The Seventh Element

Base of Operations

They were standing in front of an unassuming shack.

"This is it?"

"We like our privacy."

"Well lead the way, then."

Luna followed Trixie as she entered the shack. It was a bit cramped for the two of them and Luna had to keep blowing Trixie's mane out of her face.

"Here we go Princess."

Trixie's horn began to glow and the floor beneath them started to rotate and descend. As they went further down it went pitch black. They sat in silence for a few moments until a sliver of light appeared at their hooves and slowly expanded up their bodies. When it reached her face, Luna could see a beautiful hall before them!

It had polished dark wood floors with marble walls that had occasional magical symbols floating around on them. At the end of the hall was a fountain with a unicorn wearing the same type of hat Trixie did and spouting water out of his horn. Unicorns of all shapes, colors and sizes were scurrying about on their way to doorways that were concealed within the marble walls and apparently only able to open through the use of magic.

"This is the Atrium. It's quite beautiful really."

Trixie admired the Atrium with pride! The elevator had stopped and they'd been standing there for more than a few minutes before Trixie seemed to remember why they were there.

"Oh, yes. This way Luna"

They walked to a nondescript bit of marble wall where Trixie used her horn to open a passageway. The hall wasn't nearly as beautiful as the Atrium, but it was quite nice. The walls were lined with smooth stone and had torches placed along the walls at regular intervals.

As they walked Trixie began to elaborate on her plans.

"Well like I told you Luna, we have a very quick form of transportation-"

"Teleportation, right?"

"Yes! Well no actually- It's more of a portal than anything, so it's not really teleportation. It's quite simple though really. We found the plans inside some ancient ruins a while back; the whole place was filled with odd machines, cubes with little hearts on them and odd hieroglyphs that depicted cake, but everything was overgrown and none of the machines worked."

"Anyway we brought the plans back here, created a spell with them and after some basic testing we found that we can walk through the portals from one location to another, no matter what the distance, almost instantaneously!

'This sounded amazing!' Luna couldn't wait to see it in action.

"So how do we get the portal to the second location? Does somepony have to be there to cast the spell, or do we... Do we..."

Luna had lost her train of thought for they had just reached their destination. They had left the hallway and were now looking at a massive room filled with walls coated in some sort of white paint. It gave the room a very sterile feel and made it very bright, she had to give her eyes a moment to adjust.

It looked like they were doing experiments with the portals Trixie was talking about. In one corner there there was one portal above another with a muffin falling between them inside a glass case. Two ponies, one with bubbles on her flank and a blonde mane and another with a muffin for his cutie mark and slightly pointed ears, were darting around the container like hyperactive dogs trying to get a ball out from under the sofa.

In another part of the room they had one portal high on the wall and another on the floor and were dropping things in to the floor portal and watching as they'd go through and them be jettisoned across the room.

"Wow Luna, this portal thing looks pretty awesome!"

"Yeah, it was a lucky find, infinite applications! We'll be working from over here, Luna."

Trixie led Luna to a platform in the middle of the room.

"Honestly Luna, the great and POWERFUL Trixie and her assistants have this part handled, all you really need to do is sit back and enjoy the show!"

Trixie began to work with the other ponies making sure everything was ready for whatever they were about to do.

The ponies who were watching the falling muffin took a break to walk over and sit on either side of Luna.

"Hello!"

"Hello there. I'm Luna, what's your name?"

Her golden eyes were a bit crooked.

"Oh, I know who you are Princess! You're why I'm here! I wants to help you fight Celestials!"She sat on her haunches and began shadowboxing, but not very well.

"Well that and...She looked around to make sure nopony was eavsdropping. "They know how to make infinite muffins really fast!"

"MUFFINS?! Where? Where are the muffins? I need muffins! Muffinsmuffinsmuffins!!!"

The first pony leaned over Luna so she could talk to the one yelling about muffins.

"No, no Alun, we have muffins later!" She leaned closer to Luna and whispered "He's a bit obsessed... And a little slow She spoke normally "But I love him!"

"Love you too Derpy Hooves." He looked at her, cross eyed as well, and smiled.

These two were definitely a bit odd. Derpy spoke kind of funny and Alun seemed to have a muffin problem. Thankfully Trixie seemed to be wrapping things up which gave Luna an excuse to look away.

"Everything seems to be in order! Are we ready?'

"Everything is green Trixie, just give the word."

"Okay then. On my mark. 3....

The unicorns began to make a semicircle about ten hooves behind Trixie.

"2..."

A unicorn put his hoof on a switch at a console at the far end of the room.

