Chapter 3: All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter
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Phlip-Phlop pressed her disguise hoof against her face so hard, that she could swear she was actually feeling the large toenail against her temples. Here she was at a social gathering of the locals, all set to gather nutrient resources. Aside from hiding a paralyzed pony's body underneath the table, things had been going fairly smoothly. But then her clueless robot had to show up. Oh, he was disguised as she had previously instructed, but he seemed to completely miss the point of a subtle entrance.
What garnered the attention of the party's attendees was the sudden arrival of a hippogryph. While half-bird, half-ponies weren't unheard of, there were very few sightings of them. What was even rarer was their loud entrance invoking the destruction of the very floor on which they were standing.
You, TIR, are a fool, thought Phlip-Phlop as she silently calculated her odds of escape. I could knock some heads loose to reduce the potential witness count. No, I don't have enough shots for this many Equines. She quietly groaned. Oh, why did I have to choose the days of Academy fist combat to sleep in?
"Should I just rip up all of the floor, then?" asked TIR with a big grin on his beak.
"Um, sir... you don't... mean that, right?" piped in a nearby party guest pony.
"I never joke about dancing to the heart's content!" insisted TIR.
Phlip-Phlop sighed. Her mechanical limbs shuffled a few small items from inside her PAK. The items she grabbed entered the air of the room as small, black pellets. They landed on the ground as a layer of grayish smoke. Said smoke rose slightly, covering the eye level of all of the ponies present. Some of the ponies coughed, and all of them had eyes full of water.
At the entrance, a certain blue mane, green hide pony was dragging a hippogryph away by his tail. She looked very upset as she kicked her wing boosters on and flew out of town.
"We need to work on your foundational programming," commented Phlip-Phlop.
"Sorry, did I perform a Charlie when I should have dosey-ed?" wondered TIR expectantly.
Briefly, she looked back with a deadpanned expression. This look was briefly interrupted by a frown and a snort. She turned back to face where she was going, but didn't say anything. The hippogryph occasionally wiggled one of his limbs with the urge to perform a sky dance. In less than a couple minutes, they were back at Phlip-Phlop's base.
She shivered briefly. A mechanical, pointed leg reached out from her PAK and tapped three specific points on the back of her neck. After three clicks, her disguise seemed to fizzle out of existence. The Irken Invader stood back up on her normal two legs and walked towards where she had previously set up her computer.
"TIR, do you remember our mission?"
The hippogryph scratched underneath his beak. "The destruction of all human scum?"
"What? No!" exclaimed Phlip-Phlop. "We're here to conquer and/or vanquish the citizens of this planet." She clenched her gloved fists. "These... ponies are going to be destroyed, but we can't make that happen if you go around blowing our cover as..." She pointed accusingly at TIR. "... whatever the heck that's supposed to be."
TIR raised his claws in shocked surrender. It almost looked like he was sweating a bit, even though that should have been impossible for a SIR unit, garbage or otherwise. Swiftly, his claws reached around his neck and pulled the hawk head off. The illusion faded immediately, returning TIR to his original robotic form.
Phlip-Phlop grunted and turned back to the monitor that leaned over the tiny keyboard. Her fingers went to work tapping the buttons in the most delicate pattern ever. Meanwhile, one of her mechanical spider legs reached out of her PAK with one of the tiny cakes she had previously acquired. It whirred around to let her take a big bite of the carbohydrate-rich foodstuff. After some noisy chewing, she swallowed.
"I need to run a basic equipment check," she stated without room for opposition. "We've been burning through far too many escaping projectile weapons within our first day on the mission. TIR, see if you can find any replacement components anywhere within a hundred meters of this base while I calculate the optimal way to ration the remainder of the supplies over several days."
"But of course, ma'am," saluted TIR just before jogging through the nearby foliage.
After he was gone for a few seconds, she muttered, "If he finds anything, that will be great. If he gets lost and takes his annoying dance routines with him... that would be just as great. Either way, it's win-win."
With that said, she continued tapping random buttons and watching her various supply counts rush by on the screen.
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*Poke*
Food supplies were at an abysmal low. Plant material was sufficient. Valuable minerals were disturbingly low. Rocks were available, but their true value was beyond the computer's data. Stunning weapons were projected to be gone into the negative numbers by the end of the week.
*Poke* *Poke*
Her infinity laser blasters were still working efficiently. Automatic repair suits were sustainable. A bunch of other techno babble terms flooded the screen as Phlip-Phlop skimmed through most of them. There was no reason for her to keep track of extremely slow-reacting radioactivities, right?
*Poke* *Poke* *Poke*
Come to think of it, why were some of these flashing numbers describing such useless information? It said that opera singing was in short supply. Battering rams were just under acceptable parameters. The hidden artillery flags was an odd number where it recommended even. Phlip-Phlop couldn't help but stare in bafflement at what her device was presenting to her... at least until a rolled up newspaper smacked the back of her head four times in a row.
"For the love of Red, what?!" Furiously, she turned her head to face the interruption.
"Some botany for the lady?"
