Chapter 37 - Squad Goals
“And with that, next week’s schedule for use of the Horadric Cube is settled, barring any unforeseen changes.” Moon Dancer made a few finals marks on her ledger before slipping the page away to be posted later. “Next, is there any new business to be discussed?”
It was a grand feeling to be up behind a podium, organizing a meeting of the minds of magical researchers. The kind of thing of which she'd dreamed since she was small and written in her pre-teen diary. Of course, reality never quite lived up to dreams.
It wasn’t a think tank of Canterlot’s finest. It wasn’t a secret black site facility outfitted with the best equipment money could buy. She wasn’t researching the kind of ancient and secret magic that even alicorns held close to their chest. Instead, it was a basement under a library-slash-tree populated by a group of enthusiasts who were doing research in their spare time on the effects of magic mushrooms, new runic strings, and exceptionally quick woodworking.
But it was magic no one had ever seen before. And she was in charge. Mostly by seizing the leadership initiative when no one else had wanted to, but still.
A first step on the road to greatness. Today a basement, tomorrow her own facility.
A white hoof rose into the air.
“The floor recognizes Twinkleshine.”
The hoof went down. “I still think we should change the name.”
At least a mare could dream of greatness. But getting there was substantially harder when her supposed subordinates coworkers seemed to lack the same drive and ambition, always getting hung up on meaningless things. It seemed like every meeting someone brought up the name again and wasted more time with pointless arguing no matter how many times she used her authority as chairpony to declare the topic finished. “That is old business. The name stands. Any—”
“But come on! GRUMP? Really?”
How such intelligent (mostly) ponies could not wrap their heads around such a simple concept continued to baffle her. Their name didn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter. It was little more than a time-saving shortcut so she didn’t have to list out every joint researcher on every piece of documentation. “There is nothing wrong with the current name. Gathered Researchers of Unexplained Magical Phenomena is both concise and accurate.”
“But it makes us sound like a bunch of stodgy old stallions!”
Moon Dancer sighed. It was time to put her hoof down. Again. They had wasted too much time already and she could feel the schedule cramping. Honestly, how some of her “fellow researchers” managed to succeed in the same university as her with this manner of quavering focus was a wonder. “The last time we discussed it, we wasted over two hours of time and still failed to arrive at a name that a majority was satisfied with. The matter is settled.”
“But—”
“Old news. Dead topic. Moving on now.”
“I have a question!”
For once, she was thankful for one of Minuette’s outbursts. “The floor recognizes Minuette.”
The unicorn lowered her hoof to point at the proverbial elephant in the room. “Why is Bon Bon here?”
“I was wondering that too,” added Lemon Hearts, completely failing to recognize the established process being recognized for the minutes before speaking. “Not that I mind you bringing your marefriend, Lyra.”
Admittedly, Moon Dancer had been pondering the earth pony’s presence at their meeting as well. The inclusion of Lyra was not unexpected; she had been part of the same social circle back in school and had visited the extra-dimensional crystal chamber several times to add her niche expertise to the research efforts (not that the expertise of a cryptomagizoologist contributed much beyond confirming that the tools in the “Hunter’s Workshop” area were not designed for or by ponies. Anyone with a minor in equipology could have determined that). Her showing up to the weekly meeting to go over their findings and organize a schedule was only proper, and a sign of her finally joining in a more official capacity.
Her bringing a plus one had been a surprise.
As far as Moon Dancer’d been informed, this research initiative was something of an exclusive club. Close associates only. She wasn’t against a change in policy, but it would have been nice to be informed of it beforehand. Likewise, if the new policy allowed any doe, jack, or filly off the streets to join, then she was going to need to re-evaluate some of her priorities.
Namely, prioritizing the request to have a door made for her living space.
"I'm supervising," was Bon Bon’s simple reply.
"Yeah..." Lyra elaborated poorly with an awkward shrug. "That was her condition for letting me join. That she gets to come as well to 'keep me out of trouble'. Her words, not mine."