"1..."

Trixie's horn began to glow and a field of magic rose in a cylinder around her hooves.

"Go!"

The unicorn flipped the switch causing the roof to shift and split in to triangular sections as it rumbled open, giving an excellent view of the night sky and full moon.

The horns of the unicorns that had formed around Trixie began to glow as they added their magic to hers. Derpy threw her hooves over her head and cowered, Alun began watching the muffin again.

The light around Trixie's horn was too bright to look at without squinting, it seemed to darken the rest of the room.

A huge beam of magic shot from Trixie, just as Alun yelled,

"To the mooooooon!"

Luna put a wing in front of her as a shield just as the other unicorns (and Alun) were blasted backwards by a rush of wind!

The beam went soaring in to the sky and hit silently, thousands of miles away, on the moon.

There was silence. It seemed to be over....

Luna lowered her wing and saw Trixie leaning on her front knees.

"Are you okay Trixie?" She called.

It was a moment before she responded.

"Yes, yes I'm fine! It's usually difficult, but with the distance and all it was a bit harder this time. No worries though!" She stood up. "I'm just fine... Now, let's see how our aim was, shall we?"

As the other unicorns got back on their hooves Luna and Trixie went over to a wall that had an ever so tiny window in it. Through the window they could see that it was another small room with a portal in it and through the portal they could see the Lunar surface!

"Yes! We did it!"

The unicorns began to cheer and high-hoof each other. After all that effort, it better have worked!

"Now all we have to do is wait for-"

"Gaia?" They turned to see Gaia prance in to the room wearing bulging saddle bags.

"Excellent timing Gaia! You said you would have a solution for the whole vacuum suction problem?"

"Indeedly-doo!" She pulled out a pole on a tripod with an odd egg shaped device on top."Just throw this bad boy in there and you have an instant habitable zone!"

"No time to waste then!"

Trixie erected a forcefield around the entrance to the portal and opened the door. Gaia threw her odd probe thing in to the forcefield and watched it through the portal.

It was difficult to see through such a small hole, but it seemed like everything on the other side was within a thin green bubble.

"Did it work?"

"Only one way to find out" She nodded at Trixie.

Trixie took a deep breath and dropped the forcefield. The ponies felt a light breeze go past them in to the portal, but other than that... Nothing happened.

"Oh good, it worked!"

"Gaia, I take it you will be in charge of getting us set up here?"

"Leave it to the Gaians!"

No sooner had she said it then ten or twenty unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies of every shade of green you could imagine and all with red eyes came through the door, and began setting up shop with their strange machines. A shy looking pegasus with a pink mane and yellow coat poked her head in after the wave of green subsided.

"Fulltershy? I thought you were still in the whitetail woods taking care of those beavers that broke their dam?"

"Oh, yes, well... I -um. They were getting along fine without me, so I thought I would- you know- if you want me to that is..."

She looked at the ground.

"We would love your help Fluttershy!"

"Really?"A big smile spread across her face."Oh thank you!" She fluttered in to the room and landed next to Gaia and the Princess.

"Fluttershy I thought you were living in Ponyville?.

"Oh, well I was, but one day when I was making a house call to a bear with chiropractic problems, I met the Gaians and, well I thought they were a lot like me, so I decided to go live with them for a while! Besides I had never been that deep in to the Whitetail Woods before."

"Well we're glad to have you here with us Fluttershy."

"Thank you Princess- Oh I almost forgot!" Fluttershy pushed her mane out of the way to show a necklace she was wearing with a crystal pink butterfly set in it."It's my Element of Harmony. I thought you might be able to use it!"

"Yes, Fluttershy, that is very helpful, thank you!"

The yellow pony made a "squee" noise. She was very happy to be useful!

The Gaians had already started moving equipment and supplies through the portal setting up a base camp on the moon.

"They sure do move fast!"

"No time to waste Princess, we've got a lot to build. Our magic will help, but we still need the raw materials."

Fluttershy started looking around and then frowned.

"I-I heard that Applejack would be here... I was looking foreword to seeing her."

"She's trying to gather your friends. We need all of the elements we can get. If we had all of them, then none of this would be necessary, but since we know Twilight won't join us, we have to get as many as we can."

"I hope she doesn't take it to hard when Rainbow Dash says no... They're best friends, I can't bear to think of what this might do to their relationship... Or any of the others either..."

"All wounds heal with time Fluttershy. Trust me, some day it will be like it once was."

"Are you sure Princess?"

She looked Luna right in the eyes.

'I sure hope so.'