Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-104-

“Oh goddess damn it all!” Gilda roared from her position atop her EGGS unit, this was as she backed away from a sparking panel that started spewing some smoke. The last eight hours of sleep really hadn’t helped much in her opinion, Shining Jewel had been damaged while they were away and repairing the centaur-pede wasn’t as immediate a concern as fixing the hull of the ship they live on. She was full on grumpy at the moment at having to fix everything, but she secretly loved her work and the smell of elbow grease. “I’m always cleaning up my own messes and everyone else’s on top of that!”

“Which goddess? I really like Celestia, she’s quite friendly for someone who controls our systems sun and even continues to make life possible on our planet.” Greta was having less problem as her EGGS unit wasn’t damaged by the three pirate attacks while they were gone. It was kind of a bad thing that they weren’t here for those attacks, but things are going pretty well for them all things considered. They still had a ship to come back to after all, it just needed some repairs. “Also if you didn’t want to fix your EGGS unit, then you shouldn’t have landed it upside down.”

“Hey, be glad it wasn’t damaged any worse. I’ve been spent a lot of time in the Bombing Peregrine during those attacks fixing what I could between them with the help of our drones. I certainly made sure anyone who boarded our ship immediately regretted it.” It made Lightning glad she knew how to pilot the Bombing Peregrine solo, mind you not having someone manually work the turret made it less effective then it could be. Lightning was lucky she had been sleeping in the tank during the second and the third attacks after the first one. With her immediately ready to drive the tank into wrecking any incoming jackass that thought they could take the Shining Jewel, the ship was pretty safe with Lightning and Sassy on the top of their game. They had garnered quite a bit of scrap from several pirate wreckages that would go into repairing the damage that had been dealt to the Shining Jewel. “I’d apologize for the mess, but then again everything is in need of some repair and I’m not a mechanic or even close to being one. Without Opal we probably would have been blown out of orbit, she got pretty quiet during the second attack but she still fought back with a ferocity that made sure the supply depot was safe. Plus we were assisted pretty well during the third attack. In full, sorry, not sorry.”

“Now that’s a mare after my own heart, a jerk with gumption! Speaking of repair work, what exactly can you do to help aside from just sitting around on your ass watching us fix things? Greta, pass the wire cutters and some tubing.” Gilda was elbow deep in wires at the moment and she turned to Greta and took the offered cutters before diving back into the mess. “Your only skill can’t be to drive a tank or pilot a fighter once I get around to building you one to work with. Aside from Chrysalis, it’d make you the laziest person on this crew that actually knows she can be doing at least something with all her spare time. Who knows what Chrysalis gets up to anyway, but it’s certainly none of my business as long as she doesn’t infest the ship with Changeling eggs and starts somehow planting parasites in our bodies.”

“Hey, I’m not that lazy! Well not as lazy as many other Pegasi would be anyway. I’m getting plenty of exercise to get back into shape, I even did some repair work on my own fighter when I still had the rights to it in the Equestrian Military and I’ve been helping out around here where I can.” Now that she actually said it out loud, Lightning Dust looked like she was currently being lazy and lackadaisical by laying around. She hasn’t really found a hobby other than exercising, but the last day or so have actually been pretty tiring for her and it shows she has a place in the crew. Chrysalis was a bit odd and even she was trying to figure out what the crazy Changeling got up to when she wasn’t watching over Babs or being a nuisance. “Why is it that I was the only one that was around who could pilot the Caravel Boutique?”

“Yeah, there’s something we have to bring up with the Boss Lady. I mean the whole crew getting a zero gravity crash course helped and Mr. Cumin seems to be really good at performing zero G movement, but we need to train everyone to know how to do other things. Things like knowing how to pilot our designated cargo ship for one.” Greta was fixing one of the arms on the opposite side of the pilotable repair pod, she almost had it finished and it actually kind of helped that the EGGS unit was upside down. “I don’t think Sassy would ever work as a pilot, but she’s definitely the head of our security on top of being a clothing designer and manager. Speaking of, I’m not sure if Rarity knows how to be a leader, she seems to be mostly flying by the seat of her flanks on whatever it is we’re doing.”

