The Stars That Aided In Her Escapeby WorldWalker128ChaptersPart One: Incompetant AstronaughtsPart 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot In The ButtPart 3: Flashing Your MoonEpilogue: A New JobPart One: Incompetant AstronaughtsI don't own Moon Base Alpha or the related information/characters/equipment etc. I don't own My Little Pony and the characters, or merchandise, etc. I don't own anything related to Star Wars. I don't own anything related to Star Trek. I don't own anything related to Left 4 Dead. I don't own the chair that I'm sitting in at home, or the computer I'm using to type all this up. I also own nothing to do with football, other than a flat football that I've had for years and haven't used except on birthdays with family. I think the only thing in all this that I do own is my weird imagination and the two OC Humans Robert and Sally. Anyway, read, please leave a comment, and a like or dislike, and if a dislike, let me know what's wrong with it so I can improve. Used WITHOUT permission blah blah blah, names related to real persons are coincidence, blah blah blah. Now that's been said, let's get this show on the road. The Stars That Aided In Her Escape Nightmare moon yawned and sat up. It had been nine hundred ninety-nine years since her banishment, and in two days, it would have been one thousand. She would have been lonely, but her resentment, and anger towards her sister and those ungrateful creatures they called their 'subjects' kept her plenty of company, and as for things to do, she kept herself busy by practicing her magic, and training her body for the eventual time that she figured out a way off this rock. Just thee wait, sister, dear! She though for the six-thousand and thirty-second time. One day I shalt find a way off this prison, and then thou wilst pay! She had, of course, considered more than once just using her power to drop the moon onto the planet, but she did not really wish to kill off her subjects (or perhaps shatter the planet entirely). After all, what point was there in being a princess (or queen, once Celestia had been dealt with) if you had no one to rule beneath you? Still, at this point it might be mine only way back. Celestia made sure to disable most of mine magics before she banished me, and it hath only been mine constant prying at her barriers than has allowed me what little magics I hath got! If only there were some other way, some non-magical way for me to conduct mine escape... This thought had also crossed her mind several times, but other than once trying to build a tower out of moon rocks, which had toppled over and given what the planet-side dwellers saw as the “Mare in the Moons' horn”, she could not come up with any ideas. That is, until the next day when three objects she'd never seen before landed... – – – – – “Alright, safe landing for everybody!” Robert Higgins declared proudly as his craft settled safely down in the moon dust. ...And then his viewing screen showed one of the craft tumbling like a bouncing die from a Liar's Dice cup that had slipped between a player's fingers. It slammed into the ground and erupted into a fireball. “I am burnING! I am burnING! Some body help me!” Higgins face-palmed. Although they were using robots for this mission, not everyone that was on the project should have been. Some of them were little more than idiots who played video games too often. Unfortunately, this repair mission was too important to put off, so HQ had grabbed everybody who was even the least bit familiar with operating the equipment they'd be using, and then gave them all a crash-course in the tech on the moon base and shipped them off to White Moon Base 04, in the Equine solar system, which had named for the inhabitants on the planet below and to the right of them. Their mission was simple enough: repair the damaged equipment at the observation site, get inside the facility, and then contact HQ to inform them that the mission had been completed and to, of course, refill their oxygen tanks in their ship up in orbit from where they controlled the robots they were now using. So not only did the success of the observation project hinge on their ability to get the job done, but so did their own survival. “Ha. Ha. Ha. I did not know that row-bots could burn!” Laughed another of the crew from the crashed lander. This computerized voice thing is starting to get on my nerves! Higgins thought as he started feel a headache coming on. Their task, even with the morons on two of the four ships goofing off entirely too much, was going well so far: solar panels had been dusted off and repaired or replaced, damaged wiring was removed and replaced, and new filters were installed in the oxygen ventilation system. At least they have been in me and Sally Chang's areas. I wonder how things are going with the 'newbs'. Both his and Sally's teams had changed radio frequencies almost immediately after exiting the lander because the two other teams began typing in random stuff just to see what it would sound like on the speakers. Unfortunately (again) the control of the robots involved hooking up your nervous system to a computer, which meant your mind was in the machine, which meant also that you could not physically talk to one another from the ship, which could have prevented some of the stupidity they were doing now. There was, of course, a remote-control way to control them, but it was often a clumsy system, which made direct control much simpler. They better at least get something done! If I have to repair both my teams' stuff and theirs I just might toss them out the air lock after this mission is done with and say it was an accident! – – – – – Nightmare moon watched the new arrivals with curiosity. She had seen such things before, but only as they had been leaving. This had been because she'd been napping after an intense session of trying to break through Celestia's barriers on her magic. It had been these efforts that won her back her Royal Canterlot Voice, not that it helped her much here. Approaching them cautiously, as she had no idea what their intentions were or how dangerous they might be to her in her still-weakened state, Nightmare observed that they seemed to be working on several structures that she'd been ignoring for the most part as they seemed to do nothing. One of the creatures pulled off a thin object that was blue on one side and silver on the other and began swinging it at another of the creatures, who waved a white hose around like a whip as a counter. Wondering if they were communicating in some way, Luna strained against her sister's shield and managed to chip away at it enough to gain a mind-reading spell. She cast it, and then tilted her head in confusion. For the most part, they were spewing out nonsense or kept repeating what she assumed to be a name. All except for one of their group with white lines on it. “John Madden! John Madden! John Madden!” On of them with a purple stripe repeated over and over. “Chuck Norris is John Madden's father, and this moon is his soccer ball!” the green one declared. “Soccer balls are white AND black, you id-ee-it!” the blue one said. “Your mother is white and black!” Green shot back. “You want a piece of me, C 3 Pee Oh!?” Blue challenged, brandishing his...whatever the blue thing was. “You are C 3 Pee Oh! I am I-G eighty-eight!” “Your mother was a refrigerator, and your father was a toaster!” They're insulting one another, obviously, but what could they be talking about? What's a toaster? And what's a soccer ball? “Stop fighting you guys!” a white one said, hopping between the two. “WE HAVE TO SAVE THIS MOON!” Nightmare moon gasped. My moon is in danger?! From what? “The moon can suck my dick!” Nightmare Moon blinked. Did he just say what I think he said? “No it can't, you id-ee-it. It is a rock.” “I know that you dumb-ass!” “Quwequwequwequwe!” “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH!” “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle-” “Your mom jumped over the mooooon!” “I am going to rape you with this truck!” Blue threatened, and began waddling at a ridiculously slow pace towards another structure that Nightmare Moon had chosen to ignore and climbed on the back and leaned back against an indentation in the wall. To her astonishment, it suddenly began to roll forward towards the other two-legged thing. “Oh wow, you are driving at one mile per hour I am SO scared!” He said sarcastically. At least, Nightmare assumed it was said sarcastically. They had very little tone or pitch change to their speech, so it was difficult to tell. In any case, the blue one continued to move forward in his horseless carriage until he smacked into the front of the green one, who only moved back a foot. “You suck.” Green said, pointing a arm at the 'truck'. “No, you suck!” Blue declared, climbing down from it and waddling back in front of green. “No, YOU suck!” Green insisted. “I saved fifteen percent on my car insurance by getting rid of my car!” Red said randomly. Both blue and green turned to look at him, then nodded thoughtfully. “Cool story, bro. Tell me another!” Green said, clapping his hands. “Would you like to hear me sing?” Red asked. “Yes!” Green agreed. “No. I want to sing!” Blue objected. “Let's sing the 'Beer Song' together!” Red suggested. The three creatures locked arms and began singing, if it could be called that. While this stupidity was going on, White had wandered away from the others and had set to the task of completing their mission. This was not missed by Nightmare Moon and she crept through the work area and jumped up on top of another of the 'trucks' to watch him work. First he knelt down before what seemed to be a small box with two hoses connected to it, and tinkered with a mess of wires that had been exposed by him. Several of them were sparking, and he hesitated a bit, then turned a knob on the side of the box. The sparking stopped, and he began removing the ones that had been sparking. What sort of magic is this? I've not seen anything like it before in all my life. After a few minutes and several more discarded and replaced wires he placed a thin metal plate over the wires and rose from where he knelt and began heading towards what looked like a group of huge blue flowers on even larger fat stalks. He flipped a lever and the 'head' of the flower lowered. Luna recognized the blue parts as part of was that other had been waving around and focused her magic specifically on this one's mind, which ended the sound of the other group's horrible singing. “I don't ask for much, do I?” He thought. “I just want to do a good job, be put with a responsible team, and have my job be appreciated. Instead, I get a bunch of morons who don't know the difference between a game and a very real situation. Yes, we get to control robots to do this task, and yes, it's really cool, but we have a job to do!” Nightmare moon sighed. Or would have, if there was any air on the moon. As it was, she expanded and contracted her lungs and didn't sigh. It would seem that even aliens had to deal with their share of neglect and ungrateful beings. In a way it was comforting to know that she wasn't alone in that regard, but in others, disheartening. Part of her wanted to reveal her presence to this- what did he call it? A robot?- and say she knew the feeling of being taken for granted, but she had no way of knowing how he'd react, nor did she know how strong it was. If it took her to be a threat, she'd only have her physical strength to aid her. She was startled out of her thoughts when he turned away from the large blue flowers and began walking towards yet another location that looked like several metal boxes with gold cylinders on them. Several of the gold cylinders seemed to be losing their contents, some of which turned to snow and fell to the already-white surface. Perhaps it is holding water? Wait, no...it would be ice if it was water...so then, those cylinders are air tanks? “Stupid frigging asteroids and stupid 'team' mates and...” He tried pressing his metal claws against a flat surface that had several colors on it forming a picture and what she assumed was a language and got a message that clearly displeased him. “DAMNIT!” He turned back toward his team mates, who had taken several smaller objects and seemed to now be controlling them and driving them around the other structures in a circle. “YAAAY! I WON!” Green yelled. “No you did not, it was my row-bot!” Blue corrected. “No no no, eet wuz mine!” Red argued. “No, we all lost THE GAME!” Purple declared. “The Game sucks!” Green declared. “No one plays The Game anymore but you!” “The Game is greater than John Madden and greater than Chuck Norris!” Who is this Chuck Norris and John Madden? Nightmare moon wondered. White waddled up to the arguing 'team' and informed them he needed help repairing the oxygen tanks, and he also needed a robot for himself. “No! It Is mah row-bot! You can't have mah row-bot!” Green said. “If we don't work together to fix this problem, not only will the observation station crew suffocate, so will we!” White warned them, his claws clenched into fists. “We can go into Cryo sleep and the computer can fly us back to base.” “Yeah? And what happens when NASA 2 finds out that you goofed off and let their employees die in a project that is costing us billions of dollars? I don't think them firing you will be the least of your worries then!” “....” “....” “....” “Well?” “Robots, to the oxygen tanks!” Part 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot In The ButtPart 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot in the Butt Nightmare Moon had discovered that these morons were not the only team on the moon, and set out of observe them as well. It was because of these observation sessions that she discovered that they had used vehicles called 'Lunar Landers' to land on the moon, and when they had finished their task of repairing the damaged areas it would also be the same way they left. A grin spread across her face. If she could figure out how the Landers worked she could steal one, or perhaps stow aboard one and they'd make her escape from the moon for her! The only problem was, of course, the repair persons themselves. But even that probably would not be an issue because two of the four teams were idiots, which was proven by the destroyed lander she found for Team Moron 2. So I'll need to steal or hide aboard the first group that I encountered...I wonder how hard that would be? Like most plans with unknown factors, however, it did not happen the way she had intended... “Oh my Goddess it is a door ubble!” The blue one declared. “I will take it home and I will feed it and take