“When you said you needed food I thought you were talking about our other guest who is being rather quite shy because of… circumstances.” While it was interesting for Coriander to meet the AI of the ship in the flesh, she was an adorable little thing like his girl had once been before she started fighting thugs and became a beautiful mare of her own right, he was remarkably lackadaisical about Opal’s sudden existence. He was quite used to weird things happening to Saffron, like the time she had an evil octopus tentacle growing out of her back and thus wasn’t exactly surprised to see the trend continue with someone else. He tried to ignore the odd things that happened to his daughter when she became a costumed crime fighter, because at the time he’d rather not know what she got up to as long as she was alive, but now he wasn’t going to ignore these things any longer. “Aside from that this is not exactly the weirdest I’ve seen.”
“You don’t seem all too surprised to see me Mr. Cumin.” There was the feeling of awkwardness to Opal, it was the fact that Coriander wasn’t reacting to her presence as if she were oddity that was off-putting about it. How can she not be the weirdest thing he’s ever seen? How can he treat her current state of existence as normal? She was planted at the table by Rarity who took up a position of sitting behind her. It was comfortable being in her mother’s lap, even if her body was making cranky grumbling noises and causing her pain.
“I’ve seen a lot of weird things Saffron has tried to keep me from discovering over the years. I know when my daughter got into a really bad fight and I know exactly when she started to… moonlight. If there is a term we’re going to use for it.” Coriander tilted his head slightly as they were keeping Saffron’s secret identity in case anyone walked in unexpectedly. “So really nothing you can show me will actually surprise my daughter more than the time she accidentally became a Pegasus for a week until she figure out how to find a cure for what was afflicting her.”
“Okay I guess that makes sense, heroes do tend to get into stranger situations than mom can create by the happenstance of just being present everywhere she seems to go.” Opal noticed the slightly disapproving look Rarity was shooting her. “What, it’s true and you know it mom!”
“I’m here to feed you Opal, if that wasn’t a weird enough sentence when I know for certain that you didn’t need food to live before now. At least you’re smarter than Sweetie Belle was when she was a little foal, you’ll probably be less messy about this too.” This led to Rarity shivering at the memories of getting cakes in food thanks to her little sister. Shaking her head and lighting her horn, Rarity scooped up a bit of soup and carefully floated it over to Opal. “Now be a dear and open your mouth for me would you?”
Opal did as asked and saw no reason to disrespect her creator, well Rarity had to have had a part in creating her at least… maybe somewhat? Okay so she wasn’t sure if Rarity was actually responsible for her ending up like this, but she had always been there for Opal and was currently being here for her now.
The spoon slipped into Opal’s mouth and her head was tilted back a bit, the tomato soup slid off the spoon into her mouth and proceeded to get stuck there. Okay how did her swallowing reflex work again? Oh right. With the combination of the right muscles put into use, she swallowed her first bit of food ever. She murmured happily and waited for another spoonful.
“It tastes really good Mr. Cumin, but why is the tomato soup cold?” Even as she asked this Opal was about to take another spoonful, with Rarity carefully nuzzling the back of her head. This was kind of embarrassing, she felt like a tiny foal with Rarity at her back and… she actually liked it.
“It is tomato bisque, serving it cold is the correct way to eat it. I believed that it would have fit the Parrote’s pallet pretty well, as would have the grilled cheese.” Grilled cheese sandwiches were easy to prepare and Cumin did hear Rarity say she wanted a fast meal prepared with a sampler kind of theme. He was expecting a featherless Parrote, though the AI that now looked like a Cacceran worked just as well. “It is nothing fancy, but it would have been nice to hear our guest’s thoughts on it.”
“What’s grilled cheese taste like? Anyway this soup tastes incredible! I can see why eating is addictive and necessary for biologicals now.” Even if she could taste the food, Opal still wasn’t quite sure whether or not she was biological.
“Well then, why don’t we try it out my darling little Opalescence?” The amusement in Rarity’s voice could not be faked, she had motherly practice with Sweetie Belle and it was becoming quite useful with the more intelligent Opal. She levitated a triangular cut piece of the sandwich with the molten cheese, she cut a smaller piece of that with warm gooey cheese almost dripping out and brought it over to the soup. She paused in thought. “Opal, you’re going to need to learn how to chew your food. Also I need to teach you table manners, but for the moment I’m letting things slide because you can hardly control your current body all too well. We don’t even know what your body is.”
