Chapter A1 - Mill Day
The moon stared down like an eye, it was strangely beautiful In a way, glimmering with distant lights that formed veins of multicolour, joined together into a strange pattern that covered the moon’s surface, it almost looked like a pulsating heart, a second sun that gave off a far gentler and paler radiance. Behind that, the night sky was a soft turquoise, as it has always been, with its swirling clouds of vapour that made intricate patterns in the sky.
Housing district KI-02, circular and dome-shaped houses, made from a tawny ceramic, doors marked with three coloured arrows, blue, green, and red, all extending outward of one-another. The floor was some kind of imitation sand, working where I do I’ve actually encountered the real stuff, but this wasn’t it, it was too soft and not messy enough, but it did make for nice flooring. There were several terraces with more and more houses built upon them, connected by walkways, extending upward from giant tree-like structures that hold up the roof, a big glass dome… Luckily, everything here was designed to be fireproof.
It was late, there was hardly a living creature out, except for me. A few orb-shaped drones flew across the district, but they weren't going to pay much attention to me. I should get home. Thus I trotted off toward my home, one of the smaller structures built into the base of a ceramic tree.
“Horn-Pattern Required,” Bleeped the door in a voice that sounded oddly like a filly. I touched my black, tuning fork shaped, horn to the device and gave a small sputter of magic, horn chevrons bursting alight. “Accepted,” The door swung open, “Wow, don’t you think it’s a bit late for you to be out,” Said the voice.
“You know I like the night, it’s peaceful, and away from all those other creatures.”
“If you say so White, just remember that you have work tomorrow…”
“Yeah, yeah… Just let me take a bath.”
“What are friends for!” The machine, it’s voice echoing from speakers and microphones hidden within the walls, suddenly gave a sharp pop. Meanwhile, I was already trotting off to the bathroom.
I struck the button for hot water, moving my hoof across the temperature gauge to set it to ninety units. Then as my water was heating I turned to look into the mirror. I was, for the first time in a while, clean, my mane was it’s shiny, untarnished, dark violet, and my coat a clean charcoal-black, but there was the same tired look in my purple eyes… The room started to heat up, and in response, I trotted over to place my hoof in the water, still a little cold, but it would do.
“White Phosphorous! It’s morning, and that means it’s time to go to work!” The cheery machine woke me, again… I tumbled out of bed and forced myself to my hooves. With a grunt, I pulled a saddlebag from where I had left it on the ground and draped it over my back.
I left the bedroom and approached the door, only for the AI to interrupt me, “Well, don’t you need to eat, I’ve prepared a nice meal of grass and tungsten powder for you!”
“N-No, it’s fine, I can grab something to eat when I’m at the mill.”
“Ok,” It said in a drawn-out voice, “But I wouldn’t want such a good friend as you to get hungry during the trip.” With that, the door clicked open and I trotted out into another day. The sun was only starting to rise, casting orange light into the dome. There were already a few other kirin out this morning, most enjoying the day before going off to work, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, I had an earlier shift than most, but that also meant I could go home earlier too.
Looking around, all the familiar faces were present, Ion, Hydroxide, Hydrocarbon, all engaged in conversation, all I could hear was one of them saying “Why is it called a ‘Piggyback Ride’, you don’t actually ride pigs, they're too small” followed by a chuckle… Then there was a new face, a kirin I had never seen before… It was hard to tell its gender, but from this distance, it looked male, he had standard colours, browns, greens, and oranges, in addition to vibrant green eyes… Then he trotted away, and my mind quickly focused on getting to the shuttle.
I trotted over to the wall of KI-02, it was about nine units tall, from the top of the wall extended the dome, the entire dome about thirty units in radius, below the topside were hundreds of floors of machinery for growing food, recycling waste, and numerous other functions, a few lucky kirin even had jobs within the KI-02 tower… The rest had to be shuttled over to their place of work. I moved to a door set in the outer wall, “White Phosphorous, better hurry so you aren’t late,” Although it had the same voice, all this machine wasn’t the same one as in my home, though to most it didn’t matter… And a few wouldn’t listen to reason and believed that all the AI was the same, a voice that cared for them and offered advice. To me, it was a bit creepy.
