FTL: Harmony Edition IC

Degree smirks, and with a huff, the fire is snuffed out in a shower of bright sparks. "See? Wasn't that hard, now was it?"

Copperette
The alarm comes out easily, and the engine/workshop room becomes considerably more quiet. Sweetie Bot blinks with inquisitive eyes, "Question: That was a fire alarm. Why is the fire alarm active?"

Belgond
Belgond rushes into the living quarters just in time to see the purple firestorm die down and the two fighters make peace with each other.

Seva
Seva eats shit as they trip over their own legs, knocking the nano-machines out of alignment temporarily, essentially crippling Seva until they are able to realign each structure - which is considerably more time consuming than simply transforming. It'll take a good couple of hours to fully realign themselves. While on the floor. One of the children start giggling at the sight of Seva sprawled clumsily across the floor.

Degree Borealis
The pair hear a sudden storm of hoof stomps as the children watching on the sidelines suddenly swarm forward, practically tackling the both of them and bombarding them with questions and exclamations of excitement. "Where'd you learn to breathe purple fire""What do you call that cannon thing on your arm""Your suit is so badass!""Are you a robot?""That's so awesome!""Where did you learn to fight?""You're so cool!""Will you be my mommy?"(Degree promptly covered that one with another kid)

"I assume there's a fire," Copperette said nonchalantly, tossing the broken alarm into the corner. "I'm sure someone is taking care of it." And with that, she turned her attention to her disk again.

She focused her magic, and practically poured it into the silver runes. Marelowe's Gravity Anchor had three key components - the Object (her disk) the Reference (The spaceship, in this case) and the Position, which she set to a spot about a foot off the floor. The disk began to wobble. And then it began to rise, stopping at just the right spot.

Copperette watched approvingly. Ordinarily, that would be that and she would walk away. But if it worked like she thought...

She released it from her focus, and it fell with a clatter. She refocused, and once again it lifted into the air. She moved it back and forth, up and down. She stood on it, and then jumped on it. It only moved when and where she wanted it to.

"Let's go show Belgond," she said with a grin, jumping off and letting it trail behind her...

Enchanting:

As much as he hated to admit it, Belgond didn't know the layout of the ship just yet; Learning all the passages, shortcuts and the little sections of the ship that were either hidden or lost would take him time. While he might not have known of any shortcuts that he could take advantage of, what he could do in the absence of knowing the fastest path was run really fast along the path that he knew existed. It took him a bit less then a minute to cover the ship from one end to the other, bursting through the door of the living room just in time to see the black dragon (Degree if he recalled correctly) do something that snuffed out the flames that were coming off of the Minotaur that had been planning on setting up a ship militia of some kind (He wasn't sure if the Minotaur had ever introduced himself).

Taking a moment to look around in order to see if he could spot the cause of the fire and examine the extent of the damage, Belgond was about to ask what had happened when the swarm of children that were bombarding the pair with questions, the one standing out however being 'Where'd you learn to breathe purple fire?' That right there was a pretty good indicator about what had set off the fire alarm.

A low growl left Belgond's throat as he started to walk towards the idiots that had been fighting on his ship and scared the absolute hell out of him with that fire alarm. Taking a moment to remove the red cloak from around his shoulders, Belgond cast it aside as his gaze narrowed on the dragon; Source of fire first, the bull would get his for encouraging the lizard soon enough.

Engaging the sound suppressors on his hooves and making sure that he had enough of a running head start, Belgond darted forwards and built up speed for a gallop on hooves that were making much, much less noise then they should have been; Hopefully the children would aid making his approach a hidden one. Before he plowed right into the crowd of children, the cyborg zebra would kick off the floor and attempt to spin through the air enough in order to shift his body so that his hind legs would make contact with the dragon's head first, the tazers on the end of both hooves engaging to give the flying buck just that little bit more stopping power to it...

Dice Rolls:

Talents:

Degree, sensing something off with the situation, instinctually looks up in time to see the cybernetic zebra rushing him with electrified hooves. With enough time to react, Degree's predatory brain takes over. Degree flaps his wings and shoots forwards, the fire within flaring up again, surrounding his form in roaring flame as he snaps his fist up to meet Belgond's kick mid-way, trying to stop the attack before it reaches the crowd and, if possible, make the zebra regret attacking him. With lots of pain. In his mind's eye, he has the maneuver planned out - strike the midriff, flip around, and clock him round the jaw. Maybe a suplex into the floor if he had the chance.

