//------------------------------// // Operation 2: Learning Curve part 1 // Story: Gundam: Pilots Of Harmony // by Sonic Rainboom Dash //------------------------------// Gundam: Pilots of Harmony Operation 2: Learning Curve The days following the incident in the holding cell were rather eventful as Cinder Blaze, his engineers, and the medical staff of the ship worked overtime to make sure the mysterious creature and the little girl would be alright. It was the medical staff who were the first ones to notice Eclipse’s new horn that sprouted from her forehead. It was rather odd to them, and they conducted a series of in-depth scans to make sure that she was alright. It surprised them to find out that the horn was now a natural part of her body and she was soon emitting the same type of energy that the creature was at a small constant rate. Furthermore, it didn’t seem to be having any ill effects on her health and in actuality was helping to strengthen her immune system. A couple of weeks passed from the day of the incident; the medical staff found something strange going on with Eclipse. It seemed like she was having substantial memory lapses as she couldn’t seem to recall any memories from when she was younger or from a week ago. They didn’t know why this was happening, but they gave her some medicine which seemed to help and things went back to normal for her. They were able to take her off of the medication, but she still had a memory lapse now, and then it seemed. Another of the strangest things that happened involving Eclipse was the fact that she kept asking where her mother was and when Eclipse would be able to see her. They thought she meant her foster mother, but when her adoptive mother showed up to pick her up, she promptly hid from her declaring that she wasn’t her mother. The staff had to keep her in the medbay to make sure that she was alright. The creature itself was moved to a small room in the ship so that it could be under both constant watch and within easy reach of the medical staff should something injure it again or make it sick. The creature had been in a sort of deep sleep for the past several weeks following the incident in the holding cell. It had yet to reawaken so they could question it once again. They felt that it should be Cinder asking it the questions still since he seemed to be the only one who could understand it for some reason. All the other engineers and technicians aboard the ship had tried to understand it, but the creature’s words sounded like gibberish to them. They had listened to the recordings of the conversation between Cinder and the creature but had made no progress in understanding what it had said. Although Cinder made a working translator that could easily translate up 500 known languages, for some reason it couldn’t pick up on what language the creature in front of him said. Stranger still was the fact that he could understand her at all, and when playing back the recording he noticed one other strange occurrence, he was speaking the same language as the creature yet when he turned to talk with one of the engineers maintaining the barrier his voice changed back to his usual Australian accent. Although it could be counted as a strange discovery, Cinder was concerned about what it meant. Putting aside the fact that he could understand the creature, Cinder’s concern only grew when he heard reports that in the medical bay where Eclipse was, strange occurrences started happening. Medical charts would seemingly lift off their stands and float around, even when the artificial gravity was in full working order, glasses of what appeared to be ‘Chocolate Milk’ were found on the bed-sides of some of the patients. That one was the most concerning because chocolate milk, or rather the cocoa plant that chocolate came from went extinct during the one year war. The incidents kept popping up day after day until finally, the medical staff reported that the creature was starting to stir. The time this occurred was over three weeks after the incident. The doctor in charge of watching the creature sent a message to Cinder to come to medical bay two as soon as possible, preferably before the creature woke up. Cinder rushed down to the medical bay with full speed only to stop outside the creature’s room in surprise. There in front of the door to the creature’s room was young Eclipse, and she seemed just as surprised as him. He had just been rounding the corner when he heard a pop which made him move even faster only to find her standing there right outside the door. “E-Eclipse?! How did you get here?!” Cinder blurted out as he skids to a stop before he could crash into her. Eclipse looked up at him with her soulful amber eyes as she whispered in a soft voice, ”I wished I could see my mama and I just appeared here.” “Why would you be deposited here if you wished to be with your mom? I don’t think the creature is your mother...Is she?” Cinder asked, though, even he had to wonder if the incident three weeks ago had another side-effect. Eclipse nodded her head frantically as he asked if the creature was her mother, ”Yes. She’s my mother. All the white coated people won’t let me see her. So I wished to see her, and I saw a lot of glowing light before I just appeared here.” ‘How can the creature be this girls mother? She looks nothing like her...even though the horn popping out of her head is concerning.’ “Well if you’re sure she’s your mother then perhaps we should go in,” Cinder said instead, hoping that his hunch was incorrect in thinking the creature was portraying itself as her mom. ‘I hope this doesn’t backfire.’ Eclipse smiled eagerly, ”Thank you. You’re a lot nicer than all those other people. I can’t wait to see Mommy.” She turned towards the door with her face shining eagerly. Strangely while she was jumping anxiously to see her ‘mom’ her newfound horn was radiating a soft, almost unseen light.The light from the horn seemed to extend to the door as she continued to jump around. The door itself wobbled bit by bit as if something was tugging on it rather insistently to get it to open up. Cinder blinked as he saw the door wobbling in its support frame even though it shouldn’t be doing that. The door was solidly built and designed to slide open to the right to let a person through. He peered closer at the door and just managed to pick out the light that was surrounding it at the moment. He stepped back surprised as he let out a gasp of exclamation as he looked at the door and then down to the eager child waiting for him to open up the door. He saw that the horn on her head was glowing rather faintly and he pieced what was happening together rather quickly. The girl was the cause of the door wobbling in the frame but just how this was happening was beyond him at the moment. He stood beside her as calmly as he could while he looked down at her. A small frown tugged at the corner of his lips before he turned his attention to the keypad by the door. He quickly punched a code in and was rewarded with a beep to signal that it had been accepted. The door opened up with a soft hiss to admit the unlikely duo. Eclipse ran into the room with a happy cry of,”Mommy!” before leaping on the bed that was given to the creature. With a startled shout, The creature jumped like a cat and somehow managed to cling to the ceiling and started shaking frantically. It took about a minute before the creatures gravity pulled it back down to the bed when it realized it wasn’t a cat. Cinder’s jaw was also trying to test cartoon logic as it worked to be on the floor only for real-world physics to catch up with it and scolded it for that which it’s not. Cinder himself, however, was trying to piece together just how in the world this creature managed what should have been impossible. He once thought that walking off a ledge without knowing you did would let you stand in the air, but all he got was a bloody nose and twisted ankle. Yet here was a creature that seemed to defy all known laws of physics and act like she was straight out of a cartoon. Eclipse herself had managed to pounce on the creature after said creature came back down from the ceiling. She started to hug the creature’s front right leg as a bright smile lit up her face. She began to happily hum a tune that seemed rather strange to Cinder and more in line with a theme for a little girl like herself. But the creature seemed to respond to it immediately by stopping all movement of her body and just staring at Eclipse. Then Eclipse looked up at her with those amber eyes as she let out a soft cry of,”Mommy!” Then hugged her leg tightly again. To say the creature was shocked was an understatement, as it appeared to pale. Its eyes shrunk to pinpricks while its body seemed to lock up so wholly that had Cinder not seen it breathing or moving a few moments before he would have thought it a life-like statue. Before he could break up the awkwardness that had just happened, the creature once again did the impossible. It teleported. One second it was having its right foreleg hugged to death by a little girl, and the next, it popped over to a corner in fear and tried to be as small as possible. It even took the blanket it had been laying on with to hide. “W-Who are you?! W-where am I?! What do you want with me?! W-what are you?! Princess Celestia! Spike?! Anypony?” The creature mumbled that last bit. Eclipse frowned as her bottom lip puffed out as she looked over towards the creature. Her eyes started to tear up as she sat there on the bed with arms limp at her sides. She let out a plaintive questioning cry,”Mommy?” The creature, however, did not respond to her and continued to just huddle underneath the blanket muttering to itself. Eclipse started to cry softly as she held her hands up to her face. Her soft sobs resounded throughout the room as she cried out