AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY FIVE
ARES III SOL 9
Starlight Glimmer ate her cheesy mushroom omelet with delight. She’d let the alien- Mahrq, she thought he called himself- have a little taste, and his eyes had gone wide with shock. That suited Starlight just fine, because as grateful as she was for his generosity with his food supplies, she was already tired of one bean-based item after another.
Maybe his species, whatever it was, depended on legumes. (He looked like a human from Sunset Shimmer's mirror world, but his coloring was all wrong and he wasn't skinny enough. Besides, the mirror world was supposed to be a secret.) Or maybe he just really, really liked them. That might explain why he stole all the remaining alfalfa salads and planted them in what looked like a Manehattan window-box made of clear plastic.
And what was he even doing with a window box in his little space base? He wasn’t using plants to clear carbon dioxide- he had a machine for that. He’d explained it using pictures on a whiteboard after pulling Dragonfly away from its controls… just as he’d done with the water machine… and the air purifying machine… and practically everything else that had a button, a switch, or a screen on it. The changeling had found them all that first night.
They needed to understand what their host was thinking- understand how he thought in general. Starlight Glimmer was certain of that, and she’d spent most of her enforced bed rest focused on that problem. So long as they were dependent on the strange biped, they needed to do their best to understand him…
… and when their food supplies ran out, they would be really, really dependent on him. And that subject needed to be brought up sooner rather than later.
“Cherry?” she asked, calling the mission commander’s attention from her bowl of cereal (Health Nut brand Frosted Mini-Haybales, with a single sad cherry lingering on top, being saved for last). “I think we need a crew meeting. Now, please.”
Cherry sighed, jamming her muzzle into her bowl and gulping down the remaining cereal, cherry and all. “Fine,” she said. “Everypony, huddle up by the bunks.”
Spitfire had already been next to Starlight, enjoying her usual power breakfast (scrambled eggs and alfalfa-seed muesli) as she watched over her patient. Fireball, who had been dithering between adding one of his limited supply of sapphires to his otherwise mostly ordinary pony-style breakfast and warning the alien away from his tiny hoard, left his breakfast on a worktable and walked over. Dragonfly, who had been watching Mahrq dividing up his own breakfast and putting a bit of it in the dome’s refrigerator, wandered over to them last, completing the group.
The alien noticed the gathering and reached for a whiteboard and marker. Starlight held up a hoof and shook her head, and Mahrq shrugged and returned his attention to breakfast. That was another mystery Starlight wanted to explore: why did the alien have such similar body language to the rest of them? Nopony really needed Dragonfly’s buzzed hints to know how he was feeling about something, and simple signals like yes and no and stop and don’t were perfectly clear between them.
“Okay, everypony,” Cherry Berry said, “Starlight has something she wants to talk with us about.”
“Er, yes,” Starlight said, bringing her attention back to the most urgent matter. “You did say the food stores on the ship were in good shape, right?”
“So far as I could tell, yeah,” Cherry Berry nodded. “The crash didn’t break anything there that I could find.”
“Right. So, follow me on this. We had lunch and dinner and then breakfast before the incident,” Starlight said. “And then dinner last night and breakfast this morning came from our supplies, and lunch again. So we’ve used up two days of rations for three ponies and a dragon, right?”
“I see where you’re going with this,” Cherry Berry said. “I’ve been worried about it too. Amicitas launched with thirty days’ rations for seven crew pre-packed, according to standard procedure.”
“Yeah, I nearly learned how important that was the hard way,” Fireball interrupted.
“Ahem.” Cherry shot the young dragon a look before continuing, “We replaced one set of thirty days with dragon-specific rations, but that still leaves us a pretty good surplus, right?”
Starlight shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. Look at the situation. We can’t talk to Cape Friendship or Horseton Space Center. We don’t really know where we are, and we couldn’t tell them if we did. That means…” She paused, suddenly realizing that saying help may never come was about the least helpful possible thing she could say. She edited it to, “We could be waiting for a really long time for rescue. At least as long as it takes to build a rescue ship.”
Cherry Berry nodded slowly. In addition to her astromare duties, she’d spent a lot of time overseeing rocket construction. “Okay. So we have to ration our food, is what you’re saying?”