The earth pony crossed her forelegs and glared, daring anyone to challenge her presence. "And with good reason. I know how Lyra gets when she picks up a new passion project. Somepony has to make sure she doesn't try to cast any unnamed spells on herself—"
"That worked out for Twilight, didn't it?"
"—or nearly poison herself with a home brewing kit—"
"That was one time and the instructions were unclear."
"—or waste three months of rent money getting caught up in a multi-level marketing scheme for magic leg-lengthening horseshoes."
"Hey! That one worked out. I was definitely taller after."
Bon Bon continued as if the interruptions hadn't happened. "If the rest of you were her friends in school, then I can only assume you're cut from the same cloth. So, for the sake of safety, sanity, and the continued stability of Ponyville as a whole, I intend to be the voice of reason and make sure that no one gets possessed by obvious evil jewelry, stores unstable potions in a coffee mug, or tries eat a ball of energy larger than their head."
Moon Dancer dismissed the byplay with practised ease and focused on the facts. She had no issue taking on another member. The mare's proposal seemed reasonable enough. She came across as both competent and serious (a rare pairing if her current coworkers were any metric) even if she lacked any particularly useful scientific or magical background.
Though Moon Dancer had a suspicion that this Bon Bon might have some applicable experience to offer. After all, most common layponies weren't familiar with Mage Overload's one hundred and one magical theorems, let alone his divisive orb-to-cranium approximation. (Personally, Moon Dancer was on the side that opposed the use of it. While broadly accurate in relating the amount of mana a unicorn could safely intake to the size of their carbuncle, it was a crude ratio at best and a number of notable exceptions to the rule had been discovered since Overload's time. And even in the cases where it did still apply, it was still too inaccurate for her standards. If it was to be taken at face value, then Equestria would long since have been conquered by the pony with the biggest head).
Her thoughts on that aside, while it was odd for an earth pony to be familiar with high level casting metrics, as far as Moon Dancer was concerned it only made her a more useful asset.
"You can't be serious," Twinkleshine protested. "We don't need a babysitter. We're all adults here. Professionals in our craft. We would never—"
"Erlenmeyer incident," Lyra coughed.
Whatever this incident was (probably some inane hijinks from their school days, she reasoned) it was enough to make everyone else wince (Lemon Hearts most of all).
"I retract my objection."
"This could be a good thing," Lemon Hearts said quickly, "Inviting a non-academic perspective might help us see things that we'd otherwise overlook."
Moon Dancer seized the opportunity to redirect the conversation back towards a productive direction before her schedule could be wrecked any further. "Bon Bon, was it? What is it exactly that you do? What special skills or knowledge can you bring to the team?"
The mare paused for longer than what even Moon Dancer thought was socially acceptable before simply answering, "I'm a candymaker. I make candy."
Alas. Nothing useful then. At least it wouldn't hurt to have another note taker and material fetcher. "Unfortunate. That seems irrelevant to our needs. We—"
"No actually, that's perfect," Minuette interrupted. Again. "I've been looking into those candies that Fluttershy makes. Real clever things, those. There's something inherently magical about them that gives them their extra oompf but I haven't been able to pin down what. A professional candymaker's input might be just what I need. Tackle it from a different direction, you know?"
"Oh that sounds neat!” Lyra rose and swapped seats to be next to her, further ruining the carefully designed seating plan organized for maximum efficiency of conversation. “I'd like to look into that too. You think it could fix this crick in my neck?"
“Not passing out on the couch would probably help,” Bon Bon muttered under her breath.
“Hard to say,” Minuette shrugged. “I’ve been trying to build a reference guide of what her different treats can cure and how well, but Fluttershy gave away so much for free that there’s hardly a sick or injured pony left in Ponyville for me to test them on!”
“How terrible,” Lemon Hearts said, her face carefully neutral. “A town full of healthy ponies. My condolences.”