again, ”Mommy?” This time she got a response from the creature although it wasn’t what Eclipse or Cinder expected. “W-why are you c-calling me your mother?” The creature stammered as it looked up from behind the blanket to the softly crying girl. Eclipse looked up at her with tears streaming down her cheeks,”Because you are my mommy. You always have been Mommy. Did I do something to make you mad at me?” The tears continued to drip down her cheeks as the soft sobs continued softly. Cinder was very confused about the whole situation as he tried valiantly to understand what was going on. Cinder then spoke up in a calming manner,“What is going on? Can someone please tell me, because I feel like my brain is going to melt into a puddle of confusion.” He said trying to inject some humor into the situation, failing miserably. The creature went rigid for a moment as she stared at him with her large lavender orbs, only, they didn’t look lavender anymore. Somehow they changed along with the creature’s posture, making it appear like it was royalty. The creatures’ eyes seemed to be a soft magenta color now as its gaze softened considerably into a more motherly one. The creature spoke up in the same voice that it had been using before, but now there seemed to be an odd echo accompanying it. Like a much softer, more regal voice was speaking at the same time as the creature. “I apologize for all the confusion. I believe that I can shed some light on the subject at hand. Please ask any questions you may have. Though one thing I can say is that time is not on my side.” “Uhhh…?” Was the only sound Cinder could currently make as, like predicted, his brain melted into a puddle of confusion. Eclipse continued her soft sobs as she somehow seemed to understand the situation instinctively. She asked softly between sobs,”Why doesn’t Mommy like me anymore? What did I do to upset Mommy?” “Do not cry little one,” The creature said as it got up and walked over to Eclipse and pulled her into a gentle hug, “Your mother has been dormant for some time and only just now has come out of a long sleep. Her body could no longer sustain itself and went to sleep till she could heal.” Eclipse looked up into the golden eyes as her tears slowly started to stop, and her body stopped shaking,”So Mama was just sleeping because she needed to get better?” The creature ran a hoof gently through Eclipse’s hair as she replied,”Yes little one. Your mother needed to sleep so she could get better.” Eclipse’s lips turned a bit upwards as she slowly started to smile again,”So then Mommy does love me? I hope she gets all better real soon.” The creature continued to smile until Eclipse was fast asleep before it’s smile faded. “I’m sorry little one, but if I really could bring your mother back, then I too would have my mother back as well.” It then looked over to Cinder who still had a ‘Deer in the headlights’ look about him. Cinder’s brain slowly went through a reboot until he was once again standing calmly before the creature with a hand up to his forehead as he grumbled, ”I don’t get paid enough for this.” inside his head. He looked up at the creature before running his hand through his hair and cleared his throat. “Can you please tell me just what is going on? Just who and what are you?” Cinder asked with a current of curiosity in his voice. The creature’s expression shifted to a more teacher like one as the creature seemed to fall into some gentle teacher role,”I will do my best to answer your questions, but please keep in mind that I do not have much time left before I must rest. To answer your question about who I am let me tell you. My name is Princess Celestia. As for what I am why don’t you try answering that yourself before I tell you. Just what do I appear to be to you?” Cinder frowned as he looked her over for a moment before answering in as calm a voice as he could manage,”You seem to be some Equine creature. You are too small to be some horse, so upon observation, I’d have to say that you’re some extraterrestrial pony.” The creature calling itself Princess Celestia smiled just a bit bigger,”That would be correct. I am a pony. Now if you don’t mind a pony such as myself asking. What is your name?” Cinder blinked and blushed a bit at forgetting his manners,”Ah sorry. My name is Cinder Blaze. I’m the Chief Engineer on the ship here.” Princess Celestia chuckled,”It is quite alright. I tend to have that effect on other beings when they haven’t seen or met me before.” Cinder chuckled a bit nervously before asking another question,”Just what kind of a pony are you? You’re not a regular pony at all from appearances. You have wings and a horn so just what kind of pony are you?” Celestia replied warmly,”I am what is known as an Alicorn. I embody the three different kinds of ponies in my world. The ones that you would know as regular ponies are called Earth ponies in my world. The other two kinds of ponies are Pegasi and