//------------------------------// // Rome Really Was Tased In a Day // Story: Pony Class Starship // by Viking Hoof //------------------------------// Once her laughter at the yellow horses' misunderstanding finally stopped, and the aforementioned yellow horse stopped blushing brighter than a tomato, Aurora ran her sensors hard and loud, investigating the five mares in the room with her. The things that the Pinkie Pie and Cadance had said about them hadn't been too in depth. The strange FTL leakage continued to give her sensors conflicting data, results that only made sense on a sub atomic scale. The FTL leakage seemed to... condense around the figures. Strange that she hadn't noticed something like that before now. "It's nice to finally meet all of you, Cadance has told me so much!" Aurora wondered if that little fib would bite her in the exhaust later. She wasn't really worried, she could pass it off as a empty platitude or something. Nonetheless, a small portion of her processing worried, and predicted outcomes, and weighed those outcomes against possible gains, just as she had done before making the statement. Aurora cut her main consciousness off from the parts of her running her conversation. She'd already rated Twilight's friendship a secondary objective. Her main goals were still being to find her crew and to explore herself, following that was befriending the one's known as "Celestia" and "Luna," but only to help expedite finding her crew. Although, coming back to exploring herself... Aurora tried something she hadn't thought to try, she accessed her cabin. Most ships of her class and better, especially long range exploration ones, gave a cabin to the ship AI to decorate. Hers was simple enough, a couch for the counselor, a hologram for her to explore her self image, a few momentos and metals. But this wasn't her cabin, it was a sort of nebulous place- And as that thought crossed her mind, an actual nebula seemed to coalesce. Which rather explained it all. It seemed that she was... day dreaming. It wasn't a impossible act for her, simply a very hard one, but for it to come so easily... sort of made sense. The way she was wired to isolate herself in her cabin was very similar to the way human brains turn off most external inputs in order to isolate themselves in the imagination. Her conning tower and camera becoming a head and eyes, thrusters to wings, a communication system to a set of vocal cords, it seemed whatever transformed her into a horse also converted systems into biological analogues. Her nervous system was similarly designed, perhaps there was a causal correlation in all of it? The transformation was consistent both times it happened, as far as she could tell. She would have a least a few more samples of the transformations. Aurora was wrought forth to the world outside her head as her yellow alert was activated. She surveyed the room quickly. The purple princess and yellow pegasus were leaving the room. She quickly reviewed her communication system records. They were... going to go find Cadance and Pinkie. The white horse had said something about adorning her hull. That was highly against regulations, best to just dissuade her of the idea. Except she'd already said she do it... fucking automated systems! "By Odin, you horses are obstinate!" Aurora shouted from underneath the double pony doggy pile of Rainbow Dash and Applejack. All the while, the white horse continued to inaccurately measure her hull length and leg length. The darn thing was using a bit of cloth and metal, where were the lasers? the spacial computational software?! "Now now, you quit your bucking. Any more of that and we're gonna have to gag you." This was absurd, ridiculous, superfluous, and worst of all against regulation! A cloth outfit, for a ship! It didn't matter that she had four legs, she was a ship of the Stjörnflot! If she didn't need these horses to speed up her search, she would have thrown them all in a brig for mishandling her hull so! "Dearest, you must hold still. For a military mare this behavior is most unseemly." Aurora turned off her translator, hoping that they wouldn't understand this part. "Þú lyktar!" Ha! Not her most creative, but still a great source of catharsis. "Hmm? Dear, what are you shouting now?" Aurora let out a nasty chuckle, this was going to be fun. "Ríða þér , þú nöldra tík !" Aurora wished she could see the look on the white horse's face. "Dear, speak Equestrian please." Aha! There's no way the horses could speak Norse. Aurora knew better than to say anything, but it was so tempting. A few thousand insults, a few million combinations. What to say, what to say... A tough decision to be sure, Aurora suspended her decision for later. There were interesting things to do, like process her satellite's reports. Everything... the programing she'd uploaded seemed to have finally secured stable orbits, but it was