“What’s wrong with that? I think she’s doing a great job, as in she’s not trying to absolutely manage every single little thing we do and she trusts us to do a good job. You know as well as I do that I don’t half ass maintenance work Greta, we’ve certainly got a long road ahead of us on that front!” Yeah, because Gilda had her work cut out for her with having to repair the Centaur-pede, Shining Jewel, Bombing Peregrine and this EGGS unit in particular. None of those things were beyond saving in Gilda’s eyes. The Caravel Boutique had taken very little to no damage at all because it had been safely ensconced in section four of the hangar. “As for Goddesses, I can definitely get behind Luna. She seems to know how to get her hooves bloody without being prissy about it. Sure our boss is a bit prissy like that, but she doesn’t back down from a fight that needs to happen. Lightning make yourself useful and get us some snacks, we’re going to be at this for the next week or so and it’s not exactly a two griffon job even if we’re making it one. We need to make use of all the time we have before the next big disaster. Otherwise we’ll definitely find more work for you eventually and you’re not just going to be sitting there on your ass watching us like this, because what would we exactly be paying you for again?”

“Hey, I helped defend this ship! If I knew more about engineering, then maybe I’d be a little more useful.” After a small bout of anger Lightning became a little bit pensive. “Will our Boss Lady still pay me?”

“The Boss Lady at least always delivers on that front, but if you really want to make yourself useful then maybe you could get some of the people here interested in learning how to actually pilot a ship. Ember’s ship is currently available since she isn’t going to be using it for a long time if she ever recovers and we don’t exactly have any real pilots aside from you.” It was the truth, there wasn’t any other traditionally trained pilots in the crew as far as Gilda could tell and Lightning was the only one that had that particular skill set. Opal was the one that actually does the piloting for Rarity, which meant that they had a problem if something really bad ever happened to the kitten. Something like what might be currently going on as she hadn’t heard a single peep from Kitten yet. "Like you’d really be much help here otherwise.”

“At least I can fix a fighter that is moderately damaged. I’ve done that kind of work before when I was still flying in the EDF for the Wonder Bolts, but the stuff you guys make is far more complicated than that. Aside from that I think I will teach piloting lessons, just so I can keep from being called out on being paid for just sitting around like a foal that gets an allowance.” Lightning spread her wings and took off for the elevator being a little bit huffy about being called out on her lack of ability to help, she specialized in settling conflicts as a pilot and these people knew how to end a conflict without her help. At least she could pilot the Caravel Boutique and Ember’s Pyrrhic Victory, these people didn’t have that capability without an AI doing it for them.

“You know Gilda, something has recently occurred to me aside from the fact that Lightning has a good point.” There Greta went thinking again, she was alone with her most favorite person in the universe and she couldn’t help but wonder about something that had been nibbling at the back of her head. “Back in the facility, how did you make it so that the walker you stole didn’t explode as bad as it could have? I mean, it should have taken out at least a quarter of the room by the minimal estimates when it went up.”

“Oh that? Wasn’t hard to rig up, especially not after I figured out how to overclock the thing and boosting the machine without it tearing it apart was a little bit more difficult in comparison. I basically did what anyone would when sitting on a reactor that could have wipe out three fourths the room it was occupying during the fight.” With those words Gilda confirmed that the explosion she set off to damage the Hazard Spider’s armor could have indeed killed her and everyone else in the room, the four legged walker menace she was fighting would have survived that explosion as well. She didn’t bring that up and wasn’t about to do so. “I created a shaped charge, which directed the energy at the armor on the bigger machine. Didn’t do a single lick of good since it was still combat viable after the explosion of raw energy. My backup plan was to use the freezing chemicals and that worked spectacularly, the heavy armor couldn’t handle being frozen after being hit with all heat from a recent explosion. Made it rather brittle to small arms fire.”

“That’s… actually really genius of you Gilda, you turned the ability to overclock the walker one time into an energy emitter where it sunk it’s energy into the other walker like what I did with the Centaur-pede’s first set of legs.” There were times when Greta was quite mystified by her best friend’s sexy brain, this was one of them. It kind of reaffirms her need to chase Gilda wherever she went and hopefully one day get some return on her feelings for the brilliant hen. “How exactly did you know when to bug out though?”

“So I may have gotten the idea from you, just a bit. As for knowing when to get out I just simply guessed and I got away with minimal injuries, I still had to wait until I drained the other walker’s material ammo. Those cannons would have definitely mulched me with the rate of fire alone.” Okay now that was more like Gilda, it just wouldn’t be the same if she didn’t do something at least a little bit reckless to endanger herself and get Greta riled up with worry. “Now getting out of the facility was the true hassle and a half, especially while having to worry about extracting the Boss Lady and the ripped up dragon formerly known as Ember. That dragon barely survived taking a direct hit from a clean beam cannon that gave off extremely lethal levels of heat and force. The heat wasn’t the problem for Ember, it was the raw pressure of the blow and continually being worn down after it as if she was being rubbed by the universe largest piece of sand paper. Heck, she shouldn’t even be alive with what she was hit with!”