Unicorns.” Cinder listened quietly before pulling out a datapad and looking back up at her,”I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to get this information down and record the rest of our conversation for review later by myself and my colleagues.” Celestia smiled gently,”It is perfectly all right Mr. Blaze.” Cinder nodded with a small smile as he typed away on the pad, entering the information that he’d already received from her. After entering the report, he set up the pad to record the rest of their conversation. “Alright, I have it all typed up. So the next question I’d like to ask is what is up with your personality changing so suddenly? Your eyes were violet before, and now they are a soft magenta color. What is up with that?” Celestia’s smile faded to a more somber expression before she let out a sigh,”So you did notice. I suppose that was to be expected, but please keep this between us for the moment,” Celestia stated. When Cinder nodded, Celestia continued her explanation, “I am what you would call a passenger at the moment. My soul is inhabiting this body due to an unforeseen circumstance. Sometimes, like now, I’m able to temporarily take control when she is unconscious or in need of sleep. The problem with this being temporary is that the longer I stay out of my original body both it and my soul would slowly start to decay as immortal souls like mine aren’t meant to leave their body for longer than 24 hours.” Cinder nodded as he looked down at his datapad for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I see. I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense at all to me, but I suppose I’ll just have to make do with what you’ve told me so far. I don’t know what this magic you keep referring to is. Do you mean that strange energy our scanners keep picking up emitting from you and Eclipse there?” Celestia tilted her head for a moment as she thought about just how to answer him. Finally, she settled on a reply, ”You could say that. Although our magic is more than just the energy, you say your machines keep picking up.” Cinder frowned,”I see. I’ll come back to that later then. So just how exactly did you end up here in the first place?” Celestia’s expression shifted to an even more neutral state than before as she assumed her poker face. “That would take a long time to explain. Would you prefer the long version or the short version for now?” Cinder frowned but replied, ”I’d like the long version, but you’ve already cited that you don’t have much time left before you have to rest so just the short version for now.” Celestia nodded, ”Very well. I was in what we ponies call the Astral Plane. A place where our spirits walk outside of our bodies. The Astral Plane spans the universe and reveals many things to those who walk its paths. I was on the Astral Plane at the time before the incident with my student when she appeared here occurred. She was actually with me at the time which is one of the reasons why I am inhabiting her body for the moment. We were in the middle of; I guess you could call it a ceremony when you just so happened to pass through where our spirits were on the Astral plane. The ceremony was interrupted, and as a result, I was pulled into my student as she appeared on your ship.” Cinder listened but frowned as he asked, ”I’m sorry, but I have to say that your not making much sense. Why didn’t you appear back in the physical world back where you were originally at if something went wrong? And why did you end up here on our ship instead? You talk about being a soul attached to another being’s body, so that begs the question why this being’s body appeared here and not in its original place?” Celestia’s expression stayed somber although on the inside she was getting somewhat frustrated and annoyed, ”That is because my student’s original body was sadly destroyed in what you would call an accident. The ceremony was to give her a new body to fit the accomplishments that she achieved back in her old body. When you passed through our astral selves during the ceremony, it simply changed the place where she ended up from her original place in our world to that area of your ship that she appeared on.” Cinder sighed but nodded, ”I see. I’d like for you to explain this all in more depth if you could please.” Celestia’s expression slipped to one of sadness and at the same time exhaustiveness, ”I would like to, but I’m afraid that I’m out of time.” Cinder frowned, ”What do you mean you’re out of time?” Celestia sighed, ”I mean that my magical energy is running out and my student is finally waking up from her faint. Before I go, I must tell you that my student will be rather panicked about what has happened, but at the same time, I believe she will accept being this little one’s mother. And if my beliefs are true then she will end up becoming rather protective of the little one as her new instincts are awakened inside of