//------------------------------// // -85- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Poor Rarity continued to struggle for a while. Her need to go was getting worse and she really needed to use the bathroom, but the blasted sleeping dragon wouldn’t stop cuddling her. She knew dragons were sometimes heavy sleepers, but this was getting ridiculous. She tried pressing her hoof against Ember’s nostril; she even tried wafting the scent of her mane up her nose after that and it just made Ember look more comfortable in her sleep. Hitting Ember wasn’t working as Rarity doubted her friend could even feel the slapping hooves, it was unfortunate that Rarity was too dainty for her own good. “Have you tried tickling her yet?” It was just a suggestion, though Greta was quite curious to see if it would work. “I’m afraid that she’ll blow flames if she laughs and I don’t want my mane singed or burnt.”  Wiggling wasn’t helping her much and she decided to lay still. “I would let loose a blood curdling scream, but I don’t want her to hurt me. She’d feel really guilty about it and I’d feel guilty for causing it to happen.” “How does one safely wake up a sleeping dragon, it is a question for the ages. Even if Ember is small, she could still set the entire interior space on fire… with us in it.” Coming over to the predicament, Gilda studied the situation carefully and then chuckled dryly. “Yeah, I got nothing.” “Maybe I can help.” Saffron trotted up to them suited up in her powered armor and carefully grabbed Ember’s arms to slowly start trying to pry them apart. Trying being the keyword as Ember curled up tightly around Rarity, even with the armors enhanced strength Ember was proving to be difficult to pull off of Rarity. “What… what’s going on here?” Ember was slowly coming to and she realized she was clutching at Rarity, she also noticed that Saffron was trying to free Rarity from her grasp with the powered armor. “Rarity really needs to go to the bathroom Ember.” That statement from Saffron alone was all it took to get the dragon to let go of Rarity and the mare immediately shot off towards the bathroom. “You’re really hard to wake up you know.” “I was comfortable. Don’t you know what the saying means when it says leave sleeping dragons alone?” If Ember were a less friendly dragon then sure, but her hoard needed her awake and with her head in gear. She stretched her wings out and flapped them once or twice before bringing them in. “You might not like them when they wake up.” “So you would have been okay with Rarity losing her bladder on you?” That would have been upsetting for everyone and Saffron didn’t think anyone would have wanted to clean up the mess. “No, but I was in a cozy position.” Sniffing the air Ember sighed at the wonderful smell. “So are we making breakfast or what?” “If you like sausage, biscuits with blackberry preservatives and hash browns, then yes we’re doing breakfast Ember. Greta should almost be done with that.” Any idiot could make breakfast, even Gilda knew breakfast was one of the easier meals of the day to prepare and she didn’t exactly mind Greta’s cooking. “The sausage is for the meat eaters. As for the rest eat whatever you like, it’s guaranteed pony safe. Also somebody go get our dog out of the hole he’s dug himself into.” “I’ll go; I’m already suited for it.” Saffron volunteered immediately only to be pushed away from the ladder by Ember. “I’ll go, I’ll eat when I get back. Leave something for me and Rover.” Ember was already climbing up the ladder and accessing the hatch, Saffron sighed and shook her head and started going through the process to deactivate the armor. There were three hatches in the back of the Centaur-pede, the upper torso could be sitting over any of them when needed as it slid forward or backwards along the top. Ember popped up out of the middle hatch looking around at all the snow and upon getting out she promptly closed the hatch behind her. The cold tried to bite at her scales, only it found no purchase, her pants and shirt were enough warmth for her.  