Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-72-

“Well that didn’t end in sunshine and rainbows, but at least your friends are alright and Rarity sounds like a hero now. I thought she’d rather avoid going into dangerous situations.” Pinkie shuddered at the thought of a big brain transforming her cute appearance into a monstrous zombie thing. It only took a moment for her to think of partying again and bring back the smile she had almost lost. “Are you sure you won’t help me get all your friends together in one spot?”

“I’m glad they are okay too, goodness knows what would happen if Rarity weren’t around to look out for the rest of us.” Not like Sassy was the only one to think of the things Opal would do in case Rarity’s life was endangered as they already had several samples of Opal losing her cool and becoming a tad excessive even within the perimeters of action she was given by Rarity. “Opal would probably be driven to despair if Rarity weren’t around. She’d likely create a clone of Rarity and pretend that there was nothing wrong even knowing that it would be wrong to do so. No, but I’d rather you keep me company a little while longer, would you do that?”

“I don’t think Opal would do something like that, she’s always been a nice kitty. It’s like how Gummy has always been a nice gator… with a thing for weird trees!” Pinkie would have probably put in a trip to Antilur Station herself to help out, but she couldn’t get a SNUGGLES membership for various reasons. She had some of the problems with personal space and understanding that some people needed to be sad every once in a while to be emotionally healthy after something really bad happens. “Now he’s got an important job with making sure everything on Streusel Station is doing fine and of course I’ll keep you company Sassy, you’re my newest friend that needs a little help!”

“I don’t think she would either, but there is still the possibility. Opal is rather quirky like that.” It was rather nice for Sassy to know that Pinkie was willing to continue keeping her company, though it seemed like it wasn’t needed what with Chrysalis and Babs sitting off to the side with the same look on their faces. They were both looks of curiosity at what Sassy and Pinkie had been talking about. “Hey Chrysalis, are you done playing with Babs?”

“This little snack is adorable and I’ve had my fun playing around. This reminds me of being covered in little grubs after they’ve all freshly hatched; I’m their favorite jungle gym when they first see me nearby. I guess I’m going to miss the next few hatching days… Thorax probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I would.” Being around the negative emotions coming off the filly weren’t doing Chrysalis any favors in her own emotions becoming homesickness, she was going to miss cuddling the Changeling Grubs as they were always so cute and predatory in an overly adorable heart melting manner at that stage in life. At least Babs wasn’t horrible to spend time with and needed to cheer up a little, she still had her whole life ahead of her and she couldn’t spend it entirely depressed that her parents died. “So are we going to sit around talking or is there anything you really wanted to do while we’re here Sassy? I have to say this is a pretty different experience from my first time on a space station, I’m taking a guess this is what space stations are normally supposed to be like.”

“Well…” Sassy started to think of anything they could do with Pinkie Pie; only the mare in question shifted slightly and had an odd look on her face as her body did several involuntary things ending in a shiver that traveled down her back to the tip of her tail.

“Sorry about this!” Reaching up with her hooves, Pinkie quickly pulled Sassy from the wheelchair and rolled away with her much to Chrysalis’s confusion as she walked forward a few steps with a question on her lips. Babs however saw what was about to happen and quickly scrambled to get out of the way of the incoming noise.

Chrysalis wasn’t as confused when she was nearly knocked over by an invisible hovering bike with its still rather visible rider, one that she had barely grazed with her hoof faster than the rider could almost follow. Chrysalis almost knocked him from his bike as he slammed into Sassy’s wheelchair with reckless abandon, he really shouldn’t have attempted an ambush given Chrysalis was around. He quickly rolled sideways in the air out of the way of a blast of magic from Chrysalis’s horn and swerved his bike around a flying crescent of magic from Sassy’s blade, launching that attack left Sassy feeling weak. Neither attack had stopped the grinning maniac as he hopped up to stand on his invisible vehicle while giggling madly.

“What… who are you!” Sassy’s legs might not have been very strong, but her magic was sound enough for swinging her chokuto around, even if she was barely standing with Pinkie’s help. She prepared herself for whatever this guy would do next and contemplated separating his small head from the rest of his equally small torso.