TIR held up some plant in his robotic pincers. It was a bouquet of blue-spotted flowers that he shook around a little. Phlip-Phlop was unamused and expressed herself as a pan that was dead.
"I thought I told you to look for materials that could be used in the place of some of our escape equipment."
The robotic unit held the flowers to the side and shrugged. "There aren't any suitable materials within the demanded radius, Master Phlip-Phlop."
She pinched the skin just above her eye plates. "Mother of Orange." She sighed and held up her hands dismissively. "Alright, look. I'm not interested in having flowers in a place that we're trying to remain inconspicuous. Just... send them to that pony that sent the party invites. I'm sure it'll be a suitable appearance of thanks."
"Splendid!" TIR cheered as he whipped up a small gift box out of nowhere. He shut the exterior around the flowers in his grasp. He then proceeded to don the head of his hippogryph disguise. The rest of the disguise's body formed around him almost instantly. "I shall practice my 'shuffleboard walk' all the way to the post office."
"Yeah, sure." She rolled her eye plates. "Go do that."
Phlip-Phlop turned back to her monitor and drummed her fingers against the space just underneath the keyboard. As soon as her robotic slave was out of sight and his humming was too distant to hear, she allowed herself to lean back in her chair. Admit it or not, she was not in the best position for an invading force.
"TIR may be an idiot, but he's a smart idiot," she admitted. "If he couldn't at least find mere scraps of workable components, then there aren't enough around this patch of land to prospect in the first place." She hopped out of her chair and started pacing around with her arms crossed behind her back. "I'm either going to need to travel to distant populaces, or potentially appropriate whatever is available in the local 'Ponyville'. But... how am I going to do that without drawing unnecessary attention?" Her mechanical spider legs grew out and started carrying her around so that her biped legs could rest. "They may seem like happy, flirtatious individuals, but you can only do things outside of a culture's norms for so long before even the happiest individuals start questioning in ways that cannot be deterred with simple lies and half-covered facts."
Her metal PAK's limbs stopped so that she was hanging right in front of her computer. She rubbed her gloves against her head and sighed. What she needed to do was the most obvious solution. However, logic and her personal hubris were not in agreement. She pulled out one more cupcake and scarfed it down. She frustratingly surrendered her pride for the sake of the mission.
"I'm going to have to find... a job."
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Town Hall's board read, "Help Wanted". 'Flo', however, did not look at the phrase in excitement. It reminded her too much of a prison composed of empty lies and deep-fried grease. Still, the phrasing on the advertisement was enough to prevent her from completely getting sick. She stuck the piece of paper on a metal feather and trotted out of Town Hall.
She flew through the air, eyeing the ad every once in a while to double-check the address and directions. A couple pegasi stopped and waved, but she flew past them without a second thought. Regardless if the mission called for her to blend in as much as necessary, she wasn't foolish enough to believe that chatting it up with strangers and that befriending them would somehow save the day.
Eventually, she found the building of the advertised address and hovered down. The fires from her jet-fueled wings slowly died down, but not before smelting some nearby grass into black puddles of lawn goop. Sighing, she walked over to the door and knocked with her disguise's right front hoof.
"I'll be right there," called a guy's voice. The door opened to reveal a tan stallion with a short, brown mane. "Oh thank Celestia. I thought you'd never make it here, Phlip. Or... is it 'Flo' now?"
Phlip-Phlop performed a double-take. "What did you just say?"
"Oh sorry, I thought you already... no." The stallion scratched underneath his mouth. "I suppose technically you haven't yet, even though chronologically, you did. But from your perspective, it hasn't happened yet. So... when does that leave us?"
The disguised mare blinked, not comprehending. "Did you lose your thinking organ or are all stallions on this suspiciously clean planet just that dumb?"
He leaned closer and squinted. "Hmm, third impression could use a bit of work." He stood up straight and chuckled. "Well, third for me. First for you. Anyway..." He turned around and motioned with a free hoof. "This way, please."
"Hold up." A metallic feather clanged against the rest of Phlip-Phlop's wing. "Who are you and what did I sign up for when I took this job?"
"Just call me Doc for now and you're signing up for mechanical apprentice duties for a while." His trotting echoed as he moved further into the hallway.
She groaned before galloping inside. "How did you know I was Flo?"
"Oh, details will come earlier... or later..." He pushed open a door on his left. "It's a matter of perspective really."
Under her breath, she muttered, "Are you ever going to make sense?"
Doc pulled a lever and tapped a few buttons on the wall. Familiar beeping sounds graced Phlip-Phlop's cranium. She watched as several lights blinked on and off above her. A plasma core slowly spun around inside a lamp-shaped device. Within seconds, a couple panels opened up along the wall to reveal a crisscrossing pattern of coated wires.
"Perhaps somepony as... foreign... as you could take a crack at repairing this?"
Phlip-Phlop squinted. "What do you know about me?" Inside her PAK, a metallic limb gently touched her blaster.
He looked smug as he adjusted his bow tie. "Probably more than you'd like, Ms. Phlop. But let's stick with the here and now, shall we?" He cleared his throat and looked sincerely. "I'm going to need your help to save this world as we know it."
