CoCoBA Episode 7: Drops of Jupiter

Sweetie Drops was born in peacetime, but never really appreciated it. She had always idolized the tacticians of the past, more for their accomplishments than how they thought. Weaponry, technology, conspiracy, all of these appealed to her with its own special charm. There was so much versatility in those ideas, so much care and attention paid into finding unique and novel ways to go to war. The moment she was allowed in a military history museum was one of the best moments of her life.

At least, before she had entered the Empire, a few days ago. Magic was a convenient thing, especially in a world absolutely thick with it. It made understanding the situation, adjusting to her power, all of the processing that would’ve taken days or weeks, completely automatic. That didn’t mean it didn’t take some getting used to, but within a few days she was jumping into enchanted cave pools with the best of them.

Some of her other selves just noticed two children with Stands of their own, staring and then beating feet into the distance. She had a good idea they were heading for sanctuary, and with a quick nod she sent two of herself after them. A little mental push, and ｢Technologic｣ dissipated from above her and moved to them.

Then, advancing, they began to search for good targets.

***

“She’s following us!” Button yelled, head glancing back at their two pursuers and the Stand hovering between them. One had a suitcase tucked under one fetlock, and both of them were expressionless.

Diamond was ahead by a good margin and could hardly hear him, but she got the sentiment. Her Stand pushed further still, in case this was a game of fatal keep-away. The path they were cutting through town was going to be fast, but demoralizing, full of torched memories and things she didn’t have the time to mourn.

Her heartbeat resounded in her ears, and ahead she saw a body, slumped over against the earth like it had fainted from all of the excitement. It was no one she recognized, and briefly she wondered if it was some other enemy that somepony else had already vanquished.

Button saw it too, and rushed forward so she could hear him, spitting out the words. “C-Coco. Scootaloo’s, friend. Is she…?”

Diamond tried to tell if the pony was alive or dead, and couldn’t. “I might be able to carry her, but we’d have to stop.” Then she glanced over her shoulder.

The two Bon Bons were fiddling with the suitcase, but they couldn’t do it successfully and keep their pace. Their eyes were focused on the item between them, and they moved in almost perfect unison. Despite this, they had only fallen a couple yards behind.

The foals looked back at their opponents, then at each other, and ran for the burnt ring of houses where Coco Pommel lay.

When they reached it, Button spun and leapt on the spot, ｢Electric Funeral｣ appearing in his hooves. He skidded to a halt on his back, firing at one of the Bon Bons. She clearly hadn’t been expecting this, because she made no move to dodge, and then he front right hoof gave way under her. While the other one took in what had just happened, he counted the seconds to himself.

As he loosed another shot, Diamond knelt beside Coco and felt for a pulse. One came, but the jostling didn’t bring the mare to consciousness. ｢Misery Business｣, already occupied, tried to rearrange the Element of Kindness and the bunny already in its grip. Like so many delicate things, it stretched on endlessly against the measure of her heartbeat.

The Bon Bon he’d shot rolled to the side, and the other one fell low to the ground, suitcase still in tow. Keeping her hooves behind it, she fiddled with the mechanism singlemindedly, and it popped open.

From inside came a great rumbling, the sound of many parts connecting themselves in sequence, and the barrel of a weapon swung out and above the lip, extending like a telescope into a long cannon. Bon Bon gripped a string in her teeth and pulled.

Button cursed and hit the ground as a cannonball arced over his head and smashed into the crumbling woodwork of a broken-up house. Diamond held against the ensuing gust, dusty ash drifting back to earth around her wards. Still, Coco was unmoving.

A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, and Diamond saw the second Bon Bon snapping off an exposed beam of blackened wood in her hooves. Her enemy looked at it hungrily, and strained for a moment before what was evidently a Stand coalesced above her.

Suddenly, the lion’s share of the wood slipped loose like overripe fruit, and a clean, shiny, sharpened blade lay beneath it. The Stand fizzled out as quickly as it came, and Bon Bon fidgeted with it in her hooves before balancing the machete properly.

As one charged and the other seemed to reload that long barrel, Button saw the whole scene unfolding in front of him. In the time frame available, he could get off one solid shot. Below, Diamond was all but dropping Fluttershy and the rabbit onto the road and getting ready for combat. Beside, another cannonball waited, the barrel swiveling slightly closer to him.

Self-interest won out, and he turned his Stand onto the cannon. It wasn’t a difficult target to hit, and he got the shot out in a half-second.

