Chapter Eight
The General paced back and forth in her office, absolutely furious. The Rainbow Dash case had been hers! How dare Silver Shard call in an order like that! She had completely gone behind the General’s back and sent out a kill order. She hadn’t thought even the Council would go that far. What was so wrong with just capturing Rainbow? Though, the General had a bad feeling that even if one of her patrols had captured her first there would still be dire consequences for the blue pegasus.
There was the problem of the unicorn filly to think about too. What the Council had planned for her, the General shuddered to think about. Clearly she couldn’t be dealt with in the same manner most of the other unicorns had. The General frowned and resisted the urge to kick something. She turned back to her desk to call in for a report from the squad that had been doing fly-overs and searches of the forest, though she knew for a fact that Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have stayed there long. She and the unicorn were probably long gone, vanished into the dense vegetation of the deep Everfree.
Just as she turned around there was a frantic banging at her office door. She flipped around. “Just come in already! What’s so darn important that you can’t knock like a normal pony?!” She hollered at the door. It swung open with a crash against her wall. A very panicked looking young stallion, dressed in Guard uniform stood in the doorway.
“General! Sir! We have a very serious problem!” He shouted and turned to go, expecting her to follow.
“Woah! Hold it! What exactly is this ‘serious problem’ before we go galloping through the halls?!” She shouted at him. His response was to stand completely still in fear at her outburst.
“Answer me, Private!”
“Um, I’m not entirely sure, uh, Sir!” He squeaked out. “I was down in the research section of headquarters, just going through my patrols when one of the head scientists burst out of the lab and told me to get you straightaway! There was other stuff… like a problem with the sun or something but I was already on my way to get you…” He blubbered, his words getting muddled in his attempt to say it quickly.
The General understood about half of what he was trying to say. Either way the only solution was to go down there herself. She pushed past the private and walked down the hall at a brisk pace. It would do no good for half the Guard to see her running in a panic. She would get there and any dire problems could be solved when she did.
As she walked, she wondered what exactly the problem was. She must have heard the young Guard pony wrong. A problem with the sun? Certainly not. It wasn’t possible. He must have misheard the scientist or something. She would sort out this mess and get on to the rest of her day. She took a staircase down to the lower levels of headquarters. Ever since the removal of unicorn magic the Guard has run a very good research and development team of scientists to create ways to bypass the process that had before taken magic to execute.
They did a pretty good job too. Most of their technology was doing for earth ponies and pegasi what the unicorns had done for millennia. The only thing they couldn’t develop a solution for was the moving of the sun and moon. Not that it mattered. Equestria had been fine during its last ten years of permanent twilight and there was no reason to think it wouldn’t continue that way.
The General came to a locked doorway. Not even slowing, she turned and punched a code into the panel on the wall nearby. The door slid open and she walked briskly into the R&D sector. It didn’t take her long to find the pony she was looking for.
A green stallion in a starched white lab coat and safety glasses rushed out to greet her, a panicked look on his face.
“Sir! I’m so glad you’re here! We have a very serious problem!”
The General resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the blatant vagueness of the scientist's statement and tried unsuccessfully to curb her rising frustration.
“I just came all the way down here, and I don’t even know what the problem is! Would somepony spit it out!!” She yelled at the green stallion who seemed to be the head scientist currently on duty. He paled at her but managed to keep his voice strong and lead the General into a room filled with measuring instruments, test equipment and other scientific stuff and the General didn't have a clue what it all was for.
“Have you seen the sun today, Sir?” He went up to a screen that showed a view of the land and sky surrounding Guard headquarters and the City itself.
“Yes, I have, but could you get to the point…uh…” The General said, looking at the stallion.
“Professor Nebula. And did you notice anything out of the ordinary? It’s size perhaps?” He continued on and moved a joystick below the screen, zooming in on the celestial orb in question.
“I don’t know! Will you just tell me what the hay you think is wrong with it!” The General was fast loosing any patience she had. Nebula seemed to finally pick up on the General’s deteriorating mood and decided to hurry his explanation.
