[HICHE] ADKoPD: Episode 18, Crystals Are Denser Than Water

This title is a reference to the phrase “blood is thicker than water”, olden wisdom implying that unchosen family ties you get born stuck with are somehow more important than the bonds with friends that both parties decided to establish and maintain across the stresses of life and time. Utter nonsense. Back to the title, it’s also usually a true statement about chemistry. Well, except for ice. Water’s weird like that. Welcome, friends, to Episode 18 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – Crystals Are Denser Than Water]

Before we begin, I should tell you that early in the drafting process for this story (years ago), my laptop’s hard drive unmounted during a restart, meaning that I lost all changes to the document since the prior backup a month earlier. Victims of that loss were the complete record of entire episodes in the second half and even the order I’d put them in (I reconstructed the order on a notepad in the immediate aftermath, but to this day don’t know if it was the same), but this episode in particular lost a lot of the text and dialogue I’d thought-dumped for it. I retained the gist of things in my memory and events still follow the same original plot points, but here especially I may have neglected to write them back down. Just as a forewarning if things seem a bit sparse or missing in the draft.

With that out of the way, we open on the Gate Room with a mission that won’t happen, where Vinyl accidentally misdials the Gate, but the wrong address connects somewhere anyway, a literal million-to-one chance. When the Gate shield won’t deactivate, Time Turner is called in for tech support, quickly realizing that someone across the wormhole has gained remote control over the Atlantis computer. That someone turns out to be Spectros, another Crystal Pony city that survived the original war with the Wraith, echoing SGA’s “Progeny”. I suddenly decide to use chapters as “Spectral Shock” sees Twilight and a party of crystal ponies being ‘allowed’ to visit Spectros, featuring another six-armed layout this time emphasizing the hexagon motif, made of purple plasteel with giant pink crystal spikes at the end of each of the city’s arms and a tall tower at the center, sitting on a rocky planetoid in an asteroid belt. Much of the written content that follows is an extensive lore dump rather than story events; I’ll have to imply the general attitudes and sentiments in this summary, as a dry idea well and the unmounting kept any actual scenes demonstrating it out of the draft. Similar to Atlantis, Spectros had survived by bowing out of the Wraith war, going into hiding at about the same time to become surrounded by the large pink cloud full of Hives on the antenna station map. They had been the last two Crystal cities that hadn’t fallen to the Wraith, and both going dark had signaled the end of the conflict and a decisive victory for the Wraith, which had allowed them to act unchecked for the last 10,000 years. The Wraith never stopped looking, however, and Spectros has been bouncing around constantly to avoid being found, ‘biding their time’ so they claim. Despite their continued retreat, however, the Spectroans hypocritically gloat about their power, until a passing patrol of two Hive ships forces the city to cloak. They admit the might of the Wraith always came from insurmountable numbers, recounting how they sent their flagship, the Spectral Shadow, to attack a Wraith fleet, destroying all the Hive Ships but still somehow never making it back. And I’m sure we’ll neeeever—

After that haphazard patchwork of dialogue, we enter the lost or unwritten part of the story where the Spectroans begin overlooking Twilight to speak with Atlantis’ ‘real’ inhabitants, leading to suspicions from her that might reflect “A Canterlot Wedding”, but the Crystal Empire ponies are rather enthusiastic to finally be meeting other crystal ponies and dismiss it. Spectros is even willing to aid Atlantis against the Wraith once again, going so far as to provide them with a pristine ZPM. That was easy. However, as their conversations continue, they begin to realize that the partnerships Spectros is offering Atlantis extend only to its crystal pony legacy admissions, and are contingent on the removal of all Equestrians from the Expedition. In fact, it is framed to the Crystal Empire ponies as if the original Lanteans were cowards for abandoning the city completely and this is their chance to ‘rise to the level’ of Spectroans by joining Spectros instead. Naturally, this no longer sits too well with them, and they begin to drop their illusions of a happy reunion. Or there abouts, I haven’t quite hammered down a timeline for their wavering trust of the Spectroans vs. them telling themselves that other crystal ponies can’t be so bad, keeping in mind that they already know about Tambelon, and I absolutely don’t have any names chosen for who might be the obligatory ‘final hold-out’. It might be Amber, but she’s the only one with characterization from other episodes, so choosing her would really leave the others in the lurch.

