AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 262
ARES III SOL 259
Standing outdoors on Mars without a spacesuit helmet on is almost instant suicide, if you don’t have a magical unicorn with you.
The five of them stood together, more tightly together than they’d stood outside the rover for many days now, just outside the cave farm’s airlock. A small tank of compressed oxygen plus a battery-powered force field prevented them all from dying a short but excruciatingly painful death as they removed their helmets.
“I still think this is stupid,” Fireball said.
Spitfire ignored him, taking off her own helmet. Stupid it might be, but it was close enough to a tried and true tool of teambuilding that she was more than willing to try it. And they’d spent an hour discussing the best way to do it, before committing to this particular method.
The email from Dr. Shields- the last message before Dr. Kapoor ordered email and chat shut down for several days for a long data transmission- had referred to it as a generally discredited therapy from over forty years before, which had attained fad status and then just as quickly died out in favor of more effective means. Their case, Shields had said, was one of the rare cases in which it might actually be effective.
Primitive scream therapy, is how Starlight Glimmer had translated the name.
“I can keep this up for about ten minutes,” Starlight said. “Cherry, that means one language only, okay?”
Cherry snorted, then stepped forward to the edge of the force field. She took a deep breath.
Spitfire, flinching ahead of time, put her forehooves over her ears.
“BUCK YOU, YOU MOTHERBUCKING ROADAPPLE SOUFFLE!”
Primitive Scream Therapy was supposed to be wordless shouting and roaring, but most of the castaways had words for Mars. Cherry had chosen to speak them in her native tongue, which made up for its relative lack of truly obscene words with a host of rhyming slang and euphemisms.
“WE’RE FIT TO HURL WITH YOUR COWCHIPS, YOU MOTHERLESS FOAL OF A DIAMOND-DOG! I CAN’T WAIT TO SCRAPE YOUR TARTARUS-BEDAMNED MEADOW-MUFFINS OFF MY SHOES! AND I’D DARN WELL CUT OFF MY LEFT TEAT FOR A CHANCE, JUST ONE BUCKING CHANCE, TO KICK YOU IN THE PONY-FRUIT! IF YOU HAD ANY, YOU HEAD-BUCKED FLANK-KISSING CARROT-SUCKING SON OF A SNAKE!”
The echoes faded almost instantly. Outside the force field, Mars’s thin air sucked up sound and killed it.
“Not bad,” Fireball said in English. “But now I show you.”
Fully grown dragons are as large as mid-size passenger planes. When they roar, birds fall from the sky mid-flight, stunned by the sheer impact of sound.
Fireball had a century or more before he could expect to reach that stature, but his single, wordless roar, accompanied by the largest burst of flame he’d had in months, would have been quite respectable even in the company of his elders…
… had it not ended in a choking fit as the flame ran out mid-roar, leaving black choking smoke instead.
While the others were coughing and waiting for the pony EVA life support to clear the smoke from the air bubble, Spitfire decided to take her turn. She couldn’t compete with a dragon roar- no pony could, not even Bulk Biceps, who had taken vocal lessons from a couple of dragons.
But that wasn’t what the exercise was about, was it? It was about taking all your frustration, all your anger and grief and fear, and throwing it at the disembodied world, rather than at your friends. Spitfire’s wordless shout, half-growl, half-bellow, did that just fine.
Then it was Mark’s turn. He accomplished as much as Cherry’s rant with a single cry of, “FUCK!!!” Remarkably, the echo of that one word lingered a little longer than Fireball’s roar.
And, finally, came Starlight, who had been waiting, listening, and concentrating, standing behind the others the whole while. Now they looked at her, at the dark green glow around her eyes, at the heat-haze rising from her body.
There was a sudden grab for helmets and a scramble for the outer edges of the air bubble.
The shout came out slowly, building from a soft beginning to a literally earth-shaking roar amplified by the canned magic flowing through Starlight Glimmer’s body. Clusters of dark purple and black crystals erupted from the hillside in a rough cone extending forward from Starlight’s body, ripping downslope for over a hundred meters.
