It was two days after the birthday incident in which the Pinkie Pie that Rarity knew forgot her own birthday for the sake of another Pinkie Pie’s birthday… Rarity was not going to think too hard about that or how weird her friend was. Were they still friends? Well Rarity couldn’t find it in her heart to say they weren’t even if she had some distaste for Pinkie’s preferable mane style being a chaotic mess of curls and puffiness. Oh wait, where was she again? Oh right, she was waiting for the rest of the crew to get their rears to the cafeteria for lunch and a meeting. Her recent sales on Streusel Station had been quite profitable, especially with both men and women for the quality and prices of her stock.
“Coco I would like to thank you for all those clothes you made for sale, it really boosted our funds by quite a bit.” Her friend blushed at the praise and Rarity knew she deserved every bit of it. Wrestling was not Rarity’s thing, but she was asked to come up with a practical costume and not something that comes out as a bizarre work of Rarity’s art. “Remind me to get to work on that costume for you after we’re done discussing things here Coco. Streusel Station has been quite successful for business ventures and hardly anything has gone wrong, one would most expect at least something in an asteroid field and I’m quite surprised that nothing has occurred that warrants our attention for once.”
The best thing about owning and running your own business was that nobody could tell you what was right or wrong, though making a lot of tough calls was under Rarity’s purview as captain, Baroness and boss to everyone on her crew. Surprisingly despite all her titles, her work load didn’t increase all too much. She was even managing to keep up with the several crazier people in her crew and keep their psychological traumas in checks, Chrysalis clearly being voted the craziest person on the Shining Jewel’s crew. Vera was quite clingy and was really hard to get off the ship for any relaxation, Rarity wasn’t about to forget she existed or needed help every once in a while considering how much Vera has already done for her and the others.
“Speaking of business venture, I recall you saying something about having finished my personal order?” Chrysalis smiled innocently as she came trotting in with an expectant look, she was anything but innocent and at least she wasn’t causing too much trouble for Rarity. It seemed like she was on the up and up about being a productive member of the crew, only Rarity couldn’t relax her guard around her for various and quite obvious reasons. It was well documented that Chrysalis was quite a selfish individual that thought mostly of just herself and then her race as a priority.
“Yes, I finished it, but I need your opinion on anything that might need changing.” For a material Rarity thought Cadence’s hair was quite beautiful and strong, she treated the hair so that it would be hard to burn and or destroyed through various means. She brought out a box and set it on the table and pushed it over to Chrysalis who gleefully opened it and looked inside. “There’s not much more I can change about it, I just hope I met up to your requirements. While I don’t like where you got the material from, I must say it did turn out beautifully. There’s plenty of… Cadence’s mane left over if you want to eat it or save it for another reason.”
Rarity finally had the finished what Chrysalis wanted and was unsure about the morality behind it. Whether or not Chrysalis liked it, it was up to the Changeling Queen, she better not just eat it as Rarity put a lot of work into it. Rarity had felt a little bit bad about the material she was working with having been sheared from a beautiful pony princess with clippers, to her it was a travesty on Cadence’s part as clippers had no business being around such a beautiful mane as what Cadence once had.
Reaching into the box, Chrysalis looked at the final product and she was awestruck. It was beautiful to her and she reverently took it out of the box and held it aloft, the necklace was well crafted in her eyes. It was braided quite finely with each color of Cadence’s mane being represented, it had a clasp hold it in place around her neck and at the center of the she ran her hoof over it with enlarged wondering pupils. Her pupil quickly shrunk back to normal and she closed the lid on the box. It was an exquisitely made necklace that was almost a choker, one with the intricate weave in the shape of a heart like Cadence’s cutie mark at the front and it might have been a bit lacy, but it was exactly what Chrysalis wanted.
