Mobile Suit Gundam: Alicorn

by Alines Reinhard

Chapter 12

“Please help… please help… please…”

The voices of all of the creatures are getting weaker and weaker.

Flash could hear them while on the way back to the ship. He tries to listen to it, he even mumbling as if he is in contact with them.

“Please… help.”

The voices finally ended, making the blue haired pilot think that the nightmares he had with them had ended. However, he still has to file some reports because the mission has been a total failure.

“Darn it Brad! You should push yourself harder!” the Lieutenant complained.

…

The Chancellor and his pilots party very hard the night after the hunt. The press conference back in Canterlot, with hundreds of creatures and ponies all across the world gathered around to hear the result of the hunt. Some of the creatures have experienced fear and shock as the announcer said “We got it!”, indicating that the Alicorn have been captured.

There is countless news that if the Alicorn was captured, Equestria will have the upper hand on not just forcing every creature else but the ponies out of itself, but also making a lot of other kingdoms to hand over their strategic locations, such as mines, sea ports,… With this, creatures speculate that the kingdom itself wants to expand and rule the whole world. Since the Chancellor makes all of his decisions the name of the Council, this will ruin their reputation and make every creature think that they are ruining their own value.

However, the 265 have one more goal to achieve: unlock the Alicorn cockpit and have total control over it. However, most of the data about the machine has been lost, as well as the news that Anaheim Electronics refuses to bring some of their best engineers to Equestria for various reasons, so the Chancellor has ordered the military to do it themselves with their best talent.

“Apparently, there are some kind of security being programmed into this thing. We’re still trying to break it, Chancellor!” the MS Chief Mechanic reported “…and we might have to bring it back to a base to do it effectively.”

“Glad to hear that, Skyranger!” Joseph said “But can you find the problem yet?”

“Sadly, that’s all I know!” he said with a swipe on his face “It would be very hard to not have AE mechanics here to help, and this thing… is kinda different, Sir!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll negotiate with AE…” the Chancellor came into the room in the middle of the conversation “…and, if needed, I’ll force them back here. I could see our world is a big weapon market for AE, so there’s no way they’ll abandon us.”

“Thank… Thank you Chancellor!”

The monitor then shutted down. The Chancellor and Joseph then looked out of the hangar coordination room, towards the Alicorn being surrounded with cables that plugged right into its armor and ponies who were inspecting it.

“They said they have never seen something like that before…” the commander of the 265’s MS force started “… except for the Psycho Frame, of course. It has a kind of transformation mechanism.”

“I see…” Black Wine said “…it’s cockpit will have to open itself, soon.”

…

“Have you ever heard of… the “Haunting Curse”?”

Zecora asks with a book on her hooves, while Flash and Haystack are finishing the reports. Flash was immediately surprised with the question, so he stopped his work and looked up.

“Never heard of it! What’s that?” Haystack asked casually.

“Well… I just read about this in this book!”

She showed the book to the duo. The title read “Curses and Chaos: The fundamentals of Dark Magic.”

Zecora was known for making potions that help curing diseases for the ponies back when she was still in Ponyville. Flash knows this because of what Yamina had previously told in the night before the battle.

“Wait… I thought you were a potion crafter?” Haystack asked.

“I just started my interest in magic recently…” she said, her eyes still not get out of the book “…magic is a vital part of all creatures in our world. I think studying it would help me make more effective potions. So, how about the “Haunting Curse”?”

Both pilots shook their heads.

“Well… There’s this paragraph: it was an ancient curse that was used to force it’s victims to do something to free the casters. Since this is a kind of dark magic, most of the time, the victim has to do it against their will…”

Flash’s eyes widened at the statement. He completely stopped writing, putting the pen on the table and listening attentively to the zebra.

“Normally, when the spell caster was stuck inside an object, a dungeon, amulet,… or any kind of prison, he or she would cast a curse on that object. After that, if some other creatures who are unlucky enough to touch it, the curse will come to effect, which means the victim was also cursed… Let me see…”

She turned on to the next page, as Haystack also stopped his writing and looked up the middle age zebra.

“There's actually a whole page about it, with scary illustrations, of course! This is actually an easy course to cast, but… not many creatures know about this: I just got to know when buying this book back in Zebrat.”

“So, what’s next?” Haystack asked.

“The cursor will use a number of options to communicate with his/her victims: paranormal activities, nightmares, echoes, illusion,… anything but physical contact, like face to face contact as we’re experiencing now. About the victim… well… It was a very powerful spell. Once you’re cursed, it will last for the rest of their lives. As much as the author’s know, magic studies have been carried out in order to find a way to cure it without the need to free the cursor…”

Flash eyes widened as he found himself in a desperate situation. He was cursed: the nightmares, the echoes, the shadows of those creatures that he has seen,… all seem to fit “one of the most powerful curses to ever known by every creature”, as Zecora reads.

“Buddy, are you okay?” Haystack turned to Flash and asked, as he saw the blue hair human was terrified.

After a few seconds, he temporarily calmed down again.

“But… but… do you know how to cast that curse, Zecora?” he asked.

