My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 335

ARES 3 solar day 330

"'They cut it down!' Sam yelled. 'They cut it down!'"

Spitfire tossed and turned on his sleeping mat. Normally, she was quite happy to let Tingting read aloud. (To be honest, as long as it was not her turn, she would be happy to read it aloud to anyone.) But today, when Ting Ting was reading this passage about the tragic situation after the Battle of Linshui, the further she read, the stiffer her voice became, and it felt like It seems that for some unknown reason, this changeling's ability to understand Mark's language suddenly deteriorated to the same level as Spitfire. Something must be wrong.

However, what she saw in front of her was absolutely true. She was restless, squinting her eyes and stammering as she recited the final scene of the War of the Ring. What happened to her? Is this some side effect of the two months of confinement in that cocoon?

"There was a . . . gloomy . . . hobbit . . . lolling . . . against the low wall of the mill yard. His face was grimy, and . . . his hands were dark. 'Sam, don't you like this?' He sneered, 'But you have always been soft-hearted...'" After a second of silence, Tingting suddenly pushed away the computer in front of him and muttered, "Excuse me," and then started running at a trot, gradually accelerating towards the back of the cave. go.

"蜓蜓!" Mark stood up almost in the blink of an eye.

"No, you continue reading," Feihuo volunteered, "I'll go talk." After all, she is the fastest here and the only trained warrior. If she looked like Tingting just now, she would have a bug again. Your skills will come in handy. The magic energy in the farm environment is still very thin, so her flying ability is comparable to that of a hen; but now that she takes off her space suit, this tiny amount of magic energy assists her wings, and she can still push her to chase dragonflies. footsteps.

By the time the flying fire rushed across the farm and along the drainage overflow channel, Dragonfly had turned and hid behind the curtain of insulation covering the entrance to the tangled corridor. Since two of the largest crystals had been neatly cut off and shipped away in order to make those giant batteries, it was no longer as difficult to pass through the crystal maze there as it was at the beginning; but the complex terrain still forced her to slow down briefly. She kept walking until she broke through and entered the more open cafeteria.

When she came in, she found the cafeteria empty, but Spitfire could still vaguely hear the faint sound of hooves in the distance moving deeper into the cave. She continued to rush forward to catch up. The magic energy from the farm spread here was slightly weak, but it was still enough to add a little power to her wings. In a few seconds she crossed the entire area of ​​the cafeteria, then continued towards the chasm and into the orb.

Starlight had previously set up several sunlight relay crystals in the hallways and on the cave walls of the cafeteria due to their frequent trips in and out to mine crystals for use in making batteries or as food for the fireballs. However, ponies rarely need to pass through cracks to go deeper into the cave, so the orb at the back, a nearly spherical flat chamber with irregular strips painted in various colors - is the largest in the cave. The only single chamber that is not blocked by crystal pillars - there is only one light source in total. And when she was so far away from the source of heat and magic energy, Feihuo also began to feel obvious physical discomfort. She folded her useless wings and slowed down her running speed slightly.

The dragonfly was still missing.

Then we entered the corner of the toothpaste tube, which is the third narrowest part in the entire cave. The sight in front of him briefly reminded Fei Huo of the secret passage leading to the core of Gushan - it was five feet high and could accommodate three people walking side by side - but upon closer inspection, he found that there were not many similarities. This section of the cave is taller and narrower; while it was still in its infancy, it was constrained by the reopening of some very ancient collapses and lava tubes, giving it its current double S shape. The curved corridor is covered with small clusters of crystals, so the line of sight is severely blocked, and it is impossible to even see the scene beyond the five figures in front of him.

Then enter the final chamber of the cave, the pegboard bed. The deep and biting Martian cold that once occupied the entire cave still remains here, lingering at the very end of the cave. Only a single lighting crystal directly above the exit of the toothpaste tube can provide a little heat to dispel the cold.

