One's Trash, Another's Exposure
Twilight Sparkle winced as she yanked out a hair from her mane with her telekinesis.
She held the hair before her face and inspected it intently before looking beyond it, at the glass container that was on a work bench several paces away, which was about as tall as one of her legs and just wide enough to accept her head. The container was enchanted to hold magic while it was in an incorporeal state, and within it lie a nanodaemon colony that was immersed in a pink-tinged magic that had been condensed until its appearance exhibited a liquid-like quality.
This was it. Once she introduced her hair to the daemons, which were more or less the magic equivalent of the corporeal realm's spirits, they would be linked to her and follow her mental instructions, which would result in a tool that she could fashion into whatever she needed, whenever she needed it. It could become something as simple as a net that inhibits the use of magic, so she could subdue her foes non-violently, or something as grand as a quill, thus never having to replace it.
Raising the metal containment lid with her magic, she dropped the hair into the container before sealing it shut once more, just in case. The hair fell into the condensed magic, which glowed softly and shifted to a pale purple color upon contact, absorbing the DNA information and ensuring that every daemon would be exposed to it.
Once the glow faded, Twilight Sparkle waited a moment despite her eagerness, even though she was confident that every daemon would have been linked to her instantaneously. When mental coaxing failed to provide any response, however, she frowned and tried it a few more times, using different methods. After it became apparent that the daemons would remain inert with further attempts, confusion set in.
She wondered what could have gone wrong. The daemons couldn't have been linked to anything else — she was sure of it. It wasn't like she was breaking any new ground, either: she was just applying a different approach to achieve a scale that was well beyond what would create a simple golem. In essence, she was trying to produce a golem whose entire makeup was composed of a myriad other golems, each with the ability to move and assume different properties, and so small that the whole could be shaped into nearly anything rather than have a relatively static shape and purpose.
Thinking that she might get a better idea of what was going on with a closer look, she approached the container. She jolted back in surprise, however, when its contents suddenly pressed against the side that faced her when she got close enough to lean her head in. Fortunately, the container was secured to the work bench, so the daemons weren't able to move it. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the cracks that began to form in the glass, the daemons were pressing hard and persistently, and adding more distance between them, by cautiously walking backward several steps, didn't appear to change that.
The daemons broke through and came at her like a shot before she could get very far. She yelped and ducked underneath them, just barely avoiding them as they passed overhead. Their movement was impeded by the wall of her lab, which had been made to withstand extreme magical discharges, but the spread of its mass against the wall was quickly halted and reversed as its momentum was returning its focus on her.
Needing time to think, and her imagination going wild with what could go wrong if her nanodaemon colony happened to come into contact with anyone, not just herself, an idea for what to do in this situation presented itself. Rolling out of the way, to avoid their second attempt, she lit up her horn, making a portal appear between her and them just before they could reach her, which she closed as soon as they entered it.
She breathed a sigh of relief and thanked Star Swirl the Bearded, both for the conception of portals and many of their applications. In this case: removing something potentially dangerous to one's native environment by evicting it to another universe entirely. Of course, as a pony who could do such a thing, she had been responsible and picked a dumping ground that shouldn't trouble anyone long beforehand. Without being able to sense her, though, she expected the nanodaemon colony to become inert, anyway.
"Well," she voiced to the empty room, as she regarded the broken container, "let's figure out what went wrong. I must have missed something..."
The afternoon sun beat down on Craig as he coasted down the street on his bike, nearly finished with checking out the sub-division where his new home resided. The Arizona heat was almost unbearable, but his father had gotten him into the habit of riding a bike and he wasn't going to let a little sweat get in his way.
He spared a few seconds to incline his head toward one shoulder and released the opposite hand from a handlebar so he could wipe his eyes clear of sweat with a short sleeve.
The physical exertion was a good distraction from the dark cloud that hung over his head, at least. He didn't quite trust himself to not break something in anger if he played video games, and that was one of the main means by which he could still interact with his friends, beyond basic communication. While he understood that his father had to accept the job transfer because the money was good and finding a comparable salary was bleak in the area where they had once lived, he'd had to leave a lot of friends, some he'd had for a decade.