“You know what I mean.”
Moon Dancer ground her teeth. This was exactly why she preferred to study alone back in school. No one could focus for five minutes without devolving into jokes and chitchat. Did no one have any respect for her schedule? “Fine. You three can be a team then.” She made a note in her ledger to return to the topic later at the follow-up meeting. "Now if we can get back on task, we—"
A distant explosion sent a shudder through the room and made her ears pop. Her glass of water rippled.
“What was that?!”
Lyra smacked her hooves together, an expression of surprised realization on her face. “Oh! I forgot it’s Rainbow Dash's birthday today.”
“Does that usually involve explosions?”
“Sometimes, yeah. But they’re extra big this year cause Pinkie's declared a turf war with some out-of-towner party planner.”
Bon Bon nodded. “I think I heard something about that. What was his name? Screwball Jones or something?”
“I think it was Murphy Law,” Minuette countered.
“Nah, that’s a lawyer in Canterlot. I heard someone say it was Dandruff Tuba.”
“No, it was definitely Grilled Cheese. I heard Pinkie muttering about it earlier when she kicked me out to use the Cube.”
“Pinkie kicked you out?”
“Well, no, but she was clearly on the warpath. I heard her mention cordite and tannerite and I made myself scarce.”
Her poor schedule. It was flexible enough to accommodate for a certain amount of distraction, but they were supposed to be nearly done by now. She was up late as it was, and it wasn’t doing anything for her mood. “Does anyone have anything actually important to discuss or should I just tear up the minutes and reclassify this a tea party?”
“I wouldn’t mind some tea,” Lyra mused, not quite quietly enough to avoid an admonishing shove from Bon Bon.
“I did have something, actually.”
At last. Progress. “The floor recognizes Lemon Hearts.”
“Were we still doing that?” At a glare, she continued. “I’ve been studying those filing cabinets full of blueprints, trying to put together a glossary of terms and symbols to help eventually decipher their meaning. It’s slow going, so I mailed a copy of a few to a friend of mine who works in the Cloudsdale weather factory. He's mechanically minded, so I thought he might be able to understand it better.”
“And?” Her quill hovered at the ready. Finally a tangible benefit to the meeting.
She shook her head, dashing Moon Dancer’s hopes. “He was baffled by most of it as well, but he's pretty sure that electricity is central to its function. Maybe more so than magic. Though he couldn't find anything resembling a lightning generator or an IPH slot on the diagrams.”
“IPH?”
“It’s an industry term. It refers to components in a weather factory’s machinery where an operator has to manually apply weather magic to make it work.”
“So IPH stands for…”
“Insert Pegasus Here.”
“Of course it does.” Leave it to the pegasi to make even their professional terminology casual and lackadaisical.
Another rumble shook the room, this one sounding both louder and closer. Something in the far corner where they'd pushed all of Twilight's junk wobbled and toppled over.
"Are you sure it's safe to just ignore that?" Twinkleshine asked, half-rising from her chair. "Shouldn't we duck and cover or… or head for the hills or something?"
Lyra merely waved away her concerns as if the literal approaching cannons were no more a concern than a rogue cloud. "Nothing to worry about. Pinkie's usually pretty good about making sure her party cannons all point up ever since the Town Hall incident last year. Worst case scenario: the shockwaves collapse a few market stalls. We're in a tree. You ever heard of a tree collapsing?"
Another series of cannon blasts ripped through the atmosphere, no more than a few streets away, loud and clear enough for the sound to force its way into even their earthy bunker like an unwelcome guest. They were unmistakably timed (and somehow tuned) to the opening notes of For She's A Jolly Good Fellow.
"Not to sound alarmist..." Bon Bon's face broke its stony countenance for the first time, revealing a hint of worry, "But we're not in a tree at all. We're in a hole underneath one." She glanced up at the root-entwined rafters. "And I can't help but wonder how old those support beams are."
