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What I Am

by Knight Breeze

Chapter 4: Chapter IV

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Chapter IV

“Is… Is he going to be alright?” Twilight asked, poking the comatose ~human’s~ shoulder a little bit. The only reaction this seemed to have, though, was to cause the strange creature to roll over slightly.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine... eventually,” Luna said, shaking her head a little. “He’s just had one of the fundamental cornerstones of his existence turned on its head. He just needs a little time to cope.”

“‘Just’ a cornerstone? Sister, you make it sound as if he found out his pet dog died instead of ‘running away,’” Celestia said, raising her eyebrow in disbelief.

Luna sighed in resignation. “I know, I was trying to stay positive… Best case scenario, he comes to with a LOT of questions, but is otherwise alright.”

“And the worst case scenario?” Twilight asked uncertainly.

“Insanity is curable, but it is especially difficult with those who have Aeon level powers,” Luna said, her eyes never leaving the quietly twitching alien. “At the moment, all we can do is wait, and hope that his mind doesn’t shatter under the strain.”

“That could happen!?” Twilight asked, her voice rising by several octaves. “Can’t you-”

“What… living hot torment… was that?” a familiar voice grunted, bringing Twilight’s attention back to the human as he slowly got back to his feet.

Celestia quickly looked him over, then gave him a comforting smile. “Oh, good. You're still with us. I thought for a se-”

“Don’t change subject!” The ~human~interjected, pointing his finger towards the night sky. “How you control moon? Control sun!? Sun huge! Lots pull influence! How not pull planet out orbit!? For matter, how make go faster than light!? Nothing go faster light! Even if star close and small, still mean go many, many time faster! Yet light reach here as if sun only lightning bug in sky! How!?

“Calm down, take a deep breath,” Luna said, holding her hoof out in a placating gesture. “We-”

“No! Crazy! You all crazy! I crazy! Must be pad room, doctor look at like crazy, trying see what medicine work heal!” ~Alex~ started to babble, pacing back and forth, waving his hands around as if he were swatting flies.

“~Alex,~ you have to-” Twilight started to say, but whatever she was trying to convey was drowned out as the ~human's~ words became more and more frantic.

“Valiant Lady! I still here! Doctor, use better medicine! Still hope bring out!” ~Alex~ shouted towards the night sky.

“What do we do?” Twilight asked, her worry mounting as she watched the alien grow more and more demented.

Before either princess could respond, one of the guards, a Sergeant Fair Weather if Luna remembered correctly, stepped forward from his post with a salute. “Your Highnesses, if I may?”

“Sergeant, I did not realize you had a translation spell,” Luna said, raising her eyebrow ever so slightly.

“I do not. But I’ve seen this before, and I think I know what to do,” the Sergeant said, never dropping his salute.

“If you think you know how best to handle this, then please.” Princess Celestia moved to the side as she cast the translation spell on the Sergeant. “I implore you, employ your expertise.”

Sergeant Weather gave her a nod, then took off to fly next to the incoherently shouting ~human.~

“What if I dead!? I dead, none this happen, just hallucination as mind slow falls out existence! Or this eternal torment! Or Waiting Torment! Not heaven, not make enough sense. Clear if-”

Suddenly, the ~human’s~ ramblings came to a screeching halt as the soldier next to him put his hoof behind ~Alex’s~ head, and calmly, but firmly, struck him with an upwards motion, making an audible thump as the soldier’s hoof made contact with the ~human's~ skull.

The action was so unexpected that it left everyone there completely speechless.

Including the ~human.~

“Get your head in the game, colt! We have lives to save!” The Sergeant bellowed in ~Alex’s~ ear.

Instead of setting off the ~human,~ or causing him to curl up in terror as Celestia had initially thought, the human slowly straightened up, reached behind his head, and rubbed the probably sore spot, all while looking at the guard with a confused glare. “You not related Bright Hostage, are you?”

“You got your head on straight, then?” Sergeant Fair Weather asked, giving the human a flat look.