Rolls:

Degree Borealis Belgond
With enough time to react, Degree snaps his wings out and manages to shoot forward to meet Belgond's assault before it fully takes form, fire streaming from his body in a manner like jet propulsion, rocketing him into the cybernetic zebra. Flame gathers around his balled up fist, and with his free hand, Degree deftly changes the trajectory of Belgond's leap, and with a flame-jet powered upper cut, clocks the zebra in the jaw. Dragon scale meets metal, and though Degree feels a sharp pain run up his arm, Belgond's assault is completely halted as he is sent flying backwards from the force of the punch. Degree lands clumsily, his body still recovering from his fight with Borealis, and as he touches the ground his legs give out and he falls to his knees. That's still somewhat better than Belgond, who hits the floor with a clang and skids a few feet before stopping. By the time both individuals are able to recover, Copperette, followed shortly by Golden Gears, have entered the living quarters. Golden immediately rushes towards Belgond, grabbing the zebra with her artificial limbs, and looking him over carefully."Oh Princess above- Belgond, are you alright?"
She glances at the smoking claw mark on Belgond's jaw, the blackening on the ground, and Degree, still steaming slightly, and scowls. Looking at Borealis, who despite sporting several scorch marks of his own, is apparently the only person not super shady or slightly out of it at the moment, she asks, "What. Happened. Here?"

Copperette
With her invention and Sweetie Bot in tow, Copperette throws the doors of the living quarters open just in time to see Belgond crash into the floor and Degree land unwieldily, staggering slightly. "...Copperette, I don't think this a good time..." Sweetie Bot says uncertainly. However, her concerns are overwhelmed by Golden Gears rushing past her to get into the room.

"Ya know..." Copperette said quietly, looking at the scene before her - Belgond pinned beneath Degree, Borealis talking to a very angry Golden Gears, foals everywhere. "I'm thinkin' you're right. Let's go find Seva instead," she suggested, slowly turning and leaving.

"... Say. Tell me a bit more about ACHEs, on the way," she asked, trying to ignore the events they had just left.

"Degree and I had a... friendly, sparring match." Borealis says, gesturing at his wounds he sustained nonchalantly. "The ship overreacted, and the tech-priest did as well. Technically, he's the aggressor since he jumped Degree. I guess even with his cybernetics Degree's just a little too paranoid for Belgond to catch unawares, huh?" He tries to joke, but awkwardly falls silent after a moment's pause. "Ahem. Yes, that's the gist of it.You can ask the kids if you want."

It seemed that perhaps not all of the ACHE's systems were ready for an emergency reactivation. There was alarm in the central processing core as Seva's primary runtimes tried to re-establish contact with lost sections of their body. There was worry – after all, if there was a fire, someone might be hurt. Someone might die if there wasn't someone on hand to treat wounds. Dr. Clean Cut could handle that maybe, but what if he was injured? What if the fire wasn't suppressed quickly?

As the estimate came back from the Inner and Engineer runtimes though, the ACHE came to the realization that such questions didn't matter. It would take at least a couple hours to completely realign and make sure all their components were back in place and functioning properly. If there was a life or death situation out there, they could not help it. All they could do was try to mend themselves and hope the others would be okay.

There was something. An emotion. What was this emotion? These clearly weren't Seva's own emotions, so what were they coming from? Were they perhaps picking up someone else's at that moment? Or maybe recalling a feeling from before? Perhaps this was what the doctors had felt before they died. It was an image that came to mind at least, with those emotions. Seva running away with the children, watching as Strongheart and Swabs dove from the building, only to be crushed anyway.

Helplessness. Uselessness. Hopelessness. Those were the emotions.

Those must have been terrible things for the ponies to feel. And as some of Seva's runtimes focused upon the emotions, others quickly reminded them that the processing resources were also needed for re-establishing and trouble-shooting connections with misaligned components. The thoughts upon the emotions remained, but more effort was put into the realignment effort.

