Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-122-

“C-clan war? What are you talking about! Also who’s Rarity?” The Jor clan member appeared to be playing dumb to Grahd.

“Well you entered my room, one that partially belongs to a So clan member who has been pulled for minder duty. A duty you are currently interfering with.” Grahd wasn’t about to let the Jor clan member go after everything the three Dik-Diks did upon entering her room, even if they were relatively young. She moved her shock rod up a millimeter while glaring into the smaller Dik-Diks eyes. “Not only that you compromised and destroyed my hearing cybernetics, shot up my desk and innocent beloved chairs. Plus you illegally entered the room of a Planetary Patrol Officer, wearing fake uniforms.”

“Shrike ma’am, you have to believe me, the uniforms aren’t fake! They’re real!” The young Dik-Dik was sweating a bit as the shock rod was quite warm underneath his chin. His dark brown fur and wide blue frightened eyes filled with tears, this had Rarity give the Dik-Diks uniform a once over.

“Does the Triple P have a cadet branch by any chance?” Seeing that was she was being ignored and noticed the male Dik-Dik looked towards her, So’Grahd did the same thing.

“Could you repeat what you just said? As you may have notice these three hooligans shot up my ability to hear and I have to lip and mouth read. Not only do they have a lot to answer for by breaking into the room of an Officer on duty with lethal intent and destroying my property, I am acting as your current minder which is doubly damning given they could be charge twice over for this.” Now that Grahd was looking at her and sending glances to the Dik-Dik being expertly pinned down by Coco, Rarity could actually tell her something.

Chrysalis came over after sealing up the female Dik-Dik taken down by Sassy. She started to spit the burned and scorched flesh with her goo and the male Dik-Dik wiggled, but couldn’t break Coco’s hold and seemed to yelp in pain as Chrysalis patted down the goo on his injuries. So’Grahd pulled her shock rod away from the Dik-Diks throat and he gulped before sighing in slight relief.

“I said does the Triple P have a cadet branch by any chance?” Repeated Rarity with thoughts approaching this being a possible mishap, they didn’t know who she was and yet they came in here gunning for her anyway. She wanted answers as well, but that didn’t mean they had to treat these three Dik-Diks harshly. They were soundly defeated and weren’t going to pose any further problems.

“Ma’am even if they were from the cadet branch, and I highly doubt that, then they couldn’t possibly have access my office. The only way they could have access is if someone higher up gave it to them with the express purpose of killing you by tasking them to do so or they just hacked the door which is encrypted to work only for specific keys which are not a common commodity.” That of course was Grahd’s idea of the given situation as it was presented. Her charges were certainly not safe in this building. She might be currently deaf, but she was not dumb enough to expect a fourth attempt to not involve either high explosives or an attempt to poison Rarity as she seems to be the main target of these events. “Speaking of, since nowhere on the station of Selengrad is currently safe to you Baroness Belle, I sorely and strongly wish you would go back to your ship and conclude any business you have here swiftly.”

“Wait Baroness? Nobody said anything about a pony noble being here!” The male Dik-Dik looked highly confused and if he were a cadet then he was looking to be in for some jail time for this escapade.

“Then allow me to introduce myself, I am Baroness Rarity D. Belle and this is my daughter Opal K. Belle. I believe you shot at us with intent to kill?” Throwing her hoof over her daughters form, Rarity gave the Dik-Dik a slight scowl. “Who did you think you were going to be shooting at? I would like to know why I seem to be target of various assassination attempts.”

“Yes, I’d like to know the answer to that one as well, given you seem to be shooting at someone without an ounce of an idea as to who you were gunning for.” So’Grahd moved the shock rod back under the Dik-Diks chin and he began quivering, there was even a small spot forming on the floor beneath him. Thanks to the two shots Rarity and Chrysalis fired, he wouldn’t be able to run even if he got free. Coco had his front legs firmly pinned behind his back and he didn’t have a weapon on him. “Well aren’t you pathetic, I don’t think you’ve ever been hit by a shock rod if you’re acting like this.”

“It-it-it was… w-w-we were after… a-after…” He was a stuttering crying wreck now, all So’Grahd did to the Dik-Dik was raise a brow.

“Name first, then information if you will. If you can’t focus with an active and fully powered shock rod under your chin, then breathe and speak slowly.” Moving her face into the male DIk-Diks and putting the shock rod a millimeter from hitting the Dik-Dik and scorching some of his fur in the process. “Otherwise I’ll just hit you with it right now and get the information out of you later by using the lower settings on you and I’m not feeling like being particularly pleasant about it. You almost look like a conscript still in training.”

