Arrow 18: You've got mail

by Ocean wave

Ping

Author's Note:

Hello. I'm Ocean Wave. I'll make this clear right now that I am no Writer. In fact, my English is damn atrocious and I know it. Can I do anything about it? Years of work have told me no...just something in my brain and hands won't let me. Hell, even the guide that Fimfic recommends won't work at the time if writing this. However, after reading the Fanfiction by AdmiralTigerClaw by the name of "Arrow 18 Mission Logs" It's Dramatic reading (unfinished), Its spin-off (unfinished), and possibly continuation by Kovabomb, I felt a need to take a crack at adding a part of the story myself. After all, it's an open invitation by the latter. So please bare in mind this is written by a novice who at this point has no desire to write anything more in general. With that I leave you to read.

It all started with a bang. A bang that shook Equis to its core and would signify a change in Twilight Sparkle's life forever.

Twilight had been the first to come in contact with an in all respects, an actual alien lifeform. The life form was a 'Human' and had come from a planet that translated to 'Earth'. When humans first saw her world, Equis, which had at the time been dubbed Omega Centauri II, They saw it defy all manner of logic and reason they had studied over their course of history. It was in a Geocentric orbit. This meant unlike every other star system in recorded history, A star was in orbit around an earthlike world, rather than the other way around. Naturally, they had scrambled to get someone to study it up close.

That someone, Captain Randolph Edwards, landed on Omega Centauri II. It was there he came in contact with one of the sentient races of the planet. A race that most closely translated to 'Ponies'. Twilight was one of these Ponies. Twilight was the first to approach the captain, and though hard work and dedication to a point beyond some would consider 'safe', cracked the language barrier and set up communication with the alien.

After six months together, doing things from using Twilight's abilities as a Unicorn with what translated as 'Magic' to help tear down the barriers between them. To the captain, who she now knew as Randy, taking her into orbit aboard his flying ship, the Raven Star. The latter proved more interesting than intended. They learned the hard way that Twilight's friend, Rainbow Dash, was claustrophobic. Not something you want to learn first hand when in a flying machine going twenty times the speed of sound.

Even though such times were times of extraordinary discovery on both sides. So much so they learned how the nation's beloved rulers, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, could control the movements of Omega Centauri II's star and it's moon respectively to create the oddity that humans first saw. Randy had to go home sooner or later. And so he got back into the Raven Star and took off to head back home. It never made it into orbit.

For reasons unknown to Equis, and even Randy, The ship's engines malfunctioned. The resulting force sent the Raven Star tumbling through the air at Mach 11 for over a minute before the speed ripped the ship into flaming pieces. Though through a miracle, Randy survived. Without a moment to lose, Princess Luna performed the most impressive teleport in Equis history and Encased herself and her friend in magical shields capable of protecting them from the forces that ripped everything around them apart.

Unfortunately, even Miracles can't save everything. While luna only suffered a wing missing plenty of feathers which would ground her for a few months. Randy's legs were too close to the shields themselves and were burned beyond repair. As such even though he was alive and the ship meant to take him home was within reach, he followed the laws set by the agency that sent him to this miracle of a planet and refused transport by magic. Even taking away humans natural resistance to all form of magic, making the trip dangerous at best. He was a cripple, and cripples were not allowed to pilot spacecraft for the safety of themselves, and everyone around them.

But he was alive, and everyone was happy to take that without question. Besides, not everything from the Raven Star was lost. Before its departure, Randy had given Twilight a gift. She had one of the Raven Stars backup computers. As such all the data that Twilight had learned, and could still learn from humans survived for further study.

But despite having a year with such a device, learning as much as she could about it, she never expected what happened one lazy, absolutely normal afternoon. It let out a noise. It was a sort of ping noise, similar to a bell being rung. At first, she thought it was a warning, that she had somehow forgotten to charge it properly and the device was starting to power down.

Then she saw the computer had something far more important. It was clear, and precise in its meaning. It had received a message. At first, Twilight was stunned into being frozen in place. After a while, Spike came over and tried to get her attention.

And then everything happened at once.

Within seconds a quill was writing a hastened message. It was short, but it needed to be delivered as fast as possible. The information being transferred was that of planetary importance.

