Iron and Echoes

by Vermilion and Sage

Rating: teen
Tags: Comedy, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character
Length: 5081

Some colts just aren't ready for life yet. That can be a problem when life decides it's ready for them.

College! A land of studying, hard work, enthusiasm, late nights, drinking, and general stupidity. For Decibel, a young stallion just trying to have a little fun while trying to get his degree, it's a constant struggle to stay on top. For Ferric Hold, who has piled himself higher and deeper into his research, college is an endless maze with a graduate degree at the other side. When the two collide, life will never be the same again.

A collab between 'red Sage and Vermillion-and a shot at college life. Be advised; contains booze, which may be unsuitable for minors, advanced engineering, which may be unsuitable for readers, and ponies, which are most likely unsuitable for haters. Enjoy!

Cover art by 'red Sage

Published 2013-11-27 01:40:03 UTC
Last updated 2013-11-27 01:40:03 UTC

A Case of the Mondays

Glow. That was what could describe the rays of the sun as they fell through the window and down into the dorm room. As the shafts of light lit up the floor and blankets that they fell on, so they also enhanced the already gold and white mess of mane at the head of the bed. As the light finished it’s slow creep up the bed to rest on his face, Decibel's breathing quickened and he opened his eyes. Pale orange irises shrunk as he took in the morning light. A quick glance over to the alarm clock ensured that it hadn’t gone off yet, so he didn't even bother reading the time before closing his eyes again.

Wait a second…

Looking up at the clock once again, he read it, registering the numbers this time: 9:37 AM. He fell out of bed, sheets going with him.

“Celestia damn it!”

Decibel bolted out the door and ran down the hall to the bathroom. There was no time for a shower, but at least there was perhaps something that he could-nope, no way to fix his mane in such a short time. He was already late for class, and there was a very important quiz that he was missing right now. Letting out a groan of exasperation he threw open the dorm doors and stomped out onto the grounds of Canterlot University.

Darting around the corners of the of the buildings, the young unicorn stallion took in the fresh morning air. The grass was still slick with dew, causing him to slide a bit around the sharp turns. When his building came into sight, he was dismayed to see several of the students he knew to be in his block lounging around on the benches. Decibel tried to put his disrupted hygiene routine out of his mind. It was making him very uncomfortable to know that he hadn’t even tidied up his mane, and yet was still out in public. He also tried, and failed miserably, to rid his mind of the quiz he’d more than likely missed. It was important to be sure, but at the same time he kept lying to himself, saying that he was in time to take it.

‘“Oh buck me sideways…” Decibel muttered to himself as he entered the building at a swift trot. The Professor was sitting at his desk going through paperwork when Decibel hurtled his way up to the front of the classroom, breathing heavily.

“Over…slept…quiz…take?” he asked in between panting breaths.

“Decibel…Decibel…ah yes. Overslept did ve? Vell maybe next time you’ll learn to take ze class a little more seriously.“ The Professor looked back down at his work, and the only movement he made was to point his hoof at the door Decibel had just ran through in his desperate attempt to make it on time.

Decibel nodded slowly, feeling sick to his stomach while he made his way back through the door at a considerably slower pace. After a few moments he found himself back outside, the glowing sunlight considerably less cheerful. This was going to be a long day, he could tell already.

“Oh, to love a Monday… “ he muttered to himself; sauntering off to his next class. At least there was no way to mess up this time. He'd be very early, and today in Discrete Scrying Communications they were only having a lecture. Boring, but better than a quiz.

Decibel found himself walking toward the school commons. Just before he rounded the next corner he heard a very familiar sound, something of a loud roar, and braced himself. Sure enough, there was the hoofball team in the midst of a large spirit event. They seemed to be having some kind of waterfight, judging by the balloons and buckets.

“As if partying after a win wasn’t enough.” Decibel spat. The noise grew louder and louder as he walked past, not really paying them any mind. At least not until he felt a cold weight crash around him, soaking his coat. Raucous cheers greeted his ears as the water ran off. Decibel stood there for a second in shock, his gold and white mane now matted against his face.

