Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-81-

“Okay, I really have to ask, where do you find the time to do all this stuff?!” Saffron was looking at the vehicle that Greta and Gilda had been working on while taking breaks to work on the powered armor which attached to her EVA suit like an extra layer. Well at least they called it breaks; Saffron thought they were almost as bad as Coco in that respect. Their most recent vehicle was a beast and Rarity didn’t seem too entirely interested in seeing it, which is probably why she hadn’t visited the hangar in the last three days. It really begged the question as to what she was doing; all while these two were building what looked like a monster of a machine. She was wearing her EVA suit with the helmet off and was here to see if they’ve finished the armored suit yet.

“Oh we make the time, the EGGS didn’t exactly take that long to make.” Greta laughed as she lifted her welding mask away from her face, the EGGS could not have possibly taken up that much time to make. In fact they were helpful in getting this project started considering it was a big effort on their part. “This thing however, we’ve been at it when you guys were busy with Streusel Stations, at least I’ve been working on it myself when Gilda was busy.”

“You’re always being a life saver Greta.” Grumbled Gilda as she was wearing a pair of rubber gloves and working with a bunch of wires. There were a few sparks and Gilda tilted her head away from it from her upside down position in the inner workings. “Now do some time saving while you’re at it and talk while you work!”

“Sorry Saffron we’ll take a break soon…. oh wait… we need a break now Gilda, Mr. Welder is running dry.” Holding a talon out to signal a CAT drone, it floated over to Greta and it took up her favorite welding torch. “Opal, we need another fuel run, Mr. Welder is out again!”

“As good a time as any to visit us then, did you bring food with you?” Having finished connecting some wires, Gilda slid a panel back into position and crawled her way out of the framework of the vehicle and fluttered down to the floor. She saw Saffron rolling her eyes and levitating forward a platter for them. “Good work on getting us some the food Mare-Does-Well-Enough, now if only someone can get us some…”

“I believe somebody needs coffee… it’s rather hard to think that your blood is not made of the stuff now.” Rarity walked up to the machine and eyed it a bit, her griffons at work made for an impressive sight and they did a better job when no one was getting in their way. So she’s been avoiding them the past few days while she tried to sweet talk a few more details out of Braeburn about anything that’s been going wrong on the planet. He was nice stallion, but a bit too rustic for her tastes. “I believe you like it black with a very light amount of cream and a hint of hazelnut. Greta’s is the double mocha chocolate fountain supreme… extra sugar.”

“What… so I like sugary things, you don’t have to give me that demeaning look Gilda.” Greta accepted her floating coffee cup with a graceful smile and nod to Rarity. She took a long sip of coffee and sighed happily with some chocolate sticking to her beak, before turning to Gilda. “You take your coffee way too bitterly.”

“So what are you going to call this fabulous mechanical monstrosity? It looks like the love child of a bug and a centaur mashed together.” Rarity looked up at the new vehicle, it seemed to have six legs and boxy solid looking bottom torso, the upper torso was like that of a centaur with four claws on each arm and looked vaguely similar to the robots that had assaulted Canterlot given the palms looked like they were a weapons delivery system. It was big enough to lift, place and carry the Bombing Peregrine on its back. “So this is the mobile base idea you have running in section four of the hangar, how in the world do you even plan to get this back into orbit? I mean I’ve heard some of it, but not all of it.”

“We’ll worry about getting it back up here after we drop it, as for what to call it… we’ll name it something like Centaur-pede.” Gilda shrugged as Centaur-pede was the best she had when it came to name ideas, it wasn’t a bad name and unless anyone could come up with something better, then their ground pounding mobile base of operations was going to be stuck with that name. “Also we’re not naming it anything like sex-a-taur and we won’t ever call it that even if you do.”

“Aw… but it would have been an interesting conversation starter.” An approaching Chrysalis lowered her hoof and wilted as she trotted off to the nearest elevator to see what Coco was up to with her little wrestling ring in the exercise room. Maybe she could get at Sassy again by disguising a wrestling move as an opportunity to snuggle. “Stupid Griffon knowing exactly how I think and being entirely accepting of me... I can’t be that predictable, right?”

