//------------------------------// // -19- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Her head was pounding as she came to and she could hear a dull thumping noise and could see a red flashing before her. It was a console and she placed her suited claw against it and tried to steady her head as the world spun with the other. After a moment Greta remembered what had happened and wondered how she was alive, taking in that her EVA suit was still in perfect working order. The thumping sped up and then ended as her hearing came back to her. “Gilda, are you okay? Please respond!” Looking up Greta could see the world violently spinning around and she had no clue which way was up anymore. “What did you mean by ‘goodbye my love’; please tell me you were talking about me if your still alive!” “Oh for the love of, Greta shut up! I have a headache and I was talking about my love being the Javelin’s almost fully functional shell, we could have fixed it and it would have been awesome. Give me a moment to at least mourn will you?” Gilda’s grumpiness was back in full force and then she spoke up with a more humorous sounding lilt. “Okay, its past. Our situation is we’re falling out the sky like we’re made of lead; heat sinks are overloading and causing more problems for the Evade Mode module I ejected just prior to our imminent demise. Thank goodness for the small time delay on those devastators before they go off, we didn’t get completely clear of the explosion and it scorched us up badly. You were obviously knocked out for a few minutes from what looked like a volcano going off, I’m glad the glare compensators were still working at the time or I’d be blind right now even if I had closed my eyes. We won’t be able to use the variable jets or even pop our canopies until we fix the heat sink problem, so we’re currently dead… figuratively.” “Gilda… I think I hate your guts now.” The twitching in Greta’s right eye and her tone of voice speaking volumes about how pissed she was at hearing the amount of bad news Gilda was dishing out. The worst of it being that Gilda spent what seemed like their last moments lamenting the fact that her love was going to be blown up and said love being the combat shell of the Javelin they were flying. “Well at least you still love the rest of me and my guts are known to be assholes or leads to one at least. Can we not have a discussion right now while we’re falling to our deaths here? Also we’re still high up enough that without an EVA suit I’ll probably die if my canopy self destructs and it’s started to form cracks.” How Gilda could be taking that calmly as if she were talking about the weather made Greta feel like she was being calm to enhance the very audacity of the situation. “Aside from that communications are down and I think I see a half living Vasp or two falling alongside us slowly getting their bearings and will likely be on us within minutes. Let it be known that what we are currently dealing with is a mechanical issue of which I’m an expert in and as such I have a plan to survive the fall and the Vasps if they become a problem. I would like to do so while keeping the remaining portion of this fighter turned escape pod mostly operable to have something to remind me of my one true love who took several devastators for a lot people, also we could use this module as a base for designing a new fighter.” “Oh my goddess, you’re acting like a full blown jerk on purpose now!” Despite the anger in her voice Greta knew she couldn’t stay mad at Gilda for too long even as she called her out on being a jerk, so her voice immediately went into a flat deadpan that started slowly building up into a more chipper tone. “I’m now guessing that you have an insufferable smirk on your face Gilda. We’re in another life or death situation and you’re smiling about it! Why do I even bother with getting angry? Tell me how we can turn this situation around, because I’m willing and ready to shoot rainbows out of my ass like a pony and I want to live long enough to finally get you to accept my proposals that we get intimate. We’re survivors through and through, there’s nothing that the Garage Griffons won’t be able to get out of with enough ingenuity while we’re still breathing!” “That’s the spirit Greta, though your priorities definitely need an adjustment. Otherwise I can take you everywhere Greta… except to bed in the manner you can only wish I would eventually agree to.” Gilda was happy to hear that her friend’s indomitable perkiness and passive sexual predator nature returned to full blast, Greta just wouldn’t be fun if she wasn’t trying so hard to entice her into a more intimate relationship. Even when they were still on the Derringer and surrounded by flesh eating monstrosities, Gilda refused to give anything aside from a quick ‘friendly’ hug and was in general okay with letting Greta snuggle her. “Okay, here’s what we do and we need to be quick about this as my canopy is getting worse by the second here…” - Despite the last living core being ultimately destroyed, the remaining portions of the