“I-I-I am Jor’Xeru and I am a conscript ma’am! I’m only a few months into the program, please don’t hit me with the shock rod! I’ll talk! I swear I will! Just… give me a moment.” His eyes were dilated and he was breathing roughly as he looked away from Grahd who pulled her shock rod away. Xeru was trying to calm down despite the threat of So’Grahd tagging him with a fully armed shock rod, Grahd deactivated it and still held it at the ready. All it would take is single movement of one of her cloven fingers flicking the switch and it would turn back on in a heartbeat. Xeru started to finally calm down a bit. “Okay, okay… I think I can… guess… what might be going on. Someone ordered us to come here and attack a purple haired Unicorn Pony with three jewels on her flanks, I believe the name we were given for a target is Amethyst Star. We didn’t know that we were being set up, I swear!”

“Likely story, but assume I don’t buy it, what would you say then? I can name at least seventeen visiting Unicorns on file with three gems for a cutie mark in various colors and shapes. Of those, thirteen of them have purple hair and I only know four personally as friends.” Here So’Grahd pointed to Rarity with her right index cloven finger, but she could definitely see something of being a horrible set up in this situation. “One of those Unicorns is in this room and I really doubt that you could make such a mistake as to not confirm who Rarity was before rushing in and shooting wildly like you did. It’s almost like you knew that your target was going to be dangerous from the outset, so you couldn’t take the chance of her retaliating and chose to go straight to lethal. I’m also guessing that there’s not a better description of this Amethyst Star. Correct me if I am wrong.”

“You are not wrong… and I don’t know what I could say at this point…” A wincing Xeru suddenly had wilting ears, this was beginning to look really bad for the poor guy. Coco didn’t let up on him though, she did look to Grahd curiously. “How are you even able to hear me if you are deaf without those cybernetics?”

“Lip, mouth and throat reading. I knew there would be times, like right now, that my cybernetics will be either destroyed or highly compromised. It’s prudent to learn several helpful skills before you need them and not after you absolutely needed them and something really bad happens. So before I decide on what to do with you and your group, I need to verify that this Amethyst Star actually exists.” Grahd pulled out her data pad and started looking up something, she also now had to do a write up of incident three in her time of minding Rarity’s group. “If so then this is a grave case of mistaken identity and would explain the last two attempts on my charges life. Either that or her description was so vaguely given as to make people target my charge exclusively, this is quickly becoming a conspiracy and I don’t like it.”

While Grahd was looking up Amethyst Star, Rarity took out her own data pad to make a call to Trapeze Star. While she didn’t want to assumed, she did want to ask if Trapeze had any family members named Amethyst and Trapeze having strong Unicorn blood might only explain quarter of the things Trapeze could actually do.

Opal started to report what was happening to the Shining Jewel, starting from the second attack to the large disbelief that the last three attempts on her mother’s life were meant for another Unicorn.

-

“Now for my next trick…” Holding top hat out and high in a proud manner, Trapeze’s left ear twitched a bit and then she let go of the hat which didn’t fall to the ground and slowly rotated so that it was floating in the air upright. “Excuse me folks, but I have to take a call. Rover, Bernard, if you will keep the crowd entertained while I’m indisposed?”

Trapeze reached up into the hat with her right hoof and pulled out a data pad that was sounding off. She tapped the data pad with her left hoof and then held it to her right ear. While she did so, she gripped the edge of her floating hat with her left hoof and hauled herself up onto it with a flip and leaned back while crossing her rear legs idly kicking them every now and then.

The crowd was a bit awed at the fact that Trapeze was sitting on a floating hat in mid-air and defying gravity which everyone in the room knew was on, they also knew that it was impossible to fit an anti-gravity generator into something as small as that hat and they didn’t see anything in it and yet she kept pulling stuff out of it including Bernard whenever he disappeared to get some snacks from the bar.

“Hello Trapeze speaking. Oh hey Rarity, what’s up? Yeah, I’m in the middle of a show right now. Don’t worry about it, you’re not interrupting anything important and my friends are always important.” Sitting up more Trapeze placed her left hoof slightly on the side of the hat to keep her balance, she’d get back to her regularly scheduled program if this wasn’t important. “Hm… Do I a Unicorn with purple hair and three gems for a cutie mark? Uh, Rarity, did you get amnesia? If so, how are you making this call if you did? Wait, are you asking me if I have amnesia? Oh no, I might have forgotten how to perform all my acts and I didn’t know I forgot! So how am I even doing what I am right now?”