“That’s not a problem for me,” Dragonfly said. “If you can spare me a couple heartfelt hugs a day, I’ll be fine on a bit of water.”
“Grrrr,” Fireball rumbled. “But it’s a big problem for the rest of us. I need at least a little gem content every day to stay healthy, and I can’t eat raw hay like you ponies can. So some of your food packs are useless to me, and all of my food packs are useless to you.”
“So you need more rocks,” Dragonfly hissed. “Go outside, there’s plenty of rocks.”
“Yeah, I could eat those.” Fireball’s voice rose, causing Mahrq to look up from his breakfast again. “And you ponies could eat fresh roadapples, too. How healthy would that be?”
“Eyuck,” Spitfire said, making a face. “I know what you mean, I read up on dragon first aid and all, but did you have to say that while I’m still eating?”
Fireball slumped, sighed, and muttered a not terribly sincere, “Sorry.” After a moment he added, “But you get my point. Dragons need gems. No substitutes.”
“How many sapphires do you have?” Starlight asked.
“Thirteen. I could eat all that for a single meal and still have room, but I need to space them out for when my food packs run out.” The dragon slumped a bit more, which looked all the more dramatic given his slender build, and added, “If I can stop myself from eating ‘em, that is.”
“Is that why you ate the alien food packs whole like that?” Starlight asked.
“Nah. The wrappers actually give me indigestion. I just wanted to freak out Monkeyboy over there.”
“So, not a substitute?”
“Not even close.”
“Right. That means Fireball begins to suffer malnutrition in about a moon unless we ration. Sooner if we depend too heavily on Mahrq’s food. As for the rest of us,” she added, “we began with what amounts to sixty days of full meals for the three of us, designed for full active days, as if we were spacewalking or re-entering every day, right?”
“That’s right,” Spitfire nodded, having crammed hard to learn the ins and outs of pony, changeling and dragon nutrition for the mission.
“We can cut that by a third- or a quarter at least- and if we restrict our physical activity, we should be fine,” Starlight said. “That would buy us fourteen or fifteen more days. But after that,” she sighed, “we’ll be totally dependent on our host. And I get the feeling he can’t afford to be so generous with us as he’s been these last three days.”
The others nodded. That first night, when the six of them had been drawing pictures to communicate, the alien had made it clear he’d originally arrived with five others of his species; that the storm had forced them all to leave; and that he’d been injured, lost, and left behind. He was now marooned and awaiting rescue. That was why the shipwrecked pony crew got bunks to sleep on, and why the alien had so much more food than he could eat at once… and it was also why he needed every bit of that food.
“I don’t see the problem,” Spitfire said. “Look, that thing he spends half his time typing on-“
“I think it’s a computer,” Dragonfly interrupted. “It kind of looks like my video games back home.”
“It might be,” Spitfire admitted, “or it might be two-way television, or something else, but whatever it is it’s way ahead of anything we can make back home. And the lights?” She pointed at the overhead canvas and network of plastic poles, all brilliantly lit by strings of tiny bulbs. “It even feels like sunlight! We can’t do that back home without magic! His people are obviously way ahead of us. Why don’t we just hitch a ride with him when he leaves? Just get on with it and ask him to take us with? Wherever he comes from, it can’t be more hostile than out there!” She pointed a hoof vaguely outwards.
“Spitfire, how long would it have taken us to make a round trip from Equus to Bucephalous without the Sparkle Drive?” Starlight asked. “Twilight and Dr. von Brawn told us this in training, you should know.”
“Best alignment of the planets? Six months round trip if we only do a fly-by,” Spitfire rattled off from memory. “Longer if we orbit. So? More advanced aliens!”
“We can’t assume that,” Starlight said. With a grunt of effort she wrapped Spitfire’s plastic spoon in her magic and lifted it up, setting it down again a few seconds later. “The ambient magic in this room, right now, is just enough for me to do that without tapping my reserves,” she said. “Between that and what Dragonfly reported, I’m thinking that this world- possibly this universe- doesn’t have a universal magic field. All it has is whatever magic energy is given off by life itself. And that isn’t enough to run the Sparkle Drive on, or anything like it. Which means rescue is at least months away.”
“Our suit systems work just fine,” Spitfire insisted.
