//------------------------------// // 25: Confrontation // Story: Space Captain Pinkie Pie // by terrycloth //------------------------------// Tess was almost done ‘repairing’ the ship. She’d unfrozen all the computer systems, as well as some of the life support components that hadn’t been working at full efficiency. The only thing left – aside from the reactor itself, which she was kind of afraid to touch – was the surviving external camera, mounted on top of the ship near the airlock. Since the whole airlock/lift assembly, including the camera, was designed to be part of an extendable boom to which external cargo containers could be fastened, there really wasn’t any way to access the systems except from inside the airlock. Well, or outside the ship. That would actually have been easier, if it wasn’t for the squad of pegasi that had come to investigate. Every so often they’d hear the hoofsteps as one of them clip-clopped his way across the hull. So far they hadn’t shown any interest in forcing their way in, at least. As it was, Tess was standing on the airlock lift, just inside the external doors, struggling with bolts and wires and other fastenings that she honestly wasn’t sure of the name of, trying to get close enough to the camera to give it a good whack. She was pretty sure there were safety procedures you were supposed to follow when you did something like this, but she wasn’t the engineer. Warp wouldn’t have followed procedure either, most likely, but she would have cut corners on purpose. The doors in particular were making her nervous. She’d aborted the normal airlock cycle before they opened, but they were looming there, over her head, waiting for the slightest mistake on her part to open and dump her outside with the pegasi. There was a loud ‘clang’ as a set of metal horseshoes hit the outside of the door. One of the guards had just landed right there, on top of the ship! Despite there being no possible way that the pegasus could hear her, Tess froze. Quieter hoofsteps wandered around the pressure door that made up the ceiling; the guard wasn’t leaving. -Chance – you locked the doors when you went out, right?- Tess asked. -Didn’t think I’d need to,- Chance said. Tess grimaced. -One of them is up there poking around. If he gets inside we’re in trouble. The whole plan is to sit tight and look boring, and the inside of the airlock is not going to look boring.- -Don’t worry about it, he’d still have to work the controls, and they’re recessed even if he somehow got the cover open. I don’t think he’ll be hitting any buttons with his hooves,- Chance replied. -I think I’m going to go lock it anyway,- Tess said, extracting herself from the open wall panel and heading over to the airlock controls. -Probably a good idea,- Pinkie Pie chimed in. -I just got a combo – ear flop, eye flutter, knee twitch!- -A what?- Tess asked, hesitating. -It means beware of opening doors!- There was a hiss, and Tess’s mouth sealed itself as the doors started to slide open, venting the atmosphere in the airlock out into space. She slammed her hand into the red override button, and the doors stopped in place, the edges a few inches apart, and started to close again – only to stay wedged open by the tip of a spear. Sensing something caught in the door, the mechanism automatically started opening again. -Twilight, get me out of here!- Tess sent urgently, pressing herself against the wall to stay out of view as long as possible. -Twilight’s not here right now,- Pinkie Pie said. -Should I go get her? She said she was going to find your library.- The floor shook slightly as a huge white pegasus landed in front of her, at least twice the size of Rainbow Dash or Derpy, decked out in gaudy golden armor with a blue, star-shaped gem in the chest plate, clutching a wooden-hafted spear in his wrist. His eyes were about on level with hers, and he didn’t look particularly friendly. -Yes, go get her!- Tess sent in a whisper, as the guard lowered his spear to point at her chest. The moon pony swiped her paw to deflect the spear as she dodged the other way, and the haft crumbled into dry splinters, the severed metal tip spinning off into the corner. Surprised and off-balance from the lack of resistance, she failed to dodge the guard’s follow-up, and got smacked on the side of the head with the rest of the shaft – but it crumbled too. The pegasus dropped the useless, vacuum-ravaged wood, and reared up on his hind legs to threaten Tess with sharp-edged, golden hoof-boots. Tess ducked as they slammed into the wall about where her chest would have been, throwing sparks off the wall as metal scraped against metal. She reached up to hit the big red override button again, and the doors started to close, but that put her in no position to dodge as the guard brought his hooves down on her back, pinning her to the floor underneath him. Since he was pinning her there with his weight instead of trampling her, Tess decided to pretend to be trapped. “… light but it was you monsters all along!” said the guard, slowly becoming audible as air filled the airlock again, once the doors overhead were closed. “What