One of those friends was a girl that he had been gathering the courage to ask out.
Turning onto the street that he lived on, he angled his approach to the sandy front yard of his home instead of the driveway, because their backyard was open to the desert and he wanted to explore it a bit. His parents didn't want him or his sister to go beyond the slope and out of sight, fearing that they could have a lethal encounter with a snake or scorpion, but he had convinced them that he could do so for a short time, so long as they were aware and he was riding his bike.
Hopping onto the sidewalk, he pedaled to the back of his one-story home and paused by the window above the kitchen sink, knowing that there was a good chance that his mother would be preparing dinner by then. A knock on the window summoned her in short order, and she gave him a nod of acknowledgement when he signaled where he was going, in addition to a worried expression and telling him to be careful — which he read more than heard.
Pointing his bike toward the desert, he set a sedate pace, since he didn't want to go flying from the crest of the slope when he reached it. While the free face was short enough for him to climb over it on his way back, the slope was fairly steep and he had yet to memorize where the obstacles were.
Once there, he eased his bike over the edge and kept his descent as slow as he could manage, avoiding a couple of big rocks and a cactus along the way. When he reached the bottom, he turned his bike aside and looked back at where he had come from, which he reckoned was around thirty feet above his head. The ascent would be a bit of a chore on foot, but no real challenge.
Continuing on, with no real destination in mind, he rode within an arbitrary distance of the slope, weaving around cacti, rocks, bushes, the odd tree, and clumps of grass that could hide a small predator, be they reptilian or mammalian in nature. The landscape was so different from what he had grown up with, which was rife with green grass, trees, and lots of other flora. The change wasn't bad, per se: it would just take some time to get accustomed to it.
While he had paused to observe a bird standing on top of a cactus, one which had a hole bored into it, he caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye. When he directed his attention to where he had seen it, he couldn't discern anything that might have made it stand out so much from everything else, in brightness as well as color. Curious, he decided to ride in the direction of his gaze and see if getting closer would reveal anything.
It wasn't long before he saw something odd on the ground ahead of him, pale purple in color and not quite flat despite looking a lot like a puddle. He stopped and put the kickstand down on his bike when he was roughly twenty feet away from it, then approached it slowly, ready to about face and bolt at the first sign of trouble. He'd heard all kinds of conspiracy theories concerning this region, like aliens, secret government experiments and ball lightning, and he wasn't so keen on finding out that something like that was real first-hand.
The closer he got, the more details he could make out. Whatever it was, it was either viscous or gelatinous, not seeping into the ground. It was also translucent, because he could just make out some darker objects among the sand beneath it. The next feature that he could discern appeared to be glitter, which was quite dense throughout all of the inside, reminding him of toothpastes he'd used as a child, although he couldn't be sure if that's what it was. Finally, once he was only a few steps away, he concluded that its surface didn't reflect any light.
When he decided it was safe enough to crouch and take a closer look for a few seconds, the mass of purple flew into his face before he could flinch.
"Katie!" Craig's mother, Cynthia, called her eight-year-old daughter from the stove.
Said daughter appeared several seconds later and stopped within the opening between the dining room and kitchen. "Yeah, mom?"
"Could you go outside and get your brother, please?" Cynthia requested. "He's been beyond the slope long enough, and he needs to get cleaned up for dinner anyway."
"Okay," Katie acquiesced, a little put out.
After going into the living room and putting on her sneakers, she went to the sliding glass door in the dining room to access the back yard. From there she dashed across the patio and quickly reached the crest of the slope, wanting to finish her task as soon as possible because she didn't like the heat and didn't care much for sweating unless it was for a good enough reason.
Spotting her brother's bike, but not him, she yelled, "Hey, doofus! Mom wants—"
She paused when she noticed a mostly-purple object not that far away from the bike, and squinted her eyes to try and get a better idea of what it was. It kind of looked like some kind of animal that had wings, but she'd never known of any kind, based on the vague details that she had, that was purple, let alone a bird that might challenge the height and length of a bike.