Fourteen times the natural log of ten times x quantity prime is fourteen divided by quantity ten times x, simplifies to seven divided by quantity five times x...five times x...AUGH!

Ferric Hold awoke with a start to see the exact line that had been haunting his dreams:

(14ln(10x))' = 14/(10x) = 7/(5x)

There, but a few inches away from his tired eyes was the next in line of the seemingly endless pile of papers he'd been diligently grading the night before. Ferric sat up in the desk chair, and was greeted with a small cascade of pencils and pens pelting his face. He shut his eyes out of reflex and yelped as a multitude of small points impacted his forehead and cheeks. When the chaos was over, Ferric opened his eyes to find that his horn was stuck in the mug that he used as a pencil cup. With a grumble he levitated it off and set it back in its spot, replacing the spilled contents with another bit of magic.

Now fully awake, Ferric stretched all four legs out wide as he slumped down in his chair. Vertebrae from his tailbone to his neck popped, making him wince in minor discomfort, promising himself for the twelfth time that year that he would never again, intentionally or otherwise, spend a night asleep at his desk. Pushing some of the purple-blue mess of mane out of his eyes, Ferric glanced up to the wall clock, which read something close to a quarter til ten. This earned only a shrug from the groggy unicorn. Setting his own schedule meant that time of day only affected him in that the grocery store was often closed when he was awake.

Ferric got up and rummaged around in his pantry until he located a tub of oatmeal. He levitated some into a bowl, filled it with water, and instead of popping it into the microwave, superheated it with a blast of magic. Nudging open the silverware drawer, he found that there were no clean spoons left. With a shrug he trotted back over to his desk and began to levitate chunks of the oatmeal up to his mouth. The key was buried under all the papers he'd graded, and it was for a such a laughably easy assignment that he had all the grading points memorized after just ten minutes of grading. Lucky for him, there were only a few papers left.

When he'd finished lavishing his red pen across the top of the last one, leaving a 3/10 for whoever ‘Hoops’ was, Ferric whisked all the papers into a folder. Throwing his now empty bowl into the sink to wash later, he made lunch and headed out.

Sporting a plastic bag containing a peanut butter sandwich and a folder full of now graded calculus homework, Ferric was looking forward to another good day. He began to whistle a merry tune as the trotted down the sidewalk from his apartment to campus. Today he would finish up the modeling of amplified heat spells and maybe even test them out. Oh, and teach two sections of class, but really...that was as easy as life ever got. If only they payed him what a professor would get for teaching.

While Ferric made his way across campus to get to his office, he saw the hoofball team goofing off again. He couldn't help but smile a little. At least that bunch of ponies would be enjoying their schooling. As he looked on, he saw one of the especially rowdy looking freshponies grab a bucket and dump it over a passing unicorn. Ferric couldn't help himself and chuckled at the enraged expression on the young stallion's face. Well well well, looks like somepony is about to get whacked. Even from across the commons he looked like he was ready to kill.

“Think that’s funny? Let me ask you something. You wanna die?” Decibel growled as he charged up a spell. As the hoofball players continued to laugh, he released it at the freshpony, blasting him several feet back into a table which immediately collapsed under the underclasspony’s bulk. Decibel turned his tail to the chorus of outrage and laughter, and continued on his way. He laughed quietly, congratulating himself on the success of the spell. Blasting spells had always been difficult for him to cast and he didn't want to think on how embarrassing it would have been to mess it up.

“Stupid hoofball team and their stupid bucking alpha male egotistical mindset. Animals, the lot of them.” Decibel fumed bitterly to nopony in particular. His mane was clinging to his face and neck, and it itched like Tartarus. It didn’t help that the recent drenching was making his already musky scent more prominent, and as he walked on, two mares turned to regard his appearance with rapid whispering and intrigued expressions. He didn’t give them time do more than that though, not feeling at all inside his normal comfort zone of good hygiene and proper grooming. Nor did he really want to be insulted to top it all off.