it for walks and I will name it 'Moon-ee'!” “Ale ee ns are cool!” “Hey Blue, is this your mom? Can I ride her?” Green asked. Blue made a gesture with one of his claws that reminded the Nightmare of a certain part of male anatomy. “What the hell?” White asked, tilting his metal head to one side. “How are you breathing on the moon? There is no air here!” Of course, Nightmare moon could not answer with speech because there was no air to fill her lungs and voice-box with, so she instead turned to one side, facing the planet, and raised a hoof to point at it. “That does not answer my question (dot, dot, dot)” “I want a pony-ride! These trucks have no horse power!” Purple said, wadding towards The Nightmare. “No, Purp! It might have Space Rabies!” White objected. Nightmare watched it come close, then frowned and shoved it back with one of her spells. “Oh my Gawd is has The Force! It is a Jedi-horse!” Purple yelled while floating backward in slow motion due to the lack of gravity. “No no, it is a Uni-corn, see the horn in it head? It using magic.” White said, pointing a claw at her ivory spike. “Uni-corns are not real, it is an ale lee n!” Blue objected. “And Vulcans are Elves that travel in space!” “Star Trek sucks!” “No, Jar Jar sucks!” “Preaching to the choir, boy.” Blue said. Green laughed. “You are a choir boy? Bet the Cath O Lick priests love you!” Nightmare moon face-hoofed. This was not at all going the way she'd hoped, though at least they weren't trying to fight her. At this rate I just might bring down the moon to shut these guys up! “We should take it back to our ship and study it!” White stated. “I will tell the others what we've found.” “Maybe there are more space horses around and we can open a zoo. It looks like it has wings, so we'll need a rider with a helmet and parachute.” Red said to the others, all of them once more ignoring White, who grumbled while checking the different channels for the other three (or technically two, since the one ship crashed) teams. An hour later the other groups joined the one Nightmare Moon was walking around with and conversation exploded between them, ranging from stupid stuff to serious. Apparently they'd never seen an Alicorn before, which meant they'd not been to the planet below. Nightmare Moon smiled. Some of these others seem much smarter than this first group. Perhaps I can reverse the mind-reading spell so I can implant my own thoughts in their minds and communicate with them and convince them to lend me one of their craft- “Have you guys ever eaten horse?” One of the newcomers with a pink stripe asked the rest of its group. “It is delicious!” A second Red disagreed. “Uh NO! Horses are for RIDE-ING!” It turned away from the pink one and looked at The Nightmare, and circled her. She watched him, not reacting. “I luv horses, but I ain't never seen a horse like this one.” “Well it IS an ale lee n, genius.” Pink pointed out. “But what are we supposed to do with it?” Now is my chance! Nightmare Moon realized, and stomped a hoof in the dust a few times. This got the attention of the robots in front of her and she once more turned away from them as she had done before and pointed a hoof at the planet. She looked at them, then looked at the planet, poking her leg at it a few times, and then looked back at them. “It seems it wants to go to the planet.” White 2 observed. Success! Equestria, here I come! “Too bad we don't have Planet Landers.” Nightmare's left eye twitched. “It is a shame, really. I have not been on a planet for several years and I miss the non-recycled air.” “We could take the escape pods from the ship down.” The first White suggested. “Set up a distress beacon, and have NASA 2 send some real Planet Landers. We get a vacation, and she gets to the planet.” “How do you know it's a she?” One of the Reds asked. “Because she does not have a dick, duh.” another of them stated. Silence reigned between the machines. “Why are you looking her junk?” The same Red asked. “It is an ale lee n. I am studyING new life. I will be fame-us.” “By looking at its junk.” “I still have determined it is female.” “Why would we care what gender it is? I am more wonderING why it is alive in a vacuum.” “More wonderING? You need to learn how to speak!” “None of us are speaking, it is the row-bot!” Green 1 stated. Oh no, not again! Don't these things ever stop arguing?! Nightmare moon wanted to weep; first contact with living (sort of) creatures in nearly a thousand years, and all they wanted to do was fool around on the moon, and argue over stupid stuff. Finally, her patience ran out and her eyes glowed white. She focused her magic on the reversed spell for mind reading, and mentally yelled: “Cease this foalish arguing at once!” The robots froze, and then all turned to look at her. “Thee said thou hath a way back to the planet and could get me there! I command thee, as queen of the night, to do so now! Do this and I shalt forgive your incessant foalishness and allow you to stay in mine kingdom until thine people come for thee!” They stared at her a good minute and twenty seconds longer, and then all began chattering at the same time while running away from her, save for one, who fell over. “Who spiked mah air tank?!” the first red yelled. “She's gonna eat meee-ee! She's gonna eat meee-ee!” Green 1 yelled. “Halt! I mean thee no harm, I merely wish to enlist thine aid in returning to mine home and throne!” Nightmare Moon said, trying to convince them to stop fleeing from her like rabbits from a hungry Gryphon. Her efforts were in vain. At one point two of the blues crashed into one another and fell to the ground. A pink and a green helped them up, and they began to organize themselves again, each running to form a team of one of each color, and then ran out in four different directions, one of which a nearby lander. No! I can't miss this chance! Galloping as best she could in the low gravity, Nightmare moon reached the lander just as the last robot pulled itself on board and shut the door. No! She pounded on the door with her fore hoofs to no avail, and then to her surprise was pushed back by a brief, but forceful blast of air. Stunned and confused by this, Nightmare Moon shook her head and then widened her eyes as several flames emitted from five holes on the bottom of the lander and pushed the craft up into the lunar sky and out of her reach before she remembered she has magic. What?! They use fireworks to propel their space-faring craft? That's brilliant! I shall have to remember that for when I finally do escape so that- Ack! The other groups! I have to catch them! Nightmare Moon began following the next-closest group, which for a reason unknown to her, was only made up of three members. “Why are we goING this way? Our ride is totaled.” The Red of their group (Red 3 now, I guess) asked. “Our ride is dead, but we fixed the shit on the surface, so the planet-watchING place should be workING fine now. We can hide in there until help comes!” Green 3 explained. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. You said 'comes'.” Yellow 3 laughed. “You are an id-ee-it, Jerald. Is she chasING us?” Red 3 asked. Yellow turned his head completely around, startling Nightmare Moon, but not stopping her. Yes she was, and she was very close to catching up to them. “Yes she is we are boned!” Yellow replied. “Save me John Madden!” “John Madden has been dead for over two hundred years and is buried on Earth. Even if he wuz zombie and heard your prayer he'd not get here in time.” “Wait, why are we runnING? We are controllING row-bots. Just disconnect!” Red 3 said, and then his body froze mid-step and toppled over into the moon dust. “I feel stupid he is right!” Green 3 agreed, and then his robot also toppled over, followed by Yellow 3. Nightmare Moon stopped up short, puzzled by their sudden inactivity and examined them. They were no longer moving in the slightest, and the mind-read spell she'd recast after casting the reverse of it to make a complete link detected no mind to read. So either they had spontaneously died- Or a 'robot' is a golem of sorts, which means they're being controlled from another location! But where? Nightmare moon looked up to the skies and searched them with her immortal's vision. For three minutes she saw nothing, but then she very briefly saw a flash of light near (from where she was standing, anyway) the Solaris Stallion constellation’s eye. Gotcha! Her mood rose, then deflated again when she recalled that she was still stuck on the moon. She sighed, and then saw another of the Landers rising into the sky. What am I doing?! I've got to find that last Lander! – – – – – Meanwhile, up in the controller cubicles for repair team three, a trio of Humans were waking up with a headache, much like their other three team mates had after the crash. “Ugh, that sucked! I'll never get used to detaching at long-range like that!” Red 3 groaned, holding his head as it throbbed like the worst hangover he'd ever had. “We're not supposed to, you know, though I'll agree that it sucks.” Green 3 agreed. “Those robots are expensive to build and maintain, so we're probably going to get chewed out about this later.” Yellow walked out of his own cubicle and sighed. “I told you, bros.” G3 and R3 joined Y3 and looked at each other, confused as they headed for the door to the commons. “I told you about the moons!” – – – – – “Running through final checklist now!” Sally shouted over he panicked crew's chattering voices into her Lander's on-board mic. “We should be taking off in just two more minutes!” “Don't take any chances! I know we can just disconnect at any time, but there's always some kind of backlash when we lose an arm or something!” “Really I don't get why we're evacuatING, Robert; it didn't attack us and it only asked for help and even offered us some downtime on its world if we took it home.” “Think about that for a minute, Sal. It's up here on the moon by itself, and wants to go back to the planet below that it supposedly rules. It has no source of ox-i-gen or any other air for that matter that we could detect that it could breathe, and this is our first encounter with it and yet somehow it knew our language and could tap into our communication channels directly. I don't claim to know what we're dealing with, but something with abilities like that probably did not end up here by accident. In any case, we need to report this findING to head quarters before we take any other-” The transmission was suddenly cut off and Sally Chang tried desperately to reestablish contact. Frantic that something might have happened to the other Lander Sally stood up from her seat and looked out a window directly into Nightmare Moon's face and, startled, fell back once more into her seat. “The horse-lady is back!” One of her crew declared, and the others began freaking out. – – – – – Nightmare moon focused what little magic she was access to into the robot, and began trying to sense the connection that linked the golem to the controller. It was difficult because of how...alien...the mind and the object being controlled was, but she eventually found what she was looking for and smiled. “And now, you can't break the link!” She communicated to the one that had first seen her through the window. She smirked as the being tried to disengage the connection and failed, and then set to doing the same to the others. Once finished she walked around from the front windows to the door and politely rapped on the side with a hoof four times. After a few moments she knocked again, this time more insistent. “Who is there?” the bland monotone voice the golems all shared asked. “I am Nightmare Moon, Queen of the night and rightful ruler of Equestria!” “...” “...” “Nightmare Moon queen of the night and rightful ruler of space-horse land who?” Nightmare frowned. “You id-ee-it! You are goING to piss it off!” “A queen is not an it, a queen is a she.” “Who gives a F(asterisk mark, asterisk mark, asterisk mark) if it is a boy or a girl? Make it go away!” “Do I look like that black guy from that old movie that talked to animals to you, you dumb ass?” “No, you look like a can open-er.” “It speaks English already, we don't need a trans-lator.” “NO, BUT THOU DOTH NEED TO CEASE BEING RUDE AND ADDRESS ME DIRECTLY LEST I LOSE PATIENCE WITH THEE AND THINE CREW!” Nightmare Moon mentally blasted with the Royal Canterlot Voice. “ALL I'VE WANTED FROM THE START WAS FOR THEE TO GRANT ME PASSAGE HOME! IF YOU INSIST ON DOING OTHERWISE HOWEVER, I AM FULLY CAPABLE ON MAKING THINE STAY HERE PERMANENT!” The crew of the Lander was silent for a moment, and then finally one of them asked “Does any body here speak King Arthur?” Part 3: Flashing Your MoonPart 3: Flashing Your Moon “According to our readings, you still haven't fully repaired the station, repair squads. Is there a problem?” NASA 2 inquired. “We're also reading that the reactor cooling units took some additional damage from a recent surface impact shortly after your landing. Any idea what have caused the damage?” Higgins face-palmed from the orbiting star ship's cockpit. Yeah, he knew, alright. “Affirmative, HQ. Team three had some...technical difficulties with their flight controls and crashed and burned instead of landing.” He sent the reply and waited impatiently for their transmission to arrive and for HQ to send them a new message. It arrived two minutes later. “Are you on the transport ship, Higgins?” “Yes, ma'm.” “Why have you returned to the ship?” Robert sighed. They'll never believe this. “We encountered something we did not expect and the majority of our teams panicked. Rather than have the non-pilots try flying the Landers back themselves and maroon us here we pilots felt it prudent to do the flying ourselves.” “A problem? What kind of problem?” Here it goes... Before he could tell them what they'd all seen in scientific detail, a green-striped robot clanked in and stole the headset from him. “It was an ale-ee-n! There wuz an ale-ee-n horse on da moon!” “...” Higgins glared daggers the robot. “Give that back, you moron!” Robert Higgins yelled at the robot. “And put that thing away! The robots are for vacuum-assignments only!” “You can make like a vacuum and suck me!” the Green shot back. “I will take credit for finding the ale-ee-n, since my team found it first! “You're also the dumshits that crashed your Lander and got your equipment stranded on the moon when we scattered! Give me the headset back!” At the Green's continual refusal, Robert tried another tactic and pressed the send button instead. Two minutes of him smirking and the Green asking why he was smilING later, Greeny was told he was fired for destruction and misplacement of company equipment