"This is it, Spike, after so much careful planning and debating Celestia has finally given me the go to do it! The last spell of Clover the Clever..." She shivered with delight, smiling widely as she looked around her rather dark basement, her eyes sweeping over every little piece of equipment and detail. She was waiting for a reply but as she looked around, the little dragon was no where to be seen!
"I guess he went upstairs to sleep, I did keep him up a long while..." She mumbled to herself, feeling a barb of guilt but that quickly disappeared as she looked down at the ancient journal in front of her hooves, she practically jumped with eagerness.
"No, keep calm... Calmness is what will keep my silly head here and not... Places?" She pouted down at the journal, all it had ever said was that it took you places you couldn't imagine, some horribly fraught with danger, and where you could meet "Not-you" whatever that meant... She sighed and started taking a few deep breaths, In, out, in, out Twilight...
"Okay..." She went and started lighting extra candles around the still rather dark room, tracing an arcane circle on the floor and flipping the journal open, she began reading everything over again, she mouthed every word and found herself at the edge of her seat again. She couldn't believe how much responsibility that was dropped in her lap to get this spell to work.
Imagine life in another universe! Or even just really, really far away!
Licking her lips she charged her horn up and read the spell out, "With these thoughts of home on my mind, I acknowledge the loss I give..."
She closed her eyes, she could simply recite it from memory from reading it over and over, "I want to travel and feel the winds of worlds never seen and never felt. To stand on the precipice of discovery and climb the mountains of alien places, to broaden my senses to the cultures I know nothing of!"
Even with her eyes closed she could see the bright, purple light of her horn, she stopped to breath and realized how much it took out of her, she felt as though she'd ran the running of the leaves ten times now, but she couldn't stop now. "Take me there and let me live with the lives of those I don't know, the ones I don't understand! The outcast or the elite, I will live to tell my tales!"
She opened her eyes and couldn't see anything, just a pure white that felt divine to her, but after barely a second passed she registered everything went black; she felt herself flop over onto the hard, dusty ground. She could barely keep her eyes open now, she felt drained and just about every part of her body hurt as she lay on the ground, the scent was wrong, that was the first thing she registered, it no longer smelled as though she was in the basement of her home.
She smelt... Copper, or something, it was metallic and there was something oily, she could feel the liquid on her body, it was sticky; she grunted as she forced herself into a sitting position, slowly blinking her eyes open, instead of the dark basement she had still be hoping for, she was meet with the bright sun shining directly into her eyes, raising a hoof and roughly smacking herself in her haste to block the sight, she fell over onto her rump.
"Places..." She softly stated as everything finally clicked for her, she shot up again and looked around, she couldn't believe it.
It wasn't exactly something to be expected.
She was sitting in a pool of oil, the husks of several broken apart machines laid in front of her, she whimpered softly and looked around, she started to register the noises of combat nearby, shouting and loud poppy, zappy noises much like the sounds of her brother training on the firing line when he was a recruit. The room she was in wasn't brightly lit, but it was enough to see.
She quickly started to trot, almost slipping in the oil, towards the sounds, it got louder and she jumped when a loud shout came before an explosion, she went faster as the noises died down; what if somepony was hurt!?
she rounded a corner and was faced with a door, there weren't any buttons or handles on it or anything, but when she stepped nearer, it opened up for her to reveal a big room with a high ceiling, a giant wreck of metal sat in the middle and she saw four bipedal things looking at her, they each raised a long boxy thing and one shouted at her to get down.
Her eyes went wide as she dropped to the floor, one of the biped's guns lit up with blue lights, each of the bolts of energy soaring over her head until she heard something drop behind her. "Clanker down, Three-eight."
"What is that purple thing, boss?" She looked up at them as they started to approach, what was a clanker? She backed away until she tripped over something, scrambling up as she felt liquid on her rump she found another broken husk of metal. "It looks really scared, maybe it's your breath, Sev."
One of them grunted and all of them stopped, two of them, one with yellow and blue markings on it's arms and one with red markings all over, it looked like blood, stopped and started arguing. The other two, one with green markings and one with orange markings, stood and watched.
She slowly stepped forwards and tapped the orange one's leg, looking up at him carefully. The two bickering continued as the orange one looked down at her, the green one aimed his box at her. "E-excuse me, I don't know where I am, o-or what's happening..."
The yellow/blue one stopped arguing, forcing the red to stop too as they all looked at her, her tail subconsciously tucked between her legs as they stared until the orange one set his hand on the green's box and lowered it. "Well, little one, you're in a dangerous place right now, we ain't too bad though. Right Fixer?"