She turned around and was immediately assaulted by something and forced onto her back. She panicked a little and tried to slash her claws at it, only for her claws to get stuck in a wall of pink fur. It was the Puffle and its smiling resemblance of a pony’s face was gasping happily as it looked at Ember, it bounces several times on top of ember’s body and then it blew a happy sounding raspberry in her face. Ember slowly grabbed her rifle and pulled it from her back to aim it at the Puffle’s smiling face, her claw tightened on the trigger. She slowly removed her claw from the trigger and while sighing loudly, Ember thought that killing the Puffle would make her feel like she killed an innocent little puppy. “If you were anything else, I’d definitely shoot you until you stopped moving. You’re not worth the ammo and finding any around here would take forever given all the snow.” The creature just dumbly made another raspberry at Ember’s words and tilted its head cutely. Shoving the decidedly dumb and affectionate creature that immediately nuzzled her claws off of her, Ember stood up and walked to the sides to look for Rover with the pink menace following behind with curious large blue eyes. Looking around she eventually spotted the hole Rover dug. “Hey, Rover, Greta made breakfast!” “Be quiet, Rover is listening to something… something is moving out there and Rover is not liking it one bit.” Rover was definitely in the hole and he was apparently doing something. “There are things, very far away, but there are a lot of them moving… wait, did you say breakfast? Rover is coming!” A mound of snow erupted ten feet from the hole Ember was yelling into and Rover pulled himself free from the snow shaking it off. He started walking for one of the legs of the Centaur-pede and proceeded to carefully climb his way back up. The Puffle idly blew a raspberry and Ember, having had enough of having to deal with it, took a few steps back so that she was behind it and then promptly punted it off the side of the Centaur-pede. The Puffle landed on its back in the snow sending some of it up in the air and falling around it. It gasped happily and began to waggle its four hooves at the sky because it was stuck upside down. It seemed to not have registered that Ember had kicked it hard enough to launch its fluffy butt many feet through the air or that it was stuck on its back; eventually it would have to figure out that it wasn’t moving anywhere in its position. “I do not understand why you dislike it so badly, it seems harmless to Rover.”  Rover exclaimed as he made his way by Ember, he stopped and sniffed the air. “It’s female, so it’s a she. Rover’s nose knows that now. Also Rover has something of importance to tell Boss Lady and friends.” “Don’t care, let’s eat.” Ember did not like the cute little fluffy monster and she didn’t want it anywhere near her hoard. She knows of the disasters those things could cause. - “So, Rover is feeling many things coming from far side of destroyed town!” After he finished his short explanation of having felt something far off while he was in the ground, Rover bit into his jelly covered sausage in a biscuit. He would have liked peanut butter, but it always got stuck to the roof of his mouth and always caused him so much trouble. “Wait… Diamonds Dogs have the ability of seismic location? Why have I never heard of this before? That makes him a lot more useful then we’ve previously established!” A slightly angry Gilda sat up and slapped her palms into the table. “If he can really sense something that far away, then I’d like to know about it. Greta if you will see to his claims.” “I’m on it Gilda. Let’s see, did you say it was on the far side of town Rover?  Well I’m now narrowing heat, motion and life sensors… and… we have a lot of hits. No hits on the life, but there’s a lot of something going ib over in that direction that gives off heat and is moving.” It was easy to discern that something over in that direction was mechanical; at least Greta hoped everyone could figure that out for themselves.  “How long have you been able to do something like this Rover? It sounds really useful.” “Ability is not as useful as winged one thinks. Too many creatures or things in soil on Equus, makes accurately sensing anything hard. Best used to avoid digging into another Diamond Dog’s way or getting caught by large worm monster with multiple tongues.” Shivering at the mental image of the worm monster, Rover rubbed a paw at his head and sent everyone a questioning look as he licked at his jam covered teeth. “Here is different story, not much to get in the way of my senses and I can sense things from farther away. Ability is useful here and is situational at best… why give me looks; Rover has been learning to be more eloquent when he is speaking. I am also trying to cut back on third person speech, I believe it is strange that there is not much in the soil around here and yet it is so rich.” “Rich as in gems or rich as in the ability to grow produce?” Five minutes was definitely not long enough in Rarity’s books to beautify her form to perfection, she needed at least thirty. Still five minutes was really quite hard to achieve, Rarity quickly washed herself as swiftly as she could and she washed her mane and tail first. She was clean, but she still felt bad for not being able to do her full routine and at least her mane and tail were clean and up to her usual standards. She sat down and levitated a jam filled biscuit to herself and a few hash browns. “Also I didn’t know you could set a timer on a shower like that, thankfully I took the five minute time limit thing to heart.” “It is the second one Boss Lady Rarity.” After saying this Rover just lapped up water from his glass and swished it around his mouth to hopefully get some of the excess jam off of his teeth. “In the name of water conservation I made a timer for the shower, good to see it works.  