are you, some sort of goblin?” “I’m a moon pony,” said Tess. “How about you stop trying to murder me and we talk this out? I don’t think you really understand what’s going on here and it’s really important that –“ With a purple flash, she was back in the conference room, sprawled on the table with a worried Pinkie Pie and Twilight hovering over a magic mirror that somehow reflected the airlock she’d just left. “—I keep talking until my friends can pull my tail out of the fire, SUCKER,” Tess finished, scrambling off the table to the big screen, shoving aside the window that filled most of the screen (which showed a highly magnified view of a mirror-magic spellbook), and quickly locking the airlock. And just in time, she saw as she turned to the mirror, where the guard had picked up the spear-point in his mouth and was using it to jab at the airlock controls. “One down!” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully, “Ninety nine to go!” === “Rainbow Dash! Are you sleeping?” asked Raindrops, hovering over her. Rainbow lifted her head off the cloud. “It’s a vital strategic nap,” she said drowsily. “This is not a good time for a nap,” the other pegasus complained. “We’re behind schedule on the storm and we need those numbers!” “Did you miss the part where I first met my source in a dream?” Rainbow asked. “Don’t worry about the storm. Once I’ve got the numbers I’ll have us up to speed in ten seconds flat.” She laid her head back down, grinning. “So don’t wake me up unless the night guard comes to arrest me, you see the answers written in the sky, or some pony’s on fire, okay?” Raindrops grunted angrily, but flew off and left her alone. “Best. Job. Ever!” Rainbow Dash said, as she snuggled back into her cloud. === There was a purple flash, and Twilight Sparkle appeared in the airlock, next to the frustrated guard who’d taken to bucking the walls. “Hey, Lucky,” she said. The guard’s reflexive attack as she announced herself bounced off her pre-cast force field. “Don’t worry, I’m just here to talk.” “Oh, hi Twilight,” Lucky replied, falling into a defensive posture. “I don’t suppose you could open the door, or teleport me outside? My wing leader’s probably getting a bit nervous that I’ve been missing for so long – I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.” “It’s so nice to meet a familiar face, way up here on the moon,” Twilight said, smiling. “What brings you boys here, anyway? I’d think you were here to rescue me if it wasn’t for the way you didn’t bring anything to take me home in.” “It’s nice to see you aren’t a ten foot tall spike-covered nightmare,” Lucky replied, staying tense. “We’re here to bring you and your friends home, one way or another, and make sure you don’t fire the moon cannon again.” “One way or another,” Twilight responded. “One way would be ‘suffocating to death from a lack of air’; the other would be ‘already dead’?” “We thought you’d still have your Jelly Jar,” Lucky said. “And why did you attack Tess?” Twilight asked, glowering. Lucky snorted. “Every pony’s a bit tense, Twilight. Celestia’s been worrying herself sick after you attacked Luna, and the rest of us, well, you did try to kill us in our sleep.” “I didn’t!” Twilight protested. “No pony did either of those things! Why would you even think that?” “Celestia thinks you saw something up here that changed your mind about forgiving Nightmare Moon,” Lucky said. “Some ancient, secret inscription. I thought, you know, maybe Nightmare Moon changed the inscription, and turned it into a trap. Nightmare Twilight, wouldn’t that be a sight!” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Of course, now I’m thinking you’re being manipulated by evil goblins.” “Moon ponies,” Twilight said. “They’re not goblins, they’re moon ponies.” “Yeah,” Lucky said. “’Ponies’.” His wings twitched. “I know how they look, but they’re not bad ponies,” Twilight said. “They’re not monsters.” Lucky sighed. “Look, Twilight, are you going to let me go? I’m pretty sure you’re not going to surrender.” Twilight shook her head. “I’m not going to surrender. The ponies here need me to get us down safe.” She looked at him. “If you promise to be good, I can let you out of this room, and keep you somewhere a lot more comfortable.” Lucky snorted. “Oh goody, a real cell.” Twilight concentrated, and Lucky started to glow – but the gem on his breastplate glowed brightest of all, and she couldn’t quite complete the spell. She gave him a pleading look as she tried to force the spell, but he shook his head. After ten seconds she gave up, panting from the futile effort. The gem continued to glow purple for a few seconds, then faded back to its normal blue. “Fine, be that way,” she said, teleporting herself back to the conference room. “NNNG!” “So you can’t get through his armor?” Tess asked. “Oh, I can get through his armor,” Twilight said, pacing around the table-top. “I know plenty of ways to get past his armor. I just can’t get through his thick head!” “Convincing a cop not to arrest you is some pretty advanced fast talk,” Chance said through the transmitter. “Even if it turns out you’re innocent