Fei Huo chased him all the way here and finally stopped. There is no need to move on. Just a few steps away from the entrance, there are large crystal tips growing through the soil surface of the cave. At least to the pony's naked eyes, after entering this somewhat narrow chamber and walking about thirty meters, the soil completely disappeared from view. If you then go forward about eighty meters, you will reach a place where no crystals grow, and the light emitted by the solitary light source at the entrance cannot reach; after that starlight permanently sealed the pile of granite rubble at the core of Area E The gray stone wall left behind marks the end of the cave range.

There was no sound of hooves. No activity. There are no changelings either.

At least, no changelings visible to the naked eye.

MD.

At first, Spitfire considered whether to conduct a blanket search here. After thinking for a while, she shook her head and turned back, slower than when she came, planning to call a few others to start a formal search.

When she returned to the cafeteria, she saw Mark, sitting on the fragment of a crystal column that had broken to the ground and blocked the boundary between the cafeteria and the farm. She quickened her pace again and ran towards him, "Are you Mark?" After she finished speaking, she quickly cut to pony language to threaten, "Or do you want to force me to come out with a stick?"

"I am Tarzan. You...of course are not Jane." Mark responded with his usual out-of-the-box thinking, and then whispered, "MD, it would be great if I could really meet Jane here."

Spitfire's confusion made her freeze in place for a full second. She shook her head to throw the words away and muttered, "Yes, you are Mark. Stupid and unreasonable... uh, inexplicable... joke. Okay." She took a deep breath, and then shouted, "You Why is a person here???"

Mark shrugged, "I'm a little curious. Besides, you came here alone."

"I'm..." She never liked the makeshift translation Starlight had come up with before, "Amazing Lightning", and other similar alternative names for the Wonderbolts. She finally rephrased, "I'm in the military! This is my job!"

"Suppose one of your subordinates went alone to find a missing comrade," Mark asked, "what would you do to them afterwards?"

Spitfire rubbed her hooves nervously. "I... will... laugh," she replied. "Hug them. Say it's okay. Make them a cake. A real cake." She raised her voice, hiding it. The fact that he blatantly lied.

"That's what you said," Mark continued, "Then why don't you go back and see how big of a cake Cherry Berry has prepared for you?"

When Fei Huo heard this reminder, he couldn't help but trembled with fear. Damn it, she spent too long at the top of the chain of command. Even after a year on Mars, she still keeps forgetting to follow discipline.

"Go on," the human gently pushed the pony's shoulder, "I'd better stay here and wait."

"No, you go back," Spitfire declined, "call them over."

"I don't think it's necessary," but Mark wasn't going to let her go. "I'll be fine here. But you can ask Starlight to set up another battery and create a crackling light show for a few extra minutes."

Spitfire didn't argue, but she didn't really go back either. Instead, she only walked past the first few crystal pillars in the tangled corridor. She stopped there and carefully took a few steps in place, deliberately imitating the sound of a pony's hooves walking away. Before she even finished this set of actions, Mark spoke, proving that she was not overly worried.

"How long are you going to hide it disguised as a piece of crystal?" His voice came from the cafeteria cavity. "Let me tell you, the flaw is still quite obvious. I have come here so many times that there are so many pieces here. I remember the fallen crystal clearly. And now there is definitely an extra piece on this side..."

"Mark," Dragonfly interrupted, "I'm over here." The last word was accompanied by a soft huff, which sounded like a rather large gas stove being lit and then turned off immediately. the sound made.

"Oh! Hmm." There were a few soft footsteps, and the gravel crunched under his feet; Spitfire took this opportunity to move as far as possible towards the entrance of the cafeteria. "Aren't you going to burn a lot of magic energy by doing this?"

"Yes." Tingting's voice was full of frustration and frustration, and she was ready to resign herself to the next questioning, "But I thought it would be enough to hide for a few seconds at a time. But you just refused to leave." Then there was a sound. A deep, heartfelt-sounding sigh of, "Why can't I just be alone for a few minutes?"