“You think I’m crazy? You’ll think I’m crazy!” Foggre were known for being a little off. This one in particular was quite nuts, a least gallon size canister of mixed nuts to be precise. Faxel was going to cause havoc and he didn’t like that he nearly got knocked off his ride, in fact it gave him incentive to be more chaotic. Foggres were rarely seen anywhere in pony sectors of space, but they were certainly known when they were. Of one of the things that was certain, Faxel would prove himself to be a lot more trouble than these people thought they could handle. He was here to enjoy such trouble; as such with a tooth filled grin he pulled out the pistol from his right holster and fired it twice at the four. “Zoom zoom, zap!”

His hover bike was already clearly seen as impractical as it doesn’t make the rider invisible, so one would wonder just what kind of impracticality his gun had, provided that Sassy or Chrysalis even knew what a Foggre was. As to the nature of Foggre technology, anyone would quickly understand that it was very frustrating, especially for any engineer to look at. An engineer would always find something impractical about anything a Foggre made; the impracticality of said technology was definitively done on purpose. In fact it was a badge of honor for a Foggre to make something incredible, while being entirely impractical to use at the same time.

The gun unleashed two bright balls of electricity; the impractical part of it came into play when the shots didn’t fly in a straight line. The shots flew forward moving in all kinds of random direction within a vertical and horizontal radius of two feet. They were zigzagging and swerving randomly, meaning the shots were as likely to hit someone attempting to dodge them as they were to miss someone standing completely still. The two energy balls weren’t following any discernible pattern and they were closing in on the four, the way the shots were flying was both confusing and distracting as they also changed the speeds they moved at just as randomly.

Chrysalis suddenly jumped forward and took both of the shots, one in the side and one that shifted away from almost hitting her chest to swerve straight into her face. After the electrifying orbs had finished causing her body to convulse violently, Chrysalis fell over onto the ground smoking slightly. After a few seconds she started moaning out loudly, not in pain, but in complete ecstasy. Pinkie had to cover Babs ears because of how wrong that pleased moaning sounded.

Faxel just cackled madly at the sight of the fried bug and quickly drove off with Sassy’s wheelchair in tow while they were paying too much attention to his strange gun’s equally strange shots. The other drawback to his gun that made it more impractical was that the shot could, theoretically of course, exit the barrel and then fly straight back into the body of the wielder. The wielder was always naturally within the two foot radius as soon as the trigger was pulled. The gun was best used while retreating, because you were less likely to hit yourself with the shots if you were moving away from them fast enough.

“Oh by Luna’s stars, Chrysalis, can you hear me, are you alright?” Sassy leaned on Pinkie as they slowly made their way over to Chrysalis who was smiling and coughing up a bit of smoke. After Pinkie stopped holding her ears, Babs was right there at her side looking worried.

“Oh this, this is nothing, it felt like hugging a bug zapper really… those bright beautiful attractive bug zappers. So heavenly…” A bit of drool escaped the side of Chrysalis’s mouth, after a moment she shook her head, wiped the drool away and got serious. She was even able to stand up when her muscles should have been locking up entirely due to the electrifying shots she just took. “Right then, that asshole just took your wheelchair Sassy and shot at you… and Babs… and the other one! I know for a fact that ponies don’t like pain for whatever reason and I’ll never understand why; it certainly felt good to me. I really should buy myself a bug zapper, but I don’t want to drain all the power out of Shining Jewel…”

“That little ruffian did what!” Coming to a skidding halt, Rarity appeared on the scene and could see Gilda tailing the Foggre and disappearing around a tall building in the distance. Gilda could take care of herself at the moment; Rarity was more worried about Sassy’s state at the moment. “Are you alright darling, did that uncouth monster hurt you?”

“I’m okay Rarity-sama, who was that guy?” Sassy was still being supported by Pinkie and was upset that she was still so weak that she couldn’t stand on her own for long, if the little guy had moved a few feet closer she’d show him just exactly what he had been laughing at. “For that matter why did he shoot at us?”