“Yes you are and yes, that was kind of obvious! Anyway we built this thing with eight built in spare limbs we can swap out at any time in case we lose any due to combat or wear and tear. So six legged centaur wouldn’t have worked at all.” Gilda started to rub at one of the armor plated three toed legs that stuck out of the side of the armored walking machine with a smile as she looked up to the single eyed head. “Two large energy cannons built in the grappling arms and it can lift a cargo container weighing several tons and carry it on its back and even become a submersible for underwater exploration. If we needed a cargo mover, then we certainly have one now. Aside from that it has two working toilets that can last a few people at least a week or two before the septic tanks needs to be emptied, a single shower and a space to bunk down in the lower body which is a fully working base of operations. That’s all on top of having a microwave and a small fridge for stuff that isn’t canned food in the tiny, and I definitely mean tiny, kitchen we built into this thing with Saffron’s rather welcome input. There are our four automatic defense turrets on top of the lower torso that can cover this beast with programs written by Kitten for targeting recognition. So is it impressive or what? We’re almost finished with it, the only problem with it that I can see is that it’s lower torso be slow to move.”

“No it’s not impressive, it’s absolutely beyond amazing what you two can do when given enough time, motivation and a metric ton of materials. What about my armored suit though?” That wasn’t the reason why Saffron came down here in an EVA suit; she was here to run tests on the armor.

“Put on your helmet and we’ll have you run some tests while we eat.” Gilda was certainly giving Coco a run for her money when it came to being a workaholic and Greta was definitely right there with her in doing incredibly awesome things that would make Rainbow Dash jealous. Making Rainbow jealous was kind of Gilda’s lifelong mission. “Hey Kitten, get the SUITCASE out would you? We’re going to show Rarity what we’ve come up with.”

“Right… diverting cleaning duty drone to go get the SUITCASE out, oh this is going to be so cool.” Opal was squealing brightly as she got the Special Utility Integration Tactical Combat Assessment Suit Enhancer ready to deploy. “We get to see our very own super hero in action!”

“Why is there a special emphasis on the word suitcase?” Rarity’s answer came in the form of a MAT drone dragging what looked to be a large suitcase to them a few minutes later, during the waiting period the griffons dined on the food brought to them. Rarity looked at the large box curiously.

“It basically is a suitcase and it turns into the suit, the power armor has been made to specifically work with Saffron’s EVA suit and her suit alone.” Greta walked over and opened the large purple and dark blue box into two connected halves, she moves away from it showing that there were just four circles on the inside of it. “Now if Saffron will put her four hooves into the circles and say the word activate, we can get the tests started. Oh and stand up straight if you will, it’ll make the process go by much faster.”

“Right, let’s do this!” Saffron moved her four hooves so that they were within the circles. “Okay Ar-Mare-Do-Well, activate!”

(Cave Story Labyrinth Fight insert here)

The SUITCASE leapt up on four round spires that were encasing Saffron’s legs with shifting plates, showing the circles were where the suit started off. The rest of the box pressed against the belly of Saffron’s EVA suit and then closed shut around her body and armor plating sprang out to wrap around both Saffron’s head and tail. The armor wrapping around Saffron’s barrel and neck becoming flush with the EVA suit when it flexed and became more streamlined, with one final clank the powered armor was sealed up and attached to the battery utility in the impulse saddle. Some parts of the suit had even wrapped partially around the impulse saddle and produced two small variable jets that sent out two streams of purple colored energy that waved in the air a bit like a scarf before turning off.

“Looks like we got everything connected correctly. Now side effects may include slower movement speed in water due to the weight, but it’s pretty good armoring and we’ve got some special things to show off.” Smiling Gilda moved in front of Saffron and looked into the glowing blue eyes of the armor, Ar-Mare-Do-Well looked quite intimidating. “Doing alright in there, is everything running smoothly? Also which is your dominant hoof Saffron?”

