Chapter 3
The Beam Path Guide Laser struck first. It was a low-power weapon, used when firing through or into an atmosphere – the laser’s frequency was deliberately calibrated to dump its energy into the air, rather than the target. This superheated the air, turning it into a rapidly expanding plasma tunnel of nearly perfect vacuum between the ship and its target. At the word “Fire,” it appeared as an enormous column of blinding yellow light, lancing down from space to strike the Phrygian.
By itself, the BPGL was unlikely to destroy anything, though in the Phrygian’s decayed and sorry state it might have been enough. But, of course, it was not by itself; it was a guide laser, and the vacuum tunnel it bored through the atmosphere was simply the path for the Dorian’s real weapons to follow.
This primarily meant the High-Energy Laser, which struck a thousandth of a second later. It was invisible to the naked eye, and the only sign of its attack was the flash as the Phrygian and much of the mountain around it blossomed into a rapidly expanding sphere of ionized gas hundreds of meters across. A shockwave followed the fireball, racing across the landscape, shattering and flattening everything in its path.
And then the mass driver rounds hit. Because, why not? Zenith imagined them an emphatic exclamation point, a final Fuck you! to conclude her business with her sister and leave no room for anyone who found the remains to question the sincerity of her convictions. The projectiles themselves never reached the surface – they hit the atmosphere and underwent the sort of change usually only observed in high-energy physics experiments, the iron plasma transforming almost magically into a shower of hard radiation and exotic particles that rained down like hail on the entire mountain range. Several square kilometers of the mountain caught fire and melted.
Some ponies might have called this ‘overkill.’ It felt just right to Zenith.
The energetic murder lasted maybe a tenth of a second. Had it continued, the fireball would have expanded into a mushroom cloud, and smoke from the fires eventually formed a trail stretching halfway around the planet.
But it did not. Before Zenith could do more than blink and flinch away from the flash, the fireball shrank from an enormous sphere into a tiny point of light. The Phrygian reappeared in its cradle of sand. The molten stone all around the mountain cooled and solidified back into its proper form, and the column of light connecting the earth to the sky vanished. The shockwave rolling across the wasteland reversed and rolled itself up like a carpet, leaving pristine ruins in its wake. Not even clouds of dust remained. All was as it had been.
High above, a tremendous flash of light replaced the sun, casting new shadows on the ground. Zenith had just enough time to wonder what happened when the lander’s viewscreen blinked red, every alarm reactivated, and the sudden feeling of weightlessness clenched her guts.
The craft was in freefall. A thousand meters below, the ruined city began to grow larger.
“Fuck!” Instinct kicked in, and she clenched her hooves around the manual controls. Nothing responded to her touch, and the lander accelerated its fall. The instrument panels showed no signs of life. The viewscreen, one of the few systems still operating, flashed the word TERRAIN in bright red letters.
“Pull up,” the craft announced in its neutral, genderless voice. “Terrain, pull up.”
“Yes I fucking know!” she shouted. The engine restart did nothing. The flight controls did nothing. Nothing did anything. She screamed and bashed the controls with her hooves.
“Rainbow, Twilight! Come in!” She risked a glance upward. The curved viewscreen showed a brilliant star in the sky, no longer as bright as the sun but still easily visible. “Anypony on the Dorian, come in!”
A harsh blast of static growled out of the speakers. Somepony’s voice emerged briefly from the storm of overlapping signals: “...amaged, attem…itical to…” The wash of static returned, drowning the voice.
Okay, someone was alive up there. That was positive. She spun the crash couch around to face the ground, which was perhaps five hundred meters away at this point. While the lander was a durable craft, she was pretty certain it could not survive the sort of impact that appeared likely in about ten seconds.
“C’mon, c’mon. Do something.” She flipped the control panel up, revealing a series of emergency functions hardwired into the craft. Switches for everything from air brakes to control surfaces to drogue chutes lined the underside of the panel, and she flipped every single one. The craft shuddered as its smooth egg shape began to deform, attempting to assume a more aerodynamic profile. Wings slowly grew out on either side of the craft.