While Trapeze was occupied with reclining on top of her floating hat and getting a bunch of incredulous stares about sounding perplexed about how she didn’t know what she was currently doing, Bernard and Rover immediately went to work by warming up with their own personal flair.

Bernard moved around the stage and started to build several ramps with his personally owned cards as he had teased Trapeze to much this show and decided to use his own props instead of just nabbing hers. Though Bernard would admit that he had a problem when it came to sniffing every prop Trapeze ever used. They smelled like the mare herself, wonderful.

While Bernard was working on a few cube shape huts and a few more ramps made out of cards, Rovers started to idly juggle while waiting for Bernard to finish setting up.

Bernard and Rover have worked out their own acts without needing Trapeze’s rather unusual and highly mystical assistance. The one they were going to do in particular involved bouncing balls off the card structures Bernard made, without knocking said structures over, they had to catch each throw and return it in as ridiculous a manner as possible. They also couldn’t let any balls past them or drop any of them or let them roll on the ground once they got started.

The card structures can be randomly placed and the two would have to eyeball it when it came to bouncing balls off of them, it was insanely fun and random act. Even though Bernard was not much of a juggler, he could do some juggling in a pinch and had worked hard to make this performance one that even Trapeze was amazed by. It was given green light by Trapeze given it was an act that was low risk and lots of acrobatic exercise for the mare when she tried it. The best part of the act was the whimsy of watching it when it was in full action, because even Trapeze stomped her hooves in amazement for this one.

It all started with a single ball going back and forth, what woke up the crowd was that the ball was being bounced off the squat square huts that Bernard built as if they were trampolines. They would slowly start to complicate things from there. First by rolling the ball up or bouncing it off of the various ramps to change its direction. Slowly there would be two balls going back and forth in a complicated rhythm and then things would really start to take off from there.

“Huh, oh, you mean a different unicorn named… wait I know that name!” Declared Trapeze who ignored the crowds continued gawking as her hat tilted slightly in the air with her body’s movement with her still sitting on it. “In fact it is a name that I would know from anywhere, that is being a name of the knowing that I am acquainted with and am particularly acknowledging as having heard before! So in knowing this name and given that I can identify it…”

“Trapeze!” Rarity’s voice was heard by the crowd. Trapeze cringed and leaned back making the hat go back to floating neutrally above the stage with her on it.

“Yeah, Boss Lady?” Addressed Trapeze calmly after a second, she seemed to take on a comical tone as she talked into her data pad while ignoring the crowd completely. She was getting an earful from Rarity for being silly. “Oh right, getting to the point, yeah you would want me to do that wouldn’t you? Yes I do in fact know her, what do you want to know?”

Behind Trapeze the act was getting more and more complex by the second, there were three balls going and none of the carefully crafted card structures had faltered yet despite how hard the balls looked to be bouncing off of them. Both Rover and Bernard were running left and right as if they were playing tennis, catching and tossing the balls across the various bits of architecture between them. It was redefining juggling on their terms.

“Purple mane, Unicorn and gems for a cutie mark would be accurate to her description, but a few things are missing if you want to fully describe the mare that is... huh… don’t say her name out loud? Well okay then, but… trouble? Do you need my help?” Trapeze would cancel a show if it was of dire importance, this sounded like it was. “Well if you’re sure Boss Lady. While she does have a purple hair, is a Unicorn and has gems for her cutie mark, she looks nothing like you.”

As she continued her conversation the audience didn’t know who to pay more attention to, Trapeze on her floating hat talking to someone on a data pad or Bernard and Rover bouncing balls in increasingly incredible ways.

“Well for starters she’s a cousin. I don’t even know if she knows that we’re related. Pink fur, dark purple eyes and her gem cutie mark is far more distinguishable from yours Boss Lady.” Pausing Trapeze continued to listen to whatever Rarity was saying on the other end. “Job occupation? Accountant, organizer or various other things that involves getting things in order. She kind of has an obsessive compulsive disorder, I think she once mentioned being family with a Ms. Hooves of high repute among couriers and having to clean up after her a lot.”

Now Trapeze was being lazy as she moved to lying on her back, she idly caught a ball that bounced at her in her left hoof without looking. She then tossed it back into the now four way ball bouncing bonanza going on behind her, much to the audience’s shock that she had managed to accurately bounce it back into the juggling war between Mr. Slash and Rover or that she even involved herself in the act at all while she just sat there, still in mid-air, talking on the data pad.

