//------------------------------// // -80- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// “How are we going to break this information to the kid?” Personally Gilda would have told Babs up front and then proceed to tell her to suck it up if she started crying just because some of her relative might have been frozen solid. The Griffon thought that the remains of Bab’s parents needing to be incinerated by Ember as something far more traumatic. Yet Babs didn’t hate Ember and was surprisingly mature about it, it was kind of amazing that the little squirt hadn’t completely shut down emotionally. "I mean, do we even know if any of her family is still around?" “Well we did have contact with some of her family at the supply depot; I believe Opal said the name of the guy was Braeburn?” The supply depot was operational and Rarity thought Braeburn sounded like a nice guy from what Opal has said about the news she got from him. “I’m sure Babs wouldn’t mind going to live with him, but I’m not about let her leave the ship quite yet until we know she’ll be both safe and secure. We didn’t bring her this far to leave her in the middle of a bad situation.” Part of Applin Five was positively covered in snow and that part of it had been mostly evacuated thankfully; however the snow had only started to get really bad about three days ago. It was a major issue to leaving Babs in a safe stable environment, right now the Shining Jewel was the safest place for the filly to be. Rarity wondered if she should even consider getting involved with Applin Five’s current crisis, there was absolutely no reason for her to do so for the time being as it was not her problem. Even if her heart said yes, Rarity’s head was constantly saying ‘hell no’ in a manner unbefitting of a lady supported by a megaphone and warning sirens. Saffron would want to get involved with solving this mystery and Rarity wouldn’t have the heart to deny the heroic mare as she owed Saffron for saving her from Mind Field. Rarity helped at Antilur Station because Ember certainly needed it, that and the problem had been an apocalyptic level concern that definitely needed to die. Here on the other hoof, yeah, nobody she knew was in danger of dying and aside from the planet becoming uninhabitable she didn’t really see how this could possibly become her problem. In fact Rarity was beginning to gain a large aversion for walking into dangerous situations she could see from thousands of miles away; it was quite literally visible from that far away and on the nearest screen. Vera told Rarity that it was a perfectly normal response to have such an aversion to danger with how many situations Rarity has gotten into whether on purpose or by accident since she started up her business. The ocean’s water levels were lowering a bit thanks to the problematic weather stealing all the water to power the blizzard, as one could imagine this was also causing massive issues around the rest of Applin Five. The horrible weather obviously had to be manufactured, but no amount of Pegasi or Unicorns could have possibly covered this much of the planet on their own. It had to be the work of an exceedingly powerful being, multiple powerful beings or at least a machine. Greta and Opal agreed with the idea that it was most likely the work of a machine. If it was a machine that was causing the planetary climate issues, then who was behind it, what was their motive for creating a frozen wasteland and what were they getting from doing said action? “I can do safe and secure for the little snack, but if you want me to go down there then I’ll have to decline for really health related reasons. Changelings are good in warm weather, humid conditions and hotter climates like say a desert; anything cold like what we’re seeing is a complete anathema to my race.” If it was to save her hide, then Chrysalis would gladly spout off the knowledge of a really bad weakness to do so. As long as she didn’t have to go anywhere near that frozen hellhole. “A normal changeling wouldn’t last three minutes in normal blizzard conditions without constantly using magic. I would like to point out that that kind of weather pattern is anything but normal and my insignificantly sized butt is not going down there! Heck, a Changeling would be dead by hypothermia before frostbite can even become a problem, provided that the Changeling in question doesn’t immediately switch into a hibernation state by encasing themselves in a cocoon before they can run out of magic. I’d barely last twenty minutes, provided I wasn’t using all my magic to stay alive and warm in the same situation, before hypothermia gets to me if your EVA suit fails to keep me warm enough. I know the EVA suits work well enough in space and are quite handy in combat situations Baroness Belle, but on the ground any wear and tear on the suit could lead to me becoming exposed to temperatures cold enough to actually kill me. I really don’t want to die a painless death, which would just be the absolute worst thing ever!” “Well that’s someone who won’t volunteer to go investigate this; I however would like to get involved.” If some people were willing to pay her, then Ember was willing to find a solution to the problem. She would still do it even without being paid, but gratitude doesn’t feed hungry gem eating dragons. Speaking of gems, she bit into one of the emeralds that Rarity got for her back at Streusel Station. Ember was touched that her hoard’s centerpiece was thinking of her needs and it didn’t hurt that Rarity was a beautiful pony in many ways that don’t involve just her appearance. Aside from eating Ember also needed to pay rent to stay with her hoard. It was a little weird that Ember was actively paying her hoard for its continued survival and she didn’t mind spending said money either if it helped them. All that was considered valuable by others had become rather lacking in value to Ember, the exception being the stuff that she could consume. “I can handle sub-zero temperatures for a long time without clothing and my rifle works perfectly fine in cold temperatures. I’d have to leave Mr. Spew behind and someone would have to take care of him.” The sewer squid just crossed his tentacles from his perch on Ember’s left shoulder; he was really beginning to resemble a parrot to everyone. It was especially noticeable when Mr. Spew was given crackers to munch on by Coco every once in a while when they crossed paths. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by being left behind, provided he could be cuddled by the cute four legged servant thing that was friends with his rather magnificent throne. “Well enough about the planet for now, we’re not going down there unless we absolutely have to. Changing the subject, how is Saffron’s powered armor coming along?” As long as they didn’t have a reason to go down to the planet, then Rarity couldn’t see a reason to endanger her crew needlessly. The reason would have to be a pretty damn good one to get Rarity off of her ship. “We’re almost done; give us twenty four hours and Saffron’s assistance to make some adjustments and do some tests. You know, I think this cafeteria is becoming our favorite meeting place.” One of the many questions that had to be asked and Greta would be the first to voice it, because mostly she didn’t know what the stallion did when he wasn’t taking care of their hunger needs. A stallion that knew how to cook meat was kind of rare, but a pony that ate meat wasn’t as rare as one would think. If you were to call any of the pony species ‘fish breath’, then it would have to be a Pegasus you were talking to. That or a Mer-Pony, River Pony or a Hippocampus Pony, Ponies had a lot of racial variances. “Wait, what do you do when we’re not around Mr. Cumin?”  “Well I do have hobbies like building space ships in bottles, I also read and I play games on my data pad sometimes. Plus there was a recreational console hooked up in the exercise room, so that’s also been keeping me entertained.” Coriander really liked cooking, but it wasn’t a major problem taking care of the crews needs and as such had a lot of free time. A little meat stew every now and then for the more omnivorous portion of the crew didn’t hurt his sense of smell.  “I have a lot more free time on my hooves than I used to have. While I don’t have as many customers, I do like the customers I’m with.” “Yeah, you can play my game system. Just don’t save over any of my save files or you’ll be sorry!” Opal took her electronic gaming seriously. Instead of playing the games at an accelerated speed only an AI could achieve, she preferred playing her games at a mortal level that most people could follow. “Ahem, let us get right back to discussing other things of interest. Babs is currently with Coco, Sassy, Lightning and Vera, they’re currently getting plenty of safe exercise and Coco is learning how to wrestle with Sassy. I have to wonder if you wanted to join… oh she’s already halfway there. She must really want to wrestle.” Rarity turned to where Chrysalis had been sitting and there was a vague afterimage of the Changeling Queen, she seemed rather excited at the opportunity to wrestle with the others. Well exercise was certainly important and Vera was likely putting Babs and the others through their paces. She could do a few laps around the ship herself; maybe get in some target practice. “Was that Chrysalis just now?” Never had Saffron seen anything moving so fast, Chrysalis obviously had somewhere to be in a hurry given how she took the ladder instead of the elevator. In some cases the access ladders around the ship would definitely be faster to get you between decks. “I heard that you needed my assistance to finish the armored suit?” “Yeah and that’s not the only thing we need to finish, I have another vehicle to prepare for snow conditions and that’s going to take up some time. It needs a bit of testing as well to see if it’s combat worthy; then again it’s not exactly a combat vehicle.” Gilda’s grump was back in full force, she and Greta had been using the EGGS in the hangar to build another marvelous contraption. They didn’t exactly have a name for the newest vehicle in Shining Jewel's motor pool, but it was supposed to be a mobile living space and cargo carrier. Bombing Peregrine was exclusively for combat aside from the few creature comforts Gilda installed, the cup holders, enough hammock space for three, microwave and small fridge to be specific. This newest beast was meant to be less offensive and more like a walking fortress despite it not exactly being too massive, it was pretty big and getting it back into space would be kind of a hassle. “Just so you know we upgraded Caravel Boutique to help with lifting our mobile base off the ground if we do land it on the surface of the planet, Theoretically it should have enough fuel to get it off the ground and if the anti-gravity generator works like it’s supposed to then we can get it back into orbit with slightly less trouble. It’ll be an Equestrian record for the largest planet dropping vehicle capable of getting back through the atmosphere without abusive amounts of fuel expenditure.” “The anti-gravity generator would really only offset about half the weight, mass is still an issue and we already calculated needing Caravel Boutique to