My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 30

ARES 3 solar day 33

As a member and trainer of the Wonderbolts, Spitfire received basic field medical training, although in reality most training scenarios ended with you "getting a real doctor ASAP." She got a three-week crash course after being selected for Mission 54, the third mission of ESA's Amicitas spacecraft. During those hard-study days, Feihuo spent at least two hours every day chewing on her medical textbook, and now the book has turned yellow and brittle, with no less than thirty lines of alien information stuck to the pages. It took a little bit of scotch tape to keep it from falling apart.

But even so, the limited training she received did not mention how to deal with a unicorn that was obviously Shi Lezhi.

She'd been watching Starlight bang against the wall of Mark's storage cabinet for ten minutes. She had already made a plan. If Starlight fainted from exhaustion or lightning again - Spitfire bet that one of these two situations would happen sooner or later - she would push Starlight onto the bed and drink aspirin.

Transcribed on a nearby whiteboard was a transmission message long enough to force Mark to grab one of his former team members' spacesuits from the shelf to fill it with water (obviously, the soil in the residential area didn't need watering today):

REF S DRV SPECS SHOWS DIM LMTR MSSNG FRM S DRV TPT SP ARRAY. REF YR RPT INCDT HYPOS OBJ AVOID PARAM TRIPPED RSLT UNTRCEBLE 5D JUMP & NOVEL PWR SURGE TO FUEL JUMP. FAIL CASCADE MN PWR. FAILSAFE FAIL DUE TO NOVEL UNANTCP COND. TRACE OF ENV SYS SP INCONCLUSIVE DUE TO LOW SIGNAL, NOVEL VECTOR. PREP 2ND MSG PROCED CYCLE TELP SP. CT WHN RDY.

(Decoded as follows: "Reference to the Sparkle Drive specifications shows the dimensional limiter is missing from the teleport spell array. Based on your incident report we hypothesize that the automatic object-avoidance parameter was tripped, resulting in an untraceable five-dimensional jump and unexpected power surge to fuel the jump. The surge overloaded the batteries, which attempted to draw more power to pensate, and the unexpected magic vacuum resulted in a failure cascade of the main power system. The power cascade failsafe failed due to the unexpected and unanticipated conditions . Trace of environmental system spell failed due to low signal and unexpected vector. Prepare for second message containing procedures to reactivate the telepresence spell. Contact when ready.")

After receiving the news, Starlight Glimmer immediately ran to get the spacecraft technical guide to look for content related to the Sparkling Engine Magic Array. In the rush, he tore out two pages that were frozen dry. When she was done, she threw the book aside, began her critical psychological self-analysis, and left the task of translating the telegram into Pony language to Dragonfly.

Apparently the Twinkle Engine was trying to avoid some undetected obstacles on its path. And due to some oversight, the spell was not designed to work only within the three-dimensional space, so a small jump occurred in the fifth dimension. The energy absorbed this time was much higher than the previous normal operation, which basically drained the engine power supply array composed of more than a hundred magic energy batteries carried by the spacecraft. A battery that is suddenly starved of energy will naturally try to compensate by absorbing energy fields from the environment. But in the universe they are now in, this parity energy field does not exist; and this attempt to absorb energy from the vacuum has worsened the situation dramatically, greatly increasing the system load of the Twinkle Engine, resulting in at least one One battery was damaged first.

When one battery is damaged, the load on all other batteries increases accordingly, and this chain reaction disintegrates the entire system like a crystal domino. The fault protection systems that should have triggered a system-wide shutdown to prevent cascading failures were collectively silent at this time, because they actually also relied on the environmental magic field for energy to function normally. Only two emergency batteries, disconnected from the bus, escaped.

And now Maltimore was waiting to hear back, so that they could send in instructions that might - just might - re-create the telemetric presence spell without wasting a lot of water, to the delight of the horse.

Mark wandered over, looked at Starlight with concern, and said, "What's wrong with you? (English)" Spitfire never trusted their own translations, but this time she guessed that the first word might be "how".

"Too bad. (English)" Dragonfly replied. When he saw Mark gesturing and making a circle to indicate "continue," the changeling said, "Just like that idiot Roscoe [1]. (English)"

"Sand sculpture[2]. (English)" Fireball added.

Mark thought for a while, then his expression gradually became weird, he made cross-eyes and grinned, protruding the teeth on his upper jaw. He pointed to his face and then to the stars. Seeing Dragonfly nodded, Mark sighed, picked up Xingguang and moved her to her bunk, whispering repeatedly, "As long as it's okay, it'll be okay... (English)"

Everyone here finally breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, the matter is settled," Berry said, "Feihuo, what are you going to do?"

Spitfire shrugged. "What else could I do? If she were a Pegasus, I would have done the old-fashioned way of making her fly around the obstacle course twice before taking a shower." In fact, she would have suspended her and called in a psychiatrist to identify her. Can I still participate in the project? All in all, she'll pass the blame to other ponies as quickly as possible. And to be honest, that's exactly what she did just now.

"She's not crazy," Dragonfly said, "She's just ashamed. She thinks she's responsible for why we're trapped in this."

"Yes, it's her fault." Fireball complained angrily. When he realized everyone was staring at him, he added, "What's wrong? This is the truth!"

"It's useless to say sarcastic words." Berry urged, "Hurry up and get a few more plastic buckets. We are wasting Twilight Sparkle's time now."

Spitfire walked towards Starlight. She heard the unicorn talking to himself about improving efficiency and reducing magic energy fluctuations. Feihuo was really tired of staying in this damn place, being so useless and helpless.

She thought, it would be great if Xiaodie was here. At least Fluttershy was able to calm down Starlight Glimmer for a few minutes. She communicates directly with Mark, has the training to meet the requirements of her role, and is as experienced as the other team members. And she was just wasting food by staying here.

But she calmed down and thought about it again. No, Xiaodie can't come. What would she do if her animals were left without her for a whole month? Neither she nor the animals can stand it. At least the Wonderbolts wouldn't be in trouble without her as the leader.

Think about it again: in fact, no one should be here in the first place. Mark should be on his way home now, and we should be basking in the joy of the third grand parade as the heroes of the first orbit around the star. And it’s not any horse’s fault that we’re stuck. The current situation is just because of an accident, it's that simple.

But it still pisses me off to feel so helpless.

She thought, maybe, it would be better to have Berry in charge than me.

Transcript – Hydraulic Telegraph Switch – ESA Maltimore Center ＜-＞ ESA spacecraft AMICITAS

(Note: Standard telegraph communication techniques were used throughout/the simplified abbreviations of Moss code were translated)

AMICITAS: The communication experimental plan a/β/γ process has been copied. In order to save battery energy for food production operations expected in four days, plan A is not feasible for the time being. complete.

ESA: Got it. Prepare experimental plans β and γ within twenty hours. complete.

AMICITAS: Not feasible. Due to food production process constraints, the earliest the test will be available is three days later. complete.

ESA: Please explain what a “food production process” is. complete.

AMICITAS: You really don't want to know. complete.

ESA: Okay. Expect to contact you again after sixty hours. complete.

AMICITAS: Contact us sixty hours after receipt. Communication ends.

[Note:]

1. Roscoe: The funny buffoon in the American TV series Justice.

2. Dipsticks: In the American TV series Justice, Dipshits (idiots) were harmonized into Dipsticks due to classification issues.