FTL: Harmony Edition IC

Degree + Belgond
Degree and Belgond soon come across the ship's bridge, the door hanging limply open from the manual disengage, after Sweetie forced the doors shut. The crew are inside, sitting on the ground, their expressions a mix between fear and anger. They primarily seem to be non-combat personnel - their cloth-based attire indicates that they don't often see battle, though many of them still sport scars and marks typical for pirates. One of them, more elaborately dressed than the others, narrow his eyes. "So you've beaten the boss. Now what? I'm warning you, if you're going to kill us, we'll... uh, we'll kill you back!"

Copperette
"Whoa, calm, Copperette! Relax, Sweetie's alright!" Clean Cut immediately puts a hoof on Copperette's shoulder to calm her down. "You're just disoriented from the altercation - it's perfectly understandable. Like you, Sweetie has some surface damage that needs patching up. If it was bad, I'm sure Golden Gears would have told me. She just needs a quick fixer-upper - just as you need to sit still here and wait for those bruises to fade and those raw patches to heal over."

Borealis
Soon enough a transport pod docks to the ship, and the hatch opens to a large, burly diamond dog and a pair of ponies in the typical black security body armor and toting a laser rifle each. The diamond dog looks at Borealis, and nods respectfully. "Grunt, head of security. Thanks for handling the blockade, not sure what we could have done otherwise."

He sneers when he sees the unconscious captain. "Hmph. Scumbag looks uglier asleep than awake. Alright, Wardens, lock him up. We want him in a powered cell ASAP, get to it!"

One of the ponies, a unicorn, brings out a set of glowing energy manacles and binds the captain, before the two ponies combine their efforts and toss the captain roughly into the transport pod. Grunt nods again at Borealis, and says, "Sorry you had a... rough introduction, but anyway, welcome to Beta 5. We've got fuel and supplies. Enjoy your stop."

Seva
Golden Gears ushers Sweetie to the engineering room/engine room and sets her onto the table. "Sweetie, would you rather be online or offline for this?"

"Online please." Golden nods and her mechanical arms immediately morph into the relevant tools and begin stripping the warped metal plating off of the filly bot, and replacing broken circuits and components.

"So... anomalies, Seva? Can you describe what happened?"

"Oh," Copperette said with a sigh. She thought back over the last couple of days as she allowed Clean Cut to take her... Wherever. This was twice in as many days that somebody had tried to do awful things to her. More than twice, after a fashion, as each time had involved a lot of ponies and a lot of chaos.

"The future really sucks," she said at length. "Why can't everyone be nice?"

As Belgond and Degree arrived at the bridge and witnessed what could only be a last desperate act of bravado on the part of what he was guessing was the first mate, Belgond put his concerns and guilt about what was the most likely fate of the wardogs in order to present what might have first been considered the 'Good Cop' face to what was almost certainly Degree's bad cop. "I'm sure you will try, but I don't like your odds if it came to that. My friend here managed to capture one of your other ships all on his own and the whole crew was no doubt actively trying to stop him. Thankfully for you all, there are two possible outcomes for this situation. The first outcome is incredibly easy. All you have to do is follow whatever instructions we give you, answer any questions we have and generally co-operate with us and things will go incredibly well for all of you; After all, the only one that the station really cared about was the Captain and from what I've seen of him and his practices I'm sure that the station would be willing to accept the idea that he enslaved a crew and forced them to do his bidding. In fact, if you go above and beyond the call of duty to help us we might be willing to make some sort of arrangement but you have to make it worth sticking our necks out for you. "

The 'Good Cop' face vanished in an instant, Belgond's remaining flesh and blood eye narrowing while his face one started to glow a bright red. "You will never know the hard way."

The glare disappeared shortly after it arrived and made sure that the message was heard loud and clear, Belgond's expression shifting to something a bit more neutral. "Now then. First order of business and a golden opportunity to earn some brownie points with us; Does anyone know who the Wardogs that are on the ship originally were and where they are from? I'm also interested in hearing if anyone besides the Captain took part in creating them as well."

"Alternatively, you can not cooperate," Degree smiles widely, showing as much teeth and purple flame as he can manage.

"Upon which Pirate Code dictates that a rival band can rightfully be executed by means of the victor's choosing. I've got a lot of ideas as to how I can go about taking out the trash. The business end of this baby is particularly good for incinerating rubbish, I've found - as well as other things that I'm sure you don't even want to know about."

He cranks up the Burninator and lets loose a stream of fire that scorches the ground close to the lead pony. Stamping down on the embers with a claw, he makes a show of snuffing out the flames. "I'm sure smart ponies like you know not to play with fire. So what'll it be?"

With that done, he leans back and lets Belgond take over the boring, non-threatening talk work.

Seva remained on standby, ready to assist in whatever way they could.

""The first that we had noticed was activity in one of our primary runtimes that activated during combat. Runtime Zero. It normally only handles extra computations and errors. When we were close to terminal damage though, it expressed opinion. And it then, unprompted, processed a method of releasing energy from our Pathos Reactor.""

Touching a hoof to their front, Seva's data records internally played back the sensations of their exterior splitting apart. The bizarre sense of satisfaction and warmth as the light had spilled out of their body.

""Despite not being properly channel, the energy incurred inexplicable healing of organics and repair of mechanisms. This was observed twice. In addition, Runtime Zero also...""

Seva hesitated. They were unsure if this wise to speak of, for how much danger it could imply. However, this was serious. They didn't know the next time they might meet with their hive, and it would be irresponsible to not explore this.

""Runtime Zero also somehow briefly modified our emotion feeding mechanism to drain vital energies directly from the captain for rapid self-repair.""

Well, at least they said it.

""Another anomaly occurred shortly after Belgond appeared. We had sustained terminal damage and shut down. An inexplicable reactivation occurred though. Nothing in the emergency start-up reports offers a logical explanation how though.""

"Hey, before you leave - any idea what in Light's name is going on? Pirates on the war path, colonies being burned down - it's not a pretty sight out there. I'm just wondering as a pit stop if any of your people know anything about this whole mess. Figure some travelers might have passed through and shared some info." Borealis asks.

Degree + Belgond
The lead pony tenses up... and relaxes. "Meh, guy was a dick anyway." "Pay was shit, too..." "Embezzled most of our loot..."

As the muttered complaints continue, the lead pony says, "Oh the wardogs? Nah, I'm pretty sure the Cap bought them from slavers. Uh, the ones camped out of the old transport-hub. They bring in merchandise from all over the sector so I'm not sure where they're from."

"So, uh... these brownie points. How do we get more of 'em?"

Copperette
Clean Cut sighs as he sweeps over Copperette with a horn. "You have to excuse us, it's a turbulent time right now. If you were here even ten years ago, things would be so much better. Our government is in disarray, the people are scared, and bandits of all kinds are out and about. Once we get closer to the capital I promise things are going to get better. The peacekeeping force is more active in more populated regions."

Lifting one of Copperette’s legs with his telekinesis, he carefully tests each joint before moving onto the next one. ”You know, it was very brave of you to help. Incredibly irresponsible, but brave. Your family would - should - be proud.”

Borealis
"Well... don't know much about what’s going on outside the sector, but I’ve heard a few rumors going around. The Whirlwind Pirates are growing bolder, and more powerful. They’ve always been a threat in the region but something’s got them riled up, big time.” Grunt climbs back into the pod. “I’ve got to get back and throw this guy into a cell. Tell you what, hit me up at the bar when you go station-side. Can’t miss it, only building with a neon sign. We can continue the conversation with a few drinks and not a max-security criminal at our backs.”

Seva
Sweetie jerks visibly as Golden Gear’s omnitool sparks against a control circuit. “Ow…” Sweetie mutters, her electronic voice still fluctuating from the damage. She moves her legs experimentally. “Oh… limb movement restored to acceptable parameters.”

“Good… Alright, chin up - I’ll need to fix your vocal array.” Gears peels the neck plating away. “Still don’t know how Belgond converted a squawk box into this, but… mm. A matter for another time.”

Turning back to Seva, Golden taps her chin thoughtfully. “I won’t pretend to be an expert on ACHE morphology. I know a fair bit about nano-composites, but the synthetic intelligence of your kind is sophisticated beyond anything pony kind can reliably manufacture. Still, I’ll try and help as much as I can.” She nods as she listens to Seva’s report, her eyes flicking from Seva’s chest back to their face a few times during the self-report.

“Hmm. Not a magical specialist - honestly I think Copperette or Clean Cut would be better suited to speculate here - but I may have an idea as to what happened when your pathos reactor did what it did. Corny as it sounds, love is a powerful thing, and emotional energy is a particularly potent reagent in many magic rituals. Perhaps there’s some sort of small scale reality-warping effect of it? I don’t know, I’m just throwing out ideas here, but… I’ll probably need to think about it more before I can give you an answer.”

