AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 62
ARES III SOL 64
“I’m jealous,” Dragonfly said. “You’re going to spend twenty days all alone with Mark.”
She and Starlight were carrying saddlebags full of Mark’s food packs out to the rover. Mark had picked them out himself, saying that the few remaining pony food packs should remain behind for those who would tend the crops. Mark had his hands full with a large plastic bin full of water.
“You could take my place,” Starlight said. “I think we all know now you know his language better than any of us.”
“Bad idea,” Dragonfly said. “I have to stay with the best source of love, remember? And as nutritious as Mark’s turned out to be, he’s only one person.” She hissed softly and added, “And besides, there’s the Death Box.”
“Are you going to go on about that again?” Starlight grumbled, waiting for Mark to open the rover airlock. “First you were talking about how this planet hates us.”
“It does!”
“Right. And now you’re calling the Artie Gee the Death Box.”
“Starlight, I’ve flirted with the Pale Horse more times than I can count,” Dragonfly said. “It’s fun. But when I look at that box I can see the Pale Horse staring back at me, and she’s saying, I’m not fooling around this time.” Inside her spacesuit, the changeling shuddered. “It’s not that the box wants me dead. Or everyone dead. Or even everything dead. It doesn’t care. It just is death- death in a really thin wrapper.”
“Looked around lately?” Starlight barked back. “We’ve spent the past two months keeping death out by a series of really thin wrappers.”
Dragonfly shook her head. “I still don’t- hey, Mark, let me help!”
“He doesn’t have his crystal on,” Starlight said. “He can’t hear us.”
“But that water’s heavy!” Dragonfly insisted. “I can get it- here, Mark, I have it-“ The changeling tried to shove her way under the tub that Mark was struggling to balance on a spacesuit-padded knee while keying the rover airlock open with his free hand. The shove unbalanced the tub of water, and he fumbled with both hands to keep it from dropping and possibly losing its airtight lid.
“Oops!” Dragonfly reared up, helped steady Mark, and then sat on the rover step, looking obviously contrite. Mark, after a few moments of recovery, set the tub down carefully and then patted Dragonfly’s helmet before motioning her back out of the way.
“What’s wrong with you?” It was Starlight’s turn to shake her head. “What made you think that was helpful in any way?”
“Hey, I’ve got a strong back,” Dragonfly insisted. “I’m not the bossmare, but I’m strong enough! Maybe if I give him another hint-“
“Right, that’s it. I know you’re not that stupid. Can we have a talk?” Starlight pointed back to the Hab. “Inside the airlock?”
Uh-oh. Dragonfly didn’t like that tone. “Why not out here?”
“Because I don’t want Mark to watch us having another fight,” Starlight growled. “Especially since he’s picked up a lot of words in Equestrian, even if he can’t pronounce them.”
“But you said he can’t hear us inside his suit,” Dragonfly insisted.
“Now, bug.” The ice in Starlight’s voice made the ambient temperature (a clear late-winter day of twenty-five below) tropical by comparison.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dragonfly said. She double-checked the settings on her suit to make sure the two of them were still on the private channel instead of the crew-wide channel. Yep. Private conversation. She tapped Mark on the knee, used a hoof to indicate that she and Starlight were going back, and waited for Mark’s wave of understanding before following the unicorn into the airlock.
Starlight didn’t bother beginning the repressurization cycle. The instant the outer door was shut she rounded on Dragonfly, snarling. “All right, you. I spent my formative years learning how to wheedle, ingratiate, manipulate, and intimidate ponies into doing what I wanted. I’m trying to be a better mare, but I remember all the little tricks, and you’ve been using them non-stop ever since we got here.”
“I’ve always thought you’d make an excellent hive-queen,” Dragonfly said.
“See? That!” Starlight pointed an accusing hoof at Dragonfly. “That right there! Gratuitous compliments! Kissing up! Offering to help at every possible opportunity! Acting like an adorable moron! Every chance you get, going off alone with one of us and chatting us up! You even do it with Mark, although in his case you mostly act like a puppy who wants attention!” The unicorn’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your game?”