"Depends on what you plan to do during this time alone," Mark replied, "If you are going to build a No. 2 cocoon here..."

"No." Another deep sigh. "Let me take it, it's today's chapter, and the previous chapter. In the end, the good guys won, which is great, right? All injustice has been corrected. But when the hobbits return home, What I saw was a mess," said Dragonfly. "Everything was terrible. Everything that was joyful and beautiful, that made hobbit life sound pony-like, had been destroyed, just because it was fun to cause damage. This should not happen at all.”

"That, of course, shouldn't be the case," Mark explained, "but that's exactly the argument Tolkien wanted to express. Even if his hometown is not on the front line, the war will affect the home front. And Frodo, Sam, Merry There are also changes with Pippin."

"I think so," Dragonfly sighed, "but after I heard so many bad things like demolishing, burning, destroying, locking people up... I started to think..." There was a long pause. , Spitfire had to listen carefully to catch what the bug said next: "What would have happened if our invasion had been successful so many years ago?"

Mark waited patiently for a while after listening to her, and then asked, "Then what do you think will happen?"

"Of course changelings will look like changelings," said the dragonfly. "We'll ravage the ponies, of course, for the fun of it. We'll also suck them all dry; what else can we do with them? Anyone who dares to resist. They will all be imprisoned or enslaved by us. We will steal everything we want and smash the rest, because there is no reason to keep it? It is not our own hard work. It is all just pony-made garbage. That’s all. We’ll do all the bad things.”

Another sigh. "Of course I'll join in. And I'll be proud of it. The changelings are victorious, the Hive Warriors are glorious. The ponies will be beaten to pieces. No more hiding in the shadows and eking out an existence. There's something to eat. Endless food. You can do whatever you want because it's all at our disposal."

"You think your performance will be the same as those orcs." Mark replied.

"I clearly understand that I will definitely do this," said Dragonfly. "The winner takes it all, of course, right? It's a law of war. It's their business for ponies to be unlucky." She said and sniffed again, " That's what I thought when my understanding of ponies was limited to food or attack objects. I hadn't seen Berry yet..." She let out a slight gasp, "God, it's a good thing I didn't meet Berry at that time. ." There was a long silence, followed by, "I don't like myself very much right now."

"Ah ha. It's clear." There was another crunch of soil, and then Mark continued, "I'm just going to stay here. The last time you were alone in this mood, you put yourself Two whole months of confinement. Or we can all go back together. Which we may have to do in the end, because Spitfire and the others took too damn long to come to us."

"How did you know she was there? I mean, of course I knew, but how did you?"

Feihuo's face turned red after hearing this, from head to toe.

"Like I said - it took them too long. Either she wasn't there at all and was eavesdropping, or they all came together and eavesdropped. If I had to guess, it would be the first, because I Doesn’t seem to be very good at performing myself.”

The changeling snorted disdainfully. (She has perfected this move.) "You're lying."

"Maybe." The soil rustled lightly as he stepped on it. "Let's put it this way. In a few weeks you should be able to email Dr. Shields again, and having her talk to you will take a lot more than I can do right now. But let me be honest." Pause , "Yes, you are pretty bad."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"Hey, it's not my fault. You put so much effort into trying to discredit yourself in front of us. Well, guess what? We agreed. You're a cruel little evil hugger, and we don't give a shit what you are. Image, because in our opinion this is not your complete appearance. You are trying not to do evil." There was another sound of earth, "How many people in this world have done evil and are still addicted to doing evil, and how many people expect to do evil? You wouldn’t believe it if you were loved for such a villainous persona.”

"Of course I believe it. Just look at what my mother is like."

"But you're not like her." Move. "But you'll understand if you follow her example, and I can't blame you. She always comes back, doesn't she?" Move again. "But the point is, you weren't trying to keep us under control - well, except for once. You were trying your best to keep things as they were. Not to mention, you were even trying to keep things as they were, even though you must have known we all knew what you were up to. We all get along better with each other.”

"How to survive changelings, the first lesson of school."

"Don't be ridiculous. I don't buy it. Think about it, you don't just want to escape this planet. You want every one of us to get away safely. You really care about us. Would your mother care like this?"

"Uh...listen, can you change my name to my queen before? 'Mom' sounds...weird."

"Okay. As long as you can answer the question directly."

"Okay. My queen wants me to leave here. And maybe Berry - I think the two of them should be considered friends. But even by our standards, it's a weird friendship. But as for Starlight , fireball, flying fire, and you?" Pause. "Well, maybe you can, because honestly, you taste so good. As far as my queen is concerned, those other things can stay here forever, she doesn't care. Of course Berry would disagree. Leave them behind, but that’s what you asked anyway.”

"How did an ordinary pony with no wings or horns get such special treatment from a changeling queen?"

"I just said, the friendship between them is really weird."

"Okay. All in all, you are different from her. Maybe you were like that once. Maybe you were just a bug that would help destroy pony civilization. But I don't know when, you changed. Now here and now , you are questioning your old creeds, just because there is a book that gives you a glimpse of what it might be like to be on the other side against a swarm of changelings. This book allows you to discover a different world. Often. That means it’s a good book.”

"So is this a good book? I mean, is that what humans generally think it is?"

"This book is recognized as one of the classics in English literature. It's not because of how good the author's writing is. You should also know after reading it that there are large sections of content that are boring and dry. Like toast. And we're not going to read The Silmarillion because even the best parts of that book are worse than the whole mess of Aragorn's Coronation. And only Tolkien could come up with more than one or two , but three epic love stories, and then portrayed in the boring style of an obituary column in a newspaper."

"Then what is it famous for?"

"It works because of the work itself, and because of its historical significance. It's the first mainstream fantasy story in centuries that's not a children's story. It's also the first, well, first ever, I guess. A fantasy story that depicts war as a dishonorable or tragic event. This is also the first fantasy story that devotes a lot of writing to constructing a non-Earth world with unique geographical features, language, cultural traditions, etc."

"But mostly because it was almost the first story to express the idea that one didn't need to be a fearless killer to be called brave, regardless of the subject matter. For the first time in history, English-speaking readers read a tribute A story of heroism of kindness, generosity, gentleness and simple endurance. The Hobbits didn't have to fight to the death. The reason they won - and became heroes - in the end was because of their simplicity, their simplicity. humble and kind; they were pure human beings. This narrative runs counter to almost every fictional heroic story ever conceived by man at the time—and most real heroes as well."

"Who's bragging about how evil they are now?"

"Don't change the subject. Let's get back to my original point. You don't need to be a big bad bug. You don't need to come up with different ways to scare us all the time. And you don't need to make a fuss about cocoon every five minutes. Scream to show your loyalty. You just have to be yourself. If you don’t like the way you are now, you still have the opportunity to choose to be better tomorrow - you don’t need to change yourself all at once, but slowly and step by step Come."

"But now from my point of view, as a guy who may have been intentionally designed to be a cuddle toy for Sigourney Weaver's children and grandchildren, you are quite appropriate."

The changeling snorted again, "It's actually quite good until you get into that obscure cultural reference."

"Believe me, if you have the opportunity to visit Earth in the future, you will immediately find that this is not subtle at all."

Spitfire tried his best not to make too much noise from the friction of the soil under his hooves, and slowly walked back towards the farm from the tangled corridor. She didn't need to worry about anything anymore, and to be honest, she shouldn't have been eavesdropping for so long just now. She had always been afraid of suspicion, and if she brought it up now, Tingting might say something about what she should be like, and any effect of Mark's nagging might be in vain.

Maybe I could spend a little time each day thinking about who I want to be tomorrow, she thought, and that didn't sound like a bad idea.