Nothing happened.

Eyes widening, he tumbled onto his legs and galloped towards a safe distance. It was too late, and as he dove forward out of the trajectory the metal ball thundered into the earth behind him, and he went flying, his limbs waving frantically in search of ground. The subconscious clock implanted by his Stand and trained by its use reminded him that enough time had passed that he could fire another shot, and as he soared for a well-ravaged wall he managed to line up the sight.

Just before the crash, he squeezed the trigger.

It hit.

With a gasp like the dead awakening, Coco Pommel sat up.

***

Scootaloo’s trip back down was arduous, maybe annoying, but not stressful. Her Stand could do nothing at all to make things lighter, and so it had required more work than she would have liked to carry another mare back to ground level. The moonlit castle echoed around her the whole time, while she anticipated some new Stand user or hidden trap to spring from the dimness of the far hallways.

｢Go Zone｣ hovered over her albino foe through it all, poised to deliver another barrage of kicks at the first sign of stirring. Whether by luck or wise acting, they all made it to the doors without trouble.

The fires had stopped in the distance, and the town seemed more peaceful, as if it were possible that everypony was really just asleep and not upstairs. She wondered how far away would be far away enough, and how she would tell. Flashes of the battle with Jewel Joy rippled on the surface of her memory, and she remembered that her most recent friend was still out there, possibly.

Flying straight up, she searched for movement further out among the buildings. It existed, in pockets. Tiny ponies ran this way and that splitting from a large group in the distance. There was other activity closer than that, but she couldn’t guess at its meaning. Unless a band of survivors had tromped out of the Everfree, she was almost certain nopony should be in the area at all.

She decided to kill two birds with one stone.

With a few exerting thwacks, her Stand knocked out the hinges of one of the castle doors. She stood a few hooves back as it toppled to the earth, and then she pushed the white mare onto it. With a deep breath she hopped on herself, and then the whole chunk of glass and wood jetted forward.

***

“Coco!” Diamond yelled as she backpedaled from the blade. The Bon wielding it swiped for her like she was clenching a broom in her teeth, frustration clear in her face.

“Wuh...?” Coco mumbled, trying to overcome the complaints of her inner clock and the pounding of her head. Whoever was talking to her knew her name, so surely it was important, but part of her insisted that she was just about to have really restful sleep if she would just collapse back to where she’d been.

“Help!” Diamond’s voice cut again into the haze, deeper now. Bon Bon lunged with the blade as the filly turned her head to Coco, swinging it down like the edge of a guillotine.

Before it could connect, ｢Misery Business｣ clapped the blade between its hooves. Then, with one thick twist it shattered, and the Bon Bon wielding it jumped away. Coco realized that she’d slept through something important, and finally got a good look around.

The pink filly was charging back against her attacker, now with an upper hoof.

Button Mash, who she’d spoken to not very long ago at all, was now unconscious and bruised, surrounded by sawdust and debris in the burnt-out center of a house.

Furthest away, an exact replica of the sword-slinging mare was working a long metal cannon. This drew her attention the most, because then it spat out a cannonball, arcing towards the house where Button had fallen.

“｢Something for Nothing｣!” Coco’s Stand lifted itself from her aura and let out a leash of fabric, grappling it onto Button’s barrel and pulling him closer. He landed on a cushion, and the house finally fell into a mess of bad timber.

Close enough to see it happen, Diamond advanced. “What’s your next move going to be?”

Her enemy sweated and gritted her teeth, already exhausted from working with three legs. [spoiler]Jumping into the window behind me and finding the first available weapon ｢Technologic｣ can provide.[/spoiler]

Diamond kept silent. She realized now that it was childish to tell what she did and didn’t know, to announce it as an intimidation tactic. That never would’ve worked against half of what had happened tonight. So instead she smiled, quietly, as if she’d just been given a small, inconsequential gift from her father.

The Bon Bon kicked up some dirt in the filly’s face and leapt through the square hole where a window had once sat.

Then she paled as she bumped into ｢Misery Business｣, which was already hovering inside the ruined first floor. With one good kick she collapsed, and then… disappeared.

Diamond processed that.

Running back into the center of the fire-damage, she saw Coco. With no time to intuit what intricacies lay within the mare’s Stand, the filly just pointed at the sheet tied around Button and said, “Throw me!”

Coco had the funny, half-awake, hungover thought that she was becoming far too used to being told that, and perhaps she’d be better off building a catapult for easy use. It only lasted until she could see the look in the filly’s eyes, that same expression that the world now seemed to cultivate so well...