"Hell-o-oooo!" She tried, just to get something's attention.
When that proved to not get any reaction, and another look around the area failed to turn up her brother, she worried her lip and began to wonder if something bad had happened. While she didn't particularly care about him, he was still family, and only good things could happen if she acted fast: there was a better chance of him being saved, or he'd get in big trouble for making her think that he might be in danger.
So, she ran back to the house and desperately shouted into it as soon as she slid the door open. "Mom! I think he's in trouble!"
Cynthia only had the presence of mind to turn off the two burners she was using simultaneously before rushing to the back door, adrenaline pumping and heart thundering in her chest as she feared the worst. Slipping on her sandals for the sake of convenience, despite not being all that practical for what she planned to do beyond the patio, she raced across the back yard after her daughter pointed the way.
She slowed down when she neared the crest of the slope, so she could get a look of her destination from the high ground and because she didn't want to injure herself when she dropped over the fall. Muttering curses under her breath, as sand and rocks found their way between her sandals and the soles of her feet, she stumbled a bit on her way down the slope but managed to stay on her feet.
Her mind raced as she made her way to the purple figure that was near her son's bike, keeping an eye out for sizeable stones that could be used as weapons while she did so, in case they were needed. As far as she could tell, with the bike propped up, her son hadn't encountered an obvious or imminent threat, and may have stopped to investigate the strange, unmoving thing that she was beginning to get a better view of, which appeared to be some kind of creature.
Upon getting close enough to get a better idea of what it was, she stopped and stared, her son momentarily forgotten. Unless there was something wrong with her vision or brain, or there was some chemical in the air or technology that she was unaware of, she was looking at some kind of small, cartoon horse. Well, there was enough of a likeness to a horse for her to call it that, but no normal, real horse had a horn or wings, or naturally possessed any of the colors belonging to this one's coat and mane. Moreover, unlike the horses that she was familiar with, this one had more than enough feminine qualities for her to assume it was a she, which she felt would be right at home in a cartoon made for little girls.
Still not seeing any obvious sign of her son anywhere, or enough space underneath the "horse" for him to be there, she found a fist-sized rock nearby and tossed it so it would land close to her purple target. When that resulted in no reaction, as far as she could tell, she found a smaller rock and pelted the creature with it. That also failed to get a reaction, so, with a worried but determined frown, she cautiously drew closer.
She was about ten feet away when she noticed just how still the horse was, so she paused and observed it while she wasn't moving. It looked enough like a living, breathing creature for her to assume that it had been one from farther away, rather than a statue or something similar, and if that was truly the case... Well, she didn't see any indication that it was breathing.
Not knowing what else to do, she decided to shout her son's name in several directions, even though she assumed that her daughter had tried calling him already. When that didn't change the situation, which included there being no response from the apparently-dead horse, she took a moment to go over her options. She could call the authorities, but — considering the nature of the corpse — she was afraid the government would want to keep the whole thing under wraps, and that would either impede the search for her son, force their family into a life of confinement or worse to maintain the secret, or both. Beyond that, though, the only real clue that she had was the horse, and she didn't know what answers it could give while dead.
Eventually, she decided to try and bring the horse into the house, to see what her husband could contribute toward a solution when he got home. While it was very unlikely that anyone else would happen upon the creature, she didn't want to take a risk and have that part of the puzzle taken away from them. So, she cleared her feet and sandals of sand and rocks before snaking her arms underneath the creature, thinking it would be best to carry it rather than drag it.
Grunting more from expecting a need to than actual effort, she managed to lift the creature and cradle it in her arms without much issue, surprised by how light it was. It looked like it could have weighed anywhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred pounds, but it felt more like fifty. She could only figure that it had something to do with its winged nature. Either way, it made her task a lot easier than she had imagined it being.
Her daughter was waiting for her at the edge of the crest, who gasped as she watched her hoist and deposit the creature at her feet with wide eyes. "Is that a unicorn pegasus!?"
She didn't immediately respond, wondering how to break the news that the so-called unicorn pegasus that her daughter was marveling at was dead.
