Pinkie Pie 66%
Twilight knew something was wrong from the moment Pinkie emerged from the ice. She wasn’t in the room then—the slurry of chemicals and refrigerants that would be in the air during a pony’s decanting were not something she wanted to ingest.
But through the glass, she could see Pinkie Pie emerge, with a plain jumpsuit uniform still clinging to her frozen body. Bits of it broke apart in little chunks as she emerged, taking coat or skin with them on their way down. Sweet Celestia.
The painful reality of it hit her then, as surely as any other reality in her confusing world. You weren’t supposed to go into cryo wearing anything, other than medical implants. That was a basic fact that even entry-level students to the space program would’ve known. Pinkie Pie certainly did.
More importantly, Twilight had been there when her crew went under, and they’d all be properly naked. You woke up, Pinkie Pie. But when?
Most of the next few hours for her friend would not require her intervention, though she did call Fluttershy over coms immediately.
“It’s Pinkie Pie,” she said, before her friend could so much as squeak. “Something happened on the voyage. She went in wearing her jumpsuit. Looks hurt. There’s blood in here.”
Fluttershy wasn’t in cryo—according to the system, she was speaking from medical. Probably getting it ready for the routine procedure of regeneration and immune-boosting drugs.
“Horesefeathers,” Fluttershy swore, louder than Twilight had ever heard her. “You said she was wearing her… we can’t grow grafts out here, uh… I’ll be there right away.”
Twilight remained in the background for the next few hours, just far enough to be out of the way as her friend worked.
There were more than a few close calls, with Twilight terrified she might be able to watch Pinkie bleed to death under Fluttershy’s knife. But the Pegasus’s skilled hoof prevailed. At times it seemed that Twilight could feel the magic in the room, with Fluttershy’s kindness manifested as a physical force.
But then it was done. Pinkie Pie, still under dozens of different medications, was finally resting.
Fluttershy emerged from medical to an anxious crowd—even Spike had come to wait, watching through the glass beside them.
“She’ll make it,” Fluttershy finally said. “It’s going to be… rough. I had to take some tissue…” at their expressions, she quickly trailed off. “She’ll have scars. But she should be able to heal otherwise. Earth ponies are tough. That would’ve killed a pegasus or a unicorn.”
For a few seconds, there was silence—silence except for the Harmony’s distant engines. The air recyclers kicked in, rattling a little in their housing. Finally Twilight spoke.
“Did she ever wake up?”
“No!” Fluttershy seemed horrified. “I’m keeping her in a medical coma for at least another month. There are grafts healing, and I don’t know what kind of infections there might be… do you know what it feels like to be missing some of your skin?”
Applejack clutched at her stomach, stumbling a few steps away. She didn’t actually puke, though Twilight could’ve sworn her coat went a little greener. “Yes.”
“Do we…” Twilight hesitated. After something so sensitive, asking about the practical side could make ponies think you were callus. But this was her friend’s life they were talking about. “Do we have enough supplies for you to keep treating her that way? Enough medicine…”
“Yes,” Fluttershy answered. “But… we’re going to be real low on… everything when we’re done. I guess that’s something for Applejack to keep in mind.”
“I could switch back to geneseed,” Applejack muttered. “Would cut into our food supply, but… if something else happens.”
“No.” Twilight shook her head. “We have enough, food is more important right now. We just… we won’t wake up anypony else until we’ve got more. And we can be sure that they aren’t going to… Celestia, how did it happen? Could you get anything out of the computer, Spike?”
Spike nodded. “Not… as much as you’d like. Her pod showed her going into the ice about… twenty years ago.”
“You don’t remember that?” She had to ask the question delicately, but it was hard to restrain her frustration. Spike hadn’t been frozen during the whole trip, yet more and more terrible things had happened without him sounding an alarm.
Spike winced, looking away from them both. “Dragons hibernate, Twilight. That would’ve been right after we started decelerating. A few intense weeks, then… I slept. For almost a year. There was nothing going on when I went in, I remember. And when I woke up, everything seemed normal.”
And here we thought that having a dragon would mean we had a perfect watchpony for the trip. But Spike was right, she’d known about dragon hibernations for years. In older creatures, they could last for centuries. But a dragon as young as Spike wouldn’t need to sleep nearly as long. When we got here, the computer was scrambled. Spike didn’t know how to destroy records. Either he learned during the trip, or it was somepony else.
How much had happened during the trip over? Forty years was a long time. I have scars on my brain. Pinkie Pie was woken up and put back under with her clothes still on. Someone either didn’t know or didn’t care what happened to her.
“We have one more question to answer,” Fluttershy said. “I know it’s… not gonna be a nice one. But we should. Pinkie Pie… ordinarily you don’t put someone back under the ice after waking them up. But her body is damaged enough that the risks are… about the same as leaving her awake. Another freeze is more damage, but… if we leave her in until we’re back in Equestria, we can treat her in a real hospital. She can get real grafts, and real organ replacements if anything failed I haven’t noticed yet. Keeping her here stops from doing more damage, but… leaves her with me to care for her.”
She lowered her voice to a faint, nervous squeak. “I can’t be sure if it was only her body that was damaged. For all I know, she might not ever wake up. Or maybe she went through something similar to you, Twilight. It might be kinder just to put her back.”
“Freeze her again, after all that?” Applejack shook her head. “I don’t like it, cap.”
“If it’s really best for her…” Spike didn’t sound convinced. “I trust Fluttershy.”
“I think it would be,” Fluttershy said. “But the odds are close. If it wasn’t, I would just decide. But this is Twilight’s ship. She gets to make the call.”
A. Put Pinkie Pie back on ice, permanently. As much as it hurts, she has a better chance back in Equestria.
B. Let her heal here. Fluttershy has already done medical miracles. Pinkie Pie is barely holding on as it is. She can’t survive being frozen again.
(Certainty 170 required)
Honestly, the main reason I'm choosing not to ice her again is because that'd be the boring option.
No Ice. The odds are not that different, and strategically, we need her.
Shit... imagine if we'd chosen to defrost her before Fluttershy. That wouldn't have been a pretty sight...
I say let her heal. Pinkie Pie is tough, despite her injuries and keeping her unfrozen would allow Twilight to get answers once she does wake up. Something definitely happened during that period Pinkie was first unfrozen, and Twilight needs to figure out what.
Ponkers can't die like this. She needs to throw a We Arrived party first. Also, keeping her awake will mean we can get some answers. I bet it was Cozy who put her in like that.
The crew needs pinkie. If she is dead, comatose, or frozen, they don't have her. They all knew the risks going in, if they do end up in a situation where they need her, she wont be able to be unfrozen again till they get home. She needs to stay out of the freezer.
We don't even know if Equestrian hospitals exist anymore.
Refreezing would just delay the inevitable. Either she'll die here and now, on Equestria and much much later, or she'll pull through. We need answers.
Someone has been messing with the ship and crew while they were frozen and there is no telling what state dash or rarity are in.
As someone else mentioned, good thing we went medic officer second. All in all i'd say we've been making the reasonable calls so far. Lets keep it up.
First of all, I'd like to use some narcissism and confirmation bias to say that I knew we shouldn't have selected Pinkie! (For reasons such as we don't actually know how valuable intuition would be and we seem to be encountering violence before we've even met the aliens, we needed Rainbow.) And claim that I knew all along that Pinkie Pie was a bad choice and pretend I'm really smart and clever!
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'm of the opinion that we can't just freeze Pinks again. The odds are too close to the other option, we need more hooves on deck more than we need to ensure Pinkie's survival. Cruel and heartless as that sounds. Pinkie won't survive if the rest of the ship doesn't either, and we need ponies to start working on that and the mission.
Plus, I want to know what happened. Maybe Pinkie will be honest. Maybe she won't, but maybe she'll slip up and we can discover something. This is the same reason why I didn't want to ice Cozy Glow either.
The only way I would go along with icing Pinkie is if we could thaw another crew member instead. Even then, I'm not certain I would do it. Doesn't seem wise.
Well, sounds like it's time to vent Cozys damn capsule.
*sigh* this is what happens when choosing insight over experience people. Now either way, they're down not one but TWO. Ponies since flutters will have to deal with pinkie either way and they cant awaken the one pone who could have helped fight off any dangerous creatures. Oh and re-freezing her now without proper healing first would likely mean permanent brain damage or brain death, which would not be good in am already crazy and physics breaking pinkie. Leave her "awake", pinkies done crazier things
9321048
That seems the most likely scenario at the moment
You know, with all this talk of going back to equestria, and freezing pinkie until we get back to equestria, I don’t think this story will end when (if) they get back to equestria...
So, to sum up why leaving her here is probably better:
I honestly don't really see any upsides to putting her back into cryo. I guess we'd be eating less food, but that's a very minor plus compared to what we'd be losing.
No re-freeze.
9321048
9321094
Or she tock a trap to the stomec, panicked, hurried to freez herself and forgot to remove her jumpsuit.
Or (and I hate puting this on the table) she is in lege whit Cozy.
Now if you excuse me I have to take a shower after writing that.
9321128
If that was the case, then why would cozy even need to be on the ship?
9321139
Stacking the deck?
It is just a possabilety, a vary low one but plousable.
As has been noted, the ship might represent the pinnacle of pony medical technology by default. Better to do what they can now rather than throw Pinkie into the deep freeze so soon, especially if she can tell them what happened during deceleration. Plus, this expedition sorely needs a morale officer... though they'll need one even more if they have to plan a funeral.
From a writing standpoint, nursing Pinkie back to health may well be the key to unraveling this mystery. Get her well, get her talking. If this all comes down to Fluttershy's roll of the dice, well... We have to hope her skills are high enough.
Hmm that there is no way to CHECK the body of the pony before thawing is QUITE unbelievable...
Sincerely this looks almost an asspull...
9321086
It's my theory that whoever was in the 4th slot was going to get this regardless. Reinforcing this theory, we have Starscribe's line about earth ponies being hardier than other races. Or it's possible that her injuries were tailored to an earth pony. Or maybe she just critically failed a dice roll 20 years ago.
9321195
True, we really don't have any way of knowing. Well, maybe some of those who have been following the discord may know. But I avoid it in case of spoilers. That's why I was trying to be a little playful with it. I never considered that maybe the effects were tied to the position which one was defrosted at. I had kinda assumed the first two went sorta well simply because the author didn't want the story to suddenly collapse and die from one single wrong decision at the very beginning of the story.
9321100
Sure seems like Starscribe is trying to hint that maybe we should turn the ship around and the rest of the story is back on Equestria not some random spot in space.
Ah, the trials of being a
dungeongameStory Master.9320306
Crap I didn't catch that. Boy I sure hope that isn't the case.
9321191
Or a diceroll.
Never underestimate the power of critical success and critical failure.
Holy crap. That would have been so much worse if we didn't thaw Fluttershy first.
Keep Pinkie off the ice. Because... of reasons I'm too scatterbrained to recall right now. Should not have drank that soda. Does things to my mind.
On another note, remember that movie, Passengers, I think it was called. Sounds a lot like what may have happened to Pinkie.
Well, damn - good thing we unfroze Fluttershy before releasing Pinkie, otherwise this wouldn't be pretty ...
And what the hell is going on aboard this ship - crazy stowaways, mysterious brain-damage, sleepwalking crewmembers ... I bet they will never set a hoof on a spaceship ever again after this
Though I really, really want to know what Pinkie was thinking ... or what actually happened the first time she was defrosted. The way I understand it, there is actually no way to open the pods from the inside. I'm not sure if there even is an option for automatic release besides another crewmember doing it. And even if it's possible to program the computer to automatically release a sleeper at some specific time, that's a mighty fine coincidence that Pinkie was released just when Spike was hibernating.
And the clothing thing is just weird all around. I assume it's not something as stupid as "oopsie, I forgot not to wear PJs for this bed!" - and if Pinkie is either compromised or wanted to simply off herself after doing whatever it was she was doing when awake, there are far simpler and much more surefire ways to do so. But it doesn't really make sense for someone else (aka Glow) to pull this stunt either - if she could have gotten at the crew, she probably would have killed them outright instead of going through this charade. And if Pinkie was woken up unexpectedly, she would ahve surely alerted the rest of the crew that something is going wrong.
Assuming Spike hasn't actually gone insane, something simply doesn't add up. This whole thing makes no sense.
All that said, I don't think putting Pinkie under again is going to solve anything. Since either keeping her awake or freezing her again runs about the same chance of her not surviving, it might be best to try and heal her right on the spot - if we can get her to wake up, maybe we can start getting some answers on the insanity that apparently went down while the ship was in transit.
Ugh, doesn't the thing have any security cameras with footage we could check?
9321191
Yeah, that did seem very weird - surely it ought to be standard procedure to do at least a minimal once-over of the sleeper before waking them up? Not having the medic right there upon release was also dumb as all hell - that's the whole point of having the bloody medic defrosted!
I'm honestly starting to get pissed off at Twilight, maybe we should put her back on ice because she just keeps acting like an idiot. Might improve the crew's survival chances ...
9321297
My assumption was that a visual check was impossible prior to starting the thaw - either there was no window, or the liquid filling the pod is opaque when frozen, or both. Although it definitely would have been possible to discover that the pod was opened and then sealed again mid-journey at least, since that was in the log. Seems like there should have been an option to audit of all the logs, given all the anomolies that keep being discovered...
it's cozy glow I'll blame her for all this.
9321290
Plus there is the extremely low supply of the meds and the base mass needed to make them. Twilight just chalked it up to Spike having too many sweets, but, these last few choices have shown there is a massive difference between the food stock and the medical stock. So.....
So many oddities to figure out, and right now Pinkie seems like she might be the most likely one to tell us what was going on.
As to not having Fluttershy there, they hadn't needed her for decanting anypony else till now, it seems like it's a fully automatic process that just needs somepony to activate it. Fluttershy was doing her job and making sure medical was ready to receive and start treating Pinkie immediately. Yes, ideally you'd want a medic on hoof for this too, but they only have one of those.
It's a really bad design if there is no way to inspect the condition BEFORE thawing. It may lead to a fuckton of issues. [And let's not go there to the fact the there IS a jumpsuit... Ponies almost NEVER wear anything... why the heck Pinkie Pie would think to wear a jumpsuit is already crazy...]
I vote all hooves on deck. Let's not risk freezing her again.
We need her, and putting her back in the ice would only do more damage. Besides, Earth Ponies are tougher than Pegasi and Unicorns, Fluttershy said that herself. Pinkie will survive, the only question is at what cost?
choose B, i feel like she won't make it to Equestria
If the odds of survival are about even either way, then might as well go for the option that has the most benefits if successful: i.e. not freezing her.
Keep Pinkie awake and unfrozen. (awake can wait) Her insight is far too useful to ignore, and she may know what happened to her.
Going back on ice in-suit is probably in the manual under "Do Not Try! Bad Idea!". For someone who never read the manual, stuffing a potentially knocked out crewmember into the pod as is makes sense. It removes most trace of wrongdoing on their person, and allows greater freedom to do... what, I don't know. Sabotage, information manipulation, eating the last cupcake.
9321411
True but to give them credit and not knowing the magic rules their ship does apparently have about the same computing power as a nice toaster.
They are the elements of harmony, to put her back on ice would be on par with leaving her behind. Abe they need to be together
Holy crow those votes!!!
I still say no! There is no guarantee she can still help at all while wasting resources for another crew member!
In other words while it could be good this way we have the next best thing!
Her slitghtly more probable survival (not much but better than her dieing and probably not being able to help as she will be convalescent and most likely comatose.) versus another crew member who could most likely help.
Ugh. It feels like everyone is just hoping a natural 20 will happen to be in the game.
This is a probablity fallacy. Only the author could help us at this point to keep Pinkie alive and help keep the rest of the crew alive.
My next vote would be which crew member has the best survival rate of usefulness.
Rarity would be my prime choice as she could understand the tech/physics and that it could be used for or even if there are any clues in the system.
Then of course Rainbow. Hopefully having a cautious military mindset at that point would be best for their survival... Unless she has another skill besides military? A general smattering of disciplines or maybe cryptography? Heck even general military studies would cover alot of the basic sciences, resource management and in this case "humanities".
Of course Equestria may be too far gone but then again it could already be so and they need to solve the mystery and hopefully make friends.
Arg. Practically a forgone conclusion at this point given the votes but still.
Here is hoping for the best.
Plus don't kill the Pinkie Pie!
9321092
I chose her for geology as much as insight. They're going to a metal, habitable planet. That's something extremely odd and in her field of expertise, we'd get about as much use out of the geology as the insight.... plus you want a geologists opinion on any landing site.
If it was just about Pinkie, I'd go with Fluttershy's advice. But they need every pair of hooves they can get to help...if the odds are close, it's better that she stay awake. She won't get to an Equestrian hospital if the ship blows up, even if they manage to ice her again safely.
9321777
Actually a good number of Rocky planetsaround other stars can be called "metallic". Considering there are trillions upon trillions of stars with a larger number of planets, enough so that planets like earth and equis are more the exception than the rule. It jusy means there happens to be a larger amount of metallic ore. Of course it could be going the star wars route of "that's no moon, its a star base" type thing, a Dyson sphere under construction, or a planet inhabited by a robotic race, in any of those you want military expertise. And a military Pegasus should be just as good at finding landing sites that the ship or the prospectors can land in or possibly even better if hostile races are involved
9321776
Heh, I don't know about others but I voted to keep her out mainly because it seems like the more interesting choice story-wise. Putting her back on ice may be there more sensible thing, but didn't seem very interesting plot-wise. Like with Cozy Glow I was really hoping to keep her out even tho freezing her was probably the right call.
But I do really hope Pinkie doesn't die!
Well damn. I'm glad I lost the previous vote and we woke Fluttershy before Pinkie.
Turns out the intermittently hibernating dragon was not the best choice as the sole awake crew for a mission where stowaways and sabotage ended up happening.
I wonder how much information about what went on is locked in the now cryrosleeping Cosy Glow's mind. It might be worth carefully waking her up and interrogating her a bit more intensely to find out what she knows about Pinkie.
That's a tough choice, but I'm thinking B, heal here.
9321256
Which kind of roll?
Random Encounter roll?
Because that is QUITE the string of bad things.
9322076
You can check the rolls if you join the Discord. There were four rolls related to this chapter, the first was "Did Pinkie Pie make it through the voyage unscathed?" to which the answer is obviously "No". The other three are somewhat spoilery, so I'll leave you to join the Discord if you want to see.
Hmmm...
Keep her out. Pinkie knew going on ice like this would be awful for her but she did it anyway. Meaning she needed to endure this to do something important.
I’m going to trust in Ponk and hope she can get through this with a minimum of suffering.
9322281
What I find really offputting is that THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY WAY TO CHECK beforehand for something THAT evident. Pinkie out of commission for a subtle malfunction of the pod that comes out only midway the defrost, well ok, still strange as it's something you are trusting the life of someone to and so will be damn redundant but yeah... mangled by a gross thing like a fuc*ing jumpsuit on a pony? not really...
Hmm right... one thing... from chapter 1
So SOMETHING is worn during the deep freeze.