her.” Cinder blinked but replied calmly, ”I see. I will make sure to take that into account. Thank you.” Celestia nodded before closing her eyes with one final phrase, ”You are welcome. Now I bid you goodbye for now.” With that, her eyes reopened, but they were back to the original magenta color that they had been. The pony’s eyes were unfocused at the moment, but within a moment they were moving around generally as the pony looked around again. She looked down at the sleeping child with a small frown but this time did not attempt to run while the child held her foreleg in her small grip. Her eyes lit upon the little one’s horn, and her eyes widened dramatically as she mumbled to herself, ”She has a horn? Why does this creature have a horn? I don’t think their supposed to have horns.” Cinder cleared his throat gently to get the pony’s attention. Her head snapped from looking down at Eclipse up to Cinder as her wide eyes grew even wider in fear and surprise. Fear flickered across her face for a moment as she started to take deep breaths in a panic. “Calm down.” Cinder spoke hoping to diminish the panic that was starting to rise, “I’m sorry if I scared you with my appearance. I was the person you talked to the last time you were awake. Although I’m not sure if you remember that because you were in hysterics the last time we spoke. Little Eclipse there has a horn because of an incident she was in three weeks ago after she came into contact with an unknown energy.” “Oh. Still, w-where am I? The last thing I remember was completing a spell by a great wizard, and everything after that is blank.” The pony asked still scared but no longer about to attack out of fear. “You are currently on our ship ‘A New Hope’ in our medical bay. We have been treating you for the past few weeks after you fell into a coma of some kind. You arrived around the same time that the little one there had her accident. You appeared in an explosion of light as some energy moved throughout our ships knocking things out of place.” Cinder explained in a calm, soothing manner. “E-explosion?! But I thought you said nopony was hurt?! Now you’re saying she,” the pony tilted her head towards the still sleeping form of Eclipse,” came in contact with an unknown energy source the same time I arrived. Are you saying I did this to her?” Cinder grunted, ”What I said before is a fact, Miss…..” His voice trailed off to show he didn’t know her name. “...uh what is your name? The last time we spoke, you said you couldn’t recall it. And I don’t want to keep referring to you as ‘the pony creature thing’ for the entire time you’re here.” The pony once again tilted her head in confusion as she tried to remember her name, “Why would I say I forgot my name. I’m pretty sure that’s impossible to have happened. If you must know my name is…” the pony trailed off as it realized it still didn’t know. “....W-why c-can’t I remember my name? I can remember my friends and teacher… I think? But why is my name the only thing I can’t remember?!” Cinder held out his hand in a calming motion as he spoke up soothingly, ”It is alright miss. I don’t know why you can’t remember your name, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen. If you are alright with it, I could give you a name.” His mind had already drifted back to earlier in the conversation when he was talking with the entity calling itself Princess Celestia. “I-I think that would be o-ok. At least until I can remember my name.” The pony stuttered. Cinder gave her a small nod as a little smile appeared on his face, ”Ok. What do you think of the name Sparkle? Sparkle because of those sparkling star marks upon your flank. What are those anyway? Some sort-of brand or tattoo?” He asked while pointing at the pony’s flank. “What do you mean ‘marks on my flank?” she said as she turned to look, “Oh! You mean my cutie marks?” seeing Cinder nod she continued, “Well it what ponies get when they discover their special talent. Mine is for magic. I think? Now that I’m looking at it I’m not sure if that is what it means.” She said before remembering the first part of the question, “And I like the name.” Sparkle said. Cinder nodded his head,”I am glad that you like it. Now, back to what I stated before about no one being harmed is a fact. No one was injured when you appeared in that explosion of energy, and what happened to Eclipse there was a separate incident. That separate incident happened when we moved you to a different room from where you arrived. You went into a blind panic because of an injury that you had received that was healed a bit later. Eclipse went in and hugged you to try and calm you down, but some kind-of energy within yourself reacted to the power that she absorbed from yet another incident. As a result, your injury was healed while she ended up with that horn. So as I said, no one was harmed. And don’t blame yourself for the little one gaining a horn. It is