The First Equestrian Starliner

by computerneek

Chapter 10

Thankfully, the fog clears from her mind just as quickly as it came. She blinks her eyes open again… Yes, those big lights in the corners of the room are still yellow; she’s also still breathing deep and hard.

Though the floor feels… different than she would normally expect it to, against her scales.

She puts her claws under herself and pushes herself upright… or at least tries. She promptly falls back down on the ground.

Then she pauses. She hadn’t felt her claws, just the palm of her clawed hand. She closes her eyes; there’s also a pain building in her forehead. She places her claws underneath her. It wouldn’t befit a Princess like herself to be caught lying on the floor! She taps her claws against the floor… for no effect whatsoever. None of the clicking she’d expect, nor the feel of her claws striking the metal.

She pushes herself up with her claws, allowing herself to hold this position, her legs stretched out behind her. She hangs her head down towards her claws, breathing deeply… and opens her eyes.

She very nearly lets out a scream- and does fall over sideways.

Those are most certainly not claws. They’re…

She twists it around in front of her. This… stumpy, blocklike thing at the end of her forelimb. She hadn’t melted her claws off or something, had she?

… No. She couldn’t have; if she did, the rest of the limb wouldn’t be covered with soft, black fur. She knows its soft because she touched it with the hard tip of her other forelimb… How she’d felt with this hard block of bone, she’s not sure. She looks down at herself. Her legs have changed as well, also covered in black fur… Her body too. Her hard scales are gone.

Well, she supposes, I suppose I won’t have to deal with the pain of shedding every year any more, will I?

She shifts her hind legs a little… and after a minute, rolls back onto her belly and pushes herself up onto all fours. Then she turns her head to the side to look at herself in this natural-feeling stance.

Again, she almost lets out a scream.

Though it’s a little different this time. Strange, leathery wings grace her sides, with claws at the joints. Funny, she’s never had wings before.

The tail is a different story. She’s always had a short, scaly tail that got in the way of absolutely everything. Now, her tail is long- almost twice as long as the rest of her body, actually. Covered in that same, black fur, with a line of longer, dark blue fur sticking out the top. And at the end- she flexes it around so she can get a better look at it…

And offers a yelp of pain as it comes into contact with the backs of her ship’s weapon mounts. She quickly slams it to the floor and pulls herself forwards, away from her ship. She adjusts each leg carefully, feeling as if she were walking on her claws and knees, until she’s far enough from her ship to be safe… Then she swings the tail back up for her to look at it.

At the end, just past the patch of scorched fur, is an interesting blade-like thing… It looks sharp, but it also looks like she could use it as a club. She tries swinging it a couple times, rewarded by a satisfying whoop of air… And yes, it does have some rather significant mass; she can use it as a weapon… So, in exchange for losing her claws and becoming a quadruped, she’s gained a natural weapon.

At least, she’s fairly sure she’s become a quadruped.

She looks at her wings, on her sides… She tries commanding them. She… Carefully balances herself on three… legs… to reach one forelimb up to touch her left wing.

It twitches. She shivers at the alien feeling of the body part she never had before. Then she focuses on the feeling, enhancing it… and manages to extend the wing.

It’s huge.

She retracts it again- easy, she finds- before repeating the experiment on the other side.

Then, right as her right wing lands folded again, the lights flick to green. She blinks- she hadn’t realized she’d been slowing down her breathing, but she’s down to a normal breathing rate… and depth. It’s comfortable.

She glances up at her ship. At least the problem of getting back up to the door is solved, once she learns to fly… But the engines are a different story. Yes, the engines look like they’ve been shot off. A lucky hit, she supposes.

She turns towards the front of the room, where the one foot door is, and starts walking towards it.

She’s only three steps closer when it splits down the middle and slides open, like a door in a fancy building back on her homeworld might do… Before they were all destroyed, that is.

Creatures spill out of it. One- the shockingly pink one- gasps and falls on her face. The orange one that was leaning against her falls too, though sideways. The light blue one dodges deftly into the air to avoid getting knocked over, spreading one wing to hold her up… and landing on her side anyways. The white one dodges back out into the hallway, just in time to get smashed against the doorframe by the dark blue one, who then falls over, on top of the purple one. The purple one lets out a yelp and leaps into the air to avoid getting crushed- extending two working wings to catch herself with… successfully. Then a seventh, yellow she thinks, pokes one eye around the corner to look into the room, having avoided the dominoes entirely.

If this is the kind of decorum she’s competing against, she figures she’s got it beat- even with her no doubt embarrassing future attempts to figure out the details of her new form… like how to fly. Or eat.

The purple one drops back out of the air, landing gently on the decking next to the dogpile with a distinctive scowl. “Really, Pinkie?” she asks.

The pink one performs some kind of whirling move to slip out from underneath the orange one, landing upright with an interesting bounce… and eliciting a yelp from the orange one as it gets dropped to the hard metal flooring. “Oops!”

The purple one sighs, shaking her head- sounds like Princess Twilight did- as she watches the dogpile undo itself.

