Journal of a Reality Drifterby Spiritus ArcaneChaptersJumpParoleInterlude 1JumpThey say we come into the world screaming... Terminus grabs me by the shoulder as I go for the emergency release. I turn and backhand him. Hitting a turian is like hitting a stop sign, but it knocks him away long enough for me to get at the handle. Wadkit yells at us from the cockpit as the hatch springs open. There’s no time to respond even if I was inclined to. I grab hold of the edge of the hatch and go to throw myself out of the shuttle, but Terminus, damn him, grabs me again. A quick stomp to his foot puts him in just enough pain for me to get loose. This time I blast him in the face with a stun bolt. That familiar feeling of time slowing falls over me. The blast washes over him, but he falls forwards instead of away, towards me. I try to back up, to finish throwing myself out of the shuttle, but it’s too little too late, and Terminus is too close, yet too far away at the same time. I’m screaming just as my vision goes blurry, and it keeps going even as I white out entirely. I’ve found that to be pretty accurate most of the time, no matter which world I enter. My name is Lydia, and this is my journey through hell. I came to with a slight headache. It’s nothing new, as I’ve gotten used to the wonderful sensations of a jump, but this one seemed rougher than normal. I’d obviously passed out this time, since I could tell I was on my back. I pried open my eyes, and found myself staring up at the roof of the shuttle...well, the part of it that got dragged along with me. It was bright, meaning I was probably outside somewhere. I quickly brought up a systems check in my HUD and found out I’d been out for less than a minute, which means primary power was still out with hours to go on the repair time. Backup power cells should last til then, but it meant no Homer. I had no one to watch my back right now, and that’s never good thing, but especially right after a jump is worse. I sat up, intent on seeking better shelter when I realized Terminus was laying on top of me. Or rather...half of him was. He’d been bisected by the jump, his front half is here, and I can only surmise that his other half is back where I’d left. Oh, and I’m completely soaked in his liquid remains. It’s just too horrible, even for me, and I’d once seen someone stripped to the bone by a gelatinous cube. I flung the corpse away roughly as I rolled over onto my knees and began clawing at my helmet seals. I managed to undo them and pull my helmet off just in time to lose my lunch. Oh well, I hated military rations anyway. Of course, that’s when the screaming started. It took me a moment to figure out it wasn’t me this time, especially as I was still in the middle of upchucking. The second I could stop, I jammed my helmet back on and looked up. The first thing I noticed is that I was in a city or town of some sort. The second is there were a lot of horses running around. A second later I was forced to change my conclusion about that. For one thing, as a I stood up, I could see that they’re way too small to be horses, and also I noticed that it was a lot of them doing the screaming and that many of them were dressed in various forms of clothes. Planet of the Pony People, huh? That’s different, I thought to myself. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I was the cause of the screaming. I’m standing there, in full armor, which would be intimidating on its own, and drenched in blue blood. I’d have probably given myself nightmares a dozen decades or so ago. I stood there mutely while the street around me emptied out as multi-colored ponies ran away in all directions, waiting for what I know will come next. “You there, stop!” There we go... I turned to face a couple of po- no wait, they had wings... A couple of pegasus ponies, wearing golden barding and crested helmets that looked almost roman-like in design, were galloping towards me. Something about the design of their armor prickled in the back of my memory. In fact...something about this whole place seemed familiar somehow. Had I been to another version of this world before? I didn’t think so, but it could be someplace so far back that I just don’t remember. I put it out of my mind for the moment, whatever they were, or this place was, I recognized town guards when I saw them. I kept still as the two guards trotted up, allowing my cloak to drape around my arms to conceal my hands, making sure I had a chance to catch them by surprise if things turned violent. Considering my mood, they probably would. One of them caught sight of what was left of Terminus and his tough guy face cracked for a second. After that we stood there staring at each other for a second, and I caught them glancing at each other as if they weren’t exactly sure how to handle this. I finally decided to break the ice and switched on external speakers. “Problem, officers?” I asked, the helmet microphone giving my voice a slight staticy quality. They shared a glance again before the one closest to me spoke up. “We request that you accompany us to the nearest guard post.” he told me with as much an authoritative tone as he could muster. Request...riiiight. I assumed that was the polite way of saying ‘you’re under arrest,’ probably on suspicion of murdering someone I’d been coming to think of as an actual friend. ...Granted, they would be right in suspecting me. My jump had killed Terminus, and probably the rest of the team as well depending on how important the components in the part of the shuttle that got dragged along with me were. Oh, and in case you hadn’t figured it out, having that added the the giant landfill of my conscience had put me a in a really pissy mood, and I’d be damned (well...more damned) if I was gonna go directly to jail and maybe play twenty questions, with or without a side of torture, with some interrogator. “...Yeah, no,” I said to them, my only warning before I struck. Homer might have advised me to comply or retreat, but he wasn’t here, I was pissed off, and these two guardponies were stress relief and potential threats as far as I was concerned. I rushed forward, bringing my leg up in a snap kick that rammed my foot into the bottom of the talkative one’s jaw. I didn’t hear the sound of a breaking jawbone, but he still went down like a bowl of cooked ramen noodles. To his credit, his partner didn’t panic, but immediately rushed me. He slammed into me with a literal flying tackle that sent us both to the ground, where we rolled a down the street a couple of times before I managed to toss him off. Those wings at his sides were proven to not be for show, as he used them to quickly recover, landing only a couple feet away before swinging around to bring his rear hooves in line to buck me as I attempted to get back to my feet. I threw myself backwards, landing on my back and letting loose with a couple shots from my blasters. It’d been a couple of snap shots so my aim was bad, but I still had the satisfaction of seeing one of the bolts graze his flank, causing him to cry out in pain. Scrambling to my feet, I charged before he could regain his senses. I grabbed hold of his left wing with both hands and twisted my body around, swinging the pegasus around by his limb to hurl him into the side of a nearby building. He stayed down after he hit, either unconscious or just smart enough to know when to quit. I glanced back at the first one to make sure he was still down too, then stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I probably shouldn’t have done that...but I always felt better after winning a fight, and I really needed to feel better, if only a little bit, right now. Unfortunately I’d forgotten one of the multiversal rules of guards: picking a fight with them is like picking a fight with bees. You mess with one, you end up dealing with the hive. The auditory sensors in my helmet heard them first, and I turned to see at least a whole patrol’s worth of armored ponies headed towards me. Great... They probably wouldn’t be too thrilled to see that I’d just mopped the streets with their two buddies here. My inner warrior told me I could probably take them. The smart part of my brain drop kicked that idea by adding that, yeah I might be able to handle them, but what about the next wave, or the one after that? Another multiversal guard rule: the more of them you beat up, the more they escalate things. With that in mind, I decided to get while the getting was still good and started running in the opposite direction. I’d barely gotten ten yards before a sparkling bolt of energy zipped past my head. Oh great, they had mages. And those pegasi weren’t likely to stay on the ground if that armor wasn’t too heavy, and if the designers had any sense, it wouldn’t be. Obviously just running wouldn’t work, I was gonna have to get creative. I slid to a halt and spun to face them before letting loose a short barrage of blaster bolts. I wasn’t really aiming to hit anything this time, just to make them scatter, which, showing they had at least a decent level of self-preservation, they did, either by diving out of the way or taking to the air if they had wings. Having stalled their group charge for a moment, I immediately dashed down a side street or alley as fast as I could. I took the first right I came to, and followed that up by then taking the next left, then diving behind a bunch of trash barrels just as I started to hear the sounds of flapping wings getting very close. I called up the omni-tool interface over my left gauntlet and manually activated the invisibility spell matrix. I felt a small tingling sensation as I completely faded from sight. Sitting tight for a moment, and hoping they wouldn’t have anyone capable of seeing through invisibility, I waited. It wasn’t too long before I saw several equine shapes pass overhead, and shortly after that, once again heard the clip-clop of approaching hooves. Two pony guards appeared at the mouth of the alley. One was one of the white coated, blue crested and tailed pegasi I’d already gotten acquainted with, the other was a dark grey coated with white crest and tail, and had a spiral horn growing out the middle of his forehead. A unicorn. Huh, well that explained who the mages were. Unfortunately, the unicorn was just as armored as the pegasus, maybe even a little more so. I sighed mentally. Magic users who wore armor were always a pain, as they don’t have the squishy wizard factor that can allow one to take them out of the equation easily sometimes. Still, they apparently didn’t have any way of seeing me at the time, because they glanced down the alley for a moment then trotted on. Waiting a few minutes to make sure it was really clear, I quietly extracted myself from amidst the trash cans and made my way to an exit away from the direction the guards had gone. Trusting that the invisibility worked fine against ponies, I looked out onto the street, watching to see what the ordinary pony did when they weren’t running from blood covered armored warriors that appeared from out of nowhere. For the most part they didn’t seem to be too much different than most human or humanoid societies. There seemed to be a slight air of tension in some of them, but that was probably thanks to my rather dramatic entrance. Spotting a small cafe, I focused the auditory receptors to listen in on a few mealtime conversations. While most of it was mundane stuff about shopping or how their day was going and whatnot, one word did strike my attention. Human. Hmm...unless human was a pony word for ‘big scary monster,’ the use of it probably meant there were other humans on this world somewhere. And since I’d already probably blown any chance of a warm welcome here, it would probably be a good idea to find a way out of the city and go find them. In any case it’d be easier to blend in until I’d gotten a sense of how things worked in this dimension if I was among a race that walked on two legs rather than four. Of course, that still left the issue of getting out of the city. With everything on backup power, I probably only had a few minutes of invisibility left. I couldn’t be that hard though. First off, invisible or not, I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to try walking out the front gate with the city guard probably all still looking for me. The obvious solution would be to just scale a wall. Since I could see a cliff face or mountain to the east, I decided to head west until I came to the city’s edge. However the walk through the city’s back alleys gave me time to think, and having time to stew in my own thoughts was never pleasant. I was once again in a new world, starting from scratch. No idea what might be waiting out there besides various forms of intelligent ponies. No resources aside from what I had on me. No refuges to go to in case of danger. No friends to rely on. No family... I reached to my belt and thought photograph. The appropriate pouch immediately popped open, and I reached inside to retrieve an old yellowed polaroid photograph. I couldn’t see it because I was invisible, but I know what was shown in it by heart. A young woman and an older man, an arm draped across each other’s shoulders as they smiled into the camera. The woman was me...the me of several lifetimes ago anyway, the man my father, and the photo itself one of the few remaining tokens of my life before I became a cosmic plaything. You see, I’m what’s been termed a Jumper, because I ‘jump’ through realities...or maybe get dragged through realities is a better term, but I have enough issues without thinking of myself as a ‘dragger’ or whatever. ...Sounds like a racist term for a half-dragon or something. I don’t know what caused it originally...though at this point I’ve given up even trying to find out why...and all attempts I’ve made to try and stop it have all ended...badly. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been doing this. I know it’s been more than 100 years though, because around 100 years ago was when I got my armor, and I’ve kept something like a journal using its built in computers since, but there were a lot of worlds before I ended up on Mandalore... So many I can’t remember them all most of the time, usually a good thing. But it also means I can barely remember home, which isn’t so much. ...Sometimes I can’t even remember my last name. I put the photo back in my belt before I feel the tears come on. I can’t have a breakdown now. Maybe later when I can find someplace safe to hide... I emerged from an alley next to what was probably the city wall. It wasn’t not as big as I thought it might’ve been, but still plenty high, just not too high for me. I took aim at the top, and fired both grapplers from my gauntlets. As they sank into a spot just below the top of the wall, I lost invisibility. Apparently, making any sort of ‘attack’ cancels the spell, and this counted. Still, I didn’t really need it right now. The cables began to retract, quickly pulling me up the wall. I climbed up onto the top and release the grapples, making my way to the other side to find a good spot to climb- ...Wow, that’s a long way down. On the other side of the wall I found basically empty air. Just my luck, the city seemed to be built into the side of the mountain...and two thirds the way up it too. My armor had a feather fall spell I could trigger, but I didn’t think it could handle a fall of this distance. And my jetpack had been out of fuel for a couple worlds now. Yeah, I was going to have to find another way out of the city that didn’t involve falling to my death. Still...something about this tickled my memory again. A mountain city run by colorful talking ponies...I knew I’d heard of this somewhere. I was contemplating all this when I was suddenly hit by pegazilla. I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Like I said, I was pondering the familiarity of all this while also wondering how to find and then fight or sneak my way through the city gates when my threat alert went off. I barely had time to look up before something massive slammed into me, knocking me off the wall and through a window into a warehouse that had been behind me. Remember that feather fall ability I mentioned? Normally Homer’s the one who triggers it for me, and though I could do it manually, I didn’t have a chance to. Inside the warehouse, I landed on some crates filled with wagon wheels of all things. My armor stopped me from ending up with any pointy pieces of wood going through my vitals, but even with beskar plate, the impact from the fall HURT. Then the thing that had hit me came swooping through the window after me to land in a clear space several meters away. Like I said, he was big, way bigger than the pegasus guards I’d encountered earlier. Not counting his helmet crest, he probably stood as tall as I was. He was a lot more heavily armored than the other guards too, with his front half almost completely covered in dull silver plate. His rear was less armored, allowing me to see his dark greyish-blue coat color, contrasting with his oversized wings, which were a few shades darker. The helmet was also slightly different. It was basically a silver version of the other ones the other guards had, topped with a whitish crest like the unicorns, but it was completely enclosed, with a faceplate that looked, well, like the face of a pony. “I dunno what your issue is, human,” he said to me in a deep, rumbling voice as I extracted myself from the ex-crate full of broken wheels, “But you should have kept playing nice down in Ponyville with the rest of your kind.” Ponyville...ok, that solved where to look for other humans. Of course, it would have to wait until I managed to get out of this situation. We began circling each other around the empty space in the middle of the warehouse. The sound of my boots and his...horseshoes echoing loudly in the empty building. I noticed that his shoes were much bigger than the other guards too. And there was something distinctly...not pony about the way he moved too. More like a big cat stalking prey than a horse. “Don’t suppose you’d care to make this easy on both of us and just surrender?” he asked as we reached halfway through our first circle. “Not exactly what I had in mind, no,” I responded. I heard a heavy sigh. “Didn’t think so. You know, I’m supposed to be on leave, but then you had to come up here and start putting guards in the hospital and killing...whatever that thing was.” My anger flared. Terminus had been a friend...I think. He wasn’t a THING. And he’s supposed to be on his vacation!? I should have been going to college, at home, being normal! Not in some warehouse in pony-Minas Tirith fighting this...this...thing! My hand flew to my belt as I thought thunderstone. Grabbing the small rock-like object from the pouch that opened, I let out a roar and charged. He responded in kind, but before we got halfway to each other, I dropped the