Chapter 56
Call Applejack immediately 43%
Twilight had an awful feeling about this. As she removed the radio from her pack and switched it back on, she could feel the beginnings of nausea in her chest, and the tension in her limbs. It was the feeling she always got when she knew there was going to be conflict. But there was nothing for it. The Equinox’s chief engineer relied on trust more than anypony else aboard. There could be no softening the truth for her, no beautiful lies. If Twilight kept this secret and Applejack discovered she had lied about it, she would lose her trust forever.
“I am going to investigate the samples in the space behind,” Node said, turning to go. “I will remain close.” He didn’t wait for permission, just walked off. Twilight sighed, but didn’t try to stop him. She twisted the dial on the radio, holding it out. Would the Signaler building block her transmission?
No. Fluttershy’s voice came in over the line immediately, harsh and insistent. “—can’t hide forever. Captain Twilight Sparkle, your friends are very worried about you.”
How long had she been talking? Twilight waited for her to finish, then pressed down the transmission button. “This is Twilight, calling the Prospector. Come in.”
“Twilight, thank Celestia,” Applejack’s voice answered first, with a little bit of a gravely cough. “Was about to come up and get ‘ya. Thought maybe that building had swallowed you er somethin’”
“No. So far as I can tell the building doesn’t have defenses that trigger when we visit. There are some sections that might hurt somepony if they used them incorrectly, but… I stayed safe. This was only a scouting mission.”
There was a brief silence, then Fluttershy. “There’s a full medical and psychological evaluation waiting for you when you get back, captain. I can’t imagine you’re still of sound mind if you’re doing things like this.”
It was now or never. She wavered on the fence for a few more seconds, then winced and went for it. “There’s something in the building that… I just wouldn’t feel right not telling you about. I can give the rest of the report when I get back, but… Applejack, you deserve to know.”
Another silence, this one longer. Eventually Applejack responded. “Now why would I deserve to know, specific? Way I see it, we’re all in this together. Unless… you found out what the flu is. You know I’m not gonna make it. Is that it?”
“No!” she didn’t have to deliberate over that one. “Nothing like that, Applejack. It’s—”
“Something you should tell us when you get back,” Fluttershy interrupted. “You shouldn’t be stressing yourself after the mission. Why don’t you come back here?”
Twilight jumped at the chance, but she was too late. “No, Fluttershy. I wanna know. Captain wouldn’t say somethin’ like that casual like. She means it.”
She could only imagine the argument taking place back in the Prospector. “There’s a biological exhibit in here. Past it, there’s… an alien stasis device. Your little sister, Apple Bloom, is here. She looks alive, but…” how could she even describe the metal tendrils frozen in their crawl up her leg? “She doesn’t look well.”
Does Applejack take the news well? No.
“She’s in stasis though!” Twilight added, after a full minute of silence. “There’s really no need to do anything right now, Applejack. It looks like she’s already been here for a long time. I’m going to take pictures of everything back with me, and you can examine them. I’ll head back right now.”
Still there was silence.
Does she insist on coming right into the building despite her health? Critical Yes.
Twilight heard nothing over the radio for several minutes. When somepony finally spoke, it was an exasperated-sounding Fluttershy, out of breath. “She’s coming, Captain. I hope that was what you wanted. A pony who can barely walk, with her immune system compromised, marching a kilometer up to an alien structure. I’m struggling to imagine what you thought was going to happen.”
“I…” she whimpered, keeping ‘transmit’ off the radio. What had she thought would happen. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You’re supposed to be our commander,” Fluttershy snapped. “Treating ponies like foals is my job. I expected you to lead.” The line went dead. It stayed quiet for another twenty minutes or so, until Applejack’s voice returned, hacking and out of breath. “Where… are… you.”
Does she suffer health complications? Yes.
Applejack gains the trait Walking Pneumonia.
Twilight directed her. A few minutes later, and the door opened—Fluttershy trailing behind Applejack with a medical bag over her shoulder. Applejack herself had her tools, and a thin line of slime running down her front. She wiped her mouth with the back of one leg as she walked in, wavering a little on her hooves. But there was magic burning in her, enough Earth Pony magic to keep her standing. “Where is she?”