Twilight Sparkle covered her face with a hoof and groaned. "Of course! Because I followed all of the steps, it felt right to make a golem out of daemons, with the expectation that it could behave as if it were a physical entity. But it still needed an actual physical medium to establish a link with my physically-generated thoughts, since it wasn't designed to be controlled with magic. Without that connection, it either acted on instinct and tried to 'reunite' with me, as if we were one and the same, or..." She became filled with worry. "Or, instead of treating my DNA as its identity, it regarded my DNA as a template for its default form and sought out the proper material to build it when it sensed a physical source."
With that realization, she wasted no time in opening up a portal to the dumping ground and sticking her head through it. Looking this way and that, she didn't initially see her quarry, so she lit up her horn and angled the portal so she was facing the other direction. As soon as she finished, her ears folded back when she noticed the bicycle, since it definitely wasn't a natural feature of a desert.
After hopping out of the portal and closing it, she took to the air, hoping the situation wasn't as bad as she was beginning to fear. When she rose above the slope and saw what lay beyond it, which — in hindsight — she should have done when she had first scouted the location, instead of assuming that she would see more of the same, she discovered a community that was still in the early stages of its growth, and beyond it the civilization that had produced it.
Gulping, she tried to steady her breathing as she descended and hovered above the ground, so she could try to glean exactly where her experiment had gone via the tracks in the sand. Ignoring the trail that led to the bike, she followed the more visible one that went to and over the slope, strongly suspecting that it wasn't formed by a one-way trip like the other one. It led her in the direction of the closest house, and the trail continued to go that way from the top of the slope.
Heart pounding, she hesitated before following the trail to the patio, and the sliding glass doors by extension. When she alighted on the patio, she took a calming breath before approaching the side of the door that wasn't covered by vertical blinds and peered into the house. The first thing that she saw, which she couldn't help noticing, was another her — sans cutie mark — lying prone on the floor between the door and a table, the stillness of her body making the sight even more eerie.
She was jolted out of her preoccupation when she heard a young female shouting, and it was only then that she noticed the creature that had been sitting nearby her clone, whose face was directed at another room but who had their eyes locked upon her. The creature reminded her of a human in a lot of ways, which included their attire. Perhaps a human was what they were, which would make them a child and a girl, but in this universe certain aspects of their bodies were notably different, their colors and eyes particularly so.
In the two seconds that she had been startled and couldn't help staring at the human-looking creature, another, larger one hurriedly entered the room from an adjoining one and leveled some kind of hand-held device at her, whose design made her think of a cannon. After calculating what one might be capable of doing on a smaller scale, her ears flattened against her head when she realized that she was probably on the wrong end of a dangerous weapon.
"Where's my son?" The new arrival demanded, voice muffled by the glass between them.
Too tense and scared to feel surprise or relief at the lack of a language barrier, Twilight Sparkle's gaze flashed between the mother and her clone, fearing that if she made the wrong move she would be attacked, which seemed more likely with how unsteadily the assumed weapon was being held. Once she had the presence of mind to figure out the reason for the question, she slowly raised a foreleg until her hoof was pointing at the "pony" on the other side of the glass, at which point she answered, "There."
A storm of emotions brewed behind the mother's eyes and her grip tightened on the thing that she held. After what felt like a very long time, she spoke quietly, barely audible through the glass. "Then he's dead."
"No!" The young girl wailed, who flung herself over the "pony" and began to cry. "Craig! You can't be dead!"
Twilight Sparkle's eyes widened in horror at what they thought about the situation, which was much worse than it actually was. Panicking, she flailed her forelegs up and down at her sides as she rushed to contradict their belief, not knowing how close she'd come to being shot because of her sudden and energetic gesticulations. "Your son's not dead! He just doesn't know how his body operates!"
Fortunately, she'd been heard over the young girl's crying, but the mother still shushed her daughter to make further communication easier before replying. "What do you mean?"
After settling down and taking a calming breath, Twilight Sparkle explained, "His new body isn't like yours or mine. It doesn't have any of the autonomic functions that help sustain us, because it doesn't need them. He's probably still in a dormant state because he doesn't know he can focus his awareness outward."
