[HICHE] ADKoPD: Episode 16, A Day in the Life

I read the news today, oh boy. About a pegasus that broke a wing. And though her friends had saved the day…well I just have to sa-hay. Your nerve will go awa-hay. Welcome, friends, to Episode 16 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – A Day in the Life]

Sadly we’ve got another short one this time, the new record holder for shortest-in-draft yet released, and we’ll be having quite a few more in the immediate future as I wrote the second half of the story second and it was therefore left less complete, so hang tight. We begin with Rainbow Dash controlling a satellite’s rainbow laser cannon to blast apart several Wraith Hives approaching Gaia, much like SGA’s Lagrangian Point Satellite. However, before she can take out the last Hive, the satellite’s control room begins filling with Smooze, trapping and smothering Rainbow as the satellite is destroyed before she wakes up from the obvious dream in Atlantis’ Sick Bay, still recovering from the broken wing from her previous mission. Friends and teammates stop by to say hi, as does the next expedition team whose exploits we won’t be following, Rainbow telling Minuette not to let Applejack and Electra fight. The joke is that they’re going to come back with Minuette and Electra locked in a bitter argument instead, but I’ve yet to decide if this is the mission that does something to establish the plot for next episode or not.

Cut to Rainbow and Twilight on a balcony just staring at the ocean, where Twilight points out the lack of bird sounds making this place feel all the more alien. For a brief moment, the ocean turns to Smooze in Rainbow’s mind, a recurring theme that can’t possibly be building towards anything. Then Pinkie and Zipzee arrive; Zipzee makes a joke I use to reference the name of Ashley Ball’s band, and Pinkie wants to send a message to Gaia we’ll pick up on next time. With a heavy thunderstorm on the horizon that the weatherponies are unable to break apart, everyone bunkers down inside for a rainy day. Exciting stuff, am I right?

Worked throughout the draft for added symbolism are stray and sometimes out of order lines from the Synthis song “Broken Wings” (no relation to the Mr. Mister song), which had a big hand in inspiring the events and overall feel of the episode, so go listen to it. Once again we’ll be spending our time with focus split between two parallel stories, one for Rainbow and one for Twilight. I say two, but it’s really only Rainbow’s story with the occasional detail implying what Twilight is doing at roughly the same time, so I’ll only check in with her for the important bits. Actually, I’ll put a few here: the sea ponies are helping them try to salvage the Stargate that was on the Wraith Cruiser that attacked them but sank, and someone noticed a record of some miniscule spike of activity in Atlantis a thousand years prior. At least one of these might be important later.

On to Rainbow, she meets up with background pegasus Raindrops and hears about her discovery of an odd liquid she dubbed ‘rainbow water’, which changes color every time something new touches it, and which Raindrops considered similar to Butterfly Island’s Rainbow Waterfall. She’d found it flooding an outer pier of Atlantis after the “Enemy in the Sky” incident, but it had evaporated by the time anypony else came to investigate. Rainbow can’t stay for the rest of the story, however, as thinking of the dripping liquid calls to mind the Smooze again. Get the theme? She also talks with the Flower Trio (Daisy, Lily, and Rose), with Lily telling a constantly-shifting story about seeing a Dart flying overhead during the tidal wave after the Cruiser exploded, ultimately admitting that it had crashed. Well, I guess that solves the mystery about the Wraith Commander from the Cruiser I said would be relevant much later. Sadly not much of a payoff, but I’m sure we’ll neeever hear about him agai—

After visiting Rarity and finding that she’s working on a fabric that resists Wraith stunner blasts (watch this project with great interest), we hear about a startling discovery: a piece of Wraith armor has been found in one of Atlantis’ outer hallways. With a huge bite taken out of it. Lily is put in the spotlight again as she admits to Twilight she’d neglected to convey one important detail in every previous telling of her tale. The Dart had beamed something into one of Atlantis’ buildings before crashing, presumably the Commander, who subsequently seems to have been intercepted and eaten by some large creature living in Atlantis before he could cause any damage. Hooray? No, this plotline isn’t resolved this episode; what, did you think an episode that simply spends time chilling around Atlantis would have a climax or something? What is this, “Sunday”? Okay, so maybe this was me not knowing what to do and leaving the idea unfinished, but they won’t know what it is until way later so how much they do about it here is ultimately moot. They find no other trace of it, anyway. As for the actual conclusion, after an admission to Fluttershy about her growing confidence issue post-mission (neglecting the detail of her Smooze visions and seemingly not connecting the dots), Rainbow meets with Twilight to say she’ll need extra time off, including getting away from things for a while. Our main action lead has just left the Expedition.

Back to the summary being the draft minus dialogue, huh? Actually, this is meant to be a more subdued episode, one of two with no major conflict in the second half of the story, attempting to establish a different feel than before. It’s more character-based than action-oriented, and that makes it deeper and therefore superior, right, critics? It also has a lot of setup, some of which I admittedly have no follow up planned for; I was brainstorming at this point. We’re back to a more classic Stargate formula next time as we fill the new gap by piling on the guest stars in “Of Quartz You Can Help”.