Alpha and Omega

Chapter One

Omega leaned back in his fancy swivel chair, rubbing the dust from his tired eyes with one of his hooves. He took a cursory glance at the mess around him, and sighed. After the film studio had bought all the new fancy equipment for special effects and sound, they had trusted very few ponies to touch any of it, Omega being one of them. He sighed once again. Why couldn’t they just allow normal magic for special effects? They told him that the effects of magic would be magic, but Omega, and everypony, knew they just wanted the bragging rights. Not that having all the equipment around was a bad thing, but he normally bothered with using the piles of gadgets and gewgaws when he was on the set. Normally for editing and effects, he normally ended up using his trusty laptop, which he had built from spare parts, or old fashioned magic.

Looking up from his laptop, Omega took a look at the room around him. The hastily cobbled storage building was crammed with every sort of mechanical device, from snow machines and prop explosives to sound mixers and turntables. All of these devices were crammed into a what was a fairly large room, but with everything piled there was about cubicle of room left, so that even with everything stacked haphazardly, there was only enough room left for a single pony, his swivel chair, and a cramped desk. The objects were piled in such a dense manner that they drowned out the single uncovered light, giving the room a feeling of a small foal’s midnight blanket fort.

From the back of the room came the sound of a door opening, and several large objects falling from their perches, accompanied by several choice words.

“Dear Celestia! Why is it that everytime I come in here, there’s even more stuff piled right next to the door?!” A loud but friendly voice cried out from back near the door.

“Alpha, if that’s you, maybe you should have known to be more careful with all the equipment piled up here” Omega shouted back across the room.

“What pony else in the name of Luna would I be?”

“You could’ve been Brick it’s not unlike him to knock stuff over from time to time.”

“And what about me made you think I could be Brick? I mean, come on. That pony may be strong as an ox, but he’s got more rocks in his skull than a, a...” the voice paused for a moment, “A skull full of rocks. And not to mention, nowhere near as dashing as I.” With the last comment a pony stepped into the full light of the glowing screen. He was not quite as dashing as his comments might have suggested, but not a bad looking pony overall. He had earnest, intelligent eyes, and a short, tousled mane. He walked to a comfortable standing position with his wings folded along his back as to not cause any more damage. When he finally found a suitable spot that didn’t have multiple pointed wires stabbing into his back, his side was illuminated by the dim monitor, showing off his cutie mark of a Victorian number one, standing out in contrast from his brown flank. Alpha blinked his eyes several times, attempting to adjust to the dimness of the room.

“So, Alpha, what did you come here to see me for?”

“Well, I’m not quite so sure about the ‘seeing’ part,” Alpha noted, glancing at what he
could barely make out as his hooves, “but Brick wants some help with some props.”

“I’m short-hoofed as I am, with only you and me actually doing any of the electronic editing for all of this. Did you try asking Prancy Clops how his recruiting of the townsponies is coming along?”

“I tried, but he was too busy bragging about how amazing he is, and how he’s the perfect pony for the role of Daring Do.” Alpha said this with a pronounced roll of the eyes.

“Um... doesn’t he realize that Daring is a filly, not a colt?” Omega said, with an edge of worry in his voice.

“He’s also not a Pegasus, but that’s not going to stop him. He hasn’t read any of the books, and I’m not going to be the one to tell him that his rendition of them is entirely wrong. I really do hope that made the request we asked for at the town for more background ponies and stage hooves, but that’s all we can do at this point: hope.”

Omega folded his laptop shut, and left his desk. Both ponies slowly worked their way to the exit door, careful not to cause any more electronic avalanches. They emerged blinking into the bright midday light of the everfree forest. Everypony around them were busy with the hustle and bustle of their day’s work. There were actors practicing their lines,the stage crew moving heavy equipment on and off the set, and several directors and executives rushing back and forth. Moving their way through the throng of ponies, Omega and Alpha began their search for the one pony they had to find, and the last one they wanted to find: Prancy Clops.

