Troubleshooters: Tia and Twily

by ultra1437

Bold

Captain Twilight Sparkle stood in the bridge of her ship, the REN Celestia. Technically, their ship. She shared it with her marefriend, Celestia, who was residing in the newly-dubbed ‘Alicorn Supercharger’ waiting to give it a jumpstart.

The helmsmare sat at her console, looking over her panels. Twilight sat at her own console and looked it over. A gentle humming floated through the room as she watched some of the readouts. Seeing the one she’d waited for start rising she stated, “Reactors powering up. Helm, you should be getting power to the engines now.”

“Confirmed, Captain. I’ve got power.” The pegasus helmsmare called out, strapped into her piloting harness.

“Shield emitter arrays charging.” Her left ear flicked to focus on a stallion at another console as he called out.

“Thaumatronic communications online and fully functional.” A minotaur engineer called out, catching her other ear.

“Great!” Twilight pressed a button on her console before speaking. “Hey Celly, how’s the chamber look?”

“Teleportation matrices and Supercharger capacitor banks ready but uncharged.” Celestia’s voice rang through the bridge.

She quickly replied, “Excellent. Check your readout and charge the banks to around thirty percent, please. We’re launching shortly and I want to test out the teleport matrices before we need them.”

Celestia’s voice called back, “Roger that. Celestia out.”

Glancing about the room, the ponies in front of her all confirmed their consoles checked out ready. She pressed another button on her console, addressing the entire ship. “All hooves, prepare for launch! Repeat, prepare for launch!”

The gentle hum sharply grew into a whine as the reactors worked their way to capacity.

Twilight opened a comm channel with the dockmaster’s tower. “Canterlot Tower, this is Captain Twilight Sparkle of the REN Celestia, requesting permission to undock for a test of our teleporter.”

“REN Celestia, this is Canterlot Tower, you are cleared to undock. Have a pleasant trip.”

Twilight chuckled. “We’ll try to, Tower, REN Celestia out.”

“Helm, you copy that?”

“Affirmative, Captain. How fast do you want to leave?”

“Forty percent power to the engines, Helm. Let’s give Canterlot a good show as we leave.” The ship shook as the docking clamps holding it in place released, letting the Celestia’s engines hold its own weight in the air.

“Roger that.” The pegasus mare spread her wings pushed a lever forward with each wingtip. She leaned back slightly in her harness and the ship did the same as it accelerated slowly, merging into the orbital traffic lanes.

Celestia’s voice calmly called out, “Capacitors charged to thirty percent, Captain. Might I be so bold as to ask for a rousing speech before we break orbit?”

Twilight smiled as she contacted her marefriend. “You always were much better at them than I ever was, I was hoping you’d give one.” This brought a chuckle from the rest of the crew on the bridge.

“I suppose I can give a speech, if you guys really want one.” The chorus of cheers from around her gave her her answer.”

Helm, feeling sneaky, broke free from the traffic lanes and made her way around to Canterlot proper. She had the Celestia circle Canterlot’s mountain as it gained momentum and ascended.

She contacted the entire ship again. “Normally, this would be where I would ask the alicorn residing in our big battery, Celestia - who’s much better at this - to give a speech. She’s flipped the tables and asked me to give one instead, so I’ll do my best.”

Her tone was somber. “We’re not the first ship to go into space. Not by a longshot. By Tartarus, we’re not even in the first one-thousand.”

From the somber ashes, her voice rose. “But what we are is unique. This is the only ship that can literally teleport to wherever it’s needed, strike a sore spot, and retreat to safety again. The Celestia is not, and will never be, a useless ship. If there’s anything that needs to be done, we can do it!”

She asked her crew, bordering on yelling. “Who are we?”

The crew in the bridge responded. “Troubleshooters!”

She yelled back over the intercom. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you!”

Helm took the Celestia to safely pass by Cloudsdale, still accelerating.

The ship shook slightly as the entire crew shouted their answer back, “Troubleshooters!”

Pumped up, she continued. “That’s better! And now, what do we do?”

“Fix problems!” shouted back at her.

Twilight was really in the spirit now. “Who’s gonna stop us?”

“Nopony alive!”

Helm could see Equus’ curvature now, they were so high up. She pushed the engines to full power.

“Where are we going to go?”

“Where can’t we go?”

Celestia’s voice rang through the ship, clearly laughing. “Alright, Captain, I think you’ve motivated them. We don’t want them to yell the ship apart, do we?”

Twilight laughed. “Now, are all of you ready!”

The entire ship screamed at her as it flew out past Luna’s moon.

“Alright! Celestia, prepare to teleport two hundred kilometers straight ahead!”

“Affirmative.” Ten seconds passed before Celestia spoke again. “Ready to teleport, Captain.”

“All hooves brace for teleport.” Everypony on the bridge braced themselves on a part of the Celestia.

Twilight keyed the intercom again. “Hit it.”

The entire ship flashed gold for a split second before lurching slightly to the side as it re-entered reality.

Twilight called out. “Status report, everything green?”

Helm replied first, “Engines idling.”

The call came in from engineering. “Reactors down ten percent power, but still within projected margins and recovering quickly.”

“Comms still green across the board.”

“Shields down, should be back up in fifteen seconds.”

Celestia spoke, “A little woozy from using that much power, but I’m still good down here!” Before her voice cut out, she started laughing heartily. The laugh spread through the crew, considering the teleport a success.

