Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Genre Near-Sightedness

I woke up in my now-familiar cargo-bay sickbed, and I was okay with that. Turning my head to the left, I saw Amethyst dozing next to a new, very round cradle - looked like somepony had finally finished working on my suggestion for a gyroscopic safety cradle, so the pups could be safe during violent maneuvers. My udder wasn't bursting at the seams, so I guessed they weren't going hungry, either. I turned my head to the right, and raised an eyebrow. Three golden-furred forms were lined up on pallets - without my glasses, I couldn't make out too many details, but given recent events, there was little doubt who they were. I was kind of curious where the smallest one had been hiding... but I had something that was rather more urgent to take care of than idle curiosity.

As I walked to the facilities, I discovered my legs weren't far from shaking, and I had to lean against the wall a few times to rest. I really needed to come up with some better way of applying medical magic than the spaghetti method (throwing it against the wall to see what stuck) - if I tried this very often, I really would end up killing myself.

On my way back, I came across Captain Red. She flashed me a quick smile, and said, "If we keep this up, and we're going to need another ship, just to have room for everypony."

"I suppose 'Admiral Missy' doesn't sound any worse than 'Doctor Missy'. When and where are we?"

"You've been out for about a full day - it's about two hours till sunrise. We've turned northeast, and are over the ocean. No sign of uncontrolled storms, but I'm a little nervous one will catch us in the open, so I'm taking us at full throttle."

"I think I can help with that - my Element necklace seems to show where the major cloud systems are, across the world."

"That would be a big help... I just don't trust wild weather."

"I suppose I'm a little wary of anypony with the power to send rain where they want it." We grinned a little at each other - we'd had enough casual conversations to have gone over this topic more than once. "Anyway, I'm just going to grab a quick bite and lie back down. Unless you need me for something?"

"Nah, nobody's about to die, and we can handle just about everything else. You just work on getting back to where you could beat a filly in a fair fight."

"Remind me never to wander around without all my tricks for keeping fights unfair, anymore."

---

I woke up again near noon. I went for the goggles instead of my glasses, since I planned on heading over to the side-tunnel observation deck for a while, which would likely have some good cross-breezes at full throttle. I also threw on the torc - maybe it was solar-powered and just needed a good recharge - but left the boots behind.

I went to the kitchen to grab a pair of saddlebags full of grub to refuel with, and Amethyst was there, doing her cook thing. Today, she had some help; seeing the trio running around at her direction, my mind instantly dubbed them 'Moe', 'Larry', and 'Curly'. Since that didn't seem very respectful after nearly killing them and then saving them, I asked her, "By the way, what are they called?"

"You. Alpha. You. Decide."

That was... a somewhat depressing look into Diamond Dog culture. Though from the state the trio had been in even before the fight, I could understand why they'd be willing to trade up to an Alpha who could, and would, take better care of them. I pointed at the tall one, who I'd gored, and proclaimed, "Athos." The wide one who'd had the head injury was dubbed, "Porthos", and the small one who'd hid, "Aramis." Red had mentioned dignity; and, hopefully, Musketeers would be a better inspiration for them to reach for than Stooges.

---

I spent some time watching the ocean horizon - the only really straight line found in nature - and thinking about what had gone on the other day... and what had been going on for the last three months, give or take a few weeks of petrification.

For example... I still hadn't managed to solve the riddle of magic. I was treating it as a sort of fluid, which could be stored, moved, and put to work in various ways. But that barely let me make any predictions at all about what it could or couldn't do. I was in much the same state as the physicists who, studying heat, hypothesized a 'caloric' fluid, which hot objects had a lot of. This let them make some basic predictions, such as rate of transfer of caloric from one object to another... but it wasn't until a century or two later that somebody finally realized that a completely unrelated branch of physics, that of kinetic motion, was what actually underlay all those fluidy properties. It was only then, when the true, fundamental nature of heat was understood, that scientists could solve problems that had previously not even been thought of - from the hottest depths of the stars to creating states below the temperature of absolute zero.

That wasn't the first time such a unification had occurred. Once, people didn't know why a living hand could move, but one sculpted out of clay couldn't; so they hypothesized an élan vital which living things had and unliving ones didn't - but that was even worse than the 'caloric' theory, as it didn't let them make any new predictions at all... and had been completely blown out of the water when somebody went and created an organic chemical out of inorganic ones. Phlogiston, the luminiferous ether, epicycles and crystal spheres - all were ways of looking at reality which had been tossed aside for better ones, more fundamental ones, ones that gave truer understanding.

I felt like a pre-Darwinian biologist, taking the time to collect samples of various fauna, but without knowing how they were truly related to each other.

Why should magic respond to words in Latin, but not Greek? How did this mysterious force manage to accomplish so many different things, from creating light to traveling through time to healing injuries? Was Latin-gem magic really the same as whatever caused spontaneous musicalism? What else could it do - and at least as important, what couldn't it do? Did it work on Earth as well as on Equis?

