Author's Note: Hooray the semester is over, I'm FREE! To celebrate here's the next chapter.
Chapter 7: It's a Terrible Privilege
Inside of the TIME carrier Trixie is being escorted down the halls by a troop of armed guards. Trixie is then locked in a cylindrical glass cage. Dr. Whooves walks in and goes over to a control panel. "In case it's unclear, you try to escape...you so much as scratch that glass." he pushes a button and the floor beneath the cell drops away to nothing making the wind scream. "Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?" He pushes a button and closes the floor. "Ant. Boot." he concluded gesturing first to Trixie then the panel.
"It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." Trixie said.
"Built for something a lot stronger than you." Whooves told her.
"Oh I've heard." she said turning her head towards a camera. "A mindless beast...who thinks she's still a pony. How desperate are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?"
"How desperate am I?" Whooves moves toward the cage slowly. "You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can't hope to control, you talk about peace and you kill cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."
"Ooh. It burns you to have come so close, to have the Tesseract, to have power unlimited power, and for what? A warm light for all ponykind to share? And then to be reminded what real power is." Trixie explained.
"Well, let me know if 'real power' wants a magazine or something." he said walking out of the room.
Meanwhile
In the conference room all the ponies were watching the whole conversation. "She really grows on you doesn't she?" Fluttershy asked.
"Trixie's gonna drag this out. So, Twilight, what's her play?" Applejack asked.
"She has an army called the Changelings. They're not of Canterlot nor any world known. She means to lead them against your kind. They will win her Equestria, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract." Twilight explained.
"An army, from outer space?" Applejack asked.
"So, she's building another portal. That's why she needs Ms. Cheerilee for." Fluttershy said.
"Cheerilee?" Twilight asked.
"She's an astrophysicist." Fluttershy explained.
"She's a friend." Twilight said.
"Trixie has them under some kind of spell...along with one of ours." Rarity said looking away.
"I wanna know why Trixie let us take her. She's not leading an army from here." Applejack said.
"I don't think we should be focusing on Trixie. You can smell crazy on her." Fluttershy said.
"Have care how you speak. Trixie is beyond reason but she is of Canterlot, and she is my sister." Twilight said defending her.
"She killed eighty ponies in two days." Rarity said.
"She's adopted." Twilight said.
"I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium, what do they need the Iridium for?" Fluttershy asked.
"It's a stabilizing agent." Rainbow Dash said walking in. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at TIME. No hard feelings point break, you got a mean swing." she said to Twilight. "Also, means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Trixie wants. Ah, raise the mizzen mast, ship the topsails." Rainbow asked. The personnel just look at her strangely. "That pony is playing a game!" she said pointing at one of the personnel. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." she is now at the command area of the ship, covering one eye. "How does Whooves even see these?"
"He...turns!" Derpy replied.
"Sounds exhausting!" Dash said as she begins messing with the screens, sticking something to the underside of a desk. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Pie can get her hands on pretty easily. Only major component she still needs is a power source of high energy density. Something to...kick start the Cube."
"When did you become an expert in t-th-thermo...nuclear as-um astro...physics?" Derpy asked.
"Last night...The packet, Cheerilee's notes, the extraction theory papers...am I the only one who did the reading?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Does Trixie need any particular kind of power source?" Applejack asked.
"She'd have to heat the Cube to a hundred and twenty million kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." Fluttershy replied.
"Unless, Cheerilee has figured out how to stabilize the Quantum Tunneling effect." Rainbow said.
"Well, if she could do that she could achieve heavy-ion fusion at any reactor on the planet." Fluttershy said.
"Finally. Somepony who speaks English." Dash said with relief.
"Is that what just happened?" Applejack asked everypony confused.
"It's good to meet you, Doctor Fluttershy. Your work on anti-electronic collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you...lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster." Rainbow said.
"Umm...thanks." Fluttershy said.
"Doctor Fluttershy is only here to track the Cube. I was hoping you might join her." Whooves said walking in the room.
"I'd start with that amulet of hers." Fluttershy said.
"It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." Applejack said.
"I don't know about that, but it is powerful like the Cube. And I like to know how Trixie used it to turn two of the sharpest soldiers I know into her personal flying monkeys." Whooves said.
"Monkeys? I do not understand-"
"I do!" Applejack said interupting Twilight. The entire room goes instantly silent, staring at her. "I...I understood that reference."
"Shall we play, Doctor?" Rainbow asked.
"This way, ma'am." Fluttershy said as the two pegasuses walk off.
