An Alien in Need, is a Friend Indeed

by Word Worthy

Chapter 4: Awkward Meeting

Rarity was boiling with rage. Her normally calm, pleasant face was now glowing red like stone melted by plasma fire-or the scorching fire breath of a great dragon. “I say, I know your in here! I’m not going to hurt you dear, IF YOU JUST COME OUT!” Instead of obeying, the Kig-Yar activated her shield gauntlet, and ducked behind the nearest couch, the one currently occupied by Spike and Twilight.

“Rarity?” Twilight and Spike asked in unison.

“Ahh! Enemy?” Dadab drew his pistol, unsure of what was going on. Spike saw the motion and urgently held up his hands, trying to keep the Unggoy from accidentally doing something everyone would regret. Dadab, who was on friendly terms with the dragon, complied at once and stowed the energy weapon away. For Dadab, half his brain told him to flee due to their not being an Elite officer present. The smart half told the first half to shut up, calm down, and observe the situation cautiously.

“Come on out this instant!” Rarity ordered again, charging her horn for a spell.

Twilight quickly got up and approached the enraged mare, trying to calm her down. “Rarity, what’s gotten into you? Who’s Chur?”

“Who do you think, darling? The blasted dragon lady!” she pointed to the jackal. “That miscreant stole from me, right under my nose! And to think I was offering to refine her look, without charge!” Rarity declared.

The Kig-Yar abandoned her defensive posture, instead opting to feign personal insult. “I stole nothing of yours, clothing merchant. I, Chur'R-Yar, sister of Chur'R-Mut, am a Shipmistress of the Covenant Navy! I am above such petty indecencies.”

“Above it all, you say?” Rarity bellowed in outrage. Unexpectedly, the power of her voice shook the branches just enough to loosen the jackal pirate’s poorly placed plunder. The stolen merchandise fell from above, and landed at Rarity’s hooves in a loud clatter. She looked up from her stolen goods and gave the lizard alien a withering look.

Chur chattered furiously in Sangheili, and then Kig-Yar, before switching back to Equestrian. “You had it coming, horn head!” Her voice purred angrily in her throat, making the bird-like alien sound ironically like a loud, happy feline.

Impossibly, Rarity’s sneer only grew in size on her face. “Is there no end to your abhorrent personality? You are like a pack of Diamond Dogs, and that’s putting it lightly!”

Twilight put a hoof on her enraged friend’s shoulder. “Rarity, I understand our guest here has greatly offended your hospitality by stealing from you, but we need to go through this with a calm, cool mind, okay?”

The fashion designer gave a long drawn out sigh, and replaced her sneer with a frown. “You’re right Twilight, I was behaving very unladylike.” She looked back at Chur. “That still doesn’t justify robbing me in broad daylight, Chur!”

“You tried to scientifically experiment on me, and seeking revenge, you left your goods ripe for plunder. It would have been a disservice to myself and my people’s nature If I had not plucked a few valuables for...safekeeping," Chur admitted. "If it offended you greater than I had intended, then you have my most sincere apologies, as a Shipmistress of the Covenant.”

Instead of a frown, the white unicorn now stared at the pirate with confusion. “Experimentation? That’s Twilight’s domain, dear.” It was now Twilight’s turn to frown.

“Hey! Are you insinuating that I experiment on living creatures? Fluttershy, Rainbow, or AJ would kill me if they found out about something like that!”

Rarity ignored the remark. “And...” she sighed again. “I accept your apology, Shipmistress.”

The jackal relaxed her muscles, and deactivated her shield gauntlet. “Under one condition, that is,” Rarity declared.

Chur stiffened up again, that old, familiar anxiety settling back into her as quickly as it had disappeared. “What is it, that this one desires from me?”

“Well firstly, your going to take what you stole, march with me over to Carousel Boutique, and put it right back where you found it. I’ll think of what else you can do when we get there as recompense!” As Chur made her way to the door, Rarity followed, her muzzle turned up in the air. Before the two could take their leave however, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Fluttershy materialized at the front door in a rush.