Dragonfly sighed. “If I tell you, it won’t work anymore,” she said. “And it’s really important that it work.”
“Is it the love thing?” Starlight asked. “We all take turns hugging you twice a day! Three times sometimes! I put all my care and concern into that hug! Isn’t it enough?”
So. No, this wasn’t going to go away, was it? Why did ponies have to be so difficult? “You left home at a young age, didn’t you?” the changeling asked. “And you set up your own village, starting it by yourself, recruiting ponies one by one. You thought it was hard work, right?”
“Of course it was hard work!” Starlight insisted. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Did you ever go days at a time without eating?” Dragonfly asked. “Weeks?”
“Er… no?” Starlight said, confused. “I worked hard so I’d always have something, even if it wasn’t very good.”
“I have,” Dragonfly said, all her ingratiation put away in a box, leaving only pure warrior drone. “Every changeling has. Depending on infiltrators to steal love and bring it back across hundreds of miles to the Hive without getting caught or sidetracked. Living so poor that the only clues we had that there was such a thing as not being poor were the little gadgets, knick-knacks and other things infiltrators would bring back with them. Imagine working hard, day in and day out, and having nothing at the end of the day for it. If you can. I don’t have to imagine, because I lived it!”
“So this is about the love thing,” Starlight said.
“No,” Dragonfly said. “This is about the hate thing. This is about the anger thing. Yes, I’m hungry. All changelings are at least a little hungry all the time. But the hugs you give me would be enough if you weren’t all getting on each other’s nerves all the time and making me burn love to keep from getting sick from your bad feelings!”
Starlight blinked. “Why didn’t you-“
“Fireball doesn’t like us because we’re not dragons,” he said. “He respects Cherry Berry because, well, she’s Cherry Berry. And he respects me because I saved his life. But he doesn’t like any of us, and he resents having to work with us. And he hates himself most of all, because he thinks he doesn’t belong here.”
“Well,” Starlight said, “that’s just-“
“Spitfire rides you about your health because that’s practically her only duty,” Dragonfly said. “She feels useless all the time because she’s trained to be a flyer and a commander, and here her only role is medic- for which she’s had all of six weeks’ training total.”
“How do you-“
“Cherry Berry thinks she’s a fraud,” the changeling pressed on. “She wants a princess to come along and take the responsibility off her shoulders because she doesn’t think she can handle it. That’s why she defers to you so much of the time- you sound like you know better than she does.”
“But… well… I-“
“And you,” Dragonfly said, a little maliciously, “spend all of your time so focused on the problem of the moment or your personal issues that you don’t notice or care what any of the others are feeling or saying. Except me, because you’re worried I’ll go feral and start sucking everyone dry.”
“That is not true!” Starlight stomped a hoof, the otherwise silent motion sending vibrations up Dragonfly’s hooves.
Dragonfly took a deep breath, swallowing a lot more malicious things she wanted to say. No one knew better how to destroy a pony than a changeling, but she didn’t want to destroy this pony right now. “Maybe it’s not,” she admitted quietly. “But going by the emotions I get off you all, it’s not far from it. Cherry in particular is a nervous wreck, and I’ve worked with her for years. I know her pretty well.”
“But Cherry’s the steely eyed missile mare!” Starlight insisted.
“Is she in a rocket right now?” Dragonfly asked.
“Technically-“
“You know what I mean.”
“Well… she isn’t, no,” Starlight admitted.
“Does it look like she’ll get to fly another rocket any time soon?” Dragonfly pressed.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“That’s just it. She has confidence in herself where flying is concerned. Give her a flying problem and you can follow her to Tartarus and back. But in every other respect,” Dragonfly paused for emphasis, “she is an absolutely ordinary pony. She’s not a seventh Element of Harmony.”
Starlight made an odd noise, then shut her mouth firmly. Dragonfly nodded. Good, the pony knows when it’s not time to be pedantic.
“So she needs help holding this crew together,” Dragonfly continued. “We only trained as a unit for, what? Three weeks? Not important, because it was only going to be a five-day flight, right? Just go out to Bucephalous, orbit, take photos of future landing sites, and come back. And all of us were either senior pilots, design geniuses, or experienced leaders. We could do the job for five days.
