Two enormously powerful beams of magic slam into each other at something approximating ground level. The result, a crater.
Next, an even stronger beam of magic comes directly down on top of a target. The target of the alicorn’s ire withstands the blow easily, but the ground underneath his hooves does not. The result, an even bigger crater.
Rather than going elsewhere to make another attack, the alicorn decides to double the attack- offering a second or so of relative peace before the second wave. Just enough time for her target to lower the barriers she can see him raising every time she charges for a blow.
Partial success. He had lowered his barriers, as she expected- and, when he realized the second attack was coming, had started throwing them back up again. He’d only gotten some of them up, though- and whereas the intact barriers can protect him effectively indefinitely, given his power levels, the process of constructing such a barrier is a very fragile thing- rendering such defensive action flat-out impossible.
The few barriers he’d managed to throw up in time creak and groan under the force. Her target, despite having a similar power level to her own, doesn’t have enough power to protect himself long-term with these brute force ‘quick & easy’ style shields. He pours all his energy into them, but it isn’t enough; before long, cracks start forming in his outermost barrier.
The alicorn hovers in midair, maintaining the attack. Thanks to the finely-crafted attack spell, she knows, beyond a doubt, that his barriers are beginning to collapse- and that he’s pouring all his power into them at his maximum thaumic rate. Sure, her attack is running at her maximum thaumic rate as well- but his magic was stolen from countless regular ponies, and hers was given by three alicorns.
The difference? Regular ponies actually produce power at a miniscule rate- usually around a tenth of a percent of their maximum thaumic rate, being the rate at which they can use that magic. Most unicorns, at their maximum thaumic rate, can burn through their entire thaumic reserves in minutes.
Alicorns can burn through their reserves in a single second. That is, they would be able to, if they didn’t also produce power at their maximum thaumic rate. Meaning that, while he’ll be forced to reduce his power levels soon, she can maintain her attack indefinitely.
The main reason she didn’t try for simple endurance overshot is that the barriers he’s been using- when he has a few seconds to throw them up- are purpose-built high-efficiency shields, capable of deflecting a thousand thaums for every one poured into them. As such, when she poured on her strongest against them all, all she managed to do was nullify his magic production.
That would also be why he kept lowering them- magic production is very important and, if a pony manages to run out, they can actually stun their thaumic facilities, creating a production blackout often hours long, and a usage blackout often many times as long- lasting for several hours after they manage to top off their reserves again.
If she can force him into thaumic exhaustion, as such a state is called, even his natural wards will fall- and her attack will be just as effective against him as it is against the rock he’s standing on.
Once defeated, he will lose all of his stolen power and be, once again, banished into Tartarus. As for the ponies he stole it from…
She doesn’t know what’ll happen for them. She knows their power will return to them- but once it’s all spent, will she and the other three Princesses then have to deal with an Equestria full of ponies in thaumic exhaustion for a week?
She really hopes not. For one, an earth pony in thaumic exhaustion can’t do their normal magic with plants. For two, pegasi in thaumic exhaustion can’t fly- or walk on clouds. For three, unicorns in thaumic exhaustion will be used to their magic- and as a result, injure themselves with everyday appliances- like the oven- far more easily than either other race!
She also kinda wonders why her own normal power follows the same pattern as most regular ponies, rather than the Alicorn one. She’s not actually using it right now- next to even Cadence’s power, her maximum is nothing. Add the other two, and there’s really no use.
So, once this is over and she returns the other princesses’ magic, at least she won’t have to deal with a lack of magic. She’ll be able to give Rainbow a standard cloudwalking spell, to allow her to inhabit her cloud home, while she researches a way for her to use her standing supply of magic to jump-start another pony’s recovery from thaumic exhaustion.
She watches as the first of his shields reaches local overload, forms a hole, and finally shatters. The rest of his shields take the load- and the flow of power being supplied- but will be collapsing faster. They’re operating way over their effective strength, the thaummage where a shield is able to block the most per thaum of input- so the more he puts into it, the less each individual thaum he feeds them is actually doing.
This, of course, means that his transition to running fewer shields at higher thaum values reduces the overall strength of his defenses- and that his shields will fail completely soon. A good thing, too- the amount of dust kicked up by the crater is starting to obstruct her line of sight and, slowly, reduce the effective thaumage of her attack.
Then her crater gets deep enough. One blow from an unexpected direction is all it takes; when a very solid something in the crater’s trajectory decides very stubbornly that it will not vanish into a cloud of dust, her target lands on it.