“Well… what the… what’s with my voice? Anyway yes, I’m fine and either hoof.” Saffron lifted her left hoof and her voice sounded a bit deeper, she looked at it and turned it over to look at the armor now covering her on top of her EVA suit. She did feel rather safe wearing her EVA suit helmet and the armored helmet at the same time. “I feel like I’m wearing three layers of underwear, but it isn’t exactly uncomfortable. I kind of miss my hat already; also I’m getting something in here. Armor nominal, shields nominal and battery utility connected and operational. I haven’t seen stuff like this before on our HUDs.”

“If we have Mare-Do-Well show up, then we’re going to need to disguise your voice so people won’t be able to connect you to the suit. We’ll do the same if we end up making more powered armor. Anyway the HUDs are upgraded while wearing the armor as the regular EVA suits HUD is Rarity’s for market brand, armor is how your suit is doing now and if you wish you can switch it to health readout to show any part of your body that might be taking a beating that the breach gel and armor isn’t absorbing for you. Greta, can you get the targets out while I walk Saffron through the systems check?” Moving so that she was standing in front of the armored mare, Gilda took up the held out hoof and looked it over. “All the armor seems to have connected well and we have no issues with connection to the battery, move your targeting tracker over me and scan.”

“Okay… how do I start a scan?” The eyes on the suit had two white lines travel down them as Saffron focused on Gilda. Targeting data came up immediately reading as such to Saffron. “Griffon, status healthy, name Gilda ‘Sky Child’ Gottfrieda, mechanical engineer, friendly, threat assessment minimal unless panicked due to dangerous environment now look around to scan environment. Environment is currently stable, griffon is unarmed and weapons are currently locked down to prevent accidental firing upon civilian target. Okay that’s kind of nifty, so this will prevent me from accidentally shooting anyone? Scan target, Unicorn, status healthy, name Rarity D. Belle AKA The Boss Lady. Hey, I didn’t know you had a middle name Boss Lady. Threat assessment moderate to minimal, is exceedingly accurate with pistols and dangerous to attack due to chance of disproportionate backlash. Currently unarmed, magical capability low… this thing can process a unicorns magical ability in the scans? That’s kind of amazing, how did you even come up with a scanner like this…. hmm… scan user. User Saffron ‘Mare-Do-Well’ Masala, Unicorn, status healthy, current emotional status is balanced. Threat level is high due to armored suit enhancements; with weapons activated threat level will be extreme. Accessible weapons systems energy cannon hooves, hoof mounted vibration blades, energy whip, shock projection wings… wait this thing has wings?”

When Saffron had said wings she finally noticed the two rounded box like extrusions at her sides, which decided to pop out and turned into two metallic feathered wings lined with variable bars in them. There was still room for the possibility that a Pegasus was wearing the suit.

“Correct, we wouldn’t any accidental misfires when you pull the trigger on the gun, it was your first major concern and we addressed it like you wanted. Also Greta, I’m so going to get you back for putting Sky Child in my name! Back to you Saffron, you have to actively label me as a threat to shoot at me, try walking around to get a feel for it and maybe try jumping to see if the assisted jump feature is operational. We need to know this stuff if we’re going to make any adjustments when we take this thing off of you.” Gilda watched as Greta brought out a box with several sphere’s and turned them on and let Kitten take control of them to send them hovering into section three of the hangar in a three by three pattern, the nine target sphere’s were made to be both easily broken and fixed. “We added the wings for a reason and though you can’t exactly fly in that suit, but you can still glide and get some good air time. We didn’t want anyone looking for a unicorn when you could be an Alicorn or a Pegasus as well. Part of the mysterious Mare-Do-Well disguise really, you wanted to keep your identity a secret right? After you’ve tested it a bit, then we’ll see about calibrating one of your guns and the targeting system once you finally get used to moving around, we need to see gallop mode after we’re testing combat functions.”

