Space Captain Pinkie Pie

by terrycloth

10: Crash Course

Looking back at it later, Twilight Sparkle would think that it was probably lucky that they’d hit the moon at such an oblique angle. Ditzy and Derpy had been aiming for a landing near the building on the very top of the moon, which meant that the rocky plain the Jelly Jar crashed on was very nearly horizontal. It was also somewhat lighter and fluffier than one might expect from a rocky plain, although not as soft and rubbery as a moon made out of cheese would have been.

But even after the pegasi realized the danger and tried to fly away from the onrushing moon instead of towards it, the closing velocity was still several hundred miles per hour. The bottom of the Jelly Jar plowed into a fluffy field of moondust and sheared off, and explosive decompression sucked out the contents of both halves and swirled them around in a brief whirlwind of broken wood, flailing ropes, blue leaves, and far too little air. The torque from the impact slammed Ditzy and Derpy into the ground, leaving a pair of Pegasus-shaped craters in the dust, and the half of the jar they were still chained to flew over them and shattered against a rocky ridge, spraying broken glass across the landscape.

The tiny purple force field bubble Twilight put up around herself and Pinkie Pie bounced off the ridge, skipped across the field of broken glass, and buried itself in another drift of moondust. Twilight dropped the bubble shield to try to get her bearings, and got a face full of freezing dust instead, leaving her blind, deaf, freezing, and of course unable to breathe.

Pinkie Pie grabbed Twilight’s mane in her teeth and yanked her head up into the open, but she still couldn’t see. Twilight felt a pair of firm hooves yank her head around and aim her horn, then a kick to her flank. The only thing she could think to do was teleport blindly, but at least she had a direction. She landed on her hooves on a rocky plain, and felt Pinkie Pie – of course she’d brought Pinkie with her – climb onto her back.

Pinkie adjusted her aim, and kicked Twilight in the flank three more times. *Flash* Dust. *Flash* Dust. *Flash* Air!

Pinkie Pie gasped loudly, sucking in as big of a breath as she could manage. Twilight tried to breathe, and mostly ended up coughing. She felt dizzy, woozy, everything hurt, and she collapsed on a cold metal floor and may or may not have passed out for a few minutes.

“Where?” she managed to croak, once she was pretty sure that she was awake for good. That brought on another coughing fit.

“Moon pony central,” Pinkie Pie said happily. SHE wasn’t coughing, although she was a little hoarse. “Oh my Celestia, Twilight! Look at this moon dust! We’re glowing!”

“Still can’t see,” Twilight managed between coughs, rubbing at her eyes with her hooves, but there was too much dust caking her face, and she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyelids. Pinkie pulled her to her feet, and carefully led her over to a basin set high in the wall. The controls were odd, but by poking at random stuff they managed to trigger a stream of warm water and wash out Twilight’s eyes. She blinked the last of the dust out, and took a look around.

It was a kitchen for giants. That was the first impression. There were cabinets, a countertop with a sink, a fridge, and what might have been a toaster oven, all at about 200% normal scale. There was a table towering so high that the ponies could almost have stood up under it without hitting their heads, with precarious adult-sized high-chairs arranged around it haphazardly.

And like Pinkie had said, the room was lit by the two ponies, the moon dust worked into their fur giving off a soft pink and purple light that left the room just bright enough to see. Despite the lack of light, the room felt alive – it was chilly, but there was still some heat, and a faint breeze that smelled like lightning. The fridge gave off a low buzzing sound, and the floor vibrated just beneath their range of hearing. Not to mention the running water.

“You were awesome, Twilight!” Pinkie Pie said, poking around in the cupboards. She had to brace her hooves and yank to get each one open – some force tried to hold them closed. Maybe magnets. “You got us here in ten seconds flat! You’re as fast as Rainbow Dash!”

“I screwed up,” Twilight Sparkle said, sitting down heavily and letting her muzzle droop. “I forgot the sunscreen, almost flew us into the sun, and had Ditzy and Derpy in charge of landing? And now we’re trapped Celestia-knows where…”

“Are you sure?” Pinkie Pie asked, nosing through box after box of tiny white packets labeled in some alien language. “We’re on the moon, so it seems like more of Luna’s area. Luna-knows where doesn’t really flow off the tongue, though.”

