“Okay, what’s the damage Greta? Give it all to me straight and I mean everything, how much damage did they exactly do to the Centaur-pede?” Gilda hadn’t left the pilot's seat since the attack had started and was on full alert for anything after it ended. They weren’t being followed; there was nothing on motion or heat sensors. The Puffle wasn’t on the life sensor, but the little fluff ball had to just be out of range.
“Well for the obvious bad news, our shields are shot and the generator needs some repairs. To state the obvious, the great snow shark robots overloaded the shields. Thankfully we have plenty of spare parts sitting right on top of us for the salvaging and I can fix it… given a few hours. Hull damage was surprisingly minimal, to the upper torso at least. The legs took a bit of a beating, but we don’t need to change them out for the spares yet. We wouldn’t have done so well if the wolves had been armed with projectile weapons, I think we could use the small shield generators we can get from them for ourselves. Also the four turrets were effective with what they could hit and they are perfectly fine; we just need to tweak them a bit if we run into that kind of trouble again.” While Greta was on the job, she didn’t cut corners on anything and acted professionally with Gilda. The current situation wasn’t as dire as the attack would have been if it had kept going for another twenty minutes. “I’m going to have to study the mostly intact wolves to get an idea as to why they were built; I’ve been busy running a full diagnostics for you so you’ll have to forgive me if I haven’t jumped at the chance to study one of them yet. As for how our personnel are, we actually have some injuries. There’s at least minor bruising all around from the first two impacts that shook our transport. Ember has a twisted leg from escaping the belly of one of the sharks after having been knocked off the Centaur-pede, the injury was mostly self inflicted and accidental. Aside from the ruined clothing and leg, she’s fine if a bit sad about her shredded clothing. Who knows how many more of those sharks there are, we only saw two, there could have been at least four or five in that area and we would have never known about.”
“Get back on track Greta; we can discuss the abominable snow sharks with Ember later.” Though occasionally Gilda had to snap Greta back to the task at hand and she did so with a flat aggravated tone that Greta loved for some reason.
“Alright then, Saffron’s armor is mostly undamaged, the built in left blade needs some work done and isn’t an immediate issue. It is still usable and her shields held throughout the entire fight, mostly because the wolves weren’t armed correctly to bring them down. Saffron herself is a bit more bruised than the rest of us, but she’s used to that being a brawler and she did take the brunt of them on all by herself. Rarity’s completely unscathed and Rover won’t let go of his gun, I think he might be using it as a security blanket. I’m no psychologist, but I think Rover might need a round with Vera after this. Either this has been his first time getting into a bad scrap like that or something like this has happened to him before, which is probably why he sought out Rarity when the wolves got closer.” Chirping a merry tune out loud as she worked, Greta continued on with her situation report. “Personally I’m fine; apparently plasma can chew through the shields the wolves had with little effort. My only issue with that is that the plasma rounds don’t exactly leave behind much for us to use afterwards. I can make do with what we got from them though.”
“Can I get a personal opinion from you of everyone’s mental health aside from Rover? I ask because I’m too busy driving to check on them myself.” Shaken, not stirred and with an olive in it being the representation of her current mood, Gilda was about to get a taste of her best friends ability to read emotions and she wanted some alcohol for the headaches this current job is giving her. It was an ability Gilda was quite sure that Greta didn’t have in any capacity; she just wanted to hear that everything was fine. The expected response was not what she received.
“I think Rarity is mostly balanced at the moment, she’s good at coming down from a high stress situation provided things land in her favor and she’s currently brushing her mane out. If she’s able to calmly do some primping, then I think she’ll live as long as she can get her hair just right as the hood of the parka mussed it up a bit. The Boss Lady certainly has her priorities.” Not that Greta said they were the right kind of priorities, but at least their Boss Baroness was doing well enough to continue keeping up with her appearance. Greta really didn’t think Rarity had to go through all the trouble, she looked perfectly find without her makeup. “Saffron seems perfectly stable mentally. Then again, she’s done a lot of fighting. As far as violence goes, she is the most desensitized pony I think I’ve ever seen in my life. Ember… well she seems to be a little off and I don’t think it’s the being swallowed alive by a giant mechanical shark that’s the issue. This might have been the first serious injury she’s experienced in quite a long time. As for me… well I’m talking to my most favorite griffon in the universe.”
“You’re kind of surprising me right now, but I don’t need to listen to you go on about me for the next five minutes. I know I’m great Greta, though I’ll never have a clue what you exactly see in me.” There was a sad sounding noise from the other end and Gilda rolled her eyes, Greta liked to shower praise upon her and Gilda accepted it quite well while staying particularly grounded in reality. Reality was quite awesome if you asked Gilda, now how could she get one of those giant robotic sharks into orbit? Well at least she’d want to see what she could cannibalize from at least one of them. Even then the weight would be a problem to deal with. “By the way, how soon can we expect to see this farm?”
“Estimation ten minutes at the rate we’re going, she did say it was a distance outside of town. We would get there sooner, but we’re slowed down because the legs are still stiff from being partly frozen.” Greta turned her attention to Rarity who didn’t look like she had a hair out of place. “I’ll get to work on studying the wolves now. I can only work on the shield generator when we come to a complete stop. There is only one other problem I can think of. We haven’t exactly seen what burned the buildings down yet.”
“Now that you mention it, it is rather strange. That those machines didn’t have the firepower to bust our Centaur-pede wide open if they were the ones responsible for the buildings in town being burned down.” If they did have that kind of weaponry then why hadn’t they used it, it was something for Gilda to think on. “Well you’re the technical engineer, go do some research.”
-
“There it is, there it is!” Rarity’s gleeful shouts were met with a flat stare from the griffon she just jumped onto.
“Yes, I can see it too Boss Lady, now please stop giving me a lap dance.” Gilda enjoyed the look on Rarity’s face as she squeaked and quickly scrambled off of her lap. “Thank you. Now let’s see, there are surprisingly plenty of life signs here. Well I guess someone’s home at least, but how will they receive a several ton walking fortress like ours? It does look rather threatening and is covered in the corpses of robotic wolves we haven’t been able to clean off yet.”
“Then I suggest we make a stop here, lest we cause them issues with how scary the Centaur-pede looks. I’ll go on hoof with Rover and Ar-Mare-Do-Well, to scout things out and see if my cousin is here. Even if she isn’t, I will be helping anyone that needs it.” Rarity was already in the process of pulling the hood up on her parka, she would have to get her snow boots out. When she did, she’d set off for the apple farm. From the looks of it, the trees near the farm were doing particularly well so far and they had some strange blue apples hanging from the branches. It would make a nice conversation starter at least, if she could ask about them. “While I’m doing that, you can help Greta with her research. I’m not really cut out for discussing machinery and getting covered in oil like you two tend to do.”
“So I’m a dirty bird. I could really use a little down time from piloting, just let me find a place to park. I have needed a bathroom break for a while now and Greta can get lost without me if I’m not there to help her.” When you were on constant alert like Gilda currently was, then you didn’t exactly have time to take care of your needs. Sometimes you’d do things that would be quite detrimental to your health, mostly just to survive a little bit longer. “You just go do whatever it is you’re going to do and we’ll keep Ember entertained with our musings about the wolf robots. Can you wait until I open the rear hatch?”
-
“Rover is going around armed for rest of life, also would rather not lose another boss. Not when boss is pretty pony who give Rover job he actually enjoys.” Rover had put his parka on and was a little skeptical of leaving the safety of the Centaur-pede; he warily looked over at Greta slowly disassembling one of the more intact wolves. “Boss Lady is one of a kind and highly irreplaceable. Also Rover is never having had it this good ever, I don’t want to die.”
“We’re not going to die Rover. Seriously now, I think our little setback at the town has you worried over nothing.” Yes because the giant robotic sharks most certainly didn’t freak anyone out, at least that’s what Rarity sarcastically thought. She had been frightened half to death to see Ember coming out of one of the two they spotted coming out of the snow. Shaking her head she turned to the armored mare. “Saffron you’re going to be in front of us, in case they shoot at us before we can tell them why we’re here.”
“I have no problems with that.” It was true that Saffron didn’t, her suit was working exactly how she wanted it to. It held together and it was effective in its first live combat test, not that one could have expected robot wolves being the first real test. She was expecting something along the lines of missiles and material weapons. She hadn’t exactly test the horn on the suit yet, but she would have to eventually as it was one of the features Greta hadn’t gone over in the testing phase. “I am the one the one with armor and shields. I would have volunteered to be in front of you anyway.”
“Right have fun out there. The farm should be hard to miss; you can even see it from here.” Gilda walked to the very back of the lower torso and raised talon to slap a button. A ramp lowered into the snow and she turned back to them. “You’ll still have to walk there from here though and there are no signs of a snow storm like the one that hit us in town. I think that was mostly the fault of the robots that attacked us; otherwise it would have been on Greta’s storm warning notice. Be safe out there.”
“Oh come on, it’s just my leg. Why can’t I go with them? I still have my wings!” The griffons couldn’t understand why Ember was being a bit frantic; the dragon wasn’t in any condition to walk anywhere. Even if she could fly a snow storm would quickly ground her, it was miraculous that she managed to get back onto the Centaur-pede safely. The two griffons gave her a flat look which cowed the dragon a bit. “Sorry, but I came down here to help people… and Rarity.”
“You will definitely be helping Ember; you’ll be helping us here while you’re laid up. We’re not going to have you fly everywhere on a bum leg and we’re not asking you to, which would be just ludicrous.” Positivity aside, Greta didn’t think Ember would calm down. Ember really seemed to care about them all to an absurd degree and Rarity was something like a best friend to her. While Ember was a really nice dragon and Greta was happy to be friends with her, it’s just that Ember’s friendly nature was working against her here. Greta held her talons out in a calming gesture as she stood over the parts of what was once a robotic wolf the size of a large dog. The disassembly wasn’t the hard part; it’d be putting it back together. “Stay calm, let your leg heal and eventually you’ll be in walking condition in no time. You can provide help with anything you see that might be of interest here.”
“Fine, so you said that container is full of a substance similar to liquid nitrogen only worse… isn’t that dangerous to be around?” Ember pointed to the cylindrical container full of a strange blue liquid. She was trying to ignore the feeling in her gut when Rarity said goodbye and trotted off down the ramp behind the well armored Saffron with Rover following behind.
“Only if it’s released in a gaseous form, the stuff seems to ice over whatever it touches. You might be mildly immune to it, but given enough time and gas and even your high body temperature wouldn’t be able to cope with this stuff.” Greta handled the container with care; it was installed in the upper jaw of the mostly blue colored wolf, some parts of it were silver or white. “It would make for a pretty good fire extinguishing substance, provided that none of it touches someone that doesn’t naturally have a higher body temperature like that of a dragon. This stuff would have made popsicles of us if we had allowed the wolves to get close without a fight, Saffron was properly shielded for it and Rover had the right idea with running from one of the wolves.”
“How lethal is this substance exactly?” Moping in a hammock wasn’t going to get Ember anywhere, so she might as well discuss the stuff Greta found while disassembling the robot wolves they had access to.
“Anywhere from insanely to not at all, I think it really depends on how much coverage this stuff gets all at once. For instance, you do not want this stuff to only have an effect on your neck. I think it was meant as a way to capture people alive, mostly by putting them into a form of frozen stasis.” Greta didn’t know what went into this strange chemical compound, but she knew what it does and how well it could do it. “I’m rather curious as to why someone would design a robot like this; it’s not very good against anyone that’s armed and aware of their surroundings. Of course these things can tunnel through snow like a Diamond Dog and use snow storms as a cover for their attacks. So I guess it makes some sense that they’d specialize in capturing targets alive. Now what do they do with captured targets is something the Great Snow Sharks might be able to answer for us, had we managed to disable one. The sharks might be responsible for the sudden snow storm.”
“Yeah, I kind of wrecked the one that swallowed me alive and I’m not sorry for that. Who has ever heard of a dragon actively freezing to death?” Why Ember scoffed at the idea that the freezing chemicals would stop her, not while she still had flames in her throat and a strong inner fire. “Its insides had catwalks meaning someone built them to work as a normal vehicle. There were a lot of robot wolves and holding pens, I’d say the sharks mostly act like carriers for the hunters. It’s not hard to guess that the intended captives are frozen solid then swallowed and placed in the pens inside the giant robot sharks.”
“Okay we have a name for the metal mutts now, let’s call them Hunters. So would that make the sharks gatherers? The sharks do have teeth and are quite dangerous themselves.”It was a bit sad that Gilda didn’t even get a shot in on one of the abominable snow sharks. “I think the sharp teeth are for ripping open vehicles to expose the passengers to the hunters. I’m thinking Abominable Jaws would be a fitting name for them.”
“Seriously Gilda, that’s what you want to call them?” Greta found this name for the great white monsters machines to be rather incredulous. “Why not just go all shark tornado or at the very least storm sharks!”
While they were figuring things out, Rarity’s small group was busy approaching the house on the farm.
-
“You know, I seriously doubt that anyone is on this farm will actually…” Saffron was cut off by her shields flaring and something pinging off of her, yeah she should know better than to tempt fate around Rarity after the horror stories some of the others told her about doing so. The Boss Lady almost had the magnetic effect of drawing danger to herself or finding it wherever she went; frankly Saffron bizarrely enjoyed such a quality in her rather generous friend that obviously never went to distressed damsel school. “Okay, what just hit me?”
The shot didn’t hurt, but Saffron’s armor did pull up a scan of what hit her and it was kind of amazing that the scanners could even pick up something moving that fast. It was a small material round made out of copper, shaped like a pellet. Saffron had to hand it to Gilda and Greta; they were both gifted in what they did. Looking behind her she could see Rarity and Rover taking cover behind her larger armored frame.
“Excuse me, but to whomever out there that just shot at us! Can you please not do that again?” The negotiator in this situation would have to be Rarity; she knew there was no other place that the shot could have come from than the farm before them. She could understand that someone might have had some problems with the weather causing machines and would have trust issues with any random stranger that happened to come along in a large six legged centaur machine. It was completely understandable in this situation. “I would really appreciate it if we could talk!”
“And why should I trust some no good varmints like you, if anything you're liars out to run the rest of us holdouts off!” The voice was of a strange accent and it was certainly coming from an upset farm mare.
“Excuse me, but what did we ever do to you aside form show up here! In fact I’m wondering, do you know the name Sugar Belle? I want to congratulate her on her engagement to a Mr. Macintosh; I met a nice stallion named Braeburn in orbit at the supply depot who told me about it.” Rarity immediately set out to redirect the anger away from the three of them, mostly by calling out the fact that she was here for family and Apple’s were big on family. “I’m one of Sugar Belle’s cousins here to check up on how she’s doing, we’re also here to help solve the current weather problems plaguing the planet! We’re not here for a fight.”
“Hold on there, don’t any of you move an inch!” It was hard to spot her, but the orange muscular pony with a blond mane poked up from cover and glared at Rarity, Rover and Saffron. The pony was giving them a rather suspicious look, but at least she was no longer aiming a material rifle at them. “Color, go get Sugar and ask if she can identify this mare. I can hold the fort here. If what she says is true, then we might have some guests out here. Hopefully these guests are good ones that can help us out of a bad pickle that we’re currently in.”