“Well, it didn’t work out that way. Cherry Berry doesn’t know how to keep us going. Fireball doesn’t care. Spitfire doesn’t want to step out of line. And you’re too wrapped up in numbers and magic to notice.” The changeling shook her head and sighed. “So who’s left?”
“I’m guessing you?” Starlight said.
“Right. I’m doing it for my own benefit, sure- I get more food and less poison this way- but I’m also holding the crew together. I’m the silly crazy bug. I’m the cute adorable alien pet. I’m Miss Helpful, Miss Eager, Miss Comic Relief. And all the time I’m not just making you all like me more, I’m making each of you feel a little better about yourselves and each other.”
Dragonfly dropped her spacesuit-covered rump onto the cold deck and finished, “But that only works so long as the target isn’t aware I’m doing it. Once the victim gets suspicious, it’s over.” She pawed the deck with a forehoof and added, “All of that is Infiltrator 101, by the way. This is how changelings survive- by each of us doing our part for the team.”
Starlight, considerably deflated, stepped back, bumping into the inner airlock door. “I, um, I’m sorry,” she said. “But, well…”
“But changeling, yes, I got that,” Dragonfly snorted. “For the record, I’ve never actually lied to any of you.”
Starlight Glimmer hung her head as much as her suit would allow. “Is it really that bad?” she asked.
“Bad enough,” Dragonfly said. “By the way, you being away is about a wash on the negative emotions thing. You won’t be annoying Spitfire or vice versa, but without you she’s going to feel even more useless than before. I don’t want to think about how bad it would be if Mark wasn’t here to distract us.”
“And in a day or two he won’t be here,” Starlight muttered.
Dragonfly nodded. “Hopefully he’ll leave his television library with us. I think I can keep up the English lessons, and that’ll keep us working together on something besides farming.”
Starlight nodded inside her helmet. “I’ll ask Mark about that…” She froze. “I just had an idea. You know how Cherry wanted to try to build a new ship from the parts here?”
Dragonfly flinched. Now who was acting dumber than they were? “That’s impossible!” she insisted. “Mark’s MDV is smashed half to pieces, and the only thing the MAV base has on it is the fuel plant we’re using for extra carbon dioxide! And neither of them are compatible with what’s left of Amicitas in any way! It took over a week for us to talk Cherry Berry down from that idea!”
“You know it’s impossible and I know it’s impossible,” Starlight said. “But it’s worth suggesting as a busy-making activity. So long as ponies have a job in front of them, they tend not to ask questions. Keep them busy, and they won’t make trouble.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dragonfly admitted.
“In the meantime,” Starlight said, “apology hug.”
Dragonfly was grateful for a snack remarkably free of suspicion for a change, even if there was a decided soggy-raisin-cereal taste to it.
Starlight forgets just how experienced Dragonfly is at reading others from just their emotions. And it really sounds like she's getting into dire straits.
You know, given just the knowledge that her feeding off of the pschic energy of his emotions is painless I really don't think Mark would have a problem with knowing how she feeds. Any human xenobiologist, xenosociologist, etymologist, or anyone else that likes aliens, bugs, supernatural stuff, or horses for that matter.
I'm sad about the hit to the buffer, but happy to have more Maretian.
The Equestrian need to have a vote and replace Cherry Berry with Spitfire as team leader.
This started adorable, with the Artie Gee, and then went awesome!
Also, the pale horse is a superb mythological reference to apply to Equestria. Totes should be canon.
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While it would solve the "Spitfire has no duty role" it would shove that problem onto Cherry Berry, who would also feel depressed because of her failures. Fireball also doesn't respect Spitfire, so that part of the command would go up in smoke. Lastly, Spitfire is used to military style leadership, and Starlight isn't going to respond at all well to that.
If anything that would make the group unity WORSE.
Now I wonder how changelings would deal with various nuclear reactor plants that a decent portion of the human race depends on. Mmm, probably give them all a wide berth while avoiding places such as Chernobyl as the Pale Horse's garden.