Another rumble (this one followed by a sharper retort, like twanging metal or striking crystal) and a small cascade of dirt trickled down onto Moon Dancer's muzzle. The dark earth stood out in contrast to her pale coat like blood at a crime scene.
"A-all in favor of moving this meeting into the Hunter's Workshop?"
"""""Aye!"""""
"The ayes have it! I declare a short recess! We reconvene in five minutes! If I become incapacitated in that time, Lemon Heart is in charge."
The basement emptied out in record time.
Moon Dancer made it all the way to the crystal table in the main room before she collapsed, dead asleep.
The schedule was there for a reason, after all.
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You sent one of Tony Stark's blueprint to an unsupervised pony? Let's hope Cloudsdale would still standing by the end of the month.
Wait... why didn't any one of them just ask Pinkie about it? I mean, she is now a super genius in Science, Engineer, and some other degrees I don't know about, right? She seems like a perfect go-to pony when it comes to unknown, advanced technology stuffs.
Love me some sassy, analytical moondancer!
Great chapter.
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Iirc she still suffers from the same problem that the Cloudsdale engineer does, all her knowledge is based entirely on the leaps EQUESTRIA has made in those fields. Which is still very impressive, but a different baseline to humanities, especially "Build it in a cave with a box of scraps" MCU Humanity
Great work on this latest chapter. Definitely liked the work that went into the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up in all the right places. Definitely appreciated Moondancer trying to keep the group meeting in order while the others got caught up in commentary concerning the group name, Bon Bon being there to supervise Lyra and the others, the healing candies, Pinkie getting caught up in that competition with her future husband (not that any of the group know THAT yet), the stuff about the mechanically minded Pegasus and the motion to relocate the meeting to a safer location. Unfortunately, Moondancer feel asleep before she could make it, reflecting on that being one of the REASONS for the schedule.
Definitely looking forward to more of this.
Well, hasn’t it?
For those playing at home, this is a reference to an episode with Lemon Hearts somehow getting her head stuck in what people who don't know any better call a beaker. Our friendly neighborhood drider pony knows any better.
(Seriously, Peter Parker is a member of the Future Foundation)
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The Equestrian macrocracy strikes again!
XD
First, I love that visual, it's great and REALLY captures the mood. Second, using the multiple quotation marks to signify multiple people yelling at once is GENIUS, I may have to use that! Great chapter, very entertaining, and I have only partial sympathy for Moondancer who really needs to develop some patience since this is generally how collaborative efforts go XD
(This was pretty fun! Also, poor Bon Bon. It's going to get harder and harder to maintain her cover. Seriously Celestia, I get that you want to keep an eye on things, but what happens if her cover gets blown? Are you going to make her uproot her life with her girlfriend? Over what is, so far, basically nothing but suspicion of some possible maybe evilness that has not in any way come forth or shown itself to be accurate? Ugh... look, keep an eye, but seriously... don't make Bon Bon keep risking her life in Ponyville for your paranoia.)
11531345
With the episode that happens in the background, we're less than a season away from the point where Lyra canonically finds out about Sweetie Drops. Just saying...
Love the new chapter titles
"insert pegasus here" had me dying
This is incredible. I'm incredibly disappointed I'd never heard of a Celestial Forge fic before, so thanks for that! And having the Mane Six collectively receiving the boons while not understanding what's going on leading to a mix of science and hijinks in classic pony fashion is simply wonderful.
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Glad you're enjoying it! They're more popular over on the SufficientVelocity website.
If you're interested in reading others, here's a page that has a collected links to quite a few.
Most of them are based out of the Worm franchise (grim and edgy superhero webnovel), but there's ones set in Marvel, DC, RWBY, One Piece, Harry Potter and more! (I'd personally recommend Doormaker Dog if you want something similar in tone to this fic (that being, less combat-based, more lighthearted).
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You have expanded my reading list in a way I do not need, but welcome wholeheartedly. Thanks!