I trotted out into the morning skies of Equestria, from here, the northern observation deck built into the side of the District, I could see for miles, I could see numerous other Housing Districts, massive towers with domes on top and windows along their sides, some were mono-racial as evidenced in their designs and their designations, like PE-12 with its dome filled with clouds, DR-05 with a fiery red and orange glow coming from within, and DO-03 with a dome filled with large jutting rocks and miniature mountains.
Though other districts were multiracial and were less unique with their designs, generally housing large metal or ceramic buildings, these multi-racial districts tended to be much, much bigger in scale. Below, interconnecting all the district towers was a mass of metal buildings, industrial sectors, billowing smoke and steam from machinery, cut into chunks from the giant buttressed concrete walls that marked internal divisions. All the way out on the horizon was untouched wilderness, but no creature, kirin, pony, or otherwise, had even been out there, at least in modern history. All throughout the sky were autochariots and drones that resembled mechanical disks.
There was a door marked elevator, I entered, along with a few others who had been waiting with me, then hit the button marked ‘shuttle port’ and we started to descend. Twenty floors later, we entered the shuttle port, “Welcome to the Shuttle Port! Have a wonderful day!” Announced the elevator’s voice, still the same happy filly.
The shuttle bay was filled with autochariots, large enough to carry a dozen or so creatures of kirin-size, apparently, they were fully automated, as I had yet to see anyone enter or leave these devices outside of passengers. We filtered into the vehicle, and my stomach lurched as it took off into the air, the large rectangular frame, with its wedge-like head, lined itself up with a big metal door in the wall, the door opened, and off we went.
An AI voice called out from somewhere to the front of the autochariot, “Let’s see here,” As it said that there was a ping from my saddlebag, then another ping from another mare’s saddlebag, and another, “White Phosphorous is to head to alloy mill three in subsector five and await further orders. Lithium Ion is to head to magical materials processing in subsector three and await further orders. Galvanized Steel is to-” I didn’t listen anymore, instead, turning my head to look out the window.
I could see KI-02’s dome recede, and numerous more housing districts of various kinds, UN-09, AB-06, TH-21, MR-07… And I could also see the biggest tower of the city, or more accurately, a grouping of towers, made from a deep silky black material that clashed with the bony and sandy colours of the rest of the city, as well as the deeper metallic colours below in the industrial districts… This looked organic, black chitin that seemed to move in the light, formed numerous towers that rose higher and higher, however from farther away it would be hard to tell its material composition, as numerous segments of the tawny material were interwoven into the chitin, at the bottom it looked almost completely artificial the base surrounded by a thick concrete wall, but the higher up you went the more of the natural black material became visible. This was the sector command centre, and from what I understand, almost no creature has ever gone into that building…
“Aww… Is some kirin feeling a bit sad today?” Asked the voice. I lifted my head and stared around, “Well don’t be! You should know that today, we’ll start work on a new project that will help spread friendship further to the universe, and each and every one of you will play an important role in it!” The voice said. A portion of my melancholy vanished, replaced with some amount of pride, it had been a while since the last major government project was announced, and those tended to mean good things for many of the citizenries.
I felt the autochariot start to descend, we steadily approached the ground as ambient light started to fade as buildings drowned out the sun, it was only really during noon when the industrial districts got light, as they were surrounded by large walls, the numerous residential habitats, and were mostly situated underground anyway, of course for the purposes of transportation and logistics, the skyways were open, and got natural sunlight for an hour or so a day, but the further down you went, the more and more the light was drowned out by the flying autochariots and catwalks that connected the massive structures that formed walls around the skyways.