“I know that her chances of waking up within the next few months are kind of slim, but I’m happy that she has at least a chance.” At least Greta tried to keep a cheerful upper beak in the face of losing someone that had actively wormed her way into the hearts of Rarity’s crew. “I think the Boss Lady would have been devastated to lose a friend like her… it would have devastated the rest of us too. Ember was really nice to me and that’s even with her being a tough as her own nails bounty hunter.”

“Yeah, I think she’s too much of a kick ass person to die so easily. If it had been anyone else in the path of that beam though…” It was always intriguing for Gilda to try and bring down Greta’s perpetually positive attitude, this was one of the times she felt kind of bad for starting a statement. If it had been anyone else they’d have been evaporated upon impact with no hope of recovery.

“Well it’s kind of hard to fight something with that kind of firepower on hoof or claw. The fact that they managed to hold it off as long as they did is a miracle in and of itself, considering they were already dealing with multiple walkers in the first place. Well at least Ember was dealing with the walkers.” Greta shuddered and pulled her welding mask over her face and got Mr. Welder working once more. “I saw what the shield generator on that thing was capable of and it was horrifying, that thing was capable of soaking up an orbital bombardment and destroying a battleship. Can’t imagine something like that is very cheap for anyone to field.”

“Aren’t you the one that loves miracles Greta?” It wasn’t like Gilda was knocking that particular miracle, but she was curious about the specifications of the shield generator. “What were the specifications for the shields on that thing anyway?”

“I didn’t exactly get that information, but from what I saw the shields absorbed a large percentage of whatever hit them.” Greta finished up her weld and pulled out her data pad to show Gilda what she got on it. “I have recordings of it in action at least, it doesn’t matter what kind of weapon you hit those shields with. They absorb almost anything and turn it into energy to perpetuate the shields strength. There was one tiny flaw and that was the shield generator couldn’t be covered by the shield itself or else it would likely cause some sort of violent feedback loop that would create a massive explosion that would have killed everything within three floors of it. So at best, you’d likely have to slowly chip those shields down to nothing or get someone to get close to that thing to plant explosives on it. Destroying or overloading the shield generator was the best way to do any lasting damage to the rest of the machine at all.”

“How did they deal with the shield generator then? It was down when I went up against that thing.” On a technological scale that was pretty impressive to Gilda, knowing that it was the Humans that had something impressive like that kind of soured the amazement a bit. It was like how most EDF ships were protected against Plurt based heavy weapons. Shaking her head and getting it back to what they were doing, Gilda flapped her wings a few times and was now a sufficient distance away from her EGGS unit. “We need to flip it back over if we’re going to continue working on it, get your EGGS up and running Greta.”

“Just to remind you, you’re not a pilot and your landings are horrible. Anyway back to our discussion, I have some footage that shows Rarity going invisible and she managed to plant an explosive directly on the shield generator. If she hadn’t done that then things would have gone far worse than they actually did.” Winging her way over to her EGGS unit, Greta pondered on when Rarity had exactly learned to do that. Unicorns were amazing beings, though they had a tendency to go mad with power far more frequently than many other races were comfortable with.

There were reasons why the many other intelligent species of Equus didn’t invade Equestria and one of the main ones was because of how often Unicorns became megalomaniacal when put under enough stress. In comparison to the other two main types of Ponies, Unicorns were more likely to become evil than any other Pony type for the most incredibly asinine of reasons. Reasons a Unicorn might go evil would include: leaving the toilet seat up once and only once, forgetting to buy paper towels for your spouse after grocery shopping and then there’s the ever popular a Parasprite ate my pudding so now I have to commit genocide against everyone and everything that isn’t even remotely related to the Parasprite that ate the pudding in the first place. The pudding loving Unicorn had to be put down after burning down half a town, the most surprising thing about that situation was that it was the only stressful thing to ever happen to that Unicorn at all throughout their whole life up to that one point.

It was a clear fact that Unicorns were the most likely to go insane out of all the Pony species, when they did go insane it was never pretty in any way, shape or form. Unicorns can’t even plausibly deny it in the face of years of evidence, including multiple students that Celestia has personally trained. Celestia’s school for gifted Unicorns has every student discreetly psychologically tested for this possibility, which is why Celestia takes on the worst students personally. She even tries to prevent such incidents from occurring by specifically choosing the ones that are most likely to destroy the world over some spilled milk and partially succeeds at containing the most of them.