nothing to panic about. Although I do have a theory that it is because of that last incident that she has been calling you Mommy.” Of course, this was absolutely the worst thing he could have said and instantly regretted his choice of words. “WHAT?!” Sparkle whisper-shouted, being considerate of the sleeping Eclipse, “What do you mean she’s calling me her mother?! I don’t even have a special somepony, let alone married to anypony!” Her hair started to frizz and, if he squinted hard enough, Cinder could swear he saw smoke coming off it. He made a calming gesture, ”I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to tell you what has been going on. I felt it was better to tell you now rather than later because I’m pretty sure that when Eclipse wakes up again, she’s going to call you her mother again. And the last time that happened you panicked and made her cry.” Those three words stole all of Sparkle’s panic and anger in an instant. “I-I made her cry?!” Cinder winced a bit at her question but nodded, ”That would be correct. You disappeared from the bed there and reappeared in the corner over there.” He pointed at the corner she had re-appeared in, with the blanket still on the floor, before continuing, ”You had somehow made the blanket appear with you. But you left her on the bed, and she called out to you again, but you ignored her as you started muttering to yourself. Then she started to cry, but you didn’t notice. You shortly passed out from all the panic you were experiencing. It was then that I picked you up and moved you over to the bed. It took some explaining to young Eclipse there that you just needed to rest to recover before she calmed down from her crying. Then she snuggled up against you and fell asleep. And in your unconsciousness, you wrapped around her for some reason.” Cinder lied, leaving out how she had been possessed by the spirit of her dead teacher, as he didn’t believe that any creature could be immortal. Cinder could see that Sparkle was very confused again as her eyes started to unfocus yet again. He looked down at his pad for a moment before waving his hand at Sparkle to get her attention back. Once her eyes had refocused on him, he spoke up again,”Ok let’s just take this one step at a time. First off is that we have been taking care of you for the past three weeks due to that accident you had. Second, Eclipse there is calling you her mother, and she won’t be stopping anytime soon. Three, You are missing pieces of your memory due to said accident. Now I believe that if you start out asking a few basic questions that would help.” Sparkle, after taking a few deep breaths, finally looked down at Eclipse and, though still nervous, decided to roll with it, at least until they could find her birth mother. “I guess so. I just hope I don’t get seasick when storms start rocking your ship.” She said with such a straight face that Cinder knew instinctively that she has never been in space before. ‘Oh boy, this is going to be awkward.’ Cinder’s soothing smile slipped into a more awkward expression as he thought for a moment about just what to say. Finally, he just decided to be blunt about it because just beating around the bush wouldn’t make this any less awkward or bad than it would already be. He nervously spoke up, ”Well um... We aren’t actually in any body of water. We’re moving through space at the moment. We are on a spaceship.” Sparkle just looked at Cinder for a moment before starting to laugh, “Hahaha, good one. Of course this would have to move through a body of water; otherwise, we wouldn’t even be moving. I’m mean just look at the...waves… there.” Cinder raised an eyebrow at her as her hoof pointed over to the window in the room that she thought would be looking out into the water of a river or the ocean. Her voice had trailed off as her eye started to twitch the longer she looked out the window. She carefully extricated herself from Eclipse’s grip before she moved on over to the window. She looked out into the vastness of space before her eye twitched more rapidly and strands of her mane started to stick out even more. Finally, her rump hit the ground as she sat down with a large thump. Her eyes went unfocused for a moment before refocusing on the vastness of space. She closed her eyes and counted to three as if that would banish what she saw before her, though, when she re-opened her eyes outer space was still there. She ended up curled up on the ground in a fetal position as she started muttering to herself again, ”This is impossible. This can’t be real. This is just a strange dream.” She stayed this way for a good 5 minutes before she became unconscious once again from all the information she was trying to process. All Cinder could do was watch the scene unfold, like a cartoon coming to life before he walked over to the nearest medicine cabinet and took out some aspirin, all the while muttering, “when did this become my life?”