Mobile Suit Gundam: Alicorn

by Alines Reinhard

Chapter 21

About a few days later, the crew of the Parrot Strength receive an important message: a secret military alliance between Rainbow Dash’s S.M.I.LE and 4 more kingdoms have been successfully formed. It was called the Harmony Alliance.

“What are the four other kingdoms?” Boyle asked. He rarely scared of anything besides the ship, so the Captain and Mullet were really surprised:

“Glad you asked, buddy. They are Orthinia, Griffonstone, Abyssinia and Farisia!” Mullet answered “As much as I am
aware, they are formed out of emergency. They were big kingdoms that could make Black Wine think twice before carrying out an all-out war with them, so forming an alliance will force him to think twice about that!”

“Sweet, now where should we go next?” he followed “Or we just going around in a circle waiting for the enemy to shut us down?”

“Nope, never in my wildest dream I’ll let that happen!”

Every creature saluted Celaeno once she gets her foot to the MS hangar, the place where they are having the conversation at that moment. She came and signaled them to rest.

“Remember gentlemen, our mission is to sneak into hostile territory and bring up a fight! What we are going to do is catch Black Wine off guard!”

“Yeah… but as long as…”

Mullet’s words was cutting off when Celaeno said:

“But first, we must try to take back the Alicorn Gundam at all cost! This machine is a pure uncontrollable monster that even Black Wine can’t fully control until now! The battle at Blue Rock Mine is proof of that! However, we luckily have Ensign Brandon here with us…”

At that moment, Flash was looking at the maintenance of his mobile suit along with Seashell Blue. When he heard Celaeno mentioned his name, his head immediately turned to where the conversation was. Haystack has already paused his work and come to the Captain, and he has signal him to come to the Captain.

“Keep up the good work, Seashell!” he said and set his foot to the scene.

“He is the one who has the most connection with the Alicorn! He is the one who will bring back the Alicorn for us and Black Wine also wants to capture him, so we must protect him…” Celaeno said, then she turned to the blue haired “Isn’t that true, Brandon?”

“Yes… yes Captain. Thank you for that.”

…

After having breakfast, the crew headed to the mission room. This is when Flash, Haystack and the crew they
brought along to the Parrot Strength know what they have to do.

They knew that they were really following the Cloudsdale route, the very ship that carried the Alicorn Gundam from the moment it was captured by Black Wine. However, there is at least one good news: Black Wine and his Psycho Gundam MkII were not on board, the only rival they have to face is the Black Tri Star.

They later find out that with the Alicorn on board, he was a bit too confident that it will take down three “wooden” airships with ease.

He embarked on to the Cloudsdale just about a day after the broadcast. Turns out, Flash was too sleepy and cringe to listen to the entirety of his speech. He was reading a book about history in the late night, a habit that he have developed in the time he was still stationed at the Canterlot:

“...They are trying to set up a rebellion that will open the way for the creatures to tear our kingdom apart to be their colonies. We should never let that happen. Now, with all of my anger and responsibility, I announce that our military will launch ‘Operation Capital Retrieve’. The Canterlot was supposed to be our navy flagship and pride of our military, so we will not let our potential enemy get their claws and wings on it!”

“Ha, talking about ‘pride’. Saying that ship was built in our dimension is wrong enough, let alone saying it was completely built on Equestrian soil by the ponies!” Haystack said with a scornful voice after he briefly told him about Black Wine’s speech.

The operation launched means that Black Wine is estimating he is the hunter, and the airships are prey. But as the truth have shown, they are really the hunter. Even with that information, Celaeno still order her crew to extra careful because Black Wine’s Army can ordered more ships to join Operation Capital Retrieve soon. She even speculated that the Cloudsdale might be a trap to lure them in.

“Don’t underestimate his strategy, soldier! This operation was a publicly known one, so he will do anything to hunt us down!”

And just a few hours later, they were informed that the Las Pegasus fleet was mobilized and ready for the hunt, just like Celaeno predicted.

…

The Parrot Strength’s mission room, as well as the ship combat bridge, was a small dark room with it’s only sources of light are the large digital map in the middle, where officers plan their missions and some lights around, and the light of numerous monitors around. The scene of the room created a tense atmosphere that forced every creature in the room to pay extra attention to the speeches.