“I think I can figure it out mom, if I can figure out how to eat soup then this can’t be too hard and you have to realize that I’m not a complete idiot.” The gooey bit of cheese filled sandwich was lightly dipped into the tomato soup and was then hovered above the soup to drip for a moment before it moved over to Opal’s mouth. Having watched the others eat she knew what to do or at least thought she did.
Open mouth insert food and move food to cheeks where she could work her jaw to mulch the food before swallowing, it all sounded rather simple to Opal. The sensation of tasting the soup was incredible, but now the test of actually ingesting something solid and actually chewing it. Some things couldn’t be described, but Opal wondered if this dream was going to end sometime soon because she was in heaven. She could understand why so many people like cheese now, she at least knew to chew with her mouth shut. When she finally managed to swallow, she was actually feeling much better and another chunk of gooey melted goodness moved to hover in front of her mouth.
Yep, feeding Opal was as cute as could be and Rarity was going to make sure she ate her fill. Things were hopefully going to be quiet until they managed to get Sugar Belle’s wedding out of the way, so she could get some relaxation and maybe pry a little more information out of Opal about what she remembers happening.
This wasn’t going to take forever and they still had to get Applejack back down to the farm, plus there were other things to worry about like what Rubis was going to do now and convincing Babs to let go of her exceedingly odd infatuation with Chrysalis. It was odd to anyone who saw the two together, Chrysalis was somehow Bab’s favorite person since her parents died back on Antilur Station. Chrysalis was the only one around when Babs earned her cutie mark so something the changeling did had a positive effect, but she obviously didn’t care too much about the filly whereas the filly adored her.
“So Opal, you can actually taste that?” Coco inquired curiously as she was another bit of toasted bread, cold tomato and melted cheese go down the cat’s throat. Vera was there as well, if less visible to Coriander who wasn’t in direct contact with Miss Blossom and nobody was pointing at her.
“Yes, itshs quites dewicious.” Opal finally swallowed the gooey massed and cooed happily, she was still hungry. Is this what hungry was? Well she didn’t like it as much as tasting food.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full Opal, that’s rude and not very polite young lady.” Cowing her little kitten was just a bigger part of Rarity’s job now. It was relatively easy to get Opal to heel, she didn’t move the next portion of food near Opal’s mouth, even with her giving Rarity a big watery eyes look.
“Yes meowstress, I’m sorry and I guess I should apologize to everyone for my rudeness?” The tasty morsel moved forward and Opal received a nod for correctly answering Rarity’s disapproving stare appropriately. After her swallowing her next morsel her left ear started to twitch wildly. “Hold on, we’re getting hailed by Gilda.”
“This is Gilda, this is going to take more than a few weeks to repair Boss Lady. A week if you want to push us to do a quick patch job instead of a full repair, we’ve got a lot of internal damage to deal with after we’re done fixing the hull and replacing the turrets. Speaking of the hull, I’m in the middle of removing a data jacking harpoon from the hull. Greta is requesting permission to study it.” This was followed by a long yawn, it sounded like Gilda was getting pretty tired. “The EDF are sending us some stuff they can spare and have a few Wonder Bolt squadrons asking around if anyone needs repairs or materials after all the space pirate attacks while we were busy on the surface. So I’m calling to ask if we should take the free materials being offered by the EDF on top of Greta’s request.”
“Of course, I’m not exactly made of money and some supplies would really make up for the fact that we didn’t get paid for all the stuff we do. It’s the least they could do for us after all the resources we spent on this venture, quite literally. As for Greta’s request, I will agree because we need to study what was in that harpoon, it relates to Opal’s current state.” It occurred to Rarity that neither of the griffons knew that Opal was a physical entity, there were also the fact that she needed to bring everyone up to speed about Opal. “We will be having a meeting soon enough to discuss what happened to Opal and Opal will be present for it. She’s fine for the most part, but it’s under some rather unusual circumstances.”
“Right, I’ll tell Greta to secure that data harpoon then and then have the EDF transfer the materials over to us. It’s mostly metals and some electronics, so don’t expect it to be much of a boon Boss Lady. Lightning is out here getting familiar with Ember’s ship and giving us a protection detail, not that we really need it anyway.” Having a huffy griffon on the crew wasn’t too bad, especially when Gilda does so much work. “Lightning brought up something, we’ve been kind of relying too heavily on Opal and she thinks she can teach a few of us how to actually pilot ships instead of relying on Opal to do it for us. She’s better than I am at piloting at any rate and I don’t admit something like that easily.”