And then the glow faded, and Starlight’s normal voice said, “I feel better now. Help me on with my helmet, please?” After a moment, when Mark reached for one of the little crystals called forth from the Martian soil, she warned, “Oh, and don’t touch those. It could be really bad.”
And the echoes lingered.
Some say, long after the fact, they linger yet.
Back inside the cave, the crew gathered around Dragonfly’s cocoon and listened to Mark read from The Hobbit of Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug.
“I know some dragons like this,” Fireball muttered. “Old fatheads. Love sound of voice. When I was your age blah blah blah.”
Mark, setting the computer down for a moment, asked, “You think Smaug’s an old fogey? ‘Get off my lawn you damn kids’ and like that?”
“Kinda,” Fireball said. “Must be old and sick if his scales fall out. No dragon have bare skin ever.”
“Yeah,” Spitfire agreed. “Take it from a pony who knows. Dragons don’t have soft spots.”
“Dern right,” Fireball nodded, his English taking on a Southern- or more accurately a Hazzard County- accent.
“What do you think of Bilbo?” Mark asked.
“I think Bilbo is toast without ring,” Fireball rumbled. “Angry dragons don’t do chit-chat. Should have run.”
“But if Bilbo ran, he wouldn’t get the information the dwarves needed to kill Smaug,” Starlight Glimmer said. “That’s the whole point of this trip, isn’t it?”
“Am I the only one,” Cherry Berry asked, “who thinks the dwarves have been pretty useless all this time? If Gandalf isn’t saving them, Bilbo is. Is Bilbo going to be the one who saves them?”
Mark grinned. “There have been a couple different movies made of this book. The first one had a line at the end of this bit, not in the book. The dwarves congratulate Bilbo on living, and he says, ‘Thank you, but I would greatly prefer a more practical response- in other words, EXTINGUISH ME!!’”
Everyone laughed, even Spitfire, who’d had squadron mates shout the exact same thing in distinctly non-funny circumstances.
It felt good, very good, to be a team again.
Note to self: Don't piss off Starlight.
"Thank you, but I would greatly prefer a more practical response- in other words, EXTINGUISH ME!!’”
-best line from the animated film.
One wonders if Starlight is related to Sombra.
I'm sure there is no downside to using magic to expel bad feelings out onto Mars' surface.
8964401. Only if she applies herself.
I wonder if this'll work.
8964401 Naaaah, Sombra isn't nearly evil enough.
8964400
I need to watch that movie again. I hardly remember any of it.
This was a good solution!
I've never screamed at a planet before, but now I kind of want to...
The day after my mom died, I went out into the wood until I came to a cliff overlooking a lake. I put my head back and just screamed. I screamed out my rage and my sorrow at a world that didn't know that the greatest light in my life had been extinguished by cancer.
It helped.
Not in some great healing moment, but it got that huge chunk of "she's gone" out of my head for awhile, and let me start functioning as a person again. From then on it was a matter of just functioning one hour at a time, until the day was over. Then one day at a time until the week was over and so on, and so on. I needed that reset, and I think, so did Mark and the rest.
...
And what kind of geological disasters will we get from Starlight's admittedly awesome outburst? Im thinking the first Martian volcano in aeons.
8964401
Nah. As we have seen from Twilight and Celestia using it, glowy green eyes and black smoke are characteristics one exhibits when channeling dark magic. I guess the crystals come from negative emotions specifically ... best not to touch those indeed.
I'm still holding out for them reading Reaper Man.
8964464
Still, didn't Starlight give Mars even more ammunition?
Ominous. Btw, is dark magic cast from mana or from sanity? If conventional magic runs out then Starlight might go full Sombra on Mars.
Mark thought about his report to Dr Shields before typing "shout therapy worked. However we learned an even more important thing today, A pissed off, stressed out unicorn venting ALL of her frustrations at once is a VERY scary thing."