Off to the side, the blue one simply scrambles back upright, emitting an annoyed groan as it- no, she- does so.

The orange one rolls over to return to a standing position… on only three legs, while the pink one bounces- yes, literally bounces- over to the purple one. The white one separates herself from the dark blue one, scrambling upright and grumbling about something as she draws back into the hallway, positively limping away. The yellow one simply disappears as the dark blue one scrambles back to her hooves to speak an apology back into the hallway before returning to walk- very carefully, it seems- through the door and into the bay. The door closes behind her.

She closes her jaw. She really hopes this is abnormal. Like, very abnormal.

Then the purple one seems to get curious and prances towards the nose of her ship, completely oblivious of her presence. Her eyes widen as she realizes what the purple one is going to do- and she speaks up. “Don’t touch it!” she warns.

The purple one yelps, jumping visibly backwards and turning to look, wings flaring. “Why not…?” She folds her wings and facehooves.

That professional voice comes in, sounding from somewhere in the room. An intercom? She’s not sure. “Surface temperatures detected as high as three thousand two hundred eighteen degrees Celsius,” it- no, she- states calmly.

The purple one’s eyes widen, before she positively skitters away from the ship, taking a circuitous route to reach her.

She raises her eyebrows. “What?” She asks. “Afraid of a little skin heat?”

It rather helps that she knows exactly where those peak temperatures will be- and why they’re so high. When she’d looked earlier, she’d spotted her ship’s radiator still attached above the engines, just bent… and with the connectors shattered, rendering it useless. It won’t have lost the enormous temperatures that had been funneled up to it just yet, though, making it easily the hottest surface part of her ship.

The purple one scowls. “Of course not!” she states. “Three thousand degrees Celsius is enough to melt the flesh off my bones! I’m not about to mess with that!”

She chuckles. “The nose cone is only a few hundred degrees. The only exterior part over a thousand should be the radiator up top. Anyways, is Princess Twilight Sparkle around here someplace?”

Most of them- including the purple one- turn to stare at her for a couple of seconds.

The purple one blinks before she has the chance to ask why they’re staring. “Oh, um, that would be me, actually.” She smiles bashfully, spreading her wings in what might be called a regal manner. “I’m sorry we weren’t fast enough to save your… uh, comrades… Who might you be?”

She lets out a sigh, putting on a regal stance of her own. One that doesn’t involve her wings, or tail. Time to drive the lesson home.

“I am Princess Midnight Blade and I wish to extend a Princess’ Thanks for rescuing my person.” She has difficulty suppressing the smile, and keeping it out of her voice. “Furthermore, I wish to formally accept your offer of…” She trails off, giggling madly. She just can’t keep it in- their expressions are all priceless… Especially the princess’. Shortly, everyone in the room is giggling as well- all except the princess, whose furry face has turned a bright red.

Eventually, the gigglefest ends. She calms herself first; as a Princess, she owes it to her subjects to be the strength they can rely upon… even if they’re all dead.

But in this case, she figures, she has an excuse. She’s a young Princess, hardly out of her teenage years; she can still afford a few moments of fun. In theory.

Especially when meeting with royalty that dogpiles the door on the way in.

She waits until all of the giggling completes before speaking up again… Oh, and it seems those present aren’t the only ones listening.

“Princess Midnight Blade, Welcome aboard the Starship Athena. Simulations are suggesting the transformation effect is permanent, but we expect to have the capacity to reverse it in approximately nineteen days’ time. The amenities available to you while aboard this ship, no matter your form, include but are not limited to: Palatial living quarters, two swimming pools, eighteen hot tubs, six gyms, two standard holodeck simulators, three wind tunnel holodeck simulators, the neural simulators, and the janitor’s closet. Please, make yourself at home.”

She blinks. Whoever that was has even her beat… “Wait, what?” she yelps, tilting her head. “What was that last one?”

“The neural simulators, designed to-”

“No, after that.”

“Please, make yourself at home.”

“Before that.

“The neural simulators, desi-”

“Nevermind.” She shakes her head. She’s certain there was something between the two, but she can’t remember what it was.

---

“Nevermind.”

They can’t stop laughing. They’d watched on the screen the ship helpfully provided here in the sickbay, after they’d gotten Rarity’s broken rib fixed again. Once everypony- including themselves- had finished giggling at how Princess Midnight had one-upped Twilight’s presentation, Rarity had asked Athena to demonstrate to Twilight how it’s done and greet the visiting Princess.

The result was nothing shy of epic.

Neither of them can figure out what that part about the ‘transformation effect’ was about.

Comments

[LostArchivist]

She knows its soft because she touched it with the hard tip of her other forelimb <-- it's, not its

The ship is a bit of a troll. That part about the janitor's closet! Hahaha...

What creature is the new princess, anyway? Some sort of pterequidactyl?
I was kinda expecting the whole alicorn treatment, but I suppose that only applies if the royalty is also an embodiment of some kind of physical aspect...
Then again, EqG subverts that, so who knows.

I notice that they are still not healed from that crash. Does that mean the prosthetics are not functional, or are they not done yet/installed?
I think it's the latter...