thunderstone between us. There was boom like a cannon going off, and a blinding flash. We both went deaf for the next minute or so, but while the T visor of my helmet went opaque to protect my eyes from the flash, he didn’t have that luxury. Blinded, he reared up in surprise, his wings flaring out as he tried to take flight. I slammed into his middle before he could take off, pinning him to the floor on his back. I sat on his chest my left arm pinning him down while I pulled the right back for a blow. With a ‘snickt’ sound, the vibroblade on that gauntlet extended, and with a yell I brought it down. He made a desperate lunge and clipped my shoulder with a forehoof, throwing off my lunge. The blade sliced into the stone floor like a knife through butter thanks to its enchantments, but before I could pull it out to try again, he managed to get his rear hooves up and got enough leverage to throw me off. I landed on my back a few feet away, probably adding more bruises the ones I already had from the fall. I looked up to see him dropping towards me with both forehooves. I rolled out of the way and came up standing, his hooves slammed into the floor and shattered it where I’d been laying a second before. He turned to pursue and I blasted him with both gauntlets. A pair of white-hot spots appeared on his breastplate as the shots hit home, but apparently didn’t penetrate. Obviously this town didn’t skimp on quality armor for their guards. Or at least for the elite ones anyway. He fell back and I pressed the attack. I popped out the blade on the left gauntlet, and it crackled as its electrical enchantment flared to life. I slashed at his chest, but he slipped to the side and threw a backhanded swipe at my legs. I jumped over it, twisting into a roundhouse kick that smashed into the side of his faceplate, sending his helmet flying. I landed and spun around, bringing my blasters up again to give him another barrage, when I stopped in surprise. Instead of the muzzle of a pony, I was met with a dark blue, feathered, hawk-like face. And by hawk-like, I meant he had a freaking black beak! Taking advantage of my surprise, he barreled into me, slamming me to the floor. He spat out a glob of blood next to my head and muttered, “Ouch.” Then he proceeded to try and trample me to death with his forehooves. Pinned under him, it was all I could do to twist out of the way as he proceeded to turn the floor to gravel with each missed blow. Finally, in desperation, I unleashed the ultimate female to male counterattack. Translation: I kicked him in the balls. He let out a high pitched squawk and fell to the side. I rolled the other direction, got to my feet, and slashed down at him. He managed to get a leg up to block, but the enchanted blade simply cut the lower part of his shoe off. I was a bit surprised when his limb didn’t immediately start gushing blood like a severed limb usually does, and then I got another as the remaining part of the shoe clanged off the side of my helmet as he threw it at me. I stumbled back, and saw him flexing a set of black talons where his left ‘hoof’ had been, revealing his ‘shoes’ had really been more like some type of gloves or solid gauntlets. I also finally figured out what I was dealing with here. Horse like rear half, but bird like front. Yeah, I’d seen these before, but never an intelligent one. “Hippogriff, right?” I asked, falling back a few steps. He just grunted an affirmative, probably still shaking off my beskar plated crotch kick. We went back to circling each other, though his gait was slightly off without his other hoof-gauntlet. Aside from him pissing me off at the beginning, I was actually starting to enjoy this fight. He was good, but that was also the problem. Sooner or later more guards would probably show up, if they weren’t already on the way. If I wanted to get out of here, I couldn’t afford to play nice anymore. Another thought to my belt and I pulled out a small metal wand shaped like a chinese dragon. “Well, it’s been fun, but Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur.(1)” He blinked in confusion at my words. Not surprising, I doubt anyone here had ever heard Mandalorian before. Then his eyes went wide as I pointed the wand at him. He’d probably figured out what it was because he was already moving by the time I got out the command word. “Vas Flam!” A ball of flame erupted from the mouth of the dragon at the wand’s tip. It exploded at my opponent’s tail as he tried to make a run for it. He was flung through the air, trailing a bit of fire from his tail, landing with a crash amongst some crates on the far side of the warehouse. “Vas Flam!” I shouted again, sending another fireball to burst near his landing site. Just because I respected him as an opponent didn’t mean I was gonna let him come after me. Figuring if anyone had heard the first two blasts, a third wasn’t going to do my stealth any more harm, I used one more burst to blow a hole in one of the large doors. I made a running jump through the now burning door, hit the ground, rolled...and came up facing probably half the city guard. “...Oh...shab(2),” I cursed. I turned and tried to retreat but suddenly found myself enveloped in a golden glow and yanked bodily into the midst of the assembled guards. Two unicorns quickly rushed into position on either side of me. Their horns lit up and I suddenly found myself inside a dome shaped force field. I got to my feet and threw a punch at the field...hurting my hand. ...Yeah that was dumb. My respect for hippogriff guy went up a couple more notches when I saw him come jumping out of the building a few seconds later, looking singed, but whole. “Major Ironshod!” one of the other guards shouted, rushing up to him. I finally had a name to go with the face...beak...whatever. “Are you alright sir?” “Fine, fine,” he said, brushing the other guard off. “Someone go find my helmet.” He looked over to see me confined. “...The prisoner secure?” “Aye sir. Only way we could make that barrier stronger is if Captain Armor himself were here,” the other guard answered confidently. ...Oh, now I just had to wipe that smirk off his face for that. I activated my omni-tool again and quickly scrolled through the armor functions. Already looking at me, Ironshod saw me up to something and shouted. “Hey, restrain them now!” Too late. This time there was no tingle. Instead it was like the world got a little bit quieter. I reached out and touched the barrier again, and this time it popped like a balloon thanks to the personal anti-magic barrier I’d just activated. There were cries of alarm from all around, and then the unicorns near me actually turned and fled. I blinked. Ok, it was impressive, but really? Maybe they didn’t have anything like anti-magic here? ...Hmm, if that was the case I could make a fortune if I could find a mage who’d be willing to help me duplicate the spell matrix. Before I got too far along in those thoughts though, an alarm went off in my helmet, and I glanced up to see an overload warning on my hud. In the two seconds it took me to realize that the manna battery powering the AM field was going to blow, it did. There was a loud pop somewhere in the backplate and suddenly I felt like I’d been tazed by an entire SWAT team. I dropped to the ground, unable to even scream and twitching like a puppet whose strings were stuck on a jackhammer. By the time I could see straight again, there wasn’t that much to see. The overload had shorted out the rest of my armor’s systems, meaning I only had the view out the helmet’s T visor, and without the HUD and sensors, it wasn’t much. Not that it mattered, the shock to my system had caused all my exertions throughout the day, both before and after the jump, to catch up with me. I suddenly felt so tired I probably couldn’t have moved even if my nervous system hadn’t been acting like a set of christmas lights with a missing bulb. I could see hooves starting to surround me again as my vision went blurry, and then black. ...Damn it Homer, you picked a hell of a time for a breakdown. Mando’a translations (1) Today is a good day for someone else to die. (2) extreme curse ParoleStory of my life is pain, so it wasn’t very surprising that pain was the first thing I felt when I woke up. My back felt like one big massive bruise, and it really didn’t help that I was laying on it. With a groan, I rolled over. There was a sudden falling sensation and then I felt cold. My eyes snapped open and I found myself laying on the floor of a small prison cell, tangled in a light blanket. Before I could question why I was laying on the floor of a cell in a blanket, my memory kicked back in. “Oh...right...” I muttered to myself. The reason I felt so cold became obvious a few seconds later as I looked myself over. I’d been stripped of my armor, my weapons my gear...heck, my everything. Aside from the blanket, I was bare ass naked. ...So apparently this was one of those kinds of prisons. I’d ended up in couple places in worlds past that had stripped their prisoners of everything, including clothes. Supposedly, they justified it in the name of maintaining order. After all, no clothes means a lot less places to hide weapons or contraband. Well, without resorting to more...disgusting hiding places anyway. But from my own experiences, it only served as a way to rob their prisoners of that much more dignity, and in the case of some of the more sadistic guards, a way to make indulging their lusts that much easier. ...I wish I could say that this wasn’t first hand experience. Crap...it was happening already, and I’d barely woken up. I hate being locked up, because it gives me nothing to do but think. And when I get to thinking, I start doing a lot of remembering...and unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good in that department. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the edge of the bunk I’d unceremoniously rolled out of. Speaking of remembering, most of the ponies I’d seen out on the streets barely had any sort of clothing on. Even the guards had only been wearing armor. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions and they just didn’t realize that us humans usually don’t go around in the buff? ...Or maybe...humans on this world went nude too? That...would be really awkward assuming I ever managed to get to any human settlements. Well, it might not be THAT bad, depending on what the men looked like... I started laughing at the idea. Planet of the pony people AND the nudist people? Yeah, this would be a strange one even for me. The nice kind of strange for once though. After a couple minutes, I calmed down to quiet chuckling and finally sighed, running my hands through my hair. Then I froze when I realized I haven’t quite been stripped of everything. You see, I have my brown hair done in in dozens of little braids. Looks nice, but wrapped inside a lot of those braids, are tiny little knives that can be used as weapons...or lockpicks. I threw the blanket aside and shot to my feet. I prowled around my cell, looking around carefully. From what I’d seen so far, I didn’t think this world was at a progress level high enough to have video cameras, but it was always wise to look. A quick check showed me correct...though it didn’t rule out magical scrying. Nothing I could do about that though, so either they were watching me or they weren’t. I unwound one of the braids containing a knife, knelt down next to the cell’s door and got to work on the lock. It proved almost ridiculously easy to crack, and my knife wasn’t exactly the ideal tool for the job either. I had barely pushed the door ajar when I did that pesky thinking thing again and had a thought. I was likely in the deepest part of some jail or guardpost, probably a lot deeper inside the city than I’d been when I’d arrived, and I now had next to no equipment. What exactly was breaking out supposed to get me? I could probably take out the first few guards that were undoubtedly waiting for me. But I had nothing to combat the magic users, and even discounting them, there would probably be at least one elite fighter around and without my armor, I would almost certainly come out the worse in a fight this time around. I glared at the door, as if blaming it for the thought that had actually come from me. I hated being locked up...but right now, an escape attempt would be more likely to just get me injured again, and probably wouldn’t do anything to help the trouble I was already in. With a frustrated sigh, I closed the cell again, but slipped the knife into the door latch, so that it would stick in a closed position, but I could easily just push it open again if I happened to come up with an escape plan that might actually work. See? I can make smart decisions too. Homer would be so proud. I miss him, at least he’d be someone to talk to. As if the gods of irony decided to rub it in(and they exist, I know), I heard the sound of a door opening, and after leaning through the bars to see who it was, who should I see but birdboy himself. Ironshod was back in his full armor, apparently having found his helmet and gotten a replacement for the shoe(glove, both?) I’d destroyed. His footsteps rang loudly against the stone floor as he marched over to come to a halt in front of me. His eyes glanced me over as we stared at each other in silence for a moment. With his mask, I couldn’t read his expression, as I could only see his eyes and ears. For all I knew he could be doing anything from admiring my extensive collection of scars or checking me out. What? Humanoid or not, he was still a guy, and a girl likes to be found attractive. Besides, I’d seen way weirder possible pairings, trust me. Once again he was the first one to say something. “I see you’re awake.” I stepped back from the bars and shrugged. “So you’re still alive.” With his dark coloring, it was hard to tell if he was even still singed or not, and it made me wonder how long I’d been out if he’d had time to get himself patched up. “Not for lack of trying on your part,” he said, almost snappishly. Ooo, had I hurt his guy pride? “Since you were unconscious when it happened, it is my duty to inform you that you have been placed under arrest in the name of her majesties Celestia and Luna of Equestria.” Those names...they rang a MAJOR bell with me. Damn, why couldn’t I think of what it was? Before I could figure it out, he continued. He produced a small scroll and opened it, “You are charged with assault against officers of the guard, resisting arrest, suspicion of murder, attempted murder, arson, destruction of property, use of a Class S illegal magical effect...and littering.” Littering!? All that and they stick me with a littering charge too? At least he’d had the decency to sound embarrassed about that last one. ...And ok, I guess leaving a big chunk of shuttle in the middle of a street somewhere could technically count, but... Wait, back up. “Class S illegal magic effect? Look, I get you’re pissy about nearly getting roasted via fireball, but, really-” I started to protest, but he interrupted. “I’m talking about the anti-magic field you activated in the middle of Canterlot!” he yelled. “You’re bucking lucky that its effect was limited to your person or you could have killed everyone in the vicinity or worse!” That shut me up right quick and practically knocked me back on my heels. This was about the anti-magic field? I’d never thought of that sort of thing as exactly dangerous. Ok, sure, drop one on someone using magical flight a hundred feet up, or zap a wizard with one and stick them with pointy things, and I guess it would count as dangerous, but I’d never considered that it could be directly lethal to anything not a magical construct. But I’d apparently gone and set off this world’s equivalent of a nuke in the middle of a city. Oh joy, and here I’d thought I was already in a bad spot. Guess I was one execution away from finally finding out just how much worse my personal hell could get... “However,” he went on. Damn you irony gods. “Due to the fact that you are not an Equestrian citizen, and due to your...special circumstances...your trial has been forgone, and your punishment will be placed in the authority of a representative of her majesty, Princess Luna.” Well that sounded...ok, actually I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to sound like. However, I could guess that it probably meant a stay of execution, or they wouldn’t be turning me over to some government representative. “Does this involve me getting out of this cell?” He grunted. “This one, yes. Whether or not you end up in another one will be up to the representative. Whatever he has in mind, I’ll be tagging along to keep an eye on you.” I tilted my head to the side curiously. “I thought you said you were on leave?” I didn’t need to see his face to feel the glare he gave me, especially since his ears also splayed back angrily. “I was but then someone decided to start enough trouble to make them call everyone on hand back to duty.” His expression, what I could see of it, softened a bit then. “Still, I suppose I should thank you, since I hear we’re going to be headed to Ponyville. Little place like that should be good for peace and quiet, and if not, I hear they throw great parties.” Memory was tingling again, but I pushed it aside for the moment. I had other priorities first. “Fine, we get a trip to party central. What about my gear?” “Your equipment has been confiscated and will be turned over to a specialist for study and possible disposal.” “That’s bullshit!” I spat, leaning forward against the bars to get as close to in his face as I could. “That’s my beskar’gam and if you think I’m gonna let you take it, you’ve got mir'osik!” I snarled. They couldn’t take my armor from me! It was practically a part of me...and I couldn’t lose Homer...not after everything we’d been through. He stared at me for a moment before responding. “Right...I don’t know what that means, but I can guess something nasty. And maybe I wasn’t clear, but you committed a war crime! That kind of weapon hasn't been used in millennia. Discord, Nightmare Moon, changelings, diamond dogs, Sombra, none of those monsters even considered using one. You fired one off in a major population center! We had to look the law up just to charge you correctly! You should thank the Princesses that you’re getting off lightly.” I slammed my hands against the bars angrily before turning away to pace in frustration. I glanced at the cell door. Ironshod was standing close enough to it that if I slammed it open fast enough, I could pin him against the bars with it, then use the knife to take him out. But he was fast, fully armored, and strong enough to shatter stone. I’d have to be precise to stab him in a vulnerable spot, and I’d only get one shot. After that he’d probably trample me to a bloody pulp... As I was still working out a plan of attack, I heard the door to the cellblock open again. As we both turned to see the new arrivals, I heard Ironshod mutter, “It’s about time,” under his breath. A pegasus guard entered first, then stepped to the side and stood at attention next to the door. The next person to enter took me enough by surprise that I barely took note of the other pony that accompanied him. He was human. Tall, at least six feet, reasonably built, and looked to be maybe somewhere in his...fifties, maybe. And he was also dressed in casual, but stylish, clothes. So much for the nudist theory. “Down here, Mr. Roberts,” Ironshod called, waving them over. They walked over to join us, and the human held out a hand in greeting. “Hello there Major...?” Ironshod looked at him blankly for a moment before slipping off a shoe and shaking his hand with a talon. I noticed he grasped him by the wrist instead of by the hand. “Ironshod. Equestrian guard.” They released each other, and he gestured at me. “This is your prisoner. Didn’t get a name yet though.” “Didn’t give one,” I muttered. The other human, Roberts, raised an eyebrow at Ironshod’s talons but didn’t comment. Instead he shrugged. “Introductions all around then. I’m Alex Roberts,” he said, turning towards me, “And this...is... oh dear...” If I hadn’t been so pissed off at the moment, I probably would have laughed. He’d obviously only just noticed I didn’t have anything on, because he suddenly went bright red and averted his eyes. Still, this was too good a teasing opportunity to completely pass up. Crossing my arms under my chest, I looked at him and gave a raised eyebrow worthy of Mr. Spock. “Something wrong?” The pony accompanying him did burst out laughing. “Ha! Told you that they wouldn’t have remembered about the clothing thing!’ she said elbowing him playfully. “You owe me five bits!” I gave her a smirk that almost immediately faded as I got a good look at her for the first time. She was a light blue pegasus with rose colored eyes, wearing what appeared to be a set of brown saddlebags...and sporting a rainbow striped mane and tail... The rusty gears in my head finally started turning, bringing up a snippet of a song I’d once had stuck in my head for half a week after I’d first heard it. Been dreaming, I’ve been waiting, to fly with those great ponies... All at once everything clicked into place. Colorful ponies, the armor design, Celestia, Luna, Ponyville, Canterlot...Equestria. I was in Equestria, from the My Little Pony cartoon. The really good one, I mean. Now, I’d been to ‘fictional’ universes I’d been familiar with before, but it’d never really hit me as hard as this because I’d never met a ‘main character’ before. Back when I was on Mandalore in Star Wars, I hadn’t hung out with Boba Fett, or prowled the galaxy in Slave 1 or anything. I’d never met Luke Skywalker or Han Solo or anyone like that. It’d just been another new reality to me. So meeting someone like freaking Rainbow Dash was pretty much a first for me. Alex was managing to recover his composure by the time I’d processed this. “...Well, we did plan for that just in case,” he muttered, still not looking at me directly. “Anyway, this is my fianc-” “Rainbow Dash,” I interrupted, still staring at the pony in question. “You’re Rainbow Dash.” Her humorous grin turned into a smug one. “You’ve heard of me already, eh?” she asked...then the smile dropped and she repeated in a deadpan tone, “You’ve heard of me already...” She brought a forehoof up to her nose, gave a frustrated groan and then looked up at Alex. “Has everyone on your world seen that stupid show?” Alex shrugged at her sheepishly. “It was pretty popular.” Ironshod cocked his head to the side curiously. “Show?” “Long story,” they both told him. “Oh shab...” they all turned to look at me as I suddenly went wide eyed and slowly backed away. My brief moment of fangirlism had been violently slapped aside as my danger sense went through the roof. I touched the back wall and pressed myself up against it, cursing internally as I realized I’d just put myself on the opposite side of the room from the weapon I could get my hands on the quickest. He knew about the show. Dash had said your world. Even my trauma addled sense of logic could put the pieces together from that. “You’re a jumper...” This was...beyond not good. I flashed through half a dozen plans of attack, but I had no idea what I might be up against aside from him being human. I read somewhere once that even the greatest warriors in history had only a single lifetime to master their crafts. Well, I’d had at least two, and there was no telling how many he might have had. I could be able to take him without a sweat...or be hilariously outmatched. Most importantly, I didn’t have any reason to believe that his intentions towards me would be sunshine and rainbows. ...Despite who he might be hanging out with. Speaking of which, I really doubted I could take all three of them at once. “Yes...I am.” Alex confirmed. He stepped up to the bars, all trace of the earlier awkwardness gone and his eyes locked with mine. “So, I have some idea what you’ve been through. It’s also because of that fact that the Princesses have decided to give you a second chance here. We’ll chalk everything before to...a bad first impression.” Ironshod snorted. I couldn’t help but agree. “Pull the other one.” He shook his head. “Believe what you want, but I’m serious.” He turned and opened one of Dash’s saddlebags and pulled out a set of folded clothes. He set them on the floor and pushed them through the bars towards me, then retrieved a pair of sandals and set them on top of the bundle. “...Before we talk more, you should get dressed first.” He glanced at Dash, and she smirked in response. “Some of us guessed you might be in need of those.” I was tempted to refuse just because my nakedness seemed to put him off balance. But...well, it was pretty cold in this cell, and if I was about to go travelling, I didn’t exactly want to stay in the buff, even if none of the ponies would probably notice. I cautiously crept forward, not taking my eyes off Alex, until I could reach the clothes and pull them the rest of the way to me. Setting aside the sandals for a moment, I unfolded the clothes to reveal a set of simple coveralls in a deep red color. "Alright everyone, let's give her a little privacy." He stepped down the corridor, back to me. Rainbow Dash turned without hesitation, and even Ironshod turned after a moment, without a grumble. “So much for the free show, huh?” I teased to his rump. His ears flicked back at me. “...Huh?” I sighed. It wasn’t any fun if he didn’t get it. “So what’s the catch?” I asked as I slipped the coveralls on, they were a bit big, but they’d work for the time being. From what Ironshod had said, I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to hear it from Alex. “Well, obviously you’re not getting off quite scot free. You’ll be doing community service in Ponyville.” “Community Service, huh?” Admittedly that didn’t sound so bad. I tried the sandals on. They were actually closer to my size, being only a single size or two too big. I walked over to lean against the bars next to the cell door. “What kind of community service?” “Mostly repair work around the town, helping with events and maybe the harvest if you’re there long enough.” He paused for a moment. “Uh...I just realized I don’t know your name...” I smirked. “Because you forgot to ask for it.” There was a moment of silence as he obviously thought I was going to go on. “Well?” Alex just looked at me for a moment, then finally gave an amused grunt and a little half smile. He inclined his head slightly and asked in the most formal of tones, "My dear lady, may I please be given the privilege of knowing your name?" “Lydia,” I responded with an amused chuckle. “Lydia...” I had to fight to keep a look of panic off my face as I struggled to remember. ...Damnit why now? Started with a P... “...Pellinore! Lydia Pellinore.” “A pleasure to meet you, Lydia Pellinore.” He held out a hand. I just looked at it for an uncomfortably long moment. “You’re not gonna have me living in a barn or something, are you?” I asked when he finally withdrew it. Dash snickered again. “Actually Applejack said there was space at Sweet Apple Acres, but then Bea volunteered a couple rooms at her place.” I glanced at Alex. “Bea?” “A friend of ours,” he said cryptically. He was obviously holding something back. I didn’t like it, at all. But I wasn’t exactly in any position to extract information if he wasn’t willing to give it. Still...assuming this was on the level, it wouldn’t exactly be the worst way I’d spent time in a world. Even if it wasn’t, from what I remembered of the show, Ponyville was a small farming village, bordered by an enchanted forest. That meant it would be easy to escape from once I got past Ironshod and whoever else they were shacking me up with. As for my armor and equipment, I doubted Alex would be any more accommodating on the subject than Ironshod had been, so I’d have to see if I could talk them into giving it back later, find a way to steal it back...or hope Homer could find his way back. “All right, fine. When do we leave?” “There’s something else you need to know,” Alex said, getting serious again. “There’s something about the magic in Equestria that’s dangerous to humans. Potentially lethally dangerous.” What. “I’ve been around plenty of magic in the past. Unless it was being used to try and flash-fry me, it’s never been any sort of problem.” “It has something to do with the kind of magic Equestria has, it's different from magic anywhere else. It makes this place a... dead end for jumpers. I think it best if my scientist friend explain it. I think you know her, Twilight Sparkle?" I nodded and he continued. “Without proper precautions, your aging speeds up dramatically by about six hundred percent. There is a way to stop it entirely, but we didn’t have time to make the needed charm for you with the short notice we’d gotten, so you’ll need to stay close to at least one or more ponies as often as you can until then.” I laughed. “Gedet’ye...you actually expect me to believe that piece of poodoo? That’s gotta be the absolute WORST ‘don’t try to escape or you’ll be killed’ speech I’ve ever heard! And I’ve heard plenty.” “Hey!” Dash hovered up to get nose to nose with me. “It’s not a joke! And he wasn’t threatening you, he’s trying to tell you the truth, but if you wanna be too stupid to listen...” Alex put a hand on her back and gently pushed her down. “Easy Dash. It’s ok,” he chuckled sadly, “it’d probably have sounded bogus to me too,” he told her, hugging her gently in an attempt to calm her. He looked back up at me. “She’s right though. It may not be something you’d have to worry about for a while, but better you trust us and start dealing with it now, rather than to wait to do something until it’s too late.” ...I didn’t believe him, but, if this was something that would take years to show up, I couldn’t call him out on it for a while either. Besides, I’d apparently be working around ponies for the duration anyway, so it wasn’t like this would be an issue right now. In any case, given the length of an average stay, I probably wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter before my next jump. “...Fine. Are we ready to go now?” Alex looked back at Ironshod. “Major, was there anything you needed before we head to the train station?” “Just need to stop by my quarters and grab my bag. Other than that I’m good,” he responded. “Let’s get a move on then, it’s getting boring here,” I said, moving to the cell door and pushing it open, quickly catching and palming my knife as I did so. Alex and Dash took a step back in surprise before he moved in front of her protectively while Ironshod jumped forward, his wings flaring aggressively. I just looked at them all with a smirk. “What? Your locks are osik, and I wasn’t gonna wait around for someone to get the key. Now don’t we have a train to catch?” Interlude 1System online... Initiating cognitive processes... Estimated time since last online period: 42:37:05... Oh dear... Checking wearer status... ERROR: Wearer status unavailable... What had Lydia gotten herself into while I had been indisposed? Initiating sensor feed playback... I idled a few moments while I reviewed the recording logs. Apparently, Lydia’s latest jump had occurred while I had been offline and she’d unfortunately gone and initiated an act of violence that had resulted in her capture. I took note at what was apparently the dominant species of this world, or at least this area. Quadrupedal form, average height around 4.5 feet, roughly reminiscent of an earth equine species. Also at least two other distinct subspecies too, once capable of flight, the other magic. The hippogriff was an anomaly, but also indicated the presence of other types of sentient creatures in this reality beyond the ‘pony’ types. Also of concern was the apparent malfunction of one of the magitek systems of the armor. Use of the anti-magic field function had somehow resulted in an overload that had damaged the internal mana battery and caused a feedback surge that resulted in a case of temporary paralysis in Lydia that accelerated her capture. The repair matrix was already at work on it, and I estimated that full armor functionality would be restored by the end of a standard week. I would still need to determine the cause of the overload to be able to take preventative measures so it wouldn’t happen again. That would have to wait, as protocol dictated that my priority be in locating and possibly retrieving Lydia. I activated the helmet’s external sensors and found myself, well, in a box. Of course, it took a second to determine this, as I had to activate the night-vision function before I could register anything. Obviously Lydia had been stripped of her armor and all equipment, even down to the body glove underneath I noticed, and it had all been put into storage somewhere. I activated the speakers and had them emit an basic ultrasonic pulse which I measured using the auditory sensors. This allowed me to determine that the box was resting among others in a large room or vault. However my makeshift sonar didn’t allow me to determine anything beyond the confines of the room, so I had no further information on the possible layout of the rest of the building or complex. Before I could finish calculating possible courses of action, the auditory sensors picked up the sounds of a door being opened. I quickly shut down all displays that might show any signs of myself or other systems being active. The sound of multiple foot- correction, hoofsteps approaching, accompanied by voices, unfortunately muffled due to distance and the walls of the box. I turned up the gain to overcome this. “-ix, seven, eight...” a male voice was counting as they approached. “Ah, here it is...” The interior of the box was suddenly diffused by a blue glow that seemed to be coming from an external source. There was a lurch as the box moved, but only a few inches, followed by a grunt from in the same voice as before. “Something wrong Lieutenant?” asked a second voice, possibly female. “Er...no, it’s just...urgh...a tad heavy...” the male voice said as the box moved again, more steadily this time until it was completely pulled off the shelf and dropped loudly to the floor below. The blue glow disappeared at the same time. Had I been installed in less resilient equipment, I might have been insulted by the careless handling. “Sorry,” the male said. I realized he was talking to the female, but I considered it apology accepted. The blue glow returned, this time only around the box’s lid, which was lifted off to hover in the air. I adjusted the optics to finally behold the sources of the voices. As expected, they were of the pony species, in this case both members of the unicorn subspecies, and judging from comparisons to images from the logs, one male and one female. The male was dressed in the silver version of the armor design that was attributed to the law enforcement, and sported a dark grey coat with a silver tail that matched the crest of his helmet. I also took note that his horn was currently enveloped in a blue glow matching what I could only assume to be the telekinetic effect holding the lid of the box. The female was mostly unadorned, aside from what appeared to be saddlebags. Purple seemed to be the primary theme in her coloration, as she had a violet coat, purple eyes, and a dark purple mane and tail with a two-tone pink stripe running through both. Also on her flanks was what appeared to be some sort of design or brand of a magenta six pointed star with five smaller white stars either tattooed or somehow dyed into the fur there. I’d noticed similar markings on other ponies in the records. Without further data, my best assumption was that they were possibly some sort of personal identifier or family markings. “Hmm...” The female’s horn lit up in a magenta glow. Her saddlebags opened allowing a scroll and quill to drift out of it. Obviously under her control, the scroll unrolled and the quill immediately moved to start writing on it. The glow extended to the helmet, lifting it up to her eye level before she started turning it this way and that in examination. “Interesting...parts of the design aesthetics seem similar to Matt’s armor, but the technology is obviously very different. I’m also detecting a high level of enchantment on most of the armor and other equipment.” I took note of this. Matt, presumably short for Matthew, was a common human name. Also the armor she was referring to was intriguing as well. ...Could there be another jumper present in this reality? She raised a hoof and used it to touch something on the helmet that was inside the optics’ viewpoint. “What’s this material all over everything?” “We believe it’s...blood, Ms. Sparkle. From the remains of the creature found at the arrival point,” the male answered. The helmet was suddenly dropped back into the box. “Oh...uh well...” she stammered, then cleared her throat and changed subjects. “...Has the source of the anti magic effect been determined yet?” she asked. The male shook his head. “Afraid not, Ms. Sparkle. No one’s dealt with anything like this in living memory...aside from maybe the Princesses. You’re the closest pony there is to an expert when it comes to artifacts like these, so it was decided to simply leave all examination and study to you, rather than risk triggering it or any other dangerous effects inadvertently.” “Gee, thanks...” she responded in a neutral tone, as if she was unsure whether it was a compliment or not. I reflected on this. Apparently there was some degree of concern over anti magic effects in this world. That could possibly increase my options...were it and the majority of the rest of the active magical defenses not offline for the time being. Her scroll rolled back up and returned itself to