Her hooves clipped rhythmically against the cobbles as she cantered along the narrow streets of Canterlot. Her saddlebag bounced reassuringly against her flank with every bound, the weight of its contents threatening to topple her sideways. She knew she should have brought something to counterbalance it, but it was too late to do anything now. She also knew that she should probably slow down, that she wasn't in any rush, yet she was too exited to get back home and put her newest purchase into action. It was in this excitement that she didn't notice until too late a pegasus unloading crates onto the right split ahead. Her hooves scrabbled for purchase as she tried to come to a halt. But the heavy weight in her bag refused to stop, pulling her rear half with it.
Her forelegs were forced to keep moving as she was spun sideways. She kicked out towards the incoming wall, narrowly missing the void of the right pathway. Unfortunately, in the confusion, she pushed back off the wall, maintaining her speed. This, in turn, sent her down the left split. A street that just so happened to be incredibly steep.
Once more, she tried to stop, to slow down. But her hooves found no purchase as the road seemed to drop out from under her. It was all she could do to keep herself from tripping over her hooves and travelling the rest of the distance on her face. She was nearing the bottom now. It was only then, that she remembered she had magic. A manic grin lit her face as she barrelled towards the main road.
Ponies all around stopped in surprise as a pink blur burst out the narrow gap between two buildings and promptly vanished into the alley opposite. Moments later, a pink unicorn stumbled out, giggling manicly as azure sparks sprung sporadically from her horn.
She couldn't think straight in the pure exhilaration of what had just happened. It was a good job she remembered she could use her levitation to stop herself. Her single bag bounced heavily against her flanks, reassuring her of its presence. It wasn't much further until she reached her house that her thoughts had begun to organise themselves.
As usual, there wasn't much activity about outside, and the few ponies who were present paid her little mind as she unlocked the side door from the inside and slipped through. As much as she wanted to get upstairs and start installing the new component, her adrenaline rush had left her exhausted, and so she let herself topple onto the plush, red couch stationed just past the door.
But before she could fall asleep, she pushed through her tiredness and levitated her saddlebag unsteadily off her back. She allowed herself one quick glance at the shiny metal within before floating it into the shaft concealed by a false panel that would take it up to her lab. With that sorted, she closed her eyes, emptying her mind as she listened to her breathing settle.
By the time her eyes opened once more, the hallway was dark. Groggily, she slipped herself off the coach to land with a clop on the floor. Casting a light spell, she made her way into the kitchen and towards a bulky device set atop the counter. Her coffee machine. Levitating a coffee mug out from a nearby cupboard and dumping in some water and ground beans, she sent a small spark of magic into the blue receiver crystal.
While the water was boiling, she made her way upstairs towards her workshop. Casting her magic into the door, she blindly fumbled with the interior mechanism until it clicked open. She proceeded into the dark room, then turned to a crystal on the wall. She sparked the crystal with her magic, sending power to the lights and bathing the room in a harsh blue light that hurt her eyes. She knew she probably should get some red or amber crystals that would hurt her eyes left, but she would need a frequency converter, and she just never seemed to remember to get one. That or the fact that they were expensive.
Her workshop was her favourite room in the house, taking up nearly the entirety of the top floor. It was a wide open space with the middle kept clean of clutter. Stacked against the length of the far wall, was a chaotic mess of miscellaneous machines and equipment, while the opposite was comprised entirely of neatly organised shelves and drawers.
She followed the near wall on her left to a small table where her saddlebag was resting by the exit of a silver chute. She smiled tiredly as she levitated it open and brought its contents into the blue-hued light emitted by the crystals lining the ceiling. A bell chimed, signalling that her coffee was ready. She reached out with her magic, feeling with the etherial sense to locate the drink of wakefulness and bring it back to her. A few moments of absolute silence later, and the mug was before her.
After tongue-tapping it to ensure it was of a suitable temperature and flavour, she took one big gulp. The hot drink nearly scolded, but she had already fine-tuned her machine not to make it overly hot. Her attention turned once more to the silvery object resting on the table and she levitated it over for inspection. She turned it carefully in her magic, examining the three small crystalline ports on the back and the medium shard of blue crystal jutting out the front. Her eyes danced over the white lettering printed beside the mounting plate. HOLO_DISP_V3-HV5.2.