“Says the griffon who somehow landed her EGGS unit upside down and isn’t a pilot. Well not one that is trained or licensed at least.” A giggling Greta caused Gilda to grunt out loud in a grumpy manner. “We’ll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing Boss Lady, we’re continuing repairs on the hull and Gilda will replace the destroyed laser turrets. Hope you’re feeling better soon Opal, it’s kind of sad to not hear you talk even if we can talk to you. EGGS one and two continuing operations, over and out!”
“Well now that that’s over, more please, this is the most delicious food I’ve ever had!” Opal looked up at Rarity with expectant eyes, another magically levitated bite of grilled cheese was dipped floated towards her waiting mouth after shaking off the excess cold tomato soup.
“Opal it’s the only food you’ve ever had. It might be the most delicious thing to you today, but who knows what tomorrow will bring and there’s so much more for you to try that you couldn’t before. There’s also so much more that we can do together that we couldn’t before.” Like Rarity showing Opal how to brush her fur or her hair and how to walk, because the AI has obviously never been quasi-biological before. “I still have questions about your current form, but until they are answered I’m going to treat you like your completely biological thought it’s clearly apparent that you are not. It’s rather obvious the food is having a positive effect on you, but you still control the ship as if you were inside the computer.”
“Yes and the fact that she can eat at all is odd to say the least, which tosses out a few more of my theories about Opal.” Vera had more problem with Opal being able to look directly at her and blink without losing her presence. “At least she wasn’t one of the worst of what I thought she could be, though there are some pretty bad ideas that came to mind.”
“Why, what could I have been?” Properly swallowing her food before asking this Opal had to know what Vera could have possibly thought she was. She felt something on her face and gently had it wiped clean with a napkin by a smiling Rarity, seeing her mother smile made her day and she didn’t even know why her mom was doing so.
“Highly infectious brain parasites that can possibly mimic technology and control it remotely, thankfully that isn’t the case. There’s also a cloud of microscopic machines working together to produce your appearance which is also disproven given you’re a solid entity and a few other things. There was the one where you might be an eldritch abomination, but you’re way too friendly for that.” There was a hint of humor in Vera’s voice as Opal smiled in a devious manner towards the mare with the ‘forget-I-exist’ field. “You are most certainly not an AI and there have been a few signs that you are not entirely electronic in nature, but there is the fact that you can be electronic.”
“If she can be both electronic and biological at the same time how does that work, she’s not exactly cybernetic at the moment.” Coco reached over and rubbed Opal behind one of her ears causing the cat entity to purr contently at the action and the pleasure it brought. “Masses of coding do not miraculously spring to life, I would know as I’ve spent a lot of time working on the control systems of the impulse saddles I make. Greta has actually improved quite a bit on the efficiency of them, but I know a thing or two about it personally.”
“True, which is why Opal was always a natural intelligence who might have been led to believe, by complete accident mind you, that she is an artificially created being.” Trying to keep a warm smile on her face Vera continued for Opal’s sake. “She is not an artificially created being. It is one of the things I know for certain, but at least I can propose that Rarity was certainly the catalyst that allowed her to grow to what she is now. She’s been living as an AI for as long as she’s been aware of herself and met Rarity, but she’s not really a bunch of coding.”
“Gummy always did say something was odd about how I warped all forms of coding around me with simple thoughts alone, I wonder how he’d react to me as I am now.” The Streusel Station AI might have had a few things to say to Opal about life and a lot of profound stuff that most don’t normally hear from the pygmy alligator AI. Gummy was always a rather eloquent creature, but he was a true artificial intelligence as far as Opal knew.
“He’d probably continue being your friend and say that you have suddenly become an unexpected variable in life as we know it.” Coddling the cuddly looking cat was Rarity’s new favorite thing to do, well at least from this point forward if Opal continued to stay like this. “You’re my soft fluffy darling little girl Opal.”
“Mom…” Whined Opal looking put out as she was crushed against Rarity’s chest, however that whine was soon placated with another bit of soup smothered grilled cheese. Opal was almost finished eating, as were Coco and Vera who had been snacking on the other food that was placed before them.
“After I’m finished feeding you, we’ll try to get a scan of you in medical.” There was the no nonsense tone in Rarity’s voice and Opal nodded in acceptance while chewing on her food.