Diamond Tiara soared towards the artillerypony like a skipping stone about to touch the water, and the fake Bon Bon lifted the cannon away from its original, unconscious targets to keep it level with her. With one mighty and satisfied tug, another iron ball came crashing across the sky and into her trajectory, ready to pulp her.

｢Misery Business｣ reached out with its thin but powerful limbs and clutched the ball at its oncoming apex like a tiny planetoid. Then, simply, it bounded off, and Diamond along with it, both falling down towards their foe.

Bon Bon strained to summon her Stand, maybe to activate something, but it didn’t come. Diamond dismissed ｢Misery Business｣ and merely kicked, landing all of the force of her fall through her back leg and into the skull of the cannoneer.

Her enemy’s eyes widened, and in a wingbeat, she was gone.

Diamond brought her Stand back out and ignored the fatigue that came with it. Coco approached from below, full of silent questions.

Before she could ask any, Diamond looked her in the eye and said, “We have to get back to Princess Twilight’s Castle.”

Whatever the mare saw in her face, she agreed immediately.

***

Home was nothing like Equestria. Not nearly so idyllic, although Drops wouldn’t be able to appreciate that given when she came in. Certainly not as pacifistic. Her home knew guns, missiles, anti-tank munitions, complex political ladder-climbing. Even in Canterlot High, nothing was as easy as saying what you wanted out loud. No problem worth mentioning was solved within twenty minutes. Few liked this, but it was altogether tolerable.

These were the changes she’d been conditioned to expect. The difference that still irked her, even as she crumbled buildings with well-placed explosives, was the size of the whole thing. There had been a map shown to her of the world she was helping to conquer, and she had marveled (to herself alone, naturally) at how incredibly small it was. This world ponies called Earth was hardly an island to her, and yet the great and rightful King needed extra help to find a paltry piece of jewelry and burn down a couple towns?

Perhaps Drops only felt this way because her home had been composed almost entirely of “islands”, brought together only through human ingenuity and military might. She had been taught from birth that her city was only a small part of a much larger whole, that there were thousands of cultures she would never even learn about as technology progressed across her planet. She had never known anything else, never thought of any world itself as fundamentally comprehensible.

So, here in this world, she couldn’t help herself expecting to find the edge of this tiny landmass would just dip off into the endless roiling wind of all the others, to think that she wasn’t really gone from home at all, only on some distant part of it. But she had fallen through into this world, and she had the evidence of new physics on her senses, and she knew this wasn’t Jupiter.

Maybe this was why she didn’t seem to react when she saw an orange filly carrying one of her associates, a native she’d never met, while sliding through the grassy landscape on a glass door. This demented toboganner only registered in her mind as an enemy, and she marshalled her selves to prepare a counteroffensive.

They threw down bits of metal, frames, snapped-off drawers, nothing very useful. One threw her a comedically large hairbrush, and as she concentrated it snapped open down the middle, revealing a small, naked dartgun. Grimacing at its relative tininess, she pulled at the trigger with her lip, another her keeping it trained steady.

The filly came closer, oblivious, yelling into the wind as she approached. Whoever had incapacitated the DJ had to have been powerful, and she was probably some messenger looking to negotiate terms for a peace. Sweetie Drops couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Now,” the nearest her hissed as the filly was upon them.

She fired.

The door suddenly stopped cold, as if it had never moved in the first place, or had just been caught animate and hoped not to be noticed. The filly stopped with it. But above her head, the DJ kept soaring. Momentum pulled her forward, and her body tumbled forward over the filly like a ragdoll into the path of the tranquilizer.

The Dropses took a moment to process that.

And then the door started moving again, pushed by a Stand that was only visible for a split second, and indistinct orange shape. It “ran over” three of her selves like bowling pins while she scrambled in the detritus for another weapon, and even those who dodged it collapsed to the ground like the strength had left their legs.

After a moment, the filly had swooped back around and grabbed PON-3 in her Stand, only to head off in an utterly random direction, past them and towards the forest. Drops threw a crookful of nuts and bolts after her retreating figure, but none landed anywhere close. Fuming, she realized that this was going to be work after all.

“There are still ponies here,” another self said.

“She came from the castle. If we don’t focus on it, we’ll get more skirmishes,” one more added.

The original nodded. “We have to do this right. Hit their base, track down stragglers later.”

They double-timed it.