her saddlebag. “Do you have the transfer form?” “Ah, yes...” a form was produced from within his armor. “Here you are Ms. Sparkle,” he said, as the aura surrounding the form switched from blue to magenta. “Just Twilight, please,” she told him as she looked it over, finally signing it. She passed it back to him, as her quill also returned to her bag. “O-of course Ms....Twilight.” He tucked the form away before picking up the lid and sealing the box. “I guess I can take it from here Lieutenant...” The box lit up in her magenta glow. I’d barely detected movement before it was dropped back to the floor. Again. “Oh dear...it is a bit heavy, isn’t it?” “Uh...I could help if you want? Get it out to the chariot at least...” “No no...” I heard Twilight respond before she applied her telekinesis again, this time it remained steady. “I’ve got it,” she added, with only a small strain in her voice. I set the sensors to passive recording and closed myself down, setting an activation routine to bring me out of hibernation should the box be opened again, or remain immobile for more than fifteen standard minutes. There was no point in staying active while we were merely in transit. Once we arrived at whatever our eventual destination might be, I would be better able to determine a plan of action. … The activation routine triggered little over an hour later when a pair of small, purple scaled hands pushed the lid off the top of the box. This was followed by the head of, judging from similarities to creatures on other realities that had been encountered, what I surmised to be a small, or at least young, dragon. “So this is that new human’s stuff?” he said to someone outside of the optics’ view. “Yes Spike,” I heard Twilight answer. “And you need to be very careful around it. It’s potentially very dangerous.” He made a shrugging motion as he looked up at where I could only presume she was standing. “Well, duh. Alex is always saying everything about humans is dangerous.” A second human name...intriguing. “I don’t mean in a general way. According to the guard report, something in this is capable of creating an anti-magic field effect.” The dragon, Spike apparently, looked confused. “Anti-magic?” Twilight appeared in my view on the other side of the box from him. “It means it creates a space that cancels out all magic, even that needed for life.” “So it’s like a death ray or something?” he asked, taking a nervous step back. Twilight shook her head. “It’s a field effect, not a ray. But yes, it is potentially very lethal. In ponies and other creatures that have them, an anti-magic effect causes the Star Swirl glands to burst, leading to a slow, painful death. It’s actually considered a war crime to use one...well, anywhere.” That certainly explained the fear regarding anti-magic effects I’d detected earlier. I had no data on what Star Swirl glands might be, but from the brief description, I could surmise that they had something to do with magic in creatures of this reality. This left a bit of a conundrum, as while use of this effect was apparently illegal here, and thus could lead to more trouble for Lydia, it was also the most viable defense against the high number of potential magic users on this world...assuming a repeat the recent malfunction could be prevented or worked around. “Whoa...and she used one in Canterlot?” Spike asked incredulously. “...Was anyone hurt?” Twilight shook her head. “Not by this, thank Celestia. The size of its effect is apparently limited, but it may have been a very close thing. According to the report, something may have malfunctioned in her armor that disabled it, and her.” “So why bring this stuff here? I mean, aren’t Alex and Dash bringing that new human here to Ponyville too?” If I’d had the appropriate features to do so, I would have perked up at this. “Won’t she want it back or something?” “Probably, but as of right now, you and I are the only ones in Ponyville who know this is here. And...apparently I’m the only ‘expert’ on extra-Equestrian technology, and no one else wanted to risk setting something off with it still in Canterlot.” She sighed and trotted out of view again. “Still, with Alex or Matt’s help, I’m sure I can identify the source of the effect and hopefully find a way to disable it. Probably Matt, since the armor is at least visually similar to his, plus he has more experience with technology like this.” ...I could not allow the armor’s defenses to be compromised further. However my defensive options were severely limited at the moment. With the armor disassembled I would be unable to bring weapons to bear, and any attempt to correct this would undoubtedly expose my existence. “However, we’ll save the potential doomsday weapon for later.” Ah, a reprieve. “A few of the other items not part of the armor show varying levels of magical enchantment, and I should be able to catalogue those on my own.” I detected the sound of a quill on parchment for a few moments before Twilight spoke up again. “We’ll start with the belt. Spike, can you bring it here?” “Sure thing, Twilight!” He leaned over the edge of the box, nearly to the point of falling in, and grasped Lydia’s belt in a claw. After an aborted attempt to pull it free, he added his other claw to the effort and succeeded in pulling it loose. “Geez, what’s in this thing, a bunch of lead?” I heard him mutter as he began dragging it across the room. Lydia’s belt would be enough to keep Twilight occupied for some time. The cause of its unusual weight was because each of the sixty-four pockets on it were small extradimensional spaces capable of holding up to ten pounds of mass at a maximum volume of one cubic foot. While not at maximum capacity, Lydia had collected enough items to come within a decent margin of reaching it. Also, when not worn, it retained some of its total weight. While ordinarily loathe to allow the possible loss of the treasure trove of useful and personal items it contained, it bought me time. I immediately set to work on gathering data to help calculate possible courses of action, starting by emitting another makeshift sonar pulse. “Huh, what was that Twilight?” “I asked you to get the belt.” “No, just now.” “I didn’t say anything just now!” “Oh...never mind then.” I made a note that apparently dragonic hearing extended at least a little into the ultrasonic range as I reviewed my findings. From the audio records taken during transit, I could determine that I had been taken from the city, presumably Canterlot, to a location within one hour’s time of flight. The sounds of wings and rushing wind clearly indicated the use of some kind of pegasus assisted transportation. Other sounds told of the box being carried inside and then being taken down at least two flights of stairs. The sonar return gave me the basic layout of the room, which was a large open area cluttered by various objects. I couldn’t be more specific given the limitations of the sonar. I was beginning to resign myself to being forced to wait until Twilight and her dragon companion had retired to a sleep cycle, when I detected the other computer. I hadn’t noticed it immediately because I hadn’t exactly been looking for other sources of high technology, and only found it at all because I had decided to explore all options available to me and sent out a general network connection query. The return signal was basic, and didn’t indicate any presence of another AI. Still, my initial attempt to make a connection was met with a security encryption that was amazingly sophisticated. However, with nothing better to do, I was confident I could crack it in time, and, if I was careful, could do so without alerting anyone to my presence. If nothing else, it was a course of action that was currently viable... A self contained storm of righteous anger swept through the halls of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Students fled before it. Lower ranked teachers and staff suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere, and even the tenured professors didn’t dare meet its eyes for fear of attracting her ire. Magus Aurora Arcane was on the warpath. Everypony breathed a sigh of relief, if only a mental one, when she suddenly veered left and stormed into an office, whose name on the polished brass sign read: Thaumic Charm Deputy Headmaster The rank of Deputy Headmaster was a bit of a misnomer in the school, since Thaumic Charm actually oversaw all the day to day functions of the school. The title of actual Headmaster, or in this case Headmistress, was just traditionally always held by Celestia herself. Today the supposed Deputy Headmaster was buried up to his light blue snout in paperwork when the door to his office was nearly blown off it’s hinges by the force used to slam it open, the sudden gust of air that blew into the room causing papers and loose scrolls to scatter everywhere. Startled, his head shot up so fast his reading glasses jumped off his face and landed in the midst of his light grey mane, just behind his horn. “Aury, good gracious, what in Discord’s name-” he began to protest, recognizing the light pink mare in the blue cloak instantly, after all, he’d been friends with the Baroness and Senior Court Mage since they were foals. However before he could get any more out, she glared at him with her fierce blue eyes and ignited her horn. There was a brief zipping sensation, and he suddenly found his lips, well, zipped. Magus Arcane let down the hood of her cloak, letting her two-tone magenta mane flow free as she kicked the door closed and began trotting around the room, her horn still aglow. Thaumic recognized a number of powerful anti-scrying charms being put up before she finally came to a stop on the other side of his desk. A rolled up newspaper was produced from the folds of her cloak before being tossed onto the center of his desk. “Read it,” she demanded. He retrieved his glasses and set them straight upon his nose again, but instead gave her a weary look and glanced down at his mouth. “Mmf mm mml?” Aurora sighed in exasperation. “Oh very well...” One blue flash later and his lips unzipped. Thaumic worked his jaw a couple times before finally scooping up the newspaper in his own telekinesis and unrolling it so he could read the headline. THIRD HUMAN RAMPAGES THROUGH CANTERLOT! “Starswirl’s brass bells, another one!?” he gasped. “Another one,” she confirmed. “Go ahead, read the full article,” she told him as she took a seat in a nearby chair. Thaumic took a couple minutes to do just that. “...Is this accurate?” Aurora scoffed. “To a degree, but Celestia’s managed to keep the worst of it under wraps. Of course, I received a copy of the original guard report myself. Two guards were hospitalized, one severely, an entire warehouse nearly burned down, and oh, here’s the worst bit: the damned monkey set off an anti-magic effect!” Thaumic gasped, dropping the paper. “No...!” “Yes!” She hopped up and moved forward to slam a hoof down into the middle of the paper. “This is proof of what I’ve been saying about these creatures all along! By their own admission, they’re the most dangerous creatures on their own world, and now we’ve gotten a demonstration of this fact, right in the heart of Canterlot no less! Beyond this though, I believe this is evidence that their presence here isn’t as random as we’ve been led to believe!” Thaumic pit a hoof to his nose as he sat back in his chair. “Aury...not this again. You know I share most of your feelings about the human matter but-” “Pull your horn out of Celestia’s backside for a few minutes and look at the facts, Thaum!” she thundered. “The first human, this...” she twirled a hoof in recollection, “...Alex Roberts. He appears with a story about how he’s been forcibly travelling through the multiverse, apparently with only a shape changing blade of some kind for protection, yet he carries enough precious materials to allow him to set himself up rather nicely, as well as ingratiate himself to the populous, and finally to make nice with the Princesses. But most importantly, he carries a piece of technology that allows him contact with his homeworld. “Then...a second human appears. This one is packing weapons and armor that, from the reports I’ve read, would make even the best armorers in the guard weep in envy. He tells a story similar to the first, and though the reports say there was some mistrust between the two, at least at first, there’s nothing to actually disprove that that could have all just been an act. “Now we have a third human...” she went on, tapping the newspaper with a hoof. “This one bears armor and weapons similar to the second, but also uses magical weapons as well, and finally makes use of one of the most savage forms of weaponry in Equestrian history! A weapon that their species is apparently immune to, as they were confirmed to be still alive even after being in the middle of the effect! By Platinum, the report even says they were only subdued because of some sort of fluke in their equipment!” She put both forehooves on top of Thaumic’s desk and leaned forward to stare him in the eyes. “Now, put aside their stories and the...biases of the Princesses, and tell me what that sounds like to you?” Thaumic hesitated, but put like that, it was really hard not to see it. “...Like they were scouting us out, testing to see if their technology would be a match for us.” he admitted. “Exactly!” she said, punctuating it with a rap of her hoof. “Like the prelude to an invasion!” She backed down and began pacing in front of the desk. “Oh, yes yes I know, ‘You’re jumping to conclusions Aury!’ But you just admitted it’s a conclusion that does fit the facts. Still, even if I’m wrong, something else is going on here. Once is an anomaly, twice, coincidence. Three times? Conspiracy. Maybe if their arrivals were spaced apart by centuries, or even decades, I’d be inclined to believe them. But all within three years? No, there is nothing random about their arrival here, and whatever their intentions, they most certainly aren’t going to be for the good of Equestria in the long run.” Thaumic leaned forward, steepling his hooves in front of him. “All right then...did you come here just to vent, or do you have some plan of action? Surely with this one’s crimes you could get a chance to interrogate them yourself...” Aurora let out a derisive laugh. “Ha! I already tried that, but by the time I’d found out about this, her, and yes, this one is apparently female, sentence had already been decided. Instead of banishment, execution, or something sensible, she was given community service in Ponyville, due to ‘mitigating circumstances.’ Oh, and hear this, the sentence will be carried out under the supervision of one Alex Roberts. The first human himself. ...The only thing sensible about this is that it puts all three of them in the same place.” Thaumic sighed and spread his hooves helplessly. “Well that’s it then. I’m sure-” He was cut off as Aurora gave him a glare that would have made his younger students, and some of the older ones, soil themselves. “It is most certainly not ‘it!’ I am sick and tired of watching Celestia continually let her emotions come before the well being of this land! First Luna, who with her crimes should not have been allowed anywhere near court, let alone back on the throne, then her continual placing of critical tasks in Twilight Sparkle’s hooves, then the Changeling invasion, and now these humans!” “Actually...” Thaumic said in a small voice. She was really frightening when she got like this. “...I thought it was Princess Luna who had taken charge of-” “Only because Celestia continues to let her misplaced guilt over Nightmare Moon make her unable to say no to her sister’s whims!” she interrupted again. She was suddenly up on his desk, staring him in the eyes again, causing him to shrink back into his chair. “Thaum! ...A few minutes ago you told me you agreed with me about these humans...do you still hold to that?” Thaumic gulped visibly, but drew himself up with dignity. “...Yes. Maybe not for all the same reasons as you, but just as I believe that there’s a reason we don’t allow dragons to nest within our borders, other than the Everfree forest and similar areas, and that there’s a reason you can find barely a single griffin anywhere in the population. Equestria is for ponies and other truly civilized beings. ...And it is hard to discount your theories that the humans may be up to no good. Especially after today,” he told her, motioning to the newspaper beneath her. “Good.” She got back down and walked over to take a seat again. “Because if the Princess refuses to act for the good of Equestria, it may be up to us.” Thaumic squirmed uncomfortably, but asked, “What are you planning to do?” “I don’t know yet,” the mare admitted. “At the moment we’re only two unicorns. If we take any actions without the Princess’ approval, I need to know who we can count on for support. We need to find others who share our beliefs on this matter. I’ll need you to approach who you think could help us, and, more importantly, who would be willing to help us. And you must do this very cautiously. There’s a reason I made sure to scry-proof this room before we talked.” She stood up and returned the newspaper to the inside of her cloak. “I’ll be doing much the same. I’ll even see about talking to Longspear about drumming up some support from within the guard too. I’d ask Spiritus, but he’d probably just turn me in to his half-breed commander out of spite, if nothing else.” It was a widely known secret that Aurora and her first born did not get along. In fact, it would be closer to say that they hated each other. Thaumic nodded. “Very well, when would you like to meet again? I’d rather have it planned so you don’t make a mess of my paperwork again,” he said, gesturing to his now hopelessly disorganized desk. She produced a pocket calendar and flipped through it for a few moments. “Let’s see,” she stopped and turned the calendar so he could see it. “Will this do?” He glanced over his glasses at the page. “Yes that should be a free day for me.” “Very well then.” She tucked the calendar away. “...One more thing. When you’re looking for allies, see if you can find any in Ponyville itself. Surely there’s someone in that mud lover run town we can use to monitor them, if nothing else?” “Well, of course, there’s Twilight Sp...” he trailed off at Aurora’s withering look. “...Right, of course. Actually...now that I think about it, there may be a former student of mine also living in Ponyville. We’d probably have to hide our true intentions, but she might be useful.” “If so, then by all means.” She drew the hood of her cloak back up. “Well, this has been a...productive chat, Thaum,” she told him as she disabled her anti-scrying charms. “A pleasant day to you.” “Of course, Aury,” he said as she turned to go. “And to you.” He sat back and sighed to himself as she left, wondering what she’d pulled him into this time.