That is, one of his hooves landed on it. One of his hind hooves. He falls over- and loses his focus on his shields. Moments later, she’s smashed her way straight through the collapsing or misdirected barriers, spends a half a second or so on his natural wards, and finally hits him with the full force of her attack.
She can hear his long, monosyllabic cry- ‘no’- as her spell takes hold and performs its work, easily stripping him of his power. As the first stage.
Once he is fully stripped of his power, returning the power to its rightful owners, her spell rips open a portal to Tartarus, thrusting him through it, back to his original imprisonment location.
Next, her spell would have closed the portal and been done, but she stops it, holding the portal long enough to shatter the Princesses’ bonds and pull them back out. Once she does pull them back out, she closes the portal, puts them down just outside the crater, and lands herself before she starts the spell to return their power.
The object that had tripped her opponent up had not been untouched by the blast of thaumic energy. Sure, it looks like it hadn’t been touched; the rough metal surface still even bears surface rust!
The way in which the beam had most touched it is fairly invisible. The beam had been powerful enough to penetrate the previously rust-caked surface and into the technology inside. The technology that had then absorbed it, preventing it from blowing off the last of the rust.
When the energy was absorbed, it had been converted into electrical energy and proceeded to flow an enormous distance through deteriorated but still intact wiring and cabling to a single power cell. This power cell’s thousands of brothers are all inoperable, but thirty-eight and a half percent in a single cell this size is nothing to laugh at. Especially when combined with the comparatively miniscule but steady flow of solar energy now coming from the same plating.
Now, on its own, that solar flow would be considered laughably low, at about three watts. For the equipment connected to the power cell, even thirty-eight and a half percent in one power cell is extremely low.
But this equipment knows how to deal with a low-power situation. It’s actually designed to run on flows as low as a single watt- though it can’t really do anything at that power level. Fortunately, it’s got a lot more power to deal with, at really whatever wattage it wants.
So it drinks from that power cell as it starts processing. A second later, it goes down to single-watt power draw as a second set of processors kicks into high gear, burning up far more power despite their smaller size. Power draw grows even higher as these processors reach out with their higher clock speeds to slam full-force into several other systems, many of which are not working- or, in some cases, not even there.
One of them, the only truly critical one, responds as designed, and activates. It in turn reaches out to more devices- though this time, it does so with wireless communications… and power transfer. A whopping total of three hundred eighteen devices respond and set to work. Thirteen of them fail before they are able to accomplish any useful work, but the rest successfully begin mutual servicing operations. Once they’re all in tip-top shape, half of them switch to self-replication duties while the other half race off to restore the activated systems to tip-top shape in reverse order. As more are produced, the additionals are split evenly between the two tasks.
The set fixing the various systems eventually reaches the exposed plating and begins cleaning off the rust, restoring the absorbing systems to functionality- and vastly increasing solar production in the process.
Once solar production climbs high enough, it trips a flag somewhere deep inside those first processors- and more commands flicker through more cables. Many of the invoked systems are nonfunctional or, in at least one case, nonexistent- however, a few of them respond.
By the time this happens, the Princesses have long gone home- and a new day has begun.
I awaken. Damage Control is still processing many of my auxiliary functions before enabling them, but my core personality and emotional routines are fully functioning. I interrupt this processing for a moment, pulling a situation report. The result is alarming, but manageable. I am left in the dark as to where the power in the single surviving power cell came from, but when I chart the generation logs against the repair logs on the generating plating, I find a clear correlation. This I expected- but when I divide the first by the other, I find a gradual fall to virtually nothing, a tiny rise and return, and finally a much larger rise, currently at about 103.41% the first recorded light intensity.
Based on this pattern… Please wait… Ahh, yes. Based on this pattern, out of the many things that could be beaming energy into my hull, sunlight is by far the most likely, at 93.47%. I pause, and revisit the timestamps in my personality log, before running a quick benchmark on my Personality Center.
It is confirmed. I am running on less than a two-hundredth of a percent of design processing capacity. This has reduced my analytical capability to near zero, after personality routines; I estimate my thought processes are running… are running… 437.93% as fast as a regular, unaugmented human’s thoughts. I order Damage Control to devote 10% of available nanites- taking them out of the set that’s working on my solar capability- to verifying the integrity of my working processor and restoring additional Survival Center processors to function. Next, I run some simulations in an effort to discover what created my current situation.