Twilight led the way to the single active stasis pod. Applejack leaned in towards the window, swearing under her breath. “We gotta get her out,” she said, settling her toolbox down and looking over the machine. “There’s, uh… gotta be a way to shut this thing down.”
Applejack set to work. She didn’t actually manipulate the strange controls. Rather, she walked over to one of the offline machines next to it, and started removing the metal shell. Light from the window beside them was slowly stained red by sunrise, then went out completely, and still she worked. She barely even seemed to see any of them standing there.
“Alright,” Applejack marched over to Twilight, after several straight hours of work on one of the other pods. “I need yer help, cap. And yours, Fluttershy. I got a pretty good idea what’s goin’ on here. I think all three of us workin’ together can get my sister out.”
1. Go with Applejack’s plan. Difficult engineering task from Applejack, easy magical task for Twilight, and difficult medical task for Fluttershy. [dangerous]
2. Put a stop to this. We have no idea what condition Apple Bloom is in. Getting her out now is insane. It’s time to be a leader. [-morale Applejack]
3. Seal Applejack in one of the other stasis pods. We can’t handle this right now. [-morale Applejack]
(Certainty 215 required)
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Fucking hell.
Well this just got complicated real quickly didn't it?
It'd be nice to know what specifically happens when a -morale event happens. Depending on just how bad that would be, I'm inclined to take a gamble and go for the dangerous option.
Still, I have to imagine that AB is in the stasis pod for a reason. There's a decent chance she has a nanite plague or something, if you'll remember the weird metallic crap on her hoof that we saw.
There just isn't a great choice here, honestly, which is probably the first time so far this has happened.
Well, looks like orange is the new Twilight in terms of bad dice rolls. Starscribe, you did everything you could, but after three chances, I can safely say the dice have a death wish on AJ.
Power's back in the voters' hands now, and I say nopony else does anything stupid and rushed. 2 it is.
She was apointed to LEAD, not READ.
9462884
There were a few comments in the last chapter saying that we should have been able to combine options 1 and 2 - take pictures, bring them to Applejack while she's in her bed, and then tie her to her bed until she gets well enough to walk. I would have voted for that if it was an option.
(Also I checked the results for the last poll, and the option to take pictures and wait was only a few votes behind.)
So by moving to not lose Applejack’s trust, we’ve apparently lost Fluttershy’s (if not having killed Applejack as well). I haven’t voted or commented much lately because it kind of feels like everypony’s screwed- or at least being forced into drama- no matter what. But then,
Fluttershy is kind of a bitch in this universe, though. Don’t blame Twilight because you can’t control your patient.
Not telling Applejack about her frozen sister would have been treating her like a foal.
So, is Applejack saying she understands what's going on in the Stasis Pod and how to disable it, or does she understand what's going on with Applebloom and how to cure her?
Because those two have very different implications about what happens next.
Right now, Twilight needs to stop this before it goes any further. Ideally, she'll phrase it so Applejack understands that Twilight wants to maximize Apple Bloom's odds of survival, and that means waiting until AJ's lungs no longer look like a half-set Jello mold. I can only hope that Applejack will accept that. If not...
Well, there is room for one more in the stasis pods, but hopefully it won't come to that. We do still need an engineer, and Spike's busy in orbit. Plus, no one else may know how to turn the darn things off.
9462884
... Thus shutting down a vote that might prevent future incidents along these lines. Unless you're going to stop reading the story altogether, I don't see how this helps.
This is why I voted to tell her later. It's time to be a leader. Applejack shouldn't be here at all. Suffer the morale loss; it's better than permanent health damage for either AJ or AB. Apple Bloom has got to be in stasis for a reason. Until we know why, we should leave her there. It's safer. We can still reason things out. We only lost by 5 votes last poll.
Come on guys, you gotta commit. We brought applejack here. We cannot give up now.
That's exactly why I voted for the other option.
And now I have no idea what I should vote for this time.
To bad there isn't an forth option like last time, this time we would have really needed it.
Anyway, as always a good chapter!
Question:
Why does AJ get bad morale if we put her into stasis? If we put her there she wouldn't get anything, right?