“Those systems,” Dragonfly put in, “are specifically designed to run from a pony’s own magic field. They even work for changelings, and we leak very little magic, believe me. It doesn’t take much power at all to do that.”
“And I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Starlight said, “but your suits have been dipping into the EVA thruster batteries all the time we’ve been here. Our magic fields are weaker, too. They’re not strong enough even to run the suit systems alone.
“Back home we could stay in the suits for days, with air and water from the ground and everything else regenerating itself. Here? I recommend limiting EVAs to eight hours maximum. After that navigation and comms are dead until you recharge. And don't even think of using the thrusters.”
Fireball shrugged. “And where are we going to go?” he asked. “Walking for my health here doesn’t really appeal to me.”
“My point is this,” Starlight said. “We need to think long-term. All we have or ever will have is our ship, Mahrq’s base here and the junk the storm left behind, and whatever we can scavenge from this frozen Tartarus of a world. And we need to make it all stretch as long as possible, and use as little as possible as we can.”
“At least we’ll have plenty of air and water,” Cherry Berry said, “so long as our suit life support works.”
“And above all else,” Starlight continued, “we need to learn to communicate with our host. I have an idea for that,” she added, looking at Spitfire, “but it might mean another couple days of bed rest.” She turned her gaze to Cherry and added, “The next time somepony goes to the ship, we need to bring back one of the batteries. It should recharge here with all of us together, and we might need-“
Mahrq had disposed of his meal pack, and he was pulling one of the space suits from the recharging rack.
“Where’s he going?” Dragonfly asked. “He feels a bit worried and depressed.”
“I’ll ask,” Starlight said, pushing the lap-tray she had been using aside and dropping off her bunk onto all fours. “Spitfire, be ready to catch me.”
“What are you doing?” Spitfire asked in a tone that added, whatever it is, you shouldn’t.
“An adaptation of Bit Lead’s Universal Decryptor,” Starlight said, walking over to the alien. “The spell gives you the meaning of a coded message even if you haven’t got the code. I just have to broaden the parameters and make it two way. I just hope it works.”
“You’ll wind up back in that bunk,” Spitfire warned.
Starlight Glimmer ignored her. The whiteboard Mahrq had picked up earlier was still on a nearby worktable, as was the marker. Taking a deep breath, she ignited her magic, picked up the marker, and levitated it over to where Mahrq was slipping into his spacesuit, tapping him on the shoulder with it.
The alien flinched, looked behind him. His eyes widened as he saw the perfectly ordinary marker surrounded in a turquoise glow, as it floated back to where Starlight Glimmer stood and dropped back onto the worktable. Leaving his helmet behind and his suit only half-secured, he walked over to where she stood, sweating slightly and taking deep breaths.
She obviously had his full and undivided attention. She still didn’t understand his language, but she was pretty sure the first word out of his mouth was some form of How.
Okay, Starlight Glimmer. You’re the most powerful unicorn in Equestria. Deepest magical reserves known since Starswirl’s prime. You’re able to go horn to horn against an alicorn princess and win. You can do this.
I can do this.
I hope I hope I hope.
Her horn lit up again, this time a lot brighter, and the field enveloped both Starlight and the alien. The drain was intense from the start, and Starlight’s knees wobbled. Have to make this quick. “Can you understand me?” she asked. “Keep it simple- I can’t do this for long.”
The alien gabbled something, and overlaid on top of the nonsense Starlight heard the words, “How doing this you?”
Success! The spell would need refining, but success! “No time to explain,” she said. “Where are you going?”
More gabble. “Out the side. Stupid is you.”
Look who’s talking! No, that’s unfair, the answer was obvious. “Why?”
Gabble, gabble. “Looking for orbit plate. Radio breaking. Fix without cannot it.”
She was coming close to the end of her reserves. She had to cut off the spell or pass out. “Draw it, we’ll help,” she gasped, and then killed the spell, falling to her knees.
In an instant Spitfire was beside her, having leaped across the room. Yay, low gravity, Starlight thought idly as the Wonderbolt picked her up on her back and carried her back to the bunk.
Mahrq moved to follow, then stopped, picked up the whiteboard and marker again, and drew something quick and rough. He turned the whiteboard to show them.
Cherry recognized it first. “That’s a tracking dish,” she said.