MOM were still packing ground and aerial forces. A large number of pieces would slam into the ground between or in the three cities, two of which were at the edge of Lake Terwa. One of those nearby cities was Drixsto and was soon to be invaded by the remnants of the Mass Offensive Meteor, all the while Geoptis Station and the fleet up in orbit would continue to clean up the destruction from the cloud of Shamroids unleashed upon them and would be doing so for some time to come, so reinforcements from above wouldn’t be coming forthwith. Geoptis held up very well to the onslaught, but was in dire need of repairs and its outer hull was pockmarked with tons of scorch marks, dents, small holes and on top of that it was still crawling with monsters. The triple P would try to stay in contact with the planet despite not being able to help with the monsters unleashed on the nearby populace. Each city has its own defense force and its own minimal protection against aerial aggressors in the form of turrets posted around the edges of the city limits, the turrets were placed in such a way to deal with outside threats whether on the ground or in the air. While powerful they weren’t fast enough to stop a large number of monster carrying chunks of flesh from crashing within the city. The cities would have to deal with small pockets of monsters coming out of the smaller chunks internally; the monsters numbers would get worse once they start leaving the dead core that crashed into the ground. - “Rarity…” Coco intoned while shivering as she, Opal, Vera, Sassy and Miss Belle watched as the multiple large chunks of flesh fell from the sky and struck the ground with force inside the city. They were watching the news tracking the remains of the main flesh ball as it crashed violently into the ground a good distance away. The news report vehicle that showed up at the impact site quickly fled the area once Vasps were spotted slowly crawling from out of the large fleshy lump as the dust settled; emergency warnings went out to every civilian on the ground to seek shelter if they hadn’t already and to absolutely stay away from the dead MOM core. “Don’t worry Coco dear, I’m sure the Planetary Protection Patrol and bounty hunters like Ember are on it. We should simply lock down the ship and stay here where it’s safe.” It was a plan born of common sense and Rarity thought she had plenty of that; she also had decent business and fashion sense. “We have enough food for a few weeks between the four of us, so I’m positively sure we can wait for help to arrive once the monsters start swarming. I really don’t think flying is a good idea with those horrid giant wasps around and mind you the Caravel Boutique is an unarmed vessel. We don’t have a jump module so we can’t leave system, we still don’t have enough money to make necessary purchases and we’d have to fly to the other side of the planet to even buy one at this rate. Goodness knows how Greta and Gilda must be taking this after what happened to them on the Derringer, at least I know they can handle themselves and I trust that they’ll stay safe or else my hiring of them would be for naught.” “Make that three Meowstress Rarity… Sassy just ran off with an odd look on her face and she had her magic on the hilt of her sword as she left.” Opal sounded wary of what Sassy was going to do and why she even left in the first place, much less what Rarity would do now. “Vera, Coco, Opal, you are staying here and that’s an order. I’ll go after her and find out what’s gotten into her. I swear, leaving safety in the middle of a crisis is she… insane. Oh dear, I certainly hope she hasn’t. Please have Uno and Dos take up two of the pistols to protect the hangar Opal. I’m taking the MAT drone with me and the remaining pistols.” One of the five energy pistols Rarity had was cannibalized to repair the MAT drone’s weapon, a powerful rapid fire energy cannon that was going to be seeing some use real soon. She figured it was prudent to scrap a pistol for something much better as a trade off; a few other things that could be spared from drone maintenance were used to make the cube shaped MAT drone an effective bodyguard and Rarity certainly needed that functionality now. “Please lock up the ship behind me once I’m through suiting up and don’t let anyone else aboard besides me, Sassy or maybe even Ember unless you think you can trust them.” “Keep your HUD active Meowstress, I can relay information to you and I’ll actively control the MAT drone from here.” Opal didn’t sound happy with what Rarity was about to do, but she acquiesced in doing anything to support Rarity. “It might be slightly illegal, but I will need to jack a portion of the spaceports communications antenna functions to get some decent real time control range on the MAT. It’s going to be busy for a while and no one is going to get anything done with it anyway.” “That’s perfectly fine dear. Just make sure not to accidentally go overboard with protecting me and I’ll try to get over my distaste with committing acts of violence. Though I don’t know