“Thank you for doing business with me, it’s beautiful and exactly what I wanted. I’ll keep the hair in storage if I need you to make another one.” Chrysalis muttered, she shook her head and smiled. “Anyway, I’ll be taking this back to my room with me when we’re done with our meeting here. Speaking of business… is this about that thing I did yesterday? I know I can be callous and uncaring about other people’s feelings, but that’s just how I roll.”
“Chrysalis, we’re not here to speak of that incident. You were punished soundly for it and that was enough for me.” It took a bit of doing, but Rarity actually found a few things that Chrysalis didn’t like. Rarity was well aware that the Changeling Queen liked her own suffering just as much as she liked the pain and suffering of others. Knowing that, it had Rarity a little unsure if she should let Chrysalis pursue a relationship with Sassy. So far Sassy hasn’t told Chrysalis no and is even seemed to be friendly with Chrysalis and it didn’t seem like a caustic relationship… yet. Vera said it was worth bothering with, until something went south and the recent incident yesterday wasn’t a very big issue, but Chrysalis still needed to learn that she had to carry herself better. Rarity thought Chrysalis was a bit of brat more than a queen of Changelings, she kind of expected better of royalty and her expectations about nobility were completely blown apart now. “We’re coming together about something else; it’s high time I think about getting my crew the ability to defend themselves appropriately. Mostly because I’m beginning to tire of having to repair every single damaged EVA suit from all the incidents we run into, not to mention having to clean all that awful grunginess off of them. They are not compatible with any kind of washing machine based device and as such it isn’t exactly easy to clean one, much less several after going through a rather horrible situation.”
“Yeah, we’re going to need something better than civilian grade equipment if we keep running into horrors like that crap show. Can’t exactly find fault in you on that though Boss Lady; we had no idea what we were up against. I even thought I was going to die… thanks for helping me get here Masseuse.” Lightning was lead into the room by Vera and Vera’s favorite constantly pointing drone. Moving over to a chair and sitting down on her own accord, Lightning could hear an uncomfortable creaking noise when she leaned her chest against the table. A sudden grimace crossed Lightning’s face to let everyone present know she wasn’t feeling too well about her surgically pasted ribs. Vera gave her a stern look as and Lightning rolled her eyes. Unlike Sassy, Lightning certainly didn’t have problems walking, but it seemed that her breathing was a bit off or strained. “Yes, I know not put too much pressure on my ribs. I may have daredevil tendencies, but I’m not stupid or quick to die! I’ll take it easy and I promised you I wouldn’t attempt to fly at all, well at least until the paste on my ribs exits my body like it’s supposed to. I always hated that paste stuff when I was younger, now I have to live with it again. I can’t really say it isn’t effective in helping get your bones back in order though.”
“Chrysalis I have something to ask… do you know how to wrestle?” It took a few minutes, but Coco managed to work up the courage to ask the question.
“Well, aside from a basic wrestling style, I know folk style, sexy style and mud gumbo style. Don’t ask about the mud gumbo style, I can’t exactly teach that to just anyone.” Chrysalis’s eyes became rather shifty when she mentioned the Mud Gumbo style; she was biting her bottom lip for having even mentioned it in the first place. “So I take it you want to learn sexy style?”
“What’s the difference? I thought a lot of wrestling was the same… well comparatively.” Coco was trying so hard to not let her face go red at hearing sexy style, she really was.
“Folk style has a lot more moves when you’re stuck in the bottom position or the submissive position, it’s about making sure you don’t get stuck in that particular position and it’s mostly about pinning your opponent down. Quite a bit of reversal is involved and it requires good flexibility, I’m really flexible as I’m sure Lightning knows… we’ll have to play Twisty when you get better. I had to learn to break out of several difficult submissive holds when I became a Changeling Queen, mostly to keep the sanctity of my body. I couldn’t very well let myself be held down and used unless I wanted to be used.” Darn and Chrysalis so sorely wanted Coco to ask her about sexy style, was she stuck with a bunch of prudes? They had seemed like the well adjusted emotional beings they were, now she knew they might be repressed and she was going to tell them about sexy style anyway. “As for sexy style, it is a submission style of wrestling which is mostly involving in mixed martial arts which is something I’m clearly knowledgeable about. It’s entirely based on massaging your opponent while attempting to force a dominant position and make your opponent want to be submissive. I could always just teach you regular wrestling, but wouldn’t it be more fun if you could dominate a griffon with caressing hooves?”
