Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-84-

“Chrysalis declined my offer to help her understand Sassy better. Is it so wrong that I want to throttle Chrysalis and with actual ill intent this time?” Usually Coco was the most peaceful mare, but Chrysalis tended to throw normalcy out the window whenever possible. “I just want to help her understand what she’s doing wrong, since chances are that she’ll go for another kidnapping plot as it seems like her modus operandi. Does she really have to kidnap ponies to get attention? I don’t know why, but I’ve been feeling a lot more frustrated lately. It is like I’ve been getting angry over nothing. I really shouldn’t be mad at Chrysalis for not taking my offer of help, it is within her right to ignore my offer and say no.”

“So you’re finally coming into your magic, you’re a pretty late bloomer. Either that or no one taught you about what your magical abilities might be.” Hopefully Vera could make Coco understand her current situation, this kind of thing happened to Pegasi and Unicorns in different ways and it wasn’t any different for any other pony variants either.

“Um… what? I’ve had my cutie mark for years now, almost ever since I met Rarity even.” Coco sat up and looked to Vera in a confused manner. Who wouldn’t be confused if you were just told that you were coming into your cutie mark, butt sign or handsome symbol?

“I’m not talking about your cutie mark; I’m talking about your earth pony magic. How often have you actually used any of it up to today?” Seeing that her patient had a confused look, Vera slapped her face. “Oh my goodness, you’re going to be one of ‘those’ ponies. To start off, coming into your magic is not the same as coming into your cutie mark. You’ve done that as you have so stated, coming into your magic is actually something else entirely. A cutie mark is your special talent and depending on how you interpret it, it can let you do things beyond the original interpretation as long as you can put your mind to reinterpreting what your mark can possibly mean. Your magical traits and abilities can even be something separate from what your special talent is, because it’ll be more about what you are then who you are. Are you with me so far?”

“I think so. I can understand multiple interpretations of a talent being like how Sassy can reinterpret her special talent into a combat skill.” Coco received a rather proud looking nod. “So if this is my magic causing me to feel this way, then you know exactly what is going on with me? Is it anything like puberty? Those years were quite awkward for me.”

“Yes, I in fact do know what is going on with you. To start off, Earth Pony magic comes in many flavors, but can be boiled down to the most commonly seen magical abilities. Each pony get’s to this point at random, Unicorns usually hit the state of coming into their magic earlier than any of the pony variant races. As for Earth and Pegasus Ponies, they come into there’s at a different time and in completely different ways.”

“Since you’re an Earth Pony you might have several of the following abilities.” Moving over to the nearby desk and pulling out a clipboard with a sheet paper on it, Vera made her way back over to Coco ignoring the constantly pointed CAT drone as she did. “The most common Earth Pony magic is in passive traits, things like immunity or exceedingly high resilience to sicknesses, diseases and poisons. There’s also the ability to regenerate or heal from wounds faster or being physically stronger than normal without having to put effort into it. The less common are active traits, like actually controlling how plants grow, grabbing and move things around with your hair, communing with nature, being able to actively control your entire body perfectly at any moment in the form of biofeedback and doing anything that requires a lot of focus to achieve. Finally there are the exceedingly rare psychic traits that only Earth, Sea and Mermaid Ponies seem to get, the kind that apparently Pinkie and Trapeze have going for them and it’s even rare enough that you would even meet two mares with whatever abilities those two might have in one lifetime. As a reminder as to what Trapeze and Pinkie are capable of, they can do bizarre things like hold an object of any size in the space of a coin on their person without being affected by the weight or mass of said object at all, then there’s teleporting by moving out of sight, mind reading, emotion reading or manipulation and even the possibility of accurately predicting the near future, at least within reason. Psychic powers only need a drop of magic, compared to a unicorn which would need to use a lake of magic to achieve the same effect for some of those things. Some of those things are impossible for unicorns to do to the point they can’t replicate it with their magic at all.”

“So I have something like an active ability?” It certainly didn’t feel right hearing all this and Coco did come to Vera for advice about her recent frustration.