“He shot at you again Pinkie?” Coming from another direction was Maud’s spectacularly flat voice, which was followed by the flapping of a second set of wings giving chase to Faxel with very dangerous intent. Obviously Ember was angry to hear that Faxel shot at someone… even if it was Chrysalis who got hit, he could have just as well easily hit Babs, Sassy or Pinkie. “Okay, he’s on my list… starting now.”

Maud had a list of people she didn’t like. Your species didn’t matter, your pleas for forgiveness didn’t matter and you most certainly would receive no mercy from the pony with unusually flat emotions and currently barely narrowed eyes. If you bothered one of Maud’s sisters’s badly enough or dare to even come close to hurting them and worse actually succeed in causing an injury, then Maud would find a way to make you suffer for it and Faxel just made that list. His was the only name currently on it at the moment; anyone else that had been on that particular list had always been hospitalized within three hours. Not many people would risk doing anything horrible enough to the Pie sisters to get on the list; you always get one fair warning and only the one before being applied to the list. If you couldn’t explain your actions well enough to prevent a first warning, then Maud would come after you the next time you crossed the line.

Pinkie gave her sister a frightened glance, she knew about the list as did her other sisters and even her sister Limestone couldn’t get to that particular level of pissed off. Limestone was one of the angriest, saltiest and easily aggravated ponies to ever exist. That poor frog guy was being really mean and he kind of deserved it for stealing Sassy’s wheelchair, but Maud seriously scared her when she got like this.

Pinkie stayed silent as Maud came over and hugged her gently and patted her on the back; Pinkie hugged her back and couldn’t say a single word about what Maud was going to do once she caught up with that guy. Maud’s pace was slow as she walked off; leaving everyone else confused as to why she was going so slowly since the guy was getting away on a hovering bike. The stations residents knew better, as did Pinkie, that you don’t escape a big sisters wrath.

“I hope everything will be okay, I mean my sister hasn’t killed anyone yet so that’s at least a good sign that she’ll beat him to a… well is being pulped alive seen as something survivable? My sister is really, really strong, which is why she makes a good mediator when she’s not working on her rocktorate.” Pinkie knew the reason why her sister was walking slowly. They could run, but they can never get away. She loved her sister dearly, but she would never want to make Maud mad and that her sister was so protective made Pinkie somewhat happy. “I love my sister dearly, but she can get a little… scary.”

“Well come along then, Pinkie, it appears that Ember is already on this ruffians case and I wouldn’t want to get in her way. How about some ice cream, does anyone feel like ice cream? I know I could use some to calm down.” It was the best idea to offset this situation and Rarity didn’t want to join the chase, she’d prefer helping Sassy, Babs and Pinkie get over the sudden shock of being attacked by what amounted to a really insane frog thing with square teeth. At least it hadn’t been a Pendaxon, which would have been a far worse situation to deal with. Rarity pulled Sassy’s other hoof over her back to help Pinkie support Sassy’s body. “We came here to relax and we are going to do just that, then we’ll finish shopping and meet up with Trapeze and her group. If we run into that ruffian again, we shall deal with him then. I also need to finish shopping.”

“Oh, I know just the store to visit; I’m kind of the tour guide of Streusel Station and that includes a nice cream place I know of!” Knowing the entirety of Streusel Station like the back of her hoof was one of Pinkie’s jobs, she was the unofficial tour guide and the one who greeted new visitors to the station. Pinkie glanced at the air and then looked at the back of her hoof. “Wow airy… never really thought about knowing the back of my hoof before! Though I probably shouldn’t talk to you out loud or about my goat friend, which would make this a crossover and you’re not writing about me at all at the moment even though I am present as the story requires. You’re here to follow Rarity’s adventures in this alternate universe. Now that I think of it, it does make me curious to know where the actual Pinkie for this alternate universe got off to.”

“What in the world is she talking about?” Sassy finally decided to settle her floating sword back into it’s sheathe and looked over to her glamorous friend that had been out shopping with a grumpy griffon.