She felt about it in her magic, finding and concentrating on the ports. The shard flickered as she tuned the ratio of magic flowing into the ports, until the crystal settled on a steady glow. A bit more fiddling and it was soon projecting a slightly blurred image of a feather into the air. She could feel the effects of the coffee beginning to build alongside her giddy excitement. She practically pranced across the room, coffee and holographic display in tow.
She paused a moment, just to double check that she was alone, ears perked for any sound in the silence. But only a moment, as she couldn't wait any longer. Her magic flipped open a few clips within the wall, before pulling back the panel and sliding the compartment open. There, before her, stood her latest prized project. The dark composite pony-shaped shell stood menacingly in its closet, its surface gleaming slightly from the blue light. She yanked the 'head' off and pranced merrily to the central work surface. She laid the helmet down on its side and peered within. She hummed to herself as she inspected its padded, black interior. Floating three small bolts out from the drawer wall, she slipped the new component inside, screwing it into place with her magic. Then, opening a panel on the back of the headpiece, she pulled taught the three loose crystalline strands stuffed inside, before threading them carefully back into the helmet; this time connecting them to the three ports on the back of the display.
Excited to try her new addition, she lifted the helmet and set it upon her head, horn settling into the tall vent-like structure poking from the top. The receptacles responded to the magic in her lit horn, drawing some into the helmet and into the crystal components within. The new display flashed on, immediately projecting the Heads Up Display she had waited so long to see. There were still a few visual glitches, product of designing something that couldn't yet be seen, but she was ecstatic with the result regardless. It was something she could always change later.
She glanced across the display, noting all the negative readings from the various sensors not currently accessible back in the suit. For the first time, she'd be able to get real-time, accurate readouts straight through her HUD, rather than having to wait to get home and dissassemble the relevant components to debug systems. She lifted her eyes from the HUD and looked back fondly at her suit through the blue tinted window of her helmet.
But before she could get to that, she decided to test out what else the projector could do. Shifting her magic about the various sensors over her horn, she could control various inputs to operate the suit's systems. For this, she wanted to test the night vision overlay. She watched intently as her cursor wobbled its way across the HUD towards the menu icon. She overshot it. Clenching her jaw, she tried again, successfully bringing up the menu. Her cursor wobbled over to the tiny night vision icon. Once more, it wobbled sidewards and clicked the floodlights option. The sudden increase in magical draw startled her, as the crystals imbedded either side of her face plate ignited in full fury, blinding her completely.
With eyes clenched tightly, she bit down on the bar in-front of her. And with practiced precision, used her tongue to press the floodlights button on the controller. Her eyes ached. Her horn aches. And it was a full two minutes before the spots had receded from her eyes enough to see clearly again. She clearly had a lot to work on, regarding the tuning of the new controller. For now, she'd just have to stick to using her mouth for abstract functions. She also needed to upgrade her faceplate to properly protect her eyes from her own floodlights.
She levitated the helmet off her head and took in a deep breath. She regarded the half finished coffee set still set on the table across the room. A few moments later, it was drifting across the room towards her. Her horn ached. Her magic spluttered. The coffee shuddered. The mug dropped and spilled its contents over the floor. She face planted on the table.
One fresh cup of coffee and long rinse of her horn in icy water later, she came back into the workshop. Wandering over to the helmet, she plopped it on her head. Her horn came to life as magic was drawn into the receptacles around it. The HUD flickered to life, somehow looking even more broken than it was before. She bit down on the controller and tongue-tapped the night vision button. She could tell something had changed, but with the lights on, she couldn't figure out what. It was at that moment that the lights above ran out of magic and went dark.
The night vision wasn't great. For one, it was too blue. Bluer than her normal lights, so blue that every other colour seemed non existent if it wasn't blue. Everything in the room that was originally blue shone like a beacon while everything else appeared dark and dull. It was still brighter than pitch black at least, but it was like peering through static. Things seemed to shift and blend into each other, and got darker the further away they were. She sighed, wandering over to the light crystal receiver. She had to remove her helmet to spark it back to life.
But now that all that was out of the way, she ready for her favourite part. She walked steadily over towards the black, armour-like structure across the room. Upon reaching it, she flipped onto a panel on the back. Within, was a large crystal, glowing brightly with charged magic. She reached in with a hoof, relishing in the warm given off as she gently spun the crystal in its housing. Confident that all was in order, she did the same for the crystal on the other side. Then she started to get changed.