“I don’t think she has a history of any kind of violence. Yeah, we’re doing okay and the show is continuing on even as I’m talking to you. Is there anything else that you need?” Trapeze’s left hoof lashed out and caught one ball and then another, she juggled them with one hoof for a few seconds before sending them careening into the field of battle in an awkward way. She had to keep her boys on their toes after all and adding a twist or two here and there would do that. There were two startled yells of aggravation that Trapeze didn’t pay attention or any mind to at all. “No I don’t think I’ll be any help with that. I guess we’ll see you later then, we might look around a bit ourselves and you should know we can take care of ourselves quite well. We certainly did when you last called and we were in the middle of a bar brawl.”

“What!?” It sounded like Rarity was a little more than surprised to hear Trapeze had been involved in a room wide fist fight, well, up until she put on an opening act to stop everyone from fighting that is.

“Thanks for letting me know you’re okay Boss Lady, we have a few venues planned here so don’t worry about having to cart us back to the ship. We’ll be sticking around the station for a while. Good bye, call again if you need anything else and don’t forget about us okay!” Trapeze reached down and shoved the data pad back into her hat and climbed down so that she was standing on the stage again, she turned to the audience while taking a strong grip on the top hat. “So, where were we again? Ah, yes for my next trick I’ll join those two and make this even more complicated than it already is by performing acrobatic feats while juggling like they are!”

The balls bouncing off the small card based constructs became even more numerous and the ways they bounced became even more ridiculous with Trapeze bouncing balls off other balls thus making it harder for Rover and Bernard to keep their rhythm going. It was still an impressive sight to watch.

-

Things on the Shining Jewel were really quiet for the most part, since Greta finished patching the large hole in their hull with her EGGS unit. Opal had finished just giving the crew information of what has been going on since she last talked to them.

“I have a quick question for you Opal, is there any possibility of getting a copy of that virus you used to mess up the cyborgs invading the ship?” If they ever ran into any more invasive AI’s, it would certainly have been useful for Greta to know that they were capable of dealing with it in a quick and permanent fashion.

“Sorry Aunt Greta, but it was a one shot virus that couldn’t be copied or replicated, any attempt to do so would have made erase itself. The reason why I could still use it is because it went dormant in our systems without an AI or AIs to destroy. The AI would have caused more damage to deal otherwise and the virus would have activated anyway.” If Opal were present, they figured she would be shrugging. “I just cut out the middle mare and hurried the process along by tossing the virus straight into the invading AI’s face. Either I launched the virus early and saved us all some grief or damage to the ship or I let the virus activate on its own time once the AI got into our systems.”

“So we wouldn’t have been able to keep it even if you didn’t throw it in the AI’s face, well okay then. Was there anything you wanted Opal?” It was Greta’s turn to take a break and she was waiting on Gilda to get back from her late lunch, she continued to fuss over the small device on the table before her in hangar section four and was beak deep in tinkering with it. Gilda and Saffron had tested these for a short time and their effectiveness was quite sporadic, but they had test data from direct and grazing hits of varying strengths to work with. She was currently working out the bugs on the ones they had already so that she could get an effective final product to reproduce. Rarity really needed one of them like yesterday it seemed. “I’m already putting personal shields as my highest priority at the moment and I’m working out the various tweaks on what we have already managed to create so far.”

“So are you sure it’s this Amethyst Star Pony the DIk-Dik mentioned and not some misdirection about a conspiracy to kill Rarity? It certainly seems like someone really wants Rarity dead.” Saffron was lounging in the exercise room and so far their bets kind of panned out with the Masseuse kind of winning the pot, but it was hard to remember who exactly Masseuse was so they called it even on everything. Saffron’s idea of lounging was lifting weights. “I mean do we have any reason why it could be Amethyst Star that all these guys are after? What could she have done to earn such ire and does she have a prior criminal record?”

“I’m… not exactly sure, there’s not enough information to say one way or another if Trapeze Star's cousin is responsible for all of this or if this is just a misdirection to prevent us from focusing on the problem that someone absolutely wants mom dead. It’s all very confusing.” Though Opal was definitely looking for advice from anyone on Shining Jewel at the moment, their crew was full of awesome people. “Anything else to bring up?”

“Yeah, there is in fact something to bring up. Ember might actually be getting better, slightly, it’s hard to tell when she’s got a number of her nastier looking scales falling off of her.” Reported Gilda from the medical room on the Shining Jewel, she finished dumping the remains of her food into Mr. Spews tank and was once again ready to tackle any problems coming her way. “She moved one of her claws and her tail cracked the glass on the medical bed, I need Masseuse down here to take a look at her and we might need to mover her out of the bed.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea, she needs to stay in that bed. She isn’t in any condition to be transferred between medical beds and the sedatives we have her on aren’t exactly the most effective things on dragons to begin with.” As if Opal wasn’t aggravated enough about all the life threatening things her mother went through, now she was worried about the possibility of Ember being responsible for her own death. “Heck, we’re not even sure it’s safe to keep pumping her full of pain killers like we have been, but it’s been the most effective thing we have been doing that will keep her alive. If she wakes up as she is now… I’m just going to refuse to calculate the chance of such an incident happening and hope for the best.”

