[HICHE] A Different Kind of Pegasus Device: Episode 3, The Scourge of the Century

Throughout the previous installments, “as in SGA” has been a running gag that’s getting old, and after laying down the background lore, we’ve finally begun to move beyond it. Pardon for a time, however, the switch to “as in SG-1” instead. Welcome, friends, to Episode 3 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – The Scourge of the Century]

Following up on a joke from “The Device Reawakens”, Twilight finally says this one pony’s name right, Lemony Gem. We jump right into the adventure this time as our first full exploration team, henceforth to consist of four Expedition members (as in SGA—almost done, I swear), heads out on a mission to a new Gate address in Atlantis’ database. This time, Twilight, Rainbow, and Pinkie are joined by the aforementioned Lemony Gem, a friendly and wide-eyed unicorn who eagerly follows Twilight with an adorable notepad and you already know how this is ending.

We arrive through a grounded Stargate (it often becomes plot relevant to establish whether a planet has a grounded Stargate or an orbital Spacegate very early on, so get used to this detail being spelled out) at Breezie Blossom, another Gen 3 location, this time obviously for the small and bug-winged G3 Breezies (who, unlike in G4, look more pony-shaped, are at least sturdier than tissue paper, and have no ‘Swedish’ accents). The place is a nice flower-filled patch of forest by a river, and the team is quickly met by Zipzee (a yellow Breezie with G4 Pinkie’s voice as per the G3 episodes, remember her) and Tra-La-La (pink—and her name is spelt with a’s, not o’s), but the third member of their onscreen trio, Tiddly Wink (purple, keep that in mind), seems to have gone AWOL. We also meet Zipzee’s trusted apparent secretary, Snippity Snap (a toyline-only Breezie released only in the UK’s version of a playset also featuring Zipzee, shoutout to the one person reading this who actually has the toy).

Skipping ourselves past the formalities of greetings, we go for a tour of Breezie Blossom and learn that the closed flowers are actually their houses, and are surprisingly bigger on the inside. Peeking inside one, Twilight notices a chalkboard covered with bits of nonsense writing taken directly from sticky notes seen in a G3 episode, which Snippity Snap passingly identifies as “ongoing research”. Oh, also somepony takes a drink from the river and says it tasted off, and I’m sure we’ll never hear about this again. Things then meander for a bit over a sparsely-written period when other Expedition members show up, among them being Diamond Mint, Lemony Gem’s best friend and you’re probably already—

The story continues among a notable lack of chapter divisions when several Breezies who have been acting a bit sickly suddenly drop from the air, cocoons rapidly forming around them, which by the way, isn’t supposed to happen. Heads up, but for the next stretch, this summary becomes more of a reading of the draft due to how little the listed ideas or events are expanded upon, some having been locked down only while writing this summary. We soon discover what appears to be a Crystal Pony laboratory hidden in a rock wall, containing recently used equipment and a lone purple Parasprite in a glass cage; no Breezie admits to knowing about it. However, Zipzee feels some connection to the Parasprite (did you keep that color in mind?), and slips it some food overnight. In the morning, a swarm of Parasprites has filled up the tank and breaks out into the lab, eating the few plants inside, but Purple has stayed friendly.

Despite them being sealed in the lab with Twilight, Parasprites start appearing outside, and it’s also discovered that the Breezie cocoons have opened. The inside Parasprites’ green eyes then start turning blue, and they begin eating through the walls, indicating a connection between eye color and diet. Investigation reveals that all of the lab’s records on genetics have been erased, and Tra-La-La arrives to admit the truth: she and Snippity Snap had secretly made a formula that would alter Breezies into something else so the Wraith culling parties wouldn’t recognize them and would pass them by, Tiddly Wink blindly volunteering to be the first test subject (and becoming the purple Parasprite found earlier). Clearly, however, they were out of their depth, as the Parasprites retain no intelligence from their former selves, and Snippity also becomes cocooned, having drunk from the river Tra-La-La had put the mutagen in, thereby also afflicting most of Breezie Blossom.

After an odd scene transition that needs to be hammered out better, the purple Parasprite wanders outside where it finds a cocoon where the Parasprite mutation failed to complete…and eats it, its eyes turning red. It’s about here that I’ll confirm suspicions that the premise of this episode is based on the SG-1 episode “The Scourge”, about a swarm of carnivorous insects ravaging a planet, and let you figure out what diet the red eyes mean. A few other scenes, like the glass cage filling and bursting, are also as in SG-1. Now knowing what they’re up against, the team jumps into action, but these Parasprites aren’t like Equestria’s, and Pinkie’s music trick only angers them (like the Twonkies from that Jimmy Neutron episode using the cute monster swarm trope). Oh, and they eat the Puddle Jumper. Whoops. Hey, at least this planet’s Gate isn’t in space, right? Speaking of sacrificial lambs, Twilight pops back into a now-besieged room of the lab to fetch Lemony Gem, but a swarm of red-eyed Parasprites breaks in and eats Lemony alive in one pass. Cue shock and horror, all inspired by this one movie I saw the end of as a kid years ago—Critters 2, according to IMDb—about carnivorous fuzzballs that formed a giant ball and rolled over people, leaving only skeletons behind. That movie messed me up for a bit, I won’t deny. Lemony Gem’s death is supposed to be a major event in the story, but I’m bad at setup sometimes, so it comes out of nowhere in the draft, but in a full version I would make it more impactful to the audience. Saying that counts as doing it, right?

Back outside, those Breezies not already Parasprites are in a total panic, Zipzee starts feeling sick from the mutagen, and Tra-La-La tries to escape responsibility for this catastrophe but gets chased down by Parasprites like in the piece of fanart that inspired this episode. Now that we finally have a fully realized sequence in the draft to skip details from, Twilight has been broken and calls a full retreat, casually murdering Parasprites in the way as the surviving team falls back to Atlantis with Zipzee; the Gate Shield blocks a swarm of Parasprites from following, but the wormhole suddenly shuts off. As Zipzee is taken to Sick Bay to be treated with data from a copy of the lab’s computer they’d made earlier, Vinyl tries dialing back to send a rescue team for any remaining Breezies, but finds that the Stargate won’t connect, a further scan revealing that no Gate registers at that address anymore. In their instinct to eat everything, the Parasprites likely ruptured the Gate’s internal components and it exploded, sealing off the planet from Atlantis and probably destroying what little if anything remained of Breezie Blossom to save. The Expedition stands in silence. They’ve failed.

The next day, Twilight allows everypony the option to leave Atlantis if it’s getting to be too much; no one takes her up on it. Though shaken, the Expedition will stand strong as Equestria’s only hope, and instead gather for a memorial for Lemony in the Gate Room, Twilight sending a moving report through the Stargate to Celestia, having learned that sometimes you can’t save them all. Meanwhile, with the Wraith’s prisoner pegasi, Crescent Moon is selected by the Wraith Commander and forcefully removed from the cell over Spitfire’s futile resistance.

The key word of “The Scourge of the Century” is ‘loss’. It’s the first time they could save someone but didn’t manage to, it’s the first member that’s died in the line of duty, and it’s the reality check of what they’re facing and what they’ll have to overcome in order to win. It’s also the darkness before the dawn, because though drenched in despair, the light of hope is in the distance, and the turnaround is coming soon. Join me as both we and Atlantis see that this battle isn’t unwinnable in the next episode, “The Power of Flutter Valley”.

Comments

[BioniclesaurKing4t2]

I'm trying every combination, which abbreviation in the super-long title do you guys want me to use: "HICHE" or "ADKoPD"?