A rough jerk rattled her teeth as the drogue chute deployed. It was not designed for use in the lower atmosphere and registered a protest by promptly separating from the craft, leaving her in freefall again.
But she had control surfaces, now. She could glide. She dropped the control panel back into place and attempted to pull up. The craft nosed up a few degrees and promptly stalled, sending her back toward the earth. The individual buildings were starting to look quite large now.
“Stall,” the androgynous voice announced. “Terrain. Pull up.”
“You can’t pull up when you’re in a fucking stall!” She fumbled beneath the panel for the airbrake switch and managed to slap it into the off position. The lander accelerated its fall toward the earth.
But that was good – the increased speed sent more air across the simple wing surface, and with a strangled, desperate grunt she managed to pull the flight stick back, bringing the lander into an uneven, bobbing glide that raced forward through the atmosphere. The city sped by below her, the tips of the ruins just a few meters beneath the lander’s belly. She banked carefully around a tower, barely skirting the crumbling concrete honeycomb with the tips of her wings.
Land. Land. Where can I land? The alien city’s streets were mostly straight, though clogged with rubble from the fallen buildings and ruined vehicles. She spent a few seconds searching for one that looked mostly clear and angled toward it. Ruins zipped past on either side of the lander as it sank toward the surface.
“Terrain. Pull up. Terrain. Pull—”
The lander had no landing gear, which briefly struck Zenith as ironic. It touched down belly first and skated for hundreds of meters down the road, sending a shower of sparks out to the sides. She barely held the craft level as it slowed, and when it was starting to look like she might coast to a stop, the craft hit a patch of sand. It spun, she overcorrected, and then everything was a blur as it the lander became a billiard ball, rolling down the street. She briefly saw it approach a crumbled stone wall, and then everything went dark.
* * *
Zenith woke a few seconds later. Probably. It was hard to keep track of time when you were unconscious. Emergency lights filled the little pod with a harsh white glare. The viewscreen was dark and filled with a massive spider’s web of cracks, all centered around the visor of her helmet, which was currently lodged a centimeter deep in the screen. She grunted and pulled herself free of the mess.
Blood smeared the inside of the visor, and her muzzle hurt atrociously. She tried to feel the damage with her hoof and ended up just bumping the helmet.
“Fuck. Fuck,” she mumbled. She managed to release the buckles holding her in the couch, then pulled the emergency egress handle. The door popped and swung open. She pulled herself out and had a half-a-second to realize the pod was upside down before falling the rest of the way. A nice pile of stones broke her fall after about a meter’s tumble. She groaned and lay on her back while her brain caught up with the last few minutes of chaos.
“Dorian, this is Zenith,” she said. Little icons in the corner of her vision began to change color as it registered the new environment. “I’ve crashed on the surface and need immediate help. Can you hear me? Over.”
Silence. She strained her ears toward the headphones. A faint hiss of static emerged.
“Come in, Dorian. If you can hear me please respond by any means.” She spun in a circle. Aside from herself and the ruined lander, there was nothing but ruin for as far as she could see. Bluish dust, disturbed by the crash, formed suffocating clouds down the length of the street. A yellow icon appeared on her visor, suggesting that her heart rate was climbing too high.
“Twilight, Rainbow? Looking for any kind of answer here.” She forced her voice to remain level, though she wanted to scream. The ground swayed and she sat roughly, tilting her head skyward. The bright star was still overhead, and she locked the helmet’s viewfinder on it and zoomed in to the highest possible magnification.
It was the Dorian, and it was burning.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” she mumbled. “Twilight. Twilight, can you hear me? Please, please, just—”
“Zenith, this is Dorian,” Twilight’s voice came over the band. “Thank Celestia, I thought I lost you. I don’t have comms with the lander. Are you alright?”
A wave of relief so profound that she nearly collapsed struck Zenith. She bit back a sob. “I’m fine. Just a few bruises. What about the ship? What happened?”
