Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-51-

“Information is coming in… yes, that’ll definitely help tell them they have given us a good leg up on those machine Mr. Privates. Thank them for me if you will, now to spread the word.” Chrysalis just stood where she was in the greeting room or foyer commanding the forces personally. “Everyone, they are not immune to sticky bombs or strong wires, I repeat break out the magnetized explosive! Sure the shields may eat up a lot of the explosion, but they will start taking lots of damage and if you can knock them over then it is that much better.”

“Tell them to watch for the tank with a griffon designs on it as well while you are at it.” Luna trotted up to Chrysalis who looked to be having a good time commanding all three forces. “They are allies and they can help knock over the machines, how has dealing with the fodder been going?”

“Not much fodder left to shoot at, they were running low on everything and our forces are still doing moderately well. Lots of severe injuries, casualties and the like, but we’re coming out of this a lot better than they are.” Chrysalis disconnected for a second to give herself some time to rest. “Now all we have to do is take down the eight walkers and we have a victory, no civilian casualties so far but there are a lot of injuries being reported in and I’m having them flown out of the area. A lot businesses are going to be needing monetary help soon, given they’ve knocked down a few business districts as well as quite a few homes, some even seem to be focused on ripping apart noble houses. I’ve already sent changelings to pull the maids and servants out of there.”

“I’m surprised that you can actually care about ponies.” Not that Luna had any problems with it.

“Oh I don’t care that much really; well except for finding someone who will actually sleep with me that is up to meeting my standards. It’s just a really good political move to be seen as a good friend to ponies so that they can’t blame me for anything I could do later.” Chrysalis could think faster than most ponies gave her credit for, she didn’t need a hive mind when she already had a brilliant mind to begin with. The ability to connect to almost all Changelings at once was just a bonus of being a queen. Normal Changelings, like Chrysalis had once been, had a limited range on how far they could connect to other Changelings and each had a limit on how many they could connect to at once. “Since I’m leaving the planet soon, I figured I need some really good PR to make sure that the nobles don’t try anything as soon as I leave. I also have several contingencies in place in case they try to do something anyway; all of them are well within the law. I’ll have Thorax talk to you about that and even show you the plans to take over Equestria legally while still technically under your rule. It’s quite devious I assure you.”

“Yes, I’m quite sure that you will ruin them within the rules of our laws… again.” Luna would still consider Chrysalis a friend, if a very unusual callous one who made for a great politician of the vilest sort. “Of that I can certainly have no doubt. Though I’m surprised you’re willing to leave us ultimately in power.”

“What can I say, you’re my best friends and you grew on me.” Blushing Chrysalis looked away from Luna and reconnected with her Changelings.

-

The Bombing Peregrine skidded around the corner and rolled forward at an impressive speed and made its way towards the Colossus. It came to a stop and Lightning in the seat behind the cannon angled it upwards and fire two shots, the first charged blast caused the large machine to lose its shield for a few seconds before it lost its left arm to the smaller following shot causing it to stumble backwards a bit.

The machine raised it’s right arm to fired a beam directly at the tank as it’s shield popped back to the life, the tank leapt into the air hovered sideways out of the way of the blast. The tank charged and fired to more rapid shots that directly impacted into the chest which was followed up by several rockets being fired by the friendly ground forces, the machine slowly started to lose its balance as one of its legs left the ground. It was peppered with a ton of smaller shots and rockets until it collapsed onto its back and the shield genitor and other shoulder ruptured causing it to be taken out of the fight. There were seven titans left.

“Right, we’re moving on to the next target. Don’t shoot; I’m taking us into the air to scope it out.” The tank leapt up into the air and swerved so that it could get bead on the next target while avoiding the massive beam aimed at it, it quickly landed in the streets and landed going full throttle. “Got the next target Lightning, let us go get it! It’s going to be on our right.”

“Roger that, but what I don’t understand is why our cannon is ripping apart their shields when everything else isn’t Big G.” The tank shot down the street and Lightning swift turned the short cannon to the right and saw the next target they were coming up on. It wouldn’t be able to reach the castle they came into the open and the machined aimed both its palms their way. “Gilda punch it, they’re targeting us!”

The tank shot forward using all the variable thrusters to speed up its movement and barely avoiding the second beam scorching the shields at the rear of the tank before it fired off two shots, the damage of the second smaller spherical energy shot didn’t hit anything nearly as important this time.