JumpThey say we come into the world screaming... Terminus grabs me by the shoulder as I go for the emergency release. I turn and backhand him. Hitting a turian is like hitting a stop sign, but it knocks him away long enough for me to get at the handle. Wadkit yells at us from the cockpit as the hatch springs open. There’s no time to respond even if I was inclined to. I grab hold of the edge of the hatch and go to throw myself out of the shuttle, but Terminus, damn him, grabs me again. A quick stomp to his foot puts him in just enough pain for me to get loose. This time I blast him in the face with a stun bolt. That familiar feeling of time slowing falls over me. The blast washes over him, but he falls forwards instead of away, towards me. I try to back up, to finish throwing myself out of the shuttle, but it’s too little too late, and Terminus is too close, yet too far away at the same time. I’m screaming just as my vision goes blurry, and it keeps going even as I white out entirely. I’ve found that to be pretty accurate most of the time, no matter which world I enter. My name is Lydia, and this is my journey through hell. I came to with a slight headache. It’s nothing new, as I’ve gotten used to the wonderful sensations of a jump, but this one seemed rougher than normal. I’d obviously passed out this time, since I could tell I was on my back. I pried open my eyes, and found myself staring up at the roof of the shuttle...well, the part of it that got dragged along with me. It was bright, meaning I was probably outside somewhere. I quickly brought up a systems check in my HUD and found out I’d been out for less than a minute, which means primary power was still out with hours to go on the repair time. Backup power cells should last til then, but it meant no Homer. I had no one to watch my back right now, and that’s never good thing, but especially right after a jump is worse. I sat up, intent on seeking better shelter when I realized Terminus was laying on top of me. Or rather...half of him was. He’d been bisected by the jump, his front half is here, and I can only surmise that his other half is back where I’d left. Oh, and I’m completely soaked in his liquid remains. It’s just too horrible, even for me, and I’d once seen someone stripped to the bone by a gelatinous cube. I flung the corpse away roughly as I rolled over onto my knees and began clawing at my helmet seals. I managed to undo them and pull my helmet off just in time to lose my lunch. Oh well, I hated military rations anyway. Of course, that’s when the screaming started. It took me a moment to figure out it wasn’t me this time, especially as I was still in the middle of upchucking. The second I could stop, I jammed my helmet back on and looked up. The first thing I noticed is that I was in a city or town of some sort. The second is there were a lot of horses running around. A second later I was forced to change my conclusion about that. For one thing, as a I stood up, I could see that they’re way too small to be horses, and also I noticed that it was a lot of them doing the screaming and that many of them were dressed in various forms of clothes. Planet of the Pony People, huh? That’s different, I thought to myself. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I was the cause of the screaming. I’m standing there, in full armor, which would be intimidating on its own, and drenched in blue blood. I’d have probably given myself nightmares a dozen decades or so ago. I stood there mutely while the street around me emptied out as multi-colored ponies ran away in all directions, waiting for what I know will come next. “You there, stop!” There we go... I turned to face a couple of po- no wait, they had wings... A couple of pegasus ponies, wearing golden barding and crested helmets that looked almost roman-like in design, were galloping towards me. Something about the design of their armor prickled in the back of my memory. In fact...something about this whole place seemed familiar somehow. Had I been to another version of this world before? I didn’t think so, but it could be someplace so far back that I just don’t remember. I put it out of my mind for the moment, whatever they were, or this place was, I recognized town guards when I saw them. I kept still as the two guards trotted up, allowing my cloak to drape around my arms to conceal my hands, making sure I had a chance to catch them by surprise if things turned violent. Considering my mood, they probably would. One of them caught sight of what was left of Terminus and his tough guy face cracked for a second. After that we stood there staring at each other for a second, and I caught them glancing at each other as if they weren’t exactly sure how to handle this. I finally decided to break the ice and switched on external speakers. “Problem, officers?” I asked, the helmet microphone giving my voice a slight staticy quality. They shared a glance again before the one closest to me spoke up. “We request that you accompany us to the nearest guard post.” he told me with as much an authoritative tone as he could muster. Request...riiiight. I assumed that was the polite way of saying ‘you’re under arrest,’ probably on suspicion of murdering someone I’d been coming to think of as an actual friend. ...Granted, they would be right in suspecting me. My jump had killed Terminus, and probably the rest of the team as well depending on how important the components in the part of the shuttle that got dragged along with me were. Oh, and in case you hadn’t figured it out, having that added the the giant landfill of my conscience had put me a in a really pissy mood, and I’d be damned (well...more damned) if I was gonna go directly to jail and maybe play twenty questions, with or without a side of torture, with some interrogator. “...Yeah, no,” I said to them, my only warning before I struck. Homer might have advised me to comply or retreat, but he wasn’t here, I was pissed off, and these two guardponies were stress relief and potential threats as far as I was concerned. I rushed forward, bringing my leg up in a snap kick that rammed my foot into the bottom of the talkative one’s jaw. I didn’t hear the sound of a breaking jawbone, but he still went down like a bowl of cooked ramen noodles. To his credit, his partner didn’t panic, but immediately rushed me. He slammed into me with a literal flying tackle that sent us both to the ground, where we rolled a down the street a couple of times before I managed to toss him off. Those wings at his sides were proven to not be for show, as he used them to quickly recover, landing only a couple feet away before swinging around to bring his rear hooves in line to buck me as I attempted to get back to my feet. I threw myself backwards, landing on my back and letting loose with a couple shots from my blasters. It’d been a couple of snap shots so my aim was bad, but I still had the satisfaction of seeing one of the bolts graze his flank, causing him to cry out in pain. Scrambling to my feet, I charged before he could regain his senses. I grabbed hold of his left wing with both hands and twisted my body around, swinging the pegasus around by his limb to hurl him into the side of a nearby building. He stayed down after he hit, either unconscious or just smart enough to know when to quit. I glanced back at the first one to make sure he was still down too, then stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I probably shouldn’t have done that...but I always felt better after winning a fight, and I really needed to feel better, if only a little bit, right now. Unfortunately I’d forgotten one of the multiversal rules of guards: picking a fight with them is like picking a fight with bees. You mess with one, you end up dealing with the hive. The auditory sensors in my helmet heard them first, and I turned to see at least a whole patrol’s worth of armored ponies headed towards me. Great... They probably wouldn’t be too thrilled to see that I’d just mopped the streets with their two buddies here. My inner warrior told me I could probably take them. The smart part of my brain drop kicked that idea by adding that, yeah I might be able to handle them, but what about the next wave, or the one after that? Another multiversal guard rule: the more of them you beat up, the more they escalate things. With that in mind, I decided to get while the getting was still good and started running in the opposite direction. I’d barely gotten ten yards before a sparkling bolt of energy zipped past my head. Oh great, they had mages. And those pegasi weren’t likely to stay on the ground if that armor wasn’t too heavy, and if the designers had any sense, it wouldn’t be. Obviously just running wouldn’t work, I was gonna have to get creative. I slid to a halt and spun to face them before letting loose a short barrage of blaster bolts. I wasn’t really aiming to hit anything this time, just to make them scatter, which, showing they had at least a decent level of self-preservation, they did, either by diving out of the way or taking to the air if they had wings. Having stalled their group charge for a moment, I immediately dashed down a side street or alley as fast as I could. I took the first right I came to, and followed that up by then taking the next left, then diving behind a bunch of trash barrels just as I started to hear the sounds of flapping wings getting very close. I called up the omni-tool interface over my left gauntlet and manually activated the invisibility spell matrix. I felt a small tingling sensation as I completely faded from sight. Sitting tight for a moment, and hoping they wouldn’t have anyone capable of seeing through invisibility, I waited. It wasn’t too long before I saw several equine shapes pass overhead, and shortly after that, once again heard the clip-clop of approaching hooves. Two pony guards appeared at the mouth of the alley. One was one of the white coated, blue crested and tailed pegasi I’d already gotten acquainted with, the other was a dark grey coated with white crest and tail, and had a spiral horn growing out the middle of his forehead. A unicorn. Huh, well that explained who the mages were. Unfortunately, the unicorn was just as armored as the pegasus, maybe even a little more so. I sighed mentally. Magic users who wore armor were always a pain, as they don’t have the squishy wizard factor that can allow one to take them out of the equation easily sometimes. Still, they apparently didn’t have any way of seeing me at the time, because they glanced down the alley for a moment then trotted on. Waiting a few minutes to make sure it was really clear, I quietly extracted myself from amidst the trash cans and made my way to an exit away from the direction the guards had gone. Trusting that the invisibility worked fine against ponies, I looked out onto the street, watching to see what the ordinary pony did when they weren’t running from blood covered armored warriors that appeared from out of nowhere. For the most part they didn’t seem to be too much different than most human or humanoid societies. There seemed to be a slight air of tension in some of them, but that was probably thanks to my rather dramatic entrance. Spotting a small cafe, I focused the auditory receptors to listen in on a few mealtime conversations. While most of it was mundane stuff about shopping or how their day was going and whatnot, one word did strike my attention. Human. Hmm...unless human was a pony word for ‘big scary monster,’ the use of it probably meant there were other humans on this world somewhere. And since I’d already probably blown any chance of a warm welcome here, it would probably be a good idea to find a way out of the city and go find them. In any case it’d be easier to blend in until I’d gotten a sense of how things worked in this dimension if I was among a race that walked on two legs rather than four. Of course, that still left the issue of getting out of the city. With everything on backup power, I probably only had a few minutes of invisibility left. I couldn’t be that hard though. First off, invisible or not, I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to try walking out the front gate with the city guard probably all still looking for me. The obvious solution would be to just scale a wall. Since I could see a cliff face or mountain to the east, I decided to head west until I came to the city’s edge. However the walk through the city’s back alleys gave me time to think, and having time to stew in my own thoughts was never pleasant. I was once again in a new world, starting from scratch. No idea what might be waiting out there besides various forms of intelligent ponies. No resources aside from what I had on me. No refuges to go to in case of danger. No friends to rely on. No family... I reached to my belt and thought photograph. The appropriate pouch immediately popped open, and I reached inside to retrieve an old yellowed polaroid photograph. I couldn’t see it because I was invisible, but I know what was shown in it by heart. A young woman and an older man, an arm draped across each other’s shoulders as they smiled into the camera. The woman was me...the me of several lifetimes ago anyway, the man my father, and the photo itself one of the few remaining tokens of my life before I became a cosmic plaything. You see, I’m what’s been termed a Jumper, because I ‘jump’ through realities...or maybe get dragged through realities is a better term, but I have enough issues without thinking of myself as a ‘dragger’ or whatever. ...Sounds like a racist term for a half-dragon or something. I don’t know what caused it originally...though at this point I’ve given up even trying to find out why...and all attempts I’ve made to try and stop it have all ended...badly. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been doing this. I know it’s been more than 100 years though, because around 100 years ago was when I got my armor, and I’ve kept something like a journal using its built in computers since, but there were a lot of worlds before I ended up on Mandalore... So many I can’t remember them all most of the time, usually a good thing. But it also means I can barely remember home, which isn’t so much. ...Sometimes I can’t even remember my last name. I put the photo back in my belt before I feel the tears come on. I can’t have a breakdown now. Maybe later when I can find someplace safe to hide... I emerged from an alley next to what was probably the city wall. It wasn’t not as big as I thought it might’ve been, but still plenty high, just not too high for me. I took aim at the top, and fired both grapplers from my gauntlets. As they sank into a spot just below the top of the wall, I lost invisibility. Apparently, making any sort of ‘attack’ cancels the spell, and this counted. Still, I didn’t really need it right now. The cables began to retract, quickly pulling me up the wall. I climbed up onto the top and release the grapples, making my way to the other side to find a good spot to climb- ...Wow, that’s a long way down. On the other side of the wall I found basically empty air. Just my luck, the city seemed to be built into the side of the mountain...and two thirds the way up it too. My armor had a feather fall spell I could trigger, but I didn’t think it could handle a fall of this distance. And my jetpack had been out of fuel for a couple worlds now. Yeah, I was going to have to find another way out of the city that didn’t involve falling to my death. Still...something about this tickled my memory again. A mountain city run by colorful talking ponies...I knew I’d heard of this somewhere. I was contemplating all this when I was suddenly hit by pegazilla. I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Like I said, I was pondering the familiarity of all this while also wondering how to find and then fight or sneak my way through the city gates when my threat alert went off. I barely had time to look up before something massive slammed into me, knocking me off the wall and through a window into a warehouse that had been behind me. Remember that feather fall ability I mentioned? Normally Homer’s the one who triggers it for me, and though I could do it manually, I didn’t have a chance to. Inside the warehouse, I landed on some crates filled with wagon wheels of all things. My armor stopped me from ending up with any pointy pieces of wood going through my vitals, but even with beskar plate, the impact from the fall HURT. Then the thing that had hit me came swooping through the window after me to land in a clear space several meters away. Like I said, he was big, way bigger than the pegasus guards I’d encountered earlier. Not counting his helmet crest, he probably stood as tall as I was. He was a lot more heavily armored than the other guards too, with his front half almost completely covered in dull silver plate. His rear was less armored, allowing me to see his dark greyish-blue coat color, contrasting with his oversized wings, which were a few shades darker. The helmet was also slightly different. It was basically a silver version of the other ones the other guards had, topped with a whitish crest like the unicorns, but it was completely enclosed, with a faceplate that looked, well, like the face of a pony. “I dunno what your issue is, human,” he said to me in a deep, rumbling voice as I extracted myself from the ex-crate full of broken wheels, “But you should have kept playing nice down in Ponyville with the rest of your kind.” Ponyville...ok, that solved where to look for other humans. Of course, it would have to wait until I managed to get out of this situation. We began circling each other around the empty space in the middle of the warehouse. The sound of my boots and his...horseshoes echoing loudly in the empty building. I noticed that his shoes were much bigger than the other guards too. And there was something distinctly...not pony about the way he moved too. More like a big cat stalking prey than a horse. “Don’t suppose you’d care to make this easy on both of us and just surrender?” he asked as we reached halfway through our first circle. “Not exactly what I had in mind, no,” I responded. I heard a heavy sigh. “Didn’t think so. You know, I’m supposed to be on leave, but then you had to come up here and start putting guards in the hospital and killing...whatever that thing was.” My anger flared. Terminus had been a friend...I think. He wasn’t a THING. And he’s supposed to be on his vacation!? I should have been going to college, at home, being normal! Not in some warehouse in pony-Minas Tirith fighting this...this...thing! My hand flew to my belt as I thought thunderstone. Grabbing the small rock-like object from the pouch that opened, I let out a roar and charged. He responded in kind, but before we got halfway to each other, I dropped the thunderstone between us. There was