After making sure that they at least could confirm that the power supply from the Pathos Reactor was functional, Seva made contact with their audio sensors, a way to perceive the outside world at least. As they re-established the connection, they listened, but were surprised to hear no alarm. Was the situation already contained? A horrible thought also occurred to them that maybe there was never an alarm to begin with. What if their stressed systems erroneously perceived an alarm? Then again, they also saw the notice about the location of the alarm, that seemed too specific to be created by their systems. Perhaps they could ask one of the crew members when they fully realigned their systems again.

Well... that hadn't gone as planned at all.

Belgond blinked a little as systems restarted and the pain started to subside. Who would have guessed that the drake would be that insanely paranoid and on point, even when surrounded by a swarm of children fighting for his attention?

The first thing that came to his attention through was Golden Gears. He didn't know when she arrived but already the situation was looking up.

Degree Borealis Belgond
Golden Gears gives a sigh of relief. "So there's no emergency? Oh, good." Then she registers the first part of his statement. "Wait - you two fought? Why?" She shakes her head. "You know what, I don't even care right now. Just... ugh. As long as no one got badly hurt..."

She looks over to Belgond, and shakes him gently. "Belgond... can you hear me? Are you okay?"

Copperette
"ACHEs. Sapient military-grade biomechanical organisms. Fact: ACHEs are composed of countless quasi-biological nanomachines and function both as a colony of organisms and as a singular organism. Because their base form being derived from changeling biology, they can shapeshift and form both biological and mechanical components. Speculation: Their flexible formation lets them mimic a biological brain to have true intelligence. They're like filly-bots but cooler." Sweetie Bot says, as the two retreat from the living quarters to the medbay. "Fact: ACHEs are designed as a counter to changelings but eventually gained independence in the Concord after discovering that they are self-aware."

Eventually they reach the medbay, and with a quick tap to the door controls the medbay doors open. Sweetie stops as her processors take in the situation. "Uhm... Speculation: Seva requires our assistance?"

Copperette absorbed the information with care. It explained quite a bit - particular the genderless bit, and the creepy holes and angles and such.

As they reached the medbay, Copperette tried hard not to giggle at the sight. Here was the intimidating, creepy ACHE, sprawled across the floor like a rag doll. She kept her composure, walking over slowly. "Are you okay, Seva? Do you need help?"

There was a sound of a door opening. A voice. A filly? It had a somewhat electronic quality to it though. And then Copperette? Seva heard two sets of hoofsteps though. The electronic voice -- perhaps another automaton on board? With Copperette's question, there was a jump in activity to try to reconnect Seva's vocal chords, much to the dismay of some of the runtimes.

"“Ah-ah. Ah. Aaaaah. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,”' Seva's voice droned. The voice was even odder than usual as the ACHE's dual vocal chords were not acting in tandem as they should, activating and deactivating as they struggled even to express a single nonsensical syllable.

While the connection effort had been fast, it clearly had bypassed some necessities of making sure it was done properly, which would take a while. What else could they do though? They needed to communicate somehow.

The direct connection port on the back of their neck maybe? Seva attempted to rededicate resources on the front, trying to make sure the connection was stable and could be accessed. The connection was flawed at the moment, maybe only enough to send simple textual inputs, but it was something. Reactivating the seal around the port, Seva managed to open it back up, though slowly. As the hexagonal piece of “skin” moved, exposing the port beneath, it eventually got stuck in place – some of the parts still not cooperating it seemed. Hopefully it was enough to a cable in though. Lights around the access port flashed on and off, trying to draw attention to the spot.

Forcing himself to sit up, Belgond allowed himself to offer Golden a small smile. "I'll be alright. Just got caught off guard is all. I'll be fine soon enough..." Hoping to at least somewhat reassure Golden that he was alright, Belgond then turned his attention to the pair that had started this whole mess in the first place. The glare he sent their way was more then enough to make it clear that he was not happy with either of them right now.

"You know both of you should have gone to the medbay as soon as you came aboard; I'll admit that it's a bit packed at the moment but I'm sure the doctors would give you priority due to the amount of brain damage that the both of you must have suffered during our recent escape from a war zone!" The scathing tone in his voice would hopefully cut through them like a red hot scalpel in order to drill home the point that what the two of them did was completely unacceptable.