“Don’t worry about it, Pinkie has always been a little weird and sometimes talks about being in love with some sort of magical friendly goat mother monster thing from another dimension. I know her girlfriend exists, but I’ve never seen more than pictures of her.” Rarity always felt that there was a hint of something really strange going on behind Pinkie’s girlfriend or Pinkie herself for that matter, she has never met the goat and never got her name. “Look, just go along with it and nod your head as if you understand any of what she’s saying or ignore it completely. It’s what I do whenever she brings up the goat; Pinkie never tells me her name for some reason, or anyone else for that matter.”

“So are you gay?” It always helped Chrysalis to ask this, because she couldn’t tell if a pony was gay or not. She didn’t know about Rarity, she had some guesses about Coco, Saffron was murky territory and she definitely knew Greta was entirely centered on Gilda’s very being. She hardly talked about the emotions she felt, but the recent bad ones were leaving the atmosphere and everything would be right with the world. Now if she could figure out if Sassy was gay or not despite her actively despising men, she really didn’t want to assume anything of Sassy and would ask her later in a more private setting.

“I’m actually pansexual and happen to currently be in a long term relationship with a person’s whose name that I can’t legally say in this story without the writer adding a crossover tag first.” Everyone decided to ignore what Pinkie was saying as it made little sense. After a minute or two of waiting for a response Pinkie finally shrugged. “A little more than a small cameo would disrupt this story entirely and then this universe would collapse. Since I’m not dangerously curious enough to actually cause that… let’s go get that ice cream from the place I know about, my treat!”

-

Ember was on the trail of ‘Faxel the Foul’ or at least that’s what people started calling him, this was one bounty she’d gladly beat the snot out of bare handed. She didn’t care if Chrysalis was shot, she looked perfectly fine, but Sassy just got out of medical and she wasn’t about to let this dirt bag get away with almost putting her back in or doing even worse. She wasn’t the only one, as she had caught up with Gilda who was trailing the little punk.

“Nice day for some flying, I don’t have any weapons and I saw what Chrysalis did to herself on those shots. She obviously has no shame to speak of.” Critiqued Gilda, they were keeping up with his surprisingly speedy hover vehicle. From what Gilda could figure out, it had jet propulsion and a minor anti-gravity generator that only affected the bike itself which was pretty common stuff. As for the cloaking device and the electric sphere pistol however, those were definitely unique if entirely funky in how they operated from Gilda’s perspective. “It looked rather painful, which is why I’m not getting any closer to him. Do you have a weapon on you?”

“My claws and my breath, though I’m not about spit fire. I could accidentally hit the wrong thing in an area this populated.” Suddenly there was an angry chattering from Ember’s shoulder and she rolled her eyes. “She asked if I had a weapon Mr. Spew. You’re not a weapon, you’re a friend and I don’t want you to kill the target.”

The squid squealed something that seemed to be cheerful at first, but then was trying doing something akin to pointing out that it could do things that wouldn’t kill the little monster they were chasing. It was true that Mr. Spew could do some really horrible things with his chemical spitting abilities; things that weren’t lethal that would made you wish they were.

“Hey, the squid can be a weapon if he wants to be… okay what in the world is that little bastard doing now.” Gilda saw the wheelchair dragging, manic grinning and considered demented Foggre pull out his left pistol.

Things were getting too boring for Faxel and he turned his sights on them without watching where he was going; he was surprisingly good at avoiding traffic without really looking at it.

“Do you think I’m lazy? Then let’s get crazy!” Swerving in and out of traffic and completely aware of the two tailing him, Faxel wanted things to be more interesting as they were boring him by not trying anything. He pointed his left hand pistol straight up and pulled the trigger, what happened was not what either Gilda or Ember could have anticipated. “Tick tock, tick tock, hahaheheauauhauahaaaaa BOOM GUN!”

A small semi-transparent gray bubble appeared in the air at where the tip of the barrel of the gun had been seconds ago as the trigger was pulled, it started to expand and grow. Every nearby vehicle started being sucked towards the growing sphere that stopped growing at twenty feet in diameter, but the suction kept going and several cars got engulfed by the bubble. The drivers were panicking as they saw that the people who got sucked in suddenly froze up and their cars lost power entirely.