Decibel reluctantly slunk into his next class, still soaking wet and dripping water onto the tile floor. He received several curious stares from other students. Again, he did his best to ignore it and took a seat on the far end of the room, well away from everypony else. After a moment, his old buddy Static Blitz trotted over with a worried expression.

“Hey Dess, you alright? You look like you lost a fight with a fire hose.” Static chuckled.

Tact was never one of Static’s strong suits, but Decibel loved the colt like a brother anyway. They had a tendency of causing, and getting out of trouble on a regular basis. It had been a ritual, actually, to do something radical at least once a month and end up in the brig together for a night. Last week they'd only gotten off because Static stuck their booze in a hastily conjured dimensional pocket. Static was good enough at magic to get out of trouble like that, but was too hayfaced to magic it back out, leaving them bored for the rest of the evening.

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Been a rough day so far,” muttered Decibel, shifting in his seat, trying to ignore the nagging itch around his neck. “Look Static, I’m not feeling all that great today. I kinda want to be left alone for a while, alright?”

“A rough day already? It’s not even noon yet! But…if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll leave you to your own devices until you’re feeling better, alright?” Static's smirk faded to genuine concern.

Decibel nodded gratefully, and Static cantered back over to his seat. As the class looked on, Professor Spark Beam levitated two boxes of dry erase markers out of his bag.

“Yes I know what all of you be thinking, and you be right. Today's lecture be in need of all of deese markers.” Decibel grimaced along with the rest of the class. “Let us start by writing a basic magical impulse function with a few terms up on the board.”

In fine magic-writing, the professor jotted down the phrase:

h[n] = δ[x] – 2δ[x – 1] + 7δ[x – 3]

Decibel leaned over the side of his desk to grab his notebook and a pen out of his bag, only to find it had been soaked as completely as he was. The wet *SLAP* that emanated from dropping the notebook onto his desk caused several of his classmates to look up in alarm, only to look down when they saw the scowl on his face.

That left only one thing to do; slouch down in the desk and steel himself in preparation for the lecture. As he resigned himself to mental note-taking, adrenaline spiked and he nosed his bag open, seizing his calculator. Hoofing the 'on' button several times did nothing other than to leave the screen as dark as his mood. Great, this is just bucking great. A two hundred bit calculator gone because of those hoofball idiots. Replacing this means I can't go drinking with Static for another two weeks!

The class progressed like it always did, dry and barely manageable. Decibel felt his thoughts wandering as the numbness began to seep into his mind. As the minutes seemed to become hours, his eyes glazed over. The professor was going over the same material again for the third lecture in a row.

The sudden drop of his neck caused a bolt of adrenaline to sear through his chest and legs. Decibel hadn't even realized that he was falling asleep and shook it off for the time being. Not long after that he caught himself nodding off again, oddly exhausted despite sleeping in. Yet again, he caught himself and shifted in his seat to at least try to stay awake. He continued listening to the lecture, taking little to none of it in when suddenly he jerked back awake, a sudden pain now present in his face.

While he had been steadfastly avoiding falling asleep, it had ambushed him and knocked his head on the desk. The sudden impact jolted him wide awake for the moment, and earned the stares of everypony in the class except for the professor, whose muzzle was buried in his lesson plans. Why does everypony have to keep staring at me today!?

Once the stars faded from his vision, Decibel finally lost the battle of avoiding looking at the clock. For once in his life, it read reasonably close to end of class. Three more minutes of trying to understand the professor’s Neighjing accent and Decibel was free to go. When the bell rang, he slung the saddlebags over his back and trotted as fast as he could without running out of the room.

High noon found Decibel sitting at a table as far from anypony else as he could. He was slowly chewing through a chancellors salad, a school newspaper laying ignored next to his plate. While he mashed the lettuce leaves into pulp, his thoughts were much harder to chase down. He’d almost got ahold of them when the sound of giggling broke his concentration. Looking up from his lunch, he saw four mares sitting at the table in front of him, all hastily looking away when they realized that he had noticed them. They went back to whispering hurriedly and sneaking glances back at him as he dropped his face back to his lunch again.