It’s four walls were all black metal plate, and it tells creatures that it is the most armored room in the whole ship. In fact, the whole ship was built with metal, only it’s exterior (including the upper decks) was covered with woods as a means of camouflages. All of these camouflashes were built to carefully hide it’s 2 multi-barrel missile launchers, a 105 mm cannon and 2 five-barrel CIWS. All was supposed to be deployed on the upper deck when their hatches were opened in a battle and was made sure to never hit the airship’s balloon section when fired in anger. All of them were mounted in the deck right below the upper deck, which made Flash impressed by how a 65 meters long, 18 meters wide airship can carry. Not
to mention the 2 mobile suits it carried on board

“But… that’s why we can only carry two of you!” Mullet said while showing Flash and Haystack their cabin “This room was only for VIP only. Captain’s was only second to this. The rest are living together in a 25 beds cabin!”

“That’s just sad, man…”

In total, the ship can carry 4 VIPs and a crew of 25 creatures.

The reason why Flash still saw the wires around is because the ship hasn't finished the MS bay yet. However, it was all done about a week after Flash, Haystack and their two mechanics embarked on to the ship.

Back in the mission room-combat bridge, Captain Celaeno ordered the whole ship to get into battle station. S.M.I.L.E have made an additional order for all of the airships that if one of them spotted the Cloudsdale, they must signal the other two. Then, they will coordinate a battle formation where the suits come straight into the enemy vessel at its stern. Then, they will take down her engines and let the ship crash. After that, they can call the friendly unit where the ship crashes to salvage her, as well as the mobile suits stationed in it.

“But… you should know that the Black Tri Star is stationed on it!” Mullet is concerned “They will bring out the Alicorn with them as well. Don’t you see how it takes down 5 ships larger than us in a row with ease?”

“Yes, but… that’s the only hope right now…” she answered “Besides, our MS pilots have dealt with them at least twice and yet no one was lost! Heck, even Ensign Brandon can single handedly stop the Alicorn Gundam even knowing that it has destroyed five ships and forced that fleet to stay back!”

“Whatever…” he mumbled.

“Captain, the Cloudsdale is heading for the sea!” Boyle, who is at the helm of the ship, reported. At that moment, they are heading towards the Southern Sea, towards Storm Island.

After hearing that, Celaeno suddenly panicked. First, it will be almost impossible to salvage the mobile suits if the Cloudsdale crashes into the sea. And second, if they go too near to the enemy ship, the crew of the Cloudsdale could easily spot them with just their bare eyes.

“Can you contact the Eagle Scream and Black Hawk?'' she asked urgently.

“Yes Captain, but they say it would take about 10 minutes for them to get to us! I think we should abort right now!”

Looking at the big white dot on the radar, she knows that their enemy is near enough to launch a mobile suit attack and far enough to not let them spot the airship that have such a suspicious move. Although both are in a relatively busy airspace, going behind for hours with just a few kilometers in between could make them launch some recon craft to them.

And they did! Angie, the ship battle operator quickly spotted 2 smaller dots that quickly close into them. They are drones, built with state of the art cameras which can let them see heat source, night scenes from kilometers away. Celaeno have known this and come up with a genius tactic:

“Just call Lix, Irma and their camouflage crew to the upper deck! Just do normal things like back when we are still on our old ‘merchant’ ship!”

“Roger that ma’am!” Angie replied with a salute.

Only in a few seconds, the creatures that Celaeno have ordered are already presented themselves on the upper deck. She has straight up decided to not deploy the weapons as well as the mobile suit. She later ordered Flash and Haystack to rest.

“Haystack, Brandon. You can sleep right now!” she said to the pilots, who are still sitting in the cockpit waiting to be deployed.

“Yes, my lady…” Haystack replied with the most gentlecolts-like manner he could make.

“Thank you! I have already disable the control on the upper deck, so you can tell Lix to do whatever she wants with it. Boyle, make sure our ship is still in line! Suddenly changing course will make us look even more suspicious to them! Angie, signal the other ship to not engage! This is a good place for battle: we are right above the ocean!”