“It can be assumed that you have some sort of ability, because I certainly doubt you would have entered a haunted space station normally without some emotional imbalance caused by your magic acting up.” Vera watched as her words quieted Coco and made her look uneasy, as such she needed to think of something to say and fast. Some might think Vera would have all the answers, they’d be horribly wrong and she was mostly winging her job as the crew’s psychologist. She’s a good therapist at least. “It’s nothing bad, you just got to get used to the idea that you might have something beyond your talent for accessorizing. I think I understand what kind of natural Earth Pony trait you might have picked up, you hardly ever get angry right?”

“I prefer to avoid conflict.” Then why did Coco volunteer herself for the Antilur thing. Sure they actually needed her for it when they got to the communications hub, but after that she had to have been out of her mind to actually actively join in on the fighting and in her own mind she really hadn’t done much to help. This was when she even logically knew that she had opened communications with Opal and allowed her get into the station after they killed the brain, she had carried Chrysalis for quite a while, she managed to get the stadium lights on and she even saved the day with the tendrils.

“Well you seem to have an active ability that ties into your natural fight or flight response. Basically you become faster and stronger the more frightened or angry you get, you could probably do it while focused too which is going to be harder to achieve. You’ve been getting by with passively letting it happen in times of duress.” Flipping to the next sheet of paper on her clipboard Vera wrote something down that she was going to suggest that Coco do. She pulled the paper out and held it up to Coco and she took it from her. “This is what I suggest you do.”

“Continue learning wrestling with you and Chrysalis since it teaches discipline, is that really all I have to do?” That didn’t sound so hard to Coco. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“I and Chrysalis have just been giving everyone involved the beginner course classes. Just hope that Chrysalis doesn’t decide to start teaching you the mud gumbo style of wrestling. Yes, I know what that is personally and I shouldn’t say anymore unless I was going to teach it to you myself. Just know that you’ll be sorry if Chrysalis does decide to teach you about it and you take her up on it, if she even makes the offer. I can make the same offer as well, but I don’t want to... at this time.” Vera stopped to give Coco a pitying gaze, she shook her head sadly. “You’re about to find out how real wrestling can get and I’m sorry if the injuries don’t heal as quickly and that you’ll become really sore afterwards, but I bet you’ll be happy to be getting a lot of massages from me. Also Chrysalis was wrestling at a beginner level when you beat her… so congratulations on beating an opponent who can control her skill level at the drop of a hat. I think she mostly gave in because she was getting off on you choking her into unconsciousness.”

“Why did you have to go and tell me that? It kind of makes me feel dirty now.” Now Coco was starting to have an anxiety attack until she felt a pair of hooves start rubbing her shoulders. It took her a moment, but she eventually started relaxing. “For what it is worth, you are probably one of the best crew members Rarity could have ever asked for.”

“Why thank you. Now if we could finish this up quickly, I have an appointment to discuss some things with Opal.” Vera was worried that something was going down and that Opal would be the catalyst to opening a can of worms. She wasn’t wrong; it just wasn’t exactly the can of worms she had expected to be opened.

-

“Is it still on the leg?” Even Greta was beginning to feel sorry for the pink fluff ball; it had been on the leg for the last fifty seven miles since they picked it up. Their destination was not so far off now and it was easy to guess that it was snowing outside given Gilda tracked some snow into the Centaur-pede when she came in, seeing anything far away was a little more difficult thanks to a shift in weather.

“Yep, it’s surprisingly still there and seems to be obscenely happy with its current lot in life.” Gilda finished coming down the ladder from looking around on the back of the walker, she just hoped that the Puffle thing didn’t go to the bathroom on the leg it was clinging to happily. “Nothing has come up on the scanners yet, which is beginning to give me the creeps. We should at least be clear to make it to the town the coordinates are set for without issue. The ponies we’re looking for should be somewhere around there, if they aren’t then things might get a bit difficult without a clue of where to go from there.”