from neglect, and if he wanted his job back he'd have to pay for the equipment first as was company policy. Green crushed the headset in a fist and glared at Robert, who pressed a manual deactivation button for all nearby robots (nearby being within the confines of the ship). Searching about for a second headset, Robert took one from the co-pilots seat and plugged it into the pilot's headset outlet. “Sorry about that, but he's been dealt with. In all honesty, though, we did indeed find an alien that resembled a black horse.” He sent the message and waited. “Do you have proof of this?” HQ sounded skeptical, not that he held it against them. If he hadn't seen it he'd not have believed it either. “It's in our robot's visual records. Give me a few minutes, and I'll send it to you.” After sending the visual data from several of the robots Higgins settled in his seat to wait while HQ viewed it. An hour later he was contacted again by a rather excited man. “Was it friendly?” “That would depend on your definition of 'friendly.' At the very least it understood us and communicated with us.” “Did it want anything?” “It wanted us to take it to the nearby planet.” “Did it say why?” “It claimed it was a 'queen of the night'. Maybe she's the head of some magical religious sect or something and a ritual went wrong; who knows? The point is, she knows we have a way to get to the planet and she wants us to take her there.” “But you don't have any Planet Landers. How would you get to the planet?” “Escape pods.” “Hmm, that could work as long as you landed in the ocean or some place with soft dirt...” The next time someone spoke on the other end, it was the woman again. She said that speculation on aliens that could survive in vacuum could wait. “If you don't fix that cooling unit before the next sunrise on the continent below you the reactor is going to have a meltdown, which could make the facility explode and level a good portion of the moon's surface! Alien or no alien, you've got to fix it before then!” “When is the next sunrise?” “Less than an hour!” Though the teams were not very happy about it, there was little else they could do, and quickly returned to the control cubicles with no complaining from team 4, and loads of complaining from teams 1 and 3. In the end, though, the Lunar Landers were on their way back to the moon's surface, and the three abandoned robots already on the surface were up and moving again. With the fourth and second site already repaired to full capacity, the teams made their way to the remaining sites of one and three. Part of site one had been repaired due to the efforts of the white-striped member of team one, but the majority of it was still in a state of disrepair, with the cooling unit not even having been touched as well as the solar panels, which powered everything in the area of the facility below them. Once again, the two Landers touched down, and once again, White one was stuck with the stooges, minus Green, who'd been fired and whose robot was still with the other two members from the crashed lander that had survived. White had gone with another lander team and had escaped with them on his own. Red and Yellow, after 'logging in' made their way back to their site on foot. Even on foot they arrived back on site faster than the Lander did. “So if duh base explodes does that mean we've made a Death Star?” asked Blue. “No, it means we're all fired and the people in the base are dead!” White replied, angry over still being stuck with a bunch of chuckle-heads. “Why don't we just evacuate them instead?” Yellow asked while carrying a tool box to a solar panel relay to repair the panel. “Because even though they'd live we'd still get fired. It might not be as big a deal to you gaming-neanderthals, but I rather like having a steady source of income!” “I am not ape-man I am a row-bot!” “Know what?” White threw down his screwdriver, which made a small cloud of moon dust rise from the surface. “Screw you people, I'm going to help site three!” The remainder of team one watched him go, and then looked at one another, and then at the lunar vehicles. “Drag race?” – – – – – Nightmare Moon had eventually given up on trying to get them to open the doors, and instead sat down to wait. They could not communicate with their people to request help, and they could not take off safely as long as she could hop right back onto it, which meant they were stuck unless they agreed to do as she commanded, and unlike them, she could wait forever for them to open the door. Not that she wanted to, but until she'd worked away enough at Celestia's barrier she could not force it open, and she had no idea how to make the craft function besides. Eventually though, she grew impatient and decided to cease interfering with their communications and again waited. Chances were, if they found that they could communicate with their people again without her telling them, they would think that she had forgotten that they could or that it had simply been a problem with their form of magic. If this became the case, she could eavesdrop on them and perhaps find another way. Sure enough, several minutes after she removed her interference, they sent a message to the others of their kind asking if 'they could hear them'. “O M G are you all alright? We thought you had died!” “We are fine, but the ale ee n horse-thing is keeping us from leavING! When we tried to take off it somehow latched onto the Lander and we became too heavy to lift off again. Did you all make it out okay?” “Affirmative, but I have some very bad news. AccordING to HQ, the base on the moon is goING to go into meltdown in less than one hour unless we can fix the coolING unit that the one id-ee-it team crashed into as well as the rest of the equipment to get it the energy it needs to run better. Will the space horse let you out?” “Probably, but whether it will let us in again is another story.” “Right now we just need to get this base fixed. It can have the Lander if it wants; if we don't fix this, it won't matter very much. HQ warned that if the base goes, it could deface a good part of this moon. If that happens, we're all goING to the planet, and not in a good way.” “Understood. MovING out.” Nightmare Moon did not know what a 'meltdown' was, but did not much care either. Once she was inside the Lander they could not make her leave, and if they failed to stop the meltdown, she'd be going to the planet anyway (though she suspected from the 'not in a good way' part that it would be about as pleasant a trip back to the planet as it had been being launched from the planet in the Moon Cannon Celestia had built for just such an occasion as exile to the moon. Why would she have something like that, anyway? No matter. When I return, I shall use it to fire her to the sun! She made a crazy-person face and cackled manically. Or she would have if there had been any oxygen or perhaps helium on the moon, but if there had been helium she would have sounded hilarious rather than creepy. As it was, she just looked silly, and upon realizing this, ceased trying to laugh in vacuum. A metal wheel on the outside of the ship spun around twice and then a round door on the lander opened and several robots came out of it. Nightmare Moon watched them exit, doing nothing, and the robots looked at her. “Nice space horse...nice....niii-ice....” A yellow one said, holding up its hands in a placating gesture. Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes. What am I, an animal? “Dude, either she'll attack us or she won't. CallING her nice won't change anythING, Stop wastING time.” The one that had willed her to be a 'nice space horse' grumbled, but did as it was told and took the tool box offered to it by the last robot to disembark from the Lander. As one group they made their way off into the lunar wastes toward what Nightmare Moon presumed to be the still-damaged equipment. Drawn by curiosity, she felt compelled to follow them, and reasoned that now that she new where this lander was, she could return to it at any time and arrive before the others when they were finished. – – – – – “Alright this area is done. On to the next!” Team four's team leader declared, and they began packing up their things onto the lunar vehicles and boarded them. Unfortunately there was only 'seating' for two on each vehicle, and they had six members, so the two pilots of the Landers elected to stay behind and keep the Lunar Landers ready for when they got back, be it for emergency escape or for simple mission completion. The trip was relatively uneventful except when they allowed for a temporary lack of discipline to use a lunar hill as a ramp. The low gravity gave them more 'air time' than they'd expected, and due to a lack of thinking before they acted one of the vehicles crashed into the other and the one that 'flew' tipped over in midair and fell over. The driver and passenger, feeling like idiots, got off their vehicle and tried to right it, and the second vehicle stopped as well to help. Fortunately being robots and not flesh-and-blood astronauts they were plenty-strong enough together to right the vehicle, and after a brief repremanding they continued on to the next site. By the time they'd arrived however that site was finished being repaired as well and their numbers swelled to eight as they once more headed out. Team Four had to stop briefly to recharge their batteries, but Team Three elected to go on ahead without them. “We will see U there.” Robert nodded in approval. Good to know that even with all the complaining, immaturity, and the 'wow' over the alien they still can take a dire situation seriously. If only he knew what was to follow upon Team Three's meeting up with Team One... Team Three dove across the wasteland playing 'Ultimate Showdown' on their robot's third communication frequency. Really they weren't supposed to have saved any music files to the company robots, but it was rare that anyone used frequency three because it was rumored to be cursed, not that any of them actually believed it. “Did anybody actually make a live-action or CGI music video out of this song?” “No. Sad, am I right?” “We should totally do it when we get back. I will be Chuck Norris.” “No, the only one that can play Chuck is Chuck. Any other would be a joke.” A blip on their map came up and the two slowed down to a stop to see what it was. It turned out to be White One. “Wut R U doING out here?” Red Three asked White One. “Where is yer team?” “My 'team' as you call them are being stupid, lazy-” He added several more insulting-yet-accurate descriptive words to his rant, and then got on with it. “and are horsING around instead of repairING the area we've been assigned to, so I'm going to Site Three to help there.” White One looked them over. “Hey, you guys are Team Three. What R U doing out here?” “Site 3 is done beING fixed. Team 4 is rechargING their batteries, but will be comING soon. How much is done?” “Not much. I fixed the Solar Panels the first time we were here and started working on- is that music I'm hearING?” White had only just noticed the music in the background, and had his robot possessed an actual face, he would have sported a frown. “Music? I hear no music.” Red lied. “U must be imaginING things!” “Maybe it is the curse!” Yellow three suggested, adding a deadpan laugh that sounded as if each 'ha' was from an individual sentence. “Curse. Right. Any chance you guys could give me a lift?” “No we are all full. Ask team-” “Attention, guys! Whatever you're doING, drop it and listen up!” Another featureless voice crackled loudly over their channel as well as every other channel (although White and Team three had no way of knowing that since they were only on one channel) to ensure the message got across. “We've only got thirty five minutes until the reactor blows and we get a free ride across the galaxy on a nuclear energy wave mixed with moon rocks and base slag, so we need to speed things up, okay? Now, is there any place that hasn't been fixed up yet?” Indeed there was one place that was not, as White 1 already knew, and Team 3 soon saw. White 1 decided that rather than put up with his idiot-team again, he'd head over to the lunar base itself and see if he could stop the over-heat from the inside, or at least slow it down. In the meantime he tasked Team 3 with doing the job he knew that his own team was not. For the moment, though, they watched the ridiculous spectacle of them conducting their own version of a demolition derby around that site they'd been tasked with repairing and were neglecting. “Drive responsibly! Drink, don't drive!” Blue said as the front of his vehicle 'smashed' into the side of the other “No, it's don't drinak and drive!” Blue's driving buddy, Yellow One 'corrected' “What is a drinak? I think you meant (apostrophe) drink (apostrophe).” Pink 1 re-correted Yellow's correction. “Cactus Cactus Cactus! Cactus Juice is good for you! I'll drink some if you do too!” Red 1 rhymed, his robot attached to the second vehicle which Pink 1 was also attached to. “Alright, Dr. Seuss.” Pink agreed. “Hush, Shakespear!” Yellow scolded at the same time that Pink spoke. “Who is Shakespear?” Pink asked. “Shakespear is the original Doctor Seuss, but his stories made more sense and it took four days to read his stuff.” “They came from...behind!” Blue 1 quoted from a truly ancient movie that had been filmed a long time ago in a solar system far, far away. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Gay joke!” Red 1 commented. “We hit you from the side not-” Team 3 looked at one another, checked the time they had left, and decided that they had just enough to organize one actual race now that they had four vehicles before they'd need to seriously get to repairing the equipment. – – – – – White 1, had he been on the moon in the flesh and not the steel, copper, and other metals and plastics would have trembled in hot anger. He'd gotten away from one team of dummies to find out that there was, in fact, no one living on the base at all. Instead, it was being run by a staff of robots. Meaning, money costs and the ruination of a project that took over a decade to set up aside, there was nothing here to really save. What made it worse was that the majority of them, much like his original 'team' spent more time gaming and goofing off than anything else. To a point he supposed that he could understand that given that the automated tech on the moon base did most of the observation work for them, and they were only present to relay the abnormalities in the day-to-day activities to HQ, but even so, he had at least expected a little bit of professionalism. Instead, he was reminded of the time when he was forced to babysit all eight of his younger cousins at the same time back on Silax 3 (a space station) and was, for the most part, ignored. Eventually he resorted to asking the computer for directions to the internal reactor cooling room, and the AI directed him to the elevator where he pushed a button and waited for the proper floor. “Sling us a web- you're the Spiderman! Oh-ho-ho sling us a web...tonight!” Came a song over the elevator speaker. White looked at the speaker in amusement and chuckled. “Thank you God, it's not playing Friday.” Finally, there had been something humorous about this trip. “May the classics never die!” Ding! Having arrived at his destination, White stepped out of the elevator and into a room that had multiple vents in the walls for letting heat out into the vacuum that was the moon's 'atmosphere'. Unfortunately even the moon's night-cycle was not enough to cool the reactor, and the reactor was actually hundreds of feet underground to protect it from the occasional meteor shower (as was the observation station, though it was not nearly as deep) which meant the heat had to travel up the shafts they'd cut into the rock before it could exit into the sky above. Heat-wise, it would have been much more efficient to have built it on the surface so the heat could escape more easily, but for reasons already stated it would have been unwise. White made his way to a console at the other end of the room that stood before a large glass tank that held a light -blue liquid inside it. The liquid was boiling- a bad sign. Up in the spaceship in orbit around the moon White 1 frowned, and back on the moon and in the cooling room he looked down from the tank and observed the console's readings. From what he could tell, the reactor was close to going critical, but he still had somewhere around twenty minutes before it would. First he checked the emergency coolant reserves. Spent. Not good. White looked up at the tank again. Even as he watched its levels were steadily dropping towards a red line halfway down the tank. All that we've got left is in that tank! In truth the coolant was only used when there was something wrong with the surface coolers, which assisted in venting the heat from the the shafts, but when they malfunctioned (which was over a week ago) the liquid coolant was 'injected' into the system. Now it was almost gone. Still, there might be something I can do to slow it... Putting his mind to his task, White began checking the system for an alternative and found one several minutes later: the station's AC system. Why HQ had installed an AC unit when no one alive was on the base and it was cold by default on the moon he had no idea, and at the moment did not care. White commanded the AI to turn on the AC unit and seal all other vents that led to the facility rooms except for the room he stood in now. It would have very little effect due to the fact that the room was in a permanent state of vacuum, but heat rose and cool sank which might still affect the room, and every second the AC bought was a second more of time they had to repair the surface units. Feeling accomplished, White sat his robot down on the stone floor and waited. – – – – – “WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU MORONS DOING?!” Robert screamed (to the best of his robot's ability) at teams One and Three. “ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US FIRED?!” Really it was a shame that Robert, Sally and their teams had arrived when they did because Team Three was winning the race they'd set up, which they complained about, but at the moment Robert was in no mood to debate the value of the first Luna NASCAR Grande Pre. “We've got fifteen minutes until we blast a new crater the size of Texas into the face of this moon, and you guys are having a race!” “So the moon will blow us?” asked one of the moron-squad as he detached from his Lunar Vehicle and joined the other racers standing by the race track's starting point. Robert saw what they were doing and strode over to him and ripped out his control antenna. Instantly the robot went into convulsions and then fell over. The others stared at Robert and took a step back. “Anyone else wanna try tellING me a sex joke?” He (would have) growled. He got many shakes of the head in return. “Then get to work on that cooling unit!!!” To Robert's relief they did in fact finish repairing the cooling unit and got it running to full capacity before they ran out of time, and then set to work doing the rest of the job that Team 1 had neglected. It would take another minute or two before it began to have an effect on the reactor, but finally, it seemed that things were looking up... – – – – – “Hmm? Hey guys, why is the AC turned on?” One of the Observation team members asked, turning his head away from the thermostat. There was certainly no reason for it to be on, as they one: were not there in the flesh, and two: it was already way below zero in every room in the facility save for two. “Beats me. Personally, I think its a little cold in here; I'm feeling it even from where our actual bodies are.” “Well, it doesn't help that our actual bodies are on the other side of the moon and the life support in that chamber is bare minimal. Speaking of which, I need to pee. I'll be back.” “Wait.” “Hmm?” “Turn off the AC before you go and see if you can get the heater to reach to the control chamber before you do. I'll need to go soon too, and I'd rather not freeze my feet to the floor like last time. Oh, and password-lock it so that nobody starts fooling around with it again.” “Sure thing!” The robot in front of the thermostat adjusted the little switch, and then 'logged out' of his machine. Shortly after, warning sirens began screaming in the facility as the Air-Conditioning machine began heating the cooling chamber and nowhere else. Meanwhile, on the planet below the moon, a certain dreaming Gray Pegasus with a blond mane and tail muttered a single sentence and then rolled over onto her back, still asleep. “I just don't know what went wrong!” – – – – – “What?!” Robert exclaimed in horror and confusion as the readings of the facility on his arm informed him that a meltdown was imminent. “But we fixed everythING! And White told me that he'd found a way to slow the meltdown! What happened?!” “Someone set up us the bomb!” All of Team 1 replied at the same time. – – – – – “Computer! Turn the cold air back on! Hurry!” “Please State Password To Access Temperature Conditioning Controls.” “Password?! There's no password!” “Access Denied.” “I Hate Computers!” White declared, slamming his fists on the console, denting it and accidentally crushing and jamming the button to emergency-drain the cooling liquid from the vat, which gushed out all over the floor and control console and himself. “Shit!” “Access Denied.” – – – – – Down on the planet below (once again) Twilight Sparkle gazed up at the moon from her bed, trying to drown out the racket from the party that the Pink pony had thrown in her library. Earlier she'd seen the four stars that, as prophesied in her book had closed around the moon, and she looked on with a mild feeling of dread in her heart. No one had listened to her, not even her teacher, the princess and sister to the Mare In The Moon, and now it just might be too late to stop what was coming. She was startled out of her worries when her little baby-Dragon assistant Spike barged into her room wearing a lampshade and told her in an eager voice that it was time to go watch the princess raise the sun. Sighing, Twilight rolled out of her covers and followed him and the many ponies that had attended Pinkie's surprise party to the town hall, where the mayor gave a speech concerning Princess Celestia's choosing of their town to raise the sun on the longest day of the year this time around. While she did Twilight gazed worriedly up at the moon and witnessed a bright flash of light that swept away the Mare In The Moon crater formation. This enhanced her worry, but a nudge from Spike drew her attention back and she tried to listen again. – – – – – Nightmare Moon stuck her head outside of the lander and looked on in astonishment at the glowing mushroom-shaped cloud that expanded up from one of the places that the golems had been working at. Near the base of the cloud was a blinding light, followed shortly after by what looked like a gray sandstorm headed her way. It was not until the ground began to tremble and then outright shake as the 'storm' came closer that she realized that it was not a lunar sandstorm, but rather a blast wave, and she quickly ducked her head back into the lander and slammed the door and ran to the controls, flipping one switch or lever after the other and pressing random buttons. How do you make this thing f- “YaaaAAAAAAH!” She (would have) screamed as the blast wave hit her and knocked it off the surface of the planet, partially crushing it and sending her and it tumbling and rolling along with several pieces of lunar base equipment, the partially-melted upper torso of one of the robot mechanics (who was yelling 'Wheeeeeee!' as he flew), and several large chunks of rock. Nightmare Moon literally bounced and careened off the walls of the lander, scraping her horn quite painfully on a number of sharp edges, and nearly broke a few bones in the process. After the fourth horn-scrape however, Nightmare realized that it looked different and examined it as best she could whilst still being thrown around. She narrowed her eyes at a slight discoloration and then tried to use magic and found it to be much stronger than normal. You've got to be kidding. All Celestia did was put a coat of rubber cement on my horn!? That's it?! Nightmare Moon seethed with rage at knowing that her freedom from the moon could have been achieved centuries ago if she'd only known that it was a simple insulator that had prevented her from using her magic. Quickly she scraped the rest of it off with a hoof and the walls of her transport and cast a teleportation spell to what had once been her home to plan for her take-over. Meanwhile, the remains of the Lander and the spinning robot and the several larger rocks rained down on Equestria in several different locations, one of which being the side of Celestia's head while she was flying to Ponyville, which knocked her out cold and made her fall to the ground with a growing bump on her head. This was why none of Twilight's later-sent letters for assistance were answered. Another place some of the debris landed was in the back yard of a particular sea-foam green Unicorn who had been sleeping. This piece of debris was the upper-half of the robot, which was now even more damaged than it had been before, but one hand and the speaker was still functional. When the Unicorn woke up and finished screaming over the huge crater behind her house she discovered the nearly-destroyed robot, which struck up a conversation with her. After an hour or so of this she decided she wanted to meet the builders of this fascinating creation and began trying to set up a communication device her yard at the robot's instruction. Epilogue: A New JobEpilogue: A New Job “Well, that was a grand failure!” Robert said with a sigh as he looked out from the windows of the starship at the wiped-out moon base. “At least we're still alive, right?” Sally asked, joining him by the window with a glass of thawed (formerly) concentrated cherry cider. She offered him a bit but he shook his head. “Yeah. Alive, and fired. And probably blacklisted. For life.” “Oh, I wouldn't be too sure of that.” Robert laughed without humor. “And why not? This project was worth countless dollars and took years to set up! Why wouldn't we get fired for it?!” “Because we weren't supposed to succeed anyway.” Sally replied, taking a sip of her drink. Robert blinked, unsure he'd heard her correctly. “Say what?” “I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but we've been friends for a long time and I don't want you to just throw away your career prematurely. Just don't spread this around, okay?” Robert nodded. “That space-horse we found on the moon wasn't our first encounter with life in this solar system, and I'm not talking about the primitive creatures that we've been observing. About sixty years ago another of the winged-horned ones came to the second NASA research center without a ship and told them- in perfect English, mind you- she knew of a good place for another observation station, and she gave them the location, and the necessary raw materiel for its construction. When she was asked why, she replied that it was to welcome back a relative in the future and refused to say more other than for how long she'd allow us to observe from the station's construction site. Last week was the end of that time.” “So then why did HQ send us here?” “To make it look like it was a natural accident that was not fixable and to make it seem that HQ had made an effort to save it. Don't worry, your job is in no danger.” “So then, us getting stuck with the two teams of idiots was completely according to plan?” She nodded. “Huh. Okay, but why did you know about it?” “Because I was told before the mission began. Remember, me and my team were assigned to keep track of replacement equipment and tools. We would have to know about it in case teams 1 and 3 took this more seriously than they usually do everything else so that we could, if necessary, sabotage or 'lose' a few things ourselves.” “So what happens now? Just go home?” Sally shrugged. “If you want. Me, I've been offered the job of overseeing construction of a new observation base on the planet itself. It's supposed to be built in a large cave in a mountain near one of the smaller settlements. I'm going to need a few hard-working assistants to ensure that everything gets built and is maintained the way it's supposed to be. Interested? I seem to recall you saying something earlier about wanting the chance to walk around and breathe in non-recycled air.” Sally extended a hand to him. Robert grinned and took her hand, and shook it. “If it's all the same to you two, can I come along too?” came a tired voice from behind them. Sally and Robert turned to see a man with a number of gray hairs near forty holding a cup of coffee. “I've had it with putting up with those idiots, and if my work will be appreciated, then all the better.” “What's your name?” Sally asked. “Maruus. Maruus Clay. You know me better as White-bot 1.” “You were the man who came up with the idea to use the AC in the station as a cooling unit, right?” He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. She smiled. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Clay.” THE END And that's it! Thank you all for reading; please leave a thumb up or down, a comment or suggestion, and I hope you enjoyed!
Part One: Incompetant AstronaughtsI don't own Moon Base Alpha or the related information/characters/equipment etc. I don't own My Little Pony and the characters, or merchandise, etc. I don't own anything related to Star Wars. I don't own anything related to Star Trek. I don't own anything related to Left 4 Dead. I don't own the chair that I'm sitting in at home, or the computer I'm using to type all this up. I also own nothing to do with football, other than a flat football that I've had for years and haven't used except on birthdays with family. I think the only thing in all this that I do own is my weird imagination and the two OC Humans Robert and Sally. Anyway, read, please leave a comment, and a like or dislike, and if a dislike, let me know what's wrong with it so I can improve. Used WITHOUT permission blah blah blah, names related to real persons are coincidence, blah blah blah. Now that's been said, let's get this show on the road. The Stars That Aided In Her Escape Nightmare moon yawned and sat up. It had been nine hundred ninety-nine years since her banishment, and in two days, it would have been one thousand. She would have been lonely, but her resentment, and anger towards her sister and those ungrateful creatures they called their 'subjects' kept her plenty of company, and as for things to do, she kept herself busy by practicing her magic, and training her body for the eventual time that she figured out a way off this rock. Just thee wait, sister, dear! She though for the six-thousand and thirty-second time. One day I shalt find a way off this prison, and then thou wilst pay! She had, of course, considered more than once just using her power to drop the moon onto the planet, but she did not really wish to kill off her subjects (or perhaps shatter the planet entirely). After all, what point was there in being a princess (or queen, once Celestia had been dealt with) if you had no one to rule beneath you? Still, at this point it might be mine only way back. Celestia made sure to disable most of mine magics before she banished me, and it hath only been mine constant prying at her barriers than has allowed me what little magics I hath got! If only there were some other way, some non-magical way for me to conduct mine escape... This thought had also crossed her mind several times, but other than once trying to build a tower out of moon rocks, which had toppled over and given what the planet-side dwellers saw as the “Mare in the Moons' horn”, she could not come up with any ideas. That is, until the next day when three objects she'd never seen before landed... – – – – – “Alright, safe landing for everybody!” Robert Higgins declared proudly as his craft settled safely down in the moon dust. ...And then his viewing screen showed one of the craft tumbling like a bouncing die from a Liar's Dice cup that had slipped between a player's fingers. It slammed into the ground and erupted into a fireball. “I am burnING! I am burnING! Some body help me!” Higgins face-palmed. Although they were using robots for this mission, not everyone that was on the project should have been. Some of them were little more than idiots who played video games too often. Unfortunately, this repair mission was too important to put off, so HQ had grabbed everybody who was even the least bit familiar with operating the equipment they'd be using, and then gave them all a crash-course in the tech on the moon base and shipped them off to White Moon Base 04, in the Equine solar system, which had named for the inhabitants on the planet below and to the right of them. Their mission was simple enough: repair the damaged equipment at the observation site, get inside the facility, and then contact HQ to inform them that the mission had been completed and to, of course, refill their oxygen tanks in their ship up in orbit from where they controlled the robots they were now using. So not only did the success of the observation project hinge on their ability to get the job done, but so did their own survival. “Ha. Ha. Ha. I did not know that row-bots could burn!” Laughed another of the crew from the crashed lander. This computerized voice thing is starting to get on my nerves! Higgins thought as he started feel a headache coming on. Their task, even with the morons on two of the four ships goofing off entirely too much, was going well so far: solar panels had been dusted off and repaired or replaced, damaged wiring was removed and replaced, and new filters were installed in the oxygen ventilation system. At least they have been in me and Sally Chang's areas. I wonder how things are going with the 'newbs'. Both his and Sally's teams had changed radio frequencies almost immediately after exiting the lander because the two other teams began typing in random stuff just to see what it would sound like on the speakers. Unfortunately (again) the control of the robots involved hooking up your nervous system to a computer, which meant your mind was in the machine, which meant also that you could not physically talk to one another from the ship, which could have prevented some of the stupidity they were doing now. There was, of course, a remote-control way to control them, but it was often a clumsy system, which made direct control much simpler. They better at least get something done! If I have to repair both my teams' stuff and theirs I just might toss them out the air lock after this mission is done with and say it was an accident! – – – – – Nightmare moon watched the new arrivals with curiosity. She had seen such things before, but only as they had been leaving. This had been because she'd been napping after an intense session of trying to break through Celestia's barriers on her magic. It had been these efforts that won her back her Royal Canterlot Voice, not that it helped her much here. Approaching them cautiously, as she had no idea what their intentions were or how dangerous they might be to her in her still-weakened state, Nightmare observed that they seemed to be working on several structures that she'd been ignoring for the most part as they seemed to do nothing. One of the creatures pulled off a thin object that was blue on one side and silver on the other and began swinging it at another of the creatures, who waved a white hose around like a whip as a counter. Wondering if they were communicating in some way, Luna strained against her sister's shield and managed to chip away at it enough to gain a mind-reading spell. She cast it, and then tilted her head in confusion. For the most part, they were spewing out nonsense or kept repeating what she assumed to be a name. All except for one of their group with white lines on it. “John Madden! John Madden! John Madden!” On of them with a purple stripe repeated over and over. “Chuck Norris is John Madden's father, and this moon is his soccer ball!” the green one declared. “Soccer balls are white AND black, you id-ee-it!” the blue one said. “Your mother is white and black!” Green shot back. “You want a piece of me, C 3 Pee Oh!?” Blue challenged, brandishing his...whatever the blue thing was. “You are C 3 Pee Oh! I am I-G eighty-eight!” “Your mother was a refrigerator, and your father was a toaster!” They're insulting one another, obviously, but what could they be talking about? What's a toaster? And what's a soccer ball? “Stop fighting you guys!” a white one said, hopping between the two. “WE HAVE TO SAVE THIS MOON!” Nightmare moon gasped. My moon is in danger?! From what? “The moon can suck my dick!” Nightmare Moon blinked. Did he just say what I think he said? “No it can't, you id-ee-it. It is a rock.” “I know that you dumb-ass!” “Quwequwequwequwe!” “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH!” “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle-” “Your mom jumped over the mooooon!” “I am going to rape you with this truck!” Blue threatened, and began waddling at a ridiculously slow pace towards another structure that Nightmare Moon had chosen to ignore and climbed on the back and leaned back against an indentation in the wall. To her astonishment, it suddenly began to roll forward towards the other two-legged thing. “Oh wow, you are driving at one mile per hour I am SO scared!” He said sarcastically. At least, Nightmare assumed it was said sarcastically. They had very little tone or pitch change to their speech, so it was difficult to tell. In any case, the blue one continued to move forward in his horseless carriage until he smacked into the front of the green one, who only moved back a foot. “You suck.” Green said, pointing a arm at the 'truck'. “No, you suck!” Blue declared, climbing down from it and waddling back in front of green. “No, YOU suck!” Green insisted. “I saved fifteen percent on my car insurance by getting rid of my car!” Red said randomly. Both blue and green turned to look at him, then nodded thoughtfully. “Cool story, bro. Tell me another!” Green said, clapping his hands. “Would you like to hear me sing?” Red asked. “Yes!” Green agreed. “No. I want to sing!” Blue objected. “Let's sing the 'Beer Song' together!” Red suggested. The three creatures locked arms and began singing, if it could be called that. While this stupidity was going on, White had wandered away from the others and had set to the task of completing their mission. This was not missed by Nightmare Moon and she crept through the work area and jumped up on top of another of the 'trucks' to watch him work. First he knelt down before what seemed to be a small box with two hoses connected to it, and tinkered with a mess of wires that had been exposed by him. Several of them were sparking, and he hesitated a bit, then turned a knob on the side of the box. The sparking stopped, and he began removing the ones that had been sparking. What sort of magic is this? I've not seen anything like it before in all my life. After a few minutes and several more discarded and replaced wires he placed a thin metal plate over the wires and rose from where he knelt and began heading towards what looked like a group of huge blue flowers on even larger fat stalks. He flipped a lever and the 'head' of the flower lowered. Luna recognized the blue parts as part of was that other had been waving around and focused her magic specifically on this one's mind, which ended the sound of the other group's horrible singing. “I don't ask for much, do I?” He thought. “I just want to do a good job, be put with a responsible team, and have my job be appreciated. Instead, I get a bunch of morons who don't know the difference between a game and a very real situation. Yes, we get to control robots to do this task, and yes, it's really cool, but we have a job to do!” Nightmare moon sighed. Or would have, if there was any air on the moon. As it was, she expanded and contracted her lungs and didn't sigh. It would seem that even aliens had to deal with their share of neglect and ungrateful beings. In a way it was comforting to know that she wasn't alone in that regard, but in others, disheartening. Part of her wanted to reveal her presence to this- what did he call it? A robot?- and say she knew the feeling of being taken for granted, but she had no way of knowing how he'd react, nor did she know how strong it was. If it took her to be a threat, she'd only have her physical strength to aid her. She was startled out of her thoughts when he turned away from the large blue flowers and began walking towards yet another location that looked like several metal boxes with gold cylinders on them. Several of the gold cylinders seemed to be losing their contents, some of which turned to snow and fell to the already-white surface. Perhaps it is holding water? Wait, no...it would be ice if it was water...so then, those cylinders are air tanks? “Stupid frigging asteroids and stupid 'team' mates and...” He tried pressing his metal claws against a flat surface that had several colors on it forming a picture and what she assumed was a language and got a message that clearly displeased him. “DAMNIT!” He turned back toward his team mates, who had taken several smaller objects and seemed to now be controlling them and driving them around the other structures in a circle. “YAAAY! I WON!” Green yelled. “No you did not, it was my row-bot!” Blue corrected. “No no no, eet wuz mine!” Red argued. “No, we all lost THE GAME!” Purple declared. “The Game sucks!” Green declared. “No one plays The Game anymore but you!” “The Game is greater than John Madden and greater than Chuck Norris!” Who is this Chuck Norris and John Madden? Nightmare moon wondered. White waddled up to the arguing 'team' and informed them he needed help repairing the oxygen tanks, and he also needed a robot for himself. “No! It Is mah row-bot! You can't have mah row-bot!” Green said. “If we don't work together to fix this problem, not only will the observation station crew suffocate, so will we!” White warned them, his claws clenched into fists. “We can go into Cryo sleep and the computer can fly us back to base.” “Yeah? And what happens when NASA 2 finds out that you goofed off and let their employees die in a project that is costing us billions of dollars? I don't think them firing you will be the least of your worries then!” “....” “....” “....” “Well?” “Robots, to the oxygen tanks!”