And for that matter, how would they feel about Earth? Just another planet like Equis? They'd probably avoid cities since all the stress and negative emotions despite a few happy people they latch on to. Smaller towns would be better "hunting grounds" but humans are fairly aggressive compared to ponies-- that and it helps them to have an eternal pair of benevolent leaders to dole out the wisdom we are constantly forgetting.
I feel like I'm missing some context from CSP here. Is Cherry Berry a seventh Element of Harmony?
"we’re not dragons,” he said. “He respects"
"we’re not dragons,” she said. “He respects"?
"“Technically-“
“You know what I mean.”"
Extra line break?
"But it’s worthsuggesting as a"
"But it’s worth suggesting as a"?
Ah, sorry about the screwing up; I don't object to getting an extra chapter, but it did take your buffer down further than expected.
I don't know; in some ways, it's almost like he's hurting himself just so they can feel better about themselves. "At least I'm not as dumb/clumsy/insane as Dragonfly" or "We have to love her because she's dumb/clumsy/insane". And that feels kinda like forced love, instead of real love. But then again, I kinda see undertones that none of them, except perhaps Cherry, can really give her pure love because they have underlying prejudice against changelings and aren't sure if they love her because they have to so she'll survive, or because they genuinely want to love her.
It's all very complicated and very intriguing, really, I suspect that if there is a friendship story here, it's really between the Equestrians themselves than it is between the Equestrians and Mark/humans. Remember, survival on Mars is only half logistics and actual physical survival/fitness. The other half is emotional and mental fitness. Survival is hard in a vacuum, be it a physical one, or one with no emotional or friendship support.
Also, in reference to the Epsilon site, can't the satellites pick up the solar panels and equipment they hauled ut and the like? That should be a dead give-away that they've set up some type of hab there.
That's oddly non-specific. Something like this can be said about almost everything, except living being maybe.
So, since you went with the whole "negative emotions are poison" thing, it makes me curious how the changeling invasion of Canterlot even happened in this setting.
From what we see here, and in previous chapters, it seems like the negative emotions produced by one being in a high stress environment can be completely or almost canceled out by feeding on them two to three times a day, assuming the changeling is able to do so.
But that wouldn't happen in an invasion. The changelings there wouldn't be able to feed at all, the ponies around them would be putting out nothing but negative emotions, and there would be a LOT more of them than what Dragonfly is having to deal with. Which means that every changeling taking part in the invasion would have to have enough stored love to not only shield themselves from the sea of poison they're literally diving into, but also still function at peak ability for a full day or more without feeding.
So my question is, if the hive was able to gather that much love, why was such a rushed, drastic, and quite frankly, all or nothing assault even launched to begin with? It would be one thing if it was that or starvation, but if they were on the brink of starvation they wouldn't have the power to launch the attack anyway (or continue to exist after it had failed).
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No, she's not. Dragonfly mentioned that only to say that Cherry's not a legendary hero or anything, she's just a regular pony who happens to be a very skilled pilot.
Great chapter as always. Dragonfly comes across as having grown both more saner and sneakier than during her Changeling Space Program days. Maybe Queen Chrysalis should revisit those notions of digging out the royal jelly.
8724912 The Changeling Invasion of Canterlot doesn't make a lot of sense no matter how you think about it. It was tactically suicidal and only 'worked' because the ponies were worfed, Chrysalis got a power boost even SHE didn't expect, and Luna was mysteriously absent... so blatantly so that fans of the show suspected for two years that she must have secretly been involved!
So, yes, the changelings were an interesting villain race.... but the plot of that episode was disastrously poorly constructed from an analytical standpoint.
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The only way it makes sense is either if they were starving and desperate so Chrysalis chose short term feeding over short term starvation or if their goo pods could keep all the ponies blissed out and hooked up like living batteries a la the Matrix, Changlings farming their love in pods rather than stealing it.
A lot of people accept desperation as their head cannon.