I miss the animated version of Smaug he had what i consider an actual body of a dragon. Most dragons they show in movies now where the forearms are the wings i consider Wyverns or Drakes.
I feel like Mark is almost certain to pick one of those crystals up with tongs to take back to the Hab for analysis. They're such an incredibly interesting thing, and the first indication he has of why Ponies don't consider ten meter long crystals at all unusual.
8964455
I am currently imagining Mars going "what the fuck is this shit!?" and trying to mentally backpedal away from the evil black crystals.
If tiny magic use of thrster test made Hab grinding globe circling dust storm, just how much hyper concentrated magic did Sunset put into that burst, given a simple measurement system is the length of the exhaust flare.
A rough estimate is that Starlight just lit off the equivalent of at least an SSME at full throttle.
Thats in her extrmely magical restricted enviroment.
If she had access to the full MAV battery pack, she could F1 the thing. That is, the power of a 600 plus ton thrust drive, applied to, 20 tons of MAV? On Earth, that would be escape in about 30 seconds?
Ho-ly scheisse, Starlight. Remind me to never piss you off, especially for months on end. Angry Starlight is scary Starlight.
I could pick any one part of this story I want illustrated (so far), it would be dark magic Starlight screaming.
8964610 Dumping raw magic on Mars is demonstrably not the same as firing magic thrusters on Mars. Otherwise, a lot more bad stuff would be happening inside the cave and directly around the Hab.
Yeah, not touching the crystals made of manifested negative emotions is a good idea. So is keeping dragonfly far away from those things once she's awake, since they'll be poisonous and screaming BUCK YOU! constantly.
And Sheesh Starlight, using Sombra's magic as emotional release is...well, it's certainly something. Probably nothing bad will happen from it. Probably.
As far as I am concerned, the Primal Screaming Therapy is akin to extinguish a fire with an explosion: Consume all the rage oxygen to deplete all your energy for a moment and, hopefully, let the moment of tiredness lead to peace. With proper control, I can certify that you can use that technique without actually screaming.
8964539
I know right?
Of course Glimmer uses dark magic in her release...
That said, I doubt anyone would really disagree with Cherry Berry. The dwarves in The Hobbit were singularly useless.
Uh, wasn't it established that the force field was filled with the contents from a compressed O2 tank? Surely adding an open flame in that environment would've killed them all, right?
(Or at least ignited everything flammable in the field: manes and hair)
8964767 The bubble started with O2, yes, but that was drawn down by air exchange through the pony life support systems once they all took off their helmets. So long as no one was standing in front of the dragon (which obviously they weren't), the danger was minimal.
Of course, Fireball didn't consider any of that, so he still gets marks off.
8964692 The problem with primal scream was that, though it works with some patients having anger issues, there was a time when it was recommended for practically everybody regardless of their needs. That's why it became a joke.
8964783
I suppose it's good Fireball didn't go first then, to give the suits more time to balance out the gasses, because there's no way the air exchange was instantaneous.
At least Starlight didn't bottle her rage, that would've had horrific compilations.
8964415
Starlight is one of the least evil characters on the show. Heck, I'd go as far as to say Dash is more evil then her.
8964681
I'm going to guess that the main difference is that Mars seems to really hate complex life. Firing thrusters of magic pisses Mars off because it's too complex, while just dumping raw mana on Mars it's fine with, because raw, unchanged mana is the ground state of the universe anyway (that is, the ground state within the range of simple life or a mana-battery)
Do dragons not molt in your universe?
8964843 Haven't seen last week's episode, only a couple of reviews.
8964539
that made me think of that rather lousy "dungeons and dragons" live-action movie (the first one)...
it's amusing to note that the dragons in "reign of fire" were identical except for color.
8964681 "Starlight, why are there little crystal spiders crawling around the potato plants?"