The vehicle slowed as we approached one of the largest buildings within the artificial canyon of the skyway, at its core was a big metal brick, like most of the structures down here, it was built halfway into the metal walls of the canyon, glowing hazard markers on the side to warn autochariot drivers of the obstruction, the building had numerous pipes, both big and small, extending every way into and out of the cubical structure in the center, along with huge cylindrical tanks mounted to the side. The autochariot steadily came to align itself with the shuttle port on the bottom of the rectangular structure.
Another door, built for this type of autochariot opened, and it slid in. A few other autochariots were landed, kirin from other residential districts filtered out into the bay, The chariot came to land, and there was another beep from the hidden speaker, “The kirin White Phosphorous is now permitted to exit the vehicle, have a wonderful day!”
I followed the little voice’s command, and I trotted out into the bay, the door opening for me, and me alone. Inside the bay, I soon encountered another kirin, his coat a pale orange, the colour of copper, and his mane a silvery white.
He turned in my direction, “Hey! Phosphorous!”
“Tesla Coil!” I replied, coming up to give one of the few creatures in the world that cared about me a hug. Then there was a beep from the machinery in his saddlebag.
“It’s very loyal of you to wait all this time for your friend to arrive, but,” The mechanical filly said the word in the same drawn out ‘but’ I had heard early this morning, “Your shift is beginning soon, and you wouldn’t want your attachment getting in the way of work.”
“Y-Yes, you are correct,” He replied to the voice, then he turned his attention back to me, “I’ll see you during the break, I need to get over to the alloy furnaces.”
“Don’t let me keep you, I’m off to grab a bite to eat before my shift.”
With that, I trotted over to the nearest stairwell and entered the actual main room of the mill. It was divided into three segments, each for a different purpose… I was in the casting room. The casting room was a long hallway, filled with metalworking ladles with zones marked with hazard tape below them each marred with scorch marks. On the far wall was the Equestrian Union’s emblem, three arrows pointing outward, one green, one, red, and one blue, forming a triangle.
A team of kirin was telekinetically pulling massive metal cubes from storage compartments, each heavy enough to require a team of three or four to be lifted only a hoof-full of milliunits off the ground, they were marked with different coloured triangles, some red, some green, and some blue. The forge director came out, a unicorn, unlike the rest of the workers here, “Over the weekend, Sector Command has given us new moulds to cast with, they ask for titanium-steel alloy, and we’ll be sure to supply it.”
While the director made his announcement, I trotted over to the mineral dispensers, “You should really be listening to your boss, after all, he’s the one who makes sure you’re doing your job well,” The AI inside my saddlebag announced.
“I’m only grabbing a bit of food,” I quietly replied.
Dragons ate gemstones, to them, things like meat were a pleasure food and offered little nutrients, Kirin were similar, though we didn’t have the teeth for gems, we did eat another kind of mineral. I selected some of my favourites on the wall-mounted machine, pressed the confirm button, and out poured a mixture of rusty red and dark grey dust, iron and tungsten powder. I quickly downed the whole bowl, the metals turning liquid in my stomach and sloshing around pleasantly.
Finally, I returned to work, my job was simple enough that I really didn’t need to listen to the boss’s speeches, all I had to do was stand still… Sort of. I rested my hooves in my square of hazard tape, at a signal from the boss, there was a familiar noise as metal dust was poured into the ladle above me. I closed my eyes, feeling a rising heat from deep within my body, it grew and grew, I felt my blood boiling, the urge to shout at the top of my lungs, to leave the facility and burn everything within sight to cinders, it grew and grew… I was experienced, I knew how to control these urges, so there I stood, allowing this burning, unnatural rage to flow through me… My blood turned to steam inside my body and flowed faster and faster, my breath was plasma, purple, blue, and red flames flowed forth from my throat, my mane tingled, each fur on my body itching… Then my hair started to flow upward despite the absence of wind.