Little one? She was smaller than them, but did he think she was a foal? She wasn't one!
"Right, Boss. We're the best the Republic has to offer." She thought it was the green one that answered, but they all had helmets on, she wasn't sure. "We're the good guys here."
"I'm Three-eight, this is Four-oh, or Fixer, Oh-seven, or Sev; and finally Six-two, or Scorch." The green one nodded to her first, so he was Fixer, the red one nodded next; she noted the blood-red claw print on his helm after his gesture; and then the yellow/blue one lightly waved and she returned that wave with a soft smile.
"We call him Boss, he's the leader." Scorch chuckled a little and relaxed, his shoulders going slack. "Just be careful of Sev, he's a real psycho."
"Well, uhm, I'm T-Twilight Sparkle; and I guess I'll keep that in mind, Scorch." She nervously giggled until they all kind of froze and nodded, Three-eight raised his foreleg to his head and pressed on something.
"Roger that Advisor, we found a uh, non-hostile local; what do we do with her?" After a second Scorches shoulders seemed to tense as Sev turned around, looking over the wreck to the door on the other side of the room. "Roger, Advisor. We'll keep on mission."
Boss's foreleg lowered as he lifted his box up, the point that shot the energy bolts aimed to the ceiling, "Twilight, our Advisor orders me to tell you to go fend for yourself, but I can't do that... We have a dangerous mission to continue, you stay back and you can come with us."
She nodded to him, she was scared; but they were kind. They were the closest things to friends here. "I can handle myself, I've been in a couple of dangerous situations before, Boss. I can help you."
"Boss," Sev started, looking over his shoulder; the paint on his helmet made him seem very dangerous. She hoped it was paint. "You sure about this?"
"Not at all." He admitted and with a deep breath, he turned, Scorch and Fixer followed his lead as he confidently strode over to the door, "Delta's, I want a breaching charge on this door."
The nodded and, as one, moved together, two one side of the door, one at the door and one to the right; Scorch gestured and she moved next to him, apprehensive. Fixer set a cylinder on the latch of the door and said "Clear!" before he moved over by Sev; then the door blew open, she could hear more of those robots on the other side before Scorch threw another kind of cylinder through.
She heard a pop and electronic sizzling sounds, the clankers making several garbled gibberish noises before it sounded like they all fell over, the delta's rushed through the door, their boxes aiming around for anything moving; there were more clankers and they opened fire, she followed at their heels. "Clean breach. Sev, take up a sniping position there." Boss pointed with two of his claws at a box, and the red biped moved there.
She moved next to him and peered around the side of the box as the others moved to various positions around the room, there were other clankers to deal with; but they put them down easily with quick bursts of light. "Here to watch the master at work?" Sev asked.
She looked up at him as he took a piece of his box off and put another piece on, he then aimed through the sight and pulled on the grip; the long box jerked with a loud piercing sound and the instant but far off sound of a clanker falling apart. She peeked back around in time to see a long sliver of blue light from his box pierce straight through two of the robots at once. "Wow!"
"SBD!" Scorch yelled, ducking down as a burst of red lights soared over his head, she gasped and looked to the bigger robot, Sev fire a round and it went straight through it, but that didn't slow it down as it approached. She bit her lip and moved forwards, charging a more powerful telekinetic spell.
"Civvie in danger zone!" Sev yelled, but another burst of red lights put him down in cover, that was it for the robot though as her spell finished, she lifted the robot, it's arms flailed around before she brought it down against the floor, then she lifted it up and did it again and again and again. "Damn..." Sev grunted before the room grew silent besides her panting, the wreck of the machine laid there, perhaps I should make a comment on it being lifeless like an inanimate object?
"Is... Is it dead?" She looked up as boss came to her side, he nodded down at her and then signaled with his claws, the group of soldiers forming up on him and then they continued on, she groaned softly as she followed them to the next door. she felt drained after that.
"Let's go in silently this time, Fixer." The green marked one moved to the right of the door and started messing with a panel. "Twilight, you can use the force? What was that?"
"The force? I- N-no? It was just a telekinesis spell, I got angry because it tried to hurt you guys." She scuffed her hoof on the metal floor, looking down. "Nopony should be bullied around by somepony bigger than them."
"It's alright, we could've handled that thing, but you took it down a lot faster than we would've. Super Battle Droids, nasty pieces of work, but not the worst things we've seen in this war." Boss looked up and moved to the door as Fixer pulled away from the panel, raising their weapons again; they moved into the next room.
