Late Night Landings

Dan's Comments
DISCLAIMER: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro, Inc., Harry Dresden is the property of Jim Butcher, Carl Kolchak is the property of ABC/Universal Television, Ranma Saotome is the property of Rumiko Takahashi, Sailor Jupiter is the property of Naoko Takeuchi.

Makoto felt her competitive nature rising. While she enjoyed cooking, cleaning and a lot of `girly` stuff, she was a trifle miffed that Patrick and Ranma were as good at it as she was, and were definitely faster.

"You could at least act like it's work," Makoto muttered, then blushed as both of them kissed her on the cheeks.

"Doing it regularly might be work, cooking for and meeting your friends is fun," Ranma said.

"Making them incredibly jealous of 'Dateless Mako-chan' is the real fun," Patrick added, and Ranma `yep`ed and nodded.

Makoto wasn't sure if a face palm, a hug, or a quick trip to the bedroom was in order. She settled on sitting down and watching the assembly of a meal fit for queens, in quantities more appropriate for a platoon of hungry soldiers. While even Usagi had reduced her once prodigious intake, the very early morning after a battle would have them all ravenous and Patrick and Ranma had said they could fix a `quick snack`. Even in Tokyo, places you'd actually want to eat were few and far between at 2:00 A.M. in the morning.

The fact they were tidying up her apartment in the time between food operations just amazed her. "Watching you two work is like watching two experts dance," she said, "How do you do that?"

"I move in straight lines, Ranma does all the dodging and weaving," Patrick said, "If he can predict my course, and I beat down the instinct to maneuver, it's easy."

Ranma shrugged and grinned, then stopped and looked positively stricken. "I just realized!"

"What," Makoto said and shot to her feet, intent on pitching in wherever and however she could.

"Uranus and Neptune haven't seen my girl-form!" Ranma said, "How are we gonna make those two jealous of Mako-chan if they don't see it?"

Patrick spritzed Ranma into Ranko with the sink sprayer while Makoto facepalmed to hide her laughter.
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Celestia was helping shuttle the various other `Equestrians` back to their homes, while the Senshi, bronicorns and both Discords sorted out the surrendered chaos warriors into those who wanted to return home, and those who couldn't for a whole host of reasons, including that their star system didn't exist anymore. Which disturbed Celestia no end.

ARROOGGGAH!

There are times, Celestia thought, Anything rational wants to knock Discord into the next incarnation. She turned to dress down the draconequus, then she was staring just as hard as he was.

Celestia wasn't human, she wasn't even humanoid, but she wasn't dead either.

Oh my word, she thought as she peripherally noted the `poofed` wings of every bronicorn, pony and other alicorn in the vicinity.

Makoto's back, with Ranma and Patrick, she thought and realized that was like saying an atomic bomb was just squeezing a couple of heavy rocks. Ranko was wearing a dress that would later give Rarity a serious inferiority complex. It has to be a dress, Celestia thought, A coat of paint doesn't have pleats. Sleeveless, strapless, it barely covered the areola of Ranko's breasts, had a slit to the waist up one side, the gold belt only accented the broadness of Ranko's hips and the whole dress was tight enough you could occasionally glimpse Ranko's navel.

Occasionally because Ranko had one of Makoto's arms draped over her shoulder, between her full breasts and held Makoto's hand on her stomach with both of hers.

I suspect if Makoto tried to remove her hand, Ranko would end up hanging from her wrist, Celestia thought and fought down her own wings' instinct to `poof`.

Makoto's strapless, sleeveless dress was more demure although if she'd been less well-endowed, it would have needed as much double-sided tape to stay on as Ranko's undoubtedly needed.

That huge rose on the skirt, Celestia thought, Is that a double-entendre or what?

Patrick's tuxedo was the least blatant, but even Celestia felt the `power clothes` vibe coming from the elegant and severe lines.

Celestia closed her eyes and shook her head, reopening them to focus on the large pot of food Patrick had been carrying on his shoulder, and the other that Ranko had balanced on her head. Then added the picnic basket Makoto had under her free arm. How did I miss those? she wondered as every eye tracked the trio, except Rarity's who had grabbed the list away from Twilight and was scratching the designs onto the back of the paper with Twilight's pen and inkwell. Twilight hasn't noticed that her list is gone, Celestia mentally noted.

The trio stopped a few yards from the knot of Senshi, Makoto's friends. At an unspoken signal among the three, Ranko pulled her dress off and Makoto pulled her skirt off, revealing Ranma in his usual red and black `uniform`, and that Makoto was wearing Capri pants under the skirt. Rarity was scratching so fast the pen was beginning to smolder.

"Wait, the gorgeous girl turns into a hunky guy too!?" Sailor Venus shouted in outrage.

"Food," Makoto said as Patrick spread the skirt on the ground as a picnic blanket, then waved the open pot in front of Sailor Moon, "Ahem, FOOD!"

"Ah, yes, food," Sailor Moon said in a soft voice, staring at Makoto, Ranma and Patrick, she then glomped all three, "I'm so happy for you!" Completely ignoring the dark looks and disgusted facepalms of all the other Senshi.

Celestia tried not to laugh, and managed to keep it at snorts, then turned so see Discord and Cadance pointing accusatory digits or hooves at each other, only to have the silent accusation denied with an angry head shake. Celestia gave up and started laughing, she was soon joined by many of the others.
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The other Senshi were still staring daggers at Makoto, while Cadance and Discord were doing their own duel of stares outside the picnic blanket. Luna almost laughed at Celestia and Sailor Discord trying to placate the two combatants.