how effective the pistols will be against those horrid beasts.” While she spoke Rarity slipped her tail into the back of her EVA suit, followed by her hind legs and once she got her rear half in it she activated the compression pouch that compressed her tail hair into smaller space. She followed that by pulling her front legs into the suit and once she did that she pushed the helmet up to her face and activated it, it quickly circled around her head and locked around her neck encasing it completely. To finish off putting on her EVA suit she flipped up the collar of the suit and rolled the edges of around into the helmets collar. “Let’s see I have my energy pistols, my stylish gun holsters, the MAT drone, my own Pinpoint Puller and I’m suited fabulously in my EVA suit. It might not offer me much protection, but it can take a hit. I will promptly find Sassy and ask her why she ran off, I will not let someone so good at accessorizing perish on my watch!” “Good luck with finding Sassy out there Rarity, if you can’t that’ll be okay.” Coco came up to Rarity as she made her way to exit and gave her a hug. “Just come back safely, even if you can’t bring her back with you. I still kind of find it’s a bit out there that she’s a samurai, she still screams assassin to me.” “Don’t worry Miss Pommel; I will take every precaution I can feasibly abide by and if things go horribly I will start making my way back here immediately. Opal can keep you up to date on my progress; first order of business is to try calling her on her data pad and if that doesn’t work I’ll set off from the spaceport.” Rarity trotted on down the ramp with her head held high, of course she knew she wasn’t a fighter and quite frankly she wasn’t trained for a situation like this aside from being partially adept at calisthenics. “In the event that I don’t make it back, your next in command Coco and I just know you’ll make a wonderful eulogy dress to wear at my funeral. Aside from that busy yourself with my impulse saddle while I’m gone.” - Sassy’s data pad was still onboard the Caravel Boutique which increased Rarity’s worries, so she set off with a silent prayer to Celestia and Luna. If they weren’t full on omnipotent gods, Rarity would treat them as such anyway as they were good ponies to look up to. Rarity hadn’t gone a block from the spaceport and noted that everything was as quite as a ghost town, Her EVA suit was muffling the various sounds of gunfire in the distance and could see civilians quickly making haste to take cover in the spaceport or the nearest safe zone or shelter. Several walls of smoke could be seen flowing towards the sky in the distance and this was all happening in broad daylight, if it were happening at night it would be far more frightening concerning the fact that she wouldn’t be able to see any of the monsters coming. “Meowstress Rarity I’m getting chatter that the large swarm of monsters from the main mass on the ground are still getting their bearings, so you’ll have about an hour to find Sassy and then get back home.” Opal popped up on Rarity’s HUD looking rather serious. “Right now bounty hunters are doing okay dealing with the smaller threats already in the city at the moment. If you can, try to travel on the rooftops of buildings while keeping the battery life of your Pinpoint Puller in mind.” “Roger that Opal, can the MAT drone even follow me up?” Rarity looked for a good spot to safely grapple up to with a keen eye. “MAT drones are a bit more powerful and can do far more than hover at eight to twelve feet above the ground like a CAT in atmospheric conditions.” Opal sounded rather proud to have Rarity’s back. “So don’t worry about me keeping up with you.” Rarity aimed her right hoof at a portion of wall above a bit of roofing that looked like a chimney and fired the Pinpoint Puller, after it hit it reeled in Rarity right up to that point and after fully doing so she fell a foot or two to the top of the roof. She started looking around the streets from the roof tops and couldn’t see Sassy anywhere as she traversed several buildings. What she could see was a lot of people trying to escape from a large red skinned dog like monster that obviously had to be an Ant Head. The creature charged at some of the nearest civilians and managed to bowl over an earth pony stallion with a dark grey coat and a bright silver mane, after which it took a pose that it was going to pounce on him. The earth pony started to crawl backwards away from it shaking his head and making denials as its mandibles spread wide open. “I don’t like the idea of watching someone die, especially such a handsome looking stallion so...” Well Rarity wasn’t about to let that happen in any case, she flicked out one of her energy pistols and fired four wild shots downwards from above sweeping it vertically upwards after each trigger pull. Two of the bolts were completely off striking the ground a foot from the Ant Head and right next to it barely an inch from hitting its front right leg. The third one went through its front right leg at the shoulder as it