Oh also the race itself was seen as poorly thought out as well to the point that a lot of people linked Discord to their creation. Beings who feed off love that look horrifying? Have holes for seemingly no reason? Can change shape causing mistrust and chaos? I remember reading a couple of stories with Discord as their origin, one in particular with Discord corrupting the Flutterponies into Changlings.
Also read one where Sombra was made their origin. They collect love, the Crystal Empire survives off love, the connection had them as some race created by the Empire to protect love and corrupted by Sombra to steal love.
Meanwhile the closest we get to cannon origins is only in the extended cannon of the comics. Not exactly cannon at all but it's all we got so far.
Wow, great chapter. I love how Dragonfly's state has been hinted at so much and now it's all finally come together. Before this, it was always just enough that you sort of knew what was going on - with her food needs and everything - but I could never really put a finger on it, which just made the revelation of her more or less forced quirkiness all the more interesting.
So I'm guessing apart from the exertion everyone being on bad terms with each other after Fireball's encounter with the perchlorates did quite the number on her?
Anyways, I'm sure this meddling or the rising tension because of everyone's psychological problems is someday going to really blow up.
And I'm both dreading and looking forward to that.
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After she stuck Cherry Berry in a pod, the result was an obese changeling.
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The rtg would not show up with with a geiger counter.
The radiation is blocked by shielding (Alpha radiation)
If only they could stick Cherry in a pod again, though Dragonfly wouldn't probably fit the suit afterwards.
Dragonfly: "I fear nopony. But that... thing... it scares me. "
(Upvote if you get that reference. I mean, if you want to. )
A Changeling at it's finest!
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Maybe they could stuck all of them in pods.
If being in a pod works like stasis they can use that to wait for rescue.
This seems incompatible with sol 511
Ohhhboy, bug, that was not a compliment
Ow... poor girl, accidentally becoming the team psychologist. She never asked for this...
That's a lot of calorie waste they can't afford though
This is the story that got me to make an account here (via TVTrope's fanfiction link off of The Martian). thanks for the amazing story.
If dragonfly got "death-in-a-wrapper" from an RTG, what would she get from an actual nuke? I'd be willing to bet on death (of the "i-want-you-dead-right-now" variety) mixed with indescribable hatred.
Dragonfly's got a hell of a spy complex. She's thinks the team will fall apart if they know she's trying to be the glue and her social engineering stops being subconscious, because she's spent so long being an infiltrator that she still doesn't really get the idea that someone might be able to just take her at her word. Like, yes, she's trying to cadge food but she's never been all that shy about that -- the only thing she's hiding from the Equestrians is the good part, and the only thing she's hiding from Mark is something that'll probably fail to weird him out that much in light of the last two months.
reminds me of a line in a different story: someone asked a changeling what Love tastes like, and she answered, "strawberry ice cream!"
10361587 This was a callback to either earlier in the story or some point in Changeling Space Program, where pity is described as tasting like cereal that's gone soggy in the milk.
Changelings are perfect to keep one bussy and happy. There the most versatile race
Great chapter
Dragonfly has the most inconsistent food and taste to endure. Poor Cuddlebug
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Dragonfly piloted the rescue mission of the last flights of the Yak, Griffon, and Dragon space programs in the prequel The Changeling Space Program.
Spoiler for The Changeling Space Program: All three space programs had lanched a final desperate attempt to reach the Moon of Equus (before their programs would be shut down due to lack of funding to continue) and through various circumstances the flights to orbit had been disastrously bungled, stranding the 3 astronauts in space. The CSP flew to the rescue and Dragonfly had to deal with getting the Astronauts and then landing them safely WITHOUT any contact/telemetry with/from Horseton as a collision during the rescues had busted her comms unit.
She got a ticker-tape parade for her success and that is when Dragonfly saved Fireball's life.
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Little goofball is quite the hero 👍
Now a quit hungry one... If not for the transformation she might made it to the rescue without major problems on her behalf.
I really like the theory (which I think is elaborated on at some point?) that the lack of ambient magic makes changelings hypersensitive to emotions, which is why Dragonfly can pick up faint hints of consciousness from inanimate objects, like the RTG and Mars itself.