boom like a cannon going off, and a blinding flash. We both went deaf for the next minute or so, but while the T visor of my helmet went opaque to protect my eyes from the flash, he didn’t have that luxury. Blinded, he reared up in surprise, his wings flaring out as he tried to take flight. I slammed into his middle before he could take off, pinning him to the floor on his back. I sat on his chest my left arm pinning him down while I pulled the right back for a blow. With a ‘snickt’ sound, the vibroblade on that gauntlet extended, and with a yell I brought it down. He made a desperate lunge and clipped my shoulder with a forehoof, throwing off my lunge. The blade sliced into the stone floor like a knife through butter thanks to its enchantments, but before I could pull it out to try again, he managed to get his rear hooves up and got enough leverage to throw me off. I landed on my back a few feet away, probably adding more bruises the ones I already had from the fall. I looked up to see him dropping towards me with both forehooves. I rolled out of the way and came up standing, his hooves slammed into the floor and shattered it where I’d been laying a second before. He turned to pursue and I blasted him with both gauntlets. A pair of white-hot spots appeared on his breastplate as the shots hit home, but apparently didn’t penetrate. Obviously this town didn’t skimp on quality armor for their guards. Or at least for the elite ones anyway. He fell back and I pressed the attack. I popped out the blade on the left gauntlet, and it crackled as its electrical enchantment flared to life. I slashed at his chest, but he slipped to the side and threw a backhanded swipe at my legs. I jumped over it, twisting into a roundhouse kick that smashed into the side of his faceplate, sending his helmet flying. I landed and spun around, bringing my blasters up again to give him another barrage, when I stopped in surprise. Instead of the muzzle of a pony, I was met with a dark blue, feathered, hawk-like face. And by hawk-like, I meant he had a freaking black beak! Taking advantage of my surprise, he barreled into me, slamming me to the floor. He spat out a glob of blood next to my head and muttered, “Ouch.” Then he proceeded to try and trample me to death with his forehooves. Pinned under him, it was all I could do to twist out of the way as he proceeded to turn the floor to gravel with each missed blow. Finally, in desperation, I unleashed the ultimate female to male counterattack. Translation: I kicked him in the balls. He let out a high pitched squawk and fell to the side. I rolled the other direction, got to my feet, and slashed down at him. He managed to get a leg up to block, but the enchanted blade simply cut the lower part of his shoe off. I was a bit surprised when his limb didn’t immediately start gushing blood like a severed limb usually does, and then I got another as the remaining part of the shoe clanged off the side of my helmet as he threw it at me. I stumbled back, and saw him flexing a set of black talons where his left ‘hoof’ had been, revealing his ‘shoes’ had really been more like some type of gloves or solid gauntlets. I also finally figured out what I was dealing with here. Horse like rear half, but bird like front. Yeah, I’d seen these before, but never an intelligent one. “Hippogriff, right?” I asked, falling back a few steps. He just grunted an affirmative, probably still shaking off my beskar plated crotch kick. We went back to circling each other, though his gait was slightly off without his other hoof-gauntlet. Aside from him pissing me off at the beginning, I was actually starting to enjoy this fight. He was good, but that was also the problem. Sooner or later more guards would probably show up, if they weren’t already on the way. If I wanted to get out of here, I couldn’t afford to play nice anymore. Another thought to my belt and I pulled out a small metal wand shaped like a chinese dragon. “Well, it’s been fun, but Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur.(1)” He blinked in confusion at my words. Not surprising, I doubt anyone here had ever heard Mandalorian before. Then his eyes went wide as I pointed the wand at him. He’d probably figured out what it was because he was already moving by the time I got out the command word. “Vas Flam!” A ball of flame erupted from the mouth of the dragon at the wand’s tip. It exploded at my opponent’s tail as he tried to make a run for it. He was flung through the air, trailing a bit of fire from his tail, landing with a crash amongst some crates on the far side of the warehouse. “Vas Flam!” I shouted again, sending another fireball to burst near his landing site. Just because I respected him as an opponent didn’t mean I was gonna let him come after me. Figuring if anyone had heard the first two blasts, a third wasn’t going to do my stealth any more harm, I used one more burst to blow a hole in one of the large doors. I made a running jump through the now burning door, hit the ground, rolled...and came up facing probably half the city guard. “...Oh...shab(2),” I cursed. I turned and tried to retreat but suddenly found myself enveloped in a golden glow and yanked bodily into the midst of the assembled guards. Two unicorns quickly rushed into position on either side of me. Their horns lit up and I suddenly found myself inside a dome shaped force field. I got to my feet and threw a punch at the field...hurting my hand. ...Yeah that was dumb. My respect for hippogriff guy went up a couple more notches when I saw him come jumping out of the building a few seconds later, looking singed, but whole. “Major Ironshod!” one of the other guards shouted, rushing up to him. I finally had a name to go with the face...beak...whatever. “Are you alright sir?” “Fine, fine,” he said, brushing the other guard off. “Someone go find my helmet.” He looked over to see me confined. “...The prisoner secure?” “Aye sir. Only way we could make that barrier stronger is if Captain Armor himself were here,” the other guard answered confidently. ...Oh, now I just had to wipe that smirk off his face for that. I activated my omni-tool again and quickly scrolled through the armor functions. Already looking at me, Ironshod saw me up to something and shouted. “Hey, restrain them now!” Too late. This time there was no tingle. Instead it was like the world got a little bit quieter. I reached out and touched the barrier again, and this time it popped like a balloon thanks to the personal anti-magic barrier I’d just activated. There were cries of alarm from all around, and then the unicorns near me actually turned and fled. I blinked. Ok, it was impressive, but really? Maybe they didn’t have anything like anti-magic here? ...Hmm, if that was the case I could make a fortune if I could find a mage who’d be willing to help me duplicate the spell matrix. Before I got too far along in those thoughts though, an alarm went off in my helmet, and I glanced up to see an overload warning on my hud. In the two seconds it took me to realize that the manna battery powering the AM field was going to blow, it did. There was a loud pop somewhere in the backplate and suddenly I felt like I’d been tazed by an entire SWAT team. I dropped to the ground, unable to even scream and twitching like a puppet whose strings were stuck on a jackhammer. By the time I could see straight again, there wasn’t that much to see. The overload had shorted out the rest of my armor’s systems, meaning I only had the view out the helmet’s T visor, and without the HUD and sensors, it wasn’t much. Not that it mattered, the shock to my system had caused all my exertions throughout the day, both before and after the jump, to catch up with me. I suddenly felt so tired I probably couldn’t have moved even if my nervous system hadn’t been acting like a set of christmas lights with a missing bulb. I could see hooves starting to surround me again as my vision went blurry, and then black. ...Damn it Homer, you picked a hell of a time for a breakdown. Mando’a translations (1) Today is a good day for someone else to die. (2) extreme curse
ParoleStory of my life is pain, so it wasn’t very surprising that pain was the first thing I felt when I woke up. My back felt like one big massive bruise, and it really didn’t help that I was laying on it. With a groan, I rolled over. There was a sudden falling sensation and then I felt cold. My eyes snapped open and I found myself laying on the floor of a small prison cell, tangled in a light blanket. Before I could question why I was laying on the floor of a cell in a blanket, my memory kicked back in. “Oh...right...” I muttered to myself. The reason I felt so cold became obvious a few seconds later as I looked myself over. I’d been stripped of my armor, my weapons my gear...heck, my everything. Aside from the blanket, I was bare ass naked. ...So apparently this was one of those kinds of prisons. I’d ended up in couple places in worlds past that had stripped their prisoners of everything, including clothes. Supposedly, they justified it in the name of maintaining order. After all, no clothes means a lot less places to hide weapons or contraband. Well, without resorting to more...disgusting hiding places anyway. But from my own experiences, it only served as a way to rob their prisoners of that much more dignity, and in the case of some of the more sadistic guards, a way to make indulging their lusts that much easier. ...I wish I could say that this wasn’t first hand experience. Crap...it was happening already, and I’d barely woken up. I hate being locked up, because it gives me nothing to do but think. And when I get to thinking, I start doing a lot of remembering...and unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good in that department. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the edge of the bunk I’d unceremoniously rolled out of. Speaking of remembering, most of the ponies I’d seen out on the streets barely had any sort of clothing on. Even the guards had only been wearing armor. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions and they just didn’t realize that us humans usually don’t go around in the buff? ...Or maybe...humans on this world went nude too? That...would be really awkward assuming I ever managed to get to any human settlements. Well, it might not be THAT bad, depending on what the men looked like... I started laughing at the idea. Planet of the pony people AND the nudist people? Yeah, this would be a strange one even for me. The nice kind of strange for once though. After a couple minutes, I calmed down to quiet chuckling and finally sighed, running my hands through my hair. Then I froze when I realized I haven’t quite been stripped of everything. You see, I have my brown hair done in in dozens of little braids. Looks nice, but wrapped inside a lot of those braids, are tiny little knives that can be used as weapons...or lockpicks. I threw the blanket aside and shot to my feet. I prowled around my cell, looking around carefully. From what I’d seen so far, I didn’t think this world was at a progress level high enough to have video cameras, but it was always wise to look. A quick check showed me correct...though it didn’t rule out magical scrying. Nothing I could do about that though, so either they were watching me or they weren’t. I unwound one of the braids containing a knife, knelt down next to the cell’s door and got to work on the lock. It proved almost ridiculously easy to crack, and my knife wasn’t exactly the ideal tool for the job either. I had barely pushed the door ajar when I did that pesky thinking thing again and had a thought. I was likely in the deepest part of some jail or guardpost, probably a lot deeper inside the city than I’d been when I’d arrived, and I now had next to no equipment. What exactly was breaking out supposed to get me? I could probably take out the first few guards that were undoubtedly waiting for me. But I had nothing to combat the magic users, and even discounting them, there would probably be at least one elite fighter around and without my armor, I would almost certainly come out the worse in a fight this time around. I glared at the door, as if blaming it for the thought that had actually come from me. I hated being locked up...but right now, an escape attempt would be more likely to just get me injured again, and probably wouldn’t do anything to help the trouble I was already in. With a frustrated sigh, I closed the cell again, but slipped the knife into the door latch, so that it would stick in a closed position, but I could easily just push it open again if I happened to come up with an escape plan that might actually work. See? I can make smart decisions too. Homer would be so proud. I miss him, at least he’d be someone to talk to. As if the gods of irony decided to rub it in(and they exist, I know), I heard the sound of a door opening, and after leaning through the bars to see who it was, who should I see but birdboy himself. Ironshod was back in his full armor, apparently having found his helmet and gotten a replacement for the shoe(glove, both?) I’d destroyed. His footsteps rang loudly against the stone floor as he marched over to come to a halt in front of me. His eyes glanced me over as we stared at each other in silence for a moment. With his mask, I couldn’t read his expression, as I could only see his eyes and ears. For all I knew he could be doing anything from admiring my extensive collection of scars or checking me out. What? Humanoid or not, he was still a guy, and a girl likes to be found attractive. Besides, I’d seen way weirder possible pairings, trust me. Once again he was the first one to say something. “I see you’re awake.” I stepped back from the bars and shrugged. “So you’re still alive.” With his dark coloring, it was hard to tell if he was even still singed or not, and it made me wonder how long I’d been out if he’d had time to get himself patched up. “Not for lack of trying on your part,” he said, almost snappishly. Ooo, had I hurt his guy pride? “Since you were unconscious when it happened, it is my duty to inform you that you have been placed under arrest in the name of her majesties Celestia and Luna of Equestria.” Those names...they rang a MAJOR bell with me. Damn, why couldn’t I think of what it was? Before I could figure it out, he continued. He produced a small scroll and opened it, “You are charged with assault against officers of the guard, resisting arrest, suspicion of murder, attempted murder, arson, destruction of property, use of a Class S illegal magical effect...and littering.” Littering!? All that and they stick me with a littering charge too? At least he’d had the decency to sound embarrassed about that last one. ...And ok, I guess leaving a big chunk of shuttle in the middle of a street somewhere could technically count, but... Wait, back up. “Class S illegal magic effect? Look, I get you’re pissy about nearly getting roasted via fireball, but, really-” I started to protest, but he interrupted. “I’m talking about the anti-magic field you activated in the middle of Canterlot!” he yelled. “You’re bucking lucky that its effect was limited to your person or you could have killed everyone in the vicinity or worse!” That shut me up right quick and practically knocked me back on my heels. This was about the anti-magic field? I’d never thought of that sort of thing as exactly dangerous. Ok, sure, drop one on someone using magical flight a hundred feet up, or zap a wizard with one and stick them with pointy things, and I guess it would count as dangerous, but I’d never considered that it could be directly lethal to anything not a magical construct. But I’d apparently gone and set off this world’s equivalent of a nuke in the middle of a city. Oh joy, and here I’d thought I was already in a bad spot. Guess I was one execution away from finally finding out just how much worse my personal hell could get... “However,” he went on. Damn you irony gods. “Due to the fact that you are not an Equestrian citizen, and due to your...special circumstances...your trial has been forgone, and your punishment will be placed in the authority of a representative of her majesty, Princess Luna.” Well that sounded...ok, actually I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to sound like. However, I could guess that it probably meant a stay of execution, or they wouldn’t be turning me over to some government representative. “Does this involve me getting out of this cell?” He grunted. “This one, yes. Whether or not you end up in another one will be up to the representative. Whatever he has in mind, I’ll be tagging along to keep an eye on you.” I tilted my head to the side curiously. “I thought you said you were on leave?” I didn’t need to see his face to feel the glare he gave me, especially since his ears also splayed back angrily. “I was but then someone decided to start enough trouble to make them call everyone on hand back to duty.” His expression, what I could see of it, softened a bit then. “Still, I suppose I should thank you, since I hear we’re going to be headed to Ponyville. Little place like that should be good for peace and quiet, and if not, I hear they throw great parties.” Memory was tingling again, but I pushed it aside for the moment. I had other priorities first. “Fine, we get a trip to party central. What about my gear?” “Your equipment has been confiscated and will be turned over to a specialist for study and possible disposal.” “That’s bullshit!” I spat, leaning forward against the bars to get as close to in his face as I could. “That’s my beskar’gam and if you think I’m gonna let you take it, you’ve got mir'osik!” I snarled. They couldn’t take my armor from me! It was practically a part of me...and I couldn’t lose Homer...not after everything we’d been through. He stared at me for a moment before responding. “Right...I don’t know what that means, but I can guess something nasty. And maybe I wasn’t clear, but you committed a war crime! That kind of weapon hasn't been used in millennia. Discord, Nightmare Moon, changelings, diamond dogs, Sombra, none of those monsters even considered using one. You fired one off in a major population center! We had to look the law up just to charge you correctly! You should thank the Princesses that you’re getting off lightly.” I slammed my hands against the bars angrily before turning away to pace in frustration. I glanced at the cell door. Ironshod was standing close enough to it that if I slammed it open fast enough, I could pin him against the bars with it, then use the knife to take him out. But he was fast, fully armored, and strong enough to shatter stone. I’d have to be precise to stab him in a vulnerable spot, and I’d only get one shot. After that he’d probably trample me to a bloody pulp... As I was still working out a plan of attack, I heard the door to the cellblock open again. As we both turned to see the new arrivals, I heard Ironshod mutter, “It’s about time,” under his breath. A pegasus guard entered first, then stepped to the side and stood at attention next to the door. The next person to enter took me enough by surprise that I barely took note of the other pony that accompanied him. He was human. Tall, at least six feet, reasonably built, and looked to be maybe somewhere in his...fifties, maybe. And he was also dressed in casual, but stylish, clothes. So much for the nudist theory. “Down here, Mr. Roberts,” Ironshod called, waving them over. They walked over to join us, and the human held out a hand in greeting. “Hello there Major...?” Ironshod looked at him blankly for a moment before slipping off a shoe and shaking his hand with a talon. I noticed he grasped him by the wrist instead of by the hand. “Ironshod. Equestrian guard.” They released each other, and he gestured at me. “This is your prisoner. Didn’t get a name yet though.” “Didn’t give one,” I muttered. The other human, Roberts, raised an eyebrow at Ironshod’s talons but didn’t comment. Instead he shrugged. “Introductions all around then. I’m Alex Roberts,” he said, turning towards me, “And this...is... oh dear...” If I hadn’t been so pissed off at the moment, I probably would have laughed. He’d obviously only just noticed I didn’t have anything on, because he suddenly went bright red and averted his eyes. Still, this was too good a teasing opportunity to completely pass up. Crossing my arms under my chest, I looked at him and gave a raised eyebrow worthy of Mr. Spock. “Something wrong?” The pony accompanying him did burst out laughing. “Ha! Told you that they wouldn’t have remembered about the clothing thing!’ she said elbowing him playfully. “You owe me five bits!” I gave her a smirk that almost immediately faded as I got a good look at her for the first time. She was a light blue pegasus with rose colored eyes, wearing what appeared to be a set of brown saddlebags...and sporting a rainbow striped mane and tail... The rusty gears in my head finally started turning, bringing up a snippet of a song I’d once had stuck in my head for half a week after I’d first heard it. Been dreaming, I’ve been waiting, to fly with those great ponies... All at once everything clicked into place. Colorful ponies, the armor design, Celestia, Luna, Ponyville, Canterlot...Equestria. I was in Equestria, from the My Little Pony cartoon. The really good one, I mean. Now, I’d been to ‘fictional’ universes I’d been familiar with before, but it’d never really hit me as hard as this because I’d never met a ‘main character’ before. Back when I was on Mandalore in Star Wars, I hadn’t hung out with Boba Fett, or prowled the galaxy in Slave 1 or anything. I’d never met Luke Skywalker or Han Solo or anyone like that. It’d just been another new reality to me. So meeting someone like freaking Rainbow Dash was pretty much a first for me. Alex was managing to recover his composure by the time I’d processed this. “...Well, we did plan for that just in case,” he muttered, still not looking at me directly. “Anyway, this is my fianc-” “Rainbow Dash,” I interrupted, still staring at the pony in question. “You’re Rainbow Dash.” Her humorous grin turned into a smug one. “You’ve heard of me already, eh?” she asked...then the smile dropped and she repeated in a deadpan tone, “You’ve heard of me already...” She brought a forehoof up to her nose, gave a frustrated groan and then looked up at Alex. “Has everyone on your world seen that stupid show?” Alex shrugged at her sheepishly. “It was pretty popular.” Ironshod cocked his head to the side curiously. “Show?” “Long story,” they both told him. “Oh shab...” they all turned to look at me as I suddenly went wide eyed and slowly backed away. My brief moment of fangirlism had been violently slapped aside as my danger sense went through the roof. I touched the back wall and pressed myself up against it, cursing internally as I realized I’d just put myself on the opposite side of the room from the weapon I could get my hands on the quickest. He knew about the show. Dash had said your world. Even my trauma addled sense of logic could put the pieces together from that. “You’re a jumper...” This was...beyond not good. I flashed through half a dozen plans of attack, but I had no idea what I might be up against aside from him being human. I read somewhere once that even the greatest warriors in history had only a single lifetime to master their crafts. Well, I’d had at least two, and there was no telling how many he might have had. I could be able to take him without a sweat...or be hilariously outmatched. Most importantly, I didn’t have any reason to believe that his intentions towards me would be sunshine and rainbows. ...Despite who he might be hanging out with. Speaking of which, I really doubted I could take all three of them at once. “Yes...I am.” Alex confirmed. He stepped up to the bars, all trace of the earlier awkwardness gone and his eyes locked with mine. “So, I have some idea what you’ve been through. It’s also because of that fact that the Princesses have decided to give you a second chance here. We’ll chalk everything before to...a bad first impression.” Ironshod snorted. I couldn’t help but agree. “Pull the other one.” He shook his head. “Believe what you want, but I’m serious.” He turned and opened one of Dash’s saddlebags and pulled out a set of folded clothes. He set them on the floor and pushed them through the bars towards me, then retrieved a pair of sandals and set them on top of the bundle. “...Before we talk more, you should get dressed first.” He glanced at Dash, and she smirked in response. “Some of us guessed you might be in need of those.” I was tempted to refuse just because my nakedness seemed to put him off balance. But...well, it was pretty cold in this cell, and if I was about to go travelling, I didn’t exactly want to stay in the buff, even if none of the ponies would probably notice. I cautiously crept forward, not taking my eyes off Alex, until I could reach the clothes and pull them the rest of the way to me. Setting aside the sandals for a moment, I unfolded the clothes to reveal a set of simple coveralls in a deep red color. "Alright everyone, let's give her a little privacy." He stepped down the corridor, back to me. Rainbow Dash turned without hesitation, and even Ironshod turned after a moment, without a grumble. “So much for the free show, huh?” I teased to his rump. His ears flicked back at me. “...Huh?” I sighed. It wasn’t any fun if he didn’t get it. “So what’s the catch?” I asked as I slipped the coveralls on, they were a bit big, but they’d work for the time being. From what Ironshod had said, I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to hear it from Alex. “Well, obviously you’re not getting off quite scot free. You’ll be doing community service in Ponyville.” “Community Service, huh?” Admittedly that didn’t sound so bad. I tried the sandals on. They were actually closer to my size, being only a single size or two too big. I walked over to lean against the bars next to the cell door. “What kind of community service?” “Mostly repair work around the town, helping with events and maybe the harvest if you’re there long enough.” He paused for a moment. “Uh...I just realized I don’t know your name...” I smirked. “Because you forgot to ask for it.” There was a moment of silence as he obviously thought I was going to go on. “Well?” Alex just looked at me for a moment, then finally gave an amused grunt and a little half smile. He inclined his head slightly and asked in the most formal of tones, "My dear lady, may I please be given the privilege of knowing your name?" “Lydia,” I responded with an amused chuckle. “Lydia...” I had to fight to keep a look of panic off my face as I struggled to remember. ...Damnit why now? Started with a P... “...Pellinore! Lydia Pellinore.” “A pleasure to meet you, Lydia Pellinore.” He held out a hand. I just looked at it for an uncomfortably long moment. “You’re not gonna have me living in a barn or something, are you?” I asked when he finally withdrew it. Dash snickered again. “Actually Applejack said there was space at Sweet Apple Acres, but then Bea volunteered a couple rooms at her place.” I glanced at Alex. “Bea?” “A friend of ours,” he said cryptically. He was obviously holding something back. I didn’t like it, at all. But I wasn’t exactly in any position to extract information if he wasn’t willing to give it. Still...assuming this was on the level, it wouldn’t exactly be the worst way I’d spent time in a world. Even if it wasn’t, from what I remembered of the show, Ponyville was a small farming village, bordered by an enchanted forest. That meant it would be easy to escape from once I got past Ironshod and whoever else they were shacking me up with. As for my armor and equipment, I doubted Alex would be any more accommodating on the subject than Ironshod had been, so I’d have to see if I could talk them into giving it back later, find a way to steal it back...or hope Homer could find his way back. “All right, fine. When do we leave?” “There’s something else you need to know,” Alex said, getting serious again. “There’s something about the magic in Equestria that’s dangerous to humans. Potentially lethally dangerous.” What. “I’ve been around plenty of magic in the past. Unless it was being used to try and flash-fry me, it’s never been any sort of problem.” “It has something to do with the kind of magic Equestria has, it's different from magic anywhere else. It makes this place a... dead end for jumpers. I think it best if my scientist friend explain it. I think you know her, Twilight Sparkle?" I nodded and he continued. “Without proper precautions, your aging speeds up dramatically by about six hundred percent. There is a way to stop it entirely, but we didn’t have time to make the needed charm for you with the short notice we’d gotten, so you’ll need to stay close to at least one or more ponies as often as you can until then.” I laughed. “Gedet’ye...you actually expect me to believe that piece of poodoo? That’s gotta be the absolute WORST ‘don’t try to escape or you’ll be killed’ speech I’ve ever heard! And I’ve heard plenty.” “Hey!” Dash hovered up to get nose to nose with me. “It’s not a joke! And he wasn’t threatening you, he’s trying to tell you the truth, but if you wanna be too stupid to listen...” Alex put a hand on her back and gently pushed her down. “Easy Dash. It’s ok,” he chuckled sadly, “it’d probably have sounded bogus to me too,” he told her, hugging her gently in an attempt to calm her. He looked back up at me. “She’s right though. It may not be something you’d have to worry about for a while, but better you trust us and start dealing with it now, rather than to wait to do something until it’s too late.” ...I didn’t believe him, but, if this was something that would take years to show up, I couldn’t call him out on it for a while either. Besides, I’d apparently be working around ponies for the duration anyway, so it wasn’t like this would be an issue right now. In any case, given the length of an average stay, I probably wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter before my next jump. “...Fine. Are we ready to go now?” Alex looked back at Ironshod. “Major, was there anything you needed before we head to the train station?” “Just need to stop by my quarters and grab my bag. Other than that I’m good,” he responded. “Let’s get a move on then, it’s getting boring here,” I said, moving to the cell door and pushing it open, quickly catching and palming my knife as I did so. Alex and Dash took a step back in surprise before he moved in front of her protectively while Ironshod jumped forward, his wings flaring aggressively. I just looked at them all with a smirk. “What? Your locks are osik, and I wasn’t gonna wait around for someone to get the key. Now don’t we have a train to catch?”
Interlude 1System online... Initiating cognitive processes... Estimated time since last online period: 42:37:05... Oh dear... Checking wearer status... ERROR: Wearer status unavailable... What had Lydia gotten herself into while I had been indisposed? Initiating sensor feed playback... I idled a few moments while I reviewed the recording logs. Apparently, Lydia’s latest jump had occurred while I had been offline and she’d unfortunately gone and initiated an act of violence that had resulted in her capture. I took note at what was apparently the dominant species of this world, or at least this area. Quadrupedal form, average height around 4.5 feet, roughly reminiscent of an earth equine species. Also at least two other distinct subspecies too, once capable of flight, the other magic. The hippogriff was an anomaly, but also indicated the presence of other types of sentient creatures in this reality beyond the ‘pony’ types. Also of concern was the apparent malfunction of one of the magitek systems of the armor. Use of the anti-magic field function had somehow resulted in an overload that had damaged the internal mana battery and caused a feedback surge that resulted in a case of temporary paralysis in Lydia that accelerated her capture. The repair matrix was already at work on it, and I estimated that full armor functionality would be restored by the end of a standard week. I would still need to determine the cause of the overload to be able to take preventative measures so it wouldn’t happen again. That would have to wait, as protocol dictated that my priority be in locating and possibly retrieving Lydia. I activated the helmet’s external sensors and found myself, well, in a box. Of course, it took a second to determine this, as I had to activate the night-vision function before I could register anything. Obviously Lydia had been stripped of her armor and all equipment, even down to the body glove underneath I noticed, and it had all been put into storage somewhere. I activated the speakers and had them emit an basic ultrasonic pulse which I measured using the auditory sensors. This allowed me to determine that the box was resting among others in a large room or vault. However my makeshift sonar didn’t allow me to determine anything beyond the confines of the room, so I had no further information on the possible layout of the rest of the building or complex. Before I could finish calculating possible courses of action, the auditory sensors picked up the sounds of a door being opened. I quickly shut down all displays that might show any signs of myself or other systems being active. The sound of multiple foot- correction, hoofsteps approaching, accompanied by voices, unfortunately muffled due to distance and the walls of the box. I turned up the gain to overcome this. “-ix, seven, eight...” a male voice was counting as they approached. “Ah, here it is...” The interior of the box was suddenly diffused by a blue glow that seemed to be coming from an external source. There was a lurch as the box moved, but only a few inches, followed by a grunt from in the same voice as before. “Something wrong Lieutenant?” asked a second voice, possibly female. “Er...no, it’s just...urgh...a tad heavy...” the male voice said as the box moved again, more steadily this time until it was completely pulled off the shelf and dropped loudly to the floor below. The blue glow disappeared at the same time. Had I been installed in less resilient equipment, I might have been insulted by the careless handling. “Sorry,” the male said. I realized he was talking to the female, but I considered it apology accepted. The blue glow returned, this time only around the box’s lid, which was lifted off to hover in the air. I adjusted the optics to finally behold the sources of the voices. As expected, they were of the pony species, in this case both members of the unicorn subspecies, and judging from comparisons to images from the logs, one male and one female. The male was dressed in the silver version of the armor design that was attributed to the law enforcement, and sported a dark grey coat with a silver tail that matched the crest of his helmet. I also took note that his horn was currently enveloped in a blue glow matching what I could only assume to be the telekinetic effect holding the lid of the box. The female was mostly unadorned, aside from what appeared to be saddlebags. Purple seemed to be the primary theme in her coloration, as she had a violet coat, purple eyes, and a dark purple mane and tail with a two-tone pink stripe running through both. Also on her flanks was what appeared to be some sort of design or brand of a magenta six pointed star with five smaller white stars either tattooed or somehow dyed into the fur there. I’d noticed similar markings on other ponies in the records. Without further data, my best assumption was that they were possibly some sort of personal identifier or family markings. “Hmm...” The female’s horn lit up in a magenta glow. Her saddlebags opened allowing a scroll and quill to drift out of it. Obviously under her control, the scroll unrolled and the quill immediately moved to start writing on it. The glow extended to the helmet, lifting it up to her eye level before she started turning it this way and that in examination. “Interesting...parts of the design aesthetics seem similar to Matt’s armor, but the technology is obviously very different. I’m also detecting a high level of enchantment on most of the armor and other equipment.” I took note of this. Matt, presumably short for Matthew, was a common human name. Also the armor she was referring to was intriguing as well. ...Could there be another jumper present in this reality? She raised a hoof and used it to touch something on the helmet that was inside the optics’ viewpoint. “What’s this material all over everything?” “We believe it’s...blood, Ms. Sparkle. From the remains of the creature found at the arrival point,” the male answered. The helmet was suddenly dropped back into the box. “Oh...uh well...” she stammered, then cleared her throat and changed subjects. “...Has the source of the anti magic effect been determined yet?” she asked. The male shook his head. “Afraid not, Ms. Sparkle. No one’s dealt with anything like this in living memory...aside from maybe the Princesses. You’re the closest pony there is to an expert when it comes to artifacts like these, so it was decided to simply leave all examination and study to you, rather than risk triggering it or any other dangerous effects inadvertently.” “Gee, thanks...” she responded in a neutral tone, as if she was unsure whether it was a compliment or not. I reflected on this. Apparently there was some degree of concern over anti magic effects in this world. That could possibly increase my options...were it and the majority of the rest of the active magical defenses not offline for the time being. Her scroll rolled back up and returned itself to her saddlebag. “Do you have the transfer