Spike, on the other hand, had no idea what was going on. "Twilight? What's going on?" He just confusedly looked on as she wrote down something faster than he had ever seen her write something before.

"I'll explain later Spike! Just send this to the princess and prepare for some visitors!" Twilight rolled up the paper, practically throwing it into the dragon's claws before moving to clean up the library.

Spike, out of curiousness, opened the letter and had a read of its content.

"Dear Princess Celestia.

Please come to Ponyville as soon as possible. And bring Randy. The Computer says it has received a message.

Your Faithful Student
Twilight Sparkle"

Spike, at that point, knew what had Twilight in such a state. He sent the letter without another word.

Not a minute later, Princess Celestia appeared in a flash of light. With her was Randy, as requested. Thanks for the information contained in the current object of interest, ponykind had managed to build Randy a wheelchair to him to move around on. Though he still needed help moving up and down stairs. Luckily since the magic resistance didn’t apply to anything in physical contact, lifting the chair was child's play compared to lifting Randy himself.

“Twilight, what happened?” Randy asked with a rather no-nonsense tone as he rolled up too the backup computer.

Walked up behind him, watching him “I-i don’t know for sure. It just...beeped. Like a bell would chime. When I looked it said you had a message.”

Dan went to check on the message in question with tentative eagerness. It was like when someone is holding an unchecked report card in their hands, or being attached to a zip line for the first time. But before he could open the new file, behind everyone there was another flash of light. Princess Luna had clearly teleported as soon as he heard...at least that’s what the little dribble of saliva running down the side of her mouth gave way.

“We heard that their is a letter to Randy received by the Computer, yes?” Upon an amused look from her sister, she noticed the little bit of saliva and wiped it away. “I heard, forgive me.”

Twilight turned to her and nodded. “Yes, it just came in. It says it’s addressed to Randy on the messages sealed state...oh! I almost forgot” Lighting up her horn, she cast one of her most prized spells into the area around her.

“Thank you Twilight, I doubt any of us want to miss what this message has to offer,” Celestia said, walking behind Randy and looking at the strange markings.

Thanks to time and effort on the parts of Randy and Twilight, along with the computers help, She could read the symbols as if they were her own language...in fact to her, they DID look like Equin language. While at first, the translation spell was...primal, translating language in odd ways and even voicing sound effects, It now was near perfect in translating both voice and writing.

However Randy seemed nervous, scared, even to open the message. It was unspoken but the reason why was clear enough. This was the first contact with humankind since this whole journey with alien life began. He had constantly wondered if his discoveries would be chalked up to some form of space madness. However, Twilight was a master of friendship. With a simple smile and hoof on his shoulder, Randy got the courage to hit play.

What was, to various degrees, surprising to everyone in the room was that the message was a video recording, not text. It shuffled for a moment as the camera was set straight, but Randy knew who was on the other end of that camera. His name was Dan Hawking. Twilight knew that name. Randy had told her to leave one last message to be sent on home by the Raven Star’s mother ship, the Arrow, addressed to him. Apparently, Dan owed Randy a new pair of legs.

After setting up the camera properly, Dan cleared his throat. “Captain. If you are getting this, then the probe we sent at least got close enough to deliver it without any abnormalities. With luck, it should be in orbit around...Equis, if I recall correctly, in a few days at most. We’ll pick it up later.” That made Randy sigh in relief, at least they believed him in all this.

“Well, first things first.” Dan continued. “We know what happened to the Raven, and it wasn’t your fault, nor the fault of any of the beings on Equis. I’ll cut the details. In short, your fuel valve from turbo pump seven of SCRAM two got stuck on your first flight up. It was pouring in a hundred and thirty percent power into SCRAM 2. That's so much your systems couldn’t even pick it up properly.”

Randy sighed and put his head in his hands. He could guess what would come out of Dan’s mouth next.

“It wasn’t your field, so not checking that far up when you repaired the symptoms was no fault of your own. You couldn’t have known what was really going on. While we don’t exactly know what happened with the valve exactly after that, we do know that valve got stuck again at about thirty-six percent during your second accent. You ran the throttle up and down, as per procedure to open it up. And the whole valve slammed open to full hundred thirty percent when the pressure got too much...while your throttle was at seventy percent.”