“I’d settle for Rainbow-knows where,” Twilight said. “We just left her there!”

“So let’s go find her!” Pinkie Pie said. “Lead the way!”

Twilight looked around. There were at least two things that looked like doors, although there was no sign of a doorknob on either of them. “I think I’ve done enough leading for this trip,” she said, looking up with determination. “This whole idea is crazy, and I was crazy to think I was crazy enough to make sense of it. No, Pinkie Pie, from now on, you’re in charge.”

Pinkie Pie stared at her, and blinked. “Wasn’t I already?”

“What?” Twilight asked, pulling her head back in surprise.

“Who did you think was in charge?” Pinkie Pie asked, screwing up her face. “Rainbow Dash?”

“Well… it doesn’t matter,” Twilight Sparkle said, smiling. “You’re in charge now. What’s our next course of action, Captain Pinkie Pie?” She pulled her hoof up to her forehead in a salute.

Pinkie Pie nodded. “We’ve got to locate Lieutenant Dashie. She’s our ticket home! So lead on, Expendable Ensign Sparkle.”

“Ensign?” Twilight asked, with mock outrage.

Pinkie Pie looked to the side and said, “I had to demote you after the sunscreen thing. That was just embarrassing.”

===

One of the two doors opened as they approached, letting the two gingerly make their way down a terrifying hallway that curved rather quickly out of sight. Pipes in the walls gurgled and hissed, and there were tiny loops of unknown purpose strung in chains along the walls, ceiling, and floor, along with decorations made out of some transparent material that wasn’t glass, and more writing in the spidery moon pony script. There were also several more doors, although none of them opened automatically when Twilight approached.

“I could teleport past one,” Twilight Sparkle offered, standing in front of a door, which glowed along with her horn as she tried to push, pull, or slide it open, to no effect. There was a little give, but it felt like it was locked or latched, and she didn’t think tearing the doors off their hinges was the best way to make new friends.

“That would be kind of rude,” Captain Pinkie said, shaking her head. “Besides, if Rainbow was locked in one of those rooms she’d be screaming and banging on the walls. You don’t hear any screaming or banging, do you?”

Twilight stopped for a second and listened, but while there was plenty of noise, none of it sounded like it was trying to get their attention. “I just don’t like this,” Twilight said. “That one door opened when we approached – it could just be enchanted to open for anypony, but none of the other doors are opening for us. It reminds me of Canterlot Castle – only a few public places, with everything else mysteriously locked down.”

“You don’t like Canterlot?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Didn’t you grow up there?”

“I don’t like walking through deserted hallways in a building that is obviously not abandoned,” Twilight said. “Where are the moon ponies? We’re not exactly being stealthy. Why haven’t they showed up to welcome us, or at least arrest us?”

“I can think of one reason,” Pinkie Pie said, the corners of her mouth turning up as her eyes went wide with glee. “Surprise party!” Her face suddenly fell. “Oh no! If I know it’s coming the surprise will be ruined! Twilight! Quick! Erase my memory!”

Twilight was about to say ‘no’, but Pinkie Pie was in charge. So she turned and rested her horn against Pinkie Pie’s forehead, and erased the last thirty seconds of her memory with a quick spell.

“What?” Pinkie Pie asked, suddenly confused.

“Emergency memory spell,” Twilight said. “Come on, Captain. We need to find one of these doors that’ll open for us.” She trotted down the hallway, with Pinkie following after her with her usual bouncing gait. She was almost surprised when one of the doors they passed actually did slide open, and she and Pinkie stopped and peeked inside.

It looked empty – just another giant table, and half a dozen of the odd chairs. “No Rainbow here,” Twilight said. “No surprise party either.”

“What? We’re expecting a surprise party?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Oh my Celestia! That must be why we haven’t seen anypony! They’re planning a surprise party for us!” She lept into the room, and stood there posing, waiting for the moon ponies to leap out and greet her.

“Pinkie…” Twilight started, only to recoil and cover her eyes as the room suddenly lit up with a blinding blue glow. The far wall was now a portal to an unfamiliar snowy mountaintop, with weird asymmetrical clouds that any weatherpony would be ashamed to set in the sky streaming past impossibly fast. Twilight held a hoof up to shield her eyes, and braced herself for a wave of cold air that didn’t come.