Edit:
I just noticed the Resource Page isn't up to date.
Don't want to pressure you, just reminding in case it was simply forgotten.
Found a typo:
I'm sure the number isn't supposed to be there.
that out of the way, do we go big or go home?
How you all didn't realize this was gonna happen I don't know. There is a reason that even the safest path in these stories can lead to disaster. The random element make any risk to great. The odds in these CYOA stories naturally steer results towards the most catastrophic results. With bad rolls even the safest path can end in disaster. Any risky moves can destroy a story very quickly. This may be the move that finished off this one.
The smart thing is obviously not to open the pod yet. She's probably frozen to give somebody else time to figure out how to stop all of her from being eaten by that thing that's eating her leg.
Or we could stop choosing boring safe options and just keep being reckless and see what happens. It'll at least be more interesting. The goal here isn't to make sure the characters are all happy. The goal is to make an interesting story. Do you really want a story filled with as little conflict as possible?
Granted, all these options lead to conflict, and driving a wedge between Twilight and AJ is probably a more interesting conflict than just seeing AB die. So option 2 is still best. 3 is just too uncharacteristic for Twilight I think.
Plus I'd feel bad if AB was eaten alive by some kind of metallic goop. Unless this is the Matrix, then it might be a good thing.
Yep! This is pretty much what I saw happening.
Applejack too stubborn to see that her action might put everyone (including Applebloom) in danger. I'm being brought back to when Applejack was doing her chores half asleep again. It's really possible she missed a few things in her inspection or will make a mistake working on this thing the way she is now.
9462993
Walking Pneumonia is no joke and can be lethal if not treated. But there is no hospital here and Fluttershy already has her hooves full with everyone else. And Applejack is planning to plus one that while dragging herself into a slow death. Noooo... I'm not walking into the abyss with you. I'm voting number two. Though at this point the damage is probably done. Applejack might not even listen to reason if Twilight can't think of a good rebuke to bash through Applejack's well known stubbornness.
Wake the obviously under-attack terrified pony? Yeah, no; that's a great example of a bad idea. Shame on you Twilight...wait no; shame on you voters!
This was the risk of that choice, but I stand by it being the right choice. But now is the time to stop her doing anything rash.
9463020
I still stand by the decision. If anything I'm annoyed at how bringing AJ to the pod was handled by the writter. But they seem to have been trying to force us into no good choice situations since back when the choice was stop repairing the ship and send spike to explore some random coordinates, stop planting and recovering and explore some random coordinates yourselves, or go into the building prematurely with node alone regardless of any potentially time sensitive events you could run into like a Catch 22 of lying to AJ about the safety of her family or risking her health by telling her.
If Fluttershy wants a command decision then how about stop she stop bitching and start pushing AJ to the building in her wheelchair so she wouldn't have to walk there to begin with. Or not have Twilight botch telling her so bad and just say the team needed to move into the building and have Pinkie and Fluttershy take AJ to the pod room before telling her.
Infinite number of face-palms.
And now AJ has walking pneumonia. Good work everyone.
No good options, but I think 2 has the least chance of long-term damage.
Feels like Fluttershy trying to prevent AJ from leaving should have been up to a roll. Actually, Twilight's whole conversation over the radio sounded like she failed a diplomacy check.
Anyways, opening that pod seems like a bad idea, might restart the nanite growth, or worse, allow it to spread to the rest of the crew.
Taking her out seems dumb when it seems very likely that the stasis pod is all that is keeping the metal stuff from completely consuming Apple Bloom.
I dislike leaving strong critiques, but I really dont like how Fluttershy has been portrayed. Yes, I know she is under a lot of stress and has shown moments of anger and aggressiveness in the show. But they were MOMENTS. And they almost always were in defense of her friends. This Fluttershy is so passive aggressive as to be almost actively pushing everyone away. I just wish we could see more of her natural kindness and peacemaker traits show up. This Fluttershy is just so... bitter. Somehow that bothers me nearly as much as Pinkie Pie losing all of her joy.
9463220
Because everyone keeps ignoring her? Remember Pinkie Pie? How Twilight lessened her medication because clearly she knew better than the doctor? How about the fact Twilight time and time again can't seem to let a sick Applejack get some rest and actually heal?