Pointing towards the drake first, Belgond ranted "Are you really that stupid? Not only were you using military grade fire weapons in a spar against a living being but you did so on a spaceship; A confined space with a limited amount of oxygen that the life support can refresh for us at a given time that is very close to its limits. You set off just about every fire alarm that the ship has and I had to run here from the other side of the ship to investigate a serious problem that could endanger lives!" A part of Belgond wanted him to yell some more at the drake, maybe turn on the minotaur for a bit for encouraging his behavior... Instead he took a deep breath and let out a sigh to try and calm himself. "Just... please refine from using fire like that while your own the ship. Once your off of the ship feel free to settle whatever grudges you have in whatever manner you deem fit, I just humbly request that you keep the flame usage down while your on the ship. No one needs another false alarm like that right now. "

Copperette grew concerned as Seva moaned. "C'mon, Seva, I don't know what that means," she said, screwing up her courage to rub Seva's shoulder.

"...Hey... What's this flashy thing?" she asked, noticing the blinking light on Seva's neck. "I don't... Sweetie, go get Belgond and Golden Gears," she said urgently.

"Okay, first things first - I have been traveling in space for a long time, zebra, so don't think for a second that I don't know about ship safety. I know exactly how dangerous a wildfire can be on a ship." Degree straightens up (ignoring the stabbing pain in his rather tired legs) and huffs a breath of purple flame. "Second, this is dragonfire. If you payed attention in school you would know that dragonflame doesn't burn with oxygen, it burns ambient magic, so it has no risk of unbalancing the life support."

"Third, while I'll admit that picking on goody-two-hooves over there was fun, we don't have a grudge. I thought the kids looked bored so I put up a fire show. Simple as that. Let's be honest, what kid can resist a fight with explosions and lasers? The minotaur just happened to be around to be my punching bag." Degree bares his teeth, before crossing his arms and stalking off.

Mystery endurance roll: 9 + 7 = 16

Degree Borealis Belgond
Golden Gears frowns. "That was still incredibly irresponsible. Ponies could have gotten hurt, and the ship is ragged enough as it is, it doesn't need dragonflame being thrown around."

As Degree stalks off, his legs give for just a moment, and he stumbles awkwardly, almost falling over, before managing to regain his balance (but not his dignity).

Copperette Seva
"Affirmative." Sweetie Bot moves to leave, but stops for a moment, glancing back at Seva with a glow in her eyes. Copperette can almost hear the processors whirring in her head, before she adds, hesitantly, "uhm... permission to attempt assistance first? Please?"

Forcing himself onto his hooves again and ignoring the still smoking claw mark on his jaw to the best of his ability, Belgond growled a little as the anger swelled in his chest again. "News flash you overgrown lizard! The Onset Dawn is an older ship and wasn't designed with dragon passengers in mind; So help me if you pull a stunt like this again in the med-bay or near the engine room and we somehow don't explode and die I'm turning you into a hoofbag with a matching pair of boots and luggage bags and giving them to Golden as a present!"

Belgond had to breath deeply after his outburst, trying to reign in his temper before he did something he was going to regret.

Dice rolls:

Degree's nostrils flare, and he turns his head to bare his teeth at Belgond. "You threaten me again, Belgond, I'll burn you and the entire ship down to ash."

The cracks between his scales glow purple, and a second later dragonflame bursts out of his body, surrounding him in an aura of purple fire. Miming the firing of a finger gun at Belgond, Degree grins toothily and says, "Besides, I'd like to see you try. I love it when prey go down fighting."

Sucking up the dragonflame and biting down loudly for emphasis, Degree chuckles and disappears into the corridor - quite literally, as he appears to melt into the shadows of the room.

He briefly considers where he could go, before shrugging and heading back to the bridge. He'll take a quick nap in the pilot seat and be up in time to dock the ship at the Junction. He's had it up to here with people who couldn't take a good burn.

Abilities:

Borealis frowns, feeling conflicted.

On the one hand, Degree had attacked Borealis and apparently incriminated him as an accomplice to his pyromania, is abrasive and vehement, and is generally an unlikeable individual. On the other, Belgond resorted to violence as a first resort and insulted Borealis without investigating the situation first, unless being sucker punched in the face counts as investigation. The insult is also baseless and inadequate considering Borealis never intended to fight - in fact he tried for peace until he was forced to react.