“Yes ma’am!” both answered

After that, what the whole crew does is just wait for the drones to pass by. Despite telling herself that this is the best tactic she could think of up until that moment, and in fact she has done it successfully several times, she still prays for her crew up on the upper deck. As her hidden camera in the combat bridge shows, they are still doing normal work like moving the cargo around or looking at the drones themselves cautiously. Then, the drones came right at them and adjusted their
cameras to the upper deck.

Flash was still in his cockpit in that intense moment. He decided to turn on the monitor and connect it directly to the upper deck cameras: the drones just hovering right next to airships, looking upon the creatures doing “normal things' '. He could notice they were armed with gatling guns, which means Celaeno was really risking her friends life. The whole ship is holding their breath along with him. Everything around him scarily silence, with the only sound he could heard is Seashell Blue muttering prays

Then, they sighed in relief as the drones just passed by and returned to the Cloudsdale, after 3 minutes that felt like a century.

“Phew!” Celaeno wiped her sweet “That was intense!”

Celaeno decided to just let their enemy do whatever and ordered them to turn the airship towards friendly territory.

“But… Do you know why they are heading to the Great Iceberg Barrier?”

After the event, Haystack decided to come to her and asked.

“I don’t know! Maybe they just wanted to mess around with our airships… Keep in mind that we are in their airspace at that moment.”

…

“Flash… This place so cold and painful…” Yolinda’s voice said “Please come… fast!”

“Flash… We’re so sorry!” Luster Dawn followed “But they are trying to tear us apart…”

Flash couldn’t bear their begging.

Through that night, Flash is just hugging his head and keeps mumbling “Please stop…” It was the third night since
the creatures started begging to save them.

“Isn’t that what I am trying to do?” he mumbled to them as if they could hear him.

But he also has a feeling towards the creatures that he himself never thought he would have, even in his wildest dream. He started to grow concerned for them, worrying about the terrible thing that they have to go through to have that much kind of pain and cold.

That was the moment Flash’s soft spot for the creatures started to grow. He even have a thought that they might not be evil:

“I know that I shouldn’t trust them too much. I still really don’t know who they really are. Except that curse and those nightmares, am I having any proof that they will harm any creatures else? None, at least at this moment…”

Although the soft spot has started to take shape, the fact that they have started their relationship with nightmares is something he is not going to forgive too soon. Their behavior that suddenly changes from hostility to friendliness is suspicious enough that he fears that they are just acting.

In one night, he decided to stay up a little late to read Luster’s diary. Flash have cleaned it himself in spare time, so except the somewhat boring brown leather cover, everything in it is pretty and cute.

The diary was somewhat separated by the lessons that the creatures have learned. About one-fourth of the diary was written by Luster Dawn, which she wrote in letter style and decorated with simple icons.

“Dear Princess Twilight, today I’ve learned that…”

That’s how she and her friends started each of the letters.

Reading the diary, he found that she was somewhat a lonely pony in the beginning, mostly because she is so busy studying and how annoying she feels when her parents just keep talking, or even ranting, about friendship. She was then sent to the School of the Gifted Unicorns (the same school that Black Wine graduated from), which is where she have always dreamt of. Then, after the talk with Princess Twilight Sparkle and an adventure with her friends, she learned to adore friendship.

After digging into the diary long enough, Flash could finally distinct the writing styles of each of her friendsas well. Butter Burger has somewhat a doctor-way of writing since he is very energetic and, perhaps, very busy in his fast food business. Spring Garden have a very beautiful writings and she even added some perfume that she claimed “extracted from the best smelling flowers”. Grisela sometimes pushes her force too hard on to the papers that he could even saw the entirety of her writings being printed on the next paper. And finally Yolinda using some kind of wood-extracted ink, which makes the ink smudge on the papers. However, her letters still can readable.

“That’s a cute diary. I haven’t seen any of them seem to be plotting an evil plan…” Flash mumbled.

However, as he turned to the back of the diary, he find something very noticeable: a section of the diary was leave blanked intentionally.

“To our future friends…” the header of the section read.

“To our future friends…?” he mumbled in confusion “What are they supposed to mean?”

…

“Hey buddy, check this out!” Haystack suddenly called him to the upper deck “You gotta see this!”