The dark figure stood patiently on the launch plate. Within, a pink furred unicorn glanced across a holographic projection showing a variety of gauges and readouts. "Throttling up primary crystal," she whispered to herself as she pulsed a signal with her horn. This was followed shortly by a whirring sound as the crystal began to spin, followed by a flood of power through her horn and into her body. She ignored the sudden burst of power flooding her being, and whispered "throttling down." She pulsed a signal to stop the crystal and the boost in strength left her as suddenly as it came. "Throttling up auxiliary crystal." The same happened as the second crystal spun up and shared its power. "Throttling down," she sighed, "all systems appear to be in order, preparing for launch."
She reached out with her magic once more, but this time towards a different part of the suit. Two limbs unfolded themselves carefully from either side of the suit, previously camouflaged against its surface. She held out her mechanical wings, angling them slightly up such that they would catch the wind. Then she felt out further, towards the activation trigger of the mechanism beside her. The floor shifted below her, then began to tilt back. She braced her hooves against the four tilted slabs as she was angled up to face the moon through the concealed hatchway in her roof.
Pulleys whirred and gears creaked as the cord was tensioned. Her muscles tensed as she lowered herself into a crouch. "Throttling up." The primary crystal began to spin, radiating magic outwards as it did so. Crystal receptors surrounding the heavy stone readily drank the magic up and directed it into a network of cables filled with ground crystal dust. The crystal surfaces along the undersides of her metallic feathers were illuminated blue as the enchantments within encouraged airflow and lift. Elsewhere, various other enchantments became active, working to lighten the heavy mass enough to fight gravity.
An amber crystal lit up at the end of the track, followed by a bell. Then with a rush of wind, the pony was catapulted forwards into the sky. She almost wooped in joy at the feeling of weightlessness as she climbed higher into the skies above Canterlot. And for several long minutes, she did nothing but aerobatics as she lost herself in the thrill of flight. But she had research to do, and every moment of air time she had left mattered. Flight was magically intensive for a pony without wings. Even the reservoir of power she had packed into the crystals she had wouldn't hold out forever. And recharging even one of them could take months.
She took a breath and levelled out. She checked her HUD. Already, the magic reserves in her crystal were down 20%. So she set to work. Said work mostly consisted of observing the readouts and statistics of her flight suit as she put it through various controlled manoeuvres. For the most part, everything was holding together well. This didn't really surprise her, seeing as how this wasn't her first test flight and she trusted the construction of her craftsmanship.
One thing of note, however, was the filter warning she got. She didn't know exactly when she got it, only that it was sometime during her initial pre-work sky dancing. It didn't worry her too much, as almost every single flight she had been on previously had also yielded a filter warning when she accessed the flight logs at the end. She just couldn't figure it out. Every component in her suit was tuned to a Harmonic Value of 5.2 and she was certain that she had quadrupedal checked it. Only her magic of HV 5.2 had ever gone into the suit, and only crystals of that value had been used, something she had verified herself with her own equipment.
Unless of course, it was her both the crystals and her equipment that was the problem. But even still, the filter warning hadn't ever come on in her workshop, not when she was conducting grounded tests. No, it always happened sometime during flight. Even now, as she checked the Harmonic Disparity meter, the number was gradually climbing. Even as she was watching it, the readout jumped from 0.9 to 1.0. When she first checked it after takeoff, it had already climbed from 0 to 0.7.
First of all, this told her that magic was leaking into the system. And that whatever magic was leaking in was of a different Harmonic Value than her own. Of course, that couldn't cause problems until it started climbing above a disparity of 2, and wouldn't be dangerous to fly with until it exceeded 2.7. Already, she was down to around 30%, so it wasn't like she had the capacity to reach a dangerous Disparity Value before she was forced to land.
She continued to ponder this as she turned back to return home. She already knew that the mystery magic wasn't ambient, as the suit was equipped with ambience shielding and she had tested it under high doses of external thaumic radiation from crystals of a variety of harmonic values, no issue. And from the new access to live readouts this flight, she had noticed that the DV hadn't been increasing at a constant rate.
