Maya's Bar II: Cabinbar in the Artificially-Made Woods (temporarily not accepting new players)

"Bill please." She wanted to relax. Was that really too much to ask? Something told her things were starting to pick up and in a bad direction.

Nightbird wasn't quite sure what was going on, but she set the emergency function of her translator. If she got fatally hurt in her current form she'd switch back to her true form automatically.

"Do you want me to contact Kimi again to open a bridge out of here?" The still had thirty days till their personal bridge was recharged, but Kimi could have a portal for them at any time."

"No, but could you have her send the Strafe outside of the bar." According to the femtites the thing Lio asked her to look into just launched. The Strafe had a cloaking system, maybe getting a looked at the ship be more relaxing then whatever was about to happen here.

 

Nightshade trotted over to the bar and peeked inside the bag. "First thing I need you to do is tell me that Rose and Rain are okay. Then I need you to call Rose here. Or any other vampire, really. I don't know if Asmo has any vamp characters he can use for this or whatever... no, sorry, fourth wall, I'll stop.
Anyway, blood memories. You need somepony who can access the blood memories."

 

Rep: (chuckling at Moonshine's actions)

*Elsewhere, a strange signal was picked up by the cargo convoys, the captains of which, whilst mostly confused, upped their ships' speeds and changed courses as necessary.*

 

The Twilight dropped out of hyperspace in what appeared to be the aftermath of a huge battle. Hundreds of enormous black ships, intimidating in design, drifted dead in space.
Strange creatures, four-armed with snakelike lower bodies, floated around the ships, as dead as their ships.
Smaller craft of an obviously different origin darted around, occasionally blasting any of the naga creatures showing signs of life.
Obviously the victors of whatever battle had been fought her.

Blackheart stared at the scene unfolding around his ship. Just where the hell were they? Why had the ship stopped here?"

A strangely familiar voice came over the comm.
"Unidentified vessel. You have entered a restricted area. Identify and prepare to be boarded."

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Nightshade shrugged. "Rosie can take care of herself, I guess. Okay, right. Bigger picture. Dead demon. Who sent him and why? Blood memories could tell the tale. Any other ideas?"

 

Rep: (Voice is amplified) Really now? Is that a threat against me and my allies? If so, I must urge you to reconsider.

 