they’ll get in a lot of trouble.” “Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Twilight said plaintively. “Teleport back in there and just forcibly mind-buck him until all he can remember is the story we want him to give?” “Oooh, that sounds neat!” Pinkie Pie said. Tess shrugged. “I’m good with that plan.” “Well, I’m not!” Twilight said. “Princess Celestia –“ “Is already really really mad at us,” Pinkie Pie said. “I don’t think this is going to make her madder than what you did to Rainbow Dash.” Twilight winced. “Look at it this way,” Chance said. “He tried to kill Tess. That’s implied consent to do whatever we want to him, right?” “Nnng, fine!” Twilight said. She caught the transmitter as Tess threw it at her, and gave the moon pony a puzzled look. “I want to hear this,” Tess said. “It’ll hurt, right?” === “Rainbow Dash! You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady!” said a quiet but angry voice in Rainbow Dash’s ear. “I mean, if it’s okay with you…” the voice added trailing off. “Fluttershy?” Dash asked, groggily, remembering only just in time not to look at her. She didn’t want to end up like that cockatrice that dared to meet Fluttershy’s stare! “What are you doing here?” she asked, rolling onto her side. “I’m asking the questions here,” Fluttershy said, hooves on her hips as her wings fluttered softly to keep her hovering next to the cloud. “Okay… so whaddaya wanna know?” Rainbow Dash asked, adding a huge yawn as she snuggled back into the cloud to get comfortable. “You turned all our friends into zombie ponies and made them smash the jelly jars!” Fluttershy said. “… and?” Rainbow Dash asked. “And that was a bad thing,” Fluttershy said, hesitantly. “And you should feel bad.” “Can you come back and harass me about this some other time?” Rainbow Dash asked. “How am I supposed to know how to build the storm right if you don’t let me sleep?” Fluttershy looked over at the storm. “You’re not building it right at all. The top is all wispy and the bottom is too dense. You must be using untrained weathermares because the lightning charge is three times the safe maximum, and most of the storm is built out of shade clouds instead of rainclouds.” Fluttershy stopped her rant, and added, “although I’m sure you have a good reason for all of that.” Rainbow Dash laughed. “What would you say if I told you it wasn’t really a storm, it was a landing pad for an alien rocket ship?” Fluttershy eeped. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Rainbow Dash said. “Now I’ve gotta go back to sleep so that the moon ponies can contact me with the specifics. Wouldn’t want a huge flaming meteor to crash into the mountains and hurt all the poor little goats and bears because we didn’t set the storm up right.” She opened an eye to look when there was no response, but Fluttershy was already making a beeline for Ponyville. Rainbow Dash sighed, and went back to sleep. === Twilight reappeared in the airlock, the transmitter hovering over her shoulders as she glowered at Lucky. “For what it’s worth” she said. “I’m sorry about this.” “Twilight, what are you going to do?” Lucky asked calmly, although he recoiled slightly as her horn started to glow. “You’re going to love me, Lucky,” she said. “You’re going to love me more than anything.” With a ‘pop’ sound, the glow surrounding her horn vanished, replaced by a gently drifting pink heart, about half the size of her head. Lucky kicked out at the heart with a forehoof as it danced around, coming his way, and it popped – releasing a cloud of pink mist that slithered up his leg and neck and into his nostrils before he could react. He sat down heavily, wings fluttering uselessly behind him as his eyes started to swirl – only to resolve into little pink hearts. “Come on, big boy,” Twilight said, smirking evilly. “Let’s get you out of that armor.” Back in the conference room, Pinkie Pie was munching on a bowl of artificial wheat puffs as she and Tess watched the action in the magic mirror. “Is it wrong that the part that disturbs me most about this is that her mind control spell created a floating pink heart?” Tess asked. “Yep!” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully. “Oooh, look!” she added, pointing at the mirror, where Twilight’s horn lit up and she lowered it towards the now naked guard’s forehead. “She’s going in for the memory spell!” === One very complicated memory spell later, Lucky gave one last buck at the airlock door, and it opened! He looked around, and spotted one of his wingmates, who waved him over. Soon they were all gathered in the moon temple, where Gusty was poking carefully at a strangely ornate but asymmetrical box, that didn’t really seem to fit with the rest of the décor. “Where were you?” the wingleader signaled tersely in horse code. That was pretty much the only way to talk in horse code; it was not a quick language to ‘speak’, even using the modified military version that used both wings. “I got inside that,” Lucky signaled, and pointed towards the Here to Help with a wing, “Nothing in there.” “Figures,” Gusty replied. “This place is empty too. Let’s head back.”