-
“So you’re Queen Chrysalis, what did you do to get Babs to like you so much?” It took Applejack a while to find Chrysalis’s room, but it wasn’t hard to find once she was directed to it by Babs. She needed to talk to the Changeling in particular.
Chrysalis turned her head away from what she was doing and then went back to it in a lazy and bored manner. Applejack approached the queen with caution and curiously looked at what she was doing, it was surprisingly innocent in nature.
“Well aside from giving Little Snack the ability to properly say goodbye to her parents and let her wallow in her own depressed state, I haven’t the foggiest the idea actually. I’m kind of disturbed that a pony can give me that much love directly without becoming fatigued by the act.” Chrysalis found it odd that ponies can actually like her for who she is. She could eventually become friends with a pony after spending a long enough time in their presence, that’s mostly because she can eventually get a read on said ponies emotional stability and how they’d react to certain emotional stimulus. “I think it’s because I’m not draining her actively that the love is flowing so strongly and continuously, I’m actually kind of conflicted about it personally. Mostly because getting love is less of a challenge nowadays that I’m not even trying to get it actively. I think the challenge of getting love previously was mostly in the fact that we were defeating ourselves constantly by stealing love and or creating environment where loves couldn’t grow or spread. I guess that’s what we get for years of deceitfulness and lies.”
“So you can turn into her ma and pa huh?” She sounded quite honest to Applejack, which is unusual for the farm mare as she had heard many things about Changeling Queens. Such as the nasty disposition to make devilish plans. “What are your aims regarding her?”
“Nothing actually, I truly have no cruel or twisted designs for her. Aside from getting her to stop looking up to me, it’s really weird that I’m the role model of a pony.” Chrysalis wanted to corrupt Babs after being left alone with her, unfortunately she failed and succeeded at the same time. She was a little put off by the fact that Babs could even see her as a motherly figure or become attached to a cold calculating being like her. Friendship was easy, love was messy and tended to cause pain, suffering and plenty of mental trauma. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad that Babs liked her so much. “I can’t do voices that I’ve never heard, so really I can’t do a perfect impression of her parents. I can take on their appearance, but not their tone of voice or mimic how they treated Babs as I’ve never met them long enough to know their mannerisms. So you really have nothing to be wary of where I’m concerned.”
“Yet you’re making that for her aren’t you?” That was a rather eloquent question from Applejack, the earth pony tipped her hat to what Chrysalis was working on.
“It’s not dangerous, clearly you can’t be that scared of my creation? It’s not that horrifying or scary looking. It’s not even made of dangerous materials, I would know, I actually bothered to check up on pony biology and no pony can possibly be allergic to this.” After stating this coolly Chrysalis continued to work on her project in silence, but she did have one more thing to say. “Do you think she’ll even like it?”
“I’m sure she will, if you’re making an honest effort and want give it to her as a gift.” It was a little strange to Applejack to see the Changeling Queen come off as slightly vulnerable. If this Changeling truly cared, then that was certainly something. “Are you really going to miss her?”
“Not in the slightest.” Chrysalis told a rather blatant lie in a flat tone and Applejack just smiled at it. “I’m Crystal Clear Dick or as I prefer to be called Queen Chrysalis or just Chrysalis. And I believe you are one of Bab’s kin?”
This prompted a discussion between the two which mostly turned into talk about family. If there was one thing Chrysalis understood, it was having a large family and caring a lot about them no matter how dumb or stubborn they might get. In this she shared a kindred spirit with Applejack. Chrysalis doubted Applejack’s family could match a Changeling hive, but she was getting rather sentimental and happened to be missing all of her sneaky little idiots.
-
The vest, shirt, pants, boots and coat were all very nice and fit her very well, Rubis didn’t quite know how to thank Sassy for all the clothing. She need it all in her current state until her feathers grew back, Parrote’s usually wore clothing anyway so this wasn’t an issue. The beret covering her featherless head was a nice touch.
“Merci beaucoup, it fits very well Madam Saddles. Though I am wishing my feathers grow back quickly and as beautiful as they once were.” Rubis Poulette kneeled down and let Sassy hug her and pat her on the back, it was now that Rubis decided to broach a topic gently. “What do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it, Rarity wouldn’t ask money of you and neither would I. Though she would definitely say this was a fashion emergency that warrants some generosity.” Sassy turned to look at one of the nearby medical beds, the one Ember was in and shook her head sadly. It was her turn to watch out for the people in medical and the only one that really needed watching was Ember.