Megatron noticed her daughter's drink was included in their total, but since it was likely she was leaving with them she didn't mind. She took out enough money to leave a 100% tip and just hoped currency from another reality was acceptable. As far as she could tell the used the same currency in this reality. If not she had several precious stones to fall back on. "Will this do?"

~~~

Outside of the bar a demon bridge opened up and out of flew the Strafe, a blue stealth bomber looking craft with two dragon heads on it's front.


(A version of this guy in several shades of blue, the ship does have a robot mode too. Of course the Strafe doesn't have the solid flames on it.)

 

"Tartarus has never been fully mapped by Equestrians," Nightshade said. "We don't really know much about it. It's technically part of Equus, but much of it exists out of phase with our own dimension.
The only permanent entrance is guarded by Cerberus, but there are other ways in and out if you know what you're doing.
Intel suggests seven levels, or 'circles,' with the most powerful and dangerous entities confined to the lowest levels.
Only the top two levels are survivable to Equestrians without magical protection. One expedition made it as far as the fourth level before we lost contact."

She sighed. "It's possible that Belial may be beyond our reach. I've been as far as the third circle. There are things down there that make wraiths look like kittens by comparison. I can't even imagine what would wait for us in the sixth or seventh."

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"This is not the time for bravado," Blackheart said calmly. "Look outside. An entire fleet destroyed, and very recently. We're clearly talking to the victors of this battle. I would prefer they not think of us as another target."

He activated the comm. "This is the Equestrian exploration vessel Princess Twilight Sparkle. We are depowering our engines now."

A new voice, deep and growling, could be heard faintly over the comm. "Equestrian? You were right, Silver. It is one of yours."

 

"That would be my ship. Interesting to get to meet you guys, but I'm not interested in hell or whatever seems to be going on." Since the Rep was humanoid Grimlock turned off her form Tranlator and returned to true form she had been stuck in for years. If the Ponies new who Winry Rockbell was Grimlock was a now the spitting image of her, but with an automail left arm and right leg. She left the bar and Nightbird still in pony form followed behind her.

"So Dusty remember Grimlock now?"

 

Rep: Fine. I'll tone it down a bit, I just don't like it when those I am allied with are threatened.

 

"He's not threatenin' us, dude." Moonshine took a swig from her flask and belched. "It's pretty standard stuff. We're not supposed to be here. They want to know if we're more of the bad guys. We're lucky, really. Lotta folks would have just blown us to bits the second we dropped out of hyperspace."

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The Luna maneuvered beside the Twilight, and a docking tunnel extended to the airlock of the Equestrian ship. Silver, the Dracaryn warrior Staal, and two fully-armored Dracaryn security officers were greeted by a pair of nervous unicorn engineers, who led them up to the bridge.
Silver took a look at the pony in command of the Twilight, and groaned. "Oh, godsdammit."

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The aliens that boarded the ship were vaguely equine, Blackheart noted. Quadrupedal, with both reptilian and mammalian features.
Those familiar with Earth mythology would see a strong resemblance to the the mythical Chinese dragon-horse, the longma.
However, it was not the hulking Dracaryn soldiers that made Blackheart slap his hoof to his face in frustration, but rather their commander.
His distinctive dragonsilver armor had been replaced by a Dracaryn exosuit, but still, Blackheart's old nemesis Silver Crescent was unmistakable.

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Nightshade paused. "If you're seriously considering going after him in Tartarus, I suggest an immediate psychiatric evaluation. That's the kind of thing I'd do. And I'm self-aware enough to know that I tend to make bad decisions about this kind of thing."

 

@Lioconvoy -

Tying up a loose end, Windsor accepted Megatron's payment.

The events of the last few years in Equestria had led to some businesses installing devices called Omni-Registers, which could accept, convert, and calculate the exchange rates of every currency in the known multiverse.
These are totally a thing now, which forever eliminates that particular issue.

 

"Well so long." Megatron turned off her form tranlator returning to her normal silver haired form. When she first turned human her hair was in a style similar to her old helmet, but after a while she grew it out and wore it in a long braid similar to the hero of the Tomb Raider games. However her chest was no where near as big as Crofts. She left the bar and met Grimlock and Nightbird outside.

Grimlock must have told her daughter to set her form translator to human. There was no way Nightbird would fit in the Stafe in her true form. True it was bigger than her, but not by that much. Her altmolde was a one seater V-tol plain. The Strafe was a four man personal ship. Taking a good look at her daughter's human form, there was a strong resemblance between the two of them. Her daughter dressed more like Daring Doo minus the hat. Her blonde hair covered her right eye, and one might barely notice a scar over it. She hadn't noticed the scar while her daughter was a pony, but the pony form had a slightly thinker main. Grimlock tapped a button her arm and the three of them were beamed into the control room of the Strafe. "So what's our destination?"

"Don't know. Activating cloak and powering up the space bridge" Lio had asked her to look into the unusual tech of this Ponyverse. Her femtite detected a launch of something and she was able track their energy signature.

"So are you sure where we're going is more peaceful than what's going on here?"

"We'll be cloaked. Sure they'll be able to see the bridge, but the won't see us coming out of it, and unless they have some pretty f***ing advance sensors they shouldn't be able to detect us."

"Also since there on the other side of the bridge they won't hear that dragon's roar."

"Dragon's roar?"

"Lio was watching Steven Universe with Usagi and Kimitsu when he designed this thing. It's produces a space bridge by the dragon heads roaring."

 

Rep: (The moment before Silver had entered the bridge, Rep had vanished from most forms of detection.)

 

After a roar the bridge opened and the Strafe went through the portal. On the other side they saw the two ships docked. "Ponies have spaceships? I thought it was some sort of animal they built something on. I wasn't expecting a ship."

"So what if they do detect us."

"They shouldn't. I was joking about the roar comment. Sound doesn't travel in space and even back at the bar, after the poorly named cloak activated they shouldn't have heard it."

"Poorly named cloak?" She got a lot of toys from Lioconvoy but never a ship so she wasn't remotely familiar with what one could do.

"We're not so much cloaked as we are slightly out of existence. We're here enough to see and scan, but we can't interact with everything else, and generally they shouldn't be able see or interact with us. If we wanted to we could actually fly strait through their ship."

"Not doing that, their ships sensors shouldn't have a clue we're here, but if we go into the ship, who knows what the ponies magic could tell. We also don't know who or what is on the other ship." Lio just wanted scans and that was what Lio would get. After that, maybe they go looking for another bar.

"So if they could fire on us, we couldn't fire on them?" That didn't seem very useful.

"Not without turning off the cloak, but even if this thing is tiny, the alloy it's made of is fairly strong. We've survived two direct hits from a Death Star's main cannon." She had pissed Vader off, and he transformed and fired on them. Fortunately they were able to bridge away before he fired on them a third time. There were no plans to visit that reality anytime too soon.

 

Selena: (Getting up and stretching, and starting to attempt to fix her feathers.)

 

"I heard the Representative's voice," Silver said, doing his best to ignore the fact that he was speaking to a pony who had tried to murder him three times. "Where is he?"

"He was here," Blackheart replied, attempting to move past his dislike of the pony who had slaughtered an entire platoon of his top mercs, and had put a sword through his chest. "Now he isn't. He does that sort of thing."

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"I can survive down to the third level normally," Nightshade mused. "I'm pretty sure I could make it to the seventh in my drake form, but I can only keep that up for about two hours. And that's not near enough time."
She sighed.
"So, I figure three options. One, we leave him be, and hope for the best. Two, we find a way to go after him. Or three, we find a way to get him to come to us."