***

Spike came to in a very cramped room, chockablock with the dazed and distressed, and around him there was a great murmuring like the misty beginning of the world. Time had not seemed to pass for him, as though he were under some sort of anesthetic, but he recognized the room and the time better than most of its new occupants. Regaining his bearings, he stared dumbly at the ceiling and realized that Scootaloo must have won. For a moment he laughed, glad that her promise hadn’t been in vain.

Then he noticed Scootaloo wasn’t present, and remembered Rarity was now in Canterlot, and his face became sober.

Of the other ponies in the room, most of whom were slowly exiting through the door, most were familiar. The sleeping forms of Twilight, Pinkie and Applejack were left where they lay, for fear of disturbing them, but the other Elements were absent.

Nearby, through the legs of standing adults, Spike saw Sweetie Belle gazing into her Stand, the mechanical clacking of the changing slides drowned out by a wall of whispers. She pulled it away, looking like someone who overslept an exam. It wasn’t over.

He pushed past a few errant discussions and attempts to look out of the windows and eventually made it to her.

“Is there still danger?” he asked.

“I’m seeing multiple of the same pony, destroying things! Ponyville’s being ransacked!” Sweetie said this almost as if it were her fault, and not just to him but to the room at large.

It didn’t hear.

Spike glanced around, sucked in a large breath and frowned deeply until he spat an impressive ball of dragonfire at the ceiling. Everything in the room was illuminated green for an instant, and everyone hushed and turned.

Spike bowed and waved an arm at Sweetie, giving her the floor.

***

Coco came to the castle, carrying Button in a large bag to one side of her and Diamond Tiara to the other with her own payload. The filly had explained everything up to now, although with the lack of clarity that came from a young and excited recounting given during a swift gallop. The bag itself wasn’t a comfortable arrangement for Button, but he wasn’t conscious to notice. Despite this Coco, who privately considered herself the unofficial princess of the rushed job, still worried at it, and was relieved to make it inside and deposit him where Diamond might find a place for him.

Of course the completely missing door had been the first clue that something had gone wrong, but the sheer emptiness within was astounding. It was so entirely not what they’d hoped for.

“They were just here, I know they were!” Diamond said, scrambling around to find some note or hint to their disappearance. Coco didn’t know what to say to her, but studied the building, as if there might be some secret passageway revealed in the right alcove or fixture.

Then there was the explosion, and the shaking, as a rocket collided with the side of the castle. There was no visible damage, but the structure shook with the force of an earthquake, as if pulling against some root structure deep in the mantle of the world. A second later, when it stopped, Coco ran to the entrance to take in the number of enemies they would have to face.

She didn’t get the chance. Three came in, auras strong and pulsing, the Stand stationed above the front of the triangle. She was holding a gun large enough to pull the trigger with her hoof, and the other two had matching models and suitcases on their backs. There was a dull thrumming roar, maybe the Castle’s reaction to being invaded, maybe just the fear affecting Diamond’s eardrums.

The frontmost Bon Bon motioned the two Stand users together and backwards with the gun. They backed carefully further into the castle, into the center of it, where the high ceiling ended in a giant mass of crystal and a slab of grey stone formed a large table among chairs marked for the Elements of Harmony. The sight was breathtaking, but Coco had none to give yet.

When the Bon Bon spoke, she sounded terse, gruff, almost like the real candymaker were in the room putting on an act. “If you and the other ponies you’re hiding here don’t surrender, we’ll chip away at this castle until there’s nothing left.” Wisely, she kept the gun pointed on Diamond, and the other two of her set the suitcases against the table, popping them open to reveal steady countdown timers.

Another impact from outside, and more shuddering, but no sound. They weren’t breaking through.

“You’re lying,” Diamond said, near-sneering, “You’re going to break everything you can no matter what anypony does.”

That was the whole of their conversation. Not even giving a sign she’d heard the words, the stonefaced Bon Bon squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Not used to being betrayed by her weapons, she looked down on reflex to insepct it, and saw a small pillowy cushion jammed between the trigger and its arc backwards. By the time she looked back up, ｢Something for Nothing｣ was already on her.

Its hoof struck forward, landing squarely on the materializing surface of ｢Technologic｣ and halting there as it bore the force.

“Get out, Diamond!” Coco called over her shoulder. “Take care of Button! Find out what’s happened to everypony!” By now the other two Bon Bons had drawn closer, and their fumbling guns were torn from their hooves by cyan-glowing strips of white bedsheet.