The mother took her time to digest what she'd been told before asking, "Can he be changed back?"
Twilight Sparkle ducked her head a bit, her ears flagging. "I'm sure he can be, but it will take some time to figure out how."
She received a frown in response, but eventually the mother relaxed her posture and drew back her weapon, raising its muzzle toward the ceiling as she did so. "Then you'll do it?"
"Of course!" Twilight Sparkle readily affirmed, with a determined expression on her face. "It was my fault that this happened, so it's the least that I can do."
It seemed that her earnestness had done the trick, because the mother adjusted something on the gun before setting it down on the table, which she assumed was a good thing. Then she stepped up to the door, where she placed a hand on the handle before pausing and cautiously saying, "I don't fully trust you, but I don't know what else to do if I want to see my son again, all things considered... And as unbelievable as this is."
Twilight Sparkle nodded her head solemnly. "I understand."
When the door was opened and the mother moved aside to allow her entrance, she was immediately greeted by the sight of the mother's daughter sprinting headlong toward her, who joyfully shouted, "You're so pretty," before wrapping her arms about her neck without slowing down. The girl's momentum sent her feet flying out from underneath her when her upper body came to an abrupt halt, swinging along her side and almost kicking a wing that she had extended in surprise, and the combination of being yanked back and pulled down brought them both crashing to the ground.
She looked up at the mother with an uneasy smile because the arms about her neck were uncomfortably tight, who shook her head at the scene with some exasperation.
Craig looked down at the purple hand that was at the end of his foreleg, deep in thought.
After several weeks of study and testing in the garage, which had been converted into a lab, Twilight Sparkle had delivered the news that she had figured out how to return him to his normal, human self. His parents had been thrilled to hear it, especially with how close to the start of the school year it was. His sister had been disappointed but understanding; she was more upset about the real pony leaving once her task was finished. And he was...
He glanced up and regarded Twilight Sparkle, who was making the preparations necessary to change him back at a table dominated by various alchemical paraphernalia and magical doodads. It was still hard to believe that she was a flying unicorn pony — what she called an alicorn — who wielded magic, and looked like a girly cartoon character on top of that. There was little wonder why his sister was attracted to her so much, and a lot more amiable toward him by extension. There was a certain naiveté to the purple pony that he couldn't help but find endearing, too.
All of that should have offended his masculine sensibilities, and to some degree it did, but the broadening of his horizons, and the passage of time, had left him feeling very confused about his situation. Between the existence of magic, other universes, and what his current body was capable of doing, he was no longer dead-set on returning to a state that was just so... ordinary. Uninteresting. And it didn't help that he was so disconnected from his friends and a community, because it felt like he could start a new life if he really wanted to.
Maybe he could ask her to change his default form to look human, rather than be human. Having to concentrate to form a horn or wings, in order to use them, would be a pain, but it would be a lot better than not being able to use them at all. If not, maybe he could be schooled at home, and assume his human form only when necessary, since it was a lot harder to maintain a full-body change. Sure, that would mean remaining an adorable, female pony most of the time, but...
It was awesome to move things around with his mind, and he'd heard of many other things that could be done with magic. Flying was simply divine, and his mind couldn't help drifting to some of his experiences, which had taken place in the house while being no bigger than a doll. And enough couldn't be said about the special nature of his body, which allowed him to change some or all of his body into whatever shape he could imagine, so long as he maintained his concentration.
He was brought out of his thoughts when he noticed Twilight Sparkle approaching him, and his hand reverted back to a hoof as he gave her his full attention and his anxiety fully bloomed. Now that the moment to say or do something was upon him, to perhaps avoid being completely cut off from all the new and wonderful things that he had been introduced to, he felt his mouth go dry and his throat constrict.
Would she even entertain the idea of doing anything other than reversing what had happened to him? Would his parents be accepting, or force him into the confines of what they understood and expected? Was he really prepared to make such a drastic change in his life, if it were available to him, with no real plan?
It was now or never to say something... or nothing at all.