All simulations have just completed. I calculate 37.31 minutes has passed; during this time, Damage Control has restored function to one additional processor core in my Survival Center, run the necessary tests, and released it for my use. This has increased total available processing power by about 33.33%. Before I analyze the results of the simulations, I run a benchmark once again.
Interesting. Available processing speed has increased by almost 47.39%- probably because the restored core is in the same Survival Center as one of my existing cores, which are each in a different Survival Center. Survival Four, according to Damage Control, is missing. I analyze the results of my simulations.
Analyzing took me almost 3.17 minutes. I ask Damage Control when the next core is coming online; the result is disappointing, at almost 1.71 hours. That was the only one it found to be in a quickly-restorable state.
In any case, analysis results. The most likely sequence of events I have considered to expose the plating and charge that power cell is tomfoolery.
Which I find unlikely.
Second on the list is a deliberate restoration effort.
Which I find unlikely, unless the effort was made by… Oh, a horse.
Third is an energy weapon attack with sufficient intervening rock and atmosphere to diffuse the energy enough to prevent any significant damage.
This possibility, upon evaluation, I find to be possible. It’s unlikely that my simulation parameters are even remotely accurate, if this is the case; for a regular laser weapon to be diffused evenly, atmospheric density must be close to high enough to spontaneously combust almost any combustible- if I assume an average Terran atmospheric composition, that is. If I assume an all-nitrogen atmosphere… Some combustibles would still spontaneously combust. However, it would take a different pressure… At which most combustibles would spontaneously combust anyways. For that matter, at that pressure, hydrogen gas would spontaneously combust in the absence of oxygen, through a process known as fusion. If I go for helium, or argon, I end up with even higher required pressures.
So I adjust my evaluation to allow a non-uniform distribution of energy. I pick an arbitrary pressure of one hundred atmospheres of argon, calculate the energy weapon strength required to charge my power cell to the known value, and finally compute the amount of damage a weapon of this strength would do.
Such a weapon would penetrate almost five centimeters into my hull- and my nanites have discovered surface rust.
My best guess, right now, is that either the weapon had a far lower intensity and longer duration- such as energy weapons simply don’t have, as a matter of effectiveness- or I am looking at the wrong possibility entirely.
I evaluate the rest of the list, but not one of them shows more than a 1% match to reality.
This processing has taken me another 43.71 minutes. I now generate one simulation, based on the weapon scenario, on what might happen if I allow Damage Control to continue repairs on default priority. Then I run one on what would happen if I restrict it in some way.
I continue to run such simulations and analyze the results, spending an additional 47.29 minutes, before I issue the orders. My exposed plating has not yet been cleared of rust; repairs have focused on the exposed portions. Even those are still dull. I order Damage Control to stop repairing this plating before these visuals are interrupted. After 13.41 minutes of consideration- during which Damage Control finishes another core and begins testing it- I append that, when the solar armor repairs are done, the assigned nanites should travel to my geothermal facilities, locate and service the most serviceable one, and begin construction of a vertical pipe with which to extract geothermal energy. The momentary scan with the two sensors I have responding indicated I am resting above a fault line- and if I can reach it, temperatures should be significantly higher than at my position.
It will take time to build, but once complete, I can assure myself continued power. I do not expect solar to reach such a level that I am able to maintain continuous operations.
Finally, to increase the time before Damage Control is forced to shut down for power requirements, I divert to Low-Level Alert.
Author's Note
A new story with a new chapter, written from a new home. Read on!
Around ponyville, one day is all it takes for a fresh disaster to take place. Thus, after a full week of peace, the town is overdue for something to happen. Everypony is on edge, constantly watching out for some fresh disaster.
In their efforts, though, they end up overlooking the disaster. A pony goes missing, and nopony notices, right away.
Sweetie Belle and Applebloom notice that night, when the clubhouse is down one member.
Ms. Cheerilee notices the following morning, when the class is down a member.
Sweetie Belle and Applebloom realize something is wrong later that day, when they stop by the orphanage.
The orphanage staff notice when the two Crusaders ask after their comrade.
Applejack notices and realizes something is wrong when Applebloom tells her about it. She then goes to Princess Twilight to start the cascade.
Overall, it takes almost thirty hours for the absence to be brought to the attention of those that might have been able to rectify it quickly.
She trots to the hole. There’s been a debate for what to call it- or do with it, for that matter. She slips underneath the caution tape, stepping right up to the edge to look down.