But Diamond ignored her, pouncing on the nearest disarmed opponent with ｢Misery Business｣ at the ready, grabbing the Bon Bon with it and shouting, “How do we turn off the bombs?!”

There was an echo, a condescending smile, and then Diamond threw the opponent into a wall and jumped towards the device on the left, ripping into it and pulling wires. Coco watched in awe, until the orb of the enemy Stand drove into her chest in a metallic headbutt, pushing her away.

Her enemy, who had finally unjammed the trigger, pulled it with relish. When nothing happened, and she saw the line of cloth clogging the guts of the barrel, she gave up and charged for Coco, carrying it like a blunt instrument.

The other Bon Bon still standing, who summoned back ｢Technologic｣, opened up the back of one of the chairs. Whatever she found there, ｢Misery Business｣ socked her in the face before she could make use of it. Like the one slumped against the wall, she popped out of existence like a military soap bubble.

Diamond ripped at the wires with her teeth, working as quickly as she could. She had no idea what would happen if an artifact like this was destroyed, and she didn’t want to find out. At last, the timer died, blinking, displaying “00:05”.

“Five seconds to go!” she said, and then realized that there was another bomb left.

By her actions, Coco realized this fact at the same time. She could’ve tried throwing it outside of the chamber, and risked hitting somepony. She could’ve wrapped it in some amount of fabric, although that would’ve done nothing for the explosion.

Using ｢Something for Nothing｣ to tackle and hold back her opponent, she turned and dashed for the table, skidding to a direct halt between the bomb and Diamond. Her front hooves were outstretched, to cover as much surface area as possible, and her eyes were calm as the edge of the stone pressed against her coat.

At least I gave something back.

And then the table thrummed with sudden energy, and lit up with magical light. The sudden rush of magical aura in the room was so powerful that she took a half-step away from it, nearly shielding herself like someone anticipating bright light. It took her a little staring to realize that her Stand had withdrawn.

Darting her head to the side, as if it would reveal this all as a magnificent pre-death hallucination, she saw the bomb had a blank readout. Behind her, her assailant stared at the magic in disbelief, maybe even wonder.

Coco tried, and found that her Stand had appeared again. Diamond did the same. Together, they turned to the remaining Bon Bon.

Their enemy looked between them, clutching the useless firearm to herself, and then backpedaled out of the door.

And all at once, with that previously imperceptible roar resolving itself into knowing and angry voices, Ponyville came raging down the stairs.

***

The Dropses manning the rockets fell back as the wave of Ponyvillians descended on them. Some scrambled to open up discarded sticks into small knives, or tug grass up to reveal a bunker, but ｢Technologic｣ didn’t assist them. With those same sticks and bare hooves, the townsponies attacked. Many had lost days worth of time, and were all the more rested for it.

For some, it became a rout. The first one to jump past the edge of town also left the shared field of the enchantment cast by the mirror pool, and popped out of existence. Others faded instead of falling unconscious.

Very quickly, the numbers whittled down, as Ponyville reasserted itself. After a while, a fleet of small, well-armed planes chased and herded them, and the townsfolk attacked them in mobs of pans and trampling.

The very last one, of course, was the original.

***

Drops came to and saw she was outside, and the sky was tinged with the purplish hints of a sunrise. More prominent, she saw the pink filly standing over her, grinning down at her with unrestrained smug enjoyment. A few more seconds of consciousness, and she saw the Stand, too. It was a massive thing, from the ground.

Slowly, painfully, the truth came out.

The assault on Ponyville didn’t have any more members at the moment. Jewel, Berryshine, PON-3 and Drops had been necessary overkill in the King’s eyes. They didn’t have any way of communicating with him, although Drops didn’t know if that stopped him from knowing they’d been beaten. She had used the Mirror Pool, and was the only pony with a solid idea of its location. Sombra knew very distinctly where ancient magical artifacts were. She didn’t know the fates of the Princesses or the Elements. Stopping the Elements was important to him only because the forces of Harmony were so formidable, as far as she knew. Drops and most of the others like her came from another world. (Here Diamond tried again, wondering if her Stand had been damaged in some way.) They had been recruited through Sombra’s influence, drawn in by the power he offered and whatever their hearts desired.

When Diamond decided she’d finally had enough, she nodded to one side. Distantly, there was a plastic ker-chak!, and then Drops lost consciousness again.