“That’s all any of us can really do for Ember at the moment Opal.” Gilda turned a faint smile to the tank as she got up to leave the medical bay. “See you later little guy.”

A tentacle waved at Gilda’s back as she exited the room to the sounds of contented and relatively happy squeals.

-

“So much tasty guilt, are you sure you don’t want me to continue punishing you some more?” In a vast void a shadowy figure was overlooking a blue scaled reptile with anger issues. “Do you like the guilt? It is what I am here for.”

“Get out of my head and don’t you dare touch any of my friends!” Despite not exactly being conscious of what she was saying, Ember effectively fought against what was essentially a nightmare. Despite her guilt, Ember was overcoming the creature through pure unbridled righteous fury from how it seemed to enjoy her being unhappy. She didn’t know where she was, but Ember didn’t want to feel guilty over how she felt, in fact she didn’t feel guilty about getting angry with whatever this was.

“I cannot feel you’re guilt anymore, where did it go? I must perform my job, it is tantamount to my existence.” The shadowy Unicorn with the wistful and whimsical tone of voice started to leave Ember, she couldn’t work with anger. Anger, sadness and anything other than guilt itself was not her area of expertise. She needed to find the guilty and punish them, but wouldn’t the best way to do that be to have a body of her own? She needed a being who was filled so full with guilt that they’d be happy to join with her, they would know the joy of their own failings once they became one with her. They would even know so for however long she could keep them alive. “I must find the guilty, I must find someone worthy… I will find one with guilt that is worthy, I will perform my given duty.”

She couldn’t leave this world of darkness, not without joining someone whose guilt was immeasurable.

-

“Atchoo… oh dear… Celestia, sister, we have an emergency! I have broken my beloved shotgun in half, it needs emergency medical attention!” Judging by the look she was receiving, Luna could tell that her sister thought she was daft minded for some reason. She couldn’t see why her sister would think that at all, but she had more important things to worry about. Like her husband to be was currently in need of serious help!

“Seriously Luna? We haven’t had a single incident in a few hours, for a second I thought I’d be able to actually savor my cake in peace and eat it too afterwards.” Levitating next to Celestia was a piece of cake with her favorite cream cheese frosting. “It’s bad enough that I have to actually share my cake with the republic of Swallowstania.”

Said exceedingly tiny republic was made of, you probably guessed it by the name, entirely intelligent and quite sapient Swallows that were quite the annoying little birds when it came to making a peace treaty. Still, Celestia came out ahead in the negotiations… or at least she thought she did. Though having to negotiate with the birds in the first place was another dark gray mark on Celestia running the kingdom in as effective a manner as possible.

It doesn’t help that everyone in Equestria was trying to slowly drive Celestia insane with work. If a lot of sanity challenging things kept happening in quick succession, then Celestia might just one day decide to abscond with Twilight to go on a very long vacation on a beach and would just allow Luna to marry her plasma shotgun. She’d throw all the consequences to the wind on that day, but today was not that day as she still cared about the many lives of the world that she was still in charge of.

Goodness knows what would happen if Celestia actually left keeping the whole planet together to Luna, Discord or Cadence without her exceedingly careful guidance.

“You are just jealous that you can’t marry your cake legally like I can marry my shotgun.” The marriage hadn’t happened yet, but Luna was still trying to make it happen and her words just made Celestia roll her eyes.

Sometimes Celestia felt like she was the only sane Alicorn around, then she remembers she has Cadence and realizes that she wasn’t that much better than Luna when it came to sanity. At least she had Thorax, he was so boring and normal that he kept her grounded well enough that she didn’t just leave the planet in Luna’s ridiculous hooves.

Celestia hoped Thorax got back to her with a report from Hard Throb soon, because her patience, while tempered by the many years she’s been alive, was finally beginning to fray quite badly. She needed Twilight cuddles or her favorite plush toy like yesterday. Speaking of, Celestia hasn’t slept in several days and she needed to get Twilight away from all those books because she hadn’t slept at all either and they were getting used to waking up next to each other in bed.

Author's Note:

Going through the motions, posting a blind fire chapter...