“No… I don’t think I want to learn how to do that.” Squeaked out a very embarrassed Coco, who really didn’t want to know what Chrysalis was getting at.
“I know sexy style as well, never really had to use it for much except on more problematic people. Vinyl Scratch being one of the few times I really had to use it at all.” Vera knew that was something Rarity and Octavia were witness to personally; she had wrestled Vinyl into such a submissive and happy position. “I think Coco is looking for basic wrestling Chrysalis. Sorry I didn’t bring this up earlier when we were spending time with the other girls Coco, but I didn’t think you’d be interested in my particular knowledge on wrestling. Sexy wrestling is all about how sensitive your opponent is to your movements and what you’re looking for is the more bull by the horns every day kind of wrestling deal, so basic is really what you want.”
“It would still help if everyone learned some folk style… hey do you think Sassy would appreciate knowing some submission breakers?” At least Chrysalis understood somewhat as to what Sassy had been through, she just didn’t understand exactly how bad or psychologically scarring it was in full. She was just interested in making Sassy happy so that she could make Chrysalis happy, it seemed like the perfect plan to her and the convoluted steps between now and what she wanted to happen didn’t cross her mind one bit. Even now Chrysalis had some very warped views of what exactly was romantic; it was not the candlelit dinner kind of stuff and it wasn’t like that worked on every girl anyway. “I can perform all of mine half drugged out of my mind. It even sounds like the perfect thing for Sassy to learn! She can pin me to wall or floor anytime she wants. I mean teaching ponies can’t be that much harder than teaching Changelings right? I’ll think of a schedule and work it out with you later.”
“Do I even want to know the topic of discussion I just walked into?” Coming into the room was a grease covered Gilda who had been working on another project, it was another walker and she wasn’t quite ready to start building her dream fighter. Using a rather despoiled rag, she wiped an inky mess from her face as best she could. She looked a little grumpy, then again that was her natural state of living when it came to repair and maintenance. “I can guess this is the think tank thing we talked about, so let’s wait for everybody so we don’t have to explain things twice. As for a new topic, do you want to hear about what Greta got from the strange bubble shooting pistol I brought in?”
“Well it would be nice to get off our current topic of discussion while Coco still has some blood in the rest of her body.” Rarity giggled a bit and looked at her friend’s tomato colored head, poor Coco must have a very vivid imagination. It occurred to Rarity that Coco might have been thinking rather distracting or racy thoughts, hopefully Coco would contain herself. “Are you alright darling?”
“I’m fine Rarity, just really flustered.” The idea for several lingerie based wrestling costumes floating about her mind said otherwise, but Coco was quick to mentally stomp it down as hard as she could. Only the images just kept coming to the forefront of her thought processes and she slowly imagined Greta and Gilda tag teaming her, those thoughts just made it worse when she threw Saffron in a very slinky Mare-Do-Well style costume. “Can we please talk about that pistol Gilda managed to nab off the Foggre?”
“I’m still kind of interested in how Chrysalis can survive having all her vital organs crushed by a meteor personally.” Vera wanted to get her own few words in, she just never asked about it and nobody else had questioned because obviously Chrysalis survived.
“Eh it wasn’t really that big, even if it destroyed the entire top layer of my hive where my throne room was and basically crushed my body while setting it on fire. Thankfully no Changeling important was hurt.” It never bothered Chrysalis that it happened; it just bothered her that she lost one of her most incredible assets to protection against all forms of magic that wasn’t Changeling in origin. “It was an exceptionally white hot euphoric amount of pain and I enjoyed every minute of it, took me a while to start walking again. Probably would have died if the Changeling fire fighting team was late in spraying construction goo all over it, held me together when it finally seeped down to me. At least Changeling health care is as good as all the medical bed technology and a normal Changeling would have died five seconds in, but I have a lot of determination to stay alive.”