even get an exit vector unless we can get more power out of the take off thrusters. So yeah, that’s going to be amazing if we can even do it. I wouldn’t mind setting a planet record.” Greta hoped it would work at least, theoretically speaking it should and there was nothing technically wrong with it. She looked over the aspects of everything twice and triple checked the calculations and even ran them by Opal, she was doing her job as a technical engineer and this project was the most ridiculous thing Gilda recently came up with. None the less Greta loved Gilda for it and hoped that she had several more ridiculous ideas to come, Greta welcomed the challenge like her constant pursuit of Gilda. “You can drop on down to the hangar and get a look at what is basically an orbital drop capable base of operations. Besides Gilda was giving you too nice of an estimate, we’d need at least three days if we want to work out all the kinks. It’s seriously going to be awesome, but we’ll need the third day for some rest as we’re the only ones that will know how to pilot the darn thing.” Greta could even tell that some of the ideas for the vehicle they painstakingly constructed came from the Hands of Midas. At least the upper torso would look vaguely similar, they were geniuses of their craft and they used a lot of materials for it. Saffron’s suit was just as expertly crafted, even if they did have to work within a constrained design to give it the whole Mare-Do-Well hero theme. They’d need two days of constant work to finish up both projects. “We can easily wait four days; I don’t exactly plan to do anything about the situation or rush you in your work until something crops up that will inevitably get us involved. Saffron will likely be the catalyst for that.” Turning to the mare in question Rarity looked at her with a bored countenance. “I’m in no hurry to go down to the planet, I can wait that long too unless something pops up that requires urgent actions.” Saffron didn’t consider Faxel to be entirely urgent, though she wondered why they called Trapeze instead of her to handle the situation. Still, it was a good call and the magician did some amazing tricks while helping to disable the Faxel’s ability to cause havoc. “I may still want to be a hero, but I like to at least get a scope of the situation. I kind of wanted to be a detective growing up, but my special talent was obviously in making excellent food. Didn’t exactly stop me from being Mare-Do-Well now did it? It did however stop me from being a detective, just because I don’t exactly look like I have the cutie mark for it doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I’m not exactly one to do things with reckless abandon. I honestly think that would be more of Lightning’s area of expertise, then again we might even need some of that reckless abandon every once in a while.” It was easy to see Saffron was somewhat frustrated with the fact that her cutie mark denied her entrance to being a detective, but she looked at things in another way. Her Cutie Mark was all about spicing things up, she interpreted that as meaning more than just food.  Nothing spiced up Saffron’s life more than doing vigilante work all night while disguised in a secret identity. It wasn’t so secret anymore, but at least nobody on the crew has dropped the fact that she was Mare-Do-Well. “Let me remind you that you said that later when I do something truly outrageous that’ll piss everyone on this ship off.” Not that Gilda would ever stop herself from doing the improbable and totally awesome. There were obvious limits to what she was willing to do, like going into what amounts to a completely haunted space station. Aside from that she was open to suggestions about how to make herself twenty percent cooler than her good old pal Rainbow Dash. “I apologize in advance Boss Lady.” “Apology accepted for when you do eventually do said action.” Rarity spoke in an even tone and remembered that Gilda and Greta hotwired a fighter and went on a joyride with it straight into combat. Why had she bailed them out again? Oh right, they might have been slightly unscrupulous griffons, but they were her slightly unscrupulous griffons and Greta was quite nice to talk to. “As you like to say, don’t get us a killed when you do. So three days?” “Promises, promises, Boss Lady, but yeah three days and we’ll have everything done.” Gilda gave Rarity a lazy wave as she leaned back against the table. “I’ll get right to it when we’re done talking; Greta still needs to tell you about the pistol we got off the ugly annoying frog guy. Greta if you would please explain some things you’ve found out about it, you’ve been kind of dying to explain this ever since you got a hold of it.” “Well I wouldn’t say dying, but yeah I really do want to explain the pistol.” The captive audience just stared at Greta for a moment and she realized they were waiting on her to speak. “Oh right, I was expecting someone to ask a question before I started. It’s a compact space time distortion matrix and not exactly a weapon at all; it’s more of a tool really. Foggre technology is quite advanced despite the fact that they obviously put flaws into everything they make on purpose.” “Well that at least explains why the escape Faxel’s robot was so easy to take down; all the joints on it were quite inflexible.” Ember had fought and beat that robot in less than thirty minutes; she had noticed some of its weaker attributes about five minutes in. The thing wasn’t agile, but it was made to brawl its way out of a tough situation. It was not exactly meant to handle someone as strong as Ember was. “Gave the robot a lot of hitting