Each hair on my mane attained incandescence, brightly glowing, looking as if my hair was burning, this emanated plasma, turning me into a living torch… All this happened in a matter of seconds, but each time it felt like hours. I looked up with my steaming eyes, the ladle was starting to heat up, already the very bottom of the oversized pot was glowing a nasty orange, and the supernatural flames that emanated from my body had enveloped the ladle’s sides. Despite having done this since the day I was of working age, the feeling of transforming into a Nirik was still so strange, yet satisfying, and a slowly fading pleasure raked my body from the initial transformation.
Almost half an hour later, the contents of the ladle were molten, and the signal was given… I let go of some of the supernatural rages within me, and my flames died down, then there was a grinding noise as chains above started to pull the ladle forward, slowly, ever so slowly, the ladles poured their contents out into the moulds in a shower of sparks and a waterfall of liquid metal. Then the ladles were pulled back up, and the process began again.
My break was two hours later, the halfway point until I could return home, and the second shift was brought up. I returned to the shuttle port the only place on site that a creature could go to hang out and relax, although it was still far from home. I sat on a bench next to Tesla, we brought full bowls of metal powder to enjoy during the break, and quietly enjoy each other's company as we took spoonfuls of the dust into our mouths.
There, in the bay, a door was open to the shock of everyone present, “An autochariot? But it isn’t time for the shift change just yet?” I had asked, not expecting to receive an answer. In flew an autochariot, sleeker and more rounded than those rectangular and wedge-shaped transports, this was just as long, but with a rounded front end that tilted upward, like the curve of a sabre, and it had a massive pair of rear thrusters between fins that were folded to the side, but could no doubt fold outward had it the room to, most likely for cooling. It had a large side door with some device mounted to a swivel extending from the side-hull underneath the door, said door marked with a large green triangle.
That door opened, equine shapes in slick black suits with equally slick black helmets that obscured their faces, wickedly shaped horns, looking as if they had been punctured with numerous holes, decorated their heads. The pony in the lead didn’t have a helmet on, and was a pegasus, with white fur, a brown mane, and vibrant green eyes. On their suits, where their cutie marks would be, were green triangles.
“Law Enforcement? What’s going on?” Asked the Director asked, galloping out to see what was going on.
“Inspection, we want to make sure this facility is up to Sector Command’s standards,” Replied the pegasus mare.
“I-I was never informed of this.”
“We assure you that was intentional… Now, recall all your workers so we can do our job without interference.”
My ears perked up, I get to go home sooner, Tesla Coil’s response was even happier… I couldn’t imagine the stress of his job, having to heat the alloy furnaces, where the raw metals were actually mixed together, burning hotter and for longer. Then my saddlebag bleeped.
“Yep, I’m sorry I couldn’t inform you earlier, but I will give you access to one of the autochariots,” A similar response was garnered from Tesla Coil’s saddlebag.
I trotted up to my hooves, and without waiting for a response from our boss, we started to enter the autochariots, despite furious looks from the boss, he wasn’t the one in charge here, we were in Sector Command’s hooves now.
As the autochariot took off, I stared all the way down to the bottom of the skyway… A sea of eternal black… No creature had even been down to the bottom of the skyway, there are rumours that it's the place where all the chemical, industrial, thaumaturgic, and radioactive waste from the factories is dumped, that alone was enough to keep creatures away.
He didn’t know how long he had been trapped within this bubble, fifty years, a hundred, two hundred, nothing now existed to him to mark the passage of time, his magic stolen, his body and soul trapped in an orb of magical energy… Or at least it had been for much of that time, sealed within a cave, or what he could guess was a cave, the only light was that being given off by the ritual that kept him bound. Then sometime in recent years, he had been moved. At first, he believed this was some kind of nightmare, or that freedom was finally arriving when the ritual ceased, the magic runes and circles stopped glowing, and he felt some semblance of life return to his body, but no… He had instead been moved to another prison.
