Guardians of the Elements

Despite princess Luna’s attempt to get them back before sundown, the sun was already slowly dipping below the horizon. Nopony seemed to be out and about, almost as if it was a ghost town. The damage to the town only added to that feeling.

Deka snapped his fingers to garner the attention of the six ponies in front of him. “I’ll be escorting Applejack, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Trinity will be escorting the rest of you.” he turns and faces his charges. “I’ll also be watching over you three while Trin watches over the rest of you, that way we’re not wasting time by having both of us check up on one of you at a time.”

They all nodded silently, having no real reason to object to his reasoning. He then snapped his fingers and wordlessly told his charges to follow him with a motion of his fingers as he walked away. Trinity on the other hand, chose to not be so quiet.

“This way to adventure!” she exclaimed cheerfully while pointing a finger into the air and slightly forward. She then marched on dutifully towards Rarity’s place of residence.

First Person POV: Deka

“This way to adventure!” I heard Trinity cheer. Shaking my head, I manage a smirk. She always finds a way to stay positive. Mentally flipping a coin, I decide to take Applejack to her home first. Walking along the edge of town following the wooden fencing that surrounds Sweet Apple Acres, I hear the three behind me having a hushed conversation.

“So…” I trailed off, snapping them from their conversation. “Why does the place seem so empty? I haven’t seen a single pony walking around and the sun is only just setting. You’d think there would be at least somebody walking around.”

There's a small silence before one of them clears their throat and answers my question.

“That’s because there’s a curfew in effect. That and everypony is still pretty shaken up from the attack…” Dash trails off.

Putting my hands behind my head, I look up at the sky. “That’s another thing I wanted to ask about actually. What happened during the attack? I didn’t hear anything about a death count either.”

Applejack speaks up this time. “Thats cause there was no death count. We’re all very lucky that nopony died. As fer what happened...It came out of nowhere. Just another day like any other, then next thing we know, half the town’s on fire, griffons and minotaurs start coming out of the woodworks and hurtin’ everypony.”

Rainbow decides to add her thoughts as well. “I was flying over town when it happened.”

She looks down solemnly. “I tried to help, but some feather brained griffon barreled into me and broke my wing before throwing me to the ground.”

Fluttershy remains silent and stares at the ground as she walks. I can only imagine what it must have been like for someone as faint hearted as her. Poor girl.

Soon after they trailed off, silence consumed us once again. We reached the Apple family residence without much of a fuss, and she bids farewell to her friends before heading inside.

Left with only the two pegasi left, I start heading towards the forest that Fluttershy’s house borders on. We get there quickly enough, and Dash enters the cottage and leaves me outside with Fluttershy who is looking at me uneasily, as if she's contemplating something.

“Deka?” she says softly, so much so I almost didn’t hear it.

I nod to her motioning for her to go on.

“You’re going to check on us tomorrow, right?”

I nod again, and raise an eyebrow in question.

She fidgets a little bit, but apparently musters up the courage to ask what she was going to. “C-could you stop by here first? I know she may not look it, but Rainbow Dash is really scared from what happened. I am too, And being right by the everfree doesn’t help much… it would mean alot to me if you could… You know….” she trails off, scuffing her hoof across the ground.

I chuckle a little at the innocence and care for her friend. “Of course, Fluttershy.” I give her a smile which she returns then trots inside her cottage for some needed rest.

First Person POV: Trinity

Walking through the town gives me the creeps. It's so empty and deserted, and bits and parts are destroyed while others under repair. So much pointless destruction. Makes me wish I was here when it happened, maybe things could have turned out a bit better. I glance back behind me to make sure the others are still following me. They are, and of course, they’re all downtrodden looking at the damage to their home town.

Trying to think of a way to cheer them up, or at least take their minds off the bad stuff, I turn around and start walking backwards, and give a quick whistle to grab their attention. Once all their eyes are on me, I jump back and do a handstand, and resume traveling while walking on my hands. This gets an amused look out of Rarity, and Pinkie Pie breaks out giggling and mimics me, walking on her front hooves. We pass by Rarity’s home and she breaks off from our group with a simple goodbye. I wave my foot at her then continue on through town.

Twilight however, doesn’t seem too moved by my attempt, so I decide to indulge her a little bit. A little history can’t hurt, right?

“Hey Twilight, how much do you know about human history and technology?”

She immediately perks up and looks at me. “Not much, I know it's way more advanced than anything we have though. Why do you ask?”

I decide to switch things up a bit starting to hop on one hand as Pinkie starts trying to one up me by juggling some cupcakes in her rear hooves. Where she got the cupcakes I will never know.

“Well, did you know that at one point long ago, it used to be even more advanced then it is now?”

She seems to have forgotten her sorrows for the moment as the look in her eye tells me I have her full attention.

“Like, way more advanced then it is now.”

Pinkie surprises me by asking a question of her own. “What do you mean? I thought technology advances forward as time goes on, not backwards.” she gives off a confused look.

Twilight catches on and gets confused as well. “What happened?”

“What happened?” I parrot. “Long ago, Humanity had technology en mass, so much so, that it went from a luxury to a necessity that even children were given it. But it bred laziness among our kind, we started to overly rely on it. So nothing major, right? Well, technology expanded in many ways; communications, medicine, entertainment, transportation, and lastly, machina.”