power and it could jump pretty well, but that made it easy to rip off the limbs because they just couldn’t handle the stress of being bent out of shape in any way.” “I believe that’s the main trait among all Foggre based technology, I looked it up while we were still at Streusel Station. You should really learn Pinkie’s cupcake recipe Gilda.” Shaking her head and trying to get things back on track after licking her beak, Greta coughed loudly. “Back on the topic of the pistol, it’s really quite amazing. Technically speaking it does things that even I have trouble following, it’s not exactly in Gilda’s field of expertise so I’m the only one aside from Opal that can really study it and understand what it even does. The main drawback of using the pistol is the echo effect that locks the user in a skin tight bubble a short while after firing. While I don’t understand the more technical aspects of the space time bubble, I think I have figured out how to create a stasis field generator from studying it even if I can’t recreate the pistol itself because it’s far too unique in its own right. Though such a field won’t last for long, it can protect you from just about anything.” “What’s the drawback to such a thing?” There had to be a catch there was no such thing as a perfect defense. “Several drawbacks actually, the most prominent being that you’ll become entirely immobilized while inside the field. Another few is that you stop aging; you can’t hear, see or even react to anything until the field is turned off. Using such a field for a single person would drain half the power out of Shining Jewel in five seconds, all the power in eight because of an exponential energy draw problem. The only reason why the pistol works as it does is because it gives and takes an equal amount of energy every time the trigger on it is pulled. To be frank I’m very afraid as to what could happen should the pistol destabilize or be destroyed as you’re pulling the trigger, otherwise the pistol exploding is completely harmless.” It was entirely fascinating how advanced the tool was, Greta thought that even Gilda was a little envious of how incredible Foggre technology could get. Even Greta thought the technology was beyond imagining in some places. “The energy equalizing loop is why the user gets hit with an echo of the effects caused by pulling the trigger. I can’t change the pistol to not echo on the user. If I did, I’d have to have the pistol plugged into the nearest outlet to even fire the darn thing because the energy requirements alone are ridiculous. It’s a complete headache to study, but I’m a technical engineer for a reason. The reason why I brought this up is because I can maybe install a stasis field generator in Shining Jewel. The energy consumption rate is oddly exactly the same even if it were to cover the entire ship as much as my explained one person; the dimensions of the field can be in any shape with in at least ten miles of the catalyst that caused the stasis field. It’d save the ship from something absolutely cataclysmic once and only once, because afterwards Shining Jewel will be entirely dead in space afterwards and we’d have a big problem getting the power to come back on. I was wondering if I can have your approval for making one, before you ask Caravel Boutique wouldn’t have enough power to even get a field going for five milliseconds.” “Don’t build a generator, but keep looking into it. It sounds rather useful, but I’d rather not have Opal go offline from trying to use it.” Rarity thought of all the times she turned off her data pad and Opal was still aware despite not having power going to her programming, which was still odd to think about. Vera still hadn’t told her the exact nature of the suspicions she had about Opal, but she was assured it wasn’t anything of immediate concern. “So you can shape the entire stasis field like a flamingo and it’d still eat the same amount of power?” Ember knew how to make, repair and improve all kinds of weapons; technical engineering was a different kettle of fish and she was asking because she understood at least some of what Greta was explaining. “The field could be the size of a gnat and it would still eat through the Shining Jewel's power source at the same exact rate.” Stopping to think for a moment Opal considered something. “Why would you use a flamingo as an example?” “Well it was either that or I would suggest what Chrysalis would have in her place since she’s not here.” Ember smiled faintly waiting for the inevitable question. “What would Chrysalis have suggested?” Playing along, Opal wondered what the punch line was. “Knowing Chrysalis, she’d probably ask if it could come in the shape of something like a big donkey.” Gilda receive shocked looks from Ember and Opal, both were for completely different reasons. Ember’s was because she and Gilda were getting quite good at thinking similarly and Opal’s was because she could actually see it happening were Chrysalis in on their current discussion. “Well that makes sense; I can certainly see her asking for a large ass.” Rarity tittered lightly and Saffron spewed what she was starting to drink everywhere to start laughing uproariously. In fact everyone was set off by Rarity suddenly dropping a quip like that; they hadn’t exactly expected it of her and it was absolutely funny that she did. “Oh my goodness mom, that was horrible!” Opal yelled in the middle of her hysterical fit of giggles. “Oh I know, but we shouldn’t make fun of Chrysalis and I really shouldn’t have said that.” Rarity actually felt rather bad for cracking a joke at Chrysalis’s expense, she chalked the sudden joke up to being