Omega approached an intern colt that was towing a wagon filled to the brim with props. “Excuse me, have you seen Prancy Clops recently?” he asked.

“I wish I hadn’t,” the colt said with a sigh, “but unless he’s wandered off, he should still be bragging the ears off of anypony who’s close to hear him, somewhere around his trailer.”

Omega thanked him, and headed off to go check near Prancy’s oversized transportation trailer. The trailer was not at all difficult to locate as it towered over any and all of the other tents and shelters. It was a full sized triple-decker, eighteen-wheeled monstrosity, that required no less than ten strong ponies to pull. Nopony knew what Prancy needed all that space space for, but none of the rumors were exactly flattering.
In front of the trailer stood a gallant unicorn, with an artfully arranged mane and a dark pair of sunglasses. The pony seemed to be talking to everypony around him, with everypony around him attempting to stay as far away as possible, as to not be chatted to for more than a few words.

The stallion noticed the two tech ponies approaching him, and picked up his conversation aimed at them. “So, as I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted,” the stallion began with a derogatory tone, “When the director said ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no possible way that you could play the role of Daring Doo’ I was all like ‘Buck you, I can do what I want, I’m Prancy Clops, ya little filly.’ Do you know what i mean?”
Omega shot a tired glance at Alpha, and said “No, I don’t really have any idea at all what you mean. However, I need to know whether you completed the one simple task you were told to do today, even with everypony else being so busy.”

“Well, if I work too hard and hurt myself on all this dumb stuff, I’d have to sue The Director’s flank off. Wait, what was I supposed to do?”

Omega gave an exasperated sigh with his hoof to his face before answering. “You were supposed to head over into the nearest town, Ponyville, to look for some ponies to help out around the set.”

Prancy hooves nodded, seeming to finally understand. “Yeah, of course. I did that, like, at least an hour ago. There was this one filly that was all over me, Hairity or something like that, and she was all like-”

Alpha held up his hoof to stop Prancy’s ramblings. “Look, what’s important is where these ponies are. We’re overloaded as it is, and listening to your anecdotes is in no way helping.”

“Anna-whats?”

“Look, where the hay are they?”

“They’re over by the director’s pitiful little shack. And if you’re going to get annoyed at me whenever I try to lend a hoof, maybe I won’t help at all.” Prancy turned his tail and marched back into his trailer, slamming the door behind him.

Alpha and Omega slowed up their gallop a touch as they approached the directors’ cabin. “I wish Prancy told us that the director moved his cabin across the set” Omega muttered underneath his breath. The director’s cabin was much more humble that Prancy’s mansion of a trailer, but was by no means a measly shack. It was a well built temporary structure, large enough to house all of the equipment needed to supervise and edit a major film.

Omega trotted up to the door, and sent a shining spark of magic to twist the doorknob for him, and nuzzled the door open. The room was set up just about the same as Omega remembered it had been before, with the production equipment taking up around a third of the room, and the far wall dominated with a wooden desk, with The Director sitting behind it. The Director himself was a reverently old stallion, with gray beginning to edge into his mane. In all the movies he’d directed, he chose not to disclose his true name, instead choosing to go by the screen name “The Director”. In front of him, taking up the majority of the free space in the room, stood all of the recruited townsponies.

Of the close to twenty ponies crammed into the room, several stood out to him. There was a very pink pony with a frizzled mane that could hardly complete the task of restraining her excitement, a gray pony with a yellow mane that had somehow gotten all four of her hooves deeply embedded into the ceiling, and a pure white pegasus with a deep blue mane, donning what appeared to be a well made designer sun hat.

At further inspection, there were several other ponies that promised to be quite interesting, notably a shy yellow pegasus that was quietly shouting up advice to the rainbow maned mare, and an intelligent looking lavender unicorn that was studiously taking notes of every word The Director was saying on a long scroll of parchment.