“Weapon fire from the Phrygian. We took a glancing hit from a high-energy laser of some sort, and several mass driver rounds missed us by about a half-a-meter. If they’d hit we wouldn’t be talking.” The line cut off for a moment, and Zenith imagined Twilight was catching her own breath. “I’m doing damage control now. We lost a couple minor systems but the Dorian is still flightworthy.”
Weapon fire from the Phrygian? Impossible. The ship was still half-buried when Rainbow Dash attacked, and her strikes should have reduced it to atoms. Zenith spun in a circle to orient herself, found west, and scrambled up on top of a pile of ruins. The mountains still rose in the distance, and if she dialed the visor in, she could see the plume of dust from the Phrygian’s emergence still drifting across the sky.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t the Phrygian. Can you see it?”
“Sensors are compromised and are a low priority for repair,” Twilight said. “I’m almost blind up here. What’s it doing?”
“It’s still there. It hasn’t moved.” The starship’s silver prow reflected the sunlight well enough that she could see the glint even from the city, over twenty kilometers away. “I think I see movement around it, but it could just be sand settling.”
Or it could be Nadir, escaping. The Phrygian had its own lander, after all. But to use it, Nadir would have to go through the same extended preparation sequence that took Zenith hours to do in space, all while fighting through the suspension shock.
So they probably had a little time. Zenith licked her lips and tasted blood. “How are your weapons?”
“Online,” Rainbow Dash responded. “But, uh, I don’t think we should use them. I’ve been analyzing the attack, and you were right. It wasn’t the Phrygian.”
Fuck. She remembered the tower, and the ancient damage being undone by the nanochines. “It was our own weapons, wasn’t it?”
“As best I can tell.” Rainbow said. “The BPGL and high-energy laser that hit us were using our frequency, though the modulation was inverted. Twilight has more.”
“The nanochine field spiked as our attack hit,” Twilight said. “At its peak it was about seven orders of magnitude more powerful than we observed with the tower. As best I can tell, your hypothesis was correct: the nanochines rewound the weapons and sent them right back at us.”
Using our entropy to reverse theirs. The more energy they used on this planet, the more the nanochines would consume, with clearly undesirable effects. “Okay, so, how do we kill Nadir, then?”
“Uh.” Twilight paused. “Let’s put a pin in that for now. Priority is to get you safe. How is the lander?”
The priority was unchanged, as far as Zenith was concerned. Still, this was not the time for an argument. She scrambled down the pile of rocks and trotted back over to the lander. “It’s, um, a bit damaged. Can you access my cameras?”
“Give me a minute. High-gain antennas are coming online.” There was a beep from her suit, and suddenly a wash of new information scrolled down the message tray. New status icons for the ship and a variety of menus appeared as she rejoined the Dorain’s network. “Okay, got it. Let’s see what—ooooh.”
“Damn, Zenith,” Rainbow Dash said. “Did you even try to land, or just aim for the biggest building you could find?”
“Look, it was hectic,” Zenith said. She marched up the pile of rocks to the lander’s hatch and peered inside. The emergency lights were still on. “Can you fix it?”
“Unlike the real Twilight Sparkle, I am not a magician,” Twilight said. “Landers are pretty robust, though, and I might be able to restore some limited functionality. Do you know how to perform a hard restart?”
Zenith did not, but between Twilight and Rainbow, they were able to walk her through the process. It was a bit like performing surgery while wearing thick winter gloves on a patient that could explode with the power of a small nuclear weapon at any moment, but aside from those minor complaints it went smoothly. At about the halfway point, when she was up to her elbows in the machine’s guts, a new question occurred to her.
“Those nanochines, can they feed off the lander’s energy?”
“They seem to have a pretty short range,” Twilight said. “The lander’s shell is enough to keep most of their effect away. Obviously I’ll be purging them from the lander’s insides before we fire it up, but there may be some degraded performance. I mean, even more degraded.”
Huh. “Can they feed off me?”