She made sure to give the castle a wide berth as she soared through the cloudless skies. The first 0.7 units had been gained during the first several minutes of her flight, within an expenditure of 20% capacity. And the next 0.3 units occurred in the last 50% of drain over a much longer length of time. She just couldn't figure it out; not to mention she was tired. She rolled lazily into a barrel roll, pulling up into a steep climb out of boredom. Soon, she was down to 10% and she could just about see the blue glow coming from the beacon atop her house.
Seeing as she still had some flight left, she climbed even higher to create a larger altitude buffer with with to engage in some last minute fun. It was as she was pulling up from another loop, that she could feel the last of the magic start to leave her and gravity take hold; this was the most exciting part, and her favourite.
Her momentum faded quickly as her HUD flickered out, and she fell backwards. She used her natural magic to steer her wings, angling herself into a dive so she could see the ground rushing up to meet her. She grinned. The ground got ever closer, she relished in the thrill of free fall. "Throttling…" She sent a carefully timed pulse to her auxiliary crystal. She felt herself being pushed into a spin by the heavy crystal's own motion, but steadied herself with her wings.
Warmth flowed back into her body, as the HUD came to life and her wings began to resist her fall. She spread them wide and thrust all her power through the crystal feathers. Her wings shone brightly, small puddles reflecting the blue lights back at her. She lined herself up with the open catapult hatchway and stretched out her legs for landing. Her wings strained to bring her down to a reasonable speed. She landed hard, and braced against the launch pad, cutting power to her wings. With her heavy flight suit and still-considerable forwards momentum, the pad was pulled with her back down the track. The braking system worked hard to slow everything to a stop. The pad clicked into place, the pony fell forwards.
The next morning, a pink unicorn was fast asleep on her small bed downstairs. Unfortunately for her, she had forgotten to close the curtains. As the sun rose higher into the sky, its reach extended slowly down the wall of her house. Until finally, the sunlight reached her windows, and shortly after, her eyes. The unicorn groaned and rolled over to face away from the window. Unfortunately, the bed was, in fact, small. She hit the ground with a clomp.
Tiredly, she untangled herself from the mess of bedsheets on the floor and shifted her hooves below her. She stood up and wandered into the hall. Her tired eyes noticed something on the floor by her door. She levitated the newspapers off the floor and onto her back as she turned towards the kitchen. She set about preparing oatmeal porridge for breakfast. Then she set about eating that oatmeal porridge that she made for breakfast. She also glanced at the papers. She flicked idly through. But her attention was soon drawn to one specific photo. One that just so happened to have been taken last night, by some batpony nightsky photographer. Against the starry night sky, was a dark silhouette. If it weren't for the bright blue light shining out from under its wings, it wouldn't have been noticeable at all.
The headline read: Unidentified Flying Creature Spotted Soaring over Canterlot. This was followed by a short article discussing different theories over what this could be and bringing together various other reports of sightings over the past few months. It wasn't the first time she had been seen by ponies on her near-monthly nighttime test flights. And it most certainly wasn't the first time she had found herself being mentioned in the news. But this was the first article in which she had actually been caught on photo, and neither was the Canterlot Courier by any means a small paper.
Flipping the page, she was quite surprised to find not one, but two more photographs. One caught her silhouette banking near a tower, the underglow of her wing's barely visible around their edges. And another had caught her flying against the Canterhorn mountain, with moonlight gleaming over contours of her suit. The pictures weren't of the best quality, and they were both blurred, but it was enough to identify the mysterious pony as a pegasus.
The article ended with one last question Just who is this mysterious and elusive pegasus, and what are they doing, here in Canterlot? Hopefully, nopony would be able to track her back home, but it sounded like her dreams of flight could get a whole lot more complicated, going forwards.
Author's Note
I wrote this across two days, as a last minute entry for the New Blood contest.
The OC used in this story is one of my older ones, not one created for the writing contest.
For the purposes of this contest, the story is complete. However, there's a *small* chance that I might take it further post-contest if anyone is interested. I have a few more ideas on where to proceed with it.
If you want to know the name of this unicorn, I don’t know. I'm not very good with naming characters, so they only really get named when I reach a point where they need to be adressed by name.
But I can tell you that she has a green mane.
As always, I do appreciate any feedback, inclusive of constructive criticism on this story.
I'll submit this without cover art for now, but I might try to work on some to add later. For now, I need a short break.