The Director cleared his throat, and continued with his speech. “Before we were interrupted by Derpy’s attempt to act out the her interpretation of the book’s final scene,”

“I just don’t know what wrong!” Derpy shouted down, getting a few well meaning chuckles from the crowd.

“Before we were interrupted, I was in the middle of telling all of you about what we do here. It is no big secret that we are in the middle of making a Daring Doo film. However, movies do not simply appear, ready to watch. They have to be made, with our effort, our toil, our life. However, that effort does not have to be torture. Making these movies is the greatest joy of my life, and I hope for it to be a great joy for you all, also. Therefore, I want everypony to put in their absolute best effort. You may be only extras and stage hands in this movie, but make no assumption that you are any less important than even the most high profile actor. You are what will breathe the life and soul into this movie, and I will make sure it’s all done properly.

Now, I’m going to divide you all up by what skill you have that will help us the most. For example, Rarity, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Director, sir?” the pony with the fancy hat responded.

“From what I can tell, you have quite the skill with a needle. You, and anypony else with any related skill, should go over to the costume tent to see if they could use your assistance.”
Rarity looked quite pleased with this turn of events. “Thank you, sir. Fluttershy, why don’t you try your hoof at some needlework with me?”

“Um... yeah, I think that would be nice.” Fluttershy said quietly, hiding partially behind the rainbow maned mare. Rarity, Fluttershy, and several other ponies made their way through the crowd, and exited the door in the direction of the costume tent.

“Next: I want any pony with a knack for building or working with a hammer and a nail to head over to the construction area to lend a hoof there.”
An orange pony with a cowpony hat, the yellow-gray pony, who was recently extracted from the ceiling, and a fairly large number of the remaining ponies funneled out the door towards the construction site.

“I believe the vast majority of you remaining must be here because you are interested in the acting portion of movie production. You’re all in luck, because there are quite few background pony and small acting roles that need filling, and you’re all the ponies I need to fill them.”

“Wait, what do you mean, small acting roles? What about the role of Daring Doo?” The rainbow maned pony exclaimed, “I’d be perfect!”

“I’m sorry...” The Director trailed off, “What’s your name?”

“Rainbow Dash, the fastest flier in Equestria!”

“I apologize, Rainbow Dash, but the role of Daring Doo is already filled by Prancy Clops, whose army of lawyers will sue my hooves off for being ponyist if I don’t let him as a unicorn play the role of a pegasus. However, I don’t doubt your flying skills, and I think that you would be perfect as a stunt double for the flying scenes.

“Well, I guess that would be cool.” Rainbow said, although her expression spoke otherwise.

“Great, now all of you who are interested in acting should head over to general casting, where you will be split up based on your specific type of acting.” Most of the remainder of the crowd filed out of the room, with the exception of the excited pink pony and the studious lavender pony.

“Excuse me, sir,” the lavender pony began, “my name is Twilight Sparkle. I’m not quite sure where I would be able to help out the best, so I stayed to ask your opinion.”
The Director turned to the pink pony. “So, why are you here?”

“I’m Pinkie Pie, and I want to organize parties!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed in excitement, and began to rapidly bounce up and down.

The Director turned to the door, and noticed Alpha and Omega standing in the doorway. “ah, you two! How is your work going?”

“Well, we’re a bit swamped with all the work we have. We were given all of this new technology, and it’s bad enough figuring out how it all works, let alone work with it.”

The Director’s eyes lit up with a sudden idea. “then, it’s settled. Twilight. I want you to lend a hoof to Omega for a while, who seems to have the most... stuff to figure out. And, Pinkie?”

“Yes?” Answered Pinkie, stopping her hyperactive bouncing to answer.

“I want you to try your uttermost best to help out Alpha as best as you can.”

“I Pinkie promise!” Pinkie exclaimed, sticking a hoof into her eye.
Alpha stared down at his hooves. “Oh, joy.” he muttered, while walking out the door, followed closely by Pinkie Pie.