“Well that question has finally been answered, you could have just stated that you’re impossible to kill and I would have believed it.” That had been bugging Rarity, yet no digital media ever really explained the overly volatile reaction the princesses had to Chrysalis. “Just what exactly did you do to get the princesses so mad at you to cause that incident in the first place?”
“Oh, do you want to know what I did to deserve that? Well the very reason why the meteor was even on fire in the first place was because of Princess Celestia, I thought she would like a playful game of cat and mouse. I was almost dead wrong and her response was quite bluntly in the tone of, give me back my pretty purple pony or else. Given that direct confrontation would have been brutal in losses, the Changelings surrendered in my stead given I was incapacitated at the time. Still don’t understand why Celestia thought she had to apologize for attempted murder, that was one of the most incredible feelings I’ve ever felt.” Tapping the table with a hoof Chrysalis gained a thoughtful look as she hugged her box. “Now that I think of it, I Probably shouldn’t have kidnapped Twilight Sparkle in an attempt to get Celestia to marry me… I did kind of taunt her with the fact that I stole Twilight out from under her nose and brought her back to my hive thing. Didn’t think she would take it so personally really, I didn’t even hurt a single hair on Twilight when it came to subduing her with a spell from behind. I also probably shouldn’t have told Celestia that she was at the bottom of the hive and my throne room was near the top either… yeah, that was kind of dumb on my part really. I can make expertly crafted plans, only problem is I’m usually the wrench that messes them up in the first place or something goes wrong. Like when I was hit with that explosion on Antilur Station… good times.”
“Chrysalis, I ask that you never take a hostage around me, in fact no kidnapping either for that matter unless I’m completely coherent, aware and agree to it!” Never had Rarity seen the likes of someone whose idea of romantic was kidnapping important ponies and marry someone. “Do you even know the proper way to court someone? No don’t answer that, I’m sorry I asked and I don’t want to know.”
“Sounds fair… wait a minute… there’s a better way to marry someone I like?” Chrysalis was horribly confused, aside from the fact that she got along with Celestia as just really good friends afterwards. Was there really a different way to go about romantically entangling someone? Oh right, she wasn’t a pony so she wouldn’t think to do it the pony way, of course, it all made sense now. Friendship was easy, sexy bedroom times with a pony of her choice was a lot harder to achieve than she thought. “Fine I won’t kidnap anyone you know unless it’s urgent… can I have a list of all your relatives, friends and family for reasons that are not very ominous?”
“It’s a wonder Celestia lost to her at what should have been Cadence’s wedding.” Coco deadpanned in an adorable manner while putting her chin on her crossed hooves.
“Yeah, can we get back to what I discovered about that pistol?” Greta was now there at the table and so were Saffron, Coriander, Bernard, Trapeze and Rover. A few seconds later Ember walked in with Sassy wheeling herself and Babs was sleeping in Sassy’s lap, the filly just looked so precious kicking at the air in her sleep.
“Maybe later Greta, Ember I’m glad you came along. Since everyone is here, let’s get this meeting started. I have gathered my entire crew here today to talk about a small issue we’ve been having.” Taking a rather deep breath of air, Rarity continued. “Every time we get into a crisis I’ve had to deal with my EVA suits getting damaged or covered in stuff I’d rather not think about.”
“You always tell everyone of your displeasure about it. That’s why I’ve been trying to get you more interested in at least something with military applications to protect yourself with; my Mat drones aren’t going to cut it… I would like to thank Greta for getting them fully operational.” Even Opal wanted in on this meeting. It sounded both fun and exciting designing protective armored suits, she was laying on her belly on the nearest monitor kicking her hind legs up and down. “You don’t have to sell it, just make sure that it can’t be used for bad purposes if it’s stolen.”