***

When Scootaloo came back to the castle proper, there was little of interest on her return journey. Inside, though, everything was alive and alight. Ponies stood and talked with small smiles, Spike ran to and fro with scavenged but appreciated refreshments, and everywhere foals either rested or held close to their parents. So many thought lost had been returned.

In one corner she found Sweetie Belle, who seemed a few years older in the pre-dawn light. Clearing her throat to announce herself, she asked, “Did anypony find-”

“Coco’s fine. She’s back there. We couldn’t keep her out.” Sweetie waved at the larger central chamber of the ground floor.

“Thanks.” Scootaloo flashed her a grin and found the nearest hallway into the chamber.

Coco stood over a large projection laid out across the table, leaning on the surface itself with her front hooves. She could have sat in any of the chairs, but she didn’t. She stared at it with the same intensity that had driven her designs and dresswork, trying to commit it all to memory and knowing that some of it would leak anyway.

Scootaloo came closer to get a better look, awed at the sight. She had to prop herself up on Applejack’s armrest to get a good look.

It took her a few seconds to convince herself that the Map wasn’t simply broken.

The surface had updated itself, showing tiny termite-lines of crystal on the railroad tracks of the land. Not all of the cities were as large as they used to be. The Crystal Empire was now prominent, as were Ponyville and Canterlot. But floating over it were large icons, cutie marks. Together they almost composed a journey, stringing their way broadly to the base of Sombra’s domain.

Here, in Ponyville, Applejack. Hovering outside of Canterlot, vanishing and reappearing in half a dozen brief flashes at different coordinates, were Pinkie’s balloons. Further down the line, Twilight’s star, still and fixed as any real one and in no clear location. Farther along at a great circular dip in the ground was Rainbow’s cloud, giving way to something purple and indistinct - the cloud was half-sunken into the table’s projection, and the shape of Fluttershy’s butterflies sat below it. And at the edge, Rarity’s diamonds, fizzling and becoming Coco’s hat, only to jolt back and repeat the process.

“Spike came in a little while ago.” Coco said softly to the table. “He told me that Rarity was in Canterlot now, at the Princesses’ castle. It was the only thing he could do to keep her safe.”

Scootaloo said nothing.

“He also told me that the Map is only supposed to respond to the Elements. Someone or something must have had a plan for all this, but I don’t have a clue of what it’s supposed to be.” She slumped a little against the stone.

“What are you going to do?” Scootaloo asked.

Coco regarded the table at eye level, all of the mountains and forests and buildings blending together indistinctly into a choppy field of magical light. “I’ve got to go after her. After I know she’s safe… I guess I’m going as far as I can. I didn’t know until yesterday exactly how many ponies were affected by all of this, but… somepony has to try giving them back their lives.”

Scootaloo smiled. “Don’t say it like you’ll be doing it alone.”

“But I don’t have anypony to-... Oh.” Coco said, raising her head and blushing a little.

In the end she generated a map of her own, printed directly onto a giant circular sheet of silk as big as the table. She giggled a little as she made it, knowing it would’ve been completely useless as a map or a piece of fabric at any prior point in history.

She made and remade it, each point labeled with its floating marks, until she felt that she had the important details truly and fully memorized. Then, finally, she allowed herself some rest.

It was dreamless, but peaceful.

***

On the outskirts of Ponyville, in the afternoon sun, two well-rested ponies stood and squinted out on the horizon. The Canterhorn Mountain stood in the distance.

“Are you sure you want to come with me?” Coco asked. “I’m sure there are lots of ponies here who could use somepony like you to help out.”

Scootaloo grinned and said, “I am helping out! The sooner we sort out the Crystal Empire, the sooner everything can go back to the way it was.”

Coco chewed on the words, and smiled softly. “Well, we’d better get going, then. First Rarity, then the Map’s directions.”

“We can make it in a couple weeks!” Scootaloo said, stretching her wings.

Coco nodded. “Let’s try.”

“Wait!”

Halted by the familiar voice, they turned around.

｢To Be Continued｣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yioWJhUJA [Rush - Something for Nothing]

Stand Name: ｢Technologic｣
User: Sweetie Drops
Stats
Power: E
Speed: D
Range: B
Durability: B
Precision: E
Potential: E
Abilities: Improves existing technology based on the user's current needs; a suitcase will turn out to have a secret compartment which sprays paralytic gas, a pen will have a hidden tranquilizer dart inside, a watch will wind up doubling as a communicator. This effect only works once for an item, and the extent of the improvement is limited. Affected technology can only be worked by the user.