“Hey Rarity! What’s up Twilight? Fluttershy tells us there’s some kind of alien or a new foreigner running around Ponyville...” Rainbow finally noticed the jackal right in front of her. “Whoa! You must be it then?” She stared at Chur'R-Yar with surprise, her wings flapping as she hovered in the air. The other three elected to stay quiet and see what the strange creature’s response would be. Pinkie Pie was struggling not to enthusiastically greet the jackal as an honorary guest, for fear of frightening the mysterious creature away.

In kind, the Kig-Yar looked at the pegasus and her friends with curiosity in her large ruby eyes. “So it’s true, Dadab was accurate, some of your people can fly. I envy this.” Chur motioned to the feathers adorning her head, and the back of her arms.

Dash looked at the alien as if she had crawled out from under a rock. “Well yeah, we can fly. We’re pegasi, after all. I don’t suppose your kind can fly, can they?”

Chur shook her head. “Our ancient ancestors may have once, but we have since adapted to life in the tall trees, and my people, the low gravity of T'vao. While we cannot use our feathers to lift us, we T'vaoans, a distinct and superior kind of Kig Yar, are able to sprint quickly, and climb and jump to great heights.”

Rainbow Dash merely shrugged at the information. “I suppose climbing high can be as cool as flying, sometimes.”

Chur chortled in amusement, pulling her snout into a type of grin. “Sometimes? Perhaps we should put that estimate to the test soon, pegasus.”

A competitive grin grew across the pegasus' face. “I’ll be happy to hold ya to that, umm...T'vaoan.” Saying the last part, Dash scratched at her mane with a hoof. “What’s your name, exactly?”

Chur decided to skip the formalities. “I am Chur’R Yar. Can you pronounce this?” Dash gave it a go, but the syllables were too exotic for an Equestrian speaker. She shook her head and shrugged again. Chur's grin only grew. “You put emphasis on the human phonetic letter ‘R’, with the ‘Y’ sounding like ‘E’, while the final ‘R’, is strongly emphasized. That is how you pronounce it. But for ease of communication, just call me Chur, I suppose.”

While able to grasp human language only to a limited extent, Chur had been able to memorize the most common human alphabets via her intelligence reports many months ago. Fortunately for her, Equestrians used an enigmatically near-identical alphabetic system, and the spoken words weren't too different, either.

Rarity was losing her patience. “Well I’m sure that is all so fascinating, but if you girls would kindly excuse us, Chur here was just about to return some things of mine she stole.”

This warranted a ruckus from three of the four mares. Applejack scowled disapprovingly at Chur, Pinkie Pie gave out a scandalous gasp, Rainbow Dash shook her head in disappointment, while Fluttershy remarked “Oh my, that’s not very nice.” The timid pegasus tried her best to look indifferent to all of it.

Twilight decided now was an apt time to play the role of peacekeeper a second time. Moving towards the four, Twilight noticed the device at Chur's hip. She had seen clearly what Dadab’s pistol could do to a wooden floor, and the librarian was not very eager to find out what the jackal’s needler was capable of.

“Girls, girls, it’s alright! Chur has already apologized to Rarity, it was just a misunderstanding.”

AJ’s scowl changed to a less menacing frown, and Dash now wore a neutral expression, but was staring daggers at the alien with her wary magenta eyes. Fluttershy hid her expression behind her mane, while Pinkie grinned at the alien in her usual friendly way. A way that was in such stark contrast to her friends’ demeanor, that it left Chur'R-Yar astonished.

It would seem the Shipmistress’ day was filled full of weird feelings. She figured that inexplicably finding one’s self in a strange world with equally odd inhabitants was playing a major role in that. Seeking to shake the feeling off, Chur decided to address the source (or rather, sources) of her weird vibes directly.

Looking to each of the four mares opposite from her, Twilight, and Rarity, Chur explained herself. “Once again, you all have my apologies for offending any of you.” she gestured at Rarity. “As well as your friend. I and my Unggoy...associate...awoke here without any explanation as to how we arrived, and we assumed we were still on a certain planet populated by a race we’re at war with. Surely you can understand my error in misunderstanding your intentions?”