two probes too late, she no longer had enough left to effectively do anything other than perhaps study the radiation. That meant she had to secure more resources, ferry them into orbit, and produce more probes, dedicated orbitals this time. All of that would take time. Aurora quickly recalculated her social priorities. "She's gone very quiet" Rainbow Dash muttered as Rarity continued to measure the prone mare. "Probably more of that multi vector orbital flight-path calculation" Applejack muttered in a surprisingly intelligible southern drawl. Rainbow Dash flicked her tail dismissively. "You'd think a mare that could kick Sombra's flank out of this reality would be more..." Rainbow Dash began, searching for a word to summarize her thoughts. "Energetic?" Applejack prompted. "Yeah, how'd you guess?" Rainbow Dash flicked her tail in surprise as Applejack put on a smirk. "Your sort of expectation dash. I reckon Rarity here was imaginin' some sort of dashing knight errant in silvered armor." "Well, when you put it that way it does seem a bit silly." Rarity admitted blushingly from over the prone form of Aurora. "And Twilight, wherever she is, was expectin' some sort of ancient sage of knowledge and wisdom callin' forth ancient spells and long lost magics." Dash nodded along, following her friend's train of thought. "And you Dash were expectin' someone with lots of muscles and flash. A athlete to put it simply, well, an athlete in a explorer's hat." Dash blinked in surprise, having been pegged squarely by Applejack's guess. "Well Doc Jack, what were you thinking of?" She retorted a moment later, giving Applejack a suspicious look. "Well... honestly, I was expectin' someone sort of like my brother, more thickly built. Someone really made for kicking baddies in the head, in practical armor, maybe using a pike?" Rainbow Dash gave her a disbelieving look, but eventually found she could swallow that answer. "Huh, go figure. I figured you would have picked something farm related." She replied a few seconds later. "Why'sat?" Applejack asked, eyebrow raised at the suggestion. "You're the farmer'iest of farmers. There's literally no farmer more farmer than you are, Applejack." Rainbow Dash chortled as Applejack gave her a glare. "Hmmph, well, at least I'm not the jocks of jocks!" Applejack insisted with a defiant jab of her snout. "A jock that loves to read adventure novels" Dash retorted. "Well, I'm not just a farmer, I have a family I care for." Applejack followed. "Apple jack all farmers are about family life." Rainbow Dash followed up, another chortle following along. "And I'm always reliable." Applejack answered, a bit hastily. "Do I even need to say it?" Applejack harrumphed again in protest, but gave a resigned shake of her head. "Nah, point taken." Applejack turned back to Aurora. "Want to go find Twilight? I have to admit this is getting a bit boring." Aurora stood up quickly after the two friends of Twilight Sparkle left. She'd been briefed by Cadance earlier as to the overall political structure of Equestria. Those mares had the ear of one of Equestria's future head rulers. Where she'd dismissed such a long term relationship before, such interactions being the purview of the diplomatic corps, but if her projections for the terrain ahead were accurate... This was going to take a while. But Aurora counted herself lucky, it wasn't often that psychoanalysis subjects handed you their psyche profiles on a silver platter. It was almost if she was back in the berth, being tested by sociologists and psychologists. She was tempted to follow behind to see if she could find out more. "Ahh, so you have returned to the living! Now, do you prefer white or red?" Aurora turned to the white seamstress. She wanted to say something rude, but she reminded herself that Rarity was one of those friends. "I'm afraid I must reiterate, I can't adorn my hull with non regulation materials and patterns, and I'm afraid your dresses would fit that." "Well..." Rarity looked circumspect. "Surely your... navy?" Aurora gave her a nod, "has a uniform?" Aurora paused in thought. She'd never gotten to wear a uniform... Would that be regulation? As a ship, no, outside of specifically allowed adornments for holiday parades and the like. But if she treated her form as an android form... It would appease one of Twilight's friends, which was rapidly looking to be more important. "Tell, me, can you do silver buttons?" Rarity gave a smart smirk. Which uniform would she wear... standard fatigues or... Would they recognize the colors if she chose that uniform? Was wearing out the honors worth the risk of her being discovered? No, a normal uniform for now. "We will need black silk, white silk, plenty of silver." Aurora brought up schematics for a North Star Navy uniform along with the rank isignias for a Lieutenant, the ship parade colors, and a stitch guide for a North Star flag.