Later
Both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash are working on tracking the Cube. Fluttershy is scanning the amulet with a device. "The Gamma readings are definitely consistent with Cheerilee's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process." Fluttershy said.
"If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around six hundred teraflops." Rainbow said working on a screen.
"All I packed was a toothbrush." Fluttershy said. That made Rainbow Dash giggle a bit.
"You know, you should come by Dash Tower some time. Top ten floors all R and D. You'd love it, it's a candy land." Dash offered.
"Thanks but...last time I was in Manehatten I kind of...um...broke...Harlem." Fluttershy said.
"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises." Rainbow said before zapping her in the side.
"Ow!" Fluttershy cried.
"Hey!" Applejack shouted at the other side of the room.
"Nothing?" Dash asked Fluttershy. Applejack then approaches her.
"Are you nuts?" Applejack said.
"Jury's out!" she said to Applejack before turning to Fluttershy. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"
"Is everything a joke to you?" Applejack asked.
"Funny things are." Rainbow replied.
"Threatening the safety of everypony on this ship isn't funny. No offense, Doc." Applejack said.
"No it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things." Fluttershy said.
"You're tip-toeing. You need to strut." Dash said.
"And you need to focus on the problem, Miss Dash." Applejack said.
"You think I'm not? Why did Whooves call us in? Why now, why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables." Rainbow explained.
"You think Whooves is hiding something?" Applejack asked.
"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets. It's bugging her to, isn't it?" Rainbow asked Fluttershy.
"Uh, Aah, I just wanna finish my work here and-"
"Doctor?" Applejack said interrupting her.
"...Sigh...A warm light for all ponykind, Trixie's jab at Whooves about the Cube." Fluttershy explained.
"I heard it." Applejack said.
"Well, I think that was meant for you." Fluttershy said to Rainbow Dash who offers her a blueberry. "Even if Pinkie didn't tell Trixie about the tower, it was still all over the news."
"The Dash Tower? That big ugly-"
Rainbow Dash gives her a look.
"...building in Manehatten?" Applejack asked.
"It's powered by an arc reactor, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?" Fluttershy asked.
"It's just the prototype." Dash said before turning to Applejack. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now, that's what she's getting at."
"So, why didn't TIME bring her in on the Tesseract project? What are they even doing in the energy business in the first place?" Fluttershy asked.
"I should probably look into that as soon as my decryption program finishes breaking into all of TIME's secure files." Rainbow said.
"I'm sorry did you say-"
"JARVIS has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret TIME has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?" Dash offered.
"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around." Applejack said.
"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome." Rainbow explained.
"I think Trixie's trying to wind us up. This is a pony who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused she'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them." Applejack explained.
"Following's not really my style." Dash said.
"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Applejack asked.
"Out of the ponies in this room, which one is 'A' wearing a spangly outfit and 'B' not of use?" Rainbow asked.
"Applejack, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Fluttershy asked.
"Just find the Cube." Applejack said leaving the lab. As soon as she was out she thought about what Fluttershy said and got suspicious. So she decides to investigate.
"That's the pony my dad never shut up about?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Wondering if they shouldn't have kept her on ice."
"She's not wrong about Trixie, she does have the jump on us." Fluttershy said.
"What she's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in her face, and I'm gonna be there when it does." Dash said.
"I'll read all about it." Fluttershy said.
"Mhm, or, you'll be suiting up with the rest of us." Rainbow Dash said.
"Now, you see I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve, it's a nightmare." Fluttershy said.
"You know, I lost my wings." she said turning around to reveal that her wings are now stubbs with bandages. "When this happened in the desert. It made me useless. I lost the ability that I ever knew and loved. But with the help of science I built a suit that I could use to fly again. I've also got a cluster shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. This stops it." Rainbow Dash explained tapping the arc reactor on her chest. "This little circle of light. It's part of me now and my suit it's not just armor to me. It's a terrible privilege."
"But you can control it." Fluttershy said.
"Because I learned how and I wouldn't have if I hadn't lost my wings" Rainbow said.
"It's different." Fluttershy said returning to her work.
"Hey!" Rainbow said wipping clean the screen between them. "I read all about your accident. That much Gamma exposure should've killed you."
"So you're saying that the Flutterhulk...the Other Pony...saved my life? That's nice. That's nice sentiment. Saved it for...what?" Fluttershy asked.
"I guess we'll find out." Dash said.
"You may not enjoy that." Fluttershy said.
"And you just might." Rainbow Dash said returning to her work.
Author's Note: So many questions so little time. Will more questions be answered? Find out next time.