“Which is what our meeting is about, ideas, we need them if we’re to make some personal powered armor for our crew. Our resident experts at making all things mechanical, our very own Gilda and Greta of course, will be responsible for the construction of said armor. They will be getting some help from Opal, Coco and anyone else who thinks they can help with the design.” Rarity sat at the table and took a breadstick from a basket offered by a drone and bit a chunk out of it. After finishing that little bit of her garlic and cheese flavored breadstick which was soft and fluffy, she continued. “I’m willing to take any idea as long as it’s a productive one and I don’t want to hear anything silly like adding genitalia to it. I’m already half expecting Chrysalis to run a sex shop out of my ship, I don’t need it to become a reality.”
“Darn, well there goes my pitch for the ‘Rarity’s Secret’ portion of your fashion industry.” Dryly commented a flat faced Chrysalis. She was actually a little sad that she wouldn’t be able to sell all kinds of bondage equipment to good little loving ponies everywhere, Opal had already stomped on her dreams for the fashion industry and Rarity just crushed them. She would have done it all in good taste too… at least she thought it would be good taste. It led to Chrysalis wondering if she really knew anything about the fashion industry aside from the fact that it sounded rather cutthroat from what’s she’s heard. “I’m pretty sure the fuzzy hoof cuffs would have made sexy times even better.”
“You are the main reason why I made those ground rules in the first place.” If it were anyone else that would suggest something like accurate genitalia, then Rarity would be surprised. “Now if anyone else would like us to start off with something that could be both functional as much as fashionable I would like to hear it.”
“Well we could incorporate battery loaded impulse saddles into the design.” As soon as Coco said this, an impulse saddle appeared on screen. “We’d need something along the lines of boost jets to get us off the ground when we’re wearing them on a planet. We wouldn’t be able to fuel them for prolonged flight, mostly short bursts, in space we can get around with impulse no fuel to worry about.”
Opal made some adjustments to the saddle and added six jets to the outline of a pony on screen, the jets were located at the end of the hooves and two on the impulse saddle itself.
“What we really need is to consider what kind of powered armor we are working towards. I never really thought this was possible to make powered armor until now. Do we make powered armor with shields and light armored plating, heavy armor plating and shields or something of a middling ground?” As Saffron spoke the imagine on the screen produce three suits of old knight armor, one bulky, one moderately all around and one that looked to be full bodied chainmail. “Isn’t that a bit ancient for what we’re going for Opal?”
“Hey I’m just trying to get a physical representation on screen; the final product will not look like this. Besides unless spell protected royal guard armor isn’t very useful and all the enchantments require a lot of magic.” After rubbing her chin Opal grunted a bit and then shrugged. “We’ll worry about whether or not we want to magically enchant the armors; we need to focus on the technological angle first before we decide to add magic to the mix. What are we currently capable of with technology and can it fit on some ponies back without becoming cumbersome?”
“That is a good question; Coco might be able to handle more weight than the rest of us. So we might need to design with the physically weakest crew member here in mind, as weight can become a problem.” Everyone slowly turned to Rarity as she spoke and then she noticed they were all staring at her, Ember coughed loudly into her fist. “Right then, design it with me being the weakest crew member in mind. Yes, let’s forget the fact that both Lightning and Sassy are still recovering at the moment. I can handle some weight; I did for a long time with an impulse saddle strapped to my back. I wish I hadn’t, I was so horribly sweaty after pulling my EVA suit off, but we all know what happened on Antilur was quite hectic.”
“Aren’t I the weakest crew member though?” Asked Babs innocently as she rubbed at her eyes and rolled onto belly to sit up at the table in front of Sassy. Having just woken up, she didn’t know what was going on.