“It’s too big. Bigger than it should be.” The General once again resisted the urge to violently kick something. She made do by angrily putting her hoof to her forehead in frustration.
“Could you elaborate WHY this is a problem?!” She asked tersely.
“Well, that would require some back knowledge. If you don’t mind a bit of an explanation, I would be happy to fill you in, Sir.”
“By all means, Professor take your time!” She said sarcastically.
The professor did not pick up on this very obvious sarcasm and nodded.
“Our sun is a very old sun. When a sun gets too old it can…well…explode basically. It’s called going ‘super-nova’.”
“You think the sun is going to explode?” The General said flatly. That was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. Nebula pushed his glasses up and nodded.
“You see, our sun is expanding. That is the first sign that it may go super-nova. However, we would not be in danger of the explosion part. If the sun continues to swell, it will engulf the planet long before it finally dies in a fiery explosion.”
The General looked at the scientist pony before her. Suddenly his explanations were starting to make a little bit of sense. Even if she didn't quite believe that could happen to the sun, she needed to address the situation at face value and take consideration of what the professor was saying.
“How soon?” She needed to know the level of crisis they were dealing with here.
“At the rate it’s expanding, you see we’ve been seeing slight expansion every day for over a week now, but we just figured out today what it all could mean, we think that it will engulf the entire planet in about two weeks.”
“TWO WEEKS?!”
“As far as we can predict.”
“How is that even possible? Shouldn’t it take longer than that for the sun to basically die?!” The General was having a hard time wrapping her head around this.
“That is the same thing we all thought too!” The professor nodded. “However, there were other factors to consider. We thought our sun was a lot younger than it actually is. By the actual age of the sun, this should have happened a long time ago. In fact, our sun is about 2 to 3 thousand years overdue for this event.” The General frowned.
“So why didn’t it go super-whatever back then?”
“Magic.” Professor Nebula said, turning to an astral chart on the wall.
“What?!” The General was getting even more confused.
“Do you know that the sun and moon used to move by themselves?” Nebula asked, not looking at her.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Before the rise of the Royal Pony Sisters, they did.”
“So the reason this is happening is because of magic meddling in natural places where it shouldn’t!” The General exclaimed, everything becoming clear.
“No. The reason that Celestia and Luna took power was not because they decided to move the sun and moon. It was because they saved the sun. It was going super-nova way back then and they used their combined powers to put a Stasis Spell on it, so it would no longer age, or explode. However, this caused both the sun and move to stop their orbits around the planet. The spell had worked a little too well. So from then on, the sisters moved them by magic so the planet would go on the way it had for the thousands of years before that event.” Professor Nebula turned back to face the General.
“And now,” He continued, “that spell has worn off. With no magic in existence to restore the stasis on the sun, it is now resuming the process of going super-nova. Thanks to the effects of the Uprising, we now have no way to save ourselves. To re-cast that spell we would need either the power of at least two Alicorns or many, many unicorns.”
The General couldn’t believe what she was hearing. An awful feeling of dread had settled deep in the pit of her stomach. She knew from long experience to trust that feeling. It had always been right in the past.
“Are you absolutely sure of this, Professor Nebula?” She said quietly.
“As sure as I can be of anything, Sir. Our teams are working around the clock to come up with a solution, but I predict that it will not be found. I would take this matter to the Council and have them do whatever they feel is necessary. I would like to say that we can solve this problem, but I just don’t see it happening. I am sorry that we could not have come to our awareness of the crisis sooner, but the research we had to do to piece this all together took precious time.” Nebula frowned and stopped.
“I understand.” She said and turned to leave, not looking back. She had to come up with a solution, but she had no idea what she was going to do.
---
Starlight was sleeping peacefully when she heard a noise outside her window. She was instantly awake. Years of living by herself and staying hidden had taught her well. She was a very light sleeper. She scooted off her bed and crawled along the floor to the window. Rain and thunder still raged outside as the storm that had blown in that afternoon had refused to leave.