Ember and Gilda both fought to stay out of the suction the sphere was generating and only met with partial success as they were still within the blast radius when the bubble eventually exploded. How it exploded was quite unique, it sent a shockwave everywhere dropping the cars to the ground leaving their drivers slightly battered and relatively unharmed and the other cars that had been outside the bubble stopped working after the shockwave passed through them. All the cars in the area were entirely disabled.

The other effect of shockwave was that it launched both Gilda and Ember up high into the air into an uncontrolled tumble. It took them a few moments to get their bearings, but when they did they saw the Foggre down the street had oddly turned the same shade of grey the bubble had been and was entirely immobile. They quickly flew forward and before they could even get there the grey faded away and the cackling menace started his invisible bike up and was once again speeding away from them.

The insane, if rather technologically gifted, frog knew that the two were going to give him a better chase now or else he’d fire off more bubbles. Heck, he’d probably fire them off anyway around all sorts of technology that moved. If something mechanical touched the bubble or was anywhere near it and was using something for propulsion, then it was guaranteed to need repairs afterwards.

The impracticality of Faxel’s left gun came from immobilizing the user after the bubble inevitably popped releasing a shockwave and a painful amount of sound. If you were touching the gun when you fired it, the field wouldn’t affect you until after the bubble exploded, it was a bit of a delayed reaction to what the gun actually did. It was not possible for the bubble itself to be lethal, but it was a very annoying side effect for the wielder and Faxel had stopped his bike to prevent it from being messed up like the cars he left disabled in the road behind him. For any technology to avoid being damaged, all a person had to do was put on the brakes and not be moving before the bubble sucked them in and or exploded.

Faxel’s invisible bike was perfectly fine and his left gun was a uniquely gifted at causing traffic problems. He had much worse gadgets on him than the two strange guns and his invisible hover bike. He just didn’t think his other toys were worth pulling out just yet.

“Agh my head, what the hell was that?!” Gilda was clutching at her head in pain; her wings had taken a bit of a beating.

“Okay, I think might need my rifle for this asshole!” The angry sentiment Ember spoke with was mirrored by the angered squealing of Mr. Spew, both of them were rubbing at their foreheads. The squid really hadn’t liked that and sorely wanted to spit something lethal. Ember’s head pounded and her sense of balance was slightly off, but she kept flying forward. “Let’s try to get in close and personal before resorting to guns. Aside from the obvious that he attacked our friends and fried Chrysalis a bit, why were you following Faxel before that happened?”

“The little crap nearly ran me over, plus his technology is just plain awesome and I want a piece of that! Specifically the cloaking technology he has on his bike, anything else me or Greta can get from this will be the cherry on top.” Not that Gilda was a quitter, but it was starting to look like a bad idea to take on this guy while you had his attention. “We might want to split up and surprise him.”

-

“I’ve got an update for you girls, straight from my old friend Gummy. It seems Ember has a bounty and we will be here until she catches him, she’s currently on his tail with Gilda.” Opal might overreact to anyone trying to endanger Rarity, but her reaction to someone endangering her other friends would be just as bad. Faxel has just made a personal enemy of two AI’s; one in particular was controlling the station and had angry eyes on his avatar and it just made him look all the more adorable to Opal. “The guy nearly hit Gilda with his bike. Chrysalis has been shot twice with some sort of electricity gun and I’ve learned that she has a thing for hugging and loving bug zappers, which I will now put a ban on for various reasons. I’m seriously wondering when Chrysalis will eventually run out of things to disturb us with. Oh and the bounty just caused a traffic incident, well that’s just dandy now isn’t it?”

“Chrysalis probably never will Opal, are Gilda and the others alright?” After asking the question Greta went back to munching on the snack Mr. Cumin made for her and the other girls. If Gilda was hurt, she’d go flying in one the EGGS units after bounty herself.