“This is why I had us pack plenty of food; I foresaw the eventuality that we would need it. If we have to keep looking around out here for a while, then it would pay to be well fed.” Though eventually they would have to give up and leave, Rarity wasn’t much of a quitter and she didn’t think Gilda or any of the others would quit even if the griffon could gripe about every little thing. A good portion of their current supply of food was meat and Rarity would never disparage the needs of her crew for it. “If we run out of fruit, vegetables and other edibles supplies, then I may eat meat if it means we can search for a little while longer.”

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t exactly be pleasant… though a Pegasus would enjoy it somewhat.” Pegasus ponies enjoyed their ability to eat meat pretty well; Saffron didn’t see a problem with that as she actually had some Pegasus ancestry. She still preferred the basic pony staples when it came to food.

“How long is it until we arrive at our destination?” Ember was as relaxed as can be, though she did worry about what the rest of her hoard was doing. She knew that they’d all be safe.

“ETA five minutes and thirteen seconds at the rate we’re going, we should be within visible range.” If there was a sense of dread building up in her, then Greta was absolutely hiding it well with a cheerful smile. “Gilda, can you operate the upper torso and scope things out? I mean at least before the snow gets any worse… we have one of those blizzards incoming and we’re going to need to settle down there for the night to ride it out.”

“On it, has anything frozen over yet Greta?” Even as she asked this Gilda was already moving for the forward ladder to go into the upper torso.

“No, all systems are staying lukewarm. We’ll see how things go when the temperature drops even further; thankfully we took precautions when we installed the water tank.” They had plenty of water at the moment, but showers were going to drain it pretty fast and that’s why Greta agreed to the five minute time limit stipulation. Melting snow for water would be a last resort otherwise and it would take a while to gather enough snow for something to drink.

“Good, I’m in the seat now and I’ll be sending everyone a visual of what I’m getting up here. Pretty doesn’t define it.” At Gilda’s words, Rarity, Saffron, Ember, Greta and Rover gathered to look at the monitor in the lower torso and blinked at the visuals they were seeing. Well as much as they could see through the snow. “It looks like the town is rubble, but not because of the snow.”

“Something burned it down.” Saffron was trying to make out the remains of the ruins left behind. “So do you still think we’ll find some pony out here Rarity?”

“Yes, because the apple family runs a farm outside of town a good distance away, obviously they would not have a farm in the middle of the town itself. Still, I would like to get a closer look; this is where we’ll settle down for the night. We’ll try to find the farm tomorrow.” The town didn’t have a single building that wasn’t partially collapsed or covered in snow, but Rarity took a keen interest in the fact that most of buildings were burned down and didn’t collapse because of the snow. “Nobody is to leave the sight of the Centaur-pede, much less the confined area that the legs cover. How is that Puffle out there Greta?”

“Healthy and despite the temperature outside, its temperature hasn’t changed a bit. That’s one resilient fluff ball, that or it’s a curious biological trait.” It was a tad unusual, it made Greta actually want to look them up despite Ember’s warning that it was a horrible idea. “Maybe Chrysalis would stay behind if we told her about our fluffy puff ball tagalong.”

“We can dream Greta, we can dream. I think we’re stuck with her as long as she’s willing to cling to us. At least we can help her people out a bit, though I’m a little wary of leaving Chrysalis alone around a Puffle or even telling her about them.” Shaking her head sadly, Saffron went back to looking at the view on the screen. “We really don’t know how she’ll react to meeting one or how a Puffle will react to her. So we’re going to park in town and wait out the blizzard?”

“That’s the plan. I’m not detecting any life out here, then again the snow is getting worse and that’s going to cause some interference. At least thermal scanning and motion tracking will still work.” Taking in the view, Gilda had to admit that something felt off about this town being burnt to the ground like this. The snow was getting hard to see through, but she had already seen some of the buildings were of stone and metal with very little wood and yet something still had burnt a building like that to the ground. “I’m going to leave the Centaur-pede running hot; we wouldn’t want any of the joints to freeze through the incoming blizzard.”

The slowly marching machine came to a stop about five miles out from the burnt and snow covered wreckage that was once a relatively large town. Slowly the legs positioned themselves closer to the Centaur-pede and it lowered its belly gently to the ground. A little pink fluff ball crawled up the leg and onto the top of the machine to look around in clear confusion before just smiling dumbly, blowing a raspberry and then turning around fifteen times before laying down on the back of the now quiet, if still warm, machine. Once it was comfortable the little pink native fell asleep.