went to jump, this made it stumble and flop onto its face, the fourth shot would have hit if it hadn’t stumbled out of the way. Instead the last shot just broke a portion of a glass window on a nearby building having missed its intended target. The creature howled in anger and turned towards Rarity’s position ignoring the stallion that got quickly up and galloped off to safety, it started o move towards the building clacking it’s mandibles. “Well, I think I certainly got its attention, Opal if you would be a dear?” The MAT drone lit up with a whining noise at Rarity’s insistence and after a moment it fired eight large blasts of energy that shredded through flesh and bone, dropping the Ant Head. It made Rarity grimace at the volatile display of the head exploding into bloody chunks, its chest being rendered into horrid looking offal, followed by the rest of its body being shredded and turned into a pile of well cooked pulp. Rarity estimated that two shots from the MAT would have been enough to put it down and it was certainly performing to expectations; Opal was being rather enthusiastic about putting threats down. “I do think that was a slight bit overkill darling, do you have genetic scanners running to give us an idea where Sassy ran off to.” “Nothing is overkill when it comes to your safety Meowstress Rarity.” The severity of the statement was underselling how seriously Opal took Rarity’s safety and with extreme prejudice it looked like. “Aside from that yes I’ve been having the scanners try and detect traces of her particular genetic leavings, mostly skin and hair. She went that away.” An arrow popped up on Rarity’s HUD and it showed a gaseous trail that zipped through the air and continued on towards an upper district. Thinking on it for a moment she recalled Coco telling her of where Sassy took up residence here on Ewesen. “Opal isn’t that in the direction of where Sassy has been living here on Ewesen until she joined us on the Caravel Boutique?” The response Rarity got was a hum of approval and a smiley face on her HUD. “Lead the way then.” Rarity shook her head at her AI’s antics and slightly scary disposition, she pulled herself across the street and began hopping rooftop after rooftop following the MAT drone which was on Sassy’s trail. It stopped every now and then to make sure Rarity wasn’t being picked up by a Vasp as a few were seen getting blown out of the air from copious amounts of small arms fire if the turrets around the city didn’t do it. Following the MAT drone around was tiring until they came to a stop, which led Rarity to wondering why they had done so. “She’s not heading in the direction of her previous living quarters anymore; she turned left here and headed… this way!” The MAT drone Opal controlled turned thirty degrees to the left and started to fly straight making a slightly out of breathe Rarity inhale deeply taking a moment to rest and continued the chase. It was a few minutes of traveling and jumping from building to building that Opal spoke up. “Hold up Rarity!” “Oh thank goodness, I need a break to catch my breath and check the charge on my weapons and utilities.” Rarity looked about and didn’t see any monsters in the streets or on the rooftops with them, well at least on the rooftops nearby. In the distance she could see a Macropussian tossing a dazed Ant Head high into the air, before jumping after it and grappling it to the ground with what sounded like a sickening spine snapping slam that she wished her helmet couldn’t pick up at this distance. “All this running around and looking for Sassy is wearing me out.” “I think she might have been through here.” That drew some attention to the MAT drone, it angled downwards looking into a nearby paved streets. “Though I’m not sure what kind of mental state we’ll find her in, judging by the stuff she left behind in her wake and how much of them is left intact.” Walking over to look over the edge of the building they were on, Rarity quickly wished she hadn’t when she saw the streets had been positively paved with blue, green and red blood. There were a few shivering civilians around that were starting to get up and run from the area looking behind them in fright, there was also quite a few dead people lying around in the streets that they didn’t stop to check on as they fled. Among the dead laid three dead Vasp and fifteen Ant Heads lying in slashed apart heaps and pools of their own blood. “Okay, I would whistle in amazement, but I think that would upset your sensibilities Meowstress.” Only a few of the monstrous bodies were left mostly intact, given they were completely missing their ant shaped eyeless heads and the rest were still freshly spilling their internal life fluids on the pavement where their alien and strange organs sat resting in the sun. One particular Vasp had been gutted quite badly that you could see every single bit of its insides including where its brain would be if it didn’t like the grey matter had been sent through a wood chipper. The Vasp’s rear end was buried in some sort rock like substance that stuck