“Crew, we’ve had our first successful teleport!” She announced. ‘Just think, when we get proficient enough, we can do that like it was second nature!’

Helm called out, “Captain, you may find this interesting. Take a look out the window and try to find the moon. Or Equus.”

Twilight did just that, finding a speck resembling a planet in the distance. “Helm, where are we?” She called out.

“My best guess, instead of teleporting us several hundred kilometers, we were teleported several million kilometers.” Twilight returned to her console, checking the reserve banks and verifying they were untouched.

She called up Celestia. “Celestia, how much of your reserve do you have left?”

“Most of it, why?”

“We’ve got a little more testing and tweaking to do with the teleport matrices. It seems they amplify the distance far more than we realized.”

“How so?”

“We’re nowhere near Equus anymore. Helm says we’ve gone about ten thousand times further than we were supposed to go.”

“Ah. I’m guessing you want to go back?”

Twilight tried to keep the stress from her voice. “Yeah, that would be nice. Teleport when you’re ready.”

“Will do, Celestia out.”

She keyed the intercom for the entire ship. “All hooves, brace for teleport. The teleport was a more than a little success. We’re headed home.”

The ship flashed gold, and reappeared near Luna’s moon.

“Helm, bring us home.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

“When we dock, I’ll have to go over the matrices again,” Twilight wondered aloud.

The minotaur engineer spoke up. “Captain, permission to speak freely?”

She looked over to him. “Granted, Star Torus. You should know by now that you don’t need my permission.”

“Then with all due respect, ma’am, don’t touch them,” Torus replied.

“Why is that?” She cocked her head to the side slightly.

He fought off a grin at how adorable she looked, even if she was more than a thousand years his senior. “Ma’am, this is outer space. We won’t need to make short-ranged jumps to be anywhere in the universe. We need the efficiency to be anywhere.”

She nodded in satisfaction. “Fair enough, Torus. We’ll have to have more practice runs like this for Celestia and the teleporter to nail down their distances, though.”

Helm spoke up, cutting off Torus’ reply. “If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. We need the best, and shortening our maximum range won’t do us any good.”

“Agreed.” Torus chimed in.

“If that’s what you really want, then I’ll leave them alone.”

Helm looked to Torus, nodding sharply. “We do.”

---

Celestia hugged Twilight as soon as they were both safely on the docks again.

“Sorry about the bad teleport, love.” Celestia looked away ashamed.

Twilight brought a hoof up, forcing Celestia to look back at her. “It wasn’t your fault. I designed those matrices too well. You’ll just have to put less power into it.”

Twilight nuzzled her. “Besides, we’ll all get better with practice. A few more runs like that, and the Celestia will be good to go for real.”

Releasing Twilight, Celestia stood. Flapping her wings once, she spoke. “Remember what tonight is?”

Twilight stood next to her in an instant. “How could I forget? We have date night once a week!”

“Good. Now, since it’s my turn… try to keep up!” She launched into the air, quickly accelerating.

Chuckling lightly, Twilight took off herself, trying to make up the distance. They flitted about the sky merrily, Twilight chasing Celestia.

Twilight would close the distance one moment and almost brush her body against Celestia, and the next Celestia would take off and flip or spin away, both ponies laughing and giggling like children.

Some other ponies in the area stopped when they noticed the two alicorns flying. Most would move on after a minute or two. For an hour, both alicorns hadn’t moved more than a hundred hooves closer to Canterlot, dancing in the sky with each other.

Twilight changed her tactic. Smirking smugly, she managed to latch onto Celestia’s back, forelegs hugging around Celestia’s barrel. She was careful to keep her wingbeats in sync with Celestia’s. Subconsciously, Celestia’s forelegs wrapped around Twilight’s own, helping hold Twilight against her.

Twilight hugged the larger alicorn, her muzzle peppering kisses along the white neck in front of her. Celestia squeaked at the contact, fading to a small purr as she ‘suffered’ from the attention Twilight lavished on her neck.

A moment later, the kisses ended and both ponies basked in the closeness of holding and being held, whispering sweet nothings to each other. Minutes later, Twilight let go and circled around, nuzzling against Celestia’s cheek.

Celestia whispered, “I know just where we’re going for our date tonight…” Tilting her head, she turned and dove softly. Twilight followed, easily keeping pace.

---

It had been a lovely evening. Getting takeout at the greasiest fast-food restaurant they could find followed by laughing the entire way through a few bad movies wasn’t something they did often, but it was a welcomed and refreshing change to going to any fancy-pants restaurant or a blockbuster theater packed with other stuck-up ponies.

Back in their cloud home, the couple settled down to rest for the night. Luna’s moon shone high in the sky, casting its pale glow through the few windows still open to the cool night air. Twilight held her love gently, a wing draped over the slightly larger mare’s body.

“I love you, Twilight.” The mare in her grip shifted, kissing her gently.

Twilight kissed Celestia back. “I love you too, Tia.”

Comfortable, sleep claimed them easily.

Author's Note:

Written the 24th August, 2014, touched up and expanded 9th July, 2015.

Comments

[Dustchu]

Very nicely done, this was great! :D
Good work on it.

[Cross Lament]

Twilight changed her tactic. Smirking smugly, she managed to latch onto Celestia’s back, forelegs hugging around Celestia’s barrel.

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