“Y-Yes, sorry. Thank for that, by way. I need that,” ~Alex~ said as he gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry that… you little… 'show,’ caught off guard.”

“It is quite alright. We understand if you feel a little overwhelmed, and would like to continue this at another time,” Celestia said, quickly recovering from her shock.

“No… no, It okay, I need know this... If this really happening, I need understand before explode,” Alex said as he slowly sunk to his rump, his back to the tower wall. He then looked up at the two Alicorns, pure wonder in his eyes. “How were you do that? You certain you not Gods? Or at least draconequus?”

Celestia gave a double take at this. “How… how do you know of Discord?”

The human just looked even more confused. “What 'Chaos Note?’”

Before this could go any further, Twilight stepped forward, her hoof held up in a 'wait’ gesture. “Wait a minute. He probably means a creature in his mythology that is similar to Discord, instead of an actual draconequus.”

Luna smiled and nodded. “You’re probably right, Twilight Sparkle.” She then turned back to the human, a curious expression on her face. “While I would like to hear of this myth, we will have to do so later, once you have learned our language. For now, let us concentrate on the matter at hoof.”

~Alex~ nodded his head in agreement. “Yes... please, let deal with thing can’t understand. Are you gods?”

“We are not, of that we are certain,” Luna said as she settled down next to him. “We are older than most, heartier than most, and more powerful than most, but we can hardly claim the mantle of godhood. We are not immortal, we are not all knowing, and we are certainly not infallible.”

“Then… how you able do that?” ~Alex~ asked, pointing again towards the night sky.

“It is complicated, though I feel you will not let us go until you get a thorough answer,” Celestia said with a smile. “Know that during your little episode, many of the facts that you listed were correct: Nothing can travel faster than light.”

* * *

“Sir, I've finished running my scans on the star and moon; I’ve found something.” Lieutenant Talian said with a salute.

Hazalk leaned forward, his antenna twitching with interest. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

“It… well, there are still a lot of things I can’t even begin to explain, but at least we know one thing: The star wasn’t moving.”

Hazalk twitched one of his antenna upwards, a clear sign of curious disbelief. “Explain, lieutenant.”

“Well, sir, since this is the first time a Krin ship has seen this and not had to devote all attention to evasive maneuvers, we really had no idea what frequencies to scan, what sensors to use, or even what to look for. On a hunch, though, I ran a gravitic scan, and found that not only does the Star and Moon not exhibit any gravitational pull, but there are also holes in the fabric of spacetime where they should be.”

Hazalk leaned forward, his interest growing with every second. “So… they’re surrounded by warp fields?”

“It would certainly explain the strange gravitational distortions in the area,” Yvtil interjected as she typed a few things on her console with her uninjured hand. Technically, the commander shouldn't have been back on duty, but she refused to stay down while so many were tirelessly working to get the ship back online.

“It would. The partitioned space would twist and distort the space around it as it passed, like a fish moving through water,” Hazalk agreed.

“True, but… it’s still not quite a warp field,” Lieutenant Talian said as she adjusted a few more things at her station. “While it has many of the same properties, it is still a bit different. For instance, it only registers on the gravitic sensors. I’m not detecting any of the other obvious signs of a warp field, such as energy signatures, or a power source.”

Hazalk gave the lieutenant a flat stare, then pointed towards the star. “You’re telling me that you can’t find the red, glowing, obvious power source, no matter how hard or long you’ve been staring at it.”

Talian looked at her captain, back at the star, then back again. “...Sorry, yes I can find the… power source,” she said sheepishly. She coughed, then straightened herself as she tried to regain some composure. “What I meant to say is that I can’t find where the field is coming from. There’s no satellite orbiting the star to create it, and there is nothing our sensors can detect being transmitted to or from the star. It’s like the star itself is generating the field.”

Hazalk thought about this for a second as he rubbed his mandibles. “While that answers the question of how this, and other stars, are able to travel faster than light. It still raises more questions…” he said to himself. “Wendalaz, change course so that we run parallel to the star. I want that thing in sensor range thirty-three/eight.”

“Right away, sir,” Wendalaz said as he changed course.