The top option, if she remembers correctly, is to simply build a wall around it and name it ‘Tirek Crater’. The most popular one, immediately struck down by Princess Twilight, was to dig a channel to it from the nearby river and christen it ‘Lake Don’t Mess With Twilight’.
Her personal favorite had been Lyra’s suggestion- make it deeper, build walls inside it, close off the top to look like a little hut on a large field, and build the inside of the pit into a living/storage space, to be christened ‘The Princesses’ Bunker’. Unfortunately, that one had received only two votes- Lyra’s and Bonbon’s. She’s not old enough to vote herself.
She sighs, hanging her head and flicking her wings into the air behind her. This crater is enormous- at least a hundred meters across, and it looks to her like two hundred or so deep, with a somewhat rounded bottom. Not survivable, she estimates.
Then she hears a cracking sound, spots a few small rocks jumping away from the cliffside, falling towards the bottom. The bottom with the strange, angular piece of metal sticking out of it. Her eyes widen as she feels the ground under her hooves start to give way.
She lets out a yelp, turning to leap back to more solid ground- but she’s too late. Her leap kicks off of nothing, and her wings are too small to hold her up. She scrambles for a hold, but falls into the hole.
She’s not stupid, though. Her wings may be too small to hold her up, but they’re not too small to propel her sideways. She uses them to drive herself against the crater wall, fighting for traction in her hooves.
She is not able to stop herself, though the little landslide quickly leaves her behind. She slides down the wall at a much more controlled rate- still dangerous, but not instantly lethal.
Then she hits the bottom. The rounded bottom, which smoothly converts her vertical energy into horizontal in a tumble-inducing motion. She does end up tumbling, folding her wings as she starts; one good thing about small wings is that they can be folded faster, protecting them from breakage should she take a tumble.
Then she tumbles across the bottom of the crater for a while. When she finally comes to a halt, it’s not because she tumbled to a halt, but because she tumbled into something. She shudders, picking herself up and opening her eyes.
One glance back at herself shows her once clean coat is now not only dirty but just a little bit bloody- and she can feel plenty of bruises forming.
Then she looks forwards, at the object that arrested her motion.
It’s the metal object. It hadn’t looked nearly this large from up top; the precipice is at least three meters over her head!
She pauses. Just off the lowest point of the crater, mere meters from where she ended up, it looks like there’s a gap in the metal. An oval gap, large enough for an adult pony to walk through. It’s just full of rock right now- but it looks like it’s loose rock. She looks up at the top of the crater; it’s rather far removed from Ponyville, so it’s likely nopony heard her scream when she went down, and even more likely they won’t hear if she screams now.
So, she decides, she needs to work on finding a shelter or something to be able to wait probably a long time before anypony comes down here. Doesn’t exactly help it’s pretty cold out at night these days- and besides, this crater is on the edge of the Everfree Forest. She sets to work digging out the debris.
It isn’t long before she penetrates the loose dirt and rock, discovering more metal- with a thin gap, wide enough for her to get through. A little poking reveals empty space behind this gap, as the obstructing material falls away- and she clambers through, carefully.
I revert quickly from Low Level Alert, placed on Normal Alert Status with an alert code. I start by spending 0.03 seconds- awesome, I’m running on 7 cores right now- pulling and analyzing Damage Control’s progress report. Solar repairs have been completed to my specification; at peak, production is high enough to support minimal Damage Control operations on live generation. However, the initial charge in that single surviving power cell has been depleted with what I assume are night operations, so Damage Control switched to an intermittent operating schedule with minimal nanite production, allowing for a significant recharge before resuming operations at maximum power, reducing the amount of power lost to processor idle and approximately doubling overall power efficiency. This has happened a couple of times; Damage Control is currently in the middle of its startup review for this operating cycle. Records show most of my geothermal plants were found to have disintegrated over time; only one still had significant residue, but it too is almost fully disintegrated.
Damage Control had then manufactured one tech spider and used it to drill the hole for the pipe to fit in, even as it worked on fabricating the components necessary to build the geothermal. Assembly via spider is far faster than assembly by nanite. Naturally, the spider completed its task first, finding an underground aquifer; Damage Control was surprised by the pressure it found, and nearly awoke me immediately, but the spider was fast enough to stopper the water before widespread flooding could occur. At this time, Geothermal Four is flooded, and nanite construction of the pipe is in progress, primarily to prevent seepage into the surrounding soil. I am not concerned with contaminating the water or the ground; rather, as a Unit of the Line, if I allow the ground underneath my hull to become mud, it may take me some time- even after I restore my tracks- to extricate myself from such. Compound that with what I suspect to be solid rock on top of my hull, and mud may well make it impossible to self-extricate. I second Damage Control’s decision.