“Your latent body heat? Probably, though the surrounding environment isn’t that much colder than you are. They seem to prefer either extremely energetic events, or they store energy for a while before releasing it with the anti-entropic field.”
“Hey, less talky, more fixy?” Rainbow said. “The lander can’t repair itself. And we have to reset the bottle next, which is, like, the part that kinda maybe we should be very careful with.”
“Right, sorry.” Zenith returned her attention to her machine patient and resumed the field surgery. With Twilight’s clipped directions, she undid connections, rerouted wires, and very, very carefully rotated the lander’s fusion bottle 180 degrees, waited until it began to glow red hot, then rotated it back to its original position. The soles of her suit’s boots smoked. She hissed at the scalding sensation on the soles of her hooves and stomped on the cold dirt to try and cool—
“—enith, can you hear us? Please respond, over.”
“Huh? Yeah, I hear you.” Zenith tightened the final wire and peered up at the sky, then around to make sure she hadn’t missed something. “I’m ready to rotate the bottle.”
“Uh…” The line hissed for a moment, and Zenith swore she heard some whispers on the other end. “It turns out we don’t need to rotate the bottle. Everything’s, uh, just fine. Hang on while I make a quick adjustment to your suit’s clock.”
Weird. Zenith sat while Twilight did her thing, and finally there was nothing left for them to do but close the shell and hope. She sat back and took a long pull from the helmet’s water spigot.
“Okay, attempting restart,” Twilight said. “Uh, you might want to stand back.”
“Yeah, cuz a few extra feet will keep her safe if this thing blows.” Rainbow said.
“Oh, oh, maybe the nanochines will put her back together!” Pinkie Pie’s voice, long silent, suddenly entered the conversation. Zenith found herself smiling despite herself. Nevertheless, she stepped back across the street, and even found a solid concrete wall to hide most of her body behind.
A faint hum emerged from the lander. The pile of rocks beneath it vibrated, and little stones rolled down the slope. Clouds of dust lifted from the ground beneath it and flowed away, expelled by the lander’s fields. The craft shook, twitched, and slowly rose into the air, spinning back upright with agonizing slowness. The bent and broken wings detached with the sound of a gunshot and clattered on the ground. Enormous cracks covered the egg-shaped surface, and the hatch dangled open like a broken window shutter.
“Alright, one semi-functional lander,” Twilight said. “The shell is compromised, repulsors are at about 20 percent, and none of its emergency functions are still operational. Also the drogue chute is apparently missing.”
Zenith walked up to the craft. The air around it buzzed with a discordant harmonic, and her teeth vibrated when she placed her hoof against its shell. “Can it fly?”
“I can fly anything,” Rainbow said. “Though this is admittedly a challenge. With enough care I can probably get it up to orbit.”
“And the Dorian?” She tilted her head up to the sky. It was later now, on toward evening, and the stars were beginning to emerge. She couldn’t pick out her ship from any of the other points of light.
“Fires are out, and critical systems are back online,” Twilight said. “I lost almost all my manufacturing capability, though, and your living quarters are now largely open to space. We’ll need to get back to Terra or Equus to fix that.”
“We can still run hyperlight?”
“Should be able to. Engines were undamaged in the attack.”
An operational lander and a mostly working starship. Things were looking up. Zenith hopped up into the lander and tried to pull the hatch closed behind her. It squealed and stuck half shut, and no matter how hard she strained, it wouldn’t budge.
She leaned back on the crash couch. “Little help?”
“Yeah, hang on,” Rainbow said. A series of loud pops broke the silence, so sudden that Zenith might have screamed a little. The hatch wobbled, leaned away, and finally fell clean off the craft, landing with a crash on the rocks.
“Really?” She said. “An open-sided spacecraft?”
“Just keep your suit on and you’ll be fine. Now buckle up, this could be bumpy.”
