//------------------------------// // 9. Miles and Miles and Miles // Story: My battery is low, and it’s getting dark // by Naughty_Ranko //------------------------------// *** Mission Log: Sol 5140 *** *** AOS – BSN *** *** Message Received (Source: Applejack): Alright, y’all. Let’s get this show on the road, so to speak. Rarity, what in the hay is that for? *** “What, this?” Rarity asked innocently, holding the swatch of purple sequin fabric protectively out of Applejack’s reach with her magic. “I just thought we might take the opportunity to give, er, Opportunity a little more style is all.” “Rarity,” the farmpony said, as if talking to a small child, “Starlight asked us to fix them wheels, nothing more.” “Oh, pish posh. That little bowtie Trixie gave him is adorable. I’m just looking to tie up the ensemble. I bet Starlight is going to love it.” “I know who else is gonna love it,” Rainbow Dash said, eyeing the fabric critically. “The wind. It’ll drag him down and make him even slower than he was before. We wanna go faster!” “Faster is what broke his wheel in the first place,” Applejack maintained. “Slooowwww is what we need here.” Meanwhile, as she watched her friends and fought down flashbacks to the catastrophe that was the previous year’s Applewood Derby, Starlight stood next to Opportunity and laughed uncomfortably. “It’s fine. It’s going to be fine. They know what they’re doing … I hope.” Opportunity, for its part, was enjoying the fresh air. That is to say, after Starlight had carefully levitated the rover down into the castle’s backyard, there were plenty of new things to photograph and catalogue. After a panoramic image, Opportunity had taken detailed pictures of the various materials strewn across the grass, some procured by Starlight with the help of Sunset Shimmer from the human world, others scavenged from the depths of various attics and barns at Sweet Apple Acres and more than a few donated by Ponyville residents looking to help out a new friend. “Why are you taking pictures of that?” Starlight asked. She’d tuned out the inevitable argument between her friends and looked on as Opportunity moved its instrument arm to its own broken off wheel which lay beside it, taking microscopic images. “Damage. Engineers will want to see,” the rover replied. Starlight cringed at that. Wasn’t this kind of like documenting your own limb after it had fallen off? It seemed more than a little macabre to her. “How can you be sure? Have you heard from your creators?” Opportunity raised its camera eyes to the sky and went quiet. Starlight knew that it was trying to establish a connection to its home as it had tried daily for the past couple of days. “Home, no can talk,” Opportunity finally said. “I’m sorry,” Starlight simply said with feeling, resting a hoof on the rover’s chassis. There was little else she could do. More than anything, she wanted to help. But without an anchor point, Starlight had been utterly unable to tune her magic back into the universe that was her friend’s home for the time being. She’d promised herself to start looking for a solution as soon as the more immediate problems were resolved. “Home no send commands,” Opportunity said, calling Starlight back from her thoughts. “Opportunity make own commands now. Continue mission.” Starlight watched as the rover was evidently satisfied with its pictures and moved on to document the damage to one of its other wheels, some holes visible in the shiny metal from years of wear and tear as well as some by design. “How do you know this is what they’d want you to do?” “Sol 333 – heat shield damage inspection.” “So you’re going by past experiences, huh? I guess that makes sense.” “Alright, y’all,” Applejack called out as the trio of ponies trotted up to them, “we think we’ve got a plan here. Ya ready?” Starlight nodded. Firing up her horn, she enveloped Opportunity in the azure glow of her magic, setting it down on a wooden box that had been especially prepared to be sturdy enough to hold the rover’s weight as well as allow its wheels to remain free in the air for repairs. As had been the case earlier, Opportunity didn’t say much as it was levitated through the air, but Starlight could hear its camera shutters clicking every so often. Whether the rover found the experience fascinating and was simply too awed to speak or was gritting its metaphorical teeth in terror, she didn’t know. So she was extra careful. Of course, if she’d simply thought to ask, Opportunity would have been happy to tell her that it was no stranger to zero gravity, having spent the first six months of its life in transit to Mars. “Okay,” Starlight said after she’d made sure that Opportunity was secure, “my friends are here to fix your wheels. Is that okay with you?” Opportunity looked as she gestured to the three ponies. It had met them before, but the data was very limited, so the rover turned back to Starlight. “Opportunity trust Starlight.” Opportunity tried, and failed, to move its PanCam the full 360 degrees as the mast was now restricted by a heavy metal bandolier. The shadow from the red brush of a broom that had been glued atop the mast like a mohawk fell across one of the cameras and made it look like Oppy was wearing an eyepatch. “Aw, yeah,” Rainbow Dash said proudly, rearing up on her hind legs and crossing her front hooves. “Now that looks radical!” Having been lowered down to the grass, Opportunity strained its electric motors, but was unable to produce enough power to move the new wheels that were now encased in heavy tracks. Opportunity glanced over at Starlight, the camera moving so slowly that one might call it a dead pan. “Opportunity trust Starlight. Opportunity no trust the rainbow one.” Applejack had been the next to try her hoof while Rainbow was pouting some distance away at having her awesome upgrades be undone by the farmpony. Opportunity now stood on four comically large wooden wheels. Even if Applejack hadn’t countered the argument that four were two less than the original six with the simple statement that four wheels were more traditional, there simply wouldn’t have been enough space on the chassis. The rover had moved a whopping five centimeters during its half hour test drive, before being brought to a grinding halt