Part 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot In The ButtPart 2: Jumping The Gun and Getting Shot in the Butt Nightmare Moon had discovered that these morons were not the only team on the moon, and set out of observe them as well. It was because of these observation sessions that she discovered that they had used vehicles called 'Lunar Landers' to land on the moon, and when they had finished their task of repairing the damaged areas it would also be the same way they left. A grin spread across her face. If she could figure out how the Landers worked she could steal one, or perhaps stow aboard one and they'd make her escape from the moon for her! The only problem was, of course, the repair persons themselves. But even that probably would not be an issue because two of the four teams were idiots, which was proven by the destroyed lander she found for Team Moron 2. So I'll need to steal or hide aboard the first group that I encountered...I wonder how hard that would be? Like most plans with unknown factors, however, it did not happen the way she had intended... “Oh my Goddess it is a door ubble!” The blue one declared. “I will take it home and I will feed it and take it for walks and I will name it 'Moon-ee'!” “Ale ee ns are cool!” “Hey Blue, is this your mom? Can I ride her?” Green asked. Blue made a gesture with one of his claws that reminded the Nightmare of a certain part of male anatomy. “What the hell?” White asked, tilting his metal head to one side. “How are you breathing on the moon? There is no air here!” Of course, Nightmare moon could not answer with speech because there was no air to fill her lungs and voice-box with, so she instead turned to one side, facing the planet, and raised a hoof to point at it. “That does not answer my question (dot, dot, dot)” “I want a pony-ride! These trucks have no horse power!” Purple said, wadding towards The Nightmare. “No, Purp! It might have Space Rabies!” White objected. Nightmare watched it come close, then frowned and shoved it back with one of her spells. “Oh my Gawd is has The Force! It is a Jedi-horse!” Purple yelled while floating backward in slow motion due to the lack of gravity. “No no, it is a Uni-corn, see the horn in it head? It using magic.” White said, pointing a claw at her ivory spike. “Uni-corns are not real, it is an ale lee n!” Blue objected. “And Vulcans are Elves that travel in space!” “Star Trek sucks!” “No, Jar Jar sucks!” “Preaching to the choir, boy.” Blue said. Green laughed. “You are a choir boy? Bet the Cath O Lick priests love you!” Nightmare moon face-hoofed. This was not at all going the way she'd hoped, though at least they weren't trying to fight her. At this rate I just might bring down the moon to shut these guys up! “We should take it back to our ship and study it!” White stated. “I will tell the others what we've found.” “Maybe there are more space horses around and we can open a zoo. It looks like it has wings, so we'll need a rider with a helmet and parachute.” Red said to the others, all of them once more ignoring White, who grumbled while checking the different channels for the other three (or technically two, since the one ship crashed) teams. An hour later the other groups joined the one Nightmare Moon was walking around with and conversation exploded between them, ranging from stupid stuff to serious. Apparently they'd never seen an Alicorn before, which meant they'd not been to the planet below. Nightmare Moon smiled. Some of these others seem much smarter than this first group. Perhaps I can reverse the mind-reading spell so I can implant my own thoughts in their minds and communicate with them and convince them to lend me one of their craft- “Have you guys ever eaten horse?” One of the newcomers with a pink stripe asked the rest of its group. “It is delicious!” A second Red disagreed. “Uh NO! Horses are for RIDE-ING!” It turned away from the pink one and looked at The Nightmare, and circled her. She watched him, not reacting. “I luv horses, but I ain't never seen a horse like this one.” “Well it IS an ale lee n, genius.” Pink pointed out. “But what are we supposed to do with it?” Now is my chance! Nightmare Moon realized, and stomped a hoof in the dust a few times. This got the attention of the robots in front of her and she once more turned away from them as she had done before and pointed a hoof at the planet. She looked at them, then looked at the planet, poking her leg at it a few times, and then looked back at them. “It seems it wants to go to the planet.” White 2 observed. Success! Equestria, here I come! “Too bad we don't have Planet Landers.” Nightmare's left eye twitched. “It is a shame, really. I have not been on a planet for several years and I miss the non-recycled air.” “We could take the escape pods from the ship down.” The first White suggested. “Set up a distress beacon, and have NASA 2 send some real Planet Landers. We get a vacation, and she gets to the planet.” “How do you know it's a she?” One of the Reds asked. “Because she does not have a dick, duh.” another of them stated. Silence reigned between the machines. “Why are you looking her junk?” The same Red asked. “It is an ale lee n. I am studyING new life. I will be fame-us.” “By looking at its junk.” “I still have determined it is female.” “Why would we care what gender it is? I am more wonderING why it is alive in a vacuum.” “More wonderING? You need to learn how to speak!” “None of us are speaking, it is the row-bot!” Green 1 stated. Oh no, not again! Don't these things ever stop arguing?! Nightmare moon wanted to weep; first contact with living (sort of) creatures in nearly a thousand years, and all they wanted to do was fool around on the moon, and argue over stupid stuff. Finally, her patience ran out and her eyes glowed white. She focused her magic on the reversed spell for mind reading, and mentally yelled: “Cease this foalish arguing at once!” The robots froze, and then all turned to look at her. “Thee said thou hath a way back to the planet and could get me there! I command thee, as queen of the night, to do so now! Do this and I shalt forgive your incessant foalishness and allow you to stay in mine kingdom until thine people come for thee!” They stared at her a good minute and twenty seconds longer, and then all began chattering at the same time while running away from her, save for one, who fell over. “Who spiked mah air tank?!” the first red yelled. “She's gonna eat meee-ee! She's gonna eat meee-ee!” Green 1 yelled. “Halt! I mean thee no harm, I merely wish to enlist thine aid in returning to mine home and throne!” Nightmare Moon said, trying to convince them to stop fleeing from her like rabbits from a hungry Gryphon. Her efforts were in vain. At one point two of the blues crashed into one another and fell to the ground. A pink and a green helped them up, and they began to organize themselves again, each running to form a team of one of each color, and then ran out in four different directions, one of which a nearby lander. No! I can't miss this chance! Galloping as best she could in the low gravity, Nightmare moon reached the lander just as the last robot pulled itself on board and shut the door. No! She pounded on the door with her fore hoofs to no avail, and then to her surprise was pushed back by a brief, but forceful blast of air. Stunned and confused by this, Nightmare Moon shook her head and then widened her eyes as several flames emitted from five holes on the bottom of the lander and pushed the craft up into the lunar sky and out of her reach before she remembered she has magic. What?! They use fireworks to propel their space-faring craft? That's brilliant! I shall have to remember that for when I finally do escape so that- Ack! The other groups! I have to catch them! Nightmare Moon began following the next-closest group, which for a reason unknown to her, was only made up of three members. “Why are we goING this way? Our ride is totaled.” The Red of their group (Red 3 now, I guess) asked. “Our ride is dead, but we fixed the shit on the surface, so the planet-watchING place should be workING fine now. We can hide in there until help comes!” Green 3 explained. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. You said 'comes'.” Yellow 3 laughed. “You are an id-ee-it, Jerald. Is she chasING us?” Red 3 asked. Yellow turned his head completely around, startling Nightmare Moon, but not stopping her. Yes she was, and she was very close to catching up to them. “Yes she is we are boned!” Yellow replied. “Save me John Madden!” “John Madden has been dead for over two hundred years and is buried on Earth. Even if he wuz zombie and heard your prayer he'd not get here in time.” “Wait, why are we runnING? We are controllING row-bots. Just disconnect!” Red 3 said, and then his body froze mid-step and toppled over into the moon dust. “I feel stupid he is right!” Green 3 agreed, and then his robot also toppled over, followed by Yellow 3. Nightmare Moon stopped up short, puzzled by their sudden inactivity and examined them. They were no longer moving in the slightest, and the mind-read spell she'd recast after casting the reverse of it to make a complete link detected no mind to read. So either they had spontaneously died- Or a 'robot' is a golem of sorts, which means they're being controlled from another location! But where? Nightmare moon looked up to the skies and searched them with her immortal's vision. For three minutes she saw nothing, but then she very briefly saw a flash of light near (from where she was standing, anyway) the Solaris Stallion constellation’s eye. Gotcha! Her mood rose, then deflated again when she recalled that she was still stuck on the moon. She sighed, and then saw another of the Landers rising into the sky. What am I doing?! I've got to find that last Lander! – – – – – Meanwhile, up in the controller cubicles for repair team three, a trio of Humans were waking up with a headache, much like their other three team mates had after the crash. “Ugh, that sucked! I'll never get used to detaching at long-range like that!” Red 3 groaned, holding his head as it throbbed like the worst hangover he'd ever had. “We're not supposed to, you know, though I'll agree that it sucks.” Green 3 agreed. “Those robots are expensive to build and maintain, so we're probably going to get chewed out about this later.” Yellow walked out of his own cubicle and sighed. “I told you, bros.” G3 and R3 joined Y3 and looked at each other, confused as they headed for the door to the commons. “I told you about the moons!” – – – – – “Running through final checklist now!” Sally shouted over he panicked crew's chattering voices into her Lander's on-board mic. “We should be taking off in just two more minutes!” “Don't take any chances! I know we can just disconnect at any time, but there's always some kind of backlash when we lose an arm or something!” “Really I don't get why we're evacuatING, Robert; it didn't attack us and it only asked for help and even offered us some downtime on its world if we took it home.” “Think about that for a minute, Sal. It's up here on the moon by itself, and wants to go back to the planet below that it supposedly rules. It has no source of ox-i-gen or any other air for that matter that we could detect that it could breathe, and this is our first encounter with it and yet somehow it knew our language and could tap into our communication channels directly. I don't claim to know what we're dealing with, but something with abilities like that probably did not end up here by accident. In any case, we need to report this findING to head quarters before we take any other-” The transmission was suddenly cut off and Sally Chang tried desperately to reestablish contact. Frantic that something might have happened to the other Lander Sally stood up from her seat and looked out a window directly into Nightmare Moon's face and, startled, fell back once more into her seat. “The horse-lady is back!” One of her crew declared, and the others began freaking out. – – – – – Nightmare moon focused what little magic she was access to into the robot, and began trying to sense the connection that linked the golem to the controller. It was difficult because of how...alien...the mind and the object being controlled was, but she eventually found what she was looking for and smiled. “And now, you can't break the link!” She communicated to the one that had first seen her through the window. She smirked as the being tried to disengage the connection and failed, and then set to doing the same to the others. Once finished she walked around from the front windows to the door and politely rapped on the side with a hoof four times. After a few moments she knocked again, this time more insistent. “Who is there?” the bland monotone voice the golems all shared asked. “I am Nightmare Moon, Queen of the night and rightful ruler of Equestria!” “...” “...” “Nightmare Moon queen of the night and rightful ruler of space-horse land who?” Nightmare frowned. “You id-ee-it! You are goING to piss it off!” “A queen is not an it, a queen is a she.” “Who gives a F(asterisk mark, asterisk mark, asterisk mark) if it is a boy or a girl? Make it go away!” “Do I look like that black guy from that old movie that talked to animals to you, you dumb ass?” “No, you look like a can open-er.” “It speaks English already, we don't need a trans-lator.” “NO, BUT THOU DOTH NEED TO CEASE BEING RUDE AND ADDRESS ME DIRECTLY LEST I LOSE PATIENCE WITH THEE AND THINE CREW!” Nightmare Moon mentally blasted with the Royal Canterlot Voice. “ALL I'VE WANTED FROM THE START WAS FOR THEE TO GRANT ME PASSAGE HOME! IF YOU INSIST ON DOING OTHERWISE HOWEVER, I AM FULLY CAPABLE ON MAKING THINE STAY HERE PERMANENT!” The crew of the Lander was silent for a moment, and then finally one of them asked “Does any body here speak King Arthur?”
