//
pat reon.com/blacklares
Happy New Year!!!
I finished writing it literally at 00:08 so treat it as my new years gift to all of you haha!
So Hope you like it and like always EEEENJOY!!!
//
*KNOCK KNOCK*
"Starfall! We know you're in there! We understand you got really excited about your new idea, but you need to rest sometime!" The voice of Rainbow Dash resounded through the Lab, waking Starfall from his daydream caused by the myriad of ideas he had for implementing a special type of magic.
Ever since getting his hooves on the Storm Steel as he decided to call it, Starfall was trying to reverse the process of transforming magic into heat. He was hoping to make the heat change into magic, but despite sitting in his lab and thinking for hours on end, he was yet to figure out a viable method to achieve such outcome.
He sighed to himself in disappointment and opened the door, finding a few of his girls standing there and looking at him in annoyance.
He just gave them a sheepish smile and scratched the back of his head.
"Sorry about that girls. I just found myself with a magical problem that I couldn't solve and it was driving me Apples..." He explained, receiving an exasperated look from all of them.
"You know very well that you won't figure anything if you don't get some rest Love. Let me see your research, maybe I could figure something out, while you sleep. Is that fine?"Twilight asked from the side, and Starfall didn't have much reason to refuse her.
"Alright Twily. You should find everything you need in the notes inside. I think I subconsciously made it easy to understand in case you were to join me." Starfall said while his eyes were slowly drooping. So much for superpony physique...How long was he awake anyway?...
___________
Twilight looked at her beloved Starfall with an exasperated worry. How many times were they going to have that discussion... One of these days he was going to get hurt from all this lack of sleep...Well, not like she didn't do the same from time to time...At least they were past the point where they needed to convince eachother to rest, and now the only thing needed was a word. In a way, it was a nice way to depend on eachother...
Twilight shook her head. It wasn't the time to think about unnecessary things.
Her eyes followed Starfall's shaky Hoofsteps as Rarity, Rainbow and Pinkie Pie, led the Stallion upstairs towards his bedroom. She almost wanted to join them and cuddle, but the massive amount of notes in the room in front of her was like a treasure trove of stuff that Starfall wrote while half conscious and excited about a new topic. Knowing him, he probably solved a bunch of obscure magical mysteries loosely connected to the topic, while trying to figure out this newest idea...
_____________
Twilight stood there almost petrified as her eyes locked on the few, on first sight innocent, floating paper sketches.
While reading through his notes, Twilight learned of his recent acquirement of a weird magic absorbent metal. She was shocked to discover that he was actually planning an espionage mission into the Storm Kingdom, As she had barely any knowledge regarding the place And that mostly from his old journals, yet from his notes she could tell he knew a lot about them, and they were apparently a real, potential threat to Equestria!
But she knew Starfall was a bit paranoid about protecting their country so it wasn't surprising enough for her to freeze in shock.
What shocked her were the designs on the paper...
An armour. A shield, and even a Sword! Some of the ideas scratched away, yet all of them being completely unfamiliar to her design wise, yet at the same time all looking extremely good in their own way.
The armours all looked interesting, but it was clear Starfall mostly favoured the one he called a Scalemail.
Then there were the shields. She could see the inspiration Starfall took from the legendary Flash Magnus and his fire resistant shield. It was clear he wanted to make one that was even better than the shield from the legends.
And as for the Swords...It didn't seem like he really put much importance on them. it was more like choosing between the sword and the shield, since both could stop the magic if they were made from the Storm Steel, but a shield protected a wider area while a sword had the additional ability to cut things...
But this all came down to whether he could figure out a way to reverse the effect of the metal. Because otherwise, the armour would boil the pony wearing it, while the shield could only sustain so much magic attacks at the same time before melting, and whatever mechanism he'd use to actually wield it would fail long before that.
Twilight wasn't sure why Starfall wanted to make himself an armour, but knowing her coltfriend, He was preparing for the worst case scenario.
She decided to just accept it and get into what he wrote on his ideas regarding the metal. Maybe she could figure something out before he wakes up...
_____________
Starfall woke up in the morning and instantly felt that something wasn't right.
He threw off the covers and gently avoided waking up the three mares that apparently decided to spend the night at his place.