by a small pebble in its path. While Applejack laughed nervously, Opportunity once again looked to Starlight. “Opportunity no trust the orange one either.” “Rarity, what even is this?” Starlight groaned. “Why, it’s seasonal, darling,” Rarity declared with a flip of her mane, “he’ll be the star of the slopes come winter.” The wheels had been entirely replaced by a set of skis, which of course did nothing to move the rover forward as the electric motors moved them backwards and forwards uselessly. A white and purple scarf had been draped around the mast and a woolen cap of the same color scheme coquettishly placed at an angle atop the PanCam. Opportunity looked around at the bright summer day and the skis upon the grass, then once again at Starlight. “Do Opportunity even have to say?” “I’m sorry,” Starlight said dejectedly as the sorry group of ponies sat around the rover in their defeat with their heads hanging low. Opportunity was once again resting on the box with all its wheels removed. “It alright,” it said, glancing at its own base and slowly coming to terms with the thought that it might never again move under its own power. “Opportunity appreciate try.” “Hey, what’s this?” Rainbow asked, pointing a hoof into the distance where four fillies were drawing a wooden cart. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and, curiously enough, Diamond Tiara were slowly approaching with their project in tow. “Hey y’all!” Apple Bloom greeted cheerfully. “Ah hope yer not already done. We came to help.” Starlight walked up to them and peered into the cart. Her eyes went wide. “Girls, you made this?” “Yeah, we convinced Miss Cheerilee to let us do this instead of our physics project,” Scootaloo declared proudly. “I did the rims and the steering.” “And Ah made the suspension and the gearbox,” Apple Bloom added. “Sweetie Belle made the power converter that changes electrical power into magic energy for the six-wheel-drive,” Diamond Tiara pointed out, having unhitched herself from the cart. Sweetie blushed and rubbed her hooves together. “It was nothing. The drive itself is store bought. I just had to make an adapter so it could take electric energy instead of a magic battery.” “So that’s why you wanted to know how the SGT works,” Starlight said with a huge grin. Then she turned to Diamond Tiara. “What did you do?” “Me?” the pink filly asked. “Oh, I really didn’t do anything.” “Are you kidding?” Apple Bloom gasped, then gave her a hug and looked to Starlight. “She did more than the rest of us put together! She came up with the idea, for starters.” “And she got us all the tools and parts we needed from her father’s store,” Sweetie added with an excited squee. Scootaloo bumped Diamond Tiara’s shoulder with her hoof. “Not to mention she kept us in line by shooting down any dumb ideas and made sure it would actually work all together when the individual parts were done.” Diamond Tiara blushed furiously at all the praise, but looked genuinely happy. Opportunity had watched the exchange with interest, but had been unable to see what the girls had come up with from its vantage point. So it had remained silent. Starlight gave the rover a grin over her shoulder. “Do you still trust me, Oppy?” Opportunity looked at the smiles of the four fillies. “Opportunity trust Starlight,” it reiterated, the PanCam moving up and down in a nod. “Then what do you say we give this one more try?” As the sun was setting and tinting the field in soft hues of orange and red, the excited giggles and whoops of four fillies could be heard as they ran across the grass alongside one rover rising from the ashes like a phoenix. Opportunity proceeded at a rate that would be roughly equivalent to a brisk trot for a grown pony, but which was infinitely faster than what it had been capable of during its time roving on Mars. Now equipped with actual tires that were about fifty percent larger than the originals, Opportunity’s restored six wheel base carriage and new suspension gave it marvelous control over even rough terrain. The rover noticed a large boulder directly in its path. Putting the drive for its right front wheel in reverse, it gunned the single electric engine separately, spinning itself around the rock and leaving a skid mark in the grass. Then it switched to the secondary HazCams at the back of the chassis, put the rest of the wheels in reverse and kept on going backwards while hardly slowing down. “Whoo, that was awesome!” Scootaloo whooped next to Opportunity. “Do it again!” And Opportunity did. As it played with the fillies, it ran through every set of movements imaginable. It went ahead at top speed, did circles and figure eights, crossed small and big inclines as well as minor obstacles. It also did some fine and deliberate movements, finding its motor control for bringing instruments into position just as capable as before. When the four fillies went in to hug Opportunity, the rover lightly wrapped its arm around them to return the embrace while Starlight watched the scene with moist eyes. Meanwhile, three ponies stood in the shade of a tree some distance away, looking over the scene with complacent smiles. “Do you suppose our way of imparting life lessons to our little sisters by pretending to be utterly oblivious and irresponsible adults can get a little too roundabout sometimes?” Rarity mused. Applejack let out a low chuckle. “Perhaps, ah think Starlight plum wanted to have ya committed when ya presented yer design.” She pulled her hat deeper over her face to hide the tears in the corners of her eyes as she watched the fillies glow with their accomplishment, Diamond Tiara included. “But look at ‘em and how happy they are. Ah wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world.” “They’re gonna grow up and see through our antics eventually,” Rainbow Dash pointed out calmly, hovering lazily in the air next to her friends and remembering an incident not so long ago that involved scooters, rockets and ropes. “All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts,” Rarity sighed, and the trio sat in a companionable silence as they continued watching over their younger siblings and the strange visitor from another world that seemed to have this uncanny ability to bring ponies together.