“Parabolic radio antenna,” Dragonfly corrected, “but yeah.”
“He said his radio was broken,” Starlight said, still a bit shaky. “Spitfire, I’m fine. I didn’t trigger a magic exhaustion relapse.” But it had been a close thing. She had to find some way to reduce the power consumption of that spell. So much tweaking…
“You mean he’s not talking with his people?” Spitfire asked.
Starlight Glimmer sighed and allowed Spitfire to put her back in the bunk. It was easier than fighting it. “To be honest,” she said, “I don’t think his people even know he’s still here.”
HERMES – MISSION DAY 133
“Okay, everyone stand by,” Lewis said. “Martinez, once we lock cameras on the Hab, engage the roll program.”
“Roger,” Martinez said.
“Johannsen, Vogel, you have the cameras. Vogel, we want a survey of the site. Johannsen, focus on the Hab with the video camera. We want to know if there’s anything moving down there. It’s a long shot, but if the aliens are using the hab for shelter, it’s our best shot at getting pictures of them.”
“Ja, commander,” Vogel replied. Johannsen nodded.
Dr. Chris Beck, who had no role in what was about to happen, floated by the bridge doors with one hand on the railing and watched. For the first time in days, Ares III was a tightly functioning team again. Lewis had pulled completely out of her fugue, kicking ass and taking names, and everyone else’s morale had risen along with hers. And all it had taken was the possibility of live aliens on the surface.
Well… that, and the other possibility, but Martinez had warned Beck, and Beck had warned Vogel and Johannsen, not to bring it up around Lewis. That other possibility was now the eight hundred pound gorilla, or rather the one hundred seventy pound botanist, not on the bridge.
After yesterday’s brief glimpse of the rover approaching the alien crash site, Lewis had put together a plan and gained NASA’s approval. Hermes would be put into a slow forward tumble in its orbit, carefully calibrated to keep the cameras pointed at the landing site as long as possible. Today in particular Hermes’ sky-skimming orbit passed almost perfectly over the Hab, making it a better choice for focus than the alien ship, as eager as NASA was to get more images of the latter location.
“Video camera lock,” Johannsen reported. “Recording.”
“Stills camera lock,” Vogel reported. “Receiving data.” He looked at the pictures as they came in, just as Johannsen’s eyes were locked on the rapidly magnifying image on her own terminal.
“Pitch program engaged,” Martinez said from his station, as Hermes echoed with the soft thumps of attitude jets firing across the immense vessel. “Executed nominally. No corrections required.”
“Getting clear pictures of the antenna farm,” Vogel reported. “Is very scattered debris, rocks and sand. Total destruction.”
“Focused on the hab,” Johannsen said. “Rover 2 is parked by the recharging port near Airlock One. Rover 1 is still partially covered in sand.”
“MAV landing stage is intact,” Vogel reported. “MDV is missing- no. MDV moved laterally some two hundred meters. Obvious hull damage.”
“Two minutes to closest approach,” Martinez reported.
Beck couldn’t help smiling. This was almost how it had been before Sol 6. This was how a crew ought to function- especially a crew eight months from home.
“Movement!”
All heads turned to Johannsen, though Vogel’s turned right back to his own terminal as Johannsen continued, “Movement at Airlock One- somebody’s coming out!”
“Refocusing on Airlock One,” Vogel reported.
“One… two… three suits,” Johannsen reported. “One orange, two white. Two of them look… really odd…”
“One minute to closest approach,” Martinez said.
“The orange suit and one of the white suits seem long,” Vogel said, looking at the first pictures of the airlock. “Perhaps extra large backpacks? Very hard to see from above.”
“Fourth suit!” Johannsen said, followed by a gasp. “White and red! It’s one of ours!”
“On my screen,” Lewis ordered. Beck, uninvited, guided himself to the commander’s station so he could look over her shoulder. There, on the screen, a tiny dot reached even tinier arms towards the airlock controls, obviously keying the doors shut again.
“Mein Gott,” whispered Vogel.
“I knew it!!” Martinez cheered triumphantly.
“Mark,” Johannsen murmured.
Beck was right next to the commander, and thus he was the only one who heard her moan, “Oh God, I left him behind.”