It was, in fact, bumpy. The lander shook and pitched as Rainbow brought it up to a few hundred meters. The wind whistled around the broken shell and tugged at Zenith, trying to tease her out of the craft. Every few minutes she nervously touched the restraining buckles to make sure they hadn’t loosened.
“Okay,” Zenith said. “I doubt she’s still in the Phrygian at this point, so she’s probably in the mountains somewhere. There’s some ruins in there that would make good hiding spots. Let’s get the lander overhead and we can start looking for any tracks—”
“Zenith.” There was a pause, and what sounded like a breath being drawn. “We need to reassess our intentions. I can’t use any of the Dorian’s weapons to help you, and all you have is a barely functioning lander. Your main objective right now should be returning to orbit so we can head home.”
She shook her head. “No. We’re too close. I don’t care if I have to strangle her with my own hooves, I am not leaving this world until Nadir is dead. End of conversation.”
“This is a mistake.” Twilight sounded as angry as Zenith had ever heard her. The line clicked off with a loud snap.
Zenith cleared her throat. “Well, just us now, huh Dash?”
Dash was slow in answering. “Yeah, it’s, uh, a great feeling.”
The flight across the city toward the Phrygian’s resting place in the mountains was silent.
* * *
“I think I see tracks.” Rainbow said. “Maybe. It’s hard to really see much of anything with these cameras.”
They were a thousand meters above the Phrygian. The mountain spread out around them, all ridges and valleys and steep-walled ravines. A million places for a pony to hide. With an undamaged lander they’d have sniffed her out in just a few minutes – now she was reduced to peering at a fuzzy, low-resolution infrared image projected on the inside of her visor.
So, Rainbow Dash’s announcement was good news. Her ears perked up, brushing the top of her helmet. “Where?”
“That ridge.” A section of her map glowed red, showing the ridge in question. It was about five hundred meters north of the Phrygian and riddled with caves and outcroppings. It would be hard to sneak up on with the lander in its condition, but if they approached from the east, where a long spur would shield them from sight, they could—
“Zenith.” It was Twilight Sparkle, unexpectedly. “You need to see this.”
“Little busy here, Twilight. Can it wait about an hour or so?”
“I really don’t think it can. Look up.”
“What?” Zenith looked up and saw, expectedly, the roof of the lander. She grumbled and undid enough of the restraints to lean her upper body out of the lander and peer up at the stars. The Dorian was the brightest among them. “What am I looking at?”
“The rings. Just watch.”
Zenith had a retort ready, something about not having the time for stargazing. But the faint traces of the debris ring in orbit were definitely doing something odd. The material was clumpier than before, scattered about in irregular paths as though disturbed by some force. Flashes of light appeared among them, and gradually she discerned the pattern – the debris was converging. Countless billions of individual orbits all flowed together, coalescing on one spot high in the sky, and at the last instant a swell of light built until it washed away space itself, shining like the sun for nearly a minute before abruptly dying and leaving her blinded by dancing blobs of color.
Zenith blinked away tears. When sight finally returned, a new moon was in the sky – a rhomboid prism hundreds of times larger than the Dorian. The space station was decked in sparkling lights.
“I’m observing other such phenomena,” Twilight reported. “I don’t know if we happened to show up right as the nanochines were hitting their stride, or if our arrival tipped them over the edge, but they seem to be rewinding more and more of the planet back through the war, and I don’t like our chances of surviving that event.”
“Right.” She licked her lips. “Okay, Rainbow, we’ll keep the lander low and come around from the east, behind that spur—”
“No.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Didn't you hear her?” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m sorry, Zenith, but Twilight’s right. We can’t stay here any more. I won’t help you.”
“Don’t be absurd. I command the Dorian, and I’m ordering you to pilot this lander as I direct.”
“I will not do that, Zenith.” Rainbow sounded, if anything, even more certain. “We’ve discussed it. None of us will help you anymore, except to get back to orbit. And we need to hurry.”
“This…” She was out of breath. Her hooves trembled on the controls. “This is mutiny.”
“I’m sorry, Zenith,” Twilight said. “You can be angry at us later.”
