[HICHE] ADKoPD: Episode 21, The Honest One

I swear I hadn’t seen the SGA episode “The Defiant One” before outlining the story for “The Honest One”, I just knew the title—I was completely surprised by the staggering number of similarities between the events of the two after watching it. At this point, however, I admittedly don’t remember which parts were the original overlaps and what parts I added in later to milk how similar they already were. Welcome, friends, to Episode 21 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – The Honest One]

We start in medias res as Vinyl is looking at an active incoming wormhole that’s just sitting there, while on the other side of the wormhole is a Jumper with Applejack and a bunch of Wraith telling her to send the code that lowers the Gate Shield. She sends it. Flashback to an hour earlier, and AJ’s mission arrives through a Spacegate over a forested planet whose atmosphere has a super-high oxygen content. There is also a large population of harmless floating creatures called Bursties stolen right out of the cartoon Monster Allergy (speaking of, also read my Monster Allergy story, “My Roommate is a Monster…Tamer”, sadly a candidate for future How It Could Have Ended installments); these parallel the glowing bug things from SGA, playing different tricks on the life signs detectors in each story. As the team of backgrounds explores (noticing how for the first time three of the four are earth ponies, the team lacking a pegasus), we hear about Shoeshine’s relation to “Screw Loose”, the barking pony from the hospital in “Read It and Weep”, and how she hasn’t managed to visit her there much recently because of the Expedition. Should I mention days to retirement here?

Cue a Wraith ambush on the team, the Bursties having clogged their life signs detector with pings in every direction, disguising the presence of anyone of consequence. AJ puts up a fight with the ground forces and Twinkleshine, the only non-earth pony, manages to shoot down a Dart after the atmosphere ignites it from a glancing blow. Eventually, however, they’re all stunned down, leading to the opening scene. A Wraith Commander is forcing Applejack to take a Jumper full of Wraith directly into Atlantis, saving them the hassle of actually going there through hyperspace. Luckily, Applejack believes in applying the letter of her being the Element of Honesty, only complying when asked to send ‘the’ code instead of ‘her’ code. ‘The’ code actually sent was a distress code that lets her coordinate with Vinyl at the controls to reactivate the shield behind the Jumper’s front row as it exits the Gate, destroying the compartment filled with Wraith soldiers (rip Jumper 3), and letting Twilight subdue the Commander after more stunning spells than she liked. They need to go back for the rest of the team.

Back on the planet, we see a low-orbit Cruiser, but our scene takes place on a Wraith Scout Ship (shaped like a large, longer Dart) landed among the trees. The ponies have been partly sealed in web cocoons (as in SGA), with a different Wraith Commander taunting Cherry Berry before partly feeding on Shoeshine, a process that visibly ages the victim. Atlantis can’t dial the planet again, leading to Twilight interrogating the captured Wraith (locked in SGA’s shielded cage) in some dramatic manner too undecided to portray, discovering the above Cruiser has a Gate onboard like the one that attacked them way back when: they dial out from orbit to prevent uninvited guests. As we wait 38 minutes for the window they’re expecting their agents to report back in, Cherry and the Commander have a semi-genuine discussion about whether predators are inherently evil, and the Wraith gives his own name, Ponder, having earned it for being particularly philosophical for a Wraith. Placement undecided, Ponder also restores, then repeatedly re-drains and re-restores Shoeshine’s life force, trying to addict her to the ‘super adrenaline’ enzyme that keeps a feeding victim’s body strong enough to survive the process.

And now, the plot splits three ways. Almost shoehorned in with the prisoners’ and the rescue teams’ stories is a third struggle back on Equestria, with Rainbow’s Smooze infection deciding to suddenly overtake her worse than ever, dragging her into a nightmare like before, but Princess Luna arrives to help. Realizing a malicious influence for the first time, the Smooze appears and tries infecting Luna into Nightmare Moon, forcing her to retreat, but she manages to pull Rainbow partly out and into a lucid dreaming state, finally letting her fight back. My plan is to have a parallel between Rainbow fighting through the ocean of Smooze and the rescue teams fighting through the Wraith guarding the Scout Ship, but exactly how is hazy, as is most of what the rescue teams actually do. Through the barest of skeletal outlines, Rainbow sinks into the Smooze but is freed by a new arrival, her mother Firefly linked into her dream by Luna, inspiring her into an anime upgrade that can wither away the Smooze. Tripping over symbolism, Rainbow finds another version of her cowering inside a bubble of Smooze, and pulling herself out of it wakes her from the nightmare, where she coughs out a small purple cloud, the Smooze losing its hold. I knowingly neglected to mention in previous summaries that Rainbow would cough every time she was reminded of the Smooze, but I didn’t want a suspiciously obvious pattern to hint that anything as anime as this could be done about it, seeing as the point is that it looks and acts like depression. A while ago, Overly Sarcastic Productions released a Trope Talk episode about heroes’ darkest hours that touches on depression and the inaccurate portrayals of fighting against it that media often parade around for the sake of story structure that degrade compassion for the unfightable reality of those actually suffering. After watching it, I seriously reconsidered and rejustified to myself my usage of the parallel here, but this summary is about conveying ‘as is’ a story I never finished, unfortunate implications and all.

Back to the original story, Shoeshine is too devoted to not losing herself to the enzyme’s addiction the same way Screw Loose is lost in her own mind, and after Ponder realizes this, he just kills her to haunt Cherry Berry. Seeing the ship is surrounded, he starts to kill Cherry as the Expedition bursts in and kills him first; Cherry is left severely drained and aged, and Twinkleshine has been traumatized from watching all this unfold mere feet in front of her with no way to help. Worse still, a cloud of Darts is now swarming the Spacegate. Accepting her fate, Cherry tells the others to leave her, and the earth pony (who has been seen flying hot air balloons and pedal-helicopters before) flies one last vessel, the Scout Ship, to make a distraction so the others can escape. How can she fly it if Wraith ships use telepathy more than joysticks? Uh…an abundance of the enzyme in her blood…? No, it’s not like Goa’uld tech and naquadah. You got me. Maybe it’s damaged and easier to control (huh?) or Scout Ships work differently—it’s not the first techno hiccup in the story. As the Cruiser descends to investigate, she nosedives the Scout Ship straight into its engines, igniting the oxygen surplus in the atmosphere and literally lighting up the sky in a miles-wide inferno that draws the Darts away from the Gate long enough for the pair of rescue Jumpers to slip through.

As the episode winds down, Atlantis turns its focus to the returning rescue Jumpers, almost not noticing as Rainbow arrives through the Stargate. She’s back, but at what cost? A few final scenes show her catching up with Rarity about the anti-stunner fabric project that would’ve been useful if complete, and on the balcony with AJ doubting her actions. Today is not the day for resolutions.

I think this was actually one of the earlier episodes I came up with, the grim factor coming from the same stakes-setting mindset that wrecked stuff in episodes 2 and 3, but as the story developed, it kept getting pushed farther and farther down the plotline. As for comparing it to “The Defiant One”, what stayed the same? A team of four characters takes a Jumper to another planet, which is mostly empty save a Wraith they didn’t expect to find. The Wraith captures and cocoons some of them before trying to use the Jumper but failing. In the end, two of the team members die, one by heroic sacrifice, and the Wraith involved are defeated in spectacular fashion. I’m pretty sure the Bursties were a later addition I made to match the light bugs, them clustering being an important point. And again, I only knew the episode’s title before drafting the story, then I watched the episode and freaked. Join us as we see completely new faces and twisted minds in the next episode, “Praise Them”.