She pushed her back to the wall beneath the window, careful to stay hidden. She thought back on the noise; it had been a snap or a crack, like a tree branch that had snapped. That wasn’t too hard to believe, there was a storm outside and surely there were twigs snapping all over the forest. This one had been right next to her window though. Starlight wasn’t too worried, but past experience had taught her to always err on the side of caution.
She had to be sure that nothing was out there, even if she was almost positive the storm had done the damage to the branch or whatever had broke. She slowly inched her head upwards too peer over the window ledge. Her heart was thudding loud in her chest as she dreaded the worst. Her rational mind might have been able to pass it off as nothing, but her nervous imagination could think of all sorts of monsters and villains that could be outside.
However, what she really saw was not a possibility that even occurred to her. As she could finally see out, she was met face to face with a pair of dark, menacing grey eyes, silhouetted by darkness. A blinding flash of lightning lit up the stormy sky and Starlight saw the outline of some pony outside the window.
She didn’t even stop to think, instead she ran as fast as her little legs could carry her out of the room and into the hall. She didn’t scream, she didn’t cry, she just ran like hell was at her heels.
She reached the top of the stairs and was about to go down, the only thought in her head was that of needing to run and hide. Suddenly, she stopped and reversed direction, remembering that, for the first time in her life, there was some pony who could protect her, some pony she needed to warn.
She rushed into Rainbow Dash’s room at full speed and leaped onto the bed, shaking it.
“Iheardabranchbreackandthenisawsomeponyseyesandtherewassomponylookingatmeandtheyareoutsidethehouse!!!! RAINBOW!!! Wake UP!!!” She cried. In seconds Rainbow had rolled over and was standing next to the bed, her wings extended and her body tense.
“What? There’s somepony outside? We’re way too deep in the Everfree to have ponies looking in windows in the middle of the night. Are you sure?” Rainbow turned to her, ready for anything. Starlight nodded.
“Alright. You stay here, if you hear anything, hide in the closet. Not under the bed. I’m going to make sure everything is safe.” Rainbow said, turning towards the door. Just as she was about to go into the hall, the entire cottage rang with a blood-curdling scream.
Stats
Page generated in 0.026 seconds
Total duration
999 users online
1,292,598 hits today, 1,996,409 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
...the plot seems interesting even though this is an OC fic.
I think I shall read it.
So yeah, I want more of this.
2294657 Soon! Luckily for you I am on spring break and have free time! Also, I've gotten to the point that I have become a wee bit obsessed with this project, so I update at least once every week or two
Glad you are liking it!
2294765
This is the kind of thing that should be featured instead of diaperfag clopfics. You make a lot of your/you're errors and such things, and Starlight's whining about her magic is kind of overdone at times, but everything else is
especially the part about the sun.
2294830 The clopfics won't show up if you don't have the mature setting on. Just go to settings, if you don't already know.
2294765 I'm glad to see chapters floating out faster than before! This story is taking a very interesting turn of events. Maybe Starlight can prevent it with one of those "go back in time one use only" spells and warn the princesses and AJ. Just saying...
2294830 Thank you! And yes, I know there are grammatical errors.. especially the your/you're which is a personal weakness of mine
I really appreciate the feedback especially since I try to proofread these, but there are things I miss! Thanks so much for reading and enjoying! 
It's a very intresting theory you created. I like it. Can't wait for the next chapter! Hope it comes soon!
2295046
You must wait for all things good! (but not too long, since the next chapter is almost done already ^^ and I have a six hour drive to sit through tomorrow 
)
2295134 Thanks! And soon it shall come out! (hopefully tomorrow or friday! I'm taking advantage of spring break
)
dashie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw4365_small.jpg
2702226 NO! Actually, I did think this through. It does make sense (in my head anyway) if you have questions I can try to explain them
Try....
This? Oh that's just my satisfaction at the karmic justice going on here.