Location: Canterlot castle
Date: 3 ANM (After-Nightmare-Moon)
‘I can’t take anymore of this!’
Those were my thoughts as I galloped away from the castle, having been relieved of guard duty just moments before. The last few nights had been absolute horror, and this was the worst one!
Being close to the anniversary of the banishment of Nightmare moon, it wouldn’t be surprising that Princess Celestia would be a bit emotional. She had to banish her sister after all! Even so, I was still surprised to see her acting normal throughout the day, as if it was ordinary. However, when I was assigned to guard duty outside the Princess’s quarters, I learned the truth.
For more than seven hours, I stood there, trying to block out the sobbing and crying as I stared ahead, my steel posture unbreaking. That being said, steel could always be melted. Several times I was starting to get emotional myself, and I nearly went in there once to comfort her. Before I could, I was stopped by my fellow guard, a veteran of the Nightmare Night conflict and a good fellow. He told me that the Princess’s business was her own, and that even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be a good idea to go in there. If it wasn’t for the emotional look he had on his face, I would have ignored him. However, I heeded his advice and didn’t help.
Until now.
‘I just got to help her somehow! But how?!?’ I grumbled to myself as I trudged through the dark streets of Canterlot, completely void of life save for the occasional guard or construction worker. Even if it had started being built years before the Nightmare conflict, Canterlot wasn’t even fully built, even if it was just a few of the outlying buildings and some decorative stuff left. Probably be finished in another few months or so.
Even now, I could see some of them working. A small crew of four were working on what would probably become a shop. As I passed by however, I got an odd feeling. I wasn’t too sure what it was, but the closest thing I could relate it to was a pull of some kind, an urge.
None the less, I decided to go along with it for now, going into the under-construction shop. As I stepped in, one of the workers noticed me and approached, a wide smile appearing on the stallion’s face as he got close. One thing was for sure, he was quite familiar.
“Mat Maker, that you?” With that voice, I realized who exactly it was.
“Type Writer, is that you? Damn, between all the muck on you and the darkness, I couldn’t tell if it was you!”
“That bad huh, better get cleaned up soon. Mind if I join you on the way home? Job’s mostly finished now, and I can deal with the rest in the morning.”
"Sure, I don’t mind.”
With that, we left a few minutes later, only waiting so that Type could gather his belongings and say goodbye to his co-workers. We trotted through the streets for a few more minutes in silence before Type decided to bring up some conversation.
“So, how’s being a guard Mat?”
“Not too bad to be honest. It’s tough to get in, but after that it ain’t too bad. Of course, it can get pretty boring, but considering the fact that the guard was made to fight, I’ll gladly take it.”
“Especially with the princesses defeating the griffons a few years back, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had peace for a thousand years.”
Being reminded of the subject on the princesses made my mood drop a bit. “...Yeah, right.”
“Hey dude, are you okay? You seem a bit down all of a sudden.” Type asked, stopping and confronting me. Sighing, I briefly consider lying to him, but decided against it, as it wouldn’t serve any purpose.
“Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but it’s the princess. She hasn’t been feeling well recently, and by that I mean that for the past few nights she’s been crying herself to sleep, and sometimes she doesn’t even sleep! It just makes me wish that I could help the poor mare somehow.”
Type was silent for a moment before responding. “Well ponyfeathers, I can’t believe that, but at the same time it makes complete sense. You’re right too, I wish that we could help her, even if it’s just to get a message to Lu…”
Noticing that Type stopped talking, I looked at him in confusion and saw the look on his face. It was one that I knew all too well. It was the face of either somepony that came up with something incredibly amazing, or something that can send them to the dungeons… for years.
Before I could say anything, Type exclaimed, “That’s it!”, almost loud enough to wake up some of the ponies in the nearby houses. “We could make something to help the sisters communicate!”
This sent any argument that I was about to put forth to a halt. It seemed near impossible, yet it felt like it could work. Even so, that didn’t stop the rational part of my brain to ask him how exactly it would work. Type was all to ready to respond.
“If we could create a magical signaler with a strong enough transmission to reach the moon, then we could enable the sisters to talk to each other. That being said, we’d probably have to get a copy of the device to the moon itself and make it so that the signal can carry conversations. We’d also need a receiver and something to show the words themselves, whether visual or vocal. Then there’s-”
“Type?”
Light Blue: “Hmm, yeah dude?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“...Oh, sorry. But I mean it, it could be possible.”
“Not even including the materials we’d need, we don’t even know how to do it. We don’t have any knowledge into these sort of things.”
“We don’t, but we know who does.”
“Who?”
“I have a connection in the construction business whom I could get the materials from. Crystal Clear could help us with shaping the crystals into a screen, as well as a transmitter and receiver. The latter two could also be worked on by Willful Purpose, and the magic signal itself could be managed by a guy I know called Long Wave.”
Thinking about it, I remembered Crystal and Will from school, but I hadn’t seen them in a while. “I didn’t know that you kept in touch with them. But back onto the subject, we still need to send a copy of the device, along with the receiver, past the atmosphere and to the moon safely. Even then, we need to make sure the magic signal can break past the planet and reach the moon without any corrosion in signal strength or interference to happen. But maybe…”
“What is it?”
“I think I might know somepony who could help us, but you probably won’t believe that it could happen…"
The next day
“STARSWIRL THE BLOODY BEARDED!”
“What!?!”
“Are you actually serious?”
“Really dude, that’s who!”
It was the day after the idea for the device had come up. We had contacted everypony and asked them to meet me at my house, where we were now. Luckily, they weren't busy, so they were all able to come. I had expected these responses to happen, so I had waited until after we had determined that it was possible to create the device before telling everypony who we needed.
“How exactly are we supposed to get his help on this! He’s probably too busy to even be able to notice this sort of thing, with being one of the head arcane researchers and all!” Crystal Clear shouted, making sure that I heard every single word. Unfortunately, Crystal's name didn’t just have to do with crystals.
A chuckle echoed throughout the room, making everypony except me jump and look around in worry.
“On the contrary, there hasn't been much to work on recently. Besides, I would love to see Celestia be cheered up again.” A new voice called out, just as a distortion appeared at my side.
“Impossible.” Will said, removing his glasses. “Is that-”
“Starswirl the bearded, at your service.”
Author's Note
Welp, here's part one of two or three! So here are the character text colors:
Mat Maker (Name based off of Matti Makkonen, the person who created texting): Green
Type Writer: Light Blue
Crystal Clear: 'Rainbow Dash' blue
Long Wave: Red
Willful Purpose: Violet/purple
Starswirl: Grey
Stay determined folks!