The monologue payed off. Chur was rewarded with the sight of growing understanding on the faces of the others. Twilight caught her attention with a nudge of her hoof.

“We had a similar incident with a zebra named Zecora quite some time ago. We misunderstood her more than a little bit.” With a nervous laugh, Twilight rubbed her foreleg with the other. “We...kinda assumed her to be a witch. But hey, we’re all close friends with her now.” She grinned nervously at Chur

The skirmisher returned her grin as best she could. “You assumed her to be an evil spell caster?” Chur hit a hand on her hip, letting out a loud purr in her throat, chuckling. “That is most amusing. I am glad I am not the only one to have fallen into the trap of misunderstanding good intentions.”

Twilight smiled back, then looked around to everyone. “Well, why doesn’t everypony just come in? We all look weird standing here at the door.”

“Oh, very well.” Rarity sighed. “I suppose we can settle the rest of our business later then, Chur”

The friends and the alien walked in and settled down. Dadab and Spike all the while had passed the time in a rather interesting way. They were both on the floor, and Dadab was showing the little dragon how to play a mock game of scrub grub 'hunting'. Using books as the hunting rocks, and rolled up pieces of parchment to represent the little insects, the two took turns ‘killing’ scrub grubs.

Seeing her books being thrown around carelessly, and the parchment completely misplaced and scattered around, the librarian furiously told them to cut it out. For Dadab, Twilight’s voice carried over like an angry Sangheili, and he almost jumped out of his armor and skin in fright. “Clean this mess up, you two!”

“But it was Dabab’s idea!” Spike protested.

Twilight cupped her face in one of her hooves, sighing deeply. “No buts, both of you get to work!”

Spike looked at Dadab for support. “Help me out here, wont ya?”

Dadab fidgeted uncomfortably, before replying, “Twilight is big scary boss now, not Shipmistress! I’m just going to stay on her good side, Spike.” He started picking up books and brushing them off carefully. The dragon frowned at him.

“Pushover,” he muttered, before joining Dadab in cleaning up. Twilight briefly watched them get to work.

Satisfied, she joined her friends and Chur, who watched the whole thing from the couch. Remembering the incident with the poison joke, and Zecora’s role in fixing it, Twilight informed Chur about the past debacle. Upon hearing of the magical plant’s comical symptoms from contact with its leaves, the pirate laughed uncontrollably, making her sound almost like a happy manticore.

The six friends joined in, and all seven were now laughing up a storm. Chur's raspy laugh was almost drowned out by Pinkie Pie’s far louder giggling. “You should’a heard the way Fluttershy’s voice sounded, instead of all soft and gentle, it sounded all deep and baritone like an old stallion’s!” She declared, clutching her gut from laughing too hard.

Fluttershy frowned at Pinkie, but she was not in the mood to call her friend out on it. As everyone calmed down from laughing, Applejack stared at Chur curiously. “So, Chur, would ya like to tell us a little bit about where you’re from? What are your people like?”

Chur nodded enthusiastically. “I grew up on a world I assume to be far away from here. It is an orbiting colony called T'vao, near the heavily forested and watery planet we call Eayn, our homeworld, and where I was born. My race, Kig-Yar, have always had a notorious history of piracy and economic scheming amongst both ourselves and the greater Covenant Empire."

“Piracy? Your people are pirates? Well ain't that the weirdest thing!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. Out of nowhere, she put on an eye patch, and began trotting around the room, shouting. “Arg, maties! I be a dainty pirate!”

Other than a few odd glances, everyone else ignored her shenanigans. Applejack, however, frowned at the mention of such illegitimate business.

The jackal quickly noticed and hastily continued. "But, don’t let that foul your opinion of us. We are also renowned throughout the Covenant Empire for our trading, mercantile, and diplomatic prowess. For instance, the ill-gotten goods I acquired from Rarity, I could have sold for twice their value in your currency at a shop somewhere else in this town. Using my...charisma, the merchant would have been none the wiser. Of this, I am certain.”

