Space Captain Pinkie Pie

by terrycloth

11: First Contact

-Hey, sweet stuff. Do you have the Equestrian language patch installed?-

-Is this really the time, Chance? She’s still out there!-

Tess peeked out from behind their overturned electric cart, which had taken them almost all the way to the crash site before a rainbow streak rammed into it and kicked it over onto its side. Neither she nor Chance had been hurt – with ponies in danger, their cybernetics had kicked their adrenals into high gear – but the attack had come too fast for them to save the clumsy vehicle.

Which had dents in the side. Horseshoe-shaped indents, in solid metal. And of course, this being a rescue mission, the two of them were unarmed and naked, unless you counted Tess’ vest, which she mostly wore for the pockets.

-I’m just saying, I think I just got some vocal data,- Chance replied.

-Probably a glitch. You should have let me program it.-

Chance looked thoughtful. -Or else they’re already on board, running the training sequence.-

Tess sent the data-link equivalent of an exasperated sigh. -Focus, Chance. Where is she?-

Chance opened a compartment on the carriage and quickly assessed which of the contents were durable and/or expendable enough to use as projectiles, while letting a pattern-matching subroutine scan the feed from the Here to Help. -She’s not in the field of view of any of the cameras,- he sent over the short-range radio, -But if they are on board the ship they could seriously hurt themselves.- He hefted a roll of vacuum tape, tossing it between his clawed, furry paws. -So time to stop messing around.-

Tess pulled back behind the barrier and stared at him.

-Make like you’re going for the victims,- he sent, peeking over the edge. -I’ve got you covered.-

-Yes. Captain.- Tess sent back, scowling as best as she could with all her orifices sealed shut against the vacuum. She leapt gracefully over the edge of the carriage and landed in the moondust, kicking up a huge spray as she awkwardly scrambled across the dusty plain.

Sure enough, the rainbow streak reappeared, banking to kick dust into Tess’ face, then continuing the turn to spin around and around and form a tornado of dust and debris, mostly sharp pieces of wood and glass. It would have been easy to dodge, if Tess had been able to do anything but stare in terrified denial.

Just before the funnel cloud reached Tess, Chance sent -Got her!-, and whipped the roll of tape past her head, knocking a blue pegasus out the other side of the whirlwind. Bits of glass and wood rained down around Tess as the tornado fell apart, mostly bouncing off her fur, although she had to brush off some weird blue leaves along with the moondust blurring her vision.

Tess sent, -I am officially freaking out, Captain!- Her paws shook as she retrieved the tape and used it to secure their erstwhile assailant, before she could recover from the impact. -That was a tornado. In space.-

-Bad move on her part,- Chance replied. -Easy to track her trajectory when it repeats like that.-

-SPACE! TORNADO!- Tess screamed at maximum gain.

===

“Oh no! They’ve got Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said.

“And they’re gift-wrapping her!” Pinkie Pie said. “Bad moon ponies! Rainbow isn’t a present!”

“We’ve got to get her back,” Twilight said, and concentrated on the image of Rainbow Dash being taped up on the wall screen. Her horn glowed, the screen sparkled, and with a tinkle like the shattering of delicate china, Rainbow Dash disappeared from the screen, and plopped onto the table, where her eyes shot open.

“Mmmph!” she said, struggling against the tape until Twilight tore it off her muzzle. “Get me out of this junk! I need to save the others!”

“Not so fast,” Twilight said. “I need to know whether you’re the real Rainbow Dash or just an image.”

Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie was tugging at the tape with her teeth. “’is is on ‘eally good,” she said.

“This is going to involve you blasting me with something, isn’t it,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Heh heh,” Twilight said. “That’s the easiest way,” she admitted. “It shouldn’t hurt much, unless you’re actually an image, in which case you’ll be torn into little pieces and that would probably hurt a lot now that I think about it.”

“What’s the not-easiest way that doesn’t involve killing me if I were an image. Which I’m not,” Rainbow Dash added quickly.

“The moon ponies on the screen are acting like she suddenly disappeared,” Pinkie Pie said, after spitting out a length of tape unwound from Rainbow Dash’s wings. She pointed to the picture of the crash site, where, according to the scrolling transcript of her conversation with Chance, Tess was freaking out even more.

“Their images are,” Twilight Sparkle said. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Go Derpy!” Rainbow Dash said, as the grey pegasus bowled one of the weaselly moon-ponies over while they were distracted by Rainbow’s disappearance, and grabbed hold of Thunder Lane’s still-unconscious body. Ditzy swooped into help her sister carry him, and they flew off over the impossibly near horizon. “Talk about lazy! I can’t believe Thunder Lane slept through that whole thing. But at least everypony got away!”

“Or they didn’t.” Twilight said, exasperated. “Once you remove part of an image from a mirror, it stops being a faithful representation of the physical world! It’s a basic principle of captromancy.”

“So what we need is a different mirror to see if it reflects the same thing, right?” Pinkie Pie said. “Leave it up to Captain Pinkie Pie! This wall does things when you touch it, so if I touch it enough it’s sure to open up another mirror.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Pinkie…” Twilight said.