“It’s why we can’t have the shields active ourselves when you shoot, the cannon is engineered to fire both raw energy along ionized particle pulses which is why the shots looks like they do. That’s why it is giving off that odd blue glow despite the main portion of the shot being orange.” The tank had swerved to the right down the street and took another right to get behind the Colossus which had lost sight of them. “In essence the cannon you are wielding is made to disrupt energy fields alongside doing a lot of damage. This unfortunately includes losing our shields whenever it is fired; the pulse is why it even follows a gravity curvature. Just be thankful that I at least engineer our shields to come back up relatively quickly.”

“Right, I didn’t even understand half of that except gun makes shields go away!” Lightning released and pulled the trigger twice, putting both rounds into the shield generator on the things back, the upper torso quickly spun around and fired with its left hand. The blast rocked the front half of the tank as it turned away to get out of range of the attack. “Darn it we’ve been hit, what’s the damage?”

“It didn’t hit anything important; we just lost the use of the microwave… remind me to install a microwave laser option into the cannon later.” Gilda sent the tank rolling away as a second beam chased them down the road and she made the Tank drift around a corner avoiding another hit. “Those things are actually pretty powerful, but their design leaves something to be desired.”

“Yeah, but we just totaled the shield generator on it, so it should be going down soon.” Looking through the cannon and aiming in the direction of the Colossus, they came out on a street to the right of its upper torso. Only now it was warped into a giant flower holding a basket of Hands of Midas soldiers, Lightning shuddered as she saw Discord playing with them. “Right where’s our next target? Those guys are Discords territory now and I don’t want to go anywhere near them or him! I’ve met him once and I don’t want to be reminded of that incident.”

“Right, I’ll announce it out loud that without the shield generators they have no arcane protection.” The tank flew up and off into the air searching for its next target, it avoided taking a flak missile with a well timed mid air roll that burned through more fuel. “Damn it, shouldn’t they have run out of those by now! Our variable jets are halfway out of fuel; I’m going to take Greta’s words that we should switch over to energy to utilize them. Our smaller turrets aren’t going to be very useful against those things, if you were wondering why I deactivated them and we almost took a flak missile to the face.”

-

“That’s four down, two confirmed kills for Gilda and her tank at the least and one flower monster that is picking Hands of Midas people. Six left… no make that five.” Greta just saw one of the machines step forward, lurched, then fall onto its face creating a large explosion. They were watching it from the freshly fixed ballroom windows. “It looks like things are going good out there, though there aren’t many P-wings left in the air and they aren’t doing so hot. I can count that many on my talons at the least.”

“Well it’s good to know that things are well handled, it seems the Royal Guard isn’t entirely hopeless in a close up fight after all, well at least not while they have assistance of the Night Guard and the Changelings.” Rarity was snacking on a crackers slathered in cheese, she also enjoyed some punch and smiled.

“Yeah now if only someone could get rid of those jamming devices, then we could contact Opal to let her know you’re doing fine.” Greta felt a little awkward to just be standing around and eating while Gilda was out there in the middle of danger, but it did look like she was enjoying herself considering another machine went down to huge blast of energy. She smiled and put her mind to a different avenue of thought. “I wonder, are those energy blasts loaded with ionized particles? Well that would certainly explain the problem with the shields. I could probably modify the shields themselves to stay up during the firing process; it’s quite a technical issue to work on later. Well, if our tank survives more than a few direct hits.”

“Quite right, I feel kind of awful just sitting here on the sidelines, but what can we do?” Rarity shrugged as she was considering their options, nope there weren’t any options to consider aside from staying put and safe where they were.

“Excuse me Lady Belle, but did I hear you right?” Fancy Pants made his way over to them, he had nothing better to do as he already done his rounds and he found Rarity and Greta sitting together watching the ‘fireworks’ in the distance so to speak. “That the tank that recently left here was yours personally?”

“Oh hello there Lord Pants, I would like to thank you for your advice earlier. Also yes that tank is a recent addition to the Shining Jewel estate, orbital drop capable considering how it got here so fast. My people have a certain protective streak it would seem.” At least a few good things came of this night, she wasn’t able to find a social circle or a nice stallion for herself that she was willing to spend a lot of time with, but she at least made a few friends. “I may be in the fashion industry as a business, but I do have people that like to innovate outside what is normal and one of them just happened to build that tank… in less than a week. It was this very week no less, which is as much a surprise to me as it will be to anyone who hears it.”