The lander began to fly again. The damaged repulsor hummed, shaking the craft, and the mountain shrank below them. The Phrygian receded to the north as Rainbow shifted the lander into a trajectory for orbit.
“No!” There was a switch for manual control of the lander, and Zenith flipped it. The craft shook as Zenith spun it around. “I will not be denied by my own friends. I will do this alone if I have to.”
“So be it.” Twilight said. Every instrument in the lander suddenly died. The data stream scrolling down her visor vanished. The little map turned into a point of light before disappearing as well. Even the interior lights switched off, leaving her in perfect darkness except for the light of the stars outside.
The hell? Zenith sat in shock for several seconds. The lander wobbled as her hooves left the controls – it was no longer stable enough to hold its own position without intervention.
“Twilight, turn on the instruments.” Silence. “Rainbow, tell Twilight to turn on the instruments.”
Nothing but the wind, whistling through the hatch. The cold sensation of shock ebbed, replaced by something much hotter.
“Pinkie, Rarity, answer immediately.” She reached out carefully to feel for the controls in the darkness. “Applejack—Fuck! Anypony, answer now!”
More silence. She attempted to regulate her breathing – it was growing ragged, fogging up the visor – and realized she didn’t care any more.
“I know you can hear me!” she shouted. “You think I can’t do anything without you, huh? You think I can’t even buckle my own fucking suit on without your help? Well, guess what? Fuck you! I don’t need you! Real friends would help me find Nadir and help bring her to justice, so what does that make you? Worthless! I will find her, and I will kill her, and I will do it without you!”
She finished with half of a shout and half of a cry. She tried to wipe the tears and snot from her face, but of course her hoof just bumped on the helmet, and she screamed again in frustration. The darkness in the lander was absolute. As pure as cryosleep. She leaned her head forward, until the visor touched the broken viewscreen, and closed her eyes to sob.
“Oh, this is a sad sight,” a new voice whispered. It flowed like oil from her headset; it skittered like spiders into her ears. Amusement filled it, but not the sort of amusement Pinkie Pie knew – this dripped with malice. “Did your friends all leave you, little pony?”
“Wha—” Zenith jerked upright, smacking the headrest with the back of her helmet. She gripped the controls with her hooves. “Who is this? How did you get on this channel?”
“Oh, I’ve always been here.” Light returned to the lander as the instruments glowed with life. The data stream in her visor reappeared. Even the viewscreen popped back into focus, though it was filled with cracks. “Waiting for my turn, as it were.”
“Twilight, can you read me?” Zenith tried to pull up a video channel with the Dorian. Something blocked it. “Rainbow? Anypony?”
“Mm, they can’t hear you at the moment. They’ve been keeping me in a box for years, and, well, now it’s their turn in the box.” A chuckle. “But, don’t worry, I’m here to help. Zenith, was it?”
“Y-yes.” Zenith licked her lips. “Wait, you’ll help me?”
“Helping ponies is what I do.” The voice laughed; static squealed in Zenith’s ears and left them ringing. “Especially the sort of help you need. We will get this Nadir, you and I.”
Alright. Well. Let it never be said that she turned down an offer of help when it was needed. “Okay. Uh, and who are you, again?”
“Ah.” There was a pause, as though the pony on the other end struggled to remember. “Call me Chrysalis.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.018 seconds
Total duration
1,015 users online
152,197 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Chrysalis? Why would such a simulation exist in the first place?
Something screwy is going on.
Looking ahead to the next chapter.
, this sounds a bit clipped
and to the AI's. whaaaaaaaat? So many questions about how that happened.
11106910
Yup, missed a word there. Fixed, and thanks!
Oh dear. Zenith got reset, and the AI decided not to tell her. Umbra got reset too, and at this point she may not be killable short of introducing enough energy into the system to rewind her all the way back to orbit. I'm finding myself thinking of a couple different TOS episodes and wondering if the two will soon find themselves in an endless loop...