There were more clankers or, she guessed they were normal battle droids, in this big room; it was huge and loud as a machine to the right moved and shifted, large containers eternally going up into to the ceiling. boss signalled with his claws and silently moved behind a droid before he struck it with his left foreleg, but she didn't expect a long knife to come out of his gauntlet and stab through the droid.
The other soldiers opened fire on the other droids, cutting them down with bright, blue flashes of lights. She felt a little sorry for the machines but as far as she knew they would hurt her so, she stuck with the Delta's as they kept going, boss gave orders and the others followed, they really didn't work like a squad of royal guards, they worked like one person, efficient, ordered and dangerous.
They moved through several big rooms, working together to take down bigger threats, using different attachments on their boxes, she soon learned during one of the brief pauses they got that they were called DC-17m rifles, they took down super battle droids, Droidekas, which had round shields; but they were not match for her telekinesis, and they shot down big, scary bugs they called Geonosians.
She learned about the soldiers from their banter, Boss didn't say much beyond his orders, Sev talked most about killing more of the mindless bugs, Scorch mostly argued with Sev and talked of bombs, and Fixer mainly only stopped them when he noticed how disturbing their talks got.
It was a long, enduring battle for every inch to their destination, but they reached it; a room with lots of control panels and a big column to the right, Boss and Scorch started setting bombs on containers near the two doors into the room as Fixer and Sev set up in sniping positions; there was one was to the column, a walkway with barriers that would work as cover.
She tried to keep everything thing straight, all the details, but things were fuzzy and sometimes she stopped paying attention. She figured it was the stress of the situation getting to her.
She mentally steeled herself as Boss started to "Slice" a terminal on the column, the others of the squad getting ready as alarms went off, she stood next to Sev and prepared all the spell she thought she'd need. It was seconds before the doors opened and droidekas rolled in; but the bombs went off and the rollers were knocked over in heaps of burning metal.
She cast a strong, fire magic bolt as a pair of SBD's walked through, it melted through one robot and 'killed it' as Sev put round after round of sniper shots into it's twin but that eventually went down as she recovered her breath.
She heard Scorch yell something but she didn't pay attention until a loud explosion sounded, her sensitive ears hurt from the loud sounds of combat as more clankers of different kinds came through the doors, she felt bolstered with confidence as they kept taking the robots down; Sev seemed to be proud of her as she used her telekinesis to spear a droid with a piece of debris.
She dropped to her rump as an explosion blew right in front of her cover, the droids were closing in like an endless tide! It was hard to keep breathing in the smells of oil, ozone, and burnt metals, she was sure the soldiers had it better with the helmets of theirs.
Boss yelled something about it not taking much longer but it already felt like they'd been there for a long time, she couldn't take much more of this, she wasn't trained or very athletic like they were. Dashie or Applejack would be handling this better.
Sev grunted and pushed her to get her to look at him, he pointed down at the floor a few seconds before boss yelled that he was done slicing. She got down as the entire room started to shake, explosions in the distance sounded and got closer and closer, then some parts of the room started to fall apart with bursts of flame.
She whimpered and whined as the squad started to run, she galloped right at their heels; she didn't want to be left behind here as everything got loud and hot, they stopped at a dead end hall before the wall blew open, revealing the orange sky outside seconds before a flying carriage thing appeared and it's side opened up.
The Delta's seemed happy to see it, at least they seemed like it before she passed out from magical and physical exhaustion.
It was a few hours after the Delta's had helped her through what she later learned was known as a separatist core ship, she had apparently appeared as they fought through the ship to disable/destroy it, she had missed 'most of the action' as Sev had said; she lightly responded by saying she wasn't sure she could've handled anymore than that.
She was glad they all laughed a bit at that, after a moment of respite Boss said that the advisor chewed him out for bringer along, but that he overlooked it because she took down a SBD down in seconds, alone.
Anyhow, they sat and stood around in the troop bay of the RAS Prosecutor, Sev had picked her up and put her on a box when Fixer put a blanket around her shoulders, she blushed as she thanked them; she was glad they didn't treat her like a freak, she knew most creatures feared things they were ignorant of.
"So Twilight, what's your home planet? What system?" Scorch asked, he slowly took his helmet off, she wasn't too surprised with his looks.
"Well, we call it Earth, and my home country is called Equestria. I'm not too sure what you'd call the system..." Sev slowly pulled off his own helmet, they were twins! The harsh banter made a bit more sense from that. Then Fixer pulled his helmet off, then Boss did the same and she got confused. "You're all... You all look the same..."