“As for this Runtime Zero… well, if you really want to get to the bottom of this, I can establish an uplink between my processing implant and your system, and if you’re willing, I could… sort of… talk to Zero, in a manner of speaking. If you're okay with it? I'm not sure if it'll work, but... I'll need to plug in to run a diagnostic anyway, if you don't mind I can see if I can get a connection going.”

Degree breathes out sharply when the pirate mentions a slaver den, but otherwise doesn't say anything.

The knowledge that the Wardogs had been bought instead of created on ship went a long way to improving Belgond's general mood. It meant that he was going to have to drag someone to wherever the Wardog's were and throwing them in there to be torn apart by their own creations.

The question about brownie points caused Belgond to grin wickedly. "While I am sure that my associate can come up with some rather interesting questions, the first one that needs to be asked is 'Why are you here?'. Why was your former boss so confident that he could claim this station without retaliation?"

"Brownie points for anyone that hands over a password or key card that leads to something good." A simple deceleration, but if it saved him time having to hack something or work on getting through a door, all the better.

"Hmph. Well, the colony we came from - Daedalus 2 - was raided by unknown forces and we had to evacuate. Maybe the two are connected somehow?" Borealis sighs tiredly. "I shan't delay you any longer. You go do your job, I'll see what I can do about tending to my crew. I'll see you later."

Giving Grunt a brief salute, Borealis turns and walks down a corridor without any real idea of what to do. Belgond and Degree seemed to have the ship situation under control, and with the threat eliminated, there wasn't much for him to do. Finally, he decides to just head off to the living quarters to report the good news - the kids should know that they came out of their first firefight unscathed.

AleneShazam wrote:Copperette
Clean Cut sighs as he sweeps over Copperette with a horn. "You have to excuse us, it's a turbulent time right now. If you were here even ten years ago, things would be so much better. Our government is in disarray, the people are scared, and bandits of all kinds are out and about. Once we get closer to the capital I promise things are going to get better. The peacekeeping force is more active in more populated regions."

Lifting one of Copperette’s legs with his telekinesis, he carefully tests each joint before moving onto the next one. ”You know, it was very brave of you to help. Incredibly irresponsible, but brave. Your family would - should - be proud.”

Copperette was silent for a few minutes. Even by her father's standards she had done a lot, she supposed. She had applied a tricky enchantment to a piece of scrap, helped stop the bad guys, taken control of a ship -

"...Wait a minute. I took control of a ship," Copperette said, more to herself than the doctor. "Sweetie and I owned their control-y, computer-y stuff. I think we still do," she continued to mutter.

"...I have a ship," she finally said, a little louder. "If I control the... well, controls, then I control the ship. So that means it's basically mine, right?"

Belgond and Degree
The lead pony shifts a little and pats around his armor before drawing out a data plug from a back pocket. "The station was outgunned and starved for supplies. If it weren't for your timely interference, we would have seized it in the next few days."

"Anyway, the boss don't tell us nothing when it comes to missions." He passes the data plug to Belgond. "Something about orders from Frosty herself. I dunno, might be more on the flagship. That data plug has the security clearance to access the Stalker's system. Don't recommend 'porting over, though - oxygen system's blown out. Everyone on there is either asphyxiating, or already dead."

He pauses and takes a look at Belgond, then at the dragon. "Eh... you two gents might be fine, though."

Copperette
"Technically, your filly bot owns the ship." Clean Cut says, breaking out the cotton buds and cleansing solutions. "Not a tech person, but from what we've heard that Sweetie kid has the ship's auxiliary and even some primary systems under control. If she listens to you, then sure, it may as well be yours, but right now, everyone on board that ship's lives is in the hooves of a slightly scrambled filly bot."

"I don't think you're quite old enough to be at the front of a starship," Clean Cut says, after a few chuckles. Much as I would love to see you at the helm, you're not quite qualified to command an ex-pirate corvette. What would you do with a ship, anyway?"

"I'd take it away to live somewhere nicer," Copperette grumbled.

Seva took Golden Gear's suggestions with total consideration. It was both comforting and disquieting that their artificial intellect could not be so easily analyzed. It meant they could not be so easily taken advantage off like some common automaton, but it also meant they could not be easily remedied. It was difficult for their runtimes to come to a consensus on which was best.

And love... Seva certainly did not discount the value of emotional energy – it was what they survived on, after. And that warm feeling, Seva couldn't help but think of love being associated with it. They had been around individuals experiencing love in all it's forms, and they recognized it. Perhaps it conceivably did those miraculous repairs, yes. It still left uncertainty though. Where did it all come from? Could they really have gathered, held onto so much love, or was it merely how they used it? Or was there something else to this? Perhaps they needed assistance more than they anticipated.