Rover was already back to sleeping on his dirt in his room, paw was encased in a bio-cast and his broken wrist would take about four days to heal. Like Rarity, Sassy didn’t care all too much for the normal unkempt nature of Diamond Dogs and didn’t understand how Diamond Dog females could live in the same conditions the males do. At least Rover showed them some courtesy by remaining mostly clean. Bernard was good enough leave medical for Trapeze’s room and while she didn’t trust that guy around Trapeze, she was letting it slide at this moment because Trapeze accepted him living and sleeping in the same room as her. This let her and their guest Rubis to have some privacy. Saffron was still in a medical bed her bruises and internal bleeding were quite bad, but those injuries weren’t nearly as lethal as the ones Ember took.
“You are too kind mon amie, but let me guess… food will also be provided as long as I am a guest here?” Getting a nod at her queries Rubis felt a bit bad at the hospitality she was being shown and being unable to repay it. She’d figure out something later as she owes Rarity’s people, not to mention Baroness Belle herself, quite a debt that was more than just gratitude alone.
“I don’t see why food wouldn’t be provided… we have a few months stored up for any species. We’re becoming quite the multicultural crew, I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually hired on a hippogriff or a mermaid pony.” It didn’t take much to know why Sassy was sympathizing heavily with Rubis Poulette, after all they had both been stuck in a bad place that was a nightmare. “Though we’re not without our little issues with one another, we haven’t reached a stage where we can’t cope or calm our nerves. Are you warm at least?”
“Oui, I am not freezing for lacking my feathers and I thank you for caring so much for me.” It was nice for Rubis to have a few new friends, though they were way too kind and heroic to just be average merchants even if that’s what they truly were.
“No problem at all, Rarity would have likely done this for you anyway even if I or anyone else in the crew hadn’t.” That was a statement that Sassy didn’t doubt the veracity thereof and more importantly she knew Rarity, Coco and several other crew members wouldn’t have ignored Rubis for long without extenuating circumstances.
“Oh there you are Sassy, I see you’ve become acquainted Miss Poulette.” They turned to see Rarity entering the room while levitating along what looked like a Cacceran to Rubis, to Sassy it looked like a three dimensional version of Opal.
“Rarity… is that who I think it is?” Started Sassy not sure how to continue or even address the issue of the dragon in the… okay that thought made Sassy feel horribly insensitive about the horribly incapacitated. Well Opal was a pretty large something in the room anyway, given she wasn’t currently occupying a computer.
“It will be discussed later with the whole crew present, right now my darling little Opal needs to be scanned for any recent medical problems due to unforeseen complications. I’m sure you understand Sassy, everyone’s health is an important factor to those who travel in space and as captain I need to attend to all the members of my crew.” Already in the process of approaching an opening medical bed, Rarity levitated Opal onto it. “Which is why I need to check her health to make sure she’s doing fine. As for you, I don’t want you messing with the medical scan data Opal. I know you’re capable of doing that and would prefer that you didn’t.”
“I’m a little afraid at what we’ll get mom, what if the scans doesn’t get anything conclusive and there turns out to be nothing for the bed to scan because I don’t actually exist?” Opal whispered to Rarity as she didn’t want Rubis or Sassy to listen in, she also didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily. “What if I’m some kind of black hole where a digital cat should be, it’s like I’m a living Scroll Dinger’s box.”
“Yes Scroll Dinger did do a lot of theoretical stuff about existing and not existing at the same time, but I can certainly see that you exist Opal. This won’t change the fact that I care about you.” A hoof rubbed at one the why fluffy ears and Rarity gave Opal a soft smile. “You exist therefore you do, if the scan doesn’t get anything then we’ll just have to believe you are real anyway. A lot of the crew already do it with Vera, they are even starting to remember that we even have a masseuse. For Vera that’s a step in the right direction.”
Opal sighed under the administrations of having one of her ears rubbed and steeled her nerves. She tilted her head away from the hoof even if it was a bit upsetting to deny the affection she so loved from the pony who raised her for most of her life. Rarity backed away while keeping a sharp focus on Opal’s eyes with her own, Rarity gave a slight nod of her head to get on with it and Opal did so.
Rarity was worried over Opal and how she’ll react to whatever news they were going to receive from the medical scan beginning in three… two…