Why won’t they leave me alone today? Seriously, my mane is matted and smells like I haven't showered in days. If that wasn't enough, I know for a fact I look like I've been having a horrible day. So what in the name of Celestia makes that appealing in any way!? Just leave me alone!

“--And I'd just love to lock him in my room and--” the green earth pony at the table leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper.

That's it. I'm out. Decibel stood up quickly and took his lunch to the garbage and dumped it in. He had to walk past the group again on his way out of the cafeteria, ignoring their pointed stares and giggles as he passed, his mood beginning to darken as the realization that today might not improve at all, and that the only thing he had to look forward to at the end of the day was whatever alcohol was left in his fridge.

Ferric trotted into the lab and turned on the lights. They flickered for a moment before illuminating a few workbenches, a desk, and a large open area on the floor. A few shelving racks housed large quantities of magical engineering supplies and tools. Everything was as he left it, including the 'IN' box on his desk where mail would go.

That meant nothing new from the guard, who was giving him the meager funding that was keeping his project afloat (and paying for the oatmeal in his pantry), and no reply from any of the companies he'd applied to in the last month. Walking over to the desk, he found that there were no new notes from his adviser on the bulletin board either. Seemed nopony had any interest in his work, but that wasn't new either.

Reaching over to his design notebook, he flipped through toward the back, and pulled up a schematic on the projector. With magic he highlighted a small section of the diagram, while pondering the work for the day. On a fresh page, he wrote:

Directional Control Module: Revision 1.2

Attempted Stability Fixes

Nodding to himself, he began to copy the schematic, and once it was done,re-diagramed it with slight modifications, replacing a resistor with a different value, a magic amplifier with a different model device, and noting values and part model numbers as he went. After half an hour, the desk was littered with a few dozen pages of paper, each with a slightly different design on it.

“Ok...” muttered Ferric to himself as he looked over at the helmet-like device sitting on the
nearest workbench. If somepony were to look closely at it, they'd see that his drawing were of the little ring on the forehead. It looked as if it were supposed to be sitting around the horn of a unicorn judging by the hole in the middle of the front. Around that hole was ring of electronic parts, vaguely matching the sketches Ferric had. “Time to get to work...”

A calming sense of relief ran over Decibel as he turned the knob on his shower over and let the warm water flow. He spent a few moments just enjoying the sensation of the water impacting his body and running through his mane and coat. Eventually, the young unicorn sighed and began to scrub himself clean. Time meant little to him, and it wasn’t until twenty minutes later that he got out and looked around his room, which was left in a state of semi-disarray from his hasty morning.

The bed was unmade and a couple beer cans littered his desk, as well as a few other items that he hadn't paid the slightest bit of attention to. He inhaled sharply through his teeth, and threw the beer cans in the trash before turning his attention to the bed. Each of the sheets and the comforter were tossed into the air before neatly landing in place. One more quick sweep around to make sure everything was correct, and Decibel let out a tense sigh.

Looking around for anything else out of place, he grabbed his afternoon notebook from a drawer in his desk, and looked at the class schedule he had taped up, a sense of elation creeping into him when he was reminded that his Electromagmagics class was starting in an hour. The one class in his schedule that was actually enjoyable, had a professor without some kind of bizarre accent, and didn't make him want to spend every last second of the class smashing his head against a wall. Decibel stepped in front of his mirror, and staring back at him was a clean and well-groomed stallion.

“Well...maybe it was a bit too early call this day a total disaster...but I still find myself wondering what hay was going on at the cafeteria. Mares....insane, the lot of them...” muttered Decibel. It occurred to him that he wasn’t talking to anypony other than his own reflection, causing him to laugh and leave his room. The next class was all the way on the far side of campus from his dorm in an old brick building, but it was well worth the walk.