Pinkie chimes in as she again tries to one up me by continuing to juggle and starts hopping on one hoof as well. “What kind of entertainment?”

I sigh and up my game by juggling some balls of electricity with my feet. “All kinds of things. Some of which we still have, such as games, movies, occasionally some rides, etc.”

Twilight still has the confused look on her face. “What's the difference between technology and machina? And that still doesn’t explain what happened.”

I swap to my other hand as the one I was using starts getting a bit tired. “Well, as I was saying, more and more advanced weapons called machina started coming up. People started overly relying on those too, and started forsaking Terra’s oaths, and they started outlawing the use of the oaths. So machina is what we call forbidden technology. As you can imagine, Terra got really angry over this, and lemme tell ya, nothing's more scary then an angry god.”

Pinkie stopped her antics as the story got a bit darker. She decided to not hear the rest and broke off to her home as we passed by it. I decided to stop my antics as well and got back to my feet, still walking backwards to face Twilight.

Twilight seems a little disturbed by this, but her curiosity got the best of her. “...What did Terra do?”

I sigh and chuckle sadly a little. “What didn’t he do… he destroyed it all. Every great machina city, and the people within. He absorbed those who had forsaken him, and banned the use of any unapproved machina. Mostly weaponry but there was a lot lost that day. He summoned roots, trees, vines, etc, from the ground and uprooted everything, the vegetation overtook everything. He also refused to grant us any oaths. And for an whole 10 years, there was peace among all humans. He was appeased by this, and forgave us, granting us our oaths again.”

Twilight looks down sadly “I’m sorry that happened…”

I merely scoffed “Don’t be, it happened AGES ago. Like 30 generations ago. History is learned so it won’t repeat itself, the machina cities of old serve as a reminder to that. You shouldn’t be sorry for what some knuckleheads did thousands of years ago.” Stretching and yawning, I turn back around and point to her tree home thing. “Well, that's the end of our little history lesson. Hope I didn’t bore ya” I say with a cheeky smile. “ And hey, nothing will hurt you or your friends while we’re here. I promise.”

She smiles a bit and heads to the door of her home, and turns to me. “Thank you, Trinity. It means alot.”

First Person POV: Deka

Walking through town is… demoralizing to say the least. I didn’t get to see much of the damage while escorting my charges because they were all going towards the outskirts of town. But now walking through to get to where i’ll be staying, I can see they took massive damage. I look to my left. A demolished group of trees. Beyond that, a broken down playground, next to a charred schoolhouse. To my right, not a single building unscathed; each one seems to be charred or broken up in one way or another. Looking up I see the clouds are normal by my standards. Moving about aimlessly, masterless and free. But here in equestria, thats a sign that the weather team hasn’t been able to keep up with the weather as of late due to the curfew limiting their time, and the lack of manpower I presume. I never really understood that about the ponies, but I guess if you have a gift, you use it. Unicorns can use magic, so they use it; Dogs have a good sense of smell, so they use it; therefore, pegasi can manipulate the weather, so they do.

Coming up on the small cottage that was recently set up for us close to the eastern edge of town, I don’t even bother knocking and just walk right in. “It’s me. And don’t you dare hurl a lightning bolt at me this time!”

I look at Trinity who’s laying on the couch, a bolt of lightning in her hand and her arm cocked back ready to throw. “Awh, you’re no fun, ya know that?” she says as she making the bolt of lightning disappear as she props her head up with her hands.

I sigh and plop down on the couch by her feet. I glance at the clock above a small fireplace, and see that it’s 7:48 in the afternoon. “Did you look around the place?” I ask as I turned to face her.

“Yeah, two bedroom, one bathroom, small kitchen, and you’re in the living room.” she gets a shit eating grin “I also took the liberty of claiming the bigger room, as I got here first so I got first dibs.”

I groan at her childishness, but soon adopt the same shit eating grin as her. “That's fine, but you’re S.O.L. if you wanna take a hot shower in the morning. I always get up before you.” I saw, punctuating my point by sticking my tongue out at her.

She pouts and crosses her arms. “No fair, you can’t just use up all the hot water like that. I don’t get why you even like hot showers, your element is the bloody COLD!” she says, eliciting a laugh out of me.

“Because i’m always cold, so the heat feels nice. Plus hot showers are better for cleaning yourself with, melts all the dirt away; Cold showers don’t do that.” I explain with a chuckle, then I yawn.

Obviously it's contagious as Trinity soon yawns after me. She glares at me and kicks me. “Damnit Deka, you gave me yawn!”

I rub at the spot where she kicked me. It doesn’t hurt, but she does have a hell of a pair of legs on her. “You say that like its a disease. Besides, we should go to bed now. Gotta get as much rest as we can tonight; we have to be watching them regularly, so that means only one night of sleep per week. Anything else is a small two hour nap at most.” I inform her as I get up and stretch, and walk down the hall. I hear her pouting and whining from the living room but I ignore it as a close my bedroom door. I sigh and take off my jacket and hang it on the door, and proceed to strip down to my boxers. Note to self, find some PJ’s. I hear Trinity walking down the hall, followed by her entering her room and closing her door behind her as I do one last stretch before flopping into bed.