I knew so little about magic, that I didn't even have any good ideas about how to collect data that could, even in principle, answer all those questions. I wasn't even sure which overall field I should be looking in. Maybe I'd need to build a linear accelerator to smash together some subatomic particles. Maybe it was tied into the still-unsolved mystery of how consciousness actually worked. Maybe I needed to improve my math skills so I could notice an unusual statistical pattern. Maybe somebody already knew, and I just had to find them and know to ask the right questions.

That latter thought... niggled at me for a bit. Did I already know somebody who might know the answers? Luna? Terra? Athena? That floaty goth chick? One of the other chess pieces? None of them seemed to be interested in quite the right method of investigation; as far as I knew, the only person on Equis who even had a rough idea of Solomonoff's Lightsaber was myself - so if anyone was going to find the answer, it was probably going to be me.

And then I had a forehead-slap moment, which is always a pain when you've got hooves. "Oh, yeah," I thought to myself. "I've sent messages into the past. So if I ever do figure this out - then I might be able to save myself some time and send me the answer early. Of course, that depends on that time-travel spell, which is currently locked up in Canterlot. So if I want to take that as a short-cut, either I need to come up with some way to deal with my mysterious enemy so that I can set up a nice, long, uninterrupted relay so my future self can send me a message... or I need to find a different method of time travel, with different limitations. Either way - it comes back to playing Daring Do, looking for stones other ponies wouldn't have even thought to look underneath. And continuing my general research and poking around with the local version of physics, looking for tricks other ponies would have missed. And improving the local research community. So... I guess my existing plans really were good enough to help me work on this problem, too."

Of course, it wouldn't hurt if I was able to think up any other shortcuts, either.

---

"What's that?" Moe - I mean, Athos - pointed at the top of the ship's mast. I was trying to shoot the breeze a bit with him, both to try to understand him better and to help him get more used to me and my ways of doing things.

I held my hoof over my eyes to shade them. "The flag of Equestria. It shows whose laws are in effect aboard this ship - and whose military will be annoyed if we're attacked, and can get word back."

"What's that one?" He pointed at a lower flag; pink, with a curving black line that formed the bottom half of a semicircle, with four vertical strokes beneath it.

"It's the symbol I whipped up for the Dairy, a semi-secret organization I created to help me do things I couldn't do by myself."

"So... it's the symbol for you?"

I shook my head. "No - I created it, but it can keep on doing important things even without me running it."

"So... what is the symbol for you?"

"I never really got around to designing one. In Equestria, that would be either a business logo, or a coat of arms; and either of those would need me to be in the public eye. I prefer to do my work without being noticed."

He seemed agitated. "If your Dairy has a symbol, you should not be without yours! You made them, you should not be less than them!"

"Hm." I didn't really agree with his reasoning - but if it helped keep him calm and happy, would it hurt to come up with something? "Let's see - since I'm the Bearer of the Element of Hope, it would be nice if it had some connection to that. The anchor is an old symbol for that - and we just happen to have one handy - but it's also tied into a particular religion's precepts, and that could lead to awkward misunderstandings and complications. DC's Blue Lanterns have that bird-based thing, and I kind of like their general approach, but it would be a bit too revealing about my origins to anyone else who knew about them, and it's a bit complicated for an abstract bunch of lines. I'm a Doctor - and after the other night, I guess in fact as well as title - so the Rod of Asclepius might be a good start. That's a snake wrapped around a stick. But it's also pretty generic for any healer. I once mentioned that I'm the seventh element, like Nitrogen... if I remember right, Dalton's original symbol for that was a circle with a vertical line through it. ... Hm... maybe combine the two - keep the stick, but adjust the snake so instead of twining around it, it makes a simple circle - maybe grabbing its tail in its mouth, like Oroborus, which is sometimes used as a symbol for eternity - or immortality. Drawn like that, it would also look like the Greek letter Phi, which is the symbol for the Golden Ratio, one of my favorite numbers. And with the European pronunciation, 'fee', that letter matches up with one of my favorite spells, 'fiat lux'. It could also look like the numbers one and zero superimposed, and binary is another idea I think is important. I guess that's got enough appropriate symbolism to work - and it's simple enough that if I ever needed to spruce it up, I could throw on a pair of wings to each side, or the planet Equis behind it, or something."

Athos was bouncing on his hindlegs, almost jumping up and down in excitement. "You will be making a flag and placing it highest?"

"Er - no; I don't feel like claiming to be a sovereign individual just now. I'm not sure I even want to fly a personal flag - Equestrian nobles can be tetchy if they think someone is infringing on their privileges. I'd be pushing it even if I just made some tabards to throw over everypony's armor."

"What is 'tabard'?"