“Quite surprising indeed, I was wondering where that came from as Equestria’s military has been sadly lacking. For quite a long time really, it’s even surprising to see that they are still putting up a fight out there and it is quite embarrassing how we were caught off guard like this.” Fancy was just making idle conversation while waiting for Fleur as he watched another Colossus fall, there were now four. Three of which were close to one another and one that was too far away and isolated, he supposed that one was the next to fall. “Sure we have a monopoly on space combat and fighter production, but on the ground we’re quite behind as far as our protective forces are concerned. I would think to petition Celestia for increasing our forces, aside from the samurai.”

“Speaking of samurai, where are all the samurai that are still in the city? I mean they can’t be possibly be missing all this right?” At Greta’s question the isolated machine suddenly lost its arms as they fell off, then the legs started to fall into pieces. It started to fall entirely apart when several small equine figures in the morning light leapt towards it; with only the flash of their glowing blades to let everyone know that they were there. “Oh, well, ask a silly question.”

Celestia was raising the sun and with it came the samurai, who had been busy escorting ponies to shelter and they were rightfully pissed off enough to slice a single Colossus apart even if the arcane shields blunted most of the magic put into their attacks, it didn’t stop the rest of the force behind them.

“I believe it is time to talk business, I would like to commission a dress… of course now might not be the best time to talk about it.” Snorting as she made her way over to them, Fleur saw the first rays of light shining down upon the last three machines.

-

“Damn it! The samurai just became active, if we’re going down then we’re going down fighting!” The madness of the leader of The Hand of Midas was not going to end until her Colossus was totaled, the three of them still had forces on the ground and they were doing the best out of everyone else. All the other Colossus units and requisite infantry had been taken down. “All units aim at the castle and fire!”

All three of the machines raised their palms together and fired six beams at the castle only for a magical glow to overtake it and protect the castle from damage entirely. The elements of harmony were in effect and were effectively making an impenetrable barrier.

-

Celestia, Luna and Twilight were floating and the castle the barrier had grown that much stronger with the three friends working together to keep the castle standing. Their eyes glowed with white light and Celestia had taken the opportunity to set the sun in the right position while all this power was coursing through her.

“Canterlot will not fall this day, let us heal all of our little ponies who have been injured by the fighting. What say you two?” The two other mares turned to Celestia, Luna nodded and Twilight looked a little out of it but she was there with them in spirit.

“I agree, we shall help our people stay strong.” Luna closed her eyes and felt the power coursing through her, it had been a while since she felt this good, it felt right to be excessively generous with the power they had. To keep it for their selves was a bad idea anyway; it had to be used for the sake of harmony once activated. “I’m sure Twilight does too. Though she feels she does not deserve her ascension to Alicorn, we wholeheartedly welcome her as one of us!”

The castle erupted in a shockwave, while the rebuilding would take some time and the city couldn’t magically be fixed. The causalities wouldn’t be as bad when those fighting were being helped by whatever magic the three holders of the harmony elements could give them. They kept the power from turning Discord to stone again, because he was actually doing a good job at being chaotically helpful.

Cadence and Shining were in charge of keeping the barrier standing after the three other princesses, slowly lost consciousness from using so much power.

-

“That felt strange… yet comforting even. Was that the power of Generosity? ” Rarity felt the wave of energy flow through her and her stitched up wounds stopped aching. She still had to get the stitches removed, but otherwise she felt several levels better than she had a few seconds ago.

-

“Holy crap is this what undying loyalty to the princesses feel like?” The still slightly malnourished Lightning sat up straighter in her seat and her eyes narrowed as they drove closer to the three remaining Colossuses.

“Get your head in the game Lightning; we’re closing in on the remaining targets. The center one seems to be the leader.” Gilda was on a direct path for the middle one and she wanted to do something glorious again, the trouble at Ewesen had not been nearly enough to sate her appetite for violence and incredible odds. “So we’re going to be responsible for that one! Whoa, it seems like they still have some fighters on the ground and they have rocket launchers.”

The tank swerved around several rockets fired by a few Hands of Midas goons, before going down a different street. The tank was a bit big for the still standing buildings it fled between, but it worked out well enough. However coming back out onto the street on the other side, the tank was picked up in the grip of the machine and squeezed. The tank strained against the pressure the hand was putting on it.