“Wow, this is going to be so much fun!” Pinkie said excitedly, hopping alongside Alpha. “We’re gonna answer phones, and build book forts, and throw awesome parties, oh! We have to bring Gummy, he can be our official mascot! And another idea...” Pinkie’s voice slowly faded off as they got farther and farther away.

The Director turned back to Twilight Sparkle. “How would you like to help Omega with the work he’s doing in the special effects section?” He asked. “Also,” he added, “You can stop taking notes.”

Twilight slightly embarrassed, rolled up her parchment and placed it and her quill into her saddlebag.

“I’m not quite sure how much help I’ll be,” She said, “are you sure you don’t want me to help with the organization or administration? I’m great at all that.”

“No, I have all that well taken care of, but thank you for the offer. However, I’ve heard rumors that you showed Trixie up in town not too long ago, which says something about your magical prowess.”

Twilight seemed taken aback. “That is true,” she said, “but I’m a bit confused about what that has to do with the subject at hoof.”

“You see, after you defeated Trixie, she left the remains of her traveling show, and made quite the splash with her skills at illusion magic. She did the special effects for the latest Mare-Do-Well movie, therefore the fact that you defeated her at her own game speaks measures about your own skills.”

“Alright, I do know a thing or two about magic. How can I use that to help out?”

“Well, Omega here is in charge of just that: special effects. He’s also in charge of all the sound mixing, illusions, and other odds and ends. You should fit in just fine.”

“that sounds great, but I’m not quite sure what all of that is.”

“Here.” Omega said, gesturing with his horn towards the door. “I’ll show you.”

“Wow, what is all of this?” Twilight said, staring in awe at the piles of technology.

“Well, most of the equipment was imported from Manehatten, and we bought several pieces from a failing film studio down in Las Pegasus.” Omega said, digging through the nearest pile. “Our magic is quite excellent, but no matter how powerful it is, we can’t do everything and be everywhere we want to be at once, and some movie critics are able to point out the obvious special effects that have an obvious glow of magic.” Twilight nodded, listening to what Omega had to say.

“Aha, here it is!” Omega exclaimed, pulling out a small, square device from the pile he was digging through with his teeth, and placed it carefully on the ground.

“That’s nice, but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything.” Twilight said, prodding the device with a forehoof. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. “Does it do anything?”
Omega gathered his thoughts, and transferred his mental energy to his horn. A bright spark, incandescent blue in color, transferred from his horn to the device, which began to dimly glow. “This,” he said, “Is what it does.”
Twilight stared in wonder as a small round lens on the side of the box began to spin, crackling with the same blue sparks, and emitting a dim sort of light.”

“Is this some sort of movie projector?” she asked, looking around for the bright, crisp images associated with such devices, and was disappointed to see none.

“Almost. Take a look over there.” Omega said, gesturing with his horn to a far wall. Twilight looked over to the wall, and witnessed quite an oddity; instead of a image made of light, as she had expected and looked for, what she was instead witnessing was shadows. However there was no ponies nearby to cast the shadows onto the wall; there was only buildings, and empty space. The two of them watched in silence as as earth ponies fought hoof and mouth, unicorns fired spell after shimmering darkened spell at one another, all of this in simple shadows.
When the shadows finally dissipated and the boxed dimmed to its inactive state, Twilight appeared extraordinarily impressed. However, this did not prevent her from being the first one to speak.

"I've seen illusion magic before, but none quite that detailed or well sustained," she said, with an edge of awe in her voice. "What sort of device is that?"

"A device of my own design," Omega proudly said. "I based it off of Flim and Flam's magic technological enhancement principles, and threw in a basic shadow mimic spell, along with a few spare parts from an old projector. It records movement, not as light as a traditional projector would, but as pure shadow. I haven't found much of a use for it except for during chase scenes and the like, but it was fun to put together all the same."