Dan took a moment's breath before finishing up the story. “The emergency cutoff failed, so RCS couldn’t get the craft under control. The resulting flare of SCRAM two and the RCS being overpowered pushed the Raven out of envelope, which caused SCRAM one to flame out. After that SCRAM two choked, causing the whole thing to blow and compromised your Avionics.”

Randy, and the ponies around him could take comfort in the fact that no one was at fault. After all, such a complex machine would be subject to problems that sometimes you just don’t catch. However while Twilight could understand enough about the Raven from its diagrams that she understood what happened to a degree, the princesses were completely lost.

And that's where Twilight came in. “If I am understanding it right, one of its engines, the equipment that makes the dragon roar, lost control and went too full power while the other was at half that strength. Sort of like the reverse of a wing cramp when a pegasus like Dash or a Wonderbolt is flying at top speed, to put it at the simplest of terms.” The Princesses could now at least visualize what happened to the craft at that point, and could only imagine the stress on a pegasus’s body if that happened to one when flying at eighteen times Dash’s top speed.

“Though I still can’t believe for the life of me that, who you call Princess Luna, was able to do what she did. So Princess Luna, who I can guess is watching this at some point. You have the thanks of everyone here at the Global Space Agency and all of Humankind for saving one of our own.” Luna couldn’t help but blush a bit sheepishly at that. She was still getting used too Equestria as a whole actually liking her. And now she had an alien world singing praise of her.\

“And with that out of the way, we can get onto the best news you have heard in awhile I'd say.” Dam gave a big old Smirk. “By the time you get this, a team will be on its way to pick you up AND meet the locals for proper diplomacy. Well, as much diplomacy you can figure out ‘half way across the milky way’.” Everyone in the room was happy with that revelation. “It's going to take a lot longer than the probe though...you know SSD science, more mass means more energy, and more energy means shorter hops.”

“Anyway, back to you specifically Captain. Your discoveries are sure to make you a hero for all of human history...don’t worry, I can take some of the weight off your shoulders if you want” This lead to a chuckle from both humans “But either way, you will be compensated for your injuries and handsomely rewarded for all you have done...starting with a new pair of prosthetics when your ride arrives. For Equins watching, Prosthetics are fake limbs...not as ‘feely’ as the real deal but you can walk with them.”

Once again, the Equins in the room got excited at just how Technology can do anything they could think of. Though Randy had drowned them out at this point, focusing solely on the message in front of him. A voice to the side of Dan got his attention “huh?...yeah, yeah, hold on.” he sighed “Well, seems that times up. But before I forget” With the look of ‘got you’ unrivaled by any other, he pulled a space helmet from behind the camera and held it under his arm.

“Yes, I’ll give you your new legs when I get there”

Comments

[kovabomb]

A little rough around the edges, but I would say that this was a good followup. However, I will leave it to Tigerclaw to determine if this is actually cannon or not. Keep honing your skills. Thanks for a short and sweet read.

[Ocean wave]

8116456 Personally I am shocked that this ended up on people's favorites list. But if I may ask, how do you think I could do this better? Like any tips on what I was off on and how to improve it?

[kovabomb]

8124951
Well, you did acknowledge that English was not your first language and that you're still improving on it, so the grammatical errors and simplicity can be forgiven for now. Just keep brushing up on that and you'll be fine. However, there was also the fact that a lot of exposition was crammed into the first part of the story that didn't need to be there. You effectively retold, in short form, the entire story of Arrow 18. In a sequel story like this, when the reader is assumed to have read the previous story, details from previous installments need only be hinted at or alluded to, not retold entirely.

Those are the only real criticisms I have with this short story. Still, as I said, the idea of the story is a good one. For some, just the idea can be enough.

[Lord King Cocoon]

As kovabomb said, it's a little heavy on exposition. But for English not being your first language, I'd say that this looks pretty good. A fun little side story.

[Ocean wave]

For the record everyone, English IS my first language, I know no others. The reason I have trouble with it is more on the mental side of things. Writing/Typing, my brain, and my hands just don't play nice

[PostPony]

8180934
Ah, well you did a good job regardless.

[sockmonkey]

I liked it. That last line made me smile.

[Stellar Light Sparkle]

Just one thing...

'Dan' went to check on the message in question

I think this should be 'Randy', not Dan.