Ponies Versus Starcraft

by ambion

Rarity vs Creep

Rarity had found herself to be more introspective than usual of late. It manifested as meandering strolls about the encampment, she might stop and ponder the peculiar buildings, or watch the pylons on their endless, gentle spinning.

It came, she supposed, from a lack of sociable company. Her warriors (and she had been alternatively flattered and elated to think of them as hers) could hold a discussion well enough, but they did not opt to begin them, did not muse aloud on art or whimsies, recounted no little anecdotes.

It wasn’t exactly dreary, but, as she watched the glaring beams sunlight shattered and scattered in all its hues the facets of the pylons, she felt pangs of longing. Managing the settlement kept her busy enough, her needs were all met and her standards and views as to what these were upheld, but it only kept melancholy in check. Without something to keep her occupied, her thoughts hung heavy and slow.

Her personnel probe attendant, Probey-Wobey as she had named it, held a parasol in its particle beam. Despite the badlands, the base seemed to create its own climate to an extent, and if not cool neither was it muggy with the heat that was more natural to the blasted, barren rock all around them. The glassy roads under her hooves shone back all they saw, distorting it all wibbly-wobbly.

“Pinkie would have no end of fun playing with her reflection in this,” she mused silently, and wondered how her friends were doing. Rarity tried a funny face at the reflective ground, but it only looked sad and she quickly wiped it away.

Twilight had lead the expedition away some time ago, and her communications were sparse and to the point. The unicorn drew a stiff breath. Well, she’d just have to buck up and tough it out a while longer until they returned. Hopefully when that happened, they could contact the others and, if not be together in pony, at least have a fun time bantering away, gossiping about the things they had seen and learned since being seperated by the Placement.

Rarity sent P.W. to fetch her a glass of water, but did not wait for it. Rather, she set off a determined pace and made towards the perimeter of the main base, though truth be told it and the ‘natural expansion’, as the warriors refferred to it were close enough that one could stand between them on the open ground and see the nexi of each, glittering above each horizon.

She passed by zealots sparring amdist one another or running patrols along the perimeter, each acknowledging her with various telepathic salutes and pledges. Rarity had since ceased trying to coax them out of it, as she found it slightly annoying. Their intent was good, Rarity knew, and that was enough for her to tolerate the constant and distracting salutations she received on her thoughtful walks.

It struck her as somewhat ironic. “Here I am, complaining about being alone and at the same time wishing to be left alone,” she thought. “I’m better than this,” she decided and, making a second decision to make the best of it and stop moping already, turned about and marched up to her zealots.

They ceased their practice and quickly stepped into formation. “Your orders?” the foremost said, in what Rarity privately considered an unnecssarily masculine telepathic voice. She wondered briefly if they were all just like that, or if it was something like a uniform to them. “Surely some of them must be girly-lots? Lady-lots, maybe?” she wondered on the terminology idly. The warriors watched her impassively.

“Ah, yes.” Probey-Wobey brought her the timely glass, which she knocked back as she prepared her thoughts. “Yes. Right.” She felt so very on-the-spot, and it surprised her. Rarity wasn’t often put off by speaking her mind in groups, but what common ground was there here, asides from the endless, dead earth and the recast glassiness of the base?

“I should like to ready a patrol,” she said, clutching for something to fill the silence, for something to validate this conversation’s existence. “In, say...ten minutes?” That didn’t seem too presumptious, she hoped. Enough time for them to use the bathroom (if they ever needed it, that was; Rarity had not seen any evidence to suggest they, but hadn’t been brave enough to look into the matter further and endured the strange embarrasment she felt every time she went there bravely) or for them to have a snack (again, this was a mystery, what with the thing about mouths and all) or just to freshen up (also a mystery, but Rarity had hopes in this regard. Far as she was concerned, needed or no, the effort was always worth it.)

The speaker for the group nodded. “As you will it,” he said, gesturing to this and that zealot, cutting short this and that sparring match.

“Well,” she mused aloud. “That went...okay, I suppose.” It wasn’t like she hadn’t broken the ice already. The problem was that there just seemed to be more ice...or star-charred dust, or whatever would make the analogy work best given the situation. What she meant was, what it came down to was, as always, her boredom and loneliness.

Quite without her noticing it, Probey-Wobey had returned the glass to whence it came (the ‘toss being very methodical about neatness) and had returned to parasol toting duty. Constrained to her own time limit, Rarity pulled herself from her reverie and made a purposeful pace over to the robotics facility.

The Immortal that waited there did not stir at her coming, nor did she urge him to. Something about the stoicism, the controlled might and geological patience he posessed always made her own cares seem unimportant and far away.

He was old, Rarity knew, though he nor any other had ever said. Very old. The count of years were trifling things against that, like pebbles off a mountain.

When she had asked his name he had not deigned to give it. Rarity wondered if anybody knew it, if even he himself remembered it. She couldn’t, she had decided, keep referring to such a valient soul as the Immortal or her steed (for he had no matters of pride on serving as her mount when she wished to travel, and bore her dutifully).

The urge to dub him something, anything, was a niggling insistence at the back of her head, but despite the hours she had spent in private considering just what to name him, nothing had seemed to measure up. Again, in the shadow of the Immortal, it did not seem to matter much. Not all mountains had names either; though all were mighty nonetheless.

Without knowing how she knew, he watched, though Rarity supposed the Immortal was always watching, always vigilant. Rarity waited at the discretion of the great-strider, she would not intrude herself upon him.

“You wish to ride out,” he said, his voice the unbreaking resonation of cold machinery.

The unicorn bowed. Not curtised, but bowed to him. “I would appreciate that, if you were again willing.”