Twilight nodded, listening closely. "I thought Flint and Flame were just traveling salesponies," Twilight said, slightly confused. "HOW did they go from unreliable salesponies to publishing what sounds like a very well thought of theory?"

"You saw their Super Speedy Cider Squeezer 3000 when it stopped by portcullis around a year ago, correct?"

"Oh, yes, I remember them all right." Twilight said with a look that could only be described as fermented rage. "those scoundrels tried to cheat my friend Applejack out of her yearly cider harvest. We gave them a bucking made enough that they wouldn't dare wrong ever show their faces around here ever again."

Omega nodded, finally understanding the abundance of outdated and obsolete technology he had seen in town. "You must have scared them bad enough that they saw to it that when they mastered their theory, which they were practicing with their cider squeezer, that Ponyville would not get a technological update for quite a long time." Omega paused in his thoughts, remembering something he had seen on his trip into town. "Now that I think about it," he said, "the only thing that was remotely computerized I've seen in Ponyville was a dusty old arcade machine."

"I believe that we only actually take that thing out on special holidays, such as Hearts and Hooves day.and Hearth Warming Eve. We have it out now because we thought that the stage crew might appreciate it."

"Ah, the great holidays." Omega said in a lightly joking voice. "Speaking of Hearts and Hooves Day, did you have a very special somepony?"

"No, I don't, Twilight said with a sigh, "And I still don't, nor do I see it happening in the foreseeable future. I've had my hooves full with discovering the magic of friendship, and reporting these findings to Princess Celestia, and therefore have had little to no spare time in my schedule for such nuisance."

"Wait, what did you say about Celestia?"

"I'm her student, and I used to study underneath her at the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns. Also, she believes in a very classic approach to teaching magic, and therefore we did not use any sort of magic containment or utilization devices."

That explains why she's never seen anything like this, Omega thought to himself. He used several bursts of magic to quickly clear a path into the heart of the electronics shack.

"Come in here, I have something to show you."
Twilight ducked past a hanging stage light, and followed Omega into a small clearing through .the equipment. "This building really needs a good cleaning," she said. "Now, what did you want to show me?"

Omega stepped aside, showing her the competition on the desk. The glowing screen dimly lit the surrounding area with enough light to see the surrounding area with just enough light to see the room's general shapes and shadows, and the outlines of the two ponies.

"I built this computer here from scrap parts." Omega said, tapping a few keys with his hooves. "Pony feathers, I wishing had fingers," he muttered, more to himself than Anthony else.

"First Lyra, now you." Twilight muttered, also mostly to herself.

"Anyway, this device can be used to control just about any and all of the gadgets in this room. The only problem I'm running into is connecting them, but we'll get to that later." He hit a few keys, causing a few lights to flash to exemplify his point.

"It can not only be used to control, it can also edit. Take a look at this. "Omega hit a few more keys, and what appeared to Twilight to be some sort of sheet music appeared on the screen. He hit one final key, and music filled the room. The rises and falls of the did not sound as if it had been played by any instrument known to pony kind; the music was more pure of tone, that of which called forth images of the Pegasus in flight from the shadow projector.
Omega hit the key again, ending the music. "That's the original, which I made with a hypersaw a few months ago," he said.

"Now, I'll show you what I can do if I want to, say, make it a different genre of music altogether." Omega covered his head with a pair of headphones, and began working on editing the music, Twilight watching him throughout. He occasionally muttered phrases to himself such as "Now I need a slight bass drop here," and "this melody line needs some slight oscillation contortion here."

After several minutes, he lifted his head from the glowing screen. Placing the headset on the table and switching the audio, Omega looked back at the edited music on the screen and remarked "that should do." He turned to Twilight and said to her "I changed the music from house to more of a dubstep beat. Want to hear it."

