"Here, finished!" Tsubar proclaimed some time later, holding the PDA up over his head in the three-clawed grip of a tentacle.
Phineas stopped idly poking at the projector and looked up to his new and improved device. Tsubar set it down on the table and slid it across to the silver stallion, who then stopped it by putting his hoof down in its way. He set his Magi-Flux Harmonizer down on the table and raised the PDA up, looking at its screen. Where it was once blank, it was now conveying information on the Desolus' many systems.
"I took the liberty of putting in a Universal Translator into that thing," Tsubar said to him. "So you don't need to keep wearing the other one."
"Go figure. A Universal Translator that also works as an info-dump," Phineas replied somewhat flatly, the current state of the remains of Equestria heavy on his heart. He couldn't bring himself to make jokes. "So much for not pitying others... no, this isn't pity. It's shame."
"Hey, come on Startrot. I didn't mean anything about ponies when I said what I did!" said the mechanic in an attempt to reassure the stallion.
Phineas waved a hoof dismissively and put the PDA back on its orange band. He plucked the black device off his his chest and put it in the pile of tools. "It's almost like I was never in stasis!" he said, then he looked down to his new tool. "... Almost."
Tsubar laughed at the weak joke for Phineas' sake but did little else.
Changing the subject, Phineas said: "Gaali told me this ship delivers supplies to fringe worlds. Are we heading to one right now or...?"
"Gallopso. You might have seen all the cargo we have in the hold."
"I did indeed."
"It's a funny little world. It's very geologically active. Mountains and volcanoes dominate the landscape. The land is jagged and spiky; it tells the tale of frequent rising seas," Tsubar said to Phineas.
"So why did Equestrians settle there? The planet sounds extremely dangerous."
"If by settle you mean land their ship and start building; they didn't. They're still in the sky using their ship as the basis of their little city."
"Wow, really?"
"Cloud generators keep the ship and all the extensions they've added to it aloft. They anchor down when things on the surface are calm and disengage when things get hectic. It's pretty ingenious."
"But from what you said, you gave me the impression that ponies have regressed..." Phineas said.
"Not everyone in that city knows how it works. Only a few know how to keep the generators working and a few others know how to keep their ship in good order. With keeping alive from day to day the priority, formal schooling isn't much of a thing, you know?" Tsubar elaborated.
"I see... I suppose that makes sense," Phineas replied. With this knowledge, his spirits were lifted a little. The future for ponykind wasn't as bleak as he thought, for there were still great minds at work, scattered across space. If one had the drive and ability to, they too could learn the secrets of the worldly and beyond. Greatness was yet to be lost in full to ponies. As long as there was one pony with curiosity and motivation, there would always be hope.
"Why'd you ask?" Tsubar inquired.
"I was thinking of getting reacquainted with a few familiar faces... even if they're all strangers." Phineas answered.
"We're still some ways off from it, Startrot. What are you going to do until then?"
Phineas brought up his PDA, going through its features and projecting the ship's layout as he had seen on the wall terminal. "I'll be getting to know this ship a bit better. Give me a while with the design and I'll think you'll be surprised by the things I'd have found out on my own."
"Preposterous!" Tsubar shot back. "How can you learn how our ship works just by looking at the design? Without any knowledge of how its components function?"
"Give me some time and I'll show you," Phineas said slyly.
"Is that some kind of challenge?" Tsubar inquired, his tentacles coiling up on the table.
"One I intend to make good on. I'll see you when we reach Gallopso. Oh, and for the record, you can call me Phineas. Do me a favor and pass the message on, will you?" said the silver stallion, who then put his Harmonizer in a tool kit and made his departure from Tsubar's chamber.
"Oh yeah. I think I made a good first impression," he thought as he walked down the black halls with the blueprints as his map. There would be no more getting lost in these corridors.
***
"Phineas, you've been looking at those design-specs nonstop ever since Tsubar fixed up your wrist device."
Gaali floated over to Phineas' side with a tray held by one tentacle's graspers. She put the tray down at the counter he stood at.
He had his helmet off, laying on the counter off to the side of the tray he had. His right foreleg rested on the counter; his blue eyes transfixed on the projection of the ship's layout while he shoveled food into his mouth absentmindedly with his left, using the magical field of his Harmonizer as a spoon.
"Uh huh," he replied simply while his eyes ran across various chunks of text and diagrams for the umpteenth time.
The counter ran across the far wall of the room, which was the ship's mess hall. The other crew members of the Desolus were accompanying Phineas and Gaali except for Romaz and Tsubar, who had eaten earlier that "day" and were in their respective posts. Uolix was on the other side of the counter, standing in the middle of her kitchen, tentacles speeding across her grills. They all glowed warmly with her large pots and pans floating over them suspended in a magical field. Javic was on the other side of Gaali, the latter being in the middle between her and Phineas.