“Minds on task, people,” he said, startling Lewis. “There’s a lot of pencil-pushers back on Earth who are going to want to see all of this.”
But it was too late. The mood was broken, and Beck could sense they were back to being five people instead of one team.
And for all he wanted to celebrate- hey, that was his best friend back from the dead!- he couldn’t help worrying about the others.
Especially Commander Lewis.
The dramatic irony is so thick right now.
Still at the top of the feature box at 01:07-Z 4/1/2017
Oh, the joys of interspecies communications. That was confusing (as it should be, most likely) and funny at the same time.
Can't wait to see Mark's next log. I'm guessing at least ten percent profanity and dumbfounded keyboard mashing.
As for the Equestrians, at least now they grasp some of the enormity of the task and timeframe before them. Enjoy where you are right now, everyone, because this going to get extremely unfun before it gets any better. Especially for Fireball.
8649600 Which is part of why I'm skipping that entry. The other part is, it would be almost entirely duplicate info either of the pony scene in this chapter or Mark's log in the next chapter.
Sorry, but sacrifices must be made so that I can manage a chapter a day.
Not that I'm not enjoying this at least half as much as CSP, but why are you doing this to yourself and setting arbitrary time goals? Doing that burned me out so hard I'm only just getting back into writing now!
8649657 Partly to prove to myself it's possible; partly to jumpstart my creativity; and mostly to get Patreon revenues up, and maybe Ko-Fi if I get off my butt and make the account, because the last four months of 2017 kicked me HARD and have left me in serious financial straits.
This is me hustling to get any extra cash I can think of.
Don't worry about missing a day or three! Would rather have you take your time and write a quality story than having you push yourself to meet a daily deadline. We'll still like you if we have to wait! :)
Fairly sure that Starlight's supposed to be replying here.
My cheeks hurt from smiling to much from reading this, I need more!
8649677 Yep. Thanks.
I wonder just how large that com dish is, given the double glazing on the house behind me, with the right air pressure weather, focuses the early morning sunlight over certain ranges of days right accross the thermal curtains hanging in the kitchen window, leading to overheating odurs and very obvious bleaching of the dye. As in, just how far down is the water ice layer, and how much can they boil out to make extra room, if possible. Or at least with thinking of things, thats a tiny possibiilty. More minerals etc. Trying to solar furnace sapphires means you need clay layers to extract the aluminium hydroxide. Which Curiosity rolled over?
Nice trick using the whole ship as an accuratly stable tracking base, instead of trying to do it by hand reliably, or try and rough up a powered rocking frame.
Still, a couple things Id like to see analyzed. Instead of a complex mirror with its 3D support, try a Fresnel lens, given its half empty space equiv, but you can take parts of it and as long as they are stressed tight and arranged corectly, you can place pieces together to get area coverage or even cut out your own, which has been done for in roof planar fresnel satelite dish recievers for fixed targeting. The other is the planar array of lots of small rectifiers that is summed together to extract the signal, but because they are rectifiers, the noise is a power source. The optical photon rectifier diode demonstrated in the lab would be best as it would lead to massive advances in solar power especially for space flight.
But, they have to work with what they have. Anyone have a measurement of how bright that 3 watt laser pointer would look like from the orbiting craft to the ground? would someone be able to even see the thing?
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Great story, glad to have stumbled across this. Hope to read more soon.
That cannot be a pleasant revelation for the crew. It's one thing to think he's dead, and then find out, months later, that they left him behind. It's another thing to see that he's alive, and know they have no choice but to leave him anyway. Ouch.
I like that magic isn't the sole solution for the language barrier. It's a useful stop-gap, but it has crippling limitations unless they can solve their magic shortage. Pantomime and Pictionary are still going to be their go-to options for the immediate future.
On the subject of magic, though, the min-maxer in me has a few questions.
1) Is the whole dragonfire-messaging a Spike-only thing, or does Fireball have that ability? If he does, are there limitations?
2) Is the ability to use love to power magic restricted to Chrysalis, or is it universal to Changelings? If Dragonfly can do it, does that actually help them?
It's kind of strange thinking that we just read something that hadn't even been written two days ago; the productivity and turnaround speed you're showing here is astounding.