Part 3: Flashing Your MoonPart 3: Flashing Your Moon “According to our readings, you still haven't fully repaired the station, repair squads. Is there a problem?” NASA 2 inquired. “We're also reading that the reactor cooling units took some additional damage from a recent surface impact shortly after your landing. Any idea what have caused the damage?” Higgins face-palmed from the orbiting star ship's cockpit. Yeah, he knew, alright. “Affirmative, HQ. Team three had some...technical difficulties with their flight controls and crashed and burned instead of landing.” He sent the reply and waited impatiently for their transmission to arrive and for HQ to send them a new message. It arrived two minutes later. “Are you on the transport ship, Higgins?” “Yes, ma'm.” “Why have you returned to the ship?” Robert sighed. They'll never believe this. “We encountered something we did not expect and the majority of our teams panicked. Rather than have the non-pilots try flying the Landers back themselves and maroon us here we pilots felt it prudent to do the flying ourselves.” “A problem? What kind of problem?” Here it goes... Before he could tell them what they'd all seen in scientific detail, a green-striped robot clanked in and stole the headset from him. “It was an ale-ee-n! There wuz an ale-ee-n horse on da moon!” “...” Higgins glared daggers the robot. “Give that back, you moron!” Robert Higgins yelled at the robot. “And put that thing away! The robots are for vacuum-assignments only!” “You can make like a vacuum and suck me!” the Green shot back. “I will take credit for finding the ale-ee-n, since my team found it first! “You're also the dumshits that crashed your Lander and got your equipment stranded on the moon when we scattered! Give me the headset back!” At the Green's continual refusal, Robert tried another tactic and pressed the send button instead. Two minutes of him smirking and the Green asking why he was smilING later, Greeny was told he was fired for destruction and misplacement of company equipment from neglect, and if he wanted his job back he'd have to pay for the equipment first as was company policy. Green crushed the headset in a fist and glared at Robert, who pressed a manual deactivation button for all nearby robots (nearby being within the confines of the ship). Searching about for a second headset, Robert took one from the co-pilots seat and plugged it into the pilot's headset outlet. “Sorry about that, but he's been dealt with. In all honesty, though, we did indeed find an alien that resembled a black horse.” He sent the message and waited. “Do you have proof of this?” HQ sounded skeptical, not that he held it against them. If he hadn't seen it he'd not have believed it either. “It's in our robot's visual records. Give me a few minutes, and I'll send it to you.” After sending the visual data from several of the robots Higgins settled in his seat to wait while HQ viewed it. An hour later he was contacted again by a rather excited man. “Was it friendly?” “That would depend on your definition of 'friendly.' At the very least it understood us and communicated with us.” “Did it want anything?” “It wanted us to take it to the nearby planet.” “Did it say why?” “It claimed it was a 'queen of the night'. Maybe she's the head of some magical religious sect or something and a ritual went wrong; who knows? The point is, she knows we have a way to get to the planet and she wants us to take her there.” “But you don't have any Planet Landers. How would you get to the planet?” “Escape pods.” “Hmm, that could work as long as you landed in the ocean or some place with soft dirt...” The next time someone spoke on the other end, it was the woman again. She said that speculation on aliens that could survive in vacuum could wait. “If you don't fix that cooling unit before the next sunrise on the continent below you the reactor is going to have a meltdown, which could make the facility explode and level a good portion of the moon's surface! Alien or no alien, you've got to fix it before then!” “When is the next sunrise?” “Less than an hour!” Though the teams were not very happy about it, there was little else they could do, and quickly returned to the control cubicles with no complaining from team 4, and loads of complaining from teams 1 and 3. In the end, though, the Lunar Landers were on their way back to the moon's surface, and the three abandoned robots already on the surface were up and moving again. With the fourth and second site already repaired to full capacity, the teams made their way to the remaining sites of one and three. Part of site one had been repaired due to the efforts of the white-striped member of team one, but the majority of it was still in a state of disrepair, with the cooling unit not even having been touched as well as the solar panels, which powered everything in the area of the facility below them. Once again, the two Landers touched down, and once again, White one was stuck with the stooges, minus Green, who'd been fired and whose robot was still with the other two members from the crashed lander that had survived. White had gone with another lander team and had escaped with them on his own. Red and Yellow, after 'logging in' made their way back to their site on foot. Even on foot they arrived back on site faster than the Lander did. “So if duh base explodes does that mean we've made a Death Star?” asked Blue. “No, it means we're all fired and the people in the base are dead!” White replied, angry over still being stuck with a bunch of chuckle-heads. “Why don't we just evacuate them instead?” Yellow asked while carrying a tool box to a solar panel relay to repair the panel. “Because even though they'd live we'd still get fired. It might not be as big a deal to you gaming-neanderthals, but I rather like having a steady source of income!” “I am not ape-man I am a row-bot!” “Know what?” White threw down his screwdriver, which made a small cloud of moon dust rise from the surface. “Screw you people, I'm going to help site three!” The remainder of team one watched him go, and then looked at one another, and then at the lunar vehicles. “Drag race?” – – – – – Nightmare Moon had eventually given up on trying to get them to open the doors, and instead sat down to wait. They could not communicate with their people to request help, and they could not take off safely as long as she could hop right back onto it, which meant they were stuck unless they agreed to do as she commanded, and unlike them, she could wait forever for them to open the door. Not that she wanted to, but until she'd worked away enough at Celestia's barrier she could not force it open, and she had no idea how to make the craft function besides. Eventually though, she grew impatient and decided to cease interfering with their communications and again waited. Chances were, if they found that they could communicate with their people again without her telling them, they would think that she had forgotten that they could or that it had simply been a problem with their form of magic. If this became the case, she could eavesdrop on them and perhaps find another way. Sure enough, several minutes after she removed her interference, they sent a message to the others of their kind asking if 'they could hear them'. “O M G are you all alright? We thought you had died!” “We are fine, but the ale ee n horse-thing is keeping us from leavING! When we tried to take off it somehow latched onto the Lander and we became too heavy to lift off again. Did you all make it out okay?” “Affirmative, but I have some very bad news. AccordING to HQ, the base on the moon is goING to go into meltdown in less than one hour unless we can fix the coolING unit that the one id-ee-it team crashed into as well as the rest of the equipment to get it the energy it needs to run better. Will the space horse let you out?” “Probably, but whether it will let us in again is another story.” “Right now we just need to get this base fixed. It can have the Lander if it wants; if we don't fix this, it won't matter very much. HQ warned that if the base goes, it could deface a good part of this moon. If that happens, we're all goING to the planet, and not in a good way.” “Understood. MovING out.” Nightmare Moon did not know what a 'meltdown' was, but did not much care either. Once she was inside the Lander they could not make her leave, and if they failed to stop the meltdown, she'd be going to the planet anyway (though she suspected from the 'not in a good way' part that it would be about as pleasant a trip back to the planet as it had been being launched from the planet in the Moon Cannon Celestia had built for just such an occasion as exile to the moon. Why would she have something like that, anyway? No matter. When I return, I shall use it to fire her to the sun! She made a crazy-person face and cackled manically. Or she would have if there had been any oxygen or perhaps helium on the moon, but if there had been helium she would have sounded hilarious rather than creepy. As it was, she just looked silly, and upon realizing this, ceased trying to laugh in vacuum. A metal wheel on the outside of the ship spun around twice and then a round door on the lander opened and several robots came out of it. Nightmare Moon watched them exit, doing nothing, and the robots looked at her. “Nice space horse...nice....niii-ice....” A yellow one said, holding up its hands in a placating gesture. Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes. What am I, an animal? “Dude, either she'll attack us or she won't. CallING her nice won't change anythING, Stop wastING time.” The one that had willed her to be a 'nice space horse' grumbled, but did as it was told and took the tool box offered to it by the last robot to disembark from the Lander. As one group they made their way off into the lunar wastes toward what Nightmare Moon presumed to be the still-damaged equipment. Drawn by curiosity, she felt compelled to follow them, and reasoned that now that she new where this lander was, she could return to it at any time and arrive before the others when they were finished. – – – – – “Alright this area is done. On to the next!” Team four's team leader declared, and they began packing up their things onto the lunar vehicles and boarded them. Unfortunately there was only 'seating' for two on each vehicle, and they had six members, so the two pilots of the Landers elected to stay behind and keep the Lunar Landers ready for when they got back, be it for emergency escape or for simple mission completion. The trip was relatively uneventful except when they allowed for a temporary lack of discipline to use a lunar hill as a ramp. The low gravity gave them more 'air time' than they'd expected, and due to a lack of thinking before they acted one of the vehicles crashed into the other and the one that 'flew' tipped over in midair and fell over. The driver and passenger, feeling like idiots, got off their vehicle and tried to right it, and the second vehicle stopped as well to help. Fortunately being robots and not flesh-and-blood astronauts they were plenty-strong enough together to right the vehicle, and after a brief repremanding they continued on to the next site. By the time they'd arrived however that site was finished being repaired as well and their numbers swelled to eight as they once more headed out. Team Four had to stop briefly to recharge their batteries, but Team Three elected to go on ahead without them. “We will see U there.” Robert nodded in approval. Good to know that even with all the complaining, immaturity, and the 'wow' over the alien they still can take a dire situation seriously. If only he knew what was to follow upon Team Three's meeting up with Team One... Team Three dove across the wasteland playing 'Ultimate Showdown' on their robot's third communication frequency. Really they weren't supposed to have saved any music files to the company robots, but it was rare that anyone used frequency three because it was rumored to be cursed, not that any of them actually believed it. “Did anybody actually make a live-action or CGI music video out of this song?” “No. Sad, am I right?” “We should totally do it when we get back. I will be Chuck Norris.” “No, the only one that can play Chuck is Chuck. Any other would be a joke.” A blip on their map came up and the two slowed down to a stop to see what it was. It turned out to be White One. “Wut R U doING out here?” Red Three asked White One. “Where is yer team?” “My 'team' as you call them are being stupid, lazy-” He added several more insulting-yet-accurate descriptive words to his rant, and then got on with it. “and are horsING around instead of repairING the area we've been assigned to, so I'm going to Site Three to help there.” White One looked them over. “Hey, you guys are Team Three. What R U doing out here?” “Site 3 is done beING fixed. Team 4 is rechargING their batteries, but will be comING soon. How much is done?” “Not much. I fixed the Solar Panels the first time we were here and started working on- is that music I'm hearING?” White had only just noticed the music in the background, and had his robot possessed an actual face, he would have sported a frown. “Music? I hear no music.” Red lied. “U must be imaginING things!” “Maybe it is the curse!” Yellow three suggested, adding a deadpan laugh that sounded as if each 'ha' was from an individual sentence. “Curse. Right. Any chance you guys could give me a lift?” “No we are all full. Ask team-” “Attention, guys! Whatever you're doING, drop it and listen up!” Another featureless voice crackled loudly over their channel as well as every other channel (although White and Team three had no way of knowing that since they were only on one channel) to ensure the message got across. “We've only got thirty five minutes until the reactor blows and we get a free ride across the galaxy on a nuclear energy wave mixed with moon rocks and base slag, so we need to speed things up, okay? Now, is there any place that hasn't been fixed up yet?” Indeed there was one place that was not, as White 1 already knew, and Team 3 soon saw. White 1 decided that rather than put up with his idiot-team again, he'd head over to the lunar base itself and see if he could stop the over-heat from the inside, or at least slow it down. In the meantime he tasked Team 3 with doing the job he knew that his own team was not. For the moment, though, they watched the ridiculous spectacle of them conducting their own version of a demolition derby around that site they'd been tasked with repairing and were neglecting. “Drive responsibly! Drink, don't drive!” Blue said as the front of his vehicle 'smashed' into the side of the other “No, it's don't drinak and drive!” Blue's driving buddy, Yellow One 'corrected' “What is a drinak? I think you meant (apostrophe) drink (apostrophe).” Pink 1 re-correted Yellow's correction. “Cactus Cactus Cactus! Cactus Juice is good for you! I'll drink some if you do too!” Red 1 rhymed, his robot attached to the second vehicle which Pink 1 was also attached to. “Alright, Dr. Seuss.” Pink agreed. “Hush, Shakespear!” Yellow scolded at the same time that Pink spoke. “Who is Shakespear?” Pink asked. “Shakespear is the original Doctor Seuss, but his stories made more sense and it took four days to read his stuff.” “They came from...behind!” Blue 1 quoted from a truly ancient movie that had been filmed a long time ago in a solar system far, far away. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Gay joke!” Red 1 commented. “We hit you from the side not-” Team 3 looked at one another, checked the time they had left, and decided that they had just enough to organize one actual race now that they had four vehicles before they'd need to seriously get to repairing the equipment. – – – – – White 1, had he been on the moon in the flesh and not the steel, copper, and other metals and plastics would have trembled in hot anger. He'd gotten away from one team of dummies to find out that there was, in fact, no one living on the base at all. Instead, it was being run by a staff of robots. Meaning, money costs and the ruination of a project that took over a decade to set up aside, there was nothing here to really save. What made it worse was that the majority of them, much like his original 'team' spent more time gaming and goofing off than anything else. To a point he supposed that he could understand that given that the automated tech on the moon base did most of the observation work for them, and they were only present to relay the abnormalities in the day-to-day activities to HQ, but even so, he had at least expected a little bit of professionalism. Instead, he was reminded of the time when he was forced to babysit all eight of his younger cousins at the same time back on Silax 3 (a space station) and was, for the most part, ignored. Eventually he resorted to asking the computer for directions to the internal reactor cooling room, and the AI directed him to the elevator where he pushed a button and waited for the proper floor. “Sling us a web- you're the Spiderman! Oh-ho-ho sling us a web...tonight!” Came a song over the elevator speaker. White looked at the speaker in amusement and chuckled. “Thank you God, it's not playing Friday.” Finally, there had been something humorous about this trip. “May the classics never die!” Ding! Having arrived at his destination, White stepped out of the elevator and into a room that had multiple vents in the walls for letting heat out into the vacuum that was the moon's 'atmosphere'. Unfortunately even the moon's night-cycle was not enough to cool the reactor, and the reactor was actually hundreds of feet underground to protect it from the occasional meteor shower (as was the observation station, though it was not nearly as deep) which meant the heat had to travel up the shafts they'd cut into the rock before it could exit into the sky above. Heat-wise, it would have been much more efficient to have built it on the surface so the heat could escape more easily, but for reasons already stated it would have been unwise. White made his way to a console at the other end of the room that stood before a large glass tank that held a light -blue liquid inside it. The liquid was boiling- a bad sign. Up in the spaceship in orbit around the moon White 1 frowned, and back on the moon and in the cooling room he looked down from the tank and observed the console's readings. From what he could tell, the reactor was close to going critical, but he still had somewhere around twenty minutes before it would. First he checked the emergency coolant reserves. Spent. Not good. White looked up at the tank again. Even as he watched its levels were steadily dropping towards a red line halfway down the tank. All that we've got left is in that tank! In truth the coolant was only used when there was something wrong with the surface coolers, which assisted in venting the heat from the the shafts, but when they malfunctioned (which was over a week ago) the liquid coolant was 'injected' into the system. Now it was almost gone. Still, there might be something I can do to slow it... Putting his mind to his task, White began checking the system for an alternative and found one several minutes later: the station's AC system. Why HQ had installed an AC unit when no one alive was on the base and it was cold by default on the moon he had no idea, and at the moment did not care. White commanded the AI to turn on the AC unit and seal all other vents that led to the facility rooms except for the room he stood in now. It would have very little effect due to the fact that the room was in a permanent state of vacuum, but heat rose and cool sank which might still affect the room, and every second the AC bought was a second more of time they had to repair the surface units. Feeling accomplished, White sat his robot down on the stone floor and waited. – – – – – “WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU MORONS DOING?!” Robert screamed (to the best of his robot's ability) at teams One and Three. “ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US FIRED?!” Really it was a shame that Robert, Sally and their teams had arrived when they did because Team Three was winning the race they'd set up, which they complained about, but at the moment Robert was in no mood to debate the value of the first Luna NASCAR Grande Pre. “We've got fifteen minutes until we blast a new crater the size of Texas into the face of this moon, and you guys are having a race!” “So the moon will blow us?” asked one of the moron-squad as he detached from his Lunar Vehicle and joined the other racers standing by the race track's starting point. Robert saw what they were doing and strode over to him and ripped out his control antenna. Instantly the robot went into convulsions and then fell over. The others stared at Robert and took a step back. “Anyone else wanna try tellING me a sex joke?” He (would have) growled. He got many shakes of the head in return. “Then get to work on that cooling unit!!!” To Robert's relief they did in fact finish repairing the cooling unit and got it running to full capacity before they ran out of time, and then set to work doing the rest of the job that Team 1 had neglected. It would take another minute or two before it began to have an effect on the reactor, but finally, it seemed that things were looking up... – – – – – “Hmm? Hey guys, why is the AC turned on?” One of the Observation team members asked, turning his head away from the thermostat. There was certainly no reason for it to be on, as they one: were not there in the flesh, and two: it was already way below zero in every room in the facility save for two. “Beats me. Personally, I think its a little cold in here; I'm feeling it even from where our actual bodies are.” “Well, it doesn't help that our actual bodies are on the other side of the moon and the life support in that chamber is bare minimal. Speaking of which, I need to pee. I'll be back.” “Wait.” “Hmm?” “Turn off the AC before you go and see if you can get the heater to reach to the control chamber before you do. I'll need to go soon too, and I'd rather not freeze my feet to the floor like last time. Oh, and password-lock it so that nobody starts fooling around with it again.” “Sure thing!” The robot in front of the thermostat adjusted the little switch, and then 'logged out' of his machine. Shortly after, warning sirens began screaming in the facility as the Air-Conditioning machine began heating the cooling chamber and nowhere else. Meanwhile, on the planet below the moon, a certain dreaming Gray Pegasus with a blond mane and tail muttered a single sentence and then rolled over onto her back, still asleep. “I just don't know what went wrong!” – – – – – “What?!” Robert exclaimed in horror and confusion as the readings of the facility on his arm informed him that a meltdown was imminent. “But we fixed everythING! And White told me that he'd found a way to slow the meltdown! What happened?!” “Someone set up us the bomb!” All of Team 1 replied at the same time. – – – – – “Computer! Turn the cold air back on! Hurry!” “Please State Password To Access Temperature Conditioning Controls.” “Password?! There's no password!” “Access Denied.” “I Hate Computers!” White declared, slamming his fists on the console, denting it and accidentally crushing and jamming the button to emergency-drain the cooling liquid from the vat, which gushed out all over the floor and control console and himself. “Shit!” “Access Denied.” – – – – – Down on the planet below (once again) Twilight Sparkle gazed up at the moon from her bed, trying to drown out the racket from the party that the Pink pony had thrown in her library. Earlier she'd seen the four stars that, as prophesied in her book had closed around the moon, and she looked on with a mild feeling of dread in her heart. No one had listened to her, not even her teacher, the princess and sister to the Mare In The Moon, and now it just might be too late to stop what was coming. She was startled out of her worries when her little baby-Dragon assistant Spike barged into her room wearing a lampshade and told her in an eager voice that it was time to go watch the princess raise the sun. Sighing, Twilight rolled out of her covers and followed him and the many ponies that had attended Pinkie's surprise party to the town hall, where the mayor gave a speech concerning Princess Celestia's choosing of their town to raise the sun on the longest day of the year this time around. While she did Twilight gazed worriedly up at the moon and witnessed a bright flash of light that swept away the Mare In The Moon crater formation. This enhanced her worry, but a nudge from Spike drew her attention back and she tried to listen again. – – – – – Nightmare Moon stuck her head outside of the lander and looked on in astonishment at the glowing mushroom-shaped cloud that expanded up from one of the places that the golems had been working at. Near the base of the cloud was a blinding light, followed shortly after by what looked like a gray sandstorm headed her way. It was not until the ground began to tremble and then outright shake as the 'storm' came closer that she realized that it was not a lunar sandstorm, but rather a blast wave, and she quickly ducked her head back into the lander and slammed the door and ran to the controls, flipping one switch or lever after the other and pressing random buttons. How do you make this thing f- “YaaaAAAAAAH!” She (would have) screamed as the blast wave hit her and knocked it off the surface of the planet, partially crushing it and sending her and it tumbling and rolling along with several pieces of lunar base equipment, the partially-melted upper torso of one of the robot mechanics (who was yelling 'Wheeeeeee!' as he flew), and several large chunks of rock. Nightmare Moon literally bounced and careened off the walls of the lander, scraping her horn quite painfully on a number of sharp edges, and nearly broke a few bones in the process. After the fourth horn-scrape however, Nightmare realized that it looked different and examined it as best she could whilst still being thrown around. She narrowed her eyes at a slight discoloration and then tried to use magic and found it to be much stronger than normal. You've got to be kidding. All Celestia did was put a coat of rubber cement on my horn!? That's it?! Nightmare Moon seethed with rage at knowing that her freedom from the moon could have been achieved centuries ago if she'd only known that it was a simple insulator that had prevented her from using her magic. Quickly she scraped the rest of it off with a hoof and the walls of her transport and cast a teleportation spell to what had once been her home to plan for her take-over. Meanwhile, the remains of the Lander and the spinning robot and the several larger rocks rained down on Equestria in several different locations, one of which being the side of Celestia's head while she was flying to Ponyville, which knocked her out cold and made her fall to the ground with a growing bump on her head. This was why none of Twilight's later-sent letters for assistance were answered. Another place some of the debris landed was in the back yard of a particular sea-foam green Unicorn who had been sleeping. This piece of debris was the upper-half of the robot, which was now even more damaged than it had been before, but one hand and the speaker was still functional. When the Unicorn woke up and finished screaming over the huge crater behind her house she discovered the nearly-destroyed robot, which struck up a conversation with her. After an hour or so of this she decided she wanted to meet the builders of this fascinating creation and began trying to set up a communication device her yard at the robot's instruction.
Epilogue: A New JobEpilogue: A New Job “Well, that was a grand failure!” Robert said with a sigh as he looked out from the windows of the starship at the wiped-out moon base. “At least we're still alive, right?” Sally asked, joining him by the window with a glass of thawed (formerly) concentrated cherry cider. She offered him a bit but he shook his head. “Yeah. Alive, and fired. And probably blacklisted. For life.” “Oh, I wouldn't be too sure of that.” Robert laughed without humor. “And why not? This project was worth countless dollars and took years to set up! Why wouldn't we get fired for it?!” “Because we weren't supposed to succeed anyway.” Sally replied, taking a sip of her drink. Robert blinked, unsure he'd heard her correctly. “Say what?” “I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but we've been friends for a long time and I don't want you to just throw away your career prematurely. Just don't spread this around, okay?” Robert nodded. “That space-horse we found on the moon wasn't our first encounter with life in this solar system, and I'm not talking about the primitive creatures that we've been observing. About sixty years ago another of the winged-horned ones came to the second NASA research center without a ship and told them- in perfect English, mind you- she knew of a good place for another observation station, and she gave them the location, and the necessary raw materiel for its construction. When she was asked why, she replied that it was to welcome back a relative in the future and refused to say more other than for how long she'd allow us to observe from the station's construction site. Last week was the end of that time.” “So then why did HQ send us here?” “To make it look like it was a natural accident that was not fixable and to make it seem that HQ had made an effort to save it. Don't worry, your job is in no danger.” “So then, us getting stuck with the two teams of idiots was completely according to plan?” She nodded. “Huh. Okay, but why did you know about it?” “Because I was told before the mission began. Remember, me and my team were assigned to keep track of replacement equipment and tools. We would have to know about it in case teams 1 and 3 took this more seriously than they usually do everything else so that we could, if necessary, sabotage or 'lose' a few things ourselves.” “So what happens now? Just go home?” Sally shrugged. “If you want. Me, I've been offered the job of overseeing construction of a new observation base on the planet itself. It's supposed to be built in a large cave in a mountain near one of the smaller settlements. I'm going to need a few hard-working assistants to ensure that everything gets built and is maintained the way it's supposed to be. Interested? I seem to recall you saying something earlier about wanting the chance to walk around and breathe in non-recycled air.” Sally extended a hand to him. Robert grinned and took her hand, and shook it. “If it's all the same to you two, can I come along too?” came a tired voice from behind them. Sally and Robert turned to see a man with a number of gray hairs near forty holding a cup of coffee. “I've had it with putting up with those idiots, and if my work will be appreciated, then all the better.” “What's your name?” Sally asked. “Maruus. Maruus Clay. You know me better as White-bot 1.” “You were the man who came up with the idea to use the AC in the station as a cooling unit, right?” He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. She smiled. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Clay.” THE END And that's it! Thank you all for reading; please leave a thumb up or down, a comment or suggestion, and I hope you enjoyed!
