Armed
Mission Summary—Mission 001
Start Date: 5/12/39 (Earth Calendar)
End Date: 5/17/39
End Reason: Harmonics opened on small island; lack of further landmass to explore terminated the mission.
Employees Inserted: Explorer LINE, CROOKED, Explorer SHOP, PAWN.
Employees Lost: N/A
Mission Discovery Statement: Harmonics opened on a small, deserted island. Exploration in the following days confirmed uninhabited status and world is close to Earth/Equestrian living standards. Minimal terraforming would be required to make this island livable.
Evaluation: Mission Successful. World is viable for further development. (Note: Due to nature of opening, uninhabited status cannot be confirmed. Follow-up drones recommended.
EDIT: We don’t have the licensing for drones yet. The US is being very stingy with those, for some reason. It’ll have to wait.
Summary: Well, the first mission went pretty well, all things considered. The Harmonics equipment performed flawlessly. The employees, however, didn’t. They spent entirely too much time doing things that weren’t conducive to the mission and lost a few days of time as a result. One suffered a minor injury from jumping into a nest of carnivorous plants. Like a high dive. I don’t know what he was thinking.
My first impression of them wasn’t good, and this mission just confirmed how little work ethic and propriety they have. I wish Printing Press had kicked their unsavory flanks out the doors when she saw them walk in—but I’m supposed to be objective, so I’ll cease ragging on the ruffians.
I’m also pretty sure they pocketed some of the plants and rocks there to sell for themselves later. What are the rules regarding taking things from new worlds, anyway? Is that thievery? Exploitation rights are going to be something the courts will have to decide pretty quickly. Is it like a national park? Private land? Public land?—but I digress.
But the island is very nice. I expect it to be the site of a small resort when we sell the rights to it. Should pull in a hefty chunk of bits; it’s really quite a beautiful and harmless island, minus the carnivorous plants. (We’ll have to root those out before the rights are sold.) The detailed reports and some of the footage are being forwarded to several governments, who’ve expressed interest in funding through our Mr. Smith. It’s a probable thing we’ll get some nice bits from a few of the governments.
EDIT: The response has really been overwhelming. The amount of money they’ve poured into the company—it defies imagination. I suppose that we’re the only private company with the equipment right now, though, so they really don’t have any more options besides the United States government. Which is probably not going to let other governments use their classified, current-gen Harmonics and Ascent.
Compiled: TURNER, TIME
-----
Trixie wasted no time after remembering how to make her diaphragm move. With a flash, she winked in front of Turner, shoving him roughly to the ground. “You think this is funny?” she snarled, horn sparking and one hoof raised high.
Turner’s eyes widened. “No, no no no, no,” he panicked. “Don’t, whatever you do, don’t try to punch me.”
“Really?” Trixie grinned evilly.
Anticipating her response, Turner dove out of the way awkwardly just as she tensed her hoof—
And a bright red blast blew her backwards, melted a chunk out of the floor, and threw a cloud of dust into the air.
Turner’s voice emerged from the haze. “Please, no objections until the presentation is finished!” he screeched. “You nearly took my head off because you weren’t courteous enough to wait patiently for me to finish the lecture!”
Trixie stared at her hoof, where a small, bluish patch shone, out of place with the rest of her coloring. “What?”
Blueblood was staring, fascinated. “I can’t believe it. You managed to perfect that?” He surged to his feet, grinning maniacally. “I spent six months trying to make something like that! I knew it was possible!”
Wincing as a kink in his back made itself known, he stood on the tips of his hooves as he stretched. Stitch just sighed as Blueblood, too, flew backwards, but without the accompanying explosion.
“What—“ he started, freezing as he noticed the cause of his short flight.
Twin lengths of metal protruded from the bottoms of his front hooves, glinting in the light. They looked dangerously sharp.
Turner slapped himself with a hoof. “Well, at least you didn’t start spewing slugs everywhere,” he muttered, before hitting the slide change button.
“As I was about to say, I was laughing because once you get over your indignation and anger, you’ll realize something.” He pointed at each of them. “Effectively, I’ve made you real-life comic-book superheroes. Super strength, super reflexes, incredible toughness. In addition, we’ve got a neural computer added, which can teach you the basics of things like martial arts and fighting. How awesome is that?” he beamed.
“And that’s not even counting the doozies. Because we wanted to be prepared—“ Turner searched for his pointer, only to find it blown in half. He muttered, “Pity, I liked that extendable stick. Good for poking things,” and continued, “—for any contingency, we’ve also armed you with some means of self-defense.” He paused. “Now that I think of it, we’ve probably rather over-armed you.
“First is the augmentation which the illustrious prince discovered.” He pointed to a piece of steel on the presentation. “This, here, is an extendable titanium alloy blade and sheath within your hooves and lower legs. It doesn’t impede flexibility in any way, as it’s designed to be very giving and flexible, but is sharpened to an edge only molecules thick. It can cut through anything short of stone or steel with ease, but be careful as it can bend—price of making it internal. It activates by stretching your hoof outwards, like during a yawn or stretch.” He smiled. “There’s one in both forehooves.