“You’re not a crew member dear; you’re a passenger like Ember and it would be illegal to force a filly to work for me. You’re getting a free room and food so you shouldn’t complain or worry, we’re quite willing to take care of you for as long as you need us to. Ember on the other hoof is paying for her spot on my ship even when I told her she didn’t have to go that far.” Rarity saw Ember cross her arms and gave her a firm look. “She’s the one that has insisted on paying rent and I haven’t the foggiest why when she could be here for free.”
“I just don’t mooch off of my friends. This leads to me asking about weapons, you obviously need to include them in the workings of the armor. Energy would be the easiest to make, point hoof and fire a beam at something. Material weapons would be hard to install into armor like that and as such you would need to have the material weapon separate from the armor. There’s also the possibility of including things like bladed weaponry into the armor itself, never know when you might get stuck in a melee.” Ember watched as images appeared on screen and it cycled through three images that created lines leading to the central piece of armor, they each represented material, energy and special kinds of weapons. “There are all kinds of strange monsters out there that need to be dealt with in specific ways, Coco already has the shock hooves on her EVA suit and they kind of saved the day back on Antilur. I and Chrysalis were busy running from a giant corpse scorpion at the time so I wouldn’t have been able to protect her and deal with the tendrils on the ceiling. Put in at least one unique weapon that can do something unusual.”
“I don’t like to say it often, but thank you for watching out for my concussed ass while I was still having issues shooting straight.” Chrysalis decided not to mention the hoard thing Ember had going on here, she was completely aware of it and could feel the intense ownership for everyone Ember called a friend. This included her as well and it was a bit touching to Chrysalis, so she decided to hold her whistle blowing for now. She’d still be capable of it later, unless Ember had the guts to tell everyone she started thinking of them as her hoard.
“Yes well, we have ideas for armor, weapons and mobility, but what about looks? Can we make this armor with any sort of practicality when we all know Rarity-sama won’t make them without at least some good aesthetics involved?” It had to be comfortable to use and Sassy wanted that to be one of the things to think of in the design. “They’ll have to be fashionable, comfortable and effective. While I want them to be fashionable as well, I would say that practicality should be our main concern. We need to rely on the most no nonsense crew member here to keep us on track on that front. That would be Gilda.”
“Actually if we’re talking no nonsense, then I’d have to say Coriander should be the one on that front.” For once Gilda didn’t puff out her chest and preen about the subject, she was taking this seriously and she really wanted to pull this off. “Lest no one forgets that too many ideas can spoil the pot and nobody knows that better than a cook.”
“I agree on that front, I will be overlooking this to prevent anything silly from being put into the project.” Coriander spoke up from eating some breadsticks.
“Good, because the first pony I want to put in power armor is Saffron. I’d trust her to not go mad with power… that’s something I’d absolutely expect Chrysalis would do.” Cautiously Rarity pointed to Chrysalis.
“Yep, I would definitely do something like that. I am still a bit megalomaniacal since I’m a Changeling Queen.” There were a lot of concerned stares in Chrysalis’s direction. “Hey, at least I can at least admit it! I’m on this crew for personal reasons and I wouldn’t be here if I knew for certain that at least one of you was planning to throw me out an airlock.”
“Alright, very well then, I suggest we move onto the next stage of planning.” Lifting her data pad with her magic Rarity had Mare-Do-Well’s costume on screen and was thinking about how she could translate that costume into an armored form. “We need to hammer out the finer details of all that has been brought up so far, I would suggest adding a pinpoint puller to the design with the upgrade that I heard Ember was making to the spare one she bought from us.”
“Rover is thinking we be making each armor suit special, we can specialize while making some compromises in how each one works depending on the user we’re making it for.” That was quite an eloquent thought for Rover and everyone nodded, it was actually good idea. “I want digging suit personally. Though Rover hates to admit it, there are some things Rover can’t dig through with bare claws.”
“Hopefully that’s not the smartest thing you’ll ever say, because I expect even greater things from you.” Lazily stated Trapeze with her hat over her smiling face, she had been meticulously marketing merchandise and she was happy with earning her keep. Earth ponies prided themselves on hard work and earning their place wherever they were.