Greta crawled into her EGGS unit closing the hatch behind her and went over the activation sequence while thinking on how neat it was to have a boss that could turn invisible. There were also the thoughts of how horrifying it was to have a boss that could be watching you at any moment without you knowing.

“So the boss lady has some new tricks, that’ll be useful in the future if she remembers that she can even do that.” Gilda was considering how often unicorns forget they could do things like teleport, it occurred kind of frequently especially when unicorns went crazy. She didn’t think the Boss Lady or any of the other unicorns in the crew were capable of going crazy like that, but she wasn’t about to say it could never happen.

Gilda waited quietly for Greta to flip her EGGS unit over while contemplating that information, at least Earth and Pegasus Ponies were calmer if for two very different reasons. Earth Ponies were down to earth in nature and Pegasus Ponies, while naturally aggressive, were easier to calm down as much as it was hard to get an Earth Pony completely pissed off in the first place. When a unicorn was mad or going insane, then everyone nearby would know it and it would be a very visible and hard to hide spectacle.

-

“Hey, why are you crying Little Snack?” Chrysalis was not known for being empathetic or even sane most of the time, heck she wasn’t even sure if she obfuscating it or not. In this moment however she felt less self-centered as a Changeling Queen and more attentive of the filly she had been corrupting.

“Wha… mo… er… Chrysalis you’re… okay… well mostly anyway.” Babs had been upset to see Chrysalis as badly injured as she had been, currently though she was a little confused to see that the Changeling Queen had reattached her legs and horn. It was as if it was just a minor setback and flesh wounds had little meaning to her.

There were noticeable green glowing seams where Chrysalis’s legs were healing and that same green glow was also around the seam of her broken horn. Normal changelings couldn’t recover from these injuries nearly as well, but she was no normal changeling and she reveled in that knowledge.

“Yeah, can’t use magic until my horn fully reintegrates with my body, but I’m perfectly fine! So stop crying about it.” That and a few bushels of hair wouldn’t hurt, Chrysalis was getting kind of hungry and healing crippling injuries used a lot of energy. “My legs are fine, even if they aren’t fully reattached yet. Look, I can still walk on them just. Let’s go see Cumin, he’s the guy that makes food for everyone else right? You look hungry Little Snack, it’s either that or constipated. You’re emotionally all over the place, but at least I know you’re happy to see me.”

“Okay, I am a bit hungry.” Babs was about to call Chrysalis mommy, which would have been a bad thing to do because Chrysalis wasn’t exactly a perfectly maternal creature. The one positive thing about her is that she didn’t mince words with Babs and told her things upfront and didn’t speak down to her like the child she was. The filly had heard that one of her family was now onboard and was a little wary of meeting them because she really wanted to stay around Chrysalis, especially after the Changeling Queen helped her discover her special talent. She looked to her flank at the pair of scissors there, would she have discovered her talent without Chrysalis? Possibly, thought it might have taken a lot longer to do.

“A bit for your thoughts, you seem to be running away with yourself there Little Snack.” What Chrysalis meant was that Babs was being a highly emotional little filly and it was confusing on a number of levels. There were some emotions that she couldn’t even begin to quantify, but the love she was receiving tasted like strawberries at least. She really didn’t know love could be this sweet or satisfying when it was given freely, it almost tasted as good as acceptance did which was like a potato salad made with mustard and a bit crunchy with some sour pickle in it. “I hope you realize I am still feeding off of you, your kind of making it rather easy for me to do and color me surprised that your still going along with it. Though I do like the taste of hair, you’re pretty easy to feed off of.”

“I’m okay with that.” Babs said clearly and concisely, she was trying not to replace her parents with this creature that could mimic their appearances. It was kind of hard to think of Chrysalis as evil when it was rather obvious and that she very upfront with her own nature, which has been normal for her since signing the treaty to keep the peace between her species and Ponies. Babs really couldn’t find a reason to despise Chrysalis for being so good at it and she could see where other Changelings might be coming from when they have this particular person as their undisputed queen.

Sure the Changeling Queen had corrupted Babs a tiny bit, but that’s because she felt like being corrupted in the first place. What was the word for it? Sure she may be a love eating parasite, but she was a friendly love sucking parasite that could read someone like a book based on emotions alone and she wasn’t very violence or dangerous until something provoked her into acting in that way.