“Second is the one you haven’t seen yet.” He switched the slide, to a strange-looking contraption, much like a cannon. “Also included is a small gun—which can manufacture its own bullets and even tranquilizer darts! This can only be activated with the combination of the third augmentation, but effectively uses whatever you eat to manufacture into bullets and propellant, which it can then shoot. It holds an internal clip of 16 bullets and can manufacture a new one every five seconds as long as it has the ingredients. Now, be very, very careful with this—it’s the one with the most safety features built in because it’s easily the most dangerous. Again, there’s one on both front hooves.”
“The final weapon is the one which Mrs.—“ he stopped. “I’m sorry, I’ve never asked your name. I’m afraid I don’t recognize you.”
Trixie grumbled as she got to her hooves—gingerly, “Trixie is not surprised.” She rose up on her hooves. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is the name!”
“Right, Trixie,” he said. “She discovered this last one. It’s a combo—the pairing of the neural computer I mentioned and a coherent light focusing device.” Blueblood nodded as his guess was confirmed, but Trixie’s snout scrunched in confusion. Seeing this, Turner frowned. “A laser.”
“Oh!” Trixie nodded sagely, not fooling either of the scientists in the room.
“So, with the built in power supply—one of the things that can never be removed, by the way; too dangerous once it’s started up—feeding it, this laser can do one of two things—it can focus as a targeting laser to aim for the gun, making it very accurate, or it can emit a strong pulse of short-ranged less-coherent light, which as you’ve seen, can melt steel at short distances. It spreads fast, though—worthless beyond four or five yards.” He tapped an eye. “The computer will feed aiming info right to your eyes—point and shoot. Nothing simpler. Quite nice, really—I expect this will be standard Guard issue in, oh, a decade.”
Trixie and Blueblood were very carefully not moving their legs now, afraid to accidentally shoot, knife, or melt something.
Stitch sighed. “Relax, they’re not that sensitive— they turn off if you’re asleep, and can be shut off while you’re awake if you want. And, once you go to sleep for the first time after the procedures, the neural comp will dump things into your long-term memory centers. You’ll wake up knowing how to use the things.”
Doctor Turner said, “So, the reason you have all of this is because your job is to explore. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll need most of that, but the multiverse is a really big place, and who knows what’s out there? It’s just insurance, after the last pair didn’t come back.”
“Didn’t come back?” Blueblood demanded. “They died?”
Roseluck, who’d been standing unobtrusively in the back throughout, threw the projector remote with impeccable aim at Turner, smacking him in the head. “Ow.” He rubbed the impact zone. “I probably deserved that.” Returning to the question, he responded, “We don’t know. They just stopped transmitting. But you’ll be fine!” he assured. “They only had the basic comms pack—and they were hooligans, anyway.” He scowled darkly. “They probably found some local mares—or the equivalent— and ran off after disabling their equipment—pieces of work that the two were. They’re the reason we’re spending so much on you.” He grinned. “Well, that and the fact we’ve now got grants from the five most powerful governments in the combined worlds to do this, as the data is invaluable to them. Which is why we have a couple billion dollars to throw around. Otherwise, you’d be flat out of luck—and we’d be flat out of cash.”
He called to Roseluck, completely going off-topic, “Why’d you say no volunteers rejected, anyway? Couldn’t we at least do a screening? I hated those two.”
Roseluck yelled back, “Because no one would accept after being screened by you or Split, and I’m too busy to do much of that! You’re both jerks; everyone would flee screaming from your interviews and then we’d get bad publicity.”
“Ah.” Turner seemed cowed. “Well, then.” He smiled fondly at her. “This is why I love you, you know; I’m so utterly clueless about that kind of thing.”
His mushy statement was rewarded with a shoe to the head, knocking him to the ground for the second time today. A second shoe followed him down.
Blueblood shook his head. Great-Aunt, he knew, tended to teach lessons the hard way through personal experience (let them learn through their own mistakes and all that rubbish), and her sense of humor was often vicious, but this was far too much. He was stuck here, and he doubted even the Royal Treasury was going to fork over a quarter-million bits just because he had been too stupid to actually read a contract due to him having an imbecilic competition against a stupid showmare.
Trixie covered her face with her hat. This was the most embarrassing situation she’d been in to date. Being humiliated in front of all of Ponyville? Terrible. Returning after going mad from an ancient dark artifact—and still losing and being humiliated? Worse.
But being trapped in a company staffed by madmares and stallions who operated willy-nilly on ponies, because she’d had the misfortune to bump into the one and only Duke of Canterlot, conceited noblestallion and noted failure, and gotten into a misguided battle of pride? It wasn’t like she needed to prove herself to him—at least she’d accomplished something in her life, no matter how poorly the last few years had turned out.
But he? He had done nothing in his life. Absolutely nothing of note besides insulting the very Elements of Harmony (though, hadn’t she? And challenged one to a magical duel? Never mind that argument) and being a complete pain in the flank to anyone who had ever met him. But she couldn’t bear to be offended by him, even if he was the lowest level of civilization and didn’t bear considering. And now she was trapped here, alongside him, and she had a sneaking suspicion that they were going to be partners, if the statements by the mad scientist Turner had any truth to them.
Fate had an interest in Trixie Lulamoon and a cruel sense of humor. That fact was doubly reaffirmed for her.
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Was the report in the beginning about Trixie and Blueblood or the two agents before them?
4642789 the two before. Check the names.
Trixie can teleport? Since when?
What does Blueblood think Trixie had managed to perfect?
What exactly has Trixie accomplished? Does she mean the fact that she has some talent with magic? Because that seems to be pretty much it.