“Damn it they got us, what do you we do Big G. If I shoot then we’re going get hurt at this range if anything explodes.” Lightning was quite right, firing would not only drop their shields, but at this range if the Colossus were to explode while holding them it would be a bad thing. “Also if they fire the palm beam thing at us now, we’re going to get fried if the shields don’t hold!”

“Hold on, I’ll think of something!” There were options to consider, Gilda never thought one of these giant metal slowpokes could even catch her tank like this one just did or even pick it up off the ground. “Might have to use that option… what the… prepare to fire a shot Lightning.”

“Why, do you have some kind of amazing plan? The cannon is beginning to get a little uncomfortable up here Big G and I get crushed how well do you think you’re going to do seconds after?” There was a groaning creak and Lightning looked around herself warily.

“Just charge a shot, we’re about to get some help.” Gilda looked down at the palm of the machine as it lit up and prepared to fire, she looked up to the sky. “Hope she has a good sense of timing on this, because I would know those colors anywhere.”

-

“This is reservists Rainbow Dash coming in hot; hope you giant metal mother buckers like the taste of missiles!” When the number of Colossuses causing problems started dropping Trap Bar ordered a full launch of all fighters, including the reservists in training. One of which was Rainbow Freaking Dash who immediately took off with her wing mates towards the planet ahead of everyone else, in her rainbow colored fighter. The three fighters boosted straight through a series of exploding flak missiles and launched several missiles personally that tore into an arm, a leg and impacted the middle torso of the machine holding Gilda’s tank. Thankfully the arm that was hit was the one holding the tank which caused it to drop towards the ground as a beam, flashed out into the airspace with the three fighters dodging around. “Yeah, you drop that… tank? Since when did we have combat tanks Wedge? I mean it’s totally awesome and everything, but nobody told me about that.”

The tank blasted the machine as it fell from the hand. The griffon motif was a nice touch to Rainbow as it reminded her of someone she liked and it quickly rolled away and out of sight while being blasted at by more beams.

“I don’t know, but we’re getting confirmation that’s it’s an ally. The Changelings and our ground forces are finally dealing with the jamming devices as we speak.” The three fighters swerved around to the leftwards Colossus and unleashed another round of missiles, this time they had an impact as several explosions ripped across the surface thanks to the explosives placed on it by Mare-Do-Well, Spitfire and Daring Do. The results were that the machine slowly started to lose the ability to stand upright. “How are you doing Large, you took a nasty hit there.”

“I can still fly, shields are a bit down, but I’m good for it as long as I’m not directly hit by flak missile.” The three fighters swerved in a slow arc around to shooting at the Colossus on the far left. The ship to the right of Rainbow’s wing wiggled slightly. “Let’s distract them from attacking our ground teams and give them something to really shoot at!”

“I hear that! Round three right into its back guys!” All three fighters launched missiles and they actually managed to destroy the shield generator on the Colossus, which was soon to be destroyed by various rockets impacting it from all sides from various forces of Changeling, Thestral and Royal Guard.

“I’m so sad that we were late to this party, I’m usually faster than this!” Rainbow Dash gave a whoop of joy as she brought her two friends into a barrel roll while performing an aileron spin to avoid several crossing beams from the three Colossuses.

-

On the ground Gilda have moved the tank out of the way to prepare for something a little special. She hadn’t exactly told Lightning about this little feature yet, but it would help fix the minor problems caused by the sudden squeeze the tank went through. It’s why she named a tank The Bombing Peregrine. It was fast, it was light and the tank had the unique feature of being able to switch its weapons around a bit.

“You sure it’s not working?” Gilda just asked for clarification as she flipped several switches to prepare the tank for conversion.

“Of course it’s not working; it’s been bent out of shape!” Lightning yelled back.

“Well be prepared to be amazed as I give you a different weapon to work with, I hope this feature works as well as I hope it does. Or else I actually will rename this tank to the Cuddly Penguin. We’re switching over to Peregrine mode and I hope we both can handle the speeds this thing will be moving at when I do.” The tank shifted a bit as the some of the armor peeled away from the solid metal wheels that shifted upwards and the claws that covered the front of the wheels suddenly became part of the legs that were now forming, the flat face at the front of the tank became far more pronounced. Balancing on its front two legs the entire tank stretched out and turned into a lion like machine standing on four legs when the rear two finally started forming with the tough metal wheels acting joints. It didn’t have a tail, but it didn’t exactly need one.