"Hmm? Well, yeah. We're all clones. Republic Clone Commandos!" Scorch proudly declared. She looked around the large troop bay at all the soldiers, the fast flying carriage pilots and the engineers. "Yep, all clones around here. They get different armours and training and educations, but we're the best of the best!"
She slightly nodded, dumbfounded. "How are... I've heard of cloning spells, but..." She pouted at them, deep in thought.
"Spells? It's not like that, but you mentioned that earlier too. What does that mean, like, magic?" Boss asked, he didn't give a skeptical look like she'd expected him too. His face didn't change very much.
"Well, yeah! All ponies can use magic, unicorns like me use it directly by charging spells with our horns as a focusing point. Pegasi, they have wings, use it subconsciously to fly and control the weather. Earth ponies are like a mix, they use a lot of it subconsciously to grow plants, but they can channel it to really grow things."
"And unicorns are the only ones who can use it for dangerous things?" Sev asked with a little grin, she shook her head.
"Not at all, pegasi can make tornadoes happen and are really dextrous; most are really stealthy. Earth ponies are real tough," She blushed a bit as a certain big, red stallion came to mind. "Give them some good armour and a lance and they probably could charge through any obstacle. I mean, not a brick wall. Maybe."
"Well, let's hope Trando's don't find your planet, sounds like unicorn horns and pegasi wings, tough earth furs might all be worth a lot of creds." She nodded, she had no idea what a Trando was, but they didn't sound very nice.
"Well, how do we get you home if we don't know where to send you?" Fixer asked, he moved to sit next to her.
"I know a spell, but, I don't know how to get it to send me directly home. I can... I can only hope it'll get me home." She looked down sadly and pouted, "It's a long shot since it sent me here in the first place."
She jumped when a claw was set on her shoulder, Scorch giving her a smile and chuckling a little at her, "You stay here awhile and you think about it, we'll train you, I mean, imagine if we weren't there..." She nodded at him and smiled, pulling the blanket around herself a little tighter.
"Alright, come on, we'll get you a bunk and your training will start tomorrow." She hopped off of the box and nodded, looking determined; and sleepy, but it didn't matter.
And then time passed, months and then almost a whole year! She couldn't believe how much time passed in the company of the Delta's, she liked being with them even if she missed her old friends. She really tried not to think about them.
She helped the commando's all she could when they went on their missions, they trained her and trained her, it was grueling and hard; but she felt she had to do every workout they planned for her; she was very happy and surprised when they gave her a gift; Her very own Katarn-class armour; they painted it with purple lines and marks with a few stars on the flanks.
She took deep breathes as she put it on, she insisted on doing it herself; it was actually rather hard but she got the tight armour on; then came the helmet. It was surrounded in her purple glow as she put it on, her horn going into the fitted socket, the jaw part of it clasped and adjusted to her jaw line, the HUD showed up; the suit scanned her health and showed green bars, the shield bar was full. Squares with numbers underneath each showed where the squad was.
It wasn't until now she realized how much bulk she earned from the training, even after losing all of her chubbiness; she assumed it was from all the muscles. (She totally didn't spend lots of time staring into the mirror.)
She proudly marched out to them, it became a celebration as they gave her the nickname "Sparks." and a number designation of PN-0001; somehow they had convinced a quartermaster on one of their garrisons to not only specially make the armour for her, but they get him to part with one of their signature side-arms, a DC-15s blaster. It wasn't as impressive as their "Deece" rifle, but it didn't run out of ammo. Sev said that really counts in a firefight.
The war moved them around and around over time, but when they finally got the news, the Prosecutor, which had gone missing for two weeks, had come back! Having recently reappeared in the Chaykin cluster after being tasked with defending trade routes in the Corellian sector, the Prosecutor was found drifting without power and unresponsive to communication attempts.
They were the one's sent in to go secure it.
Twilight made sure her armour was air-tight as she stood near Boss, Sev was making fun of Scorch as they checked each other's armours, Fixer stood off to the side and spent more time contemplating something. she frowned and went over to him before starting to forcefully use her magic to check his armour, he grunted a few times.
"Sparks, what are you-?" He squirmed a bit as she finished up, giggling up at him a little. "Oh, right. Thanks." She nodded and turned to Boss as Sev dropped a the little holographic projector; she wouldn't publicly admit she was still amazed by tech like that after all the time in this universe.