She snorted. "Your intel gathering is shoddy, Doc."
Doc waved a hoof dismissively. "Yes, yes, world-conquering invader, but that's just your basic instincts. You could be so much more if you dedicated your scientific application to helping others."
"And now you're being presumptuous." Phlip-Phlop's jet-wings lifted her and moved her just in front of her 'employer'. "In case you couldn't tell by the descriptor you just used for me, I'm trying to destroy this world. In spite of how little you know, there is enough in your debriefing to say that you know too much."
Her metallic limb pulled out her blaster. It charged up and aimed directly at Doc's skull. He remained calm as his hoof reached into a pocket under his hide. When his hoof came out, an object that looked like a cross between a laser pointer and an electric toothbrush flicked and pointed in the opposite direction. It chirped at a high frequency and glowed neon green.
At that moment, the blaster lost its noise. The disguised alien gasped as her blaster refused to respond to its trigger. She looked at her current opponent and growled.
"I'm not going to turn you over to anyone, Phlip." He looked sincerely at her. "From one extra-equestrial to another, I simply request your help."
She stared at him for what felt like forever. How were this stallion's eyes so naive and yet simultaneously experienced? She couldn't gauge him. All she knew for sure was that he knew a few things about her identity and he could apparently shut off her weapons. Accompanied by a sigh, she put her blaster away.
Doc slowly stowed his tool as well. "May I... have a look at the real you?"
Phlip-Phlop squinted at him again. "You're pushing it, Doc."
"I just want to provide my new employee some comfort after her moment of stress."
"Hmph." She crossed a couple of metallic legs in front of herself. "In that case, why don't you show me your true form first?"
"Believe it or not, this is my true form." He rustled his mane with one hoof. "Though, I do keep wishing that one of my re-spawns would give me a nice red mane."
"A freaking Gallop-Free?" She held a hoof over her eyes and shook her head lightly. "By Red and Purple's antennae. Now your buzzing monkey-wrench makes perfect sense."
Doc half-smiled and half-frowned. "It's a hypersonic screwdriver actually."
"Do I look like I care?" She practically ripped off her disguise in frustration and it disappeared into a holographic weight space. She crossed her gloves while her metallic limbs carried the rest of her body over to the wall's wires. "Where do I start?"
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Minutes passed with the Irken doing various tasks: adjusting circuits, welding parts together with a torch, and reconfiguring whatever else she could think to realign. She wiped an area on her forehead as if in a sweat. After the wires looked sufficiently different from when she had first witnessed them, she nodded at the stallion.
He pushed the lever back up and the panels slowly closed. With a bit of rumbling, some of the above lights turned on solidly without the blinking. He smiled gently and walked over to the another side of the room.
"Well, that job will be finished," he said while shuffling around behind an old aircraft. "At least, it will be for yesteryear."
Phlip-Phlop rubbed her temples for the umpteenth time that day. It's like freaking riddle-speak with this species.
He walked back over and dropped a sack at her feet. It sounded like multiple clinks on top of each other.
"Here you are, that should get you off the ground... so to speak." He pulled out a clipboard and scribbled with a pencil in his mouth. "Oh, and remember to put your disguise on before you leave."
"I already knew that, Gallop-Free." She used her mechanical claw to drag the bag and its contents into her PAK. She then reset her pony guise of 'Flo'. "But just remember something." She took slow, deliberate steps toward the room's exit. "As soon as I figure out how to bypass your cheating multi-tool, I will find you... and I will destroy you."
He didn't even look around from his clipboard and paper. "Yeah, good luck with that."
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Phlip-Phlop's eyes went wide. "Five hundred pieces of pure aurum? Computer, do you know what this means?"
"That you can start making statues of your glory earlier than you anticipated?" guessed the artificial intelligence.
The Irken grinned wickedly. "Actually, I have a better idea."
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After shoving many of the aurum 'bits' into the machine that converts aurum into anything else, inventory numbers rose dramatically in certain line items. Space turkey sandwiches were enough to last for weeks. Stun-ray charges and tripping tools were filled for the next year. Automatic refuel and repair cells for the one-invader spaceship were fully charged.
Phlip-Phlop cackled loudly. Soon, this pathetic planet would be hers to command. All would crumble before-
"I traded the blue flowers for some magic beans!"
The familiar voice of her lackey urged her to sharply channel her gaze. "TIR, not now! Can't you see I'm having an evil moment of triumph?"
"Ah, a note of huge success." The robotic unit clapped two appendages together.
She turned back to her spot and attempted to resume her cackling where she left off. "Ha ha ha... aw, forget it. You ruined it, TIR! You have ruined it and I'm going to bed." She hopped off her chair and marched over to her temporary relaxation quarters.
TIR glanced at the beans in his possession before calling out. "What should I do about the barter I got from a zebra?"
"Shove them in a storage can! I don't give a spooch!" Phlip-Phlop called back.
He shrugged and tossed the beans into an open tin can on the other side of the hideout. He then proceeded to dance the night away.
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