//------------------------------// // Dashie, Our Only Hope // Story: Ofolrodi // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// —forth with the blessings of Harmony, foals of Emeraldine. Our weary eyes rest upon the—scrkkkkkkkk—forth with the blessings of Harmony, foals of Emeraldine. Our weary eyes rest upon the—scrkkkkkkkk—" "So..." Pinkie Pie's eyes narrowed. "That's Onyxxus, huh?" Twilight Sparkle hovered next to her and Rainbow Dash. "That would seem to be the case." "Seems to have a goldfish memory, doesn't he?" Twilight glared aside. "It's the recording, Pinkie. The message is obviously stuck." "Oh. I knew that. Heehee." "Isn't it incredible?" Fluttershy cooed. "An actual honest-to-goddess alicorn..." Applejack squinted aside. "Didn't y'all get a chance to see Mortuana while she was still alive?" "I know. But it doesn't make this any less amazing," Fluttershy said. She cocked her head aside, staring at the hologram from a different angle. "Once upon a time, we only knew about two alicorns: Celestia and Luna. But bearing witness to others? I don't know about you, but I find it to be an amazing experience." "Look at his mane!" Rarity stammered. "I know it's just a holographic projection, but observe how it shimmers in the light despite being such a dark color!" She sighed dreamily. "Must have been so silky and smoothe... quite remarkable for a stallion!" "That's right!" Fluttershy breathed. "He is a stallion! This is the first alicorn stallion we've ever seen!" Applejack spoke, "Y'all do realize that this feller-a-corn you've been fawnin' over has been dead for untold centuries...?" "Applejack, darling, don't be so quick to rebuke." Rarity upturned her nose. "We are allowed to acknowledge beauty in all its forms. No doubt the regal gentlecolt was the paragon of virtue and inspiration while he was still alive." "If you ask me, he's kinda edgy-looking," Pinkie Pie droned. Rarity sighed. "Goddess help me... I wonder if I will be regarded so bluntly long after I've perished." "Who knows... with somepony like Pinkie Pie still around..." Applejack smirked. Clearing her throat, Ariel floated closer to Rainbow Dash. "Do you... uh... do you have an assessment yet or are you waiting on your friends to finish deliberating?" "You know me too well," Rainbow muttered. "They're busy being ponies." "Hey!" Pinkie pouted. "I resemble that remark!" A blink. "Wait..." "Yo! Herald!" Rainbow spoke across the Emeraldinian Command Room. "Any thoughts?" Logan, Kepler, Wildcard, and Flynn pondered while the translucent alicorn portrait continued to repeat itself: "—scrkkkkkk—forth with the blessings of Harmony, foals of Emeraldine. Our weary eyes rest upon the—scrkkkkkkkk—forth with the blessings of Harmony, foals of Emeraldine. Our weary eyes rest upon the—scrkkkkkkkk—" "Well, he... uh..." Logan shifted where he stood. "...he sounds like a monarch, alright." Flynn face-hoofed. "You could at least comment on his intent, lardo." "Well let's hear you come up with something smart, baldy!" "If you ask me..." Flynn rubbed his chin in thought. "He's addressing the colonists of the Darkreach Expedition." "Obviously," Logan said. Flynn rolled his eyes and continued: "But it sounds like he's saying something commemorative. It's... not something I would expect to be stored within Darkreach's crystalline memory banks." "How do you mean?" Ariel asked. "Think about it." Flynn looked at the others while the portrait kept speaking, distorting, and re-speaking. "Onyxxus still had duties to attend to back in Emeraldine. It's likely that he produced this message from the heights of Verdestone." "Not prrecisely," Kepler said. Flynn looked over. "Hmmm?" The wyvern slapped his claws against the nearest wall. "It's rratherr obvious that alicorrn magic carrved Darrkrreach frrom the hearrt of this mesa. I suspect Onyxxus paid at least one visit to this domain. He could verry well have given this speech as a farrewell addrress..." "Beforrrrrrrrrrrre making his way back to the Light Side," Ariel droned. "Exactly." "So he's wishing the poor bastards here 'good luck,'" Logan remarked. "Cool. Got it. What now?" "Not so fast..." Flynn waved a hoof. "I still don't get why this is the first thing we uncover as soon as we boot this system up." "Well, this message was stored in the 'crystalline database' thingy housed here in Darkreach, right?" Rainbow remarked. "Yeah..." "Well, it's been offline for Celestia-knows how long." Rainbow blinked. "Maybe—in throwing the switch—we've inadvertently brought the system back to square one?" She looked at the others. "There could be more messages. There could be more to this message. We just don't know because we're only scraping the surface." Ariel's eyes squinted. "Is there a way to find out more?" She waved at the hologram. "First off—to figure out everything that Onyxxus said?" "I... suspect that providing more power to the main core could help out," Flynn said. "I had been hoping to do that gradually—for fear of overloading the system." "Make it your main priority," Rainbow Dash said. "Because if these dudes actually left messages for us to uncover then I sure as heck want to access the full bulk of them." She waved a hoof at the map of the mesa made out of magnetically-raised pins. "Gathering as much information about the Dark Side would be super... super awesome." Flynn took a deep breath. "I'll need to hop back down to the generator room... slide more crystals into the core. However, I'm going to have to do it slowly... one at a time... or else I might inadvertently cause a blackout—which would lead to permanent data loss." "I shall happily assist you, brrotherr," Kepler said. "Jourrney orr no jourrney, I would love to hearr morre frrom the wise muzzle of Morrtuana's patrriarrch." "You guys do that," Rainbow said. "I'm assuming that—in powering up the rest of the core—you'll be restoring lighting to the rest of the settlement?" "Presumably." "Good. Ariel, Big Show and I can continue searching the compound." Rainbow Dash turned tail and marched out of the room. "Let's get every square inch of this place covered, dudes! I wanna know all that there is to know!" "Wowie, Dashie!" Pinkie grinned wide as she and the other ghostly mares accompanied her. "You really take disembodied holographic heads in stride!" "Wouldn't be my first time," Rainbow droned, navigating a concrete hallway. "I encountered something similar with Commander Hurricane back in Stratopolis." "Stratopolis?" Rarity pronounced. "Yeah. One of the two Sentinels said to accompany this piece of Urohringr," Rainbow Dash said. "Funny how a single message from the past can shed so much light on a crazy-flank situation in the present." Pinkie Pie droned: "Only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction." "... ... ... ... ...huh?" "Heehee! Let's go spelunking!" Rainbow sighed, shaking her head in mid-trot. "Never a dull moment."