"Darnit! Sorry, Mark. We need to spray or they get everywhere. And big."
Starlight:
8964748
Sometimes Dark Magic is really good for venting Dark Emotions like Anger, Frustration, and Despair.
The Dwarves from the Hobbit Were Useless as a group of Royals seeking a Throne. Which if you think about it is exactly what they were doing.
8964584
good person that deserves a rainbow dash laughing icon you made me laugh
Shout! Shout! Let it all out!
8964408
Inb4 magical dustorm 2: electric bugaloo
8964748
her talent, remember? Her emotions do amplify magic. She drained her anger into enchanted bottle, result of that you know. Here she sprayed it all over the Mars, that's why she warned Mark not to touch it. It possible that umbral crystals have similar nature.
8965532
I imagine I would have had to not skip any episode after the season 5 finale that focused upon Glimmer to know that, so no I do not know that. That sounds like changeling magic. Ponies shouldn't be able to do changeling magic.
8965596
I recede to hope that you just emulate being willfully ignorant personality for sake of giggles.
*adds "buy more bottles" to her "to do" list*
8965608
Sorry, no. I genuinely despise Glimmer. But I'm not going to go on a long rant here about that. Kris Overstreet's skill as an author has made this story enjoyable in spite of that character's presence.
8964897
Both look like they were based on assets of same FX studio... which also made "mockumentary" about how "extinct" dragons could "work". There were a couple less known flicks that also used that model.
What? No, not in the book. They had no delusions about killing Smaug. The dwarves weren't even planning to so much as set eyes on him. They didn't even have any weapons until they stumbled on the trolls. Their plan was to grab some treasure and leave.
That's why they brought a burglar.
Of course they were. They weren't warriors in the book. They were cowardly craftsmen and tinkers.
The movie messed that up.
A lot of discussion, and confusion, centered around the magic Starlight used while screaming. I have no special insight, but I'm going to try and clear some things up.
First, this isn't "Sombra's magic" as I've heard a few call it. Remember that the first time we saw it, Celestia was the one using it. (Clip!)Granted, she did it as a demonstration for Twilight to show what it is. However, that demonstration also made it clear, these magics are tied to emotions somehow. This darker magic is tied to "hate and fear" or at least, so says Celestia. But she's a pretty trustworthy source, I think.
So it's likely this magic isn't an invention of Sombra's and certainly not unique to him. At least, I imagine a magic tied to powerful negative emotions would've been something discovered before (for example) writing, at least for a species that is born with the ability to use magic and learns it in a developmental stage.
Second, Starlight specifically pinpoints the source of her magic as something emotional. So it's only natural that on venting those negative emotions she'd generate similar crystals.
Finally, it's unlikely this will generate a storm. Though our author has already said as much. We've had two freak storms so far, both a direct cause of the pony's engines and no other magic has had any kind of similar effect. With a sample size so small we can't really say for certain, but the storms appear to be the result of some specific interaction between the engines and the Martian atmosphere.
That said, those crystals could definitely have an effect of their own, especially so close to the farm, and Dragonfly. Those crystals in the clip were shown to continue to grow once created. At the very least Celestia didn't stop them by ending the spell. She had to demolish them with a different spell. What does this mean? Who knows? Well, the author does, but I'm just throwing out the information we have to work with and trying not to speculate too much. At least not publicly.
8964869
Better get caught up! We're seeing a few new things about dragons and changelings in Season 8, as well as revelations about Starlight Glimmer and (in Grannies Gone Wild) Cherry (though it's minor for her).
So, since I'm mostly done writing out River Babble's version of the song, I'm just waiting for her to be available to approve or modify notes, harmonies/chords, and rhythms. Then we can lock that down. In the meantime, I started recording demo tracks of each part, though that will take some time as there are limited times of day I can sing at home.
Follow any updates I make to the score here: https://musescore.com/user/27997005/scores/5117933 And PM me if you'd like to observe our work on the Discord server I made.