“Touch!” Pinkie Pie said, thrusting her hoof at a random place on the screen. A box full of swirling lights briefly appeared, and then they heard a long, low groan in the background, and felt it through the floor. “Touch!” This time, a large blank box appeared, obscuring half the wall screen.

“Okay, I’m sure this is not a good idea!“ Twilight said frantically.

“Touch!” was Pinkie’s reply, and this time the whole screen went dark.

“Great,” Rainbow Dash said, still working on peeling the tape off of herself so that she could move. “You broke it.”

The darkness intensified, becoming a window into an infinite void. Then, in the depths, far far behind what should have been the surface of the wall, lightning flashed, and suddenly they were looking down at a chaotic, stormy cloudscape. The clouds started to glow, and with a cascade of lightning and a rumble of thunder, a single word in the moon pony script emerged, the letters crafted out of floating, riveted metal, damaged by explosions that left faintly glowing cavities here and there in their strange sharp points and loops.

Twilight stared closely at the letters as they floated behind the screen, just as the cloud-covered mountain had earlier. This time she was sure – the picture had depth, which wasn’t even scientifically possible, unless the screen was using cleverly hidden illusion magic. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch it again, but it still wasn’t a portal.

“That is so awesome!” Rainbow Dash squealed, the one wing she’d managed to free sticking prominently up into the air. “Break it more!”

===

In the machine shop, Chance helped Tess strap on the last salvageable bit of his encounter suit to augment what was left of her own. Keeping the suits in good repair had never really been a priority, and the last functional ones had disappeared along with the only crewmembers qualified to maintain them. Still, between the two of them she was mostly covered. -There,- he sent, patting her on the armored plate covering her spine. -Do you feel safe now?-

-No,- Tess sent back, pouting underneath her faceplate. -We have no idea where they are or what they’re doing. If we live through this, we’re installing internal cameras.-

-Uh uh. No cameras on my ship,- Chance sent. -A pony needs his privacy, if you know what I mean.-

Tess hefted the Ultra-Taser 3000 in both hands, and pushed the test button. Lighting crackled between the probes, and, satisfied, she slung it over her shoulder.

-You look ridiculous, you know,- Chance sent, slipping a mini-taser into the pocket of the one-size-technically-fits-all jumpsuit he’d settled for, since Tess had claimed all the armor. -Warp built that as a joke.-

-I look terrifying,- Tess sent back. -They’ll think twice before trying something this time.-

-Right,- Chance sent, -Just let me go first. I’m sure this is all a big misunderstanding, and no pony wants any pony to get hurt.-

Tess hissed out loud at the colloquialisms. -Did I ever mention that you suck at language patches?-

Despite Tess’ grumbling, finding the intruders was easy once they made their way to the crew quarters. Even if they hadn’t left a trail of glowing dust, the speakers in the conference room were turned up full blast, and the soundproofing wasn’t up to containing the sounds of lasers and explosions.

-Hold up,- Chase sent, reaching back and resting a paw on Tess’ chestplate. The explosions had paused, replaced with a deep, menacing voice. “FRESH MEAT!” It was followed by a chorus of girly screams.

-What. What now?!- Tess sent back, muzzle scrunched up into a scowl.

-I recognize the game, and this is a pretty epic boss fight,- he said, looking back and smiling.

Tess shoved him out of the way. -No! Not more waiting. We’re doing this my way. We’ll zap them all before they pull any more freaky wizard crap.-

She burst through the door into the conference room, and shouted, “Eat lightning, pony scum!” as she pulled the trigger. The Ultrataser sent out hundreds of miniature electrical probes, filling the whole room, or at least the part of the room not protected by a reflexively cast purple force field. That is, the part of the room with only Tess in it. She had time to send -oh, horseapples!- before the Ultrataser fried her.

“Did you get… any of that?” Pinkie Pie asked, looking at the twitching moon pony askance.

“I got ‘pony’?” Twilight Sparkle said uncertainly.

“I got ‘hey ponies, come kick my weaselly little tail,’” Rainbow Dash said, thumping and wiggling as she laboriously turned herself around to face the door.

Outside in the hallway, Chance detached a sheet of smart paper from his notepad, folded it into a paper airplane, and hooked it around the edge of the door, where it sailed gracefully across the room until it bumped against the force field. Twilight caught it with her magic, and approached the purple bubble to read the paper through it.

“Dear Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash,” she read out loud. “Welcome to my ship. Now that my twitchy second in command has calmed down –“ Twilight looked down at Tess, who was still twitching. “—why don’t we put down our weapons and –“

“MEAT!” screamed the sound system, and the ponies whirled around to watch the bloated figure inside the screen messily devour the front half of Pinkie’s image-duplicate.

Comments

[Rowyn]

So the moon ponies are ... ponies? Weasels? Weasel-ponies? Humanoid weasel ponies? With hands and clawed paws?

... I think I need a description.

Also, magic beats technology! But Blizzard beats Pinkie.