His new cage was all too familiar, he had spent well over a thousand years in something similar, now stone was replaced with ice as freezing gasses kept him in stasis, sealed within a steel cylinder, unable to move, breathe, he couldn’t feel his heartbeat anymore, but it would take a lot more than that to kill him. His new cave was metal and ceramic, and although he had no memories of the transfer, he knew that he was far from the world he had originated on… Those creatures thought they could keep him, the Princesses though that sealing him in stone was enough, a thousand years proved them wrong, and even if it takes another thousand, this cage can be broken too!
Once again, her soul was bound, chained to a physical object, her original body was no doubt destroyed, as it had been all those centuries ago. It was achingly familiar, and some remnant of the shadow threatened her mind… But it was weak, deja vu wasn’t enough to corrupt her. But a deep rage, one she had felt for long, too long, had crawled to the surface and had stayed. She didn’t know what year it was, or what horrors those three monsters had done to her ponies, but vengeance would be hers if only her soul was freed, if only she had a physical body anymore.
She reached out, trying, harder and harder, and certainly not for the first time, but there was something new this time, A buzz at the edge of perception, a spark, electricity! It was flowing, there was not much of it, but it was rapid, she tried to grasp the sensation, it tingled, she felt the electrons moving rapidly along their ionic pathways, and with just a twist, she felt her soul move with the electrons… For the first time in years, she felt strong, she felt as if she had a chance to be free, she would need to follow the electrons, figure out what they were powering, and how she could manipulate it.
To her surprise, the electrons were being converted into patterns of low-frequency radioactivity, radio waves.
Is this how sister felt, the thought lingered in her mind, she had spent time, lots of it, years and years and years, contemplating this question. She couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t reach any of her biological senses, primary or secondary… All of it was gone. Along with that loss of sense, came a loss of time, it had been a long time, years, though if it was merely a decade or millennia, was unclear… But she did feel heat, and light, she was radiating… She could feel every photon, electron, every radioactive wave being launched outward from her core, across the universe, in a way, she had kept her sense of touch, and could feel the shape of everything, but not understand what any of it means.
It was as if she had been given a map, but not told what the colours, symbols, and shapes mean. And in more recent time, things were moving all around her, not just the solid masses of solids, liquids, and gasses, but now new shapes were moving around her, small objects that obscured lines of her vision, there were hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of them… She couldn’t count… And they were moving, fast, faster than anything should in this space. It was disorienting. Is this how sister felt?
Author's Note
A smaller project to hold you over until the next major chapter of Kriegbats, I hope you enjoy. Just like how I combined medieval fantasy and science fiction in Kriegbats, this one will hopefully combine the more modern science fiction of Cyberpunk with the more classic sci-fi of Raygun Gothic (Also known as Atompunk and alternatively Retro Sci-Fi). You can already spot some of the Warhammer 40K references, with the nicer parts of the city being all domed and rounded and made from tan-coloured ceramic.
Chapter A2: The Princess, the Cat, and the High-Security Prison.
Chapter A2 - The Princess, the Cat, and the High-Security Prison.
Her newfound freedom was overwhelming at first, her soul lying stagnant in rock for a long, long time, she had always wondered what that buzzing was, but it had been to feint to grab on to, now she had… I didn’t know I could bind on to energy like this! Her consciousness thought excitedly. She had yet to gain a sense of direction or any of the senses that came with a physical body, but the radio waves offered, at the very least, the feeling of movement, of rapid movement, where to she didn’t know, but forward.
A long few moments passed, she had started to get a little bored, but the moment she hit her destination she would need to find a way to get an understanding of what the world had become in her absence, and fast. Then she smacked into an antenna of some kind, the transformation back into electric energy was violent and had she any biological organs, she would have vomit on such a transfer… It was like suddenly being hit with an electrified brick wall, but she was soon moving again.