around Pinkie so much for last several days. “She’s just fine the way she is and is a perfectly beautiful member of this crew in her own unique way. Though her sanity challenging antics leaves a lot to be desired, I wouldn’t ask her to change who she is on our account. She’s quite proud of who she is and she’s quite unique in how she thinks.” “Well if I knew everyone’s emotional state to a very exact degree at all times, I think I’d act a little weird around everyone too.” Despite her ability to read people, Gilda could not define exact emotions or entirely what’s going through someone’s head. All Gilda could do was tell what type of person someone was after enough time in their presence, Chrysalis was quite talented at masking what her actual thoughts and feeling were, this was not to Gilda’s surprise. What was to Gilda’s surprise was the depth of Chrysalis’s hidden character, the true leader hidden beneath her happy go crazy attitude. As for the others, these people were the ones she could see herself living with for the rest of her life. “Okay, I think I’m done here. Finish up Greta and meet me in the hangar.” Gilda got up and walked towards the nearest door out of the cafeteria contemplating the oddity of the lonely queen.   -   “I wonder how Chrysalis is doing…” Celestia was beginning to miss the annoyance she wanted to beat to almost death, but Chrysalis would enjoy it too much and she was far too kind for her own good. Why anyone actively wanted to die in complete agony was a mystery to Celestia, but she did know the lesson of pain telling you that you were alive. “She is most likely having fun exploring the universe… I’m beginning to think it was a bad idea to let her leave sister. I do so miss the games we used to play and Twilight is too methodical about all of them to be enjoyable, plus she’s really bad at twisty.” Being the playful sister Luna was less about business and more about the fun they had when Chrysalis was still around. “I’m right here you know.” The, so called, princess of friendship who was formerly known as Twilight Sparkle was sitting with the two with a slightly angry look directed at Luna. “Of course you are Twilight.” Celestia said calmly and acknowledged the mare that she liked a lot; she was beginning to miss the innuendos that Chrysalis spouted off. “Thorax is quite boring and too friendly. Chrysalis actually kept things interesting around here by driving us insane while surprisingly within the letter of the law.” “Sister do you hear that?” Luna’s ear twitched at the sound of something coming, it sounded like a bunch of swallows burdened with something. How did Luna exactly know what that sounded like? Well she had to learn how complicated math had gotten after she was cured of being Nightmare Moon and one of the questions was about a laden swallow, which is why she got a real swallow to do the math with and that had been an entertaining week. A swallow could fly between thirty to forty miles an hour, however when burdened with something that was cut down to twenty or twenty five when carrying something to its natural limit. “It sounds like a bunch of laden swallows.” “Oh please tell me you didn’t do anything horrible or untoward to that one swallow you had when you were overly curious about that really stupid and unnecessarily complicated math question.” Celestia was glad to have a phoenix for a pet; she knew exactly what a phoenix was capable of. “I did nothing of the sort sister and I’ll have you know that…” Suddenly hundreds of swallows carrying bowls of yellowish pudding flew in and started bombarding all three of the princesses with everything they had. There were three waves and as quickly as it came, it ended with three princesses pounded with pudding. “Okay, perhaps I might have used the royal voice to tell the swallow that his services were no longer required.” “Luna, please tell me that we are not at war with swallows…” As ridiculous as it sounded coming from Celestia’s pudding covered face, it was a very big possibility given equestrian animals were quite smart. “Also why is this tasty pudding making my tongue tingle so… oh me and my sister, it’s banana pudding!” “Our next few hours will be very interesting then dear sister…” Luna started to slide her gaze over to Twilight who was actively eating the banana pudding and licked her lips. “Twilight certainly looks delicious.” “I will stop you from doing what you are currently thinking of doing and I will stop myself from doing anything through sheer force of will if I have to. If it means I can prevent you from losing your innocence on my mare!” Celestia declared while pointing out a hoof and then while she still had a sane thought in her head. “Guards, we’re currently at war with a flock of swallows! Don’t open the door or come in for any reason, I’m sealing the room to absolve some issues that have recently cropped up.” “We could share her you know, you and me sister… imagine all that tasty positively pudding packed purple pony all to ourselves.” A haze began to fall over Luna’s face as she spoke, she was no longer herself anymore and Celestia was barely holding onto her sanity in what would become a very desperate fight to protect Twilight from Luna and not go after Twilight herself. Chrysalis’s delayed plan went off better than she thought it would and the two Changelings watching from nearby window just looked at each other and snickered, they were recording this for posterity and it would be one of the funniest things to ever happen in Equestrian history. It was also one of the saddest displays in history because the royal guard eventually lost a war with a bunch of swallows.