You mentioned that Hermes would be leaving orbit sooner or later, will the POVs continue to show the Hermes crew interactions? Have to say I'm enjoying the surface-based bits a lot more than those bits.
Hopefully that alfalfa provides a good charge of magic.
Also it is nice to know magic is confirmed as being possible in this universe.
Spike eats pony food without problems. He likes hay extra crispy. Gems are probably used to reinforce dragon tough hide and help replenish magic reserves. The dragon should remain quite healhy with only pony food. If he doesn't get injured he will not need gems. Under the skin he is flash and blood. Pony food will be ok. He should eat those gems only when they are realy needed.
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Well he may not know that. And/or being dragon, although that'd be stupid in this scenario.
Overall, keep at it. This is good stuff right here.
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From what I recall of the series, while Spike can eat pony food just fine, he also does require a steady intake of gems.
I am pretty sure I recall seeing him not only seemingly snacking on them but also serving as his primary meal, though, so some variance is in play somewhere.
Anyway, my point is that dragons do seem to have to consume some quantity of gemfood. As weight and such would still be an issue though, adapting stores on their ships to minimize weight while keeping the dragon healthy would definitely be a thing, so while he should have a comfortable pile that he could indeed scarf in a single sitting, they're also sufficient to last him a decent stretch when interspersed with more conventional foodstuffs.
8650068 (1) It was tried on the way down. The letter came back. (2) You almost answer your own question. Changeling magic is fueled at least partly by love, which means when a changeling uses magic they're burning food. Dragonfly is taking great care not to use any magic at all if she can help it. She's the only one who's truly been through hard times, and she went into her survival mode almost immediately.
8650153 Watney and the crew of the Amicitas will get almost all the purely character-driven moments in this story. Hermes and NASA will only come in as plot requires, and if their scenes don't advance the plot in some fashion, they don't happen. So you're not going to get a whole chapter of five mopey astronauts halfway home to Earth or anything like that, no. What you will get? Wait and see.
8650419 Spike likes cooked hay fries, not raw dried grass. And the nutrition it provides him is questionable (after all, how healthy are French fries if you're not starving). Fireball will need gems in the same way Watney will need the vitamin supplements; they provide vital nutrients pony food / plain potatoes don't provide. For that reason his food packs include little garnishments of gem shards and the like that would be hazardous for any pony to eat who didn't grow up on a rock farm.
8650428 Because not Earth, and because in the show the name of the world Equestria is in is never given.
You realise you're writing more each day than I do in a month, right?
Loving this. The realistic limitations of magic/food/love, the way they're coming to the same conclusions from different viewpoints despite limited communication, etc.
Now this is fun. I'm loving the alternating perspectives.
Next time, on The Maretian...
As NASA deals with the stunning revelation of alien life forms and the revival of Mark Watney from the grave, and as the Ares crew struggles to find its center, the marooned astronauts embark on the first joint endeavor between Man and Other. Their mission: to find a radar dish that was lost in the recent Martian sandstorm...
That poor changeling tries way too hard
My thoughts exactly. Most gems are just quartz anyway. Or, heck, diamonds are just carbon
Well, they kind of have to be; they don't have magic
Haaahaha, a reverse "we'll magic our way out of it" joke
Those Sufficiently Advanced Technology jokes will never get old
(Though personally I prefer Florence Ambrose's remark on Clarke's Third Law: Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it.)
Clever! And extremely dangerous to cast, in these circumstances
Ah, four exchanged sentences and his style is already rubbing off on her
Well, to be completely fair, their escape equipment was threatening to break. If she'd delayed longer to find him they'd simply all be stranded there.
-"No shit."
-"What? 'Absence of excrement'? This makes no sense!"
Remarks and corrections:
> alfalfa-seed museli
muesli
Years later and this still leaves me butthurt in an extream way. Season one we establish that Twilights special talent is magic. We see her lift an Ursa Minor and preform like three other spells at the same time to prove this point. We even get to see her go full archon mode on us and cast a bunch of insane spells as a child, on ACCIDENT. Then she accends to an alicorn, presumably getting ANOTHER power buff.
Then this punk comes in and fights her to a standstill.
Wat.
Why are you messing with your own cannon Hasbro? Is Sparkle’s butt tattoo and new godhood pointless, or what?
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I've got a headcannon about that, and it kind of makes sense.