Up two flights of creaky wooden stairs and inside a musty lecture room with an old blackboard was where Electromagmagics was taught. Now freshly showered and groomed, Decibel’s mane was properly combed and his coat didn’t reek of sweaty stallion. Seated on the far side of the room, two of the mares from lunch glanced up as he walked in, and then hurriedly turned to chatter to each other. Some of the same faces...word gets around I guess...

No further worry was given to those worldly cares as he graced one of the chairs in the front row with his rump. Sure, it had been a rough day so far, but he decided to let it go and focus on the present time, which was the EM class. The professor was late, as per usual, allowing for just enough time to get his very dry notebook out, and a pen. The sheer volume of notes he’d taken down over the course of the last couple weeks was enough to promise an easy study session for the final, and a happy reminder that in hindsight it was a good thing that he’d accidentally left that notebook back in his room when he’d rushed out the door earlier that day. Those thoughts were completely interrupted by Professor Half Wave, who’d come barging in at a near galop, looking several different flavors of disheveled.

Well at least it’s not just me today. Those thoughts quickly gave way to a sick sense of satisfaction, and he gave himself a mental reprimand as the professor quickly sat his bag down and began pulling papers out haphazardly; tossing them onto the desk in no particular order. Decibel started to feel bad until Half Wave suddenly stood upright with a large grin on his face.

“I know you’re all going to love what we’re doing today! Now, I’m just gonna go ahead and assume none of you did the assigned reading, am I right?” A number of guilty nods and more than a little coughing greeted his question, and Half Wave smiled even wider. “Damn I’m good. Well, lets get started then. This is Coltoumbs law...here.”

F = (MxMy)/(4πε0)*(q1q2)/(r^2) = ke(MxMy)(q1q2)/(r^2)

Half Wave jotted down the expression on the board, at which point Decibel began burning through ink and paper, taking down notes nearly as fast as Half Wave could dish them out. “And you see, the force between two particles is a function of the charge on each one, proportional to the permittivity of free space divided by the square of the distance between the two. Of course, if the particles are magical in nature, one must take into account the magic type and the caster co-efficient, represented here…”

When Decibel looked at the clock just a few minutes later, he was sorely disappointed to find that the class was actually just about half over. The worst thing about EM class was that it always went by faster than it should. Decibel had already gone through a half-dozen pages, utterly coated in ink, putting that particular notebook dangerously close to being added to the others on the shelf of filled out notebooks in his room. This was one of those classes where the paper ended up full of notes, rather than doodles. The minute-hoof of the clock and the fetlock around the pen raced onwards to the end of class.

“Why. Don’t. You. Work?!”

Ferric sighed and slumped down at his desk, eyes taking comfort in staring into the grains of wood. It had been the most typical of days. After two hours that morning spent working on new designs, he’d legged it over to the lecture hall and taught the ‘Intro to Calculus’ sections. The students had been good, and soon he was right back to his lab. Then followed five more hours of zero progress.

Raising his eyes, Ferric was greeted by a mess of balled up papers, scratch paper covered in diagrams and hastily scrawled bits of math, and a small mess of electrical components. It had been five hours, and his progress...was normal, which was to say nonexistent. He was ever so close to making it all work, but there was something in the design that wasn’t quite working.

With an exasperated sigh, he shoved the paper out of the way, and levitated over the schematic of his current design. Tracing it with his pencil, he worked his way from the source nodes, through the limiting resistors, past each amplifier, checking twice to make sure the pins were in the right place. After fifteen minutes, he was satisfied that they were all in place, and ready to check on the physical build.

Humming to himself, Ferric levitated the helmet-device over, and began checking to make sure all the components were in the same order he had them down on paper. Bit by bit he ran through the mess of wires, chips, and solder, and was soon smiling. It was all exactly in the right place. That left only one thing left to check.