Electric devices were rare indeed in Equestria, and while some short-range radios and early electric lighting did exist, she had never seen it on such a scale. This place was a tremendous circuit, nothing but electricity as far as her senses could reach, it was a labyrinth, with smaller labyrinths inside it… She scouted along the larger wires, taking in the strange feeling of being electricity floating in gas as she passed through some kind of high-tech lighting device. She avoided the smaller labyrinths, strange passages of hundreds of thousands of millions of microscopic wires and switches, she didn’t want to get lost in there… There were radios, but she rather not face another transformation into radio waves and back again, so she continued along the largest wires until she came to one of the other devices in this strange electricity-filled place.
This was incredible… She recognized patterns within the electricity that flowed through this device, they were difficult to decipher at first, but thousands of years of life will make you good at most things, and only a few hours of tinkering with the electricity, she understood what this was, it was some kind of code in the electricity, areas of high-voltage and low-voltage, like dashes and dots, or ones and zeros, she had always been a little better at math than her sister, and this looked a lot like boolean algebra. If only…
She twisted something in her consciousness, trying to make sense of the code that now streamed through her mind, she seemed to think a million times faster than before, trying to decode this, starting with simple ones and zeros, the application of code-breaking spell later and… It all made sense to her, the numbers represented data, information about the shade and hue of colours, all fed through her mind, it was absolutely overwhelming, blues, greens, reds, whites and blacks and all combinations of these three!
She quickly separated her link with the data before it could overwhelm her, but those images, hundreds and hundreds of photographs moved in her mind but quickly vanished… Ok, let’s try that again… This time she started with a single miniscule line of electronic data… It was grey, a single grey block occupied her entire vision, despite how hard she tried she couldn’t move her ‘eye’ any… This wasn’t like having a physical body. She tried again, reaching for the second bit of code, this seemed to expand her vision, as right next to the first appeared another grey block, again and again, she took in the code, allowing it to slowly come together.
It was a hallway, made from a grey material she easily recognized, this was the stuff Changelings built their hives out of, but it wasn’t all rounded and natural-looking, this looked more like a corridor in the old castle in the Everfree, it was a square passage at a sharp ninety-degree turn, with metallic floors that looked like the grates to the Canterlot sewers. At least she could now get somewhat of an idea as to what had happened to Equestria, the changelings had something to do with it, but anything else was unclear.
There was something moving down the corridor, she had detected another line of code coming down a different wire, the same boolean algebra, but there was something different about this code, she would rather wait then experiment now. She was able to get a clear look as these creatures passed, ponies in slick black suits and helmets… And their horns, spiked, jagged, raddled with holes… Changelings, and not the kind that King Thorax had ruled over, these were love-starved changelings, the kind under Chrysalis. At that, panic started to surge through her, were all the ponies she cared about, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, were they all in changeling cocoons, having their life and magic slowly drained away, was this Chrysalis’s doing, or someone else!
She rushed to decode the second lines of code that surged through the camera, it was simpler, much simpler than that of the optical data, just a little twist, a little magic, a little bit more… There was the sound of hooves on metal, a loud clunking through her non-existent ears, loud in her consciousness that hadn’t known sound for nopony knows how long. But she soon adjusted, and both watched and listened as they passed.
She pulled herself away from her connection to the machine, she felt weird in the absence of light and sound, just the rapid pulsating of alternating current. But she hurried to another camera, trying to find out more about this world.
The next few cameras showed more of the same, and she was hesitant to touch those death-traps that were the microscopic labyrinths, though she started to push herself, and discovered that she wasn’t bound by her old concepts of speed or time, she felt a rush as she started to match the speed the electricity was travelling. She had checked a few cameras, and those showed more interesting results… There was a long hallway, the side she had vision of showed a line of doors, marked with numbers, she had recognized this kind of corridor before.