Chur continued with a sort of twinkle in her eyes. “We Kig-Yar know how to make a tidy profit for ourselves. In short, we have a knack for making money, and amassing things of value, whether it be for good or ill.”

Twilight took the information about the Kig Yar in with a thoughtful smile. Applejack, on the flip side, rubbed her chin with her fore-hoof. She narrowed her eyes at the jackal. AJ was deciding whether or not to trust the alien, as Chur's people didn't sound like the kind who take pride in making it by the hard, honest way.

“What about the little guy over there? Is Dadab his name?” Dash inquired, pointing at the Unggoy, who was still cleaning up books.

“What about him?” Chur purred, bored already at the mention of the grunt’ name.

“Where is he from? What species is he?”

Chur waved a hand indifferently at Rainbow Dash. “Why don’t you just ask the little gas sucker yourself? He’s surprisingly smart, even for an Unggoy. I’m sure he can tell you all sorts of things, like how to properly bang two rocks together.”

"Hey, birdbrain, my people can have giant families faster than yours can even lay an egg!" Dadab shot back. "We could team up and take you down like we almost did! How does that make you feel?"

Returning to her businesslike demeanor and ignoring the grunt, Chur peered at each of the mares smartly. “Now, who here is interested in a joint business venture? I have seen first hand that you possess a fine garment and fashion establishment. Isn't that right, Rarity? Would you be interested in my mercantile skills for helping to sell and spread word of your work throughout this land?”

The fashionista raised a brow at her. “Really? After you just stole from me in broad daylight, you’re offering a business proposal, of all things?”

The part-entrepreneur, part-pirate nodded at her, grinning and resisting the urge to wring her slender fingers in anticipation. Rarity actually seemed to be considering the offer, much to Applejack's chagrin. “Hmm. You’ve already shown you have rather deft hands, and you are obviously quick of mind if you managed to find a way to slip out from under me so quickly with all those goods in your grasp. Such situational awareness is one of the hallmarks of a shrewd businesspony.”

Rarity put a hoof to her cheek thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose we could discuss it, after we return to Carousel Boutique. Perhaps I can see first hand whether or not you’re just a braggart. Or whether you're, in reality, Ponyville’s next premier business agent, darling!” Rarity returned the alien’s grin with a poker face of her own.

Twilight, a bit surprised by the two’s conversation, looked over behind, to where Dadab and Spike had just finished cleaning up after themselves. “Dadab, care to tell my friends all the fascinating stuff you already told me and Spike?”

The grunt felt a surge of dread go through him. Yet another endless barrage of questions were sure to follow. He shuffled his feet around uncomfortably. Sensing his reluctance, the librarian decided to up the ante. “Please?” Twilight was now giving him a sad puppy-dog look. This alone caused the stocky alien to finally cave.

“Fine, but you owe Dadab for this, boss Twilight.” The unicorn nodded at him gratefully. Recognizing Fluttershy among the group, Dadab brightened back up to his usual cheerful self. He waved at the pegasus. “Hey, it’s the nice lady again! Hi Fluttershy!”

“Hello,” she replied, barely above a whisper.

“Alright Dadab, why don’t you start from the beginning.” Twilight instructed, more than eager to hear about the alien’s culture a second time. Chur'R-Yar felt like groaning. Listening to an Unggoy, of all creatures, droning on about society and culture within the Covenant was definitely not on the pirate’s list of favorite pass times.

Comments

[Deletethis22]

This is a great story please though don't skip Dadabs explanations it be interesting to see how a grunt views the covenant.

[shadowblitz13]

2980600 I agree with you,that would be interesting

maybe it will be in the next chapter

[Dartagnen]

Love the chapter.

[Jonny Bench]

It's funny how in the games, elites are the hardest ones to beat then the hunters. Grunts would be difficult if they didn't run away all the time

[Mr Swanky Hat]

8039139
It's a shame what the covenant did to them, if I'm remembering it right, the grunts invented the needler, considering that the human and elite researchers haven't figured out how it works, that should say something