Surrounded in a cobalt glow, the magemeter floated over to rest on the desk. The scientist pushed the cleft in his hoof over the tuning dial, and with a number of loud clicks rotated it to be checking magical potential. A stream of magic began to flow from his horn into the helmet, lighting it up in the purple-blue glow. With one lead in his mouth, and the other in a fetlock, Ferric set about checking every last node against the values he’d put down on his paper.

It appeared to be so routine until he reached the second to last component, a cylinder with multi-colored stripes on it. When the screen flashed on as a ‘0’, Ferric dropped both the leads and jumped up with a shout.

“YES!”

The brief moment of celebration past, he sat back down, and replaced the resistor. I guess it was just defective. I hate when that happens. Two minutes of testing later, a wide smile graced Ferrics face. He pulled out a small video recorder from under his desk, and switched it on, facing the center of the room. Waiting in that open space was a small rock on a pedestal. All day long he’d been trying to make it move with no success, but he knew that was about to change as he lifted the device over his head.

“6 PM, 23rd of the month of Downpour. Test take seven, directional control stability.” Ferric took his place several hooves away from the pedestal, in full view of the camera. “Casting now.”

A bright light filled the room, and Ferric saw no more.

The rest of the class went by in a blur, and when Half Wave called the end of period, Decibel was almost disappointed. How that was possible probably could not be explained by science, considering his plans for the rest of the night. After the evening lecture was time to go back to his room, crack open a cold cider and unwind for a couple hours before meeting up with Static Blitz to run off somewhere and find trouble to make; raising hell of any color to make up for the dreadful start of his day.

That wasn’t to say he did anything illegal (usually), just a bit of practical joking, and hit on a mare or two. Now finally clean, and with just a little liquid courage, Decibel wouldn’t mind spending some time with the fairer sex. His partner-in-crime, Static Blitz was probably already hayfaced; his last class having ended an hour and a half ago. Blitz’s idea of pregaming for a night out involved downing a half a bottle of liquor and then going to cider, both of them being strong believers in the adage ‘Cider before liquor makes you more sicker quicker’.

Decibel packed up his things, reluctant to leave the class until Half Wave’s notes had been taken down exactly, down to the last right parentheses, which could honestly make or break a formula. He was the last to leave the room, save for the professor, and he noticed with some satisfaction that his saddlebags had dried out enough during the class to actually be comfortable. It was going to be a good night after all.

Though the night air was cool and crisp, relaxing after an hour stuffed up in the classroom, Decibel wanted to be back home as swiftly as he could get there. After living on the campus for two years and change, he knew most of the tricks to get from one end to the other quickly. In particular, cutting through the lower level of the graduate physics research lab allowed him to walk a mostly clean diagonal across an entire block.

Whistling a merry tune, Decibel pushed open the door and trotted down the hall. Clean, white-tiled floors and white-painted walls greeted his eyes under the flourescent lights. Gosh. I could not work here every day. Ah well, not my problem. Nothing can ruin my day now.

A force picked Decibel up and slammed him into the wall; the impact shaking his bones and bruising his side. Chunks of sheetrock and plaster covered every bit of his hide, ensuring the other side would be quite sore as well. As soon as the insanity started, it stopped, and Decibel shoved his way out of the mess with a grunt of pain.

“What in the bucking hay--”

The wall was gone. Ten lengths in each direction, it had been completely torn through. Pipes and wiring stuck out from the ragged edges where something had torn it to bits. That something was probably related to the gray coated and cobalt maned unicorn wearing some kind of odd helmet lying in the middle of the floor. Yep. Throat kick mode enga--...wait a second, he’s not moving. Decibel shoved off the rest of the debris and sprinted over to the fallen lab worker. Oh please be ok.

Author's Note

Sage: I feel a little cheap in that I put carrots in the Coulombs law equation to do superscripts, but the superscript formatting doesn't import from google docs, and Fimfiction doesn't have a feature for it. If you enjoyed, let us know and we'll keep working on it!

Vermilion: Hey all, thanks for droppin by to read it! we definitely had a great time writing this fic, and we certainly plan on adding more chapters in the future.