“Right, got to learn to take baby steps and then we can see what the weapons, and whatever gallop mode is, can do.” Saffron put the hoof she had been holding up and started to slowly canter forward with clunking noise, it felt kind of weird and very unusual. “It feels a bit sluggish and it’s not quite the same without the hat; let’s see what this thing can really do.”

She started to move a little faster and the suit responded in kind to her motions, then she decided to jump and she almost slammed into the ceiling of the hangar which shocked her so much that she almost fell on her back on the way back down when the two variable wings flared reorienting her and shifting her to land on her hooves on top of the Centaur-pede, she didn’t feel the impact at all. She started to run around on the back of the large vehicle and was amazed at how well the suit was beginning to react to her movements. She leapt off shooting forward in a slow descending glide that was halted when the variable bars jets reoriented again to soften the landing; she had gone from section four of the hangar to section two with one jump.

“Yeah, it’s taking the system a bit to warm up, but that was definitely cool.” A smiling Opal appeared in front of Saffron’s and bowed to her. “Everything seems to be in order Gilda; the suit is moving perfectly fine. Now do the weapons practice Saffron, I’ve been waiting forever for this!”

“Hold on kitten we need to give her some time to wrap her head around this, let’s start you off by target the three by three grids of floating spheres Greta prepared for you. We don’t want you to shoot all of them with the energy gun, we need to test each weapon equally.” Gilda pointed up in the air at the nine floating orbs. “Having said that, I want you to shoot at the top left and right targets with an energy gun mounted in any one of your four hooves and yes, the rear hooves can also shoot if you want to hit something behind you. Activate target practice protocol, there, that should open up your weapons.”

Lifting her left hoof Saffron aimed it in the direction of the top left one and saw a targeting reticle that place where her shot was going to go and she adjusted her aim slightly. With a twitch her hoof cannon fired a bright flash of purple and then quickly shifting her aim to the right it fired again. The energy bolts hit their marks and both the target spheres fell to the floor smoking, Saffron gave off a gasp of excitement.

“Hey, I did it!” The armored mare pumped a hoof, the suits wings fanned out slightly as if she was getting excited like a Pegasus.

“Don’t look so happy yet, target the middle one and fire one of your shock projection wings.” Gilda watched as the right wing of the suit twisted around and seemingly flapped firing a ball of raw electricity which struck the center target. The target sparked with arcs of electricity and fell to the floor. “Okay you’re getting used to the suit pretty well if you can already control a wing to that degree. The feathers on the wings double as a close up combat option that can be electrified. Let’s test the hoof mounted blades. Lower left and bottom middle sphere to melee range, the blades vibrate at a dangerous frequency to deal damage. Thanks to their unique shape they can be used as shields, in case the energy based one is overloaded or goes down for any reason.”

The two spheres floated close up to Saffron and she lifted her right hoof a triangular metal blade popped out and she swung it outwards horizontally at the sphere to the left. Nothing seemed to happen for a minute until the sphere dropped to the floor and tilted to the side until the top half fell off and there were two wobbling halves of the sphere sitting on the floor. She retracted the blade and then thrust her hoof forward into the second sphere and the tip of the blade erupted out the back of it.

“Okay that seems to be a bit lethal even for me, but I think I can see a need to have something like that.” Saffron shivered at the vibration blades cutting power. “What’s the next thing please?”

“The energy whip can double as a pinpoint puller, pinpoint pull any of the remaining targets to you. We haven’t seen Ember use hers in action yet and I’m kind of curious to see how this work out, it’s integrated into the front two hooves only. Target sphere’s diamond formation, lock down jumping assist, wings and projectile weapons for this exercise.” Here Gilda wanted to see the final weapon in action, she watched as the wings folded up against the armors side. The four remaining sphere’s oriented themselves in the air out of reach of Saffron’s blades in a vertical four point diamond formation.