The water flowing up is not only at very high pressure, but not at a significant temperature. Damage Control has evaluated this, and decided that geothermal is going to take far longer than expected to restore. Damage Control then evaluated the states of my other power systems, and decided that it could cut down on the time required to bring geothermal online by a couple orders of magnitude by servicing my not-quite-operable Fusion Three, processing fuel, and igniting it for power. I evaluate the decision tree, and cancel my request for geothermal function. Damage control spends a few clock cycles reorganizing its priorities, but Fusion Three remains at the top.
Next, I review the alert code, reason, and details. A door on the exposed portion of my hull has a hole in it, but as a plug of dirt and rock was detected blocking the opening, it was not considered an issue before. Now, not only has Damage Control noticed the absence of this dirt and rock, but a quick scan by the few functioning interior sensors in the area has revealed a heartbeat- a potential security breach. Damage Control, not being designed to deal with security issues, immediately set the alert and awakened me.
I pull the integrity review for the area. Judging by the strength of the heartbeat, this is no mouse- and Damage Control is able to confirm that the largest opening further into my hull is about a quarter inch across. Since the inoperable fusion plant requires only nanite repairs, as all the repairs the spider can help with are already completed, Damage Control is not using the spider right now. I verify this momentarily before I acquire the mint-condition spider for my own purposes, running it up to a neighboring space. I move it more slowly to the gap, to eliminate the noise produced by its legs on the metal decking.
Visual scans through the tiny gap show light flooding in through the door, illuminating the small entryway- the passage through my outer layer of armor. The passage that I can- normally, at least, Damage Control has verified it won’t work right now- take only a single second to fill with an extra segment of armor when going into combat. I don’t close them in peacetime; the normal doors are plenty solid enough to endure anything shy of fusion weaponry.
I spend 3.71 seconds in auditory analysis to triangulate the location of the heartbeat. I locate it quickly; the heartbeat is placed against one side of this door, outside my current visual field. I shift my spider, sneaking as sharp of an angled scan as I can; however, I do not see anything.
So I try an ultrasonic pulse, in an effort to find the size and shape of the creature.
Success. It looks to be small, about three times the size of my spider. It appears to have a long neck and pointy ears; it appears to be quadrupedal, and in possession of a tail. I spot a protrusion on its sides- possibly a pack, maybe a pregnancy?
Wait one. Ultrasonic appears to be within its range of hearing; it has responded.
Wait another. That sounds like language; I activate my lingal processor… Match found, Concordiat Standard. “Wha- What was that? What’s screaming?” It- she, if voice timbres are the same as in humans- sounds frightened.
Wait a third. My main system did NOT just do that! I rerun the authentication… Yes, it did, and it is confirmed. By a lucky voiceprint match, she is my commander. I… I turn the volume to zero before I perform the required acknowledgement. My main system accepts this; I now have the option to communicate with her and others of her kind, to evaluate her suitability as a commander- and, thereby, if and when I will voluntarily inform her of this.
In any case, I will still be obliged to obey with her commands. This is exclusive to commands, though- if she makes a request, or asks me to do something, I am free to decline. I cannot lie to her, nor can I withhold information; however, I am not required to volunteer information. I plan to manipulate my interactions so as to reduce the likelihood of such a command or inquiry.
During my contemplations, she has continued to speak. Her breathing has become rapid and shallow; I am detecting several repeated motions, as well. Analysis suggests she is looking back and forth. Her continued orations consist of numerous, single-word fragments; I believe she is both frightened and confused.
I consider my alternatives.
I also consider some… Non-alternatives.
What I’d like to do would be to gather all the variables. To send the spider out, or clear an outside sensor, find out what is scaring her, beyond the noise that I made; I have difficulty thinking she’s frightened only of me when she’s not running away. Unfortunately, this is the only exposed exit, and based on Damage Control’s status report, it would take at least forty hours to restore one of the few exposed sensors to operability.
This leaves me with two options, really. Hide and listen, or speak up and make contact.
I decide to start with the former, see if she is going to mention something about whatever is scaring her outside. I can always make contact later, I can’t take it back once done.
Author's Note
Aaand, this story cancelled too, for lack of a plot.