The blank expression on Twilight's face showed that she had no idea what either of those were, but she nodded nonetheless. Omega hit the play button for the second time, but this time the tune had a much darker, more sinister sound to it. Although the general melody was just about the same as the original, the booming of the bass and the low tone brought to mind something much lower than the soaring pegasi, and even lower than the toiling earth ponies. It called to the mind a beast crawling from the depths of the deepest, darkest portions of the Everfree. Forest, spawned from a darkness so decrepit that not even Discord himself would have wished to have laid eyes on it.

As the final notes thinned from the air, both ponies sat silent and and astounded for several seconds; Twilight because of the horrifically dark music she had just heard, and Omega because that this was not the song he had intended to create, and that had terrified him, also. Twilight was the first one of the two to break the awkward silence.

"That was... interesting," Twilight said politely. "I think I liked the original version better. The second one seemed a bit... dark ."

Omega nodded, also slightly disturbed by what he had created. He took a step back from the keyboard, saying "Would you like to try your hoof at some editing of your own?" while motioning with his horn towards the computer.

"I would love to, but how do I use this?"

"It's quite simple, really. Move this," he said, pointing towards the mouse on the table, "to move the cursor on the screen. Hit the button on the top of the mouse to select whatever is underneath the cursor on the screen. The program's tutorial should guide you through the rest."

"This seems fairly straightforward," Twilight said, prodding the mouse with one hoof.

"One more thing, before I forget." Omega said, levitating the heavy duty headphones over to Twilight. "You may want to use these these to make sure that what you create is too your liking before playing it over the speakers. That way we don't have a repeat performance of what happened with my dubstep attempt."

Twilight chuckled nervously, and adjusted the headphones to better sit on her head.

Omega was amazed at how quickly she was able to pick up the program. What most ponies took several days to a week to figure out Twilight was learning in a few short hours. She also occasionally noted a few of the program's features on a long scroll from her saddlebag, but he could teach her about the wonders of word processing later. Every few minutes she would ask one or two well worded questions about an aspect of the program, but besides that, she appeared to be doing well on her own. This left Omega little to do except stare off into space,or at the back of Twilight's head. It was quite a nice back of the head, too, with her lavender mane wanted accented by the slim white stripe falling over her ears, which were covered by the headphones. He would almost call it attractive - no, he shouldn't think like that. She was his co worker, and in addition to the possibility of The Director frowning down upon him,enough he doubted she would have any interest in him anyway. Banishing the thoughts from his head, he shuffled to the edge of the room, slightly embarrassed, and been working on repairing a few broken stage props that he should have been fixing the whole time.

After what seemed like only a few short minutes, Twilight called him over to show him what she had accomplished. She quickly switched the audio cable expertly over to the speaker, which surprised him, as he had not shown her how to do that. What she showed him next surprised him far greater.

When Twilight hit the play button, Omega 's jaw dropped. She had not only composed her own original musical track in such a short time; she had also synchronized it perfectly to a video clip for the movie which Omega had forgotten on the desktop, the sound falling when there was minor dialogue as to not overwhelm them, and rising to a peak during the major action clips. She had done a better job, in fact, them the advertisement team had done themselves with the official commercial.

"That... That was..." Omega stuttered, trying to translate the pure amazement and shock that he was experiencing into spoken word.

"I'm sorry that I did more than what you told me to do. I just started editing and I forgot to stop." Twilight fidgeted slightly in the seat.

"No. What you did, is, well, amazing." Omega said, struggling for words. Are you sure that you've never used one of these before?"

"Well, I do have a older model in my basement. This mouse makes everything so much easier than having to use key commands for everything." Twilight stopped her fidgeting, and visibly relaxed. "Do you mean what you said? You're not mad?"

"Of course not. Actually, we may be using that as one of the official advertisements for the movie." Omega said. "That is, if you're okay with that..."

"Of course it's okay!" Twilight said rather loudly, jumping from the chair and hopped in circles around the cramped room. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!"she ended the jumping with a flying hug. Omega wondered idly if Alpha's assistant was anywhere near as wonderful.