“Neat!” Pinkie Pie said. “A movie is almost as good as a surprise party!” She hopped up onto the table, and started making shadow puppets, only to stop in confusion as the shadows failed to form.

“Right. A movie,” Twilight said, and approached the screen, looking around to try to see the projector. The only shadows she saw in the room seemed to be cast by the light from the wall itself, and even standing directly in front of it, close enough to touch, no part of the screen was shadowed by her body. It was like the wall was the screen and projector all at once – or a portal.

So she touched it. Her hoof made a ‘clack’ that sounded like hitting wood more than anything else, and the wall went dark.
Well, mostly dark. The background was actually a slowly roiling pattern of brown and black, while bright gray letters appeared one by one, spelling out a message – in Equestrian.

WELCOME STAR SAILOR PONIES
to the star ship “here to Help”
is Your language
PHONETIC or IDEOGRAPHIC

Twilight Sparkle took a step back, glancing back as she bumped into the table, to see Pinkie Pie waving her hooves around wildly trying to find the projector that probably didn’t exist. Since her captain was occupied, Twilight poked a hoof at the part of the picture with ‘PHONETIC’ written on it. She paused at the last second, as the screen seemed to react to her hoof’s approach by extruding a large rectangular block with the word in the middle, although closer examination revealed that it was an optical illusion caused by false shadowing around the edges. Moving it over to ‘IDEOGRAPHIC’ had the same response.

“Well, it’s both,” Twilight said, and pressed her hooves against the screen on both words. The ‘clack’ of her hooves was echoed by a ‘click’ from behind her. Both ponies turned to look, but nothing else in the room had changed.

Pinkie Pie looked back at Twilight, then pointed past her, at the screen. “Look, Twilight! A party game!”

please move these cutie marks
in the right boxes

Underneath the slightly garbled instructions were pictures of two boxes, one above the other, labeled ‘phonetic’ and ‘ideographic’, as well as falsely-shadowed squares with letters in them to each side. The left side had ‘T’, the right side ‘pony’. Pinkie Pie leapt off the table and pressed her hoof against ‘pony’, sliding it into the ‘phonetic’ box. A scraping noise sounded behind them as it moved.

“No, Pinkie,” Twilight said, sliding ‘pony’ into the other box. “The letters that mean things go in the bottom box, letters that sound like things go in the top.”

“Well, duh,” Pinkie Pie said. “I was just wondering if mister screen was smart enough to tell if I was doing it right.”

“I think mister screen is trying to learn our language,” Twilight said. “Why don’t we humor him?” She slid ‘T’ into the top box, and another pair of symbols appeared. Once they’d sorted all the letters, the screen went blank again, then a new set of instructions spelled out letter by letter.

Please pronounce the Following phrases

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” Twilight said, obediently, careful to watch her diction.

“Pony!” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully, as the single symbol appeared, replacing the long sentence.

“Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb?” Twilight said, squinting at the screen a bit confused.

“Everypony!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing happily as three pony symbols appeared next to each other. “Although you should really stack them like this –“ she tried to slide the third symbol over the top of the other two, but this game apparently wasn’t set up to let her move the symbols around. “You only write them next to each other when you’re typing…”

Then the screen cleared, and it was Twilight’s turn. “Warning, excessively long response detected. Please indicate the beginning and end of the relevant phonemes,” she read, then both ponies waited expectantly for the screen to give them their next sentence.

Nothing happened for about a minute. Twilight Sparkle noticed a strange squiggly bit under the words, and leaned down to try to make sense of it, while Pinkie Pie started poking around the edges of the screen. “If you broke mister screen, I’m going to have to demote you again, Ensign,” Pinkie said sternly.

An ‘X’ symbol briefly lit up in the top right corner of the screen, right under Pinkie’s hoof, and then the game was replaced by a chaotic mess of boxes and symbols and lines and circles and squiggly lines, all moving. The only comprehensible part of the chaos was the part that instantly attracted both ponies’ attention, as they leaned in close to a moving picture of their lunar crash site, and shouted, “Rainbow!”

Comments

[Rowyn]

Yay! They found Dashie! Or at least a monitor hooked up to a camera that's on her.

The language-learning game was cute. n.n

[LittleSallyDigby]

SHE wasn’t coughing, although she was a little hoarse.

I can't believe you did that.