/-/
/ The Encounter/ Story: Voltage/ by PowerLine/-/

Chapter 1: The Encounter

I knew I was special. I just was never truly sure how special. In my early days, I had always been superior in my magic class. I could conjure up a lightning storm the size of Canterlot in an instant, and my magic has gotten much stronger since then. I nearly destroyed my hometown, Fillydelphia, last summer. Even my little brother, Volt, had been appalled by the accident. Volt normally isn't surprised by things like that, but this time was an unusual instant. I don't live in Fillydelphia anymore. My family wasn't the type that liked the big city. We prefer a more kind of country life.
Just then, my mom burst in. "Surge! Did you finish the work you had to do! You know your dad wouldn't be pleased if you didn't finish!"
This morning, before my dad left for work, he told me that he wanted me to practice generating power for the house. Every so often, he wants me to practice something like this, just in case I need to take his place at his work. I don't have time to tell you where he works now, so I'll tell you later.
"Sorry mom, I haven't had time to do that yet. I'll get to it in about an hour."
"An HOUR? The house will lose power if it isn't charged in 15 minutes!"
"Look, can't you see I'm trying to do some paper work?"
"You won't be able to do that work if you don't charge the house now!"
Just then, the light that I was using started to flicker. I switched off the light, stretched, and got up to go to my basement. As I went down the stairs, I had noticed that the generator was much quieter than it usually was. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I walked towards the generator. The generator is cylinder-shaped, about 10 feet tall, and 5 feet in length. If you ever needed to, you could take it apart and transport it, which is what we did when we moved from Fillydelphia. I stopped in front of the generator antenna, and concentrated. SSSHHHHHHHKK. The electricity sparked off my horn in a blaze towards the antenna. When the electricity made contact, the generator immediately began to get louder. I had to be sure not to miss or redirect the electricity, or it could cause the generator to explode. When it was back to normal, I slowly stopped giving it power, and walked back upstairs.
As I walked up the stairs, I thought about when my dad would be home from his work. He works for the Equestrian Power Company. There are only 7 others that work next to him, and these 8 all help generate power for all of Equestria. They all have to be extremely experienced in their work area, and have to be able to make 200,000 watts of energy without getting tired. I could easily make up the same amount of energy, but it's nothing to brag about. I knew one day I would need to take his place as a generator, so I have to practice what he does every day. It really isn't a tough job now, but when I was younger, I never would have been able to do what I do now.
I went back to my room to finish my paper work, and when I got into my room, I turned on the light. Although, the light didn't turn on. I tried unplugging the power and plugging it back in, but that still didn't work. After a while, I was fed up with why the light wasn't working, so I went to the generator to see why it wasn't working. When I opened the door to the basement, I didn't hear the generator at all. All I heard was metal hitting the floor. I started to walk down the stairs when I heard someone say,
"SHHHH! Someone is coming!"
I had stopped walking entirely, and started to breath very slowly. The voice I heard was very raspy and high-pitched and didn't seem to be a Pony, Pegasus, or Unicorn. Heck, I hadn't heard anything quite like it. Then I heard another voice say,
"Don't worry, Grey, it's nothing. Just help me get this stuff off of here."
"B..b..but Blade, I swear... I thought I heard something this time."
"The family that lives here isn't supposed to return from their vacation for a while remember?"
"Maybe you're right, but what if they came home early?"
CLLAANNK.
"CAREFUL. If the Queen wants to use this machinery correctly it has to be intact. Just keep working. We need to take as little time as possible."
What did they need our generator for? How did they know that we had been on vacation? These questions didn't matter. I needed to deal with these guys. I started quietly walking down the stairs, and looked around the corner to see who or what it might be. I saw two figures that looked somewhat like swiss cheese monsters. They had large green eyes, and had holes in their hooves, wings, and horns. One was wearing a metal helmet and metal armor, so I suspected that he had more power than the other. They literally looked like overgrown insects. They were taking apart our generator, and loading it into some kind of saddlebag that clearly couldn't fit an entire generator. I started to charge my horn, nothing that would mortally hurt them, but merely stun them for a few hours. I leaped around the corner, and in their surprise, I stunned the one without armor. I ran over to the armored one, tackled him, and threw him into the wall. He yelped in pain as he hit the wall, and he hissed at me. He left a huge dent in the wall, but nothing I couldn't fix. He tried to get back up, but was having trouble. Clearly in pain, he started to charge his horn. The glow around his horn began flickering, and he fainted. I walked over to him, and poked him to make sure I didn't need to stun him too. Neither of them expected anything, thanks to the armored guy that thought I was 'nothing'. I opened up the saddlebag, and found that all of the pieces to the generator they took apart were shrunk. As I took them out, they grew back to normal size. I put the generator back together and fixed the wall without any trouble from the mutant insects.
Once I was finished, I sat and thought about what I should do to these monsters. I had a few options; to turn them in to the authorities, hold them hostage and interrogate them, or take them to the nearby librarian to see if she knew what they were. If I took them to the authorities, I couldn't be sure if they could handle the power of these guys. If I held them hostage, they probably wouldn't tell me anything. It seemed like this wasn't in their plan. If I took them to the librarian, she could tell me what to do with them. So I decided just to take them to the librarian. I loaded the monsters into the infinite saddlebag and put the bag on my back. They were heavier than what I thought they would be, but that only fueled my curiosity even more. I ran upstairs and left my house to go to the Library.