“So you can shut down my systems with a voice command… that’s a nice safety net if I go crazy. Just don’t leave any back doors to hack the suit.” Aiming a hoof at one of the four remaining orbs, she fired a beam that grabbed the top one and pulled it to Saffron, where she then slammed it against the ground. “Well at least we know the pinpoint puller feature works, now to use the whip.”

Pointing her left hoof at the three remaining sphere she pulled the trigger on the whip and line of energy shot out and became limp, Saffron stood there for a second with a limp line of energy hanging from her hoof. She reeled back her hoof and slung it forward missing the sphere she had been aiming at.

“There’s a bit of limited range on the whip…” Saffron said shyly looking like a bit of the dork in the armor as her front right hoof rubbed against the left with a line of energy trailing from it, making Gilda slap her face and mutter something to make the three spheres move close. Saffron lashed out again and missed all three spheres once more but they were definitely clearly in range this time. “This is actually a lot harder to use than I thought it would be!”

“Yes, well, I’m not saying anything. We haven’t seen an energy whip in action before this. It’s actually pretty fascinating really.” Greta was off to the side looking over the data she was getting from the suit and its actions. “Systems are operating perfectly so far and nothing has gone wrong.”

“Hold on a second…” Saffron was narrowing her eyes at the target and she flicked her hoof up and brought it down sharply, the sphere was wrapped in the energy whip and then the sphere started darkening when several lights started flashing down the whip back to the Ar-Mare-Do-Well suit. The whip loosened when the ball fell to the floor lifeless. “Okay, what was that?”

“The whip on your suit has a particularly special feature that can drain mechanical targets of their energy to help power the suit.” Sighed out a slightly frustrated Gilda, the range was going to be half of what Saffron was currently capable of. That wasn’t a fault of the suits; it was the pilot who wasn’t good with whips. Maybe Chrysalis would know how to wield a whip better? Yeah, she was beginning to think of that mare a bit more often than she probably should have… she could turn into any Pegasus she wants right? Did she really just seriously think that? Not like it would happen, she respected Chrysalis’s Changeling Queen Protocol and she hardly respects a lot of things outside of those who lived on the Shining Jewel. “That is provided that you can even get close enough to use it, recall the remaining spheres and let’s pick up the damaged ones as we’re done with them.”

“Now that we’ve officially tested that, how about we test gallop mode? By the way, suit perform full system unlock protocol, that should unlock everything again.” Chirped up Greta who gave Saffron a bright smile, this was amazing piece of work and here she thought they couldn’t do small. Well Sassy and Coco helped a bit with the design; otherwise the griffons were all about vehicles of a larger nature and sorely needed some help with the construction these last few days.

“Right, what’s gallop mode… oh is it that skating thing I wanted!” There was a sudden sense of excitement in Saffron’s voice. She immediately went to activate as Greta opened her beak to try and give her a warning.

“Yeah it’s the skating thing, but be careful… we think it may be a slight bit touchy.” The warning came a bit too late as Greta watched Saffron shoot past her to almost slam into the wall in her panicked efforts to turn herself around. The poor mare went skidding all over the place at high speeds in an uncontrolled manner until she eventually figured out how to slow it down. “Yeah, the skidding skates of gallop mode really needs to be calibrated to pick up speed and not start off at full blast…”

“So we have two minor problems, otherwise the suit is working as advertised, it’s powered and it’s armor.” There was a bit of silence as Gilda coughed into her talons, while Saffron slide around on her four hooves in the background. “We just made a real vigilante hero into an ideal comic book version of a super hero come to life people! Where’s the applause?”

The entire hangar was suddenly filled with cheering and clapping, Opal popped up on one of the hangars monitor and there was confetti raining down around her avatar.

“Thank you kitten, we definitely deserved that.” Gilda held her head high and proud with a broad smirk on her beak; she then turned to Saffron who was gliding her way back from section one of the hangar with relative ease and upon landing in section three she skated the rest of her way right back to them and slowed to a stop. “If you want out of the armored suit, mega mare, then use the eject command and absolutely confirm ejection from the suit.”