Their advisor showed up in as a hologram as she heard his voice through her commlink; his voice was still just as cold and callous as it always was. "Alright Delta's, you know the ship-"
"We spent lot's of time on it, it was like our first home." Boss said, it wasn't like him to speak coldly like that, or interrupt somepony speaking.
"Right. It went missing, as you know..." The adviser seemed to stop for a few moments and shake his head. "You mission is to secure four data cores and then further orders will be given. You will be inserting from space, four different entry points, Boss and Twilight will enter through the torpedo tubes, starboard." The clones knew where they'd get in from, of course, but Twilight needed to know.
The door of the CR25 troop transport opened up to black space. Twilight's breath caught in her throat every time she saw space, staring out at stars. Each of the clone's jumped out one by one with Twilight following close behind Boss, her jump jets were the only thing she could hear beyond Scorch making a bad joke, but she was glad he did.
It took a very short space "walk" for them to reach the huge ship and land in the tube, she bit her lip as Boss went in through a door to slice a console and open the tube's door up.
She looked back at space and watched the stars, her own breath was the only thing she could hear; the view was so beautiful. She had to tell Luna about this, if she could... She turned back around in time to see Boss come out of the room and the door began to open.
She drew her weapon with her magic and moved forwards, she loudly gasped and fired her gun upwards when a pair of ugly bat-things passed over her head into space. She heard Boss laugh over the comms before the moved in, she tried to ignore her embarrassment.
"Mynocks, disgusting and such a disgrace on this ship." Said Scorch over comms, apparently he had gotten in too. She agreed with him in her head, but she wanted to keep the channel clear of unnecessary chatter. Boss motioned forward by tapping the back of her hind leg with his boot, she wished they never thought up that way of letting her know to move on.
It was annoying and made her feel like Winona back on Applejack's farm when she was in the way.
They crept through dark corridors and several unwell lit venting areas before they finally found something, or rather; it found them. They hadn't seen it coming except for the static, a machine flew at Twilight and attached itself to her head, she screamed and bashed it with her left hoof, the vibro-blade in the gauntlet cutting into it each time, that kept it from gaining ground with the big drill it had.
And once, she missed, her hoof went slightly to the left on a swing and missing it, it's drill began to dig into her visor; she screamed again for help and Boss yanked it off.
He stabbed it twice before throwing it at the wall, he turned to Twilight who sat on her ramp and panted as her visor cleaned the mark from the machines drill. "Twilight, are you okay?"
"I'm fine!" She yelled, her panting got a little faster for a second. "Almost died, it's nothing!" Boss tried not to, he did, but he laughed a little. She giggled a little too, before she stood. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm okay." She nodded a little, convincing herself as much as him.
"Tell me if you get cold feet." She nodded and started trotting ahead, she kept her pistol in the ready position, as she had begun to call it doing her time in training, she was still scared, but she knew she had Boss with her. He would be like a brother and protect her. They all had guided her already, now she had to make the right choices.
They fought more of the machines, scavenger droids apparently, as they went.
Twilight couldn't believe what she had willingly walked into, but she shook her head of that thought. thoughts were the enemy of nonconscious reflex, especially in a small space such as mouse droid vents.
She had to be ready for anything and that anything soon came in the sight on a clone on his knees in front of a pair of green legs seconds before a loud shot rang out and the body dropped to the floor. She surprised the gasp and gag at the front-line sight. The legs walked off as she and Boss crept forwards to the exit of the droid dwellings.
She kept herself from making a distressed sound as she got a close look at the clone corpse, biting her lip. Boss didn't seem to be affected, but she knew better. She knew he felt that could've have very easily have been him, they were clones. They were all truly genetic family after all.
Twilight stood in the locked, large room; everything shook as all of the cannons fired away at the huge ship across the way in space. This was too much for her. "Sparks, go!" She wasn't sure who had said it over the comms.
"What? Scorch, Boss, repeat that!" Go? Go where!?
"Use your magic, get out of here!" She turned and started to batter the door, kicking and hitting it, her vibro-blade didn't do much at all. "Use the spell and go! Sparks, you'll never get home if you stay here afraid of whatever may come, but right now; we can't kill you, not like this!" It was Sev.
"No! I can't leave you, you'll die!" She screamed into the comm, setting her head on the door as she gave up, she was too tired to use a teleport spell. "You need me!"
"Just do it!" She started to cry, but she stopped herself, they wouldn't want her to cry. They didn't let her when she broke her nose during training, they wouldn't now. She stood tall and started to prime the spell, everything grew white, she knew the divine feeling, she relished in it. Everything went black.