“Sir, is that wise? If it comes at us-” Talian started to say, but was interrupted by her captain.

“If it comes at us, there’s no way we’d know until we were dead. It moves faster than the light it emits, so we can hardly watch as it barrels into us,” Captain Hazalk said with a dismissive wave. “I want to get as much data off of that thing as possible, and we can only do that if we keep it in range.”

“Pardon me for speaking out of turn, sir, but this still seems incredibly foolish.”

The captain's antenna didn’t twitch, betraying nothing of what he was thinking about. “Soldier, please... trust me, I know what I’m doing. Now, open a channel to the Quzin ship,” Hazalk said, straightening his uniform a little bit.

* * *

“But…” I said as I looked up into the sky. “If all you do is create a warp field and move the space around the star, how is it that the light still reaches us at roughly the same time that you move it? You’re still moving the light source faster than the light it’s producing; shouldn't it take at least a few minutes to reach us? And shouldn't it be more of a huge, flaming line it the sky that only lasts a couple of seconds?”

Evening Twinkle looked at me, a confused expression on her face. “What Twisted Scope?”

“Later, once I know the language,” I said, waving her off. “Please… just answer my question.”

Sun pursed her lips in thought, then looked up into the night sky. “Magic… change, how light work. How we perceive thing. How thing perceive us. Sun know light not reach in time, to see show right. Show not look nice, show last much shorter. So, Sun use magic, change how light travel, how we perceive light, how it reach, so it look better. Sun can be vain sometime…”

I raised an eyebrow at her, looked up at the sky, then back at her. “Wait… Assuming you mean the star and that you haven’t started talking like Elmo, you’re telling me that the sun literally has a mind of its own?

“Alex, you forget. We say everything with soul have magic,” Luna said, gently reminding me of a previous conversation. “Same go in reverse. Everything with magic, have soul. But… Well, when say sun, moon, planet have mind its own, that… true, but at same time… really not. They have mind, dream, wish, but they different from ours… Alien, slow, ageless, but at same time so, so young.”

I thought about this for a few seconds, trying to work out what she meant. “So… if the star tried to hold a conversation with me, it would act like…?”

“Best analog be small, six year old child with huge ego,” Celestia said with a barely restrained laugh. “It be quite wise when wants be, but at same time it no concept simple thing, like sleep, or time. It get petulant sometime when I say time move, but still obeys because it thing. Have soul, but no real will.”

I giggled a little, the concept somewhat funny to me. “You’re saying it whines at you when you tell it to go down sometimes?”

She thought about this, her stare a thousand miles away. “Not… exact. Hard describe, since sun no actual speak. Just emotion, passion. Like very large dog.”

“So... “ I said, as I stood up and brushed myself off. “That’s the plan, then? Use the sun as a demented tether-ball, knocking any invading bugs out of the sky? And if they’re too close for that, we smack them with the moon?”

“Exactly,” Sun said with a smile.

I gave a low whistle. “Boy, you weren’t kidding when you said that we’d have bigger problems if they destroyed your weapon…” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

* * *

“What do you mean you didn’t cause it?” Hazalk asked, both antenna raised in alarm.

Akitesh sighed in frustration. “What I mean is that the technology and ability to control the movements of a star is not unique to my people alone,” the priestess said, the slow, patient cadence of her voice showing just how close she was to losing her cool. “What I also mean is that we have to be very, very careful in how we interact with the natives and their ally below.”

This seemed to have the desired effect on the Krin captain. “Well… that actually confirms my original suspicions about them…” he grumbled to himself. “Can you…?”

Akitesh sighed a little. “No, we can’t wrestle control away from them,” she said, answering his implied question. “And even if we could, we wouldn’t. Their planet doesn’t naturally rotate, nor does it orbit the star; since it’s inside its own little pocket of space, the transitions of their days and seasons is completely manual. If we were to take control, what do you think would happen to their planet?”

The Krin nodded in understanding. “They would be wiped out in less than a week.”