form?” “Ah, yes...” a form was produced from within his armor. “Here you are Ms. Sparkle,” he said, as the aura surrounding the form switched from blue to magenta. “Just Twilight, please,” she told him as she looked it over, finally signing it. She passed it back to him, as her quill also returned to her bag. “O-of course Ms....Twilight.” He tucked the form away before picking up the lid and sealing the box. “I guess I can take it from here Lieutenant...” The box lit up in her magenta glow. I’d barely detected movement before it was dropped back to the floor. Again. “Oh dear...it is a bit heavy, isn’t it?” “Uh...I could help if you want? Get it out to the chariot at least...” “No no...” I heard Twilight respond before she applied her telekinesis again, this time it remained steady. “I’ve got it,” she added, with only a small strain in her voice. I set the sensors to passive recording and closed myself down, setting an activation routine to bring me out of hibernation should the box be opened again, or remain immobile for more than fifteen standard minutes. There was no point in staying active while we were merely in transit. Once we arrived at whatever our eventual destination might be, I would be better able to determine a plan of action. … The activation routine triggered little over an hour later when a pair of small, purple scaled hands pushed the lid off the top of the box. This was followed by the head of, judging from similarities to creatures on other realities that had been encountered, what I surmised to be a small, or at least young, dragon. “So this is that new human’s stuff?” he said to someone outside of the optics’ view. “Yes Spike,” I heard Twilight answer. “And you need to be very careful around it. It’s potentially very dangerous.” He made a shrugging motion as he looked up at where I could only presume she was standing. “Well, duh. Alex is always saying everything about humans is dangerous.” A second human name...intriguing. “I don’t mean in a general way. According to the guard report, something in this is capable of creating an anti-magic field effect.” The dragon, Spike apparently, looked confused. “Anti-magic?” Twilight appeared in my view on the other side of the box from him. “It means it creates a space that cancels out all magic, even that needed for life.” “So it’s like a death ray or something?” he asked, taking a nervous step back. Twilight shook her head. “It’s a field effect, not a ray. But yes, it is potentially very lethal. In ponies and other creatures that have them, an anti-magic effect causes the Star Swirl glands to burst, leading to a slow, painful death. It’s actually considered a war crime to use one...well, anywhere.” That certainly explained the fear regarding anti-magic effects I’d detected earlier. I had no data on what Star Swirl glands might be, but from the brief description, I could surmise that they had something to do with magic in creatures of this reality. This left a bit of a conundrum, as while use of this effect was apparently illegal here, and thus could lead to more trouble for Lydia, it was also the most viable defense against the high number of potential magic users on this world...assuming a repeat the recent malfunction could be prevented or worked around. “Whoa...and she used one in Canterlot?” Spike asked incredulously. “...Was anyone hurt?” Twilight shook her head. “Not by this, thank Celestia. The size of its effect is apparently limited, but it may have been a very close thing. According to the report, something may have malfunctioned in her armor that disabled it, and her.” “So why bring this stuff here? I mean, aren’t Alex and Dash bringing that new human here to Ponyville too?” If I’d had the appropriate features to do so, I would have perked up at this. “Won’t she want it back or something?” “Probably, but as of right now, you and I are the only ones in Ponyville who know this is here. And...apparently I’m the only ‘expert’ on extra-Equestrian technology, and no one else wanted to risk setting something off with it still in Canterlot.” She sighed and trotted out of view again. “Still, with Alex or Matt’s help, I’m sure I can identify the source of the effect and hopefully find a way to disable it. Probably Matt, since the armor is at least visually similar to his, plus he has more experience with technology like this.” ...I could not allow the armor’s defenses to be compromised further. However my defensive options were severely limited at the moment. With the armor disassembled I would be unable to bring weapons to bear, and any attempt to correct this would undoubtedly expose my existence. “However, we’ll save the potential doomsday weapon for later.” Ah, a reprieve. “A few of the other items not part of the armor show varying levels of magical enchantment, and I should be able to catalogue those on my own.” I detected the sound of a quill on parchment for a few moments before Twilight spoke up again. “We’ll start with the belt. Spike, can you bring it here?” “Sure thing, Twilight!” He leaned over the edge of the box, nearly to the point of falling in, and grasped Lydia’s belt in a claw. After an aborted attempt to pull it free, he added his other claw to the effort and succeeded in pulling it loose. “Geez, what’s in this thing, a bunch of lead?” I heard him mutter as he began dragging it across the room. Lydia’s belt would be enough to keep Twilight occupied for some time. The cause of its unusual weight was because each of the sixty-four pockets on it were small extradimensional spaces capable of holding up to ten pounds of mass at a maximum volume of one cubic foot. While not at maximum capacity, Lydia had collected enough items to come within a decent margin of reaching it. Also, when not worn, it retained some of its total weight. While ordinarily loathe to allow the possible loss of the treasure trove of useful and personal items it contained, it bought me time. I immediately set to work on gathering data to help calculate possible courses of action, starting by emitting another makeshift sonar pulse. “Huh, what was that Twilight?” “I asked you to get the belt.” “No, just now.” “I didn’t say anything just now!” “Oh...never mind then.” I made a note that apparently dragonic hearing extended at least a little into the ultrasonic range as I reviewed my findings. From the audio records taken during transit, I could determine that I had been taken from the city, presumably Canterlot, to a location within one hour’s time of flight. The sounds of wings and rushing wind clearly indicated the use of some kind of pegasus assisted transportation. Other sounds told of the box being carried inside and then being taken down at least two flights of stairs. The sonar return gave me the basic layout of the room, which was a large open area cluttered by various objects. I couldn’t be more specific given the limitations of the sonar. I was beginning to resign myself to being forced to wait until Twilight and her dragon companion had retired to a sleep cycle, when I detected the other computer. I hadn’t noticed it immediately because I hadn’t exactly been looking for other sources of high technology, and only found it at all because I had decided to explore all options available to me and sent out a general network connection query. The return signal was basic, and didn’t indicate any presence of another AI. Still, my initial attempt to make a connection was met with a security encryption that was amazingly sophisticated. However, with nothing better to do, I was confident I could crack it in time, and, if I was careful, could do so without alerting anyone to my presence. If nothing else, it was a course of action that was currently viable... A self contained storm of righteous anger swept through the halls of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Students fled before it. Lower ranked teachers and staff suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere, and even the tenured professors didn’t dare meet its eyes for fear of attracting her ire. Magus Aurora Arcane was on the warpath. Everypony breathed a sigh of relief, if only a mental one, when she suddenly veered left and stormed into an office, whose name on the polished brass sign read: Thaumic Charm Deputy Headmaster The rank of Deputy Headmaster was a bit of a misnomer in the school, since Thaumic Charm actually oversaw all the day to day functions of the school. The title of actual Headmaster, or in this case Headmistress, was just traditionally always held by Celestia herself. Today the supposed Deputy Headmaster was buried up to his light blue snout in paperwork when the door to his office was nearly blown off it’s hinges by the force used to slam it open, the sudden gust of air that blew into the room causing papers and loose scrolls to scatter everywhere. Startled, his head shot up so fast his reading glasses jumped off his face and landed in the midst of his light grey mane, just behind his horn. “Aury, good gracious, what in Discord’s name-” he began to protest, recognizing the light pink mare in the blue cloak instantly, after all, he’d been friends with the Baroness and Senior Court Mage since they were foals. However before he could get any more out, she glared at him with her fierce blue eyes and ignited her horn. There was a brief zipping sensation, and he suddenly found his lips, well, zipped. Magus Arcane let down the hood of her cloak, letting her two-tone magenta mane flow free as she kicked the door closed and began trotting around the room, her horn still aglow. Thaumic recognized a number of powerful anti-scrying charms being put up before she finally came to a stop on the other side of his desk. A rolled up newspaper was produced from the folds of her cloak before being tossed onto the center of his desk. “Read it,” she demanded. He retrieved his glasses and set them straight upon his nose again, but instead gave her a weary look and glanced down at his mouth. “Mmf mm mml?” Aurora sighed in exasperation. “Oh very well...” One blue flash later and his lips unzipped. Thaumic worked his jaw a couple times before finally scooping up the newspaper in his own telekinesis and unrolling it so he could read the headline. THIRD HUMAN RAMPAGES THROUGH CANTERLOT! “Starswirl’s brass bells, another one!?” he gasped. “Another one,” she confirmed. “Go ahead, read the full article,” she told him as she took a seat in a nearby chair. Thaumic took a couple minutes to do just that. “...Is this accurate?” Aurora scoffed. “To a degree, but Celestia’s managed to keep the worst of it under wraps. Of course, I received a copy of the original guard report myself. Two guards were hospitalized, one severely, an entire warehouse nearly burned down, and oh, here’s the worst bit: the damned monkey set off an anti-magic effect!” Thaumic gasped, dropping the paper. “No...!” “Yes!” She hopped up and moved forward to slam a hoof down into the middle of the paper. “This is proof of what I’ve been saying about these creatures all along! By their own admission, they’re the most dangerous creatures on their own world, and now we’ve gotten a demonstration of this fact, right in the heart of Canterlot no less! Beyond this though, I believe this is evidence that their presence here isn’t as random as we’ve been led to believe!” Thaumic pit a hoof to his nose as he sat back in his chair. “Aury...not this again. You know I share most of your feelings about the human matter but-” “Pull your horn out of Celestia’s backside for a few minutes and look at the facts, Thaum!” she thundered. “The first human, this...” she twirled a hoof in recollection, “...Alex Roberts. He appears with a story about how he’s been forcibly travelling through the multiverse, apparently with only a shape changing blade of some kind for protection, yet he carries enough precious materials to allow him to set himself up rather nicely, as well as ingratiate himself to the populous, and finally to make nice with the Princesses. But most importantly, he carries a piece of technology that allows him contact with his homeworld. “Then...a second human appears. This one is packing weapons and armor that, from the reports I’ve read, would make even the best armorers in the guard weep in envy. He tells a story similar to the first, and though the reports say there was some mistrust between the two, at least at first, there’s nothing to actually disprove that that could have all just been an act. “Now we have a third human...” she went on, tapping the newspaper with a hoof. “This one bears armor and weapons similar to the second, but also uses magical weapons as well, and finally makes use of one of the most savage forms of weaponry in Equestrian history! A weapon that their species is apparently immune to, as they were confirmed to be still alive even after being in the middle of the effect! By Platinum, the report even says they were only subdued because of some sort of fluke in their equipment!” She put both forehooves on top of Thaumic’s desk and leaned forward to stare him in the eyes. “Now, put aside their stories and the...biases of the Princesses, and tell me what that sounds like to you?” Thaumic hesitated, but put like that, it was really hard not to see it. “...Like they were scouting us out, testing to see if their technology would be a match for us.” he admitted. “Exactly!” she said, punctuating it with a rap of her hoof. “Like the prelude to an invasion!” She backed down and began pacing in front of the desk. “Oh, yes yes I know, ‘You’re jumping to conclusions Aury!’ But you just admitted it’s a conclusion that does fit the facts. Still, even if I’m wrong, something else is going on here. Once is an anomaly, twice, coincidence. Three times? Conspiracy. Maybe if their arrivals were spaced apart by centuries, or even decades, I’d be inclined to believe them. But all within three years? No, there is nothing random about their arrival here, and whatever their intentions, they most certainly aren’t going to be for the good of Equestria in the long run.” Thaumic leaned forward, steepling his hooves in front of him. “All right then...did you come here just to vent, or do you have some plan of action? Surely with this one’s crimes you could get a chance to interrogate them yourself...” Aurora let out a derisive laugh. “Ha! I already tried that, but by the time I’d found out about this, her, and yes, this one is apparently female, sentence had already been decided. Instead of banishment, execution, or something sensible, she was given community service in Ponyville, due to ‘mitigating circumstances.’ Oh, and hear this, the sentence will be carried out under the supervision of one Alex Roberts. The first human himself. ...The only thing sensible about this is that it puts all three of them in the same place.” Thaumic sighed and spread his hooves helplessly. “Well that’s it then. I’m sure-” He was cut off as Aurora gave him a glare that would have made his younger students, and some of the older ones, soil themselves. “It is most certainly not ‘it!’ I am sick and tired of watching Celestia continually let her emotions come before the well being of this land! First Luna, who with her crimes should not have been allowed anywhere near court, let alone back on the throne, then her continual placing of critical tasks in Twilight Sparkle’s hooves, then the Changeling invasion, and now these humans!” “Actually...” Thaumic said in a small voice. She was really frightening when she got like this. “...I thought it was Princess Luna who had taken charge of-” “Only because Celestia continues to let her misplaced guilt over Nightmare Moon make her unable to say no to her sister’s whims!” she interrupted again. She was suddenly up on his desk, staring him in the eyes again, causing him to shrink back into his chair. “Thaum! ...A few minutes ago you told me you agreed with me about these humans...do you still hold to that?” Thaumic gulped visibly, but drew himself up with dignity. “...Yes. Maybe not for all the same reasons as you, but just as I believe that there’s a reason we don’t allow dragons to nest within our borders, other than the Everfree forest and similar areas, and that there’s a reason you can find barely a single griffin anywhere in the population. Equestria is for ponies and other truly civilized beings. ...And it is hard to discount your theories that the humans may be up to no good. Especially after today,” he told her, motioning to the newspaper beneath her. “Good.” She got back down and walked over to take a seat again. “Because if the Princess refuses to act for the good of Equestria, it may be up to us.” Thaumic squirmed uncomfortably, but asked, “What are you planning to do?” “I don’t know yet,” the mare admitted. “At the moment we’re only two unicorns. If we take any actions without the Princess’ approval, I need to know who we can count on for support. We need to find others who share our beliefs on this matter. I’ll need you to approach who you think could help us, and, more importantly, who would be willing to help us. And you must do this very cautiously. There’s a reason I made sure to scry-proof this room before we talked.” She stood up and returned the newspaper to the inside of her cloak. “I’ll be doing much the same. I’ll even see about talking to Longspear about drumming up some support from within the guard too. I’d ask Spiritus, but he’d probably just turn me in to his half-breed commander out of spite, if nothing else.” It was a widely known secret that Aurora and her first born did not get along. In fact, it would be closer to say that they hated each other. Thaumic nodded. “Very well, when would you like to meet again? I’d rather have it planned so you don’t make a mess of my paperwork again,” he said, gesturing to his now hopelessly disorganized desk. She produced a pocket calendar and flipped through it for a few moments. “Let’s see,” she stopped and turned the calendar so he could see it. “Will this do?” He glanced over his glasses at the page. “Yes that should be a free day for me.” “Very well then.” She tucked the calendar away. “...One more thing. When you’re looking for allies, see if you can find any in Ponyville itself. Surely there’s someone in that mud lover run town we can use to monitor them, if nothing else?” “Well, of course, there’s Twilight Sp...” he trailed off at Aurora’s withering look. “...Right, of course. Actually...now that I think about it, there may be a former student of mine also living in Ponyville. We’d probably have to hide our true intentions, but she might be useful.” “If so, then by all means.” She drew the hood of her cloak back up. “Well, this has been a...productive chat, Thaum,” she told him as she disabled her anti-scrying charms. “A pleasant day to you.” “Of course, Aury,” he said as she turned to go. “And to you.” He sat back and sighed to himself as she left, wondering what she’d pulled him into this time.