“Well… there’s a few ways to do it, but the most used way is making a spell that forces ponies with bad qualities: greedy, mean, lazy, etc. to free them, when they can’t pass a ‘test’ to find out if you have that quality or not. If you can do that, they will forgive your sins, which means lifting the curse. But, the curse also provide them with the ability to manipulate your mind so you could not past the ‘test’, therefor, you will their ‘slave’.”

“Slave?”

“That was how the author wrote…” Zecora looked up and saw Flash looked down, breathing heavily “…are you okay, Brandon?”

“I… I… need to relax a little bit…”

“Hey Brad, make sure to finish the report when you come back!” Haystack said to Flash as he closed the door.

His back leaned against a wall, thinking back of all the nightmares and things he had encountered: from the test they had set up, the nightmares, the echoes he heard, especially during battles,…

And that one time he saw them running away from guards.

He looked up to the ceily, thinking that his life might have ended.

In a short moment, he slowly recap the events that lead him to that moment: the memory of when he was sent to the gate, banish him to another world, the voices that whisper to him when he was in a painful transformation to human form, the torture that he have to endure when the Federation make multiples experiment on him, and the curse that he was suffered.

He teared out, mumbled.

“Mom, I’m sorry…”

…

After the dinner, he came to the mission room to discuss a new mission that Rainbow Dash herself had come up with. The report had been finished and filed before he came to the canteen for the dinner.

The mission room was fill with disappointment and sadness, after the failing battle at Manehattan. To make matters worse, they have just received the news that some of the Equestria allied kingdoms have cut ties with Equestria as tension rises, therefore, the Canterlot can’t land in their territory anymore.

“Let me list: first, Everfree wants us to stay out of their forest or they will arrest us and give us to Black Wine, then there is Farasi who blocked us from landing at their base…”

A pegasus said with a boring tone.

“Isn’t Black Wine taking over will help?” a changeling asked.

“Dumbass! No creature wants that!” the pegasus yelled at him “We want nothing to do with that racist unicorn! Oh… and Parrot Peak does the same with Farasi too!”

“Don’t worry soldier, we still have the Hall of Friendship!”

The whole group was surprised to learn that Rainbow Dash herself is the one behind the statement, as they turned around. The blue pegasus looked at them with a smirk.

“Miss Rainbow Dash…” they all bowed before her.

“No need for that, I’m your ship mate now! We’re gonna share this space until this operation is concluded.”

“What… what do you mean by that…” the changeling asked.

“That means we are still hunting the Alicorn, my friend.” Lyra came and said.

The whole room looked at them as they got to the podium.

“Every creature listen!” the rainbow mane pegasus started her speech “…I know that after a long list of failed missions, you’re very tired, exhausted and bored. However, this operation that I have make up myself is to stop a war before it even started. As you might have known, Black Wine now have total control over our government, and with his mindset that ponies are superior, he will take over the world and make every creature else become slave. As a pony myself, I’m truly sorry for this…”

“What does she mean by ‘control the government’?” asked Flash to the Lieutenant.

“Black Wine’s party, ‘The Ponykind’, manipulates the government, rewrite the constitution to transfer all of the Council’s power to him.” The brown earth pony calmly explained “You know how racist he was, right? His own military unit, the 265, the one you and I have fought, tries to capture the Alicorn just like us to use it as a superweapon, forcing all creatures else to bow before the ponies and enslave them. You got that?”

“…But, with S.M.I.L.E here along with you, they will guide us to retake that thing. I, a member of the Council of Friendship, was entrusted by the rest of the Councils and also my best friends to help you in this operation. With this, I’ll stay with y’all until we can capture that thing, along with Black Wine’s racist party. Do you agree?”

“Yes ma’am!” the whole room replied all at once.

“Good, now you can come to have your speech, Lyra Heartstrings and Sweetie Drop.”

…

The mission is clear: they will stop a fleet of airships from trying to invade a city in Farasi.

“From recent release news paper, there is this fleet, consist of 20 airships, armed with MS, heading to the city of Panthera.” Bonbon said to the ship crew “Their plan is to use the fleet as a negotiation advantage to force him to hand over the Blue Rock Mine, a large alloy mine that is located 20 kilometers north of the city. However, according to our own recon group stationed on one of those ships, the Cloudsdale will also join the fleet with the Alicorn on board. They are in a very vulnerable situation if we decide to attack them. Be careful for the 265, as well as the Chancellor himself of course. We must make sure his fleet didn’t reach the city!”

“Sorry miss, but are we doing it alone?” a unicorn asked.

“Captain Celaeno’s airship, the Parrot’s Strength, also joined us as a guide ship.” Lyra replied.” They will tell us the situation as well as advise us what to do. Other than that, sadly…” she sighed “…we have to do this on our own. But nothing is guarantee that there’s no more help, folks!”

On that night, he decided to have a glance to the diary to find out if there is a way to lift the curse. Although he doesn’t hope too much they might include it in the diary, it is still possible for Luster Dawn, now that he has labeled her as a ‘witch’, to write down everything she knows and learn about in her diary.

However, on that night, another ‘visit’ by them might give him an answer.