In the middle of the night, a bunch of lanterns suddenly appeared from the horizon and flew up to the sky.
Following them are more lanterns, which create one of the most breathtaking sights of the night.

“That’s the lantern from the Kirin’s Groove!” the Lieutenant explained “They are honoring their missing Princess!”

For security reasons and to hide themselves from a Las Pegasus fleet’s cruiser, Captain Celaeno decided to divert the ship into Kirin’s territory (with the Kirin's permission) and turned all the lights off. They arrived at Kirin Groove right on the night that was called “The Rainbow Honoring Festival”, an occasion that the kirin not just honoring their lost Princess, but also her friend as well.

“First, do you know about the magic of Rainbow?”

“No… I don’t know about that?”

“Yeah… I get why. 25 years is a very long time for sure…” he replied “So basically every creature in Equus has the ability to control the color around them, as well as the colors on themselves, to their moods. The happier they are, the brighter the colors. If they have a bad mood i.e. anger, sadness, hopelessness,… the colors will be dimmer. Normally creatures won’t notice it because the change is too little…”

“Why is that?”

“Maybe because when an individual is in a bad mood. However, if that ‘bad mood’ happened on a community scale,
the change will be more obvious. Sometimes the colors will just disappear and what’s left is just black and white!”

“I see. So what do you want to say?”

“When you arrive at Kirin Grooves in the morning, you will see that there is just black and white there. It was
due to the fact that their Princess was missing and there is a war just around the corner: I once heard Black Wine wanted to invade them!”

“So… who is that Princess?” Flash asked.

“Her name is Spring Garden!”

…

Flash was shocked to his core once Haystack said the name out.

"Spirng. Garden." his voice emphasize in his mind.

"This can't be true!" Flash thought.

“Wait! You… You… tell me that the Princess of Kirin Groove is Spring Garden?”

“Yes! She is also Queen Rainshine’s only child… But why do you seem so shocked, dude? This is common knowledge!”

Knowing he had exposed his feelings a little too much, Flash lowered his tone and asked for more information.

“So… what’s happened to her?”

“Well… she and her friends came to Canterlot 6 years ago and never returned. They rumored that it is Black Wine
who ordered his guard to chase them down… And did I mention that the kirins do honor her friends too?”

“Yeah… and who are they?”

“First is Luster Dawn, the pony behind the diary you have. Next is Butter Burger the earth pony, Grisela the griffon, Yamina the yak, and Spring Garden the kirin Princess I just said!” Haystack then looked at him with an unamused face “I thought you know that! Last night you spent the whole night reading her diary!”

“No… No… I haven’t seen them talking about Spring Garden is a Princess!”

“Read it carefully… Wait, do you think they will allow you to read such a thing?” Haystack wispeared “This is like… violating privacy!”

However, Flash chose to just look to the sky above Kirin Groove, lighten up the city itself, the stars and the lanterns.

It was one of the most breathtaking sights of his life, when the lights and the nights are harmonized
to create a lighting performance. He could see the lanterns are the only things the kirin have at that moment that have full colors, in contrast to the scene of Kirin Groove that Haystack has said.

“Oh… that thing. It was beautiful indeed!” he said whilst looking at the lanterns. Celaeno has previously ordered the airship to slow down so her crew can enjoy the sight “They do this annually for 6 years now, on every April the 3^rd which happens to be today!” he chuckled.

“So… why do they also honor her friends?” Flash asked “Are they doing something heroic?”

“Absolutely, we call them the Rainbow Team! They have helped a lot of villages, town and rural communities regain their colors! Heck, they even help protect Ponyville once!”

“Ponyville?” Flash asked curiously “How?”

“So… There is a sorcerer named Jinx who built a machine that sucked all of Ponyville’s color. The goal: lost colors, lost hope, easier to enslave! To stop her, the Rainbow Team have come together and destroy that thing!” Haystack tell the story briefly.

After looking at the festival sights and hearing what Haystack has said, his attitude towards the creature has changed. That night confirmed that they are not evil and they are heroes. Now he gets what they said: they don’t want to punish him for anything, they are just asking for help.

However, this means that a heavy duty has been placed on his shoulder.

“Sadly… they have chosen me…” Flash sighed “Can I even have a portion of their courage to save them out?”