Between Magic and Science

The next few days were awfully awkward for Nexus, with Twilight Sparkle and Rarity about. They were slowly adjusting, learning more about Nexus’s personal history, as well as the country’s. They kept coming back to the topic of neural implants, which they both found fascinating. Where they were from, abilities like that came naturally, and only to certain people. Nexus had all three implants at once, a rare occurrence. The only other people known to undergo the mental strain, and surgery were the Queen of the region of Raingear, and the Patriarch of the Onterra region.

Of course, the only person he knew who didn’t have implants and still had powers was Orbital Order, who obtained the knowledge when he was under Nightmare’s control. So technically, the evil spawned that great technology.

“War,” he began solemnly, “War stimulates technology.”

Rarity had a perplexed look on her face, “What do you mean?”

“If you’re fighting another country, you’re going to look for more ways to beat them. New things are discovered, invented, implemented. By the time the war is over, those inventions used to wage war are repurposed into more civilized uses.”

“That would make sense,” Twilight said, nodding her head, “But I would rather have lasting peace with less technology.”

“You do have magic in your world, I guess. That kinda makes up for it, doesn’t it?”

“You could say that.” Twilight thought of the situation from the opposite perspective, where the technology here made up for the lack of magic. Perspectives, what an interesting concept it was.

A sharp noise rang out. Nexus reached into his pocket, and produced what was called a ‘cell phone’, which allowed for communication at a distance. He flipped the phone open.

“Hello?” He said, listening to whomever was speaking to him.

“Nexus, we need to get the others together right now!” Nexus heard the voice of his good friend Killjoy, the Onterran tank commander.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’ve found someone, she said that she was from another world. We were out on patrol a few days ago and we ran into some Raiders chasing her. I picked her up and we just reached Fort Switchback this morning.”

“Another world?”

“Yes, she said she was looking for a Twilight Sparkle. You’re the expert on interdimensional travel and all that, so you were the first person I’d call.”

“Why do we need to get the others together?”

“Because, when we arrived at Fort Switchback, one of the guards out front had attempted to attack the girl. When I hit him, he turned into this... thing. Fluttershy called it a ‘Changeling’. I took it down, and we’re interrogating him as we speak, but this thing was from Fluttershy’s world.” Killjoy’s voice started to grow impatient.

“Fluttershy...” Nexus knew the name from Twilight’s stories, as well as what the Changelings were. They were a hive-minded entity that fed on the affections of others, using their ability to shapeshift into anything to trick others into loving them. Twilight and Rarity looked at him expectantly when they heard the name.

“Yes, that’s her-” Killjoy started to talk, but Nexus interjected.

“Get down here as soon as you can. Where are you?”

“I’m at Fort Switchback, it’s in Onterra. It’ll take awhile to get there, but I’ll head out ASAP.”

“Alright, thanks.” Nexus said, flipping the phone closed. He looked at the two girls, who were waiting for him to say something.

“Well?” Rarity asked.

“My friend Killjoy found your friend Fluttershy.” They seemed to be relieved by this news. ”Fluttershy was also attacked by a changeling. In this world.” Their relief turned into worry.

“A changeling? Like the ones that attacked Canterlot?” Rarity seemed to suddenly become extremely serious about this.

“Yeah, from what you told me, they’ve infiltrated the Onterran military, or at least, that particular Fort. I’m guessing Killjoy’s got all of his soldiers lined up, and he’s knocking them out, one by one. I’m going to gather all of my friends here, and we’ll figure out what to do then.”

“How did the changelings even get here?” Twilight let out a frustrated sigh.

“I said that there was a connection between our worlds. Maybe they were able to find it.”

“Why would they even come here?”

“Twilight, you were the one that told me they fed on affection and love. Don’t you think that your world has proper measures in place to identify them? This is a fresh world, where they can deceive people who don’t even know about them.”

“What are we going to do?” Twilight buried her face in her hands.

“Yes, we must do something about this Changeling situation! We need to find our friends as well. Nexus, did you say that your friend was in the army?”

Twilight looked up, surprised by her friend’s focus. “Do you have something in mind, Rarity?” She asked.

“I believe I do.”

“Yeah, Killjoy’s the commander of a tank battalion.”

“If he could organize some way of defending against them, then you could focus on getting us back to our world and we deal with the Changeling Queen there.”

“That’s... actually a great plan, Rarity.” Twilight was surprised that she hadn’t thought of that herself. “If we dealt with the Queen then we could get her to call off the coming invasion of this world.”

Nexus looked at her for a moment, confused. “Get her to... call it off? Twilight, I know that you’re not big on destructive measures, but from what you told me, they’re a hive mind that has no other goals but to feed off of it’s food source and grow. Why would she call off the attack when she could just kill you and then invade?”

“There are other ways to stop this than violence!” Twilight protested, but she knew he was right. The Changelings as a whole had little reasoning ability. They would only develop more complex thought processes when they were separated from the hive mind for an extensive period of time.

“I’m going into your world with you. We have the technology here to safely destroy them without harming anyone else,” Nexus told her flatly.

“But-”

“This is a matter that affects my world too! It doesn’t matter how far I have to go, I’ll protect it with my life!” Nexus had risen from his seat now, his frustration breached, and was staring Twilight in the eyes.

“Twilight,” Rarity put hand on Twilight’s shoulder, and she looked over at her, “Nexus is only thinking for the best of his people and our people, both. Although I personally don’t like the idea of completely destroying them, I don’t see anything else that would work.”

Nexus’s cell phone began to ring again, and he picked it up.

“Hello?” he said, sighing.

“Hey Nexus, we have a problem. Nightmare’s back.” It was his friend Whirlwind, he could tell by the accent, one that indicated that his ancestors had enjoyed many a glass of alcohol.