“O-Okay, I’ll go get her.” Well Countess Coloratura was recognizable so that was two ponies Rarity could identify. So things were looking up for a peaceful resolution here, they watched as the pop star kissed the orange pony on the cheek and carefully walked off.
“Well that’s something we certainly want to do, help out here I mean. We’re not here to do anything untoward.” Honesty was a good policy and Rarity was glad that this situation didn’t dissolve into a one sided shootout. Saffron could have massacred them by herself if she wanted to, good thing she wasn’t the kind of violent sociopath that would escalate things.
Rarity looked over the orange pony and thought that he was rather handsome looking, it took her a moment to recognize that it was a mare she was ogling and that was quite embarrassing. Luckily neither of her compatriots noticed that she had roaming eyes, the mare was quite masculine and she had better not call attention to it. There was something of a natural beauty about the masculine farm girl, maybe it was the toned hard worked body. She wondered what kind of makeover she could do for the mare; she could clean up really nicely if she was in a relationship with Countess Coloratura.
Speaking of the Countess, she had a lovely appearance, but Rarity still liked her previous glitz and glam style even if it wasn’t exactly Coloratura’s thing anymore. It was easy to see why she stopped with that particular style and she’s still as popular as ever even if she was on this backwater planet cuddling up with a farm mare. Whatever made the pop star happy worked for Rarity, she was sure her sister Sweetie Belle felt the same way about one of their favorite musicians. Coloratura’s current mane style was loose curls of her dark indigo mane that had blue streaks and it went well with her light aquamarine coat.
Color had come back with a pink furred mare that had curly magenta mane, one that was entirely familiar to Rarity. Rarity waved to this mare in question and pulled her hood down.
“Oh Sugar Belle, it’s me, how are you doing darling!” It made Rarity glad to see that Sugar Belle lit up at seeing.
“Rarity, oh my goodness, it’s been a while cousin! Wait, what is with that robot, the dirty looking diamond dog and that… I want to say Centaur-pede in the distance?” Well at least Sugar Belle understood the thought processes of two griffons when it came to naming their vehicles well enough; the pun was still horrible by anyone’s standards.
“Look I know you might be Rarity’s cousin and have been out of the loop of her life for a while, but I would like to clarify that I’m not a robot! I’m Ar-Mare-Do-Well, the armored version of Mare-Do-Well. Do not confuse me for the Mauve Mare-auder stand in that happens to live in Saddle Arabia.” It was still a little odd for Saffron to know that Chrysalis was keeping the legend alive, but who was she to get angry about the legacy being kept alive by Changelings as long as they did a good job of it.
“Rover is taking dirt bath just this morning, thanks for noticing!” The fact that Rover was proud of it irked Rarity somewhat and she glared at him, he just rubbed the back of his head and gave her a dopey smile.
“Yes, well, I’ve been involved in multiple things that eventually led to me hiring a diamond dog and a vigilante hero. As long as I keep the vigilantes secret identity, there will be no issues. I swear, my life is slowly turning into a circus and I have a circus troupe for crew members on my ship in orbit. Rover here is one of the members of that particular venture and he’s really good at juggling. Other crazy things include me being best friends with what might be the only dragon bounty hunter, I found out that one of my friends is a magical samurai and I have a butt obsessed Changeling Queen that is slowly growing on me and that frightens me more than anything else I’ve seen does.” Stopping to think about what she just said, Rarity slowly brought a hoof to her face. “Now that I said it out loud, my life sounds horrendously preposterous and I know Pinkie Pie for crying out loud! This is not exactly where I expected to be in my career as a fashion designer, I’m even doing things that are completely absurd for a fashion designer to do. I’m always fighting monsters, dealing with disasters and the like. Seriously, how has the stress not gotten to me by now? Oh and I’m now a Baroness, so I did get a royal title and I, thankfully, didn’t have to marry a snobby noble for it. It’s at least one of the better things to happen to me.”
“Rover is thinking it’s the underpaid muscle mender that doubles as a mental doctor who is easily misplaced that keeps Boss Lady’s stress levels down.” At least that’s what Rover called the amazing mare that was easy to forget, he couldn’t even remember her name now… or her appearance. He just knew that said mare existed and was good at her job, he wasn’t bothered by forgetting what she looked like because everyone on the crew had that problem and it wasn’t just him.
“Congratulations on becoming a noble, it was one of your dreams right? So… who’s Pinkie Pie? She must be strange if you’re comparing her to all the stuff you’re telling me.” Sugar Belle said as she moved over to look at the winged and horned vigilante, it fit with the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well’s continued theme of possibly being an alicorn in disguise.
“She’s an expert baker that lives out in the asteroid field owned by the Pie family at Streusel Station, she makes really good cupcakes. Also I think the massage expert’s name that Rover was trying to talk about was… funny, I can’t remember her name now. ” Even Saffron was having a case of the forgetful and she was trying to remember Blossom sisters name, well at least she could remember that it was the third Blossom sister who wasn’t the renowned Aloe or Lotus. “Anyway you should really go check out Sugarcube Galaxy if you drop by Streusel Station; she’s a good friend of Rarity’s and we went to a birthday party for her. Just a warning she’s really weird, there was two of her at the birthday party and one of them forgot her own birthday just to celebrate the other's not native to our dimension or at least that’s the story they were going with. We could tell them apart thanks to that adorable bipedal goat lady that was dating one of her, she was quite friendly.”
“Can we not relive that Mare-Do-Well; she’s always been the most confusing mare in the universe and that gave me an absolute headache. How can my friend keep forgetting her own birthday like that? She does that every year even!” After a moment Rarity slapped her face, they were kind of getting way off course. “Excuse me, but can we get back on track Sugar Belle? Also yes, that is my transport out that way and surprisingly you figured out its name easily enough. My mechanical and technical engineer griffons built it, they’re more like mad scientists at this rate given they built Mare-Do-Well the armored suit she’s wearing.”
“So you’ve practically, for all intents and purposes, lost all control of your life up to this point?” Asked Sugar Belle curiously, she wondered how much her cousin has been through to even get here. “So how did you come to be here?”
“Well after we left the asteroid field, with little trouble thankfully, we came here trying to find Babs Seed’s family. Her parents and a lot of people other were killed by a nasty infestation at Antilur Station, sorry to be the bearer of bad news on that front. At least my crew helped in putting the cause down, so they were avenged at least.” The orange mare swept her hat off her head and held it to her chest, Rarity sighed at the sight. “Anyway we came here for business and to drop poor little Babs off with someone who could take care of her in a stable environment. Instead we find a large portion of this planet covered in snow. I heard you were down here and I came to see if you were alright Sugar dear, by the way congratulations on the engagement at least. I heard about it from Braeburn, is Mr. Big Apple really everything you wish for in a stallion? Oh sorry, now I’m the one that is sidetracked. I didn’t exactly lose control of my life; I’ve just been too generous with my need to help people.”
“You’re still a river of generosity I take it. That was always a rather contagious and dangerous trait of yours. My stallion is definitely everything I could want thank you very much, but we won’t be able to have that wedding until the current crisis is dealt with and you’re most certainly invited. I could even use your services for a wedding dress. Maybe we can honeymoon in the asteroid field, it’s not too far away so transportation will be cheap… maybe I can even visit this Pinkie Pie friend of yours and get some tips on baking if she’s really good.” Sugar Belle didn’t look particularly happy to hear that a filly lost her parents, but she was trying to think positively and only had a small frown on her face. “Say Applejack, would it be okay if we adopted Babs Seed? The filly sounds like she really needs help.”
“Come on Sugar, you know my answer to that.” Closing her eyes and letting her tears flow at hearing they’ve lost some family, Applejack opened her eyes with a look of determination and slapped her hat back on her head. “We Apple’s always take care of family! I, Mac and Bloom know what it’s like to not have parents and it’s a sad day to hear that it has happened again.”