“Huh, oh that wasn’t for you Gilda, Coco just won a wrestling match against Chrysalis. Seems like our super shy and quiet mare is really quite taken with the idea of wrestling now, I think she loves it too.” After a bit of a pause Opal spoke up with a cheesy grin. “This is the one for you… and it’s an actual celebration!”

-

“Eh, she’ll be fine Coco. She’s tough like that and I think she was smiling while you were choking her anyway.” Ember commented blandly, having played referee for the match and watched as Chrysalis was taken down by the smaller mare that got her into a really good sleeper hold. She proceeded to follow Coco and Sassy to the nearest elevator to see what was going on in the hangar when the whole ship started thumping.

-

A disco ball lowered from the ceiling and laser lights started to dance when Opal started up the music, the entire hangar was shaking with music. Opal ducked down and popped up on the screen with a pair of headphones on her head.

“Oh my freaking… did you seriously install a party mode in the hangar Greta?” Turning her eyes onto her friend, Gilda wanted to throttle the sheepishly smiling griffon who sipped at what would now become an assuredly empty mug. She might have been slightly pissed about this, but even she was bouncing her head to the music and she couldn’t say Kitten had a bad taste in music. “I can’t believe you sometimes, but then again I like having you around for the fact that I can rely on you to be the fun one in my place.”

“I swear I really shouldn’t have given you guys as much freedom with the hangar as I did.” Even so Rarity was dancing calmly to the music. She loved Opal a lot, but she could do some ridiculous things. Things like getting and convincing Greta to install a party mode in the hangar. “Though I seriously think this is something Vinyl Scratch would like.”

Saffron stood still as the armor retracted from her head and compression pouch covered tail and then the armor separated and shrunk back down into its SUITCASE format. She looked at it mystified as she got off of it and turned to stare at it, she slowly reached down and closed the two halves up into the suitcase and levitated it off to the side and then she started tapping her hoof to the music.

“Okay what’s going on…hey this is pretty nice…” Trapeze started to tap to the frantic beat after stepping clear of the elevator. “Is this the speedy mix version? I love that one, come on and dance with me Bernard.”

Bernard blushed brightly as Trapeze took his paws and started twirling them both around and she hugged her partner in crime and Rover just smiled standing off to the side. A short moment later, Rover making a raise the roof gesture while with an even wider smile.

“I think Opal may be taking your victory over Chrysalis a little too far…” Sassy said as she stepped out of the elevator on the opposite side with Coco and Lightning to see a small party going on with a disco ball. “Really a disco ball, who in the world would decide to… oh right, Greta and Opal would do that. Let’s go have some fun El Wildflower, it probably won’t last forever.”

Coco just smiled while blushing under her mask, in her cute wrestling yellow and pink costume with a mask that had a design of flowers tracing up the sides of her face. She was quite embarrassed about the wrestling name she came up with and she was learning from two people who were seriously good at it, but she had to give it to Vera on her teaching skills as Chrysalis was a little bit too provocative in how she wrestled.

“Okay the disco ball is kind of cool… and shiny… I wonder if it tastes good.” Ember followed the two mares over to Gilda, Greta and the rest of the party in the midst of a small rave going on.

Rarity waved to them and could tell that her crew was at least always ready if, and especially when, they had to tackle a serious problem head on. She stopped dancing for a moment to stare curiously at the Centaur-pede for a moment; did they actually really need something like that?

Author's Note:

Happy random explosions in the sky night day!

Comments

[Razzy]

Iron Mare! But with much less alcohol.

Cheer up, Chryssie, we still love you.

... Centaur-pede.

'Saffron thinks they were' - thought

'they've finish' - they've finished

'Finished connecting some wires' Having finished

'She saw that Saffron rolling' - remove that

'given the palms look like they' - looked

'wasn’t bad name' - wasn't a bad name

'showing the circles were' - showing that

'The rest box pressed against' - The rest of the box

'Saffron shoot past her to almost slammed into' - slam

'Chrysalis was taking down by the smaller' - taken down