Akitesh licked her lips nervously. “While it makes the situation a lot more tenuous, it still does not change our overall mission. If your former comrades attack, and manage to slip past the defensive barrier of the star, we’ll need to be ready to catch them before they can make planetfall. How are repairs coming along on your ship?”

“We managed to find and clear the virus that Ilisk's left in the satellite array, and we have enough parts to do a halfway decent patch job on the engines, but our power will still be too pitiful to provide anything meaningful, even with your strange carving tech aiding us.” His tone had a distinctly bitter quality to it. “Assuming that they don’t arrive in the next week or so, we’ll be able to provide limited support at best. Has your Speaker responded to your message, yet?”

Akitesh shook her head. “No, but that is hardly surprising. It would take a couple of days for the message to reach Vithol, and then it would take a few more days after that for the council to make its decision.”

“So, we’re looking at a few more days at least before any hope of reinforcements from your end?” Hazalk asked, his antennae drooping in disappointment.

“I’m afraid so. Even then, it will take them some time to send reinforcements to either world,” Akitesh said with a grimace. “Just… keep working on your repairs, and keep me informed.”

“Yes, Priestess,” Hazalk said, right before he cut the transmission.

Akitesh stood up from her chair, taking a second to straighten her clova, the long, sinuous tube of cloth that she wore on her serpentine lower half.

“Why didn’t you tell him about the perception anomaly?” her second voice asked as he looked up at her.

Akitesh shook her head. “That borders far too much into the spiritual, which would go against our current mandate to restrict the Krin from learning of that power,” she answered him without even looking.

“...You know they’re going to figure it out on their own eventually.”

“Yes, but hopefully we’ll be able to catch their ex-emperor and his sycophants before that happens,” Akitesh said as she slithered towards the lift. “I leave the bridge to you, Jedon. I must continue learning of our charges before our meeting in the morning.”

“As you wish, My Priestess,” the Second Voice said as his priestess left the room.

* * *

Tusk Breaker cracked a bleary, bloodshot eye. His head hurt, his tongue felt like it was two sizes too big, and his stomach was making a determined effort to turn itself inside out.

“You okay, mister?” a worried voice asked from somewhere nearby.

Tusk turned his head towards the voice, his eyes squinting against the glare of the sun above him. “What... happened last night…?

In front of him was a grey mare with blond hair and pegasus wings. She was wearing a brown coat and hat, and at her side was a mailbag, clearly marking her as a mailpony. Her eyes were a bit askew, but this fact paled in comparison to the raging hangover Tusk was experiencing.

To be honest, just the fact that she existed seemed to tick him off.

“Shove off,” he said as he unsteadily got to his hooves.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t until you move,” She said, her eyes wide as she stared up into his face.

“Why not!?” Tusk asked, thrusting his chin out belligerently.

To her credit, the gray mare didn’t even flinch. All she did was raise her hoof, pointing somewhere behind Tusk. “Because you’re blocking the mailbox.”

Tusk quickly turned around, causing his head to swim even more. He ignored it, though, in favor of staring dumbfounded at the offending mailbox, until the fact that he was in the wrong finally crossed his mind. “Oh… uh, sorry about that…” he said as he stumbled out of the way.

“Don’t worry about it,” the mare said, smiling happily as she opened the box and shoved a large envelope into the void inside. “Just make sure to get home and drink plenty of liquids! Those late nights can take a lot out of you!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Tusk said as he stumbled off in a random direction, completely unaware of the pair of glowing green eyes watching his every move from a nearby alleyway...

Author's Notes:

Hey, gang! Sorry for taking so long, but I've been doing stuff, preparing for something that I'm not going into right here. If you want to know what's happening, go check out my blog! It's not a bad thing, in fact, it's something that I couldn't be happier about! It's just going to eat a lot of my free time.

Not that I'm complaining. She can take as much of my free time that she wants!

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to get things squared away, and bring you more awesome chapters. See you guys next chapter!

EDIT: I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the cameo by everypony's favorite mailmare! You guys make Derpy sad...

Next Chapter: Chapter V Estimated time remaining: 14 Hours, 30 Minutes
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