Twilight's special talent is magic, yes and she studied in one of the best (if not THE best) school for unicorns in Equestria, and has a level of comprehension about magic more or less comparable to modern day mathemathicians about math. That means a lot, like a very big lot. After years of study, and with Celestia's guideance, she was able to create new magic. That is a very big deal. Just for that, she is part of the magic history. Like Einstein in our world, but This Einstein also gets the power to fly, teleport and shoot lazers. And is one of the most politicaly influential people of the whole world. So that is a pretty damn high power level, right? No. She is talented with magic, of course, but her main source of power resides on the understanding of magic. That's why she can teleport in the first place, and use her magic in ways most unicorns never even dream of. The incident when she was young was a one-time power surge, more tied to her future than to herself as she alone. The Ursa minor can be explainde pretty easily. If you think about it, all what she did was levitate things around (of course, they were some big things). Levitation is something any unicorn is capable of, and well, she IS powerful, but the following exhaustion is something we had never seen before. There, she used most of her magical resources. But after turning into an alicorn she has to be more powerful, right? Well, not necesarily. after all, alicorns are a conjunction between pegasi, unicorn and earth pony, so she could have new powers, the most obvious being flying, (here I enter another headcannon, regarding earth pony magic, and how it works. Anyway, that's not important, because this power is either dormant or unexistent). However, her unicorn magic doesn't get an obvious buff.
So that's Twilight. Pretty though, right? Let's talk about this mare from nowhere, Starlight.
Starlight's special talent is also magic. That gets settled pretty fast with her first appereance, with the not-actually-magic-staff. And she has also studied and practiced magic. A lot. She may not understand it as well as Twilight, but she gets the most important part. In contrast to the lazer shooting Einstein, imagine her like a skilled engenieer (also lazer-shooting). She knows about math and physics, of course, but she won't discover anyting new. But, she has an advantage over Twilight. And that is practicality. Starlight may not be able to invent new spells, but she is capable of doing some powerful magic thingies. Even without knowing the potential power of the cutie marks and their link to the ponies, she was able to loosening and limiting that link, if not breaking it. Just an adjustment, maybe a clever use of a somewhat common spell.
This leads us to the final encounter. You have to understand the setting and enviroment here, because time travel has its importance. Starlight has casted this spell, and she is taken back in time. Some seconds, or even minutes or hours later, Twilight arrives. Starlight sends Twilight back to the future. Then, Twilight has the scroll, and with some help from the Tree of Harmony she gets back. Starlight also experiments this shift, and again, she arrives first, and then Twilight. This setting is literally an exhaustion machine to Twilight, as she goes back and foward in time, going through hard moments, both emotional and physical. Starlight, however, just gets some minutes or hours earlier from her relative time. She knows where and when will Twilight appear, and she can freely rest and prepare between that time.
So here you have, Starlight and Twilight are both inmensely powerful, even if their strong point comes from different angles. Twilight is probably more powerful, but not overwhelmely so. Starlight got to set the place and conditions, wich give her a very big advantage, enough to gain her the victory.
Sorry for the wall of text, have a
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Starlight spent all of Season 5 stalking Twilight; you can see this in background cameos of various episodes. She's a planner; we see this in her founding and running a town based on the very Un-Equestrian idea of no cutie marks. As such, it's safe to assume she multi-tasked during that time so as to prepare for the confrontation. She studied, specifically, to fight Twilight. Remember that during her initial defeat at Our town she tried blasting them all with a spell she had 'studied for years' (I don't recall the exact line but she whined about Twi being able to shield it). So she clearly put time into overcoming that.
By contrast... Twi isn't a warrior mage; she spent that same time being a scholar and friendship problem solver. Warrior Princess and Princess of Friendship are, obviously, two very different titles. She can fight, has fought (especially Tirek but that was a special circumstance), but she's not Goku or something; it's never going to be her go to. Even so, did Starlight win? She's fair in thinking so, since she didn't really lose via magical combat. But she didn't succeed in putting Twilight down, either. The two were stalemated long enough for Twi to convince her, through logic and friendship (her go to's rather than combat), to give up.