"Applejack, go plant some crops!" "Applejack, fix Shimmer's pod!" - Fluttershy is trying her best to keep everyone healthy and she can't do her job because Twilight seems unable to get some R&R for awhile. Is there a reason for all of this rushing ahead? Why doesn't everyone just take a month to rest and relax? Applejack would probably appreciate it.
Oh, and to the people saying you knew this would happen? It's all dice rolls. This could have gone amazingly, just like the way Pinkie had a critical recovery roll after Twilight countermanded the doctor and lowered the medicine dosage.
If Applejack hadn't gotten a "Critical Yes" on the "does she come to the building despite her health" check, it would have gone a lot better. That wasn't outside of the realm of possibility.
Only addressing the part that was addressed to me: Im not arguing that Fluttershy doesnt have a REASON for acting this way. It just feels kind of out of character for HER. The knly time we have seen her act this way for an extended period was towards her brother Zephyr who was plainly taking advantage of everyone and completely self centered. While some of the poll decisions could easily be argued against, Twilight is doing what she does while still trying to consider her crew, and Fluttershy knows that. Fluttershy is one of the most understanding friends in the group, and I dont want her to never get upset, I just want to see some actual examples of that. I dont feel like we have gotten to see any og her inherent kindness, only bitterness, anger, impatience, and maybe even a slight resentment towards the ones she abandoned everything to come with (which is not fair as it was still her choice, even if it was a bummer of a choice.). I want some balance, is all Im asking. Even seeing her say some kind words to Pinkie per decent bedside manner would make me feel better.
Twilight made the right decision. If it had been anypony else I'd have kept it quiet. If they'd been humans I'd have voted to keep it quiet... But for this story it was the only choice.
Just like now the only choice I can support is 2... Even if in a regular story I'd rely on plot armor to make sure AB survived.
9463256
Yes, but we have to decide based on worst case scenarios, and in this case, the worse case happened. If taking photos had won, than even if applejack found out she would still have had a bit more time to recover, and we would probably have gotten another vote based on it. This way, we hinged everything on a single choice, with insanely high risk vs reward, which is just asking for trouble
The only reason I chose not to chuck AJ in the stasis pod was because we may need her engineering know how in the immediate future. But even then it's up in the air for for me because maybe putting the most stubborn member of the crew in stasis for a while would give the rest of the crew a chance to settle down a little and deal with other problems before they deal with this one. It's not often you get the chance to put a problem on hold without it getting worse over time.
But on the flip side, if something happens while AJ is in stasis, they may not have time to wake her, the most qualified engineer, to solve the problem, and then Twilight would probably have to do it. Also, there may be complications in waking AJ back up, we don't know.
I'm honestly a bit annoyed at how many of the comments are people disparaging everyone who voted to tell AJ. It very easily could have worked out fine, even better than trying to keep it from her. But nah, everyone who voted is clearly not very intelligent or want to see this fail.
All of these options suck, 2 is the best one, AB isnt going anywhere for now
9463436
It's just that we know how much emphasis AJ puts on family. If it were Twilight or even Fluttershy's brother, then they would probably see reason and wait for themselves to get better. But AJ is not that kind of character. She thinks with a lot of emotion, especially when it comes to family.
Yes, it could have ended well, but (in my opinion) it was more likely to end badly.
Talk about a fail train of rolls.
Basically the worst case scenario.
we should never have let applejack comeninnthe condition she is in. time to be a leader and shut applejack down. she needs her rest.
Congratulations, we just lost an engineer for possibly months. Effectively forever, I'd guess. Goddammit Twiggles, get a hold of yourself and stop making decisions based only on the heart. Hell, you just lost your farmer, do you have any idea how hard it'll be too awaken Rarity and Rainbow now?
Option 3 is right out. Thats a game over scenario.
Option 2 is also idiotic to the extreme and thats mainly to do with the fact it may spark a mutiny. The only viable choice is to get Apple Bloom out, despite the danger.