“Always.” She had already known the answer, just as she knew she would always ask first anyways. Perhaps it was only her that fretted about demeaning the twice-lived warrior inside.

Her perch atop the Immortal had since been fitted with a small, sturdy yet plush cushion. She had felt guilty about putting it there, but again he had given no complaint. As the legs hefted the great-strider back up, she suspected that he found her fretful considerations amusing. She wondered how young she must seem to the ancient.

The zealots had gathered around them; there was no great speech. A few hours of poking around the endless expanse of dust and rock and daylight, surely that was something to look forward to. The zealots accepted this with their usual severity, and not a word more. Rarity sighed. This was going to be so much better than moping in the cool and comfort of the base.

At the brisk pace the group adhered to, reaching the natural took only about ten minutes. Already Rarity was thankful that the Immortal’s shields kept the air cool and fresh. She would not have liked the sweat, glare and clinging dust she would have to endure otherwise one bit at all.

The natural, while staioned around a nexus much the same as the main base itself, was a sparse affair. One assimilator, one pylon and a skeleton-crew of probes at work were all that seperated this barren patch of ground from the rest of the empty, scorched husk of a planet. The dust and rock underfoot had not been melted and recast into the smooth glassiness Rarity had become familiar with, and again she was glad that she did not truly have to be out there in it, tucked away neatly under the shields of the Immortal as she was.

She made a show of looking over everything, despite feeling silly for it. “Well, everything seems in order here.” Not even a breeze had disturbed the dust, only the humming of the probes added song company to Rarity’s lone voice. “Let’s move on,” she suggested.

The drudgery of the next two hours was, miraculously, lifting Rarity out of her glumness. Anti-miraculously, it was dropping her right back down into moodiness. She glared at rocks, as if to guilt-trip them into trying a little harder to overcome their utterly drab, uninspired appearance. The sun seemed fixed in the sky, like it was intent to stay up as long as there were scurrying dust-motes on the world below to watch.

“Let it watch,” Rarity mused bitterly to herself. “There’s nothing to see, nothing to talk about.”

“Trouble always comes soon enough,” the great-strider said suddenly, though he did not elaborate the point and Rarity was quite startled to think of nothing to reply with.

Some moments later they found the edge of the creep. Rarity, curiosity battling disgust, stepped down from her mount, peering closely at the stuff. It reached off far as she could see, like an ocean of purple. Intricate patterns rose and fell in the matted material and it had the consistency and appeal of hair pulled from the bath-drain. The edge was a hair’s breadth thick, as she watched the creep almost shuffled about upon itself, like something alive.

“It is alive,” she mumbled, aghast and amazed. And it was crawling at a snail’s pace towards her, towards them all, little roots of growth that snagged any grit or surface they could, a million little trestles for the creep to expand along. She promptly stepped away and took some deep breaths, looking anywhere but it.

It was the single most hideous thing Rarity had ever seen. It stretched for untold miles.

“Zerg,” she whispered, as if to say it any louder would call the Swarm down upon them there and then. Pinkie and Fluttershy had gotten zerg placement. Was this their doing? Would it be better if that were the case? “Don’t touch it,” she ordered, though truth be told none of the warriors were foolish enough to do so. Creep acted as a rudimentry sensory network. Anything atop it would have its prescence known to the hive.

Rarity wanted to pale, and really express her revulsion at the unnatural growth, but something in her kept firm. She was still a leader, she could feel squicky later. “We need to know where this is coming from, and how far it goes.” She could feel the agreement of the Immortal in her mind, and it gave her much-needed confidence.

She divvied the present zealots into two groups, keeping two for her own escort. One mentioned burning the tumours out. “But we have no detection out here,” Rarity thought. The only observer she had had gone with Twilight’s expedition. She dispatched one group left, the other right.

“Scout along the edge of the creep,” she commanded them. “Don’t touch it, and don’t fight anything you find." ‘Knowledge is power overwhelming’, Twilight always said. Rarity could not have agreed with that more just know (though ‘style’ was neck and neck for first place). Knowing was key. “Be back for nightfall, we’ll have a better idea of what to do then.” Her imagination struck her quite out of the blue - an image of dusk and chittering, flurrying wings and claws. “Make that an hour before nightfall.”

She’d have to queue up an observer soon as she could. And she’d feel safer with some photon cannons in the meantime.

“Well,” she pondered as the three parties split, the Immortal and escort headed for home. “At least I’m not bored.” And because she was feeling snarky and sarcastic, she added for the great-strider’s benefit, “now I’m scared instead, which is so much more exciting, isn’t it?”

The Immortal said nothing. Its silence stripped her of pettiness.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurred to him after a moment. The unbreaking rhythm of his motion lulled her to calm, even to drowsing as the sun beat down upon them all.

Author's Note:

One of the most interesting things I find in writing these is that what I imagine the chapters to be and what they actually become can differ quite drastically. I find the non-seriousness with which I can treat the whole thing is very, very appealing as well. I'd recommend it to anyone struggling with their own urges to write.

Comments

[RedvsBlue327]

This makes me wonder what the actual time scales can be... one second for us screen overlords could be minutes for the troops in there...

I personally felt a theme of overwhelmingly depressing boredom for Rarity. Nothing to do, nothing to do... Jeez I can relate to that. I think anyone could relate to some part of that.

Rarity's issue of trying to engage inconversation with her warriors also rang out to me. She could make them talk to her, but like the fic said, never from their initiative.
Like attempting to do something without real purpose when your bored just never feels like an option, as what would be the point?

Or maybe only wastes of humanity feel that.

[Sihv]

My shipping addled brain demands RarityXImmortal!