"It's a sleeveless coat, worn over everything else, with the wearer's symbol prominent on it, originally for easy identification in a battle, more recently mostly to show off. It's a bit awkward - I wouldn't recommend wearing one all the time. Superman had a better idea - skintight bodysuit with his logo on the chest, and another on his cape. Even better, at least for everyday wear, would be something based on Starfleet - instead of a splashy, big logo, a neat pin on the left side of the chest."

He asked a few more questions about clothes, and then pointed at one of the two big capstans, asked "What's that?", and I talked about manual controls for when part of the ship's magical power system failed, and on we went.

---

Later that evening, while I was reading in bed... I'd been hearing rumors passing through the ship's grapevine that Athos was being a busy little doggy, putting himself almost a week in debt for ship's points for some favors from other crewponies. But I still tried to act surprised when, nervously, he came up to me at my table, holding a bundle, accompanied by his two companions, carrying similar piles of cloth.

Athos's offering was a blue, skin-tight bodysuit, with a surprisingly well-executed snake-and-stick Phi symbol on the chest, and a cut-out for my udder. I carefully pulled it on, and suppressed a giggle as I thought about Power Girl's costume. After a moment of thought, I pulled out one of my belts with pouches of useful gimmicks, and strapped it on.

It was at that moment that the torc spontaneously decided to activate itself - at least partially. In moments, from my neck extended a blue-black cape, which ruffled and fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

I looked at myself in a hand-mirror, and stated, "This costume is gaudy, flashy, impractical, and shows off every curve of my body. I love it. But I think I'll save it for formal occasions, when I need to make a real fashion statement."

Porthos's offering was based more on my walking-around ranger-scout outfit - I guessed that whoever they'd gotten to do the tailoring, had been rummaging through my clothes trunk. But I didn't especially mind. It was mostly black, with blue shoulders and highlights, and a stick-and-snake broach. Once it was on, I rolled my shoulders a few times, and stretched my limbs. "I could get used to this," I admitted. "It's nice and warm - and we're heading to a land that's supposed to be rather cold."

Aramis's bundle wasn't a costume for me; it was a set of phi-shaped pins for the diamond dogs' own collars, and some blue shirts - one design for bipeds, another for quadrupeds - with the phi symbol on the left breast. "Uniforms," he almost squeaked. "For every... pony... else."

"I don't know how you put those together so fast - but I'm impressed. I'm not going to make wearing them mandatory for daily use - there are too many ways for that to go wrong - but I will allow anypony who wants to wear them, to do so. And if we ever come to a situation where we want to impress somepony with how our crew looks - well, now we can. Thank you, all of you."

Like children whose art made it onto the refrigerator, they beamed. They were obviously trying to fit in with their new group - a group that had to be far different than anything they'd lived with so far - and all I had to do to make them happy was to accept it.

Of course, I was going to double-check to see if the torc had a quick-release function, or some sort of equivalent, to make sure that I wouldn't be killed if it got caught in a jet engine or revolving door or the like. After all, narrative causality could work against me just as easily as it could work for me, and I had no intention of dying ironically just to prove a point about post-modernist deconstruction of classic comic-book superhero tropes.

On the other hoof, I could think of at least one other use for the super-suit - to completely confuse and befuddle anyone in Equis who knew about Earthly comic book superheroes. I hadn't come across any chess pieces who needed to be dealt with, but it was nice to have one more tactic to throw at them, if that ever came about. I supposed it would be even more impressive if I actually could fly... hm, what was the Latin for 'to fly'? There was that Italian song I'd once heard Sam sing in Quantum Leap - ah, yes, 'Volare'.

... if that actually worked, I was going to have to eat my hat.

---

Fortunately, to a cow, straw hats turned out to be reasonably tasty.

Comments

[Nathan Traveler]

LOOK, UP IN THE SKY! IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE! IT'S!!!!

SUUUUUPER COW!

Sorry, just had to say that. I also love the Musketeers reference, very nice.

[Forevermore]

Ha, loved the Watchmen reference. Also I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the whole "Supercow" shenanigans was a reference to Cow & Chicken? Because I can totally see a Chess Piece pointing that out if she actually goes through with it

[TheEnemyCube]

Oh god. That ending line. Can't breath!

[nemryn]

1202741
It's also an Incredibles reference!

[Umbrella_merc]

Supercow! Al rescate!

[strangephantasm]

1203395

Oh god damn you beat me to it!

[RealityDowngrade]

1202719 1203395
thecrypts.org/images/cartoon/Cow_Chicken5.png

[ObsidianOrangutan]

So minions, and a costume, and super powers...

[AppleTank]

Number 1 cause of death by cape wearing heroes: Jet Engines.
20% of all statistics are made up.

[DataPacRat]

Author's Note: Visiting a hospitalized relative. Chapters likely to be delayed.

[Themaskedferret]

Loving the plethora of references here.

[scranity]

PRESENTING MISSY, THE FLYING COW IN SPANDEX!