“All crew members are okay, except maybe Sassy who had her wheelchair stolen.” There was a gray area to Opal when it came to Chrysalis getting hurt. “I’ve given up on worrying about Chrysalis; the word ‘alright’ when in context to Changeling Queen will always be set to ‘completely fine’ from now on. If we happen to find her dead and atomically shredded unmoving corpse personally at any time, which is not likely to happen in this millennium, then I’ll be utterly flabbergasted. As for the, ‘what if’, scenario you asked me to calculate. the most likely thing to kill Chrysalis as she is now is a chicken feather to the throat, choking on a black pretzel, attacked by a flock of killer chickens which can lead back into the choking on a feather and or killed by a pillow filled with, you guessed it and to nobody’s surprise, chicken feathers. I’ll just skip to the last one to save time, it is her being caught in the center of an exploding sun with flaming demon chickens that shoot plasma feathers and they all get promptly swallowed by a black hole and the singularity also explodes and then the universe collapses down on Chrysalis, mostly because existence is not entirely sure if she’s dead or not yet and only then do things return to normal without Chrysalis having ever existed. Before you ask, yes, my calculations are really oddly specific on that last one and I’m beginning to think I should disable my running gag subroutine as it might be throwing off my calculations with crossing the road jokes. That or it’s bleed over from communing with Gummy at a level only AI’s, gods and the incredibly gifted could possibly keep up with. At least he promised me he wouldn’t do the epileptic tree thing while I’m here. In other news Trapeze’s group is entirely untouched by any trouble whatsoever, so Greta your bet fell through and Coco seems to be on track with hers, but Saffron’s could still happen if given enough time.”

“Why a black pretzel and when would Chrysalis ever eat want to eat one?” Giggling at that thought Saffron’s brain worked on that for a moment and she looked over to Coco who shrugged and shuffled some cards with her hooves. “Well if it was made of hair maybe…”

“I’d rather not think of anyone dying anytime soon after Antilur Station.” Her meek personality coming to the forefront, Coco received a hug from Greta and Saffron which she nuzzled into. “Thank you, but can we please change the subject away from death?”

“Okay, we’ll stop considering whether or not Chrysalis can die and is in fact made of dark matter and will now change subjects on this ‘what if’ routine we have Opal calculating for us. Is it my turn to cut the deck Coco?” Greta split the cards up in small groups and them placed them back together before Coco for her deal them out. “So Opal, what if… Rarity eventually does meet the stallion of her dreams that can fit in perfectly with all of her criteria for a perfect stallion. How do you think that will turn out?”

“We promised to change the subject away from death Greta, this one ends up with such a stallion dying within a week of meeting Rarity.” Opal really hoped she had fudged up that calculation or allowed any personal feelings to mess this particular one up. The end result of it had come up obscenely fast, if Opal hadn’t messed with the calculations then Rarity was going to be a sad pony if she continued to hold on to her current sexual proclivity. "If you're wondering, immediately lethal stress induced heart attack."

Author's Note:

Okay if I have a Pinkie from another story of mine standing in for the real one of this story, then where did my Coarse Diamonds Pinkie Pie go? I am the author right? You'd think I would know about this replacement.

Comments

[Razzy]

Hej, what a crazy frog alien... Crazy frog alien... Crazy Frog... Oh god damn it!

Heh, Underdale.

Of those frogs are such an annoyance, I wonder why nobody blew their whole planet up yet.

Maybe this universe's Pinkie is fighting the Patriots?

Well, so Chryssie likes being shocked... Kinky. And I don't think even turning her to ash would work, she'd just reform.

‘It only took her a moment for her to think of’ - remove first her

‘incase’ - in case

‘ending in shiver’ - ending in a shiver

‘strange gun strange shots’ - strange gun’s strange shots

‘impractical is that’ - was

‘writing about me at me all at the moment’ remove second me

‘and he turn his sights’ - turned

‘A small gray semi-transparent bubble’ - A small semi-transparent grey bubble

‘shockwave passed through their moving vehicles’ - passed through them

‘effect of shockwave’ - of the shockwave

‘bubbled’ - bubble