Nexus nearly dropped the phone, “Wh-what?”

“Aye, I saw it with me own eyes. I was patrolling in my jet around the Raingear-Onterra border when I saw the same black clouds that we saw over Tanktown when it was first attacked by that devil. A few things dropped out of them, looked like bug-people.” He heard Nexus’s silent reaction, and continued, “I don’t know, I could’ve just had a wee bit too much to drink last night.”

“You need to get here, right now.” Nexus’s tone was serious. So serious, Whirlwind had hung up that instant and ran off to the airfield he was stationed at to get his jet, and fly off.

“Oh man...” Nexus put the phone down and had resumed sitting. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Nexus heard someone say, but he was so focused on what he had just heard he didn’t care which one of them said it.

“Nightmare is back... He’s working with the Changelings.”

Nova Burst dug another potato out of the ground. It’s leafy top had just began to die, like all the others he had pulled that day. That girl he’d found had a strange story, but it reminded him of his friend Nexus’s story. She was from another world, one ruled by ponies, though, and had came to this world to find her friend. It was almost time to harvest the potatoes, so he had to get that done before he could help her.

She had long blonde hair, tied a ponytail of sorts at the end with an elastic band of sorts. She had green eyes, like emeralds, and freckles below them. Her skin looked sun tanned, which made since for the kind of work she did. She wore a short denim jacket, that only came down to her ribs, and an orange shirt of the same length, with three red apples printed along the bottom. Her blue jean pants looked like they’d been worn out, although she had just arrived here.

“It’s mighty kind of y’all to let me stay here, but I ain’t givin’ to watch others do work while I just sit back, especially when I can work.” Her accent was very similar to his own. Apparently where she was from, she worked an apple orchard, and was used to the work that growing crops came with.

“You’ve got a hat like mine!” Nova Blast said, looking up at Applejack’s hat. He wasn’t sure what to think of her, but being able to relate to her helped.

“I guess I do,” she said, unable to not smile. He reminded her so much of her own little sister.

“Hey Nova Burst! You got a full bucket yet?”

The sound of his brother’s voice snapped him out of his flashback. He looked back his bucket, which wasn’t quite full yet. He put the potato in and continued on with the next one. Applejack had volunteered to help, which made the work go by much faster. They had already cleared half of the front of their house with her help, and it was only midday.

“Not yet, I don’t.” He continued the process, digging out a potato, removing it from the roots of the top, and placing it in the bucket he had. He hadn’t even noticed Applejack was working in the row next to his until she said something to him.

“How is it y’all walk like this all the time? Don’t it start to hurt?”

“No, I guess it’s normal for us humans.”

“What about these?” She made the ‘jazz hands’ gesture. “Don’t these bother ya?”

“Hands? They’re normal, too. I’m not sayin’ I didn’t believe ya before, but you really are from another world, ain’t ya?”

Applejack nodded, and looked at his bandanna, “What about that there thing on your mouth?”

“This?” Nova Burst put a hand to his mouth, and remembered exactly why he wore it so much. His parents’ death, he couldn’t let little Nova Blast know how much that had hurt him... so he covered his mouth, and his brother would never see the expression on his face when his parents were mentioned. He had to be strong, for him.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t reckon it’s normal for some of you to wear those, would it? I mean, you wear these fancy clothes all the time.”

“It’s...” he paused, “I don’t want you to tell my brother this, but I don’t want him to know about how much the death of my parents hurt me...”

Applejack was shocked. He hadn’t mentioned his parents dying, “Your... your parents are... dead?”

“Yeah...” Nova Burst looked away, but Applejack could see through the bandana anyway, “They died on our first mission to space, on the space station called Waypoint. There was a supply failure... and they eventually lost life support up there.”

She knew a little bit about space, like the fact that there was no air to breathe, and it was far too cold to live in. The life support obviously was technology that countered that, providing air to breathe and a suitable temperature. Then, Applejack thought about what it would be like to suddenly have those things ripped away...

“Nova Blast doesn’t know the details, he just knows that no one on the station made it.”

“So you’re hiding how you feel, for your brother?” Now that she thought about it, Applejack would do the same for her sister. She couldn’t imagine little Apple Bloom as devastated as she was.

He just nodded. “Do you have any other questions?”

“Yeah, I do, what’s that on your arm?” she pointed to the grey wrench tattooed on his lower left arm.

He didn’t really notice it much anymore, but it was the reminder of what he brought to the table when it came to fighting. Telling the story of his friends was something that excited him.

“It’s my combat tattoo. Me and my buddy Nexus once fought some monsters and Raiders and stuff, and he had me and all of our friends get these tattoos on our arms, right? Well, each one kinda explains how we fight, like my wrench here, see? I build lots of gadgets and stuff, like that there sentry on the porch, and this really cool robot suit that could go underwater and stuff, it was really cool, but you had to be there to see it. Anyway, I guess you could say that I solve problems with it. But like, not those theoretical problems, like “What is beauty?”, but more practical problems...”

“Oh...” Applejack had known there was conflict in this world, from what Nova Burst had told her, but she didn’t know that it had went as far as new things being created to fight. It made sense, but she didn’t agree with the idea of fighting in general.

“Somethin’ wrong?”

“Well, I’m just not used to fightin’ so much, where I’m from. My family ain’t backin’ down from any fights, but we ain’t gonna start any either.”

“Well that’s just fine,” Nova Burst gave her a friendly smile, “If you’re not so fond of fightin’ that’s completely fine. Thing is, them Raider folk don’t really get what the word ‘peace’ means, so I ain’t got a choice.”

There was a silence, as the two just stood there in the half-harvested potato field. Nova Burst looked over to the next potato plant, and began to dig it up, and Applejack did the same.

In the house, the phone’s ring reached Nova Burst’s ears.