Inside, Rarity was unrolling a mattress for her personal use and this wasn’t exactly going to be comfortable. They’d all be sleeping on the floor next to each other and thankfully they had the foresight to leave Saffron next to Greta who liked to snuggle in her sleep. They probably should have warned Saffron about it, but she preferred to have Ember as a buffer zone. On her other side Gilda was setting up and on the other side of her was Rover working on his mat.

“I’m going to be the one scouting things out early in the morning, if the weather isn’t too bad I’ll be able to fly out there.” Ember stretched her wings out and looked them over. “I think my wings need more exercise anyway. Also I’ll be bathing myself in flames when I set out so I won’t be using up too much water.”

“We all know you can take care of yourself Ember, goodnight everyone.” Rarity hoped that she wouldn’t need Luna’s assistance with nightmares again; Antilur Station had been pretty bad and she was thankful that those monsters weren’t able to infect you with some kind of zombie virus. Oh great, that’s what her nightmares were going to be about now.

An uneasy frown appeared on Rarity’s face as she tried to get some sleep. An hour later she was tossing and turning fretfully in her sleep until a pair of arms dragged her, along with her blanket, into a cozy snuggle. She calmed down and cuddled against the rather warm body.

-

“So Ember formed a hoard… out of us... are you serious?! You have got to be kidding, please tell me you’re kidding. I don’t think I can handle this; this could become a huge disaster. The repercussions of it on Ember’s mental health are bad enough.” Well that certainly explained a few things to Vera, especially why Ember had been getting so impossibly friendly with the crew. She had an eye that was twitching in disbelief given that Opal had a weak smile on her face, at least Ember would protect her hoard if Opal was right. Except the form of protection Ember offered would be of the horribly violent kind. “Do you even realize the kind of problems this would cause? Ember would go nuts if any one of us is in danger, who knows what she wouldn’t do to protect us and she’s a bounty hunter! Do you at least know what the centerpiece of Ember’s hoard is? The centerpiece is what will cause the worst reactions in her, does Ember even realize that she can’t watch all of us or protect us all at the same time? She’s just one dragon!”

“About that… you can kind of figure that out easily given that she’s not currently up here.” Opal had a very good guess as to who the centerpiece was, she just gave Vera a hint and the poor mare went catatonic. Thankfully ponies were resilient to being fully broken mentally, but that was thanks to them always being crazy. “That should be a big enough hint as to where her centerpiece currently is and you look like you understand.”

“You do realize that anyone who joins our crew and becomes a welcome addition is not going to be able to leave right? Ember wouldn’t like that if she started considering them a part of her hoard…” Vera was slowly sinking into hysteria; she was already shivering quite violently and her mane was falling into disarray. “Also please tell me the centerpiece is not who I think it is, for love of all that is holy, good and wonderful; please tell me that it’s absolutely not Rarity!”

The wan grin Opal had on her face was clearly quite forced, one that was horrifying Vera on a number of levels to the point that she went full circle from panicked to calm.

“Yeah… I think I can come to terms with this. Being stuck on the Shining Jewel wouldn’t be so bad; I can handle Ember being horribly psychologically imbalanced by the fact that we will eventually die.” The tone of Vera’s voice was a bit shrill and her purple mane looked wildly out of sorts now, otherwise she was completely fine. “Am I hyperventilating, I might be hyperventilating, is the room getting smaller or is it my eyes getting bigger?!”

“Oh here comes a distraction from your obviously valid worries!” After stating this in a happy tone, Opal frowned and looked a little sick. “Then again this just might validate your worries about Ember losing her cool.”

“Well, what is it?” A distraction would be good right about now for Vera; she’d take anything over having to worry about what Ember would do should the rest of her hoard be endangered while she wasn’t around to protect it.

“How do you feel about space pirates? Everyone I will be going into battle stations soon, apparently there’s about to be raid on the supply depot.” Opal set about powering up the weapons; she hardly ever dropped the shields. She would never be caught with her pants down. Not that her avatar wore pants, but it could wear pants if she wanted her avatar to have them. “Warning this is not a drill, we might have boarders soon! I repeat we’re about to be attacked, get some weapons just in case I can’t stop them from getting in. There certainly are a lot of them; I’ll be helping the supply depot defend itself. Chrysalis is in charge of internal security, Sassy will protect the injured or incapable. I’ll take care of any fighters and or ships that come at us while making sure to stay as safe as possible. We’ll worry about clean up after the battle is over. I hope they don’t do anything too noticeable, Rarity would freak out if she found out something happened to us.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty good distraction.” Yep, there was nothing quite like a space pirate attack to clear your mind of any disastrous thoughts of being part of a Dragon’s hoard.

-

Rarity yawned and opened her eyes as she stretched slightly, she was really quite comfortable in Ember’s arms… that’s right completely… wait. Rarity blinked once or twice and sighed.

“Ember, darling, could you please wake up and let me go? I have to use the little pony’s room.” The dragon just tightened her hug on Rarity, forcing a squeak out of her. She wasn’t uncomfortable, but she would really like it if the dragon wasn’t holding her so tightly and in such a loving manner like this. It just wasn’t proper that a lady be treated like this, then again when had she recently acted anything like the lady she should be? Did she really want to be a looked upon fondly as a lady people would think she should be with preconceived notions or did she want to be seen as herself? She slapped Ember’s face harshly, but that did little more than cause Rarity’s hoof to become slightly sore. Ember’s face was like hitting a brick wall, she could have probably punched Ember and even then she doubted that would have hurt the slim and beautiful dragoness. “Ember, wake up please.”

Ember just rubbed at her face lightly and rolled over on top of Rarity making the situation even more embarrassing for her. A rather groggy Greta sat up hugging Saffron to her chest, she looked to Rarity’s predicament and snickered. Greta let go of Saffron carefully and made sure that she didn’t disturb the mares sleep. Standing up, Greta made her way over to Rarity and stumbled a bit before she came to a stop over the cuddled pony. Rarity was looking up at Greta pleadingly.

“A little help here, please Greta?” Pleaded Rarity with a look of hope on her face, well it was hope before she heard a click on Greta’s data pad.

“Oh, this is so precious. I’m going to give this to Opal and the others later and you can’t stop me!” It was pretty cute to see a lithe and beautiful sleeping dragon cuddling a pony, nothing seemed wrong with that to Greta. She even cackled in an evil manner, but it was hard to count it as evil when it was coming from Greta of all griffons. “Don’t worry she’ll have to get up eventually Boss Lady, we need her to scout around the town in case of danger. Whatever burned most of it down might actually still be around and I’m certainly not flying around out in this cold. Whatever burned down those buildings couldn’t have been naturally occurring.”

“What makes you say that, couldn’t it have been some hulking fire breathing beast?” Well if it was, then Rarity was fine with Ember going out there. The dragon was immune to fire and deadly amounts of heat and could possibly survive being dumped into a star without a protective suit. Rarity was now struggling to get out of Ember’s strong if rather surprisingly soft grasp. “I mean no offense to our dear Ember here of course. My goodness, why is she actively clinging to me like this and how can I get her to let go?”

“I haven’t had my coffee yet, give me a moment to get up to speed and check the sensors.” Even if Greta knew coffee was not the Boss Lady’s refined beverage of choice, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be hers and Gilda’s. A shot of hot chocolate would certainly sweeten up her morning, she stretched her wings out and lazily looked over her data pad as she moved to the small kitchenette to get started on the coffee. “Let’s see, nothing worthy of note on the detectable life here or in town. Well aside from the Puffle on the back of our transport, breathing solid, still healthy and… the same temperature readout. How is it managed to keep its temperature that steady? It slept outside in blizzard for Grover’s sake! Oh right Grover is an old king in the griffon lands Rarity, he was quite popular and nobody will ever forget him for what he’s done for us. I think Gilda might be a descendant of his, but she hasn’t ever wanted to go in and get that tested.”