“What in the world, when in the hell was this tank capable of being a walker?” Lightning said as her round turret spun one hundred and eighty degrees by itself and then her chair did the same as two long beam cannons popped out, she was now part of the butt end of the tank and at the front two large bars of variable thrusters popped up out of the back after having stretched in to its new form.

“Oh always… but there’s a few key differences, this mode doesn’t have a shield system as it redirects all the energy to the cannons which might I add are not test, also it flies better than the bomber mode. I tested that personally whenever you went to sleep by flying it around The Shining Jewel, only Opal is aware that it can do this. It can’t fly forever but as dive bombing walker? It works pretty well, just don’t hit the variable covered wings.” Gilda smirk as she turned the machine around, she was going to test out the melee function of this thing. “I hope Greta’s heat sinks can handle what I’m about to do to the claws.”

-

“Oh my goodness she’s actually using it, that is so awesome, go Gilda go!” Opal started waving little flags around on screen the crew was watching and they both had Gilda’s face imprinted on them. The rest of the crew was watching the tank gallop from around the corner and leapt at the Colossus while firing two brilliant beams of green before slamming into almost causing it to topple.

The machine climbed its way up one of the legs and then clawed its way up the back, before preparing one of its claws to swipe the machines neck. The claws started glowing white hot before it slashed the head right off the machine.

“I don’t think Lion Heart can beat something that’s real like that!” Opal would continue her joyous tirade, but the crew didn’t mind they were celebrating with her.

-

“Yes, the melt claws held together, score one for griffon ingenuity! I could even kiss Greta for that.” Gilda barked out with laughter as she rode the toppling machine to the ground before launching off at the last moment to fly skywards on the two bar like wings loaded with variable thrusters and once she flew high enough to avoid getting struck in butt with the flak missiles she turned it towards the remaining Colossus which was firing flak missiles frantically. “This is going to use all the fuel we have left. It is still so worth it to show you, that this is why I call it The Bombing Peregrine!”

-

“No, no, no, no this can’t be happening!” The leader of the Hands of Midas was frantically trying to take whatever the hell that armored monstrosity was out and it was effectively flying higher out of the path of the missiles avoiding the explosives they released. Once it was done being chased by the missiles, it turned back towards and started into a dive right on top of her with its front two talons like claws glowing brightly. The Colossus was shot several times by the twin beam cannons before it got rammed claws first by the diving griffon faced machine. The shields held up to the cannons, but they were overpowered by the claws were about to strike the Colossus, Lyra hit something to record herself. “I’m sorry Bonny, I couldn’t… I couldn’t get revenge for what they did to you. Your beloved lyre player, who was admittedly overly obsessed with hands, isn’t going to succeed in this endeavor no matter how many hands she thought she could throw at the problem. Maybe I, Lyra Heartstrings, can join you in your coma that ‘THEY’ caused? Just know that I will always love you Bon-bon Drops no matter what happens to me. Please... just wake up, even if I’m not going to be there to be the smiling face for you.”

The last Colossus was toppled by a diving griffon face transforming tank, which ripped a hole into it. The Bombing Peregrine was the first of many things Gilda G. Gottfrieda would come up with and it wouldn’t be the last. It wasn’t a fighter or a real flying vehicle thanks to its ridiculous fuel consumption, but when she got around to building a fighter… it was definitely going beat her transforming tank in so many ways.

-

“Wow, so that’s why it was in dire need of heat sinks. Well aside from the cannon needing to use the heat sinks anyway.” Greta was quite impressed, Gilda may have needed her help on some more technical issues but what the tank was capable of was just plain nuts.

“I certainly got what I paid for when I hired you and Gilda, then gave you the rights to Han Gar.” Was all Rarity could say as she sat there wide eyed, both Fancy and Fleur next to her were wide eyed as well. “Last night might have been a horrible affair into the world of nobles, but I feel like today is going to be a lot better. Well aside from doing a lot of volunteer work to help clean up this mess.”

Author's Note:

Well that happened, what can I come up with next? More dark stuff that's for sure, but I still have to close out of Equus.

Comments

[Razzy]

... And it transforms? Eff yeah!

That was awesome, though now I'm afraid of what will the two griffins come up with when they have more free time.

D'awwww, Chryssie does care.

Did the EoH affect only ponies, or everyone?

Why do I feel like Luna is going to try some of these takeover plans when she's bored?

Ah, Lyra... I hope she won't die and we get an explanation as to what happened to Bon Bon.