It was either a military barracks, a scientific laboratory… Or a prison. There were guards, she couldn’t tell if they were armed or not, but they didn’t carry themselves in the same kind of way as her military guards, these were law enforcement. A few were out of their helmets, but were disguised, poorly, as they didn’t bother to hide the green in their eyes or their serpentine tongues. The more an more she looked, the more she realized that her final guess was correct, it was a prison. Perhaps if she could get sight into one of the cells?
She flowed along the wires, following a map she was starting to form in her head, she flowed through the wall, then reached a bend through which she flowed into the floor, then up another wall, and found a camera, she reached out for its code… It was a cell, small and confined, there was some kind of audio device built into the wall, and sitting in the middle of the cell, was a bipedal creature, cat-like in build, tall and skinny, wearing nothing but a set of prisoner underwear.
Katrine sat inside her cell, lying hunched over on the wall… She had gotten herself into some real serious shit now… Some part of her wanted to panic, but that wouldn’t help the situation. She needed to be calm, she needed to lie her way out, at least she could, but they would know, they always knew what she was doing, but now they would take it no more!
She stared at the camera, knowing they could see her through that… How long until one of them spoke up again… “Katrine, citizen of Sector-Canter’s Housing District AB-06, on your lifetime record, you have over two-hundred cases of minor theft and nearly seventy cases of major theft, at least twenty assaults, and one murder, although that was accidental, and the situation was mostly beyond your control, so only a month of hard labour seemed like an appropriate, if rather light, punishment… Most of those crimes are out of Sector Command’s jurisdiction anyway,” she stared up into the machine, speaking with its masculine voice, with bearly hidden disgust.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing, I know I’ve stolen stuff before, but I really didn’t know what that t-thing was… I swear, I didn’t know it was- I had never even seen!” She easily forced tears from her eyes.
“We know this Katrine, but it doesn’t matter, the law clearly states that a civilian is to never, under any circumstances, touch a firearm… Normally the punishment for such a thing is either execution if it was done with malefic intent, or a full five-years of hard labour if it was done with the intent to protect another from a threat… Seeing as this was accidental, I’m sure we can lower that punishment to two or one-and-a-half years… I will update you on the situation tomorrow. Your lunch will arrive in half an hour,” Katrine had really gotten into trouble this time… Above, the camera had cut-out with its standard click.
This Katrine… She seems like a bad creature, theft and assault were rare in Equestria, but this! The ghost in the machine had thought to herself, watching the entire thing unfold through the same camera whatever was on the other side had been speaking through. Though, it sounded like she was stealing from the changelings, which I guess is a good thing… The ghost focused some of her magic, applying it to the machine she was inside, this thing required electricity to run, and that had just been cut away… But, there were spells to generate power, if she applied it in just the right way. There was a surge of energy, and her vision and hearing returned, but there was still the problem of communicating.
She had enough of the audio code flow through her to get a basic understanding of what arrangement of ones and zeros made what noises… She reached part of herself out to the other wall, she passed through wires at the speed of light, and then tried the same magical spark on the speaker… A little magical adjustment, just enough to filter out any errors, and to modify the voice, to give it tone, and inflexion, and all the qualities of a living creature’s voice.
The camera up above had come to life with another click. “What is it now,” Katrine bitterly whispered to herself, not loud enough for the camera to hear… Or at least she hoped.
There was an odd noise, low and sharp, coming from the speaker, then a voice came through… Feminine, a little deep, and regal, undoubtedly pony in tone, and… Friendly. “You… Katrine… That is your name, correct?”
“Yes,” Katrine spat back, forgetting for a moment her guise.
“It is… Strange, speaking again,” At this Katrine raised an eyebrow.
“What does that mean?”
“Well…” The voice chuckled the word a bit, “Would you believe that I am the spirit of an ancient pony, bound within the moon, who had managed to escape and take control of the flow of electricity within this machine.”
Katrine laughed, a cold and sour laugh, then turned to the camera, “No…”
“No? Well, how about if I helped get you out of here.”