Were this any other situation, the choice would be obvious. Join the berating of the criminal with the obviously more moral and righteous individual, but for some unfathomable reason Borealis gravitates towards liking Degree. Maybe just because Degree showed him up when Borealis acted high and mighty towards him, as clearly, Degree's dragonfire arsenal beats out his hardlight armor, putting Borealis in the wrong.

In the end Borealis decides neutrality, as he usually does, and crosses his arms, staying quiet throughout the whole exchange and only wishing for some peace and quiet after all that nonsense.

AleneShazam wrote:Copperette Seva
"Affirmative." Sweetie Bot moves to leave, but stops for a moment, glancing back at Seva with a glow in her eyes. Copperette can almost hear the processors whirring in her head, before she adds, hesitantly, "uhm... permission to attempt assistance first? Please?"

"Uhm... Sure?" Copperette said. "What exactly are you going to do?"

Degree Borealis Belgond
Gears breathes out deeply, but seeing Belgond's reaction, she places a hoof placatingly on the zebra's shoulder. "Belgond. Calm down - he's not actually going to hurt anyone (I hope,) and as he says, he is a seasoned traveler. As... disrespectful, as he's being, I suspect that's just his way of talking to people. Being angry will just play right into his hands."

Copperette Seva
"The glowing bit here is a basic data access port. Speculation: Seva is attempting to communicate in their current state." Sweetie Bot moves a hoof to her temple, and retracts her hoof with a data cable in her grasp. Plugging it into Seva's access port, Sweetie Bot says, "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

How could Copperette not recognize a basic data jack? She didn't seem that familiar with ACHEs yes, but she seemed competent with mechanisms from what little Seva had seen. Thank goodness the automaton seemed to figure it out. As soon as Seva was able to confirm the connection, they sent out the words through the port,

>>SUMMARY:
>>RUSHED ACTIVATION IN RESPONSE TO ALARM
>>CRITICAL SYSTEMS FAILURE FROM PHYSICAL TRAUMA OF FALL
>>CURRENTLY REALIGNING NANOMACHINE COMPONENTS
>>ESTIMATED SELF-REPAIR TIME:
>>2-3 HOURS

Almost immediately though, the parts of Seva concerned about what was happening around them found their chance to ask. Even if they couldn't directly help now, their input was allowed through.

>>OBSERVATION:
>>COPPERETTE IS IN THE MEDBAY
>>REQUEST INPUT:
>>IS COPPERETTE INJURED?

Belgond sighed softly as he turned to look at Golden and nodding his head a little. "Your right... I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. I freaked out when I saw the fire alarm and came running here as fast as I could and seeing that he was the source of it... I just flipped out." A look of self disappointment appeared on the parts of Belgond's face that were still flesh and blood. "I should have been better then that."

Turning to look at the minotaur in the room, Belgond sighed as he offered him an apology "I'm sorry if I snapped at you like that. You really didn't deserve any of it, I was just seeing red and you were standing right next to the target of my ire. I hope you can forgive me." He even offered the minotaur a bow, supplicating himself to him as an act of penance.

Seva
"Negative, Copperette is not injured." Sweetie Bot says mechanically, before saying more brightly, "We're here to help!"

Her eyes glow green, and she nods as Seva feels an additional consciousness bleed into their system. It's not trying to take over - she's not trying to take over - but they can sense a guiding presence in the consciousness. It's not methodical, and it's not brute force realignment... almost a singing, to Seva's many runtimes. She's singing the nanomachines back into alignment. There's a flow to it that is both electronic and organic, and though Seva is immediately certain that unlike their own evolving AI, this is a preprogrammed top-down AI, Seva can almost taste the emotion in the consciousness. They can't, of course - the logical part of their processing reminds Seva that they detect no amounts of emotional energy - but in some part of Seva's mind, they feel a surge of warmth and confidence that brushes away their concerns and the previous helpless feelings as they feel their body coming back under their control. Though the last few steps will be up to Seva's runtimes to complete, the heavy lifting had been done by her.

Eventually the consciousness passes from Seva's interface back into her own chassis, and Sweetie Bot blinks her eyes. "Reprogramming complete. Inquiry: How do you feel?"

Sweetie Roll: