//------------------------------// // Stridorbvs Avfertvr // Story: Hc Svnt Equus Pinnis // by Masterweaver //------------------------------// "Oh my gosh did you lead them on a dramatic chase through an alien city?!" Fluttershy rolled her eyes. "No, Dash. Reinhild kept the cap-squad's attention long enough for us to escape." "Oh. Oh, but I bet she kicked butt, right?" "A bit," Fluttershy allowed, "but from what she tells me she eventually just bribed them to give her the contract records and told them I was at a Progenitus kiosk negotiating for another job." "...Oh." The yellow pony grinned wryly. "What, did you expect my entire stay would be one action scene after another as I dealt with horrible alien abominations?" "...maybe a little," Dash admitted. "I mean, you are one fifth machine now." "Rainbow Dash!" Twilight scolded. "Don't be rude. It's more like one eighth anyway." "No, no," Fluttershy waved her down, "she was closer. Maybe just one sixth though." Applejack rolled her eyes. "Right, cause determinin' how much o' ya is metal clearly's tha most important thing here." "I could do a scan!" Starlight offered. "I could just ask Votum," Fluttershy countered. "He's got all my surgical records. Votum, calculate percentage of my body mass that's artificial, please." She paused. "...Oh. Huh. Okay then, I... didn't realize I'd had that much done. I guess it builds up over time." Twilight blinked. "What?" "So, as it turns out, I'm actually about a quarter cyborg." Fluttershy shrugged awkwardly. "The optional bits piled up, I guess. Plus wings are actually pretty complicated." "...Well, I wouldn't have guessed that to look at you," Rarity offered hesitantly. "I'm not ashamed of it," Fluttershy pointed out. "I mean, sure, a lot of this was necessary, not by choice, but... it's not like it's something I should be ashamed of, you know?" "Oh no, I wasn't saying that at all!" Rarity assured her. "I'm sure I could design some ensemble for you, actually, the scaled plates on your leg would translate well to a dress, and while your eye scars are certainly striking, they could be visually counterbalanced by... a lovely hat, I suppose..." She frowned to herself. "Twilight, darling, do you happen to have a spare pad and quill I can borrow?" "Hmm? Oh, sure." Twilight teleported away. Fluttershy blinked, staring at the space she had occupied. Very quickly, Twilight teleported back, levitating the quill and pad to Rarity. "There you go." "Curiouser and curiouser," the yellow pony murmured. "What?" Fluttershy shook her head. "Nothing, it's... just part of an old human story. Where was I?" "Running from a bunch of freaky people that wanted to capture you for no discernable reason," Pinkie Pie replied. "Right, right, the cap-squad... Well, anyway, me and Alea made it to the Remora complex. A seaside facility, built as sort of a meeting place for aquatic laterals." Starlight blinked. "Aquatic laterals?" "The humans wanted to cast a wide net in the omega generation--the vectors they made after Earth got nuked--so they decided to try to give them the widest possible spread of potential environments. Avian and reptilian vectors also came from the omega generation, but the aquatics... they went a little bit wild with that," Fluttershy admitted. "Maybe because there's a lot of water on Earth and they wanted to recolonize eventually. There's the seals, the dolphins... the sharks..." "Wait, hold on." Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes. "So you met an alien shark." Fluttershy chuckled awkwardly. "No, Dash, I... what I told you last night was true..." "Wait, what?" Twilight looked between the two. "What happened last night?" "Just maretalk," Rainbow said dismissively. "Or at least I thought it was maretalk." "...So it turns out that Kleitos was actually a Mako shark vector... not a lateral, just a usual plantigrade..." "Friends of Reinhild, eh?" The fish-headed man smirked, stepping aside. "I see she's still got fine taste for the lookers." "Um..." Fluttershy glanced away. "That's... nice of you to say, but, um... I, well... no. Just... no." "I'm a recent widow," Alea added. "So, no for me as well." "Alright, alright." Kleitos held up his hand, leading them in. "You never know if you don't try, is all. There's a booth over by the verge, I'll let Reinhild know you're there when she gets here." Alea flicked the plastic rectangle to him as they followed. "Discretely, I hope." "Of course. You're not the first people she's sent my way." Kleitos flicked a finny ear in annoyance. "Just tell me, should I keep my head down?" "...maybe. I don't think so, though, the sargent's probably got this." "Right. Well, if a firefight starts, I can meet you in the verge." The shark gestured toward a table. "Your booth, ladies, if you'll excuse me." He walked into a nearby pool, submerging quickly and retreating down an underwater tunnel. Fluttershy looked after him for a moment, before shaking her head and flapping into a seat. "A recent widow?" She gave Alea a pointed look. "Really?" "It's in the records," the cog pointed out, sitting across from her. Fluttershy frowned. "Right, in the records. Cadence would probably have something to say about that." "A friend of yours?" "...Friend of a friend, if I'm honest. Mi Amore Cadenza, the princess of love." Alea stared at her for a moment. "I'm sorry, did... did you seriously just say 'princess of love?'" "Yes. She's Twilight's sister-in-law." "Riiiiiight." The cog snorted. "So, what, does she just stand around all day and spout cheesy one-liners about true love and all that shit?" "Actually, she rules the Crystal Empire." "Uh... huh. What's her species?" "Alicorn." Fluttershy took note of the nonplussed expression and sighed. "A blending of all three tribes, earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn." Alea gave her a flat look. "So she's a pretty pony princess." "Yes. She's... about a head taller than me, not counting her horn--I think she could poke you in the forehead easily, if she wanted to. Oh, but her wings are humongous, gorgeous purple tips, really compliments her pink coat--" "She's a pretty pink pony princess--okay, Fluttershy, you have to be making this up." Fluttershy shook her head. "No. I am completely serious. I was one of the bridesmaids for her wedding." "Really." "To be fair, her original bridesmaids were still recovering from being brainwashed by the changelings," she admitted. "The what?" "The changelings--shapeshifters who feed on love. They're..." Fluttershy frowned. "Well, I want to say they're a mix between a nymph and a pony, but nymphs don't have holes in their legs. Also they tend to be greyer. Changeling chitin is black." Alea stared at her for a moment or two. "...Shy, I don't know if you realize just how hard I am working to figure out where you came from, but one thing I can say for certain is these crazy stories just won't help." Fluttershy frowned at her. "I am telling you the honest truth." The cog leaned back in exasperation. "So we're looking for a lateral grotto with nymph-vector hybrids who attacked a royal hippie at her wedding, because of course that makes perfect sense." "I understand that it is a bit... unusual by vector standards," Fluttershy stated calmly, "but this all did happen." "You know what? That's not even the angle I'm working on. I'm just trying to figure out what TTI wants with you." Alea shrugged. "Or at least StarThread. Could be some independent subsidiary thing, that happens sometimes." Fluttershy stared at her blankly. "...The basic idea is that TTI is way too big to know every little thing its employers are doing," Alea explained. "So they don't until they need to. If a subsidiary corp becomes problematic, or if they stop turning a profit, the higher ups will step in and rearrange things, but... Look, Fluttershy. You're just one pony. One incredibly special pony, true, but there's a good ten billion vectors out there. Unless StarThread's been doing something REAL big, or you rattle the system real hard, the higher ups won't think there's enough reason to check up on this." "Oh." "Which is actually a good thing." "Really?" "Trying to dig secrets out of TTI is like trying to snatch a diamond out of a stream of molten lava. Technically doable, if you have the right tools and perfect timing, but we aren't Spyglass. So long as whatever happened remains relegated to StarThread, we have a much smaller target to dig around in--still difficult, in that you're trying to snatch a diamond from the den of lions--" "I know how to talk to lions." Alea rolled her eyes. "These are metaphorical lions, Fluttershy." "Right. Sorry." "My point is, the lions--that is StarThread--have noticed you, and they want you back. I don't know what Reinhild is doing, but chances are she can only keep them off for a week or two. You have that long before they set out a stronger set of hunters." The cog leaned across the table. "Which means, you need to find a more defensible position." "...so... how do I defend myself from metaphorical lions?" "Find a pack of metaphorical hyenas to take you in. Hyenas hate lions." Fluttershy frowned. "I'm... pretty sure they're just competitors for the same food source in the wild. Although they will kill each other's young, if--" She noticed Alea's flat expression. "Metaphor. Right. Sorry. Um..." She tapped her hooves together. "So... where would I find these Hyenas?" "StarThread is a TTI subsidiary. TTI and Progenitus hate each other. You need to make yourself valuable enough to some Progenitus subsidiary that you're worth protecting." "And... how do I do that?" "Helping us out with the record-keeping in the wild like you have is a good first step. But you need to do something extra, show some special talent, if you really want to get in their good books." "Special talent..." Fluttershy glanced at the butterflies on her hips again. "...I... might have some ideas there." "So, once Reinhild came and found us, we did... research." Fluttershy held up a hoof. "Yes, Rainbow, it was boring. No, Twilight, it wasn't anything worldshaking. Most of it was along the lines of things that had been done before, what had gotten people picked up by Progenitus before." "You keep mentioning Progenitus," Twilight noted. "I understand it's a megacorp, and from what you've told us it's a... natural preservation group?" "Actually, Progenitus is more medicine and health in general. I mean they do make a lot of the environmental maintenance stuff, but they're really famous for their healthcare." Fluttershy smiled. "I may be a lit-tle bit biased, since I did work with them heavily, but... of the big seven, I think they're the kindest." Applejack quirked an eyebrow. "Big seven? Whatcha mean by that?" "Most megacorps own a few dozen subsidiaries--a smattering of ordinary corporations, who themselves own minicorps, who might own a few local businesses in every town. The big seven are the megacorps that own megacorps." Fluttershy paused, considering her friends. "I'm just going to summarize, alright? This is important, but in a sort of 'always there in the background' way." Rainbow Dash nodded. "Yeah, sure, get through the boring stuff so we can go back to the awesome stuff, makes sense to me." "Right. So, first of all, MarsCo is the great granddaddy of them all--they've been around from the beginning, they make pretty much everything, you can't go anywhere without seeing MarsCo stuff because to Vectors it's basic. Houses, cars, furniture, food... if the other six corps all vanished there would be a lot of chaos, but Vector society would survive. Of course," she mused, "being so big means everyone's watching the company. So it's mostly... passive, so it doesn't provoke the other big seven." "Are you sure you're describing a company?" Starlight asked. "Because it sounds like you're talking about an entire kingdom here." "Well, there's a few differences between a megacorp and a nation-state--but, um, I think if I went on about that, I would be rambling for a while. Let's see, MarsCo also spun off ASR, Pulse, and the IRPF. ASR, Applied Sciences and Robotics, they do all the techy stuff--computers, cogs, robots, my cybernetics are actually ASR products mostly. Pulse is... sort of a combination of fashion and sports? They're the ones that make equipment, design games, help vectors look beautiful or noble or awesome or what they like. ASR and Pulse have a bit of a rivalry with each other, but it's kind of like... well, like I'd imagine a rivalry between Rarity and Rainbow Dash would be like." "A rivalry? Between us?" Rarity scoffed. "Aside from my brief moment of mania during the young flyer's competition, I don't think we would have much to fight over." "Well, let's say you had to impress some foreign noble in two weeks and I offered you a choice between a sewing machine and a gym set, both of which were guaranteed to make you look good in the time permitted." "Sewing machine," Rarity said swiftly. "Beauty is innovation." "Gym set," Rainbow replied casually. "Awesomeness is effort." "And there you have the core conflict," Fluttershy concluded. "It's not a big one, not like some of the other rivalries, but it is a philosophical one." She cleared her throat. "Now, the Inner Ring Police Force are sort of like the police and the royal guard all rolled into one. Some people don't trust them because they're the army for hire, but they try to keep things civil and law-abiding. Not like Spyglass--they're, well, spies. Saboteurs. They... um. There's no nice way to put it... they don't trust anyone. Not even themselves. But they're honest with that distrust." "Honest with distrust?" Applejack tilted her head. "That sounds like one o' them oxymorons ta me!" "They're a little hard to get the hang of," Fluttershy admitted. "But I can't entirely dislike them, they helped a lot with the investigation of TTI after all. And Progenitus was a spin-off of theirs." "Wait, wait wait wait." Pinkie held up a hoof. "The super friendly guys came from the super sneaky guys?" "Yes, well, you see... before Progenitus, medicine was deliberately expensive. But when the Spyglass people who were investigating found out that the doctors were deliberately hiding cures, they decided to basically let everyone know and spread the cure around. So now there's life-saving technology all across the solar system, funded by a small tax and free for anyone to use, all kept running by Progenitus." Fluttershy sighed. "Which makes the rivalry with TTI so frustrating..." "Those are the guys that kidnapped you, right?" Spike asked. "That's what Twilight told me." "I don't think they were aiming to kidnap anyone," Fluttershy mused, "but, yes, they did launch the Tether. Or a subsidiary did. Transcendent Technologies Incorporated... officially they research extreme biological manipulation and dimensional exploration, creating specialized life forms and modifications. But unofficially, I think what they're doing is messing with magic." Twilight blinked. "Wait. You told me there was no magic in that universe." "No natural magic." Fluttershy shut her eyes. "But... from what I felt in the tether base... I don't know exactly what kind of magic it was, but I'm almost certain it was magic. Of some sort." She looked around at the ponies and cleared her throat. "Anyway. The big seven megacorps. That's them. Of course it wasn't like most of that touched me, it was just background... stuff. Important, but not active. So... where was I?" "Doing research," Twilight prompted. "If you don't mind, I'm going to skip ahead to the point where the research paid off. We managed to rent out a presentation room, and... let's be honest, I was very nervous that I was going to be speaking in front of a crowd..." "Um." Fluttershy swallowed, adjusting the collar of the formal coat she wore. "Hello, everyone. My name is Fluttershy, and, um, I'm here to, um, present a new... technique, which I have developed." The fourteen vectors around the table looked at her with unjudging, impassive expressions. She took a breath. "Nymphs communicate through a complex interweaving of signals. Pheromones, minor telepathy, specialized motions, consuming brains of other nymphs... this information is gathered by the colonies and, um, used to determine what forms of nymph the local ecosystem needs to remain balanced. Now, this is all grade-school knowledge, but even among the E.M.L.A. it takes very specialized equipment for vector-kind to read the information that the nymphs have gathered, which raises the expense of every monitoring expedition and outpost significantly." Fluttershy glanced out at her audience, noting the minor interest on some of their faces. She tapped the glass pane in front of her, and the next part of her speech came up. "But what if, instead of getting indirect readings by capturing nymphs and observing them, we could communicate with them directly? What if instead of a hundred random specimens, all you needed was one of each type? Ten, maybe twenty, and what if you could ask one to bring a single specimen of each form from their colony? The onus of effort would be on the nymphs themselves, and there would be no risk of accidentally unbalancing the ecosystem by taking too many, um, pollinators or insectivore edibles. For many, getting such easy results from such a large and active system would sound impossible. Today, I'd, um, like to prove them wrong." With those words, Fluttershy produced the fruit of her effort--a complex bit of machinery with a transparent cube atop it and a digital screen in front. "This," she explained to the now focused audience, "is the Behavioral Interpretation and Nymph Communication System. Through careful study of nymph actions, interactions, pheromone exchange, and, um, their brain eating, I have managed to not only derive the basic 'vocabulary' of our little friends, but also a minor grammar structure and a way to send more complex messages in real time to them." Fluttershy held up a hoof. "Now I know this is all possible with advanced degrees, vector kind did make nymphs after all, but in the intervening centuries between their creation and the modern era many ecologies have grown so complicated that the old 'language' requires, well, a dozen checks and rechecks to understand the totality of what the nymphs are communicating. This system, however, is designed to not only use the modern nymph 'language', but to collapse it into easily readable data, and to register when the nymph is attempting to communicate something outside known vocabulary. It can be manually updated with new 'words' and 'grammar structures,' as necessary. And as you can see, it is portable." She noticed all the eyes on her and blanched for a moment. After taking a deep breath, she pressed onward. "This is an update in ecological surveillance that, quite frankly, has been overlooked for far too long. The B.I.N.C.S. is not any more expensive than the current nymph observation technology; in fact, it is a third less expensive to make and set up, with most of the cost going into the, um, data system that stores and encodes the nymph translation software. I will admit my testing has been limited, I've only managed to do a few sectors here on Mars, but the data remains consistent with the current methods. Nevertheless, I do believe this is a project worth looking into." "Indeed," mused a squirrel, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Even if it is a dead end, at least we'll know why. I for one would put forth my support." "I'll second that," said a raccoon lateral standing near the foot of the table. "All in favor of funding a B.I.N.C.S. research and development project?" Nine of the vectors raised their hands. "All opposed?" Two, a horse and a badger, rose their hands. "Well, that's still around half of us, all told." The squirrel turned to the pegasus. "Thank you for having us here today, miss Fluttershy. We'll have the company start writing up the contract and send it to you within the week." "Oh, um, thank you." Fluttershy took the box. "You, uh, don't mind if I keep this until then? I can give you the blueprints and the program..." "Not at all." The squirrel smiled quietly. "I know the importance of one's own work. We'll be in touch." "Right, yes." The pegasus nodded, backing out the door. "I'll... be on the lookout for the contract, then." The door slid shut, and a tension that Fluttershy had felt building drained from her limbs. "Hey." Reinhild put a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?" "I, I really, really don't like talking to large groups," Fluttershy mumbled. "But... I'll be okay, yes." Alea crossed her arms. "Did you get them to look at your thing?" "Yes. They're sending a contract in a few days." "Then the only thing left to do is wait." "And three days later, I was officially put on the head of the research team." Fluttershy rolled her eyes at Twilight's excited gasp. "Which meant everyone else did the research and I just collated the data." She chuckled at the deflated sound of disappointment that escaped the alicorn. "How did you even pull that off?" Starlight asked. "A random stranger suddenly coming out of nowhere to spearhead a new initiative?" "It's all in the pitch, darling," Rarity explained. "She hit all the right marks--it was new, it seemed to work, it wasn't more expensive to do then what they were already doing, and by granting the blueprints but keeping the prototype she gave the impression that any mistakes in the product would require her direct intervention to fix. I may not know much about bugs myself, but I do know about business and leveraging abilities." "And you gave a presentation to a crowd!" Pinkie cheered. "Well done, Fluttershy!" "Heh, well." Fluttershy blushed, fidgeting with her mane. "It made everyone's life better, and I was staking my own safety on it..." The mood dropped for a moment. "...Are ya'll sure you're okay?" Applejack asked softly. "I've lost a leg, an eye, and my wings. I spent so long away from Equestria, never knowing if I could get back. I... I was attacked by monsters and demons and just ordinary criminals... I've seen friends die. Right in front of me." Fluttershy sighed. "No, Applejack. I'm not okay. I'm alive, and I'm not dragged down by it all, but it doesn't go away like that. I might be, eventually. I'm definitely better, just being home with friends. But... I'm not okay. And I don't know if I ever will be." "...Of course you will." Rainbow Dash stood up. "Because, like you said, you've got friends. And we'll help you through whatever you need." Without any other words, she put her wings around Fluttershy. A purple pair joined soon after, then a small set of paws, then a pair of pink forelegs, then white, then orange, and then a set of claws. For a moment there was silence. "...Starlight?" Twilight looked up, giving the sole equine still outside the group hug a questioning look. "I'm... not sure I should be part of this," the unicorn admitted. "I mean, the last time me and Fluttershy met was... the village, and, well..." "You don't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with," Fluttershy assured her. "I understand." Starlight bit her lip, but nodded. "So... should... should I just go, or--" "No." Fluttershy quickly shook her head, pushing off her friends gently. "Thank you everyone, but... well, we've been up here a while. And there are things I need Twilight and Starlight's help with." "You do?" Twilight asked. "Yes. So... how about I wrap up telling you about my time on Mars, and then the three of us can head back to my cottage to set things up? Actually, maybe Pinkie should come too, now that I think about it--" "Ooo!" Pinkie bounced up and down. "What are we doing, what are we doing?" "I'll tell you in a moment. I don't want to keep all our friends in suspense." "Oki-doki-loki." The pink pony pounced into her seat. "Storytime, go!" Fluttershy chuckled. "Well, like I said, I was put in charge of the research team. And, pretty much, the B.I.N.C.S. was a rousing success... on Mars, anyway. Soon enough, the E.M.L.A. decided maybe I should go to Venus and take over tests there. That's another planet in the solar system. Of course, my last experience on a spaceship had been kind of... bad, so I was a little nervous, but I decided to talk with my friends..." "There's no real downside," Reinhild mused. "Um... really?" Fluttershy frowned. "It's just... the last time I was in space--" "--you were on a manifestation-infested liveship and had just been transported from your home with transcendent tech," the fox pointed out. "None of that is space-based danger, just TTI stuff. And if you're on a Progenitus ship it's not very likely you'll meet anyone working with TTI." "Venus is sort of TTI turf, though," Alea pointed out. "They were the ones that made the wildlife." "That was almost three centuries ago," Reinhild replied. "They didn't start doing the transcendent shit until a lot later. And anyway, most of Venus is a wildland, even the animals. Even if they have more technical control, they'll find it harder to find Fluttershy over there then they would over here." "So... you think I should go to Venus?" Fluttershy asked. "I think you'll get more from the trip then you would staying here," Reinhild replied. "Stable job, new animals to meet, whoever's interested in you would have a harder time finding you, and there is enough TTI presence that we could stumble on some sort of clue about how you got here in the first place." Alea quirked an eyebrow. "What, are you going with her?" "Might as well. It was my apartment that they found, I'd be the reasonable first link to getting Shy." Fluttershy's ears folded back. "I'm sorry, I... I didn't mean to put you in danger--" "Shy, it's fine. Danger's my job." Reinhild shrugged. "Besides, I've been wanting to get off-planet for a while. Go see the sights. Venus is a good place to start." "Well, best of luck to you two." The cog sipped her drink. "Maybe before you go we can, I don't know, get something to eat together or something." Reinhild rose a brow. "I think you want to come with us." "I think you're imagining things." "I think there's somebody on the Quad who would have very pertinent questions for his sister-in-law, especially if he never met her before." Alea frowned. "You know, threats don't work on me fox." "How about this." Reinhild wrapped an arm around Fluttershy. "This girl saved your life. And you still haven't been able to help her find out why she's here. So you're going to be leaving a debt unpaid if you don't come with us." Alea glanced from the fretful pegasus to the stone-faced fox. Then back at the fretful pegasus. "...You two make a real carrot and stick routine, you know that?" With a sigh, she put her glass down. "Fine. I mean it's not like you're uprooting me from my own life anyway." "Oh, I really don't mean to be a bother--" "No seriously, Fluttershy, I really don't have a life here. It's the reason I've got so much time to pour into your situation." "...Oh." Fluttershy looked at her. "Do you want to talk about--?" "No." "Oh.... okay." Alea rubbed her brow. "And I can't even tell if you're guilt-tripping me with that look..." "So it's settled. Shy takes the gig, we three all fly to Venus, and we figure it out from there." "Yes, fox, it's settled." Alea smirked. "Of course, knowing our luck, everything will go to shit three days in."