“Which is why I’m so horribly confused about you.” Chrysalis was a pragmatic Changeling Queen or at least liked to think of herself as such. There were things like dressing every Changeling up as a clown after signing a treaty with the Ponies, she had thought Ponies liked clowns and instead caused clowns to be feared for an entire month. Of course the clown thing might have worked if the Changelings weren’t doing the Nightmare Night version of clowns, Chrysalis really could have thought that one through better. There were a lot of things she could have done better in hindsight, but it wasn’t like any of it was a problem at the moment.

Changelings weren’t usually given love freely or on a platter without doing something or being disguised, she almost felt bad for feeding off of Babs even if the filly was completely okay with it. The fact that filly was freely giving her love unconditionally had Chrysalis feeling a bit off about it, it almost felt like a trap or a ruse to get her to lower her guard and it was just a filly. She’s fought a Minotaur with her bare hooves for crying out loud, why is one little filly making her wary?

They continue moving forward in silence, Babs didn’t know what to say to Chrysalis and Chrysalis didn’t know how to respond to Babs odd emotions. One thing for sure, Chrysalis had never been so close to someone of the same sex before and the major problem was that she wasn’t exactly of the right age. Chrysalis would never do something so horrid as to sleep with a filly, not that things were going too well with Sassy. If the filly asked for something like that, she’d have to tell Babs no in as polite a manner as she could feasibly use if it had any sexual connotations whatsoever. She understood sexual connotations well enough in spite of her being a virgin and she knew what lines she would never even be dumb enough to cross in a million years.

“Could you maybe dial back all that affection, it’s kind of creepy coming from a Pony so young and towards me of all people.” It was safe to say that Chrysalis didn’t understand the different levels of love fully, such as the filly loving her like a mother. All Changelings loved Chrysalis unconditionally for the most part, but she couldn’t feed off of them like this. This one filly had a lot of love to spare and then some for her. This weirded her out when she was usually the one busy weirding others out.

“Cousin Babs, is that you? I’m sorry to hear what happened to your… is that a Changeling Queen?” The wariness coming off of Applejack eased the tension between Chrysalis and Babs quickly, Applejack had a reason to be wary as Changelings were usually instantly suspected of many things. Being friendly and helpful were not one of those suspected things. Sure Applejack had heard about the Changeling, but seeing and even meeting it was a different matter entirely.

“She’s a perfectly physically healthy Pony filly and I would like to clarify that it is not my fault that she’s suddenly feeling highly insecure and full of dread about something. I really could have sworn she was fine a second ago…” Rubbing her chin Chrysalis became thoughtful. She was an interesting being when it came to attachments. When she wanted attachment like with Sassy, she tended to ignore the fact that others might want to actually be attached to her like Babs. Babs wasn’t a Changeling which made it weird that she loved Chrysalis so much and Chrysalis didn’t exactly see what she had done to deserve such affection. So the diplomatic approach is what her mind snapped to. “If anything is wrong with her mentally and she suddenly starts getting too focused on butts while making sexual innuendoes constantly, then I most certainly had nothing to do with that and can’t understand why you would blame me for it. Furthermore I did not attempt to mold her into becoming a lesbian at any point by just having her in my presence, so any future sexual leanings are also not my fault and I will deny any claims in a court of law. The claims that I won’t deny are that I’m sexy and my rear end is of a perfectly normal appreciable roundness.”

Babs dreaded being separated from Chrysalis even if it was definitely for her own good to not be around the insane Changeling Queen for too long. Babs also liked living on the Shining Jewel even if it wasn’t exactly the right place for a growing filly. Hopefully Applejack could stop her from latching onto Chrysalis like a leech in an impossibly ironic fashion, since Changelings are usually the ones that are supposed to act like parasites.

Author's Note:

Unicorns go crazy over the slightest thing, magic is like an absolute power and it corrupts absolutely eventually.

Comments

[Razzy]

Shaped charge? Seems a bit far fetched, though I guess if the reactor was heavily armoured and she removed the armour in the front... But she didn't have time for almost any modifications, so dunno. Eh, let's file it under Gilda being awesome (until she has to land anything).

D'awwww, Chryssie is getting attached.

Dammit, Chryssie, your butt is just fine.

'the ship they live on' - they lived on

'having less problem as her' - less of a problem

'but things are going pretty' - were

'I’ve been spent a lot' - spending

'where it sunk it’s energy into' - its

'It kind of reaffirms her need' - reaffirmed

'perpetuate the shields strength' - shield's

'even sure if she obfuscating it or not' - if she was obfuscating

'thing about her is that she' - was

'feeding off of you, your kind of making it' - you're

'obvious and that she very upfront' - and she was very

'she wasn’t very violence or dangerous until' - violent

'They continue moving' - continued