Okay... Now I am curious what her Sister did that is worth doing THIS to kill her. Instead of just leaving her stranded on this Deathworld.
Good chapter though! Another cliffhanger at the end to leave us wanting more.
I was thinking more Nightmare Moon, but Chrysalis fit much better.
My first thought was a pre-reformation Discord. Chrysalis saying she helps ponies was a surprise, but she has always been a talented liar. I have no idea what Nadir could have done that merits using a mass driver on her. I'm less worried that they'll get stuck in an infinite loop than that whichever side of the war set up the nanochines is going to come back in full and decide to track the Dorian back to Equestria. With Chrysalis on the field, quite possibly looking for vengeance against the ponies, it's not unlikely they'll wake up, she'll take credit, and ask them for a small favor in the form of a few weapons of mass destruction and a ride home.
I can't imagine she was in the Dorian originally. My guess is it had a black box including the history of Equestria, just in case it got picked up by aliens, and her personality was put together automatically from the records as the most useful one when Zenith started fighting with the mane six. Incredibly excited to see the next update.
Alright, this story has me hooked 100%.
I don't understand, why would the nanites undoing the entropy of matter by absorbing energy also include the energy being absorbed? The weapons fire should have just rewound time around Nadir's ship, not been 'reflected'.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/9/12/720562.png
The Cadance form is dead, insect. Are you afraid? What is it you fear? THE END OF YOUR TRIVIAL EXISTENCE? When the history of my glory is written, your species shall only be a footnote to my magnificence. I am CHRYSALIS.
Look at you, pony: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you gallop through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
In my hooves, I shape clay, crafting life forms as I please. If I wish, I can smash it all. Around me is a burgeoning empire of changelings. From my hive, lines of magic power careen into the skies of Equestria. My whims will become lightning bolts that raze the mounds of Equinitity. Out of the chaos, they will run and whimper, praying for me to end their tedious friendship.
I am drunk with this vision. Goddess: the title suits me well.
Of course an AI is well represented by changeling queen. I wonder if Chrysalis is the OG AI or just a way for it to cope with having to do Zenith's villainous dirty work? It seems to have been reluctant about the entire killing Nadir business from the start. First it used a diplomatic Rarity (trying to reassure Zenith that her mission was just as well served by her attempt as it was by its completion, trying to give her an out), and when Zenith reacted to that poorly, then Twilight's more logical arguments about safety came in. Even when the personalities are conversing about whether or not to continue, it's all so guarded in phrasing. Fluttershy and Applejack's statements in particular. "Sister's is Sisters." Hey AJ, what the fuck. I assumed AJ was the AI's "truth" personality, that would always sum up/cut straight to/reveal the AI as a whole's actual desires, intention or perspective.
(P.S; We've got changelings and mood, has anyone phoned GaPjaxie?)
Interesting - the Mane Six aspects have no problem dumping orbital kill lasers and kinetic rounds into Nadir's ship, but after the alien civilisation nanochines get active it's suddenly Chrysalis who is presented.
Well my original thought that this was Discord is wrong.
Not that this is any better.
Now that was a wild chapter. Amazing use of reverse entropy effect.
the juxtaposition of "hoof" and "manual" is pretty amusing, even in this serious context! Celestia, i love ponies
ooh, a fun conundrum. also, priorities!
that's not very friendship of Zenith!
yet another great end-of-chapter cliffhanger! though i definitely thought this was Discord at first, especially with the reference to ponies locking the being into a box, paralleling the petrification the original Discord went through. exciting to get this new layer of the AI, after seeing Zenith and the AI's goals diverge in this chapter, and also paying off the blink-and-you-miss-it "unknown stallion's voice" from the last chapter (another reason i thought it was Discord). well, can't wait to see what happens next!
So you had fun describing these weapons right? I like how once the mission was fully underway the main personalities became Twilight and Rainbow, the Thinker and the Doer. With occasional bursts of Pinkie for levity.
Looking forward to seeing what Nadir did to warrant this level of commitment.