""Time to contemplate a more complete answer is acceptable,"" Seva stated, ""And the proposal to access Runtime Zero is acceptable. As we have been unable to extract any information internally, an outside perspective may be necessary.""

Seva's optics then focused on Sweetie.

""We have an additional inquiry. During combat, were there any additional alterations to the plan after we were dispatched to the teleportation room? We did not anticipate  the presence of Copperette and Sweetie.""

Copperette
Clean Cut chuckles again. "Not while piloting a ship with pirate markings, you won't. No place is nice towards pirates. Except their own people I guess, and even then..."

Hovering his horn over Copperette once more, he nods and stands back. "You should be fine. Don't over exert yourself, and your body should be back to normal in a few hours. If you feel anything wrong just talk to me or Seva. I imagine you'll want to go find Sweetie now, right? Gears took her to the engineering bay for repairs."

Borealis
He enters the living quarters to find Night Snow's pegasi standing guard behind the door, and the kids bunkering down under beds and behind impromptu barriers. The pegasi relax when they see Borealis approach. "Oh, it's you. Thank the Princess for that... is it over? Did we win?"

Seva
"Sweetie Bot's primary directive is to be 'cute'," Sweetie says, her voice still electronic. Golden Gears brings her omnitool up and makes a few final adjustments to her voice box, and after a few whirring noises Sweetie's voice returns to normal. "My secondary directive is to listen to Copperette. She issued the command to follow and assist you. Justification: Big sister told me to."

Gears smirks. "Two centuries of technical experience in programming AI leads up to this point: the ability to shift blame. Good job, ponykind. Anyway... Seva, would you want to do the scan now, or is there something else you wanted to do first?"

Her mechanical arms shift back into their normal pod-like state before one of them morphs into a universal jack. The other gets to work reattaching the exterior plating onto Sweetie Bot.

"... Yes. Yes I do want to see Sweetie Bot," Copperette agreed, ambling off to the engineering bay...

Seva merely blinked at Sweetie's reply at first, then turned back to Gears and nodded at the suggestion.

""A scan at this time would be acceptable. Upon further consideration, it may be prudent to do so before our auto-repairs are effected, to assure avoidance of potential errors in the reconstruction process.""

Getting down into a kneeling position, the port on Seva's back was opened and exposed.

""Unrelated suggestion: Copperette may require disciplinary action. Reason: Her actions caused disruptions in the operation, and sets a bad example for Sweetie.""

"But I helped!" Copperette complained as she walked in.

Though Copperette's sudden entrance surprised Seva, the ACHE did not move even an inch, remaining in their standby position before their launched into their disinterested-sounding rebuttle to Copperette's justification.

""You also recklessly endangered yourself and Sweetie. Because we had no method of long-range communication, it was not possible to notify other personnel of your transport, which meant changes in tactical planning that might have required your presence on the Dawn would not have been possible, and an emergency exit teleport might not have included you, stranding you on the pirate ship while it was still a combat zone. In addition, we needed to expand our mission parameters while on board to include consideration for your well being.""

There was a barely noticeable twinge in the exposed, damaged parts of Seva's systems on saying those last words.

""Such a need is undesirable.""

Accepting the Data port that was given freely to him, Beglond tucked it away in the folds of his robes before looking over at Degree and asking "Do you think you can keep the situation under control here while I go and check the flagship out?" Even has he was speaking, parts of his enhancements were already shifting to cover his face, protecting his eyes and mouth from the vacume that was sure to be over there before he signaled the Dawn to teleport him over. The result looked like some kind of mechanical gas mask with two red, glowing lights for eyes.

Copperette tersely chewed her lip. "...Maybe. But you wouldn't have done it all by yourself, either," she pointed out. "That jerk pony with the hammer almost wiped the floor with three of us, nevermind just you. And you didn't even know where to start on the hacking."

"Right, right. You take care of that." Degree waves a claw. "The kids and I are gonna have a chat about the state of affairs in the Whirlwinds."

He waits until the zebra disappears from sight before turning to the pirates. "Right. Look, lets be honest, you're already turned your back on the Ice Queen and the Whirlwinds once. She's gonna be after you. I can protect you, send in a commendation to a gunrunner compound so you can make your lives there instead."

"But - you gotta cooperate. So tell me what the Whirlwinds are up to. I don't care about the why's and how's for now, just tell me what you've heard about what the gang's up to."