Not any standout good choices (2 seems the lesser of three evils...), but if Twilight (Apple Jack too) should have learned anything from the Pony of Shadows incident it's that when you bring something back it ALL comes back. Apple Bloom was put in stasis to stop the mechanical worms that seem to be doing something to her body. Popping her out of stasis without knowing what to do with them could get AB eaten up, or whatever is actually happening. AJ needs to have that made clear to her and be told to wait, unless she wants to risk a dead sister. Can Node shed any light? Does Pinkie have any Pinkie sense feelings about this? Does Fluttershy have any tranquilizers that would calm AJ down if she needs it (or knock her out in a worst case scenario)?
Ok. We made a very stupid decision, and everything went wrong afterwards. Now we have to deal with it.
TLDR: dice is not in our side, RUN!
First of all, option three is a no. It's another stupid decision.
And between the other two options, one has the [dangerous] tag. I know morale is important, but Applebloom dying (plus something else going wrong) would be much worse.
Stop this. It's madness. It was madness before, and it won't stop being madness if we keep going. The pods are stable, we can wait, at least to Applejack to get better and be able to not fuck up, but preferably to the Equinox to be habitable and to have the full team.
9463797
I don't regret telling her, but she did fail to live up to my trust... had she approached this calmly before coming up with this plan, I'd agree with it, but her mental state clearly isn't in the right place at the moment to pull it off. Not sticking her in stasis, but definitely putting our... "hoof" down.
9463463
I dont disagree but that line of thinking is exactly why not telling applejack or worse (from aj's perspective) holding her hostage and not helping her free her sister just WEREN'T options if it WERE book or spoop horse's family they could be delayed or even told and would be emotionally ok with leaving them in there. but aj... her morale would be un-recoverable. in the worst way we now have an excuse to force her to remain in an recovery coma. if aj thought we were keeping family from her.... she would stop being a friend. it would have been actively worse, then killing her fixing the ship.
9463347
your forgetting its not a recovery pod deathly ill pone goes in <> deathly ill pone comes out. thats the opposite of helping.
9463336
nooo the REAL worst case scenario is that aj has all ready had THREE - morale points. we dont yet know how morale affects the pones but what we can safely assume is if morale gets bad enough the pone may very well stop helping or if critical morale loss may even become hostile. if we kept apple horse from her sister or GOD FORBIDE the stupid fucking robutt or PINKIE alludes that book horse LIED to her about FAMILY. we already know thats its possible to kill our NPC's is it really such a big stretch to assume they might go hostile? aj is the element of HONESTY. not loyalty we should assume that any choice that isn't directly tied to the element can be refused or -if morale affects a characters involvement- may even have a hostile reaction. no reality were we keep it from aj is there not a role for aj to catch us in the lie. and if THAT critical fails she might have attacked us. THATS the worst case scenario.
Everyone trying to defend this choice and admonish those telling you 'yeah we told you so' can stow it. This was a HEAVILY likely outcome. Sure, it went as bad as possible, but this was what I think many of us knew was somehow most likely to happen.
For one the previous option said have AJ come anyway, the fact that she may NOT have was a kindness from the author. Her having a chance of taking the news WELL could also be considered similarly to a degree. The only thing we had to KNOW was going to happen is AJ might get sicker this way. Showing her later had the consequence of her being mad at Twilight instead. You chose to risk AJ's health for a bit of peace of mind for now, when it's very likely AJ would have gotten over it if handled properly.
NOW we're going to have to do something very stupid or make AJ DEFINITELY mad at us. And it's on you. You can't blame the dice for everything. You weigh the risks in any game with dice. Have the injured rogue try to disarm the trap or head back to get some rest despite the chance of more resistance when you come back? Et cetera.
This is the first choice in this series I've really disagreed with. Like, 90% so far had been what I'd do and the other 10% were pretty up in the air. This one just felt like the fool's option if you thought about everything. Like, yeah, I get it, I sort of had a hard time leaning away from it too, but it was the right thing to do.
9462993
thats.... there is so little to gain..... like.... best case scenario aj passes out and twighlight and flutters amputate blooms leg because how do you dice roll "have adequate second hand knowledge of nanotechnology biomechanics and instanly kill and cure the metal slime attacking AB's leg?????????????????????? just... no....
9462962
you are not respecting the danger of the morale loss of LYING TO THE ELEMENT OF HONESTY. i dont think there is but if there was a partial fail option for these dice roles that would be - 1 morale hit. she already has -3 morale. starscribe has promissed a morale scale soon but untill then we have to assume that -5 morale is a tipping point for a character. in a regular story trying to lie to apple jack wouldn't be possible. if this wasn't based on dice lying to THIS AU aj would be akin to making enemies with the only pony with combat training. if you look at the resource page she is the only pone with armor and weapon training currently awake.
Okay, who thought it was a good idea to have Applejack walk all the way over there?!
Well, gotta deal with this shitstorm now. Options two and three have a high chance of causing AJ to mutiny (Who wouldn't if the chance to save a family member was ripped away by the captain?), but on the other hand they may just save Apple Bloom's life. AB is in stasis (?) right now, so whatever is eating away at her leg right now cannot take over her whole body.
If - And this is a pretty big if - we were to get AB out of that pod, we have no idea how to deal with the thing on her leg. It would end up killing her most likely.
We have a big choice here: We either save (?) AB and end up losing AJ, or keep AJ on our side but keeping AB in that pod, where we know that at least she will stay alive for a good period of time.
Option two seems like our best bet here. A fine balance between keeping AJ from potentially killing her little sister and keeping ourselves in AJ's good graces.
Fluttershy, a favorite character of mine, scolding Twilight Sparkle, another favorite charcter of mine, harshly. Excuse me, I have to shut down my emotional pathways before they overload.
I would normally say that was too harsh for Fluttershy, but I guess that it has something to do with the training that they definitely would have had for this kind of mission.
I pick this.
I'm sorry, Applejack, but right now we need to be pragmatic, even if it's seemingly cold-hearted. We know nothing about the situation yet, but letting your emotions get the better of you and rushing is definitely bad.
Funny thing though, we come to what seems to me like one of the heaviest decisions and I know almost immediately what my choice is, whereas in other chapters wth less heaviness I couldn't decide and abstained.
… or maybe it isn't so funny after all. In ths chapter, the stakes are clear and immediate, whereas most other times we had to guess and think pretty long-term.
*glares at the gallery* well, are you happy?
Granted it was a close vote, and would have likely lead us to this point with slightly worse consequences, but...
Also, Node became male again.
Our personal opinion is that this chapters actions could have been handled much better. It's difficult to justify Twilight as Captain anymore.
We say there should be an extra option: shove Applejack into the chair of perspective (or whatever).
9463852
I agree, I don't regret anything. Honestly, I've started voting for what I think will make for a more interesting story rather than what seems most safe, because safe is boring.
Looking at the dice rolls in the Discord channel, "Does Applejack take the news well" was 60% chance of "No". "Does she insist on coming right into the building despite her health?" and "Does she suffer health complications?" were both 30% chance of "No". (Unfortunately, we got "Yes" on both, 49% odds.)
I’d like to see Twilight lay down the law with /Fluttershy/. ‘You’re right, I am the Captain. It’s my job to pass on mission critical information. You are the doctor, if you can’t handle your patients, the fault is with you.’
Now, that wouldn’t be something she would do, but it would be nice catharsis for everyone dumping on the decisions and saying Twilight sucks as a leader. I believe you can’t have a strong, decisive leader emerge in a story driven by democracy. We might think she would be making safer decisions, but the votes determine the story and that is going to make her come off as a weak, flip-floppy leader.
I might want her to be a hard-nosed, no nonsense pragmatist, but she has developed into a somewhat passive, emotionally motivated, perhaps dangerously inquisitive captain. So that informs my votes now.
9464446
I don't see how anyone can say that being "safe" is boring given the sheer number of plot threads that are dangling around now (just off the top of my head, there's Sunset Shimmer and the Solstice, Cozy Glow and the mystery of the Listeners, Node and what her purpose is, and now just what the heck is up with Apple Bloom). Being "safe" means actually working on resolving some of those instead of running off and creating new ones that are then going to be ignored in favor of whatever the new shiny is. The Chris Carter Effect is still bad if it's crowd-sourced...