fast to the ground at the point where it was slashed open. There were also body parts and limbs that were still twitching or wiggling on the ground still trying to come to terms with the fact that they were no longer connected to a body. It was a morbid display of extreme violence against the monsters and Opal could hear Rarity gagging trying to hold back the bile that tried to rise up her favorite pony’s throat as she watched several more people make a break for it. “Yeah, that’s the mark of a samurai from what I got from looking them up. She really shredded through these guys with that sword of hers and it looks like her blade didn’t dull at all after cutting through so many of them. I’m currently calculating the feasibility that her sword hasn’t dulled once through all of that against what the sword is made of… final consensus, she’s certainly effective at wielding it.” “Well, I think I’ve gotten enough rest and am now horrified on a number of levels of what my friend is capable of. Let’s just hope we find her in a good mood.” Just looking at the mess made Rarity queasy at what Sassy left in her wake. “We still need to catch up with her. Now I’m a little more than concerned as to what made her come out here in the first place.” - Ember cracked her slightly stiff neck with a twitch and kicked roughly shoving yet another dead body off of her; she always eventually ended up beneath something dead and or dying. Quite frankly she was tired of it since most things that usually ended up pinning her down died within seconds, at this point she could be knocked on her back and she wouldn’t panic as it was just another day for her. One would learn to never put her back to a wall or floor if they wanted to survive. Quickly getting to her feet, Ember aimed her rifle skyward and started firing several rounds off with precise aim. The end of her bulky gun lit up loudly and it expulsed some flames from its second barrel as rocks passed out of it through the first. Every molten bullet hit home and the Vasp above her ignited and screeched as it plummeted to the ground when its wings went up like flash paper, it was dead before it even hit the ground and the last stinger it fired struck a foot to Ember’s left. “Now you see, this is exactly why you don’t mess with someone who specializes in weapons with multiple functions and is physically strong enough for her size to rip your entire throat, along with an accompanying small portion of your spine, out with her bare claws while you’re burning to death.” Ember muttered over the corpse that was now halfway to being a charred pile of bones. Yes, the second barrel was home to an exceedingly powerful modifiable flamethrower that was partially responsible for the well despised namesake nickname. She could only hope that the surrounding buildings didn’t catch fire from any of her stray weapon produced magma rounds. Shaking her head at the thought of having to pick up more rocks after this, Ember lamented. “I have really got to stop talking crap to corpses. Huh?” Down the street Ember watched as Sassy ran past several monsters ripping them and everything in her path to shreds and bloody bits, she looked to be heading for the nearby hospital. Thankfully it looked like no bounty hunter, civilian or even a Planetary Protection Patroller would even be stupid or daring enough to go near her in that seemingly berserk state. Luckily Ember was smart and brave enough to keep tabs on her friend from a safe distance behind her. Were they really friends? Yes, she liked the thought of having nice people to talk to that didn’t assume she was evil in some way, shape or form. It was lonely being a complete badass, especially with a job that has as high a mortality rate as bounty hunting does. An actuary would certainly have a field day trying to predict when she would eventually die. She’d follow Miss Saddles to see what was up with her, because there was a strange crazed look in her eyes as she tore through multiple Ant Heads like butter and she was acting in a rather particularly vicious manner for a samurai. - She had to keep going, she had to keep pushing forward. They all had to die, she needed to slaughter every last one of them in her way. A flicker of silver and orange colored eyes watched as another faint line appeared in the flesh before her and soon that flesh split completely in twain, she had an objective and she had to reach it quickly. All the monsters had to die; none of her friends were safe while they lived. There were several flashes and the sound of metal sliding through more sinewy flesh, thick bone, blood pumping veins and vital organs that couldn’t hold up to the onslaught. She had to chase away the ghosts of her past, her nightmares, her illusions, her fears and the real monsters before her. They would see worse than death incarnate if they so much as hurt anyone she cares about. Her movements were all part of a pattern, she would stick a pin into the more troublesome portions of the design in the fabric and then she would cut them completely from the cloth of life!