//------------------------------// // -28- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// “Just thought you ought to know, chaos is on the way and it’s not my doing.” Discord hung in the air next to Celestia looking vaguely uninterested in the goings on before him. He was a powerful being that was entirely chaotic in nature, which had a head that was vaguely pony shaped with a rightward deer antler and a leftward blue goat horn. Out of his mouth poked a large fang, the tongue of a snake and a goats beard on his chin, his eyes were mismatched in size and the white bushy eyebrows were about the only normal thing in his gray appearance. His body was even weirder as it was that of a snake with a dragon’s tail ending in a white tuft of fur, a small bat wing and a small feathered wing stuck haphazardly out of his back on his floating form. His right arm was that of a lion, his left an eagle’s talon, followed by his right leg of a lizard and the left leg of a goat finishing out his appearance. “I so do dislike senseless death or violence, because life is chaos. So I thought a small heads up would be nice.” “I’m well aware of something about to happen soon, which is why I have struck a deal with Chrysalis here.” A deal that didn’t really bother Celestia all that much, the price was going to be well worth the job she had in mind. She turned to the smiling changeling who obviously got what she wanted. “Yes and I’ll get my payment a week before the gala as agreed, also Cadence doesn’t have to show up as she’ll have other plans to attend to.” Chrysalis licked her lips slightly; she was going to enjoy herself as the contract didn’t have much in the ways of loopholes. Some would say she didn’t ask nearly enough for her services, then again they weren’t changelings and wouldn’t know a good deal if they saw one. “If you want an excuse as to where I’ll be for the gala, then just state I’ll be busy with other projects in my kingdom during the gala. Plentiful Thorax will take my place as a stand in with my invite to the gala. All you have to do is give me the target pony’s schedule so I can observe them and get their personality down, I’ll take care of the rest. No, I won’t kill them; they’ll just be indisposed for a while so stop giving me that look. You’re actually paying me the experience of a lifetime to play nice here and I’m still appropriately following the rules of your nation as a hired mercenary contract, yes I’m aware of that clause Celestia don’t look so surprised plump flank.” The queen of the changelings was quite a political mongoose in taking down opponents three times her size and was possibly more poisonous than a metaphorical cobra considering her fangs were covered in the poisons of her enemy. As such the deal she was getting was entirely fair to her and she knew what she loosely termed as friends were known for holding up their end of the deal. So she had to worry about holding up hers by keeping an ear to the ground in the meantime until the gala happened. “Oh this will be entertaining, sending someone to do a little espionage are we Celestia?” Discord looked particularly amused as he turned into a little ball with a particular shade of green that rolled down a summoned wooden incline before coming to a stop in front of the princess. “Why that’s so unlike you to put so much trust in someone who regularly makes you blush, why I’m quite jealous of that talent of hers. This deal of yours might even get the ball rolling in your favor. Oh the irony of what you’re doing here is quite delicious to me… I’ll let this play out without any interference from me.” “That only makes me worry more for the future.” Celestia stated flatly with a no nonsense look on her face as she looked at the little snaggletooth smiling ball that was now an important part of protecting Equus from outside threats. “Yeah, that would be like him. He’d want you to panic and do exactly what he wants you to do.” The ball suddenly turned a glare on Chrysalis, before it continue smiling in an eerily cheery manner and started to become very bouncy and started to playfully roll through an obstacle course of twists and turns of his design. Celestia may have considered Discord’s actions childish, but Chrysalis was personally paying absolute attention to what he was actually doing and took mental notes at the clues he was giving them by his actions alone. She got the subtle hint that things were about to go downhill, it related to the color green or given its particular shade it possibly represents a pony. Things are not going to be as they first appeared thus throwing them for a loop as the Discord ball just rolled through one. “Nice metaphor you’ve got going on there, now if only I knew what you meant.” Discord had free reign of dealing with more dangerous threats above even Celestia’s ability to account for, however he’d let Celestia have her naturally existing chaos and ‘so called’ order. In fact he became quite the hero, not that many knew what he’s been doing to keep the status quo flowing. As long as it kept him from being turned to stone again he was all for the chaos he could get away with. A missing nail here, an incidentally missing leaf there, maybe something turned the wrong color at the most opportune time… why the smallest things you could do to turn it all into a chaotic mess was all the fun of it! So it made sense for Discord’s favorite game to be dominoes, the chaos of toppling a rather neat intricate setup with but a simple push in the right direction made him smile. “I’m currently wondering, where’s my invitation to the gala as lord of the chaos dimension next door?” Turning back into himself and eating a teacup to leave the tea floating behind, Discord thought of how he could make the rather unflappable Chrysalis completely lose her cool. “Well… since you asked.” Celestia reached into her peytral and actually pulled out an invitation much to Discords shock. “You’re invited provided you can draw as much attention to yourself as you possibly can without hurting or actively bothering any pony too much as to be thrown out. I don’t honestly think you can actually do that.” “Ooh is that a challenge I hear? I’ll be there once I can find a good plus one, excuse me I have a call to make to the SNUGGLES organization.” Discord took the invitation and popped away, Celestia sighed with relief the minute he did so. “Cadence told me that you had something to ask me?” The cute purple mare known as Twilight sparkle asked as she walked into the room with her blunt cut dark blue bangs and equally straight edge cut of the rest of her mane bouncing as she trotted in, singular mauve and magenta stripes flowed throughout it. She had a book levitating next to her, a cutie mark of the sparkling stars marking her butt and she was looking upon Celestia with something that was definitely considered more than lust. Celestia slowly turned a flat glare to Chrysalis who just chirped cheekily at her as she made her exit, to let Celestia and her student have a friendly talk. Frankly the changeling queen was doing the solar princess a big favor here by including a stipulation in the contract of having to have Twilight as her plus one, it was one of the stipulations that Celestia didn’t think much on until it was too late. Celestia obviously loves Twilight beyond their student mentor role, so why not force the two together? It was the one thing Chrysalis and Cadence could actually collaborate on without any arguing, questioning of motives or second thoughts. Many normal ponies even took to calling Chrysalis the Princess of Lust and Cadence’s long lost reputedly evil twin sister. Absolutely everyone knew the once somewhat obstructive nobles were too afraid to assign a moniker to Chrysalis for fear of harsh political retaliation, the civilians didn’t have nearly as much worry to worry about from the changeling leader. - Approximate time to arrival in the Equon System was thirty minutes and counting. Rarity was making her rounds on the Caravel Boutique and considering her options for the future, such as security for her new ship and the kind of people she would need to hire for it. She feasibly could run the ship on a skeleton crew like she was currently doing, but how was she going to utilize all the extra space she had to deal with? Who would she hire that could be of use as crew members of her private enterprise? In fact how many people would it even take to properly crew the Shining Jewel? She also had a lot of internal renovations to think of, but not the money to purchase enough supplies for them all. Thus far they had been sticking to the Caravel Boutique because it had beds and everything was not exactly in order yet on the Shining Jewel. Rarity was drawing a blank as she already had a decent crew for what she needed when it came to the Caravel Boutique, but the Shining Jewel was a different monster altogether. She was the captain and boss of a rather loyal crew that she earned or picked up, none of them had any other places to be or prior arrangements. Still the Shining Jewel presented a big challenge and their supplies were currently excellently stocked as Greta had been pulling a lot of hours getting the more problematic aspects of the ship entirely under control, such as making the cleaned out food storage fully operational. The Triple P agents took a lot of stuff from the ship, but the stuff they decided to leave behind after cleaning up all the remains of those killed was a nice bonus. “How’s the arm feeling Gilda?” If Rarity had asked anyone else, they’d probably say they were find and couldn’t complain. This was Gilda so of course she’d have something to say about the cast, as she walked into the repair and maintenance room of the Caravel Boutique. “It gets in the way of work, it feels stiff and numb, plus I’m going crazy trying to find other things to do other than just yell at Greta all the time.” As Gilda stated this she turned to Greta who finished opening up the less combat capable MAT drone number two while shaking her head. “We’ll need some rather specific parts if we’re going to get our second MAT here up and combat ready like the other one. Can’t do much aside from increase its movement speed, but once we start getting a bit more cash flow around and supplies around here we’ll start doing magical things for you.” Greta stretched her talons above her head and let out a yawn. She followed this up giving a big smile to her favorite griffon and the boss lady before putting her face shield back in place as she worked with Mr. Welder on the MAT drone. “Besides you can yell at me as much as you want Gilda, I actually enjoy it.” “You would enjoy that wouldn’t you? I would bludgeon you with my bio cast covered arm, but I’m afraid I might damage the cast breaking your skull. Only another day or so like this and it can finally come off…” Muttered Gilda as she tried to flex her talons in the cast, she turned to Rarity ignoring the sparks come from off to the side as Greta worked. “Speaking of asking how others are doing… are you really sure you want to get into some kind of haughty, snobbish and stuck up to high hell event like the Grand Galloping Gala boss lady? Besides that it’s not even assured you’ll even get an invitation. Also if you do somehow manage to get into the shindig, then the only reasoned I’d go is to see if my friend Rainbow Dash was hobnobbing with the Wonder Bolts.” “Why yes, I’m quite determined to see this through, because then I can maybe meet ‘HIM’. The very stallion of my dreams~! We’d fall in love, have many romantic evenings together, we’d marry under Luna’s moon and then we could have a couple of fillies and maybe a colt. Of course I’ll still be running my business; nothing’s going to stop me from doing that even if I become a highly influential name in the right circles.” Tapping a hoof to her chin and looking contemplative, Rarity looked Gilda in the eyes. “If I can’t get an invitation from the princesses, then I’ll just have to find someone who’ll take me as their plus one.” “I’m just going to put it out there because even Greta’s probably thinking it even as she has her dumb and stupidly optimistic side going full blast at the moment.” Leaning her head in close Gilda spoke clearly to Rarity in a manner that was filled with vast wisdom; she even put her talons on Rarity’s shoulder. She respected this pony even if she was simply a somewhat high maintenance clothing designer. “You’re setting yourself up for disappointment. I think your goals are a bit lofty and unrealistic as far as romance is concerned. You also probably shouldn’t try to live out the fantasies in those horrible sparkling vampire pony novels you read, since I certainly hope you’re smarter than that. Do you ever notice that the words ‘happily ever after’ is never fully explained or detailed all too much in fairy tales? Can you seriously be happy with some strange guy you don’t know who’s willing to come waltzing up to you to kiss your corpse awake? I’d be more worried about him being into necrophilia, not to mention that nobody thought to wash the poison off the girl’s lips before he did so and why is he immune to said poison is never going to be explained either if it was powerful enough to almost kill you with one taste. Relationships take time and energy to build; you can’t just instantly expect someone to love you at first sight even if you do have a nice outward appearance. Personally I think personality matters more in the long run even if you think first impressions are the most important.” “I’m quite well aware that I’m setting my bar a bit high… but when I fail, I’m happier knowing I’ve tried to achieve my impossible goal knowing I at least got somewhere.” After stating that Rarity decided to try and defend the fairy tale Gilda was mentioning in question. “Also just because the earth pony still had the poison on her lips didn’t mean it… okay now that you mention it that is a rather big hole in the plot. Knowing that the poison can work by skin contact alone is bad enough, but they never cleaned her teeth of the apple chunk she had to have chewed and swallowed before succumbing to it either and her breath must have been horrid give nobody brushed her teeth since then. Now I can’t get the image of the prince of being into necrophilia out of my head and it’s disturbing me on a number of levels as to what my mind is coming up with.” Gilda smirked at the pale look on Rarity’s face, she wondered if she ruined Rarity’s childish fantasies with that one. Rarity tried to act classy as if she were already part of the upper crust, but the truth was she was already more noble than most nobles tended to be and she was better off not moving up in the world. Being born into nobility meant nothing to Gilda, being noble and actually meaning your intentions and actions did. “Don’t think about it too hard then, think about what we’ll do in the future and where we’ll all be. I can certainly spend the rest of my life next to Gilda working in Shining Jewel’s hangar.” Chirping in merrily, it seemed that Greta was done putting the MAT back together and had it hovering off via Opal’s control. “Well I don’t have much else to do here; I’m going to see to the few other technical issues around Shining Jewel. Ask Opal where I am if you need me for anything, I’ll likely be in the bowels of Shining Jewel for a while.” Greta got up and left the room and Gilda just moved out with Rarity towards the living area, where they found Coco sitting idly with a CAT drone taking a few sips of water at the table. Coco looked up at them as they entered through the left branch door and she smiled lighting up the room. “Great you’re here Rarity, I’ve actually come up with an interesting idea for the Impulse Saddle and I would like to test it once we come out of jump. I only need a few minutes in open space and I’m asking for permission to perform a test run of the solar battery packs. Sassy’s been real helpful with my design and it’s helping her improve the Pinpoint Puller’s design at the same time.” Even if Coco still felt a bit iffy about Rarity’s actions involving the pirates, she was okay with leaving them to the Triple P. Of course that meant flying back to Ewesen for an hour and a half to report the criminals and then another hour and a half leading them to the ambush point to have them detained. “Do you really have to go out into open space dear? We could have Opal test it with a CAT drone.” If safety was a concern then Rarity had to ask about it, she was hoping to keep a safe workplace for her crew and any testing to be done had to be run by her or Opal. Opal obviously wanted this to be run by her as well. “We need someone using up the energy and Coco maneuvering an Impulse Saddle around would give us a good scope of how much power the solar cells can put into the saddle and how well it will keep charged. We can possibly make the saddles lighter and viable for ground excursions. Imagine never running out of energy for your pistols in a firefight!” At this point Opal coughed and had the CAT make a requisite motion as if it were coughing; Rarity gave Opal a flat look. “Of course I know we’re not making combat armor… though you’re quite capable of it and it would go a long way to giving me peace of mind if you were better protected. I’ve run the calculation and our experiment is not capable of causing anything lethal to happen, unless a battle cruiser were to suddenly drop out of nowhere on top of us. Whatever happens will be problematic maybe, but nowhere near lethal. The worst it will do is short out the saddle and might electrocute Coco a bit… enough to knock her out and lightly injure her.” “I’ll allow this test, just be careful darling.” Trotting over to her friend, Rarity got rather affectionate by nuzzling her. “I don’t like seeing my friends floating lifelessly in med beds, so take all precautions and don’t push the envelope Coco. Remember that we’re fashion designers, not scientists.” “Well actually…” Coco started up and trailed off, she was kind of a scientist or at the very least an inventor. Then again so was everyone else aboard the two ships. “We’re all a little bit inventive here… Gilda hasn’t been able to get inventive because of her cast, but I’ve seen the way she eyes that naked Javelin. If anyone here knows rocket science, it’d definitely have to be her.” “Yeah, pretty much need to know that stuff to build fighters and repair them.” Intoned Gilda as she puffed out her chest to preen at the attention she was getting. Said partially capable Javelin was sitting where it was left in hangar section three and Gilda often looked at it longingly. In fact some might say Gilda had a fetish for space ships in general given she adored getting a chance to pilot Shining Jewel when they had still been scavenging the space surrounding Ewesen. “Speaking of ships, finally finished going over all the data as to how the pirates could accurately place an interdiction field for us twice. It’s quite ingenious really; they had the Caravel Boutique bugged with a device that only received a signal. The fact that it doesn’t transmit makes it hard to pick up, but I’ve found and removed it. I suggest we leave it up to Gilda and Greta as to what we do with it. It’s part of our spare parts storage now.” A nearby screen lit up and Opal appeared on it to give them a visual run down. “They used the distance it took for the signal to be received to track us, as it stops where we are. They moved to the edge of the system ahead of us and since we didn’t alter course before our jump, they got ahead of us to set up an ambush without really needing to get into visual range using our initial unchanged trajectory to plan an interdiction field given jumps are a mostly straight shot. Note that Ewesen’s Planetary Protection Patrol also has a copy of this data since I pawed it over to them. The pirates knew where we were heading the first time so they eventually caught up to us and stayed out of the sight. That was until we were ready to leave the system so they could have a chance at their revenge on us for escaping them previously. How unfortunate for them that we were armed with a bigger fish this time, not to mention Greta and I did a good job in making sure things were mostly running smoothly as far as the weapons and shields were concerned before we left. Why the fire rate on those turrets has me purring with delight.” “Thank you Opal, please do not power up the turrets unless we’re shot at or it’s necessary… shields will always be free reign until otherwise stated. Call Sassy and Vera, I think we should all sit down to have some tea before we arrive and begin Coco’s product testing.” All things were going just fine at the moment so Rarity had little to worry about aside from her plans on how to get into the Gala, hopefully plan A came to fruition. If not then finding someone who would take her as a plus one was paramount, mostly because it would be a date then. - Bliuspyro was a world that had some safe places to land that surprisingly had a breathable atmosphere, though you probably wouldn’t know it by looking at it. You wouldn’t want to stay for long either as the entire planet was covered in lava flows and lakes. The planet even had life forms on it, rather intelligent ones that avoided the volcanic activities easily enough and were nomadic. The other less intelligent life forms grew up subsisting on high temperature places having evolved similar tolerances to heat that a dragon could enjoy. One being didn’t care at all about any of this, because the planet didn’t have any large predators and it was generally a planet for rock farmers that had a metric ton of gems provided you could take the heat for a while to get them. This is where Ember was as she erupted out of a lava lake and blinked the hot molten rock out of her eyes and gave off a sigh as she relax in what amounted to a Jacuzzi for her. This would probably kill a pony in seconds to even get within five feet of. She was enjoying her time of this planet, the lava and magma felt good, the gems tasted sweet and succulent, to be quite frank the blue dragon was in heaven and completely without her armor as she enjoyed her vacation from putting down frenzied monsters. “Ah, Bliuspyro Beach and all the gems I can eat… it’s perfect here… well almost.” Sitting up and looking around, Ember frowned at how lonely it was out here. Then again she didn’t want people gawking at her body or messing with her ship or Mr. Spew. There was nothing intelligent for miles aside from a few creatures that wouldn’t bother someone who played in magma and lava like convection didn’t even exist. “I can’t help but miss having people to talk to; at least I have Mr. Spew now. Even then he can’t enjoy the local flavor like I can.” The local flavor being rich with flavorful ores and quite a few tasty treats that Ember was snacking on while saving others for later. Some of it she would convert into money, trading food for goods and services never hurt as she wasn’t a hoarder, then there’s the fact that this world was ripe with high grade ammunition possibilities for her rifle. Ember closed her eyes and leaned back slowly inhaling the scent of sulfur and brimstone, the heat of this world taking her into its comfortable embrace. “I wonder where I’ll end up next; I can feasibly go anywhere now. I really should have a bought myself a ship a long time ago.” It was quite peaceful on this world, mostly because not many people other than miners, manufacturing crews or natives really bother with volcanic worlds. She looked at the bright night sky and wondered about her father, about her recently made friends and things she tried to forget. “Mother, what would you make of me now? There’s your daughter, the lone dragon who left her home lands behind for the stars. There’s Flamethrower, the powerful bounty hunting dragon that can put up a fight with a fury like that of a volcano… still hate that nickname. Then there’s plain old Ember Mcflame, the dragon that just wants to be different, to have friends and be loved by someone that’s not family. Dad still hasn’t called me back, even knowing he can do so any time he wished. I have to thank him for letting me have my freedom if I ever see him again. I’m so glad I don’t have to be the princess that all other dragons are forced to bow down to.” - “I swear, things like this day leave a bad taste in my mouth. At least business hasn’t been too poor, but that business seems rather shifty.” Saffron Masala Cumin intoned to her father Coriander Cumin. The unicorn had long thick puffy curly two toned dark fuschia hair that hung down beyond her chest and was held back by a tasteful headband and her equally thick tail was held off the floor by a hair band. Her orange fur and colorful amethyst eyes made for an exotic looking beauty of indoneighsian descent that had a saffron flower marking her rear. She was the head chef of the small restaurant and worked with her father Coriander Cumin who just huffed at her words, she was looking at several of their customers with suspicion. “Seriously father, shouldn’t we do something about them?” “We should stay out of their business Saffron, because they are bringing us business.” The bushy dark raspberry haired short and stout stallion with the mustache stated, he had an amber fur and a gruff demeanor about him. His cutie mark was a bowl of spices with a few surrounding it; he had the same eye color as his daughter. “They haven’t done anything yet except talk. Nothing incriminating has happened yet and we can’t report on suspicions alone and besides, they are paying customers. As long as they don’t cause us issues and are paying customers we should return the favor.” “Okay… fine.” Saffron turned away from the suspicious customers and went back to getting their food ready, she wasn’t happy about it. Something was up with those ponies.