[HICHE] ADKoPD: Episode 19, Homebound

This title is clever because one focus character is bound for home, while another is bound at home. Revel in my genius! Welcome, friends, to Episode 19 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – Homebound]

Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man whose ideas get ahead of my commitment. This is another episode where I make a space for an idea to take hold, but then don’t actually fill it in with anything, with the new shortest draft so far. Enjoy or something.

I’ll tell you upfront that this episode is mostly dialogue and incidental ‘and then this happened’ scenes, so let’s knock it out real fast. The installation crystal stolen from Spectros is the Crystal Stinger, and will grow into a large anti-air armament for the top of a building, so it and a ZPM are heading for the Crystal Empire and Outpost, but Vinyl is feeling homesick and so tags along. Octavia’s already in the Equestria Games stadium converted Jumper hub eager for updates, so they meet up later in the episode and have a discussion on where if anywhere is safe anymore. Decide for yourself how close they are. Defense on the Equestrian front is progressing, with the Games’ ice arrows being amped up to be weaponized and possibly be made a substitute for the dwindling supply of drone weapons for the Jumpers, but it’s still early days. The Crystal Stinger is attached onto the Empire’s spire’s peak and begins to rebuild the inside of the tower into the weapon, but it locks itself unusable, some incompatibility preventing a full interface with the crystal surface for the Empire to control it; this issue won’t be resolved today. Also, back on Atlantis, Twilight suddenly falls ill, which turns out to be a delayed reaction to the radiation that had presumably been flooding Spectros during her visit, but she’ll be fine in a few days. The crystal ponies on the mission were presumably immune due to being crystal, like the Spectroans. If these seem rushed, it’s because I’m presenting them straight, while they’re interspersed arcs in the draft, but each check-in can be as short as a single sentence, so I took the easy route.

And now for the biggest arc in the episode. More “Broken Wings” lyrics signal a visit to Rainbow Dash unknowingly stuck in a Smooze funk, with mentions of a touching scene here or there with Tank, Scootaloo, and her mother, who it turns out also can’t fly but who encouraged Rainbow to fly as high as she could. They sound beautiful. If only I’d written them. The one I did write, however, is where she goes to meet a particular psychologist some of you might just recognize, Doctor Wolf. DRWolf001 (Doctor Wolf) is a long-standing and horse famous YouTuber of the Bronalysis (brony analysis) Community, whose wolf avatar character and personality I’ve written into my story doing exactly what he does in his “A Moment With DRWolf” series, hosting scripted therapy sessions with other Bronalysts and occasionally (fictionalizations of) show characters, where he’s even based in Ponyville. Half-written, at least. Other than her dropping her usual façade to admit she needs to come here, the only plot-relevant detail revealed is that Rainbow can’t fly in her dreams anymore, which will be picked up on later.

Two final points as we wrap up this stream of consciousness draft. One, a program Twilight installed way back in “Enemy in the Sky” blocks an attempted Wraith dial to Atlantis, signaling that Wraith outside the Hive alliance that had had Gaia under its hoof are becoming suspicious of Atlantis’ return, accelerating the endgame. And two, after plugging the ZPM into the Outpost, that suspicious door that wouldn’t open I’d said would be important much further down the road finally opens, revealing a hidden Jumper (yes, it’s exactly the one you’re thinking of, there’s no way to hide it), and another sealed door behind it, this time with a genetic lock. It’s considered highly unusual that something so ordinary had been stored so secretly, so this Jumper is going nowhere for now to await further study. As for us, however, we’ve all been subpoenaed to appear for trial next time in “Turnabout Horn”.