What she saw rising over the hills in the distance shocked her. "What is that?" she asked pointing a shaking foreleg at the massive, silvery crescent.

"That's the moon," Usagi said between bites, the only Senshi not planning some horrible fate for Makoto.

"That's your moon!?" Luna asked, "It's huge!"

"No," Usagi explained, "It's a lot smaller than the planet. It's the sun that's huge."

"You actually got it right," Tuxedo Mask told her, and grinned at her frown.

"How big is it?" Luna asked, "Who raises and lowers it?"

"Well, technically," Soldier said, "It's not a moon, it's a space station. It was too dark at night, so we scooped up a bunch of lighter elements from the planet and put a big ball into orbit as a reflector." He gestured around. "You can see how well it works. When the whole disk is properly aligned, it's even better."

Luna stared goggle-eyed at him.

"Give me back my list!"

"These designs must be preserved. You can make another list!"

"SILENCE!" Luna thundered at the arguing unicorns, then said, "Who raises and lowers it?"

"Nobody," Soldier said, "It raises and lowers itself," he said and looked around, "Right? The moon and sun go through their motions without any action from us."

Luna was horrified to see the Senshi all nodding.

"Even during the Moon Kingdom, we didn't do anything to change the moon's path," Usagi explained, "It orbited, had its eclipses and went on. We had magic, lots of it, but we didn't need to affect the moon."

"You had a colony on the moon?" Luna asked, more of a squeak than a question.

"We had colonies on all the planets," Ami said.

"What is an 'eclipse'?" Celestia asked.

"The sun is 400 times the diameter and 400 times the distance from Earth that the moon is, so the arc they occupy in the sky are the same," Ami said, "So when their orbits take them into the same part or exact opposition of the sky relative to an observer on Earth, the moon blocks out the sun, or the shadow of the Earth blocks out the moon. It's quite a sight to see a total eclipse."

Luna smiled. "The moon blocks out the sun?" she asked and grinned at Celestia.

"Yes, and it causes riots, regicides and suicides and people firing guns and rockets at it to get it to move," Scholar said.

"And it always works," Patrick added. Scholar nodded.

Luna frowned at Celestia's subdued grin.

"Back in the time of the Moon Kingdom," Tuxedo said, "Endymion of Earth and the Moon Princess were lovers, so we could easily travel back and forth."

"They were the kings," Patrick interrupted Luna's squawk of outrage, "Ordinary people can do it now, but it is expensive."

"It's even cheaper now, as long as you don't want to land," Ami suggested.

"Wow," Patrick said, "I've got to go home eventually. I always wondered how Nixon got out of that Watergate thing."

Many of the Senshi began closely studying the sky.

"Oh boy, a 'Checkers' moment," Patrick said, "Or did they finally get their revenge for Alger Hiss?"

"Jaunting back and forth to the moon?!" Luna said, pointed a foreleg, "That moon?"

"We've traveled to discover many moons in this star system," Ami told them.

Luna's frustration grew. "I bet you've had expedition to the sun as well," she said.

Ami looked at Patrick who nodded. "Several," Ami replied.

"How would you land an expedition to the sun?" Celestia asked.

"We land at night," Ami, Patrick, and half the bronicorns told her.
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" 'We land at night'," Discord said and chortled as they watched the sun come up.

The cosmological discussion had stunned the Equestrians, how their system was a 'disproven' one from early Earth philosophers. The mass and scale of the sun stunned Celestia.

"All the other objects in the star system are less than a tenth the mass of that object," Ami gestured at the sun as she explained, "It converts millions of tons of matter into energy every second. It could eat the planet we're sitting on in just 44 million years."

"When it becomes a red giant," Scholar added, "It will. Expand until it consumes all the inner planets, then eventually it'll shrink down to a stellar core, a white dwarf."

"When will this happen?" Twilight asked and began looking to where the gates had been.

"Oh, a few billion years," Ami said.

" 'Billion'?" Twilight asked, then stared at Ami, "How do you know this? Time travel?"

"No," Patrick said, "We've watched other stars, there are billions of stars, and there have been people keeping records for thousands of years. We've seen stars explode -"

"Explode?" Celestia asked.

"Yep, supernova, brighter than the noonday sun, some of the biggest cataclysms our science can describe," Patrick said.

"Your science," Ami said, "Hypernovae are known to us, and galactic collisions."

"This place is insane," Luna said.

"Well, there are also gamma bursts, the effects of pulsars, the black holes in galactic cores," Ami offered, "But without the supernovae of older stars there wouldn't be the heavier elements needed for life to occur."

The Equestrian alicorns stared at the Senshi and bronicorns with a mixture of trepidation and sympathy.

"I think this explains a lot," Cadence said.

"Suns, exploding," Celestia said.

"Suns eating their planets, over billions of years," Twilight added and shook herself.

"Don't tell Fluttershy about Australia," Ranma warned.

"Why, she'll want one?" Soldier asked.

"I understand about life, and the violence of it," Fluttershy said.

"Fluttershy," Discord said, "If exploding, carnivorous suns are acceptable, and Australia is scary, I don't think any of us need to know about what goes on there."