“Coffee me Greta, I’m not getting up until I have a mug in my talons. It’s way too early for your annoying cheerfulness.” The cheeky chirp Gilda got in reply made her glare at Greta. “So… you and the dragon Boss Lady… I didn’t know you liked playing with fire.”

“Rover is thinking fire be playing with her.” Groaned out Rover who was sensitive to changes in his environment, that being the enclosed space of the Centaur-pede’s spacious lower torso. “Can I go out and dig under Centaur Stampede for a bit? Just a small hole, Rover came to get his paws dirty.”

“Just don’t dig too far into the snow or you could get stuck if it collapses in on you.” Gilda grumbled out as straight black coffee with very little added to it was put in her talons, she sipped it and smile. “Yeah, now that’s the stuff, thanks Greta.”

“Rover is digger expert; I not get stuck by frozen water and cold hard dirt. Now which warm coverings are Rover’s to use when going out without an EVA suit?” The one who had to have an answer to Rover’s predicament, as the boss lady was the one that packed the warm weather gear.

“Hold on a second Rover… she’s… not… letting… me… go. Oh fine, it’s the bag up in the third shelf on the left. Yes that’s the one, bring it down to me.” Doing as Rarity asked Rover brought it over to the dragon trapped Rarity who pulled out a comfortable looking brown parka with some small shaped gems around the collar. Rarity made all kinds of clothes for her crew, yet she never gets to play dress up with any of them. “This is the one I made for you Rover; I figured you’d like some shiny gems in it.”

“Thank you very much Boss Lady, Rover is thinking that he wouldn’t have time to do Diamond Dog things. I not go very far, I am promising that like I promise to be helping you with finding other family. I might have to use nose for that, I have good strong nose.” He almost sounded eloquent in his joy, almost; he was still very much like the crews scraggly voiced puppy that could do circus tricks. He ascended the ladder and closed the hatch behind him as he exited the vehicle; he gave the pink Puffle a curious look as she snoozed and shrugged before diving off the side of the Centaur-pede’s back and straight into the snow. He was forty feet down in five seconds; he knew that he still had it. “Bit cold, but Rover is finding the dirt here to be of extravagant quality. It tastes pretty good too.”

Off in the distance a pair of glowing yellow eyes glinted in the shaded light beneath the clouds, they were watching the destroyed town as they sat in the snow. They had yet to spot the intrusion on the other side, but they were waiting and watching for anything to enter their territory. Once they did spot something, then that thing would quickly cease to exist.

Author's Note:

Now introducing two dangers. The story will focus on what Rarity and the others are doing on the ground.

Comments

[Razzy]

I'm already feeling sorry for any pirates who try to board the Shining Jewel. If they're lucky, they'll meet Sassy and die quick, if not... Well, I bet Chryssie likes to play for quite a while with her prey.

Oh c'mon, Vera, you know you'd miss Bugbutt.

Rarity got promoted to a living teddy bear.

Dun dun duuuuuuuun...

'pointed CAT drone as she does' - did

'have active ability' - an active

'thinks to a shift in weather' - thanks to a shift in the weather

'coming down the ladder down from looking around on the back the back of the walker' - remove second 'down' and one of 'the back'.

'come up on scanners yet' - the scanners

'Nobody is to leave sight of the Centaur-pede' - the sight

'Inside Rarity, was' - Inside, Rarity was

'protection Ember would offer would be' - Ember offered would be

'Ember wakes up please.' - Ember, wake up please.

'Greta sat up hugging Saffron to her chest and looked to Rarity’s predicament and snickered, she let go of Saffron carefully and made sure that she didn’t disturb the mares sleep.' - Greta sat up, hugging Saffron to her chest, looking to Rarity's predicament and snickering.

'Sanding up she made her way over to Rarity, she stumbled a bit and stood over Rarity look up at her pleadingly.' - Standing up, she made her way over to Rarity, stumbling a bit before standing over the mare, who was looking up at her pleadingly.

'those building' - buildings

'and lazy looked' - lazily

'they sit in the snow' - sat