While he felt pretty well rested, the bad premonition couldn't leave him, so he Instantly descended into a special section of the Lab.
an inconspicuous wall opened automatically, and instantly closed behind him the moment he stepped inside where a bunch of crystal screens displayed multiple places of interest scattered around Equestria.
His eyes instantly locked onto something out of the ordinary.
Cerberus has disappeared from it's place in Tartarus!
He could see the Dark cave and the spot where the large three headed dog usually rested, and now it was empty, which meant that it was on its way to Ponyville.
That on itself wasn't the problem though.
The problem was the empty cage further back, in the Maximum security part of Tartarus...
Lord Tirek broke free from his prison...
_________
Starfall got out of the bathroom and sighed to himself in relief.
It took them an entire day to find the Cerberus, and then another few hours to bring it back to its place in Tartarus.
He needed to ask Fluttershy to help calm the three headed dog down, and then together the two of them went on a small adventure, leading the creature back towards the dark forest where the entrance to the place was located.
He wouldn't go looking for Tirek yet, since there was a bunch of other problems that were quickly approaching Equestria, and he knew that the Centaur wouldn't get much if any power for a few months at least...
For now he would deal with one problem at a time... Starting with the one currently wasting herself away in the lab despite having just scolded him for doing exactly the same not even two days ago...
___________
"But I am so close! I-I'm sure if I only think for a few more hours I'll have the answer Starfall! Please Just..." Twilight tried to stop the Stallion as he levitated her out of the pile of notes that looked slightly bigger and somehow much better organized... he really needs to do research with Twilight more often. She's amazing in all this organisation stuff. But who would then stop them from getting too absorbed in their work...
____________
They spend almost two days afterwards trying to figure out how to reverse the effect of the metal together, but in the end they finally reached the conclusion that even if the process is theoretically possible, it wasn't something they could discover in the foreseeable future. Starfall really hoped to just create some kind of magic formation that would transform heat into magic, but he got stopped by the basic magical principles he was taught in the magic academy, and despite his best efforts, he was yet to figure out a way to bypass them.
But despite the outcome of their research leaving much to desire, he wasn't really disappointed, because he still learned a lot, and had a lot of fun brainstorming with Twilight, and Whooves who came to help them from time to time by giving some suggestions from another, more mechanical perspective...
____________
Starfall was currently standing in his metal workshop slash alloys and compounds research wing, forging in the earnest, trying to form the unwieldy metal blob into a coherent shape...
After a while of contemplation, Starfall postponed the idea of making himself an armour, and decided to go with the shield for the time being. Since he didn't have a viable method to compensate for the overheating of the metal, he'd simply keep the metal away from his body at all times.
As for how he would actually levitate a shield that he couldn't affect with magic...Some ceramic elements installed in the back of the shield would do just fine as a sort of magic "handle".
It took him a good part of the day, between saturating the metal with his magic to heat it up, and then beating it up with a power hammer he made using a mix of technology and runes, to finally finish working on the shield. It wasn't anything fancy...well...that's a lie... Starfall very much tried to make it look pleasing to the eye.
Though in the end, it still ended up just like a simple metal disk with some engraving that suspiciously resembled Starfall's Cutie Mark.
Starfall heated the shield up before quickly dropping it into a tub of oil, eliciting a lot of hissing and fire. He disregard it through, his protective spells keeping him from getting hurt, and waited for the perfect moment to take the shield out of the oil.
He had made a few previous trials before this moment to see whether he could temper the metal, and as far as he could discover until now, this was the best optimal time and temperature he needed to keep up in order to achieve the greatest durability.
When he finally took the shield out of the oil, he noticed with a small grin, that the shield received a noticeable rainbow like colouration over its surface.
He might not use the shield much, and he didn't want to rely on it too much since he didn't want to be associated with Captain America or something, but having another mean to protect himself from all those potential magical attacks in the future would certainly be something he wouldn't pass because of wanting to remain original...
And seems like he finished just in time, because not long after he was done with the last details to his first technically non-magical creation, the doors burst open with Spike running inside carrying a message scroll.
"Dad! It's a message from the Princess...Uhh...I mean aunt Celestia! She's asking for your assistance in Canterlot! Apparently some kind of threat appeared recently and the entire Canterlot went on lockdown or something!" The little dragon gave Starfall the scroll which he quickly read through, quickly recognising what was happening.
It was finally time...
...For the wedding in Canterlot...
...but first... beating up an army...