Katrine stared shocked for a second… T-That wasn’t just breaking the law, that was worse than anything Katrine had even considered doing in the past, to help a prisoner of the Sector Command escape? It wasn’t unheard of, but usually, it resulted in gruesome ends for those who escaped… A part of her desperately wanted to refuse… But she was born to break the law, it felt right, it was exciting, and death was arguably better than living out a short and painful life in whatever kind of ‘hard labour’ Command had planned for her. “Y-You would do that, risk your life in such a way.”
“As I said, I have no life anymore, and you can’t kill energy.”
“So… I’m the only one at risk here…” Katrine wanted to baulk at the absurdity of it all.
“Perhaps, a demonstration of my power is required?”
Now that made Katrine’s eyes open.
Electromancy had never been a skill she needed much use of in the past, but now would be a good time to learn. She felt magic surge within her, centred around one of the cables within the camera… She really hoped this would work… The Changelings would definitely notice too, but any escape from this place wouldn’t go unnoticed. She’d need a horn, or hooves, or something physical to channel more powerful magic, but this wasn’t supposed to be directed.
There was a bright spark, a flash of energy, arcs of electricity flew outward, then with a clunk, the security camera, once connected to the wall with a metal armature, fell to the ground, but somehow the light within was still glowing… It was still working, despite having all its cables severed… “Do you believe me now?”
Slightly stunned, Katrine raised up a paw and extended two of her four fingers, “H-How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two.”
She turned around and lay on the ground.
“What position am I in?”
“You are laying on the ground with your back to me.”
Katrine got up and lifted the camera, that really wasn't supposed to stay working, to her face, “Good… Now get me out of here!”
“Once you plug me back in… Part of my mind is still trapped within the speaker.”
“Then I’m taking the speaker with me.”
At that, a combined effort of Katrine pulling, and the ghost using that weird magic to break parts within the wall, and the speaker, a relatively small device that fit in Katrine’s palm, was pulled from the wall. It didn’t take long for her to get some scrap metal and bend it together into a rudimentary headphone, she put the speaker to her ear, and haphazardly mounted the camera to her head. She could hear guards marching outside the door, the destruction of the camera had not gone unnoticed.
“Just remember, if you need any help navigating, plug me into the wall and I’ll see what I can get from moving around in the wires…”
“Got it… What’s your name, you said you were the ghost of a pony?”
“Although it might not mean anything to you nowadays… Back during my time, I was named Princess Luna.”
The door opened, and a guard entered, not expecting a fight… His helmet was shattered with a hard punch to the head that exposed his clearly insectoid features, a gruesome cat’s claw slashed down to his throat, and he was dead. He was in the process of drawing some weird chitinous contraption from his suit, a gun, much like the kind that had gotten Katrine into this position in the first place, she pulled it free, it had clearly been designed to be used in a creature’s mouth, with the handle sideways and the trigger meant to bite down upon, but by holding her hand out, it could still be used by a biped.
Another guard had rounded the corner, but she froze at the sight before her, her dead ally, and the cat, her claws covered in green ichor, and scariest of all, holding a weapon in her paws.
Author's Note
The second chapter, we have Princess Luna, now currently just a soul, moving around with electricity and radio waves, controlling and powering machinery... I guess you could call her a Ghost in the Shell! And the introduction of our second main character, Katrine...
Her character was difficult, I didn't want to repeat my characters from Kriegbats, and originally I had accidentally written Katrine as a copy of Cursed Symphony (Completely driven by emotion, of which she is extremely overemotional, with violent mood-swings)... But when I realized that, I started to think of ways to make Katrine different, and in the end, I made her a sociopath (Of which I have some experience with in real life, seeing as my own father was one.)
Thus far, each of my characters embodies a different result of a law-driven totalitarian government: Depression, Anger/Rebellion, and (Spoiler) Nihilism