Aside from that we’ve detected trouble through both Rover and the sensors.” Uncaring that she was talking with a full beak, Gilda wanted them to get back to the issue with what the sensors were picking up. “There are machines out there and we don’t know what they look like or what they are doing, but they are close enough to town to be seen as the threats that possibly devastated it. If we’re going to scout the town then we should do so from the safety of the Centaur-pede.” “Then I suggest we stay armed at all times from now on, nobody leaves the Centaur-pede without a weapon and someone with them that is also armed.” Everyone nodded and Rarity started in on her breakfast, everyone else still had to get in cleaning themselves as well. - “We are now going into the town.” From her seat, Gilda saw the devastation up close now, small spots of dried pony blood splattered across the walls and that of a few other species here or there. There were no bodies however, just burnt twisted husks of what used to be housing or businesses. “It’s way too quiet out here and all this snow is beginning to unnerve me, are you sure we can find your cousin down here? It looks like things are looking a bit grim around here on that front.” “Until we’ve checked the apple farm, I’m willing to hold out for hope that we’ll at least find something that tells us someone is alive out here.” Rarity was crouched down next to one of the four turrets on the Centaur-pede’s lower torso. She didn’t want to be in the way of the upper torso if it needed to change positions and she had her two energy pistols on her, they were fully charged and she even had a material pistol on her for emergencies or if her energy pistols didn’t work for whatever reason. “Has anyone else spotted anything of note yet? I’m not leaving here until I see what these machines are.” It was becoming a natural part of Rarity’s life to be armed constantly now; it was a bit upsetting that she couldn’t go a single day without having a pistol at her hip. She actually preferred to be upset than dead if she didn’t have a weapon on her. At least with a hoof grip weapon she could wield it with her hoof instead of her magic. She currently looked highly fashionable in her glamorous sparkling parka and matching snow boots. “Nothing so far and none of the motion sensors has anything moving towards us.” Greta was holding the plasma rifle she and Gilda used back when they were on Geoptis, thanks to Chrysalis they had a lot more ammunition for it now. She was next to the turret opposite of the one Rarity was behind. “I’m not going to complain about the five minute showers, but it is really hard to do when you have a mane like mine.” The powered armor was a weapon, one that Saffron wore well as she stood near the front next to the upper torso. Rover was armed with an energy pistol near the back and told to leave the safety on and only turn it off if he had to absolutely shoot at something; he wasn’t trained for using any of the projectile weapons.  Ember was standing on the head of the machine looking around from her perch for any sign of something dangerous. She looked to the back to check on everyone and sighed when she saw that the Puffle was sitting there at the butt end of the Centaur-pede looking around at all the activity and blowing a raspberry every now and then. Who even taught it to blow raspberries anyway? For that matter how was it staying so healthy in these conditions? Shaking her head, she turned her gaze to the right and then left searching for any sign that something was coming at them like a howler monkey with a frozen banana. It’s happened to Ember once before and she was prepared for it to happen again, no matter how unlikely the situation of that occurring again was. “Gilda, there’s something wrong. Sensors are showing motion coming in our direction, that and winds are picking up around here. I think we’re about to be hit with a snowstorm. That doesn’t make any sense; it doesn’t follow Opal’s blizzard watch program at all.” Unless and this was Greta just thinking to herself, unless whatever they were detecting could generate blizzards themselves. That would mean they were about to be attacked though. “We’re about to come under attack, the machines have to be making this snowstorm and they’re using it as a cover for their movements!” The winds whipped up at Greta’s words and snow started to fall rather fast as if a snowstorm had always been here and they were just realizing that fact. They heard a loud keening noise from the Puffle and it was cowering where it sat curling up into its thick fur like an armadillo, apparently it was smart enough to know that something bad was about to happen. The Centaur-pede continued its silent march for a second, before Gilda noticed something off about the ground as they continued forward. “I don’t know what I’m getting here on the sensors, but it’s almost on top of us. get ready for anything guys.” Gilda grabbed the controls that operated the arms of the upper torso and narrowed her eyes, she didn’t see anything above the snow so that would mean. “Brace yourselves we’re about to be attacked from below. Like Greta said, it’s an ambush!” The Centaur-pede shook and tilted to the side, but it stayed standing after something had just violently rammed into it and dove back into the snow after it bounced off the shields that flared around the walker and pushed whatever it was back which flared with its own shields. The Centaur-pede continued to slowly move forward and everyone was still atop its back, shaken, knocked over, but otherwise completely fine for the moment. “What the heck was that, did anyone get a visual on what just hit us? The shields just took a huge dip because of that!” Gilda turned the upper torso and there were all kinds of motions in the snow now, it was hard to tell where anything was down there. “It’s shielded whatever it is and it’s large, I managed to see that much!”  Another blow struck from the right and it sent Greta sliding across the back until she managed to get a grip on the slippery surface. There were several more impacts to the shield, but these were much smaller than the first two. “Apparently whatever just hit us isn’t the only thing out here!” “I saw what caused the smaller impacts; the smaller ones are mechanical wolves!” Saffron carefully moved over to the edge and aimed her hoof at the shifting piles of snow surrounding them now. “A lot of good knowing that does us when we can’t even see them to fight back, their hit and run tactics are hurting the shields and they’re going to fall if we don’t do something soon. We do not want to be exposed to the elements out here.” Several smaller impacts rammed into the Centaur-pede from various sides, Gilda narrowed her eyes leaned the upper torso towards a moving pile of snow. She thrust the left arm into the snow and grappled onto something. Pulling the arm back she saw a yellow eyed mechanical wolf, it started trying to gnaw at the claws and then tried to blast them with ice until Gilda crushed it in the claw's grasp. She dropped the crumpled mess onto the back of the lower torso. “We need to start fighting back, I got one. It has cryogenic technology and tried to freeze the Centaur-pede’s claws off. Secure it; we’ll analyze it later when we’re not in danger! It’s hard enough staying above the snow with them trying to sink us into it and I think that’s exactly what these machines are trying to do here. Also is it me or has the snow gotten deeper then it’s supposed to be?” “We’re working on it Gilda, they’re not making this easy for us.” Rarity heard something slam into one of the legs and started to bite at the armor on it, the turret immediately came to life and started to fire rapidly at the blue mechanical wolf only twice the size of a pony. Whatever the larger thing had been, it was clearly not one of these wolves. Rarity levitated out her two pistols and started to help the turret eat through the shields on the metal wolf until one shot from the turret finally blew its head off and its body fell into the churning snow where it was swallowed within seconds. She could already hear the other four turrets churning out blasts of energy and many more impacts hitting the Centaur-pede. “Whatever anyone does, don’t fall off the Centaur-pede. It’s the only thing keeping us safe at the moment, fire at will if you see something moving in the snow.” A large impact from beneath at the back sent them all sprawling and the Puffle went flying off the back end where it landed in the snow. Something big moved towards the Puffle and the snow started churning fiercely around it until they got their first visual of what the larger machine was. A large shark headed machine came up from under the Puffle and swallowed it alive before disappearing back into the snow which rippled in its wake. “Was that a freaking giant mechanical shark, what in the hell is going on here!”  