Javic was floating strips of greenery and scoops of a creamy, pudding-like substance into her retracted mouthpiece with an Arcane-Manipulator. In his time on the Desolus, it was the only time Phineas knew the Shu'badi to ever undo any part of their suits. For what it was worth, he knew that Javic's skin was a glistening, dark blue color, Gaali's was a light orange and Tsubar was a deep brown. The color of the other two Seaponies were currently unknown to him.
In contrast, the others knew full well how Phineas looked like underneath his suit; or at least what his face looked like. Over the few days that passed, cohabitation became possible without the spacesuit being necessary. Phineas learned however, that the Shu'badi wore their suits explicitly to retain the moisture in their bodies. While he could interact with them without his suit on, they could only do the same for short periods of time, if ever.
"You don't think you've committed them to memory already?"
"Not memorizing," Phineas said before downing another mouthful of the creamy substance that tasted like a medley of vegetables, some tastes familiar to him and others not very so. "Understanding."
Gaali's mouthpiece slid apart and she started to eat. Her mannerisms were much more refined, as opposed to the robotic tendency of the silver stallion. She plucked small amounts of her meal from the tray and carefully chewed it, while Phineas wasn't chewing much at all.
"Have you always been so compulsive in your studies?" she asked after downing a decent amount of her food.
"It's not compulsion. It's me having the urge to review constantly until I can go over every part of this ship mentally; forwards, backwards and side to side." Phineas said with a distant sounding drawl.
"But why?"
"I told Tsubar I'd be able to before we reach Gallopso."
"Ah."
Javic cocked her head at the conversation, turning her gaze past Gaali. It lingered on the silver stallion for a few moments, the Seapony finding Phineas to be an odd specimen. She couldn't fathom how any creature could willingly endure such repetition and not be positively bored out of their minds! In spite of this, Phineas was practically enveloped by the static hologram of the Desolus.
She wanted to speak to him herself when Uolix's voice intruded on her thought process. "Finished already?" the cook asked her.
Javic's response was sloppily assembled as she stumbled to contain her surprise. "I-yes, that is..." Her mouthpiece came together and she fell silent, the shy Shu'badi simply nodding. She raised her tray up to the ship's chef.
Uolix took the tray with a mechanical arm and put it on a table off to her right to be dealt with later. In a hushed voice she added: "I can't understand why you're so nervous all the time, Javic. Have those guns affected you in some way?"
"No, it's not that... I think it's just my nature. You and the others are my closest friends... but I'm still a stammering wreck most of the time around you... then there's Phineas..."
Uolix turned her sights to the stallion, who was now scooping at a mostly empty tray with his Harmonizer device. Gaali was swift to stop this though, snapping him back to reality long enough to notice he had finished eating.
"Strange one, isn't he?" Uolix said offhoofedly, then went ahead to retrieve his tray.
"Very..." Javic replied. She envied Gaali's outgoing attitude. Gaali not only found the stallion drifting in space, but had little reservations toward making first contact with him. Since then, it appeared she and Phineas had become best friends; disregarding the fact they were absolute strangers to each other just a few days before.
Javic wished she could know the pony a little more in such a way; perhaps even a little more. But with his priority being what it is, she found Phineas difficult to approach and impassive.
After stacking his tray on top of Javic's, Uolix replied: "Don't worry. He doesn't bite!"
"Thank you for the words of comfort, Uolix. I feel so much better." Javic replied with a monotone.
"Don't mention it!" said the chef, disregarding the technician's snide comment.
***
He was back in his room aboard the shuttle shortly after eating, the lights dimmed down. He was on his cot staring up at the projection, which was a diagram of the Desolus' Spell-core, detailing each individual machine's purpose and the processes which made them work. He was utterly captivated by it. So much so that he did not read the information in the hologram, he simply recited it in his mind as he looked at each individual part in all of it's transparent, holo-imaging glory.
"I'm juuuust about ready to try my hooves on the actual things!" Phineas thought with pent up anticipation.
And this was just the beginning. He awaited the time when he would come across another kind of starship with completely different principles of function. The fun he would have deciphering the alien code of science and practicality!
"One thing at a time, Startrot. One thing at a time."
"Entering Furosta star system. Gallopso is thirty minutes away!" he heard Romaz report over his PDA, her voice being the deepest of all the female Seaponies on board.
"And in perfect timing, too! Tsubar hold onto your alien ass, I think I just beat this challenge!"
With that, Phineas sprung out of bed, bucked it back into the wall and then got himself ready for his first true EVA. He did find it funny that the first life he would see on an alien planet would be others of his own species. Not only them, but minotaurs and gryphons and so much more!
Before long, he stood at a row of windows, looking out into space. It reminded of when he met Amadeus on the Iopteryx. He too was looking out of the ship's windows, except at the time he was taking in the sights of many other ships at the Ponyville launch hub. What Phineas saw now was far more grand. Against the backdrop of stars, he saw the planet Gallopso, its atmosphere a sea-green color. Clouds wafted across its sky over planetary badlands, craggy and rugged terrain.
And somewhere on it was a bastion of pony civilization, hovering above the turmoil brewing within the core.