When excusing my cliffhanger-killing back in episode 2, I referenced the anime Dinosaur King out of nowhere. Well, here’s where actually knowing about it comes into play: these new Spectroans and their city are designed after the aesthetics of the Dinosaur King season 2 villains, the Spectral Space Pirates. Oh, right, the Spectroans are evil. Did you guess that yet? I personally don’t like the whole “everyone from your past is evil now” trope in fiction, but come on, one of them is named Blood Diamond! Among the variants of the Ancients in SGA, the most notorious are the Asurans, also from the aforementioned “Progeny”, replicating nanobots who combine into humanoids that emulate the Lanteans in appearance, behavior, and even a copy of Atlantis…except that they’re villains. Spectroans are still biologically Crystal Ponies, but a rough parallel exists. They’re actually closer to some other groups of Ancients who only appear in books from after the series’ run, but no one has time to read, right? Much like the bat ponies earlier, most of the characterization of individual Spectroans came about only while writing this summary, so they don’t play very large personal roles outside of their leader, Prism Prasiolite, whose speech pattern was initially modeled off of the more-technical-than-Twilight formality of (insert nearly any Stargate alien who considers themselves advanced), and which is still prevalent even in lines I handed off to other Spectroans but is not intended to stick around in the finished version.

In the only other named chapter, “The Rough in the Diamond”, our characters finally begin to hear the ominous background music. All this time, Vinyl and Time Turner have been working on chipping away at Spectros’ hold on the Atlantis computer (yeah, that’s still in place, remember), managing to take control of the virus and use it to secretly hack Spectros’ computers and make quite the discovery. A third Crystal city had existed when Atlantis sunk itself, named Crusa’tor, but during a daring play to trap an attacking Wraith fleet with a deadly star, Spectros had dialed in and shut the city down, letting Crusa’tor fall to the same trap. As it turns out, Spectros is on a crusade to monopolize the title of Crystal Ponies, because of course they are. It also seems that these Spectroans have been using their own gene therapy to extend their lifespans and make themselves functionally immortal (the same ponies from the Wraith war still running the show today), but it’s beginning to lose effectiveness; I don’t know how this would play into the plot besides making them desperate or driving them crazy (like SG-1’s healing sarcophagus), but it’s a neat side idea. Additionally, through unwritten convenient genius, Amber realizes that the ZPM they’ve been so generously gifted is tainted with a chemical signature and (like in SG-1’s “Zero Hour”) would explode catastrophically if plugged into anything. Now knowing who they’re up against, the Expedition jumps into action with a coordinated strike.

On signal, Vinyl and Time Turner break Spectros’ hack and lower the Gate shield, tossing through the Wraith subspace communicator found in G3 Ponyville that caused the “Enemy in the Sky” incident (which has since been repaired but prevented from broadcasting) a second before Spectros kills the wormhole, which Twilight grabs and races off with, drawing Prism’s attention. In the distraction, Crystal Arrow tries raiding the Spectroan armory, but is intercepted, barely escaping with an unknown weapon installation crystal as the rest activate and swallow up Blood Diamond while expanding. Finally, as Prism corners Twilight on a balcony, Night Knight and Amber unplug the three ZPMs powering Spectros, dropping the cloak and shields and letting out the Wraith communicator’s signal, which Twilight tosses over the rail, to lead the Hive patrol straight here. “From Crusa’tor with love,” Twilight mic drops, and teleports to meet back with the others. Spectros isn’t helpless, however, as several of a grid of defense satellites activate upon the pair of Hives’ arrival, taking each other out, but a Cruiser escapes to gather the other dozen Hives searching the area. The Expedition then rushes the Spectroan Gate Room as Vinyl dials back in and Time Turner, in a very Doctor Who manner, uses the leftover virus to grab control of Spectros’ computer and use their own millennia of advances to Stargate technology to ‘reverse the polarity’ of the wormhole, switching the connection so that Spectros becomes the dialing Gate, something no facet of the Stargate franchise to my knowledge has ever contrived before. As the Expedition makes their escape, Amber ‘drops’ one of the ZPMs, and some Spectroans try to follow them through but instead meet Atlantis’ Gate shield. Prism easily realizes the ZPM left behind was their booby-trapped one as the wormhole closes, leaving the city in darkness. A fleet of every other Wraith Hive in the sector arrives at once, wiping out the rest of Spectros’ defense satellites, and begins pelting the planetoid. Refusing to let the Wraith be the ones to defeat the mighty Spectros, Prism commits Sudoku and plugs in the tainted ZPM, releasing its power all at once and clearing the nearby region of space of asteroids, Hive Ships, and Spectros alike.

In review, Atlantis has finished the day with a full complement of ZPMs they never expected to find plus a neat new toy, over a dozen Hive Ships have been destroyed, and karma finally caught up with some jerks who’ve had it coming for ages. All in all, a far happier ending than official Stargate would ever allow. And some of it was even actually scripted! I’ll stop apologizing for short or gap-filled drafts because it’ll be the same excuse from here on out: later episodes were worked on less. Join us next time for the second ‘casual stroll’ episode in “Homebound”.