Saffron heard something land near her and she turned and started fire almost point blank into the face of a mechanical wolf that charged at her. Once it got close she ducked under its lunge and threw her hoof straight into its belly while unleashing a charged blast of energy into it. This blew a hole through it making it go lifeless on top of her. “Please tell me there aren’t too many of these things?” “The area around us is practically a sea of motion, so how are we supposed to know unless we can thin their numbers.” Greta blasted a mechanical wolf trying to blow freezing gas at her out of the air; the plasma chewed straight threw the shields, blew it backwards and made it explode once it hit the snow. “Gilda is that shark coming back for another hit?” “How am I supposed to know, there’s too much going on around here for me to keep up with.” The palms on the Centaur-pede were wide open and Gilda was firing into the snow.  Several explosions erupted when she managed to hit something dead on with the high powered laser cannons. She started to turn the Centaur-pede when she saw a big bulge in the snow moving towards them. The shark erupted and narrowly missed grabbing one of the Centaur-pede’s thick three toed legs. Instead, it was stomped down into the snow when the leg slammed into its head. “We have got to get out of here, where’s that farm Rarity!” “Start heading west, it’s a good distance outside of town!” One of the wolves climbed the legs and lunged for Rarity who started to focus as much firepower as she could on it, it opened its mouth spewing gaseous chemicals and it looked like it was going to try and bite Rarity. Rarity narrowed her eyes and sent a shot down its throat destroying its head making it collapse before it could reach her. “They’re vulnerable when they open their mouths; the insides of their mouths aren’t shielded! Also the turrets aren’t working very well.” “We know Boss Lady! They weren’t made to shoot threats behind, or in this case, under cover! They’re ineffective, but they are at least doing their jobs at trying to hit these machines. What are the wolves doing now?” Greta turned and saw Rover backing away towards the front shooting at the two wolves clambering up the left rear leg and started to breathe on it, he was stopped when a third mechanical wolf came after him with an open mouth. Ice was starting to form up on the leg and it started slowing down in movement. Several other wolves were seen clambering up the other legs to do the same to them. “Stop them; they’re trying to freeze legs!” “If they freeze up the legs, then I don’t see the point of switching to the spares if they’ll just do the same to them.” Gilda turned the upper torso and blasted the wolves clear off the back left, middle right and front left legs, but where two were destroyed four more came out of the snow trying to slow down the trundling Centaur-pede. “Get your butts in gear people, the turrets can’t possibly handle this many targets at once! Use your energy weapons to blow the ice off. Oh great now they’re climbing the upper torso, get them off of me!” “We’re all a little busy here darling, where’s Ember!” Rarity concentrated her eye for detail and focused on each wolf she could see, she pulled the trigger four times on each of her energy pistols and six wolves went down, two managed to dodge the attack and take it on their shields. Rover came to a stop next to her after dealing with the wolf that had come at him; he immediately started shooting at the wolves attempting to climb the upper torso. “Yeah, where is she when we need all the fire power we can get!” Now Saffron was leaping from leg to leg and bashing the wolves off. Their shields didn’t stop melee attacks and as long as she didn’t let them freeze her armor over, then she could keep fighting. She rammed her blade into one's back and shifted the shock wings to make contact with another two and started frying them with electricity. A loud explosion was heard and the large shark robot erupted from the ground again with its mouth smoking, flying backwards out of the flames was a frantic looking Ember with torn clothing. She quickly flew out of range of the large snapping mouth firing flaming rocks down into it with her rifle on what looked to be full auto; as she hovered there firing she looked around and spotted the Centaur-pede and flew for it. The snowstorm didn’t make it easy for Ember to fly and she managed to get back on the walker well enough, but her landing looked off.  