Starlight's obviously very powerful, and she'll push boundaries in ways Twilight isn't willing to. Enough so to go hoof to hoof in single combat since she's far more willing to cause injury than her opponent. Does that make her 'more powerful' or just differently focused? Eh, your call.
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I like a lot of your explanation, though it's not quite the way I'd put it, but this quote is understating what we saw. Moving wind is more than just levitation, particularly doing it in such a way as to play a lullaby through cattails. She can't just pick up wind the way she would a normal object; there's more going on there. She also milked cows without looking at them, all at once, too quickly to be possible and getting way more milk from even a full barn that size (say 10 cows in there tops, less than a gallon per day is normal, this was one milking, and she got WAY more than 10 gallons). So... time dilation magic? Some sort of mass increasing spell cast on the milk? And then she put that milk into a water tower which she'd torn apart to re-purpose as a giant bottle. Water towers aren't exactly frail structures. Comparing all that to just levitation is comparing space flight to paper airplanes. And then her 'exhaustion' lasted a few breaths and she's back to acting normal... and putting mustaches on ponies and Spike again. All in all, a very impressive display which solves the conflict of a rampaging monster without any violence. ...Unless you count the possible harassment of several sapient cows.
To the author... I apologize for having this briefly downvoted via misclick; it has since been corrected (my phone lags sometimes so where I touch isn't where the screen is... I blame Sprint). No need to apologize for Mark's character, he was never exactly the diplomatic type. Really enjoying this so far and I was a bit worried at the synopsis about balance in the crossover. If the Equestrians were just an added burden (what with no magic) this would have been unreadable for me. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case, though it's unfortunate that they apparently caused his stranding and injury. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.
That is worrying, how are they going to substitute gems?
My favorite!
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And yet, after nearly 100 sols, this issue has yet to be brought up again; granted, they could (probably) make a new thruster battery from the cave, but so far, nobody has had their suit stop working due to their EVA battery being exhausted and the suit rendered unable to operate due to their weakened magical fields.
And yes, I know they probably could easily recharge their suits on their ship, but as far as I'm aware, they're keeping their suits in the Hab when not in use, and I can guarantee that ESA and NASA have different charging docks.
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not neccesary. The batteries recharge on their own, especially in close proximity to life (like when the suits are worn/in the hub)
They limited the use to 8 hours/day with at least 16 hours to recharge.
Oh my God it's Jason Borne
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A Martian day is not 24 hours dude
well, so much for magic solving all their problems...at least it helped a little with one problem.
Well, at least it didn't come through as a worse insult.
Ja!! mehr Deutsch für mich !! Ich liebe, wer auch immer dieses Buch geschrieben hat !!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
gute verdammte Arbeit. Du hast ihn auf dem Mars liegen lassen und jetzt fühlst du dich schuldig.
Looking back, is it possible for them to detach the thruster packs (not the thruster batteries, but the thruster itself) from their EVA suits, and integrate them somehow into the Ares IV MAV, to operate in tandem with the magic engines on liftoff?
Five small suit thrusters might seem negligible, but if they can help make takeoff even a little bit easier, it would seem like the smart thing to do. Especially since they can't use the thrusters for their intended purpose anyway without quickly draining their EVA suit's batteries.
(I know you used some specific terms for thrust vs. weight, but I honestly can't remember them)
Removing the EVA's thrusters might also have the side benefit of extending the battery life for the other pony systems of air, water, and comms, allowing for longer EVAs at a time.
8963362 Leaving aside a lot of other problems, they already have six intact ship maneuvering thruster blocks from Amicitas. They don't need to give up powered EVA capacity in space for that.
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Yeah, but it's only 40 minutes longer.
Earth will party hard over alien contact. I have no clue how this story will continue or end
Awesome
I had to search up roadapples on Wiktionary, it means fecal matter on the side of the road. Yuck!
Funny... I can see Humans growing respectfull helping aliens come to earth, but if the just land here i think our Gavorments don't be rational and calm about it.
Text to speech allow me to enjoy this story +10 times and i can say, it's like a super Mario game soundtrack. It never gets old ♡
Apperently some people don't like if other people love re-reading storys and showing appreciation
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I always figured it was because Twilight wasn't trying to kill starlight. Also Twilight likely doesn't know many combat spells, considering she's an academic. If she really wanted to just kill starlight outright she probably would have won that dual.