There were swarms of mechanical wolves in various states of damage beginning to pour from the damaged shark’s mouth as it slowly sunk back into the snow. Before it could go too far under something else exploded and a small pink orb rocketed off into the distance shrieking in… joyous laughter? “Yeah, don’t get swallowed by something like that. It tried using chemicals to freeze me solid and when that didn’t work wolves started coming from everywhere trying to detain me!” Landing on the back of the Centaur-pede had been rather painful; Ember hid a grimace as she joined the fight. Even with Ember back things were clearly not going their way, as no sooner than she got back did another giant white robotic shark’s fin popped up and was coming straight towards the Centaur-pede. “I hope someone has a plan, because this is nuts even for me and I was attacked by a howler monkey with a frozen banana. Yes, the monkey was a bounty target and yes it killed a lot of people with that banana.” “Well that’s not something we need to be thinking of in the middle of a crisis, they’re all over us here!” Gilda made the Centaur-pede stop and jump to the left as another giant robotic shark lunged from the snow to snap at them. “Oh my goodness, are you okay?” It didn’t take Rarity but a glance to tell something was wrong with Ember, she wasn’t standing up or moving about, instead she was sitting in place and trying not to put too much pressure on one of her legs. Shaking her head she couldn’t get distracted and turned to shoot a lunging mechanical wolf off the side of the Centaur-pede. “I’m fine, but my leg was twisted badly getting out of there.” The Centaur-pede was slowly being swamped with wolves and even Ember’s added firepower wasn’t doing much to stem the flow of the smaller mechanical menaces. “Don’t stop on my account, keep shooting!” “Rover is getting a lot of experience with gun here. It is very bad learning experience that Rover doesn’t want to repeat, especially if Rover is surviving this!” Rover was kind of a bad shot, but at least he was proving to be an able body even if he wasn’t taking down as many as the others were. “Less talking, more fighting!” Saffron was handling any robotic wolf that got onto the back of the Centaur-pede and she was keeping them off of the others the best she could. She had learned how to fight them quickly enough, mostly because there were just so many of them. Shoot them in the mouth or get up close and personal. She’s already counted putting twenty down and more were still coming, the snowstorm didn’t help with any of this either. She rammed her hoof into a wolf's neck and then activated the suit's built in triangular blade, it immediately severed the neck cutting the head off. They were shooting in all directions; the Centaur-pede stumbled every now and then, but at least the silver colored beast managed to shake off the ice every time it became too much of a problem. They were still moving west. They had made it outside the town at least and as suddenly as the attack had come, the mechanical wolves started to leave and dive into the snow. The second shark fin also disappeared. “Wait, why are they retreating now?” Greta fired and a ball of plasma blew apart another metallic wolf. “They had us on the ropes… so I might have enjoyed the wrestling classes with Chrysalis and Vera a bit.” “Good question, why are they leaving and what are they hiding out here?” Gilda kept the upper torso turned towards the town and glared at it. “You’d think they’d want to make sure no one gets away from them alive with the kind of force that they were coming at us with. We’ll stop at the farm if it’s still there and get a look at the damage. Is everyone okay?” “Why Gilda, are you actually worried about us darling? My word, I never knew you had a golden heart where the coal is supposed to be.” Though no one could see it, Rarity actually had Gilda blushing. “Next time we get into a fight with those things, we’ll be wearing our EVA suits. Still, you have to admit that my cold weather gear is quite fashionable and absolutely functional from head to boot too. Everyone is bruised, cold and otherwise accounted for Gilda, except for… that Puffle. Oh that poor thing, lost and all alone out here. Possibly killed or even taken for whatever the machines would do with it.” “Rarity, we’re not going back for the Puffle.” That was a statement and Ember wasn’t about to start budging on it. They needed to find out more about what these things were or more importantly, where they came from. They had plenty of damaged and destroyed metal wolves littering the Centaur-pede’s back to study, including the first one Gilda caught. “In the mean time, let’s see what we can find out about this frosty reception.” “Please don’t start cracking cold jokes or I will hit you with one of the claws.” Gilda did not want to hear it, especially after having gone through a massive assault like the one they had just been through.