After lunch, Farkas came back to the Equestrians to lead them to the ship’s office so they could prepare their presentation.

While certain crewmembers on board had their own office such as Dilip, Roberto and Artyom (by virtue of being, respectively, the secretary and the bosun), most of their shipmates didn’t. The Officers and Engineers didn’t really need one since their cabins were large enough to do their paperwork there, but the ratings’ weren’t. Hence, Amandine had a larger office to conduct office work on deck B, just below the bridge. It wasn’t even always used by the ratings, since oftentimes they lent the office’s meeting space to surveyors and company officials that came on board.

The room was fairly large, decorated with the same pattern of cheap burgundy carpet covering the floor and waist-high fake planks on the walls. Anything above that was painted a pale yellow in opposition to the striped pattern found in the passageways, though it would have been hard to notice it considering the amount of boards and files hanging off the walls.

One half of the room was outfitted with computer desks, printers and bookshelves that were nearly bending under the weight of all the manuals and folders. The ponies following Farkas also took note of a large blackboard on that side of the room, onto which a crewmember had drawn a table containing the daily duties of Amandine’s complement.

The second half was more geared towards holding meetings. There were other places for such on board of course, such as the engine room’s office, the cafeteria and even Dilip’s office, but each of these was often occupied for one reason or another. It had a large rectangular Plexiglas table in the center, surrounded by a couple desk chairs, and naturally the usual projector already plugged to a computer, pointed towards a whiteboard.

Sidereal was already there and busy with her muzzle practically shoved between the pages of a book she had pulled from her saddlebags. A few other Equestrian books were strewn around the table with a mess of office supplies, none of which appeared to bother the Doctor as she busily scribbled down some notes on a few sheets of paper.

“Your team’s here Doc’” Farkas told.

“Good good.” Sidereal nodded distractedly, muzzle still riveted to her books and a thoughtful frown on her features.

She kept writing down in her notes.

“Doctor?” Pulp insisted, the stallion’s voice than the sphinx’s.

That apparently was enough to get through to her as the red unicorn jumped up in her seat and looked at the group next to her for the first time.

“Right uh… sorry. Bad study habit, I get carried away sometimes.” She told them with a sheepish smile.

“Min anisycheis.” Farkas replied. “If I may ask, do you require anything in particular for your presentation?”

“Such as?” Sidereal quirked her head. “I mean, I already got the paper, pens –neat pens by the way, beats our Equestrian pencils any day- and a board. What more do I need?”

At that Farkas smirked. Without a word, she approached the computer next to the projector and booted it up. Telekinesis was a bit iffy when it came to using keyboards, but by now she was pretty much used to it. One flicker of her power flared and hit the projector’s power button.

“I’ll hazard a guess; does your country know of slideshows? Or cinema projectors?”

“Well, yeah. We do have those, why?” Cheese asked her.

“Just to check how familiar you’d be with what I’m about to show.” The sphinx lioness said.

In front of her, the projector’s beam coalesced onto the whiteboard, showing the computer’s start menu. She immediately started up a new PowerPoint presentation.

“What is this?” Radiant and Sidereal both asked at the same time.

“A computer program we use to make presentations –slideshows that is-. Usually whenever someone has to give a lesson or a briefing we use them to support what we say. It’s generally more practical than a blackboard, at least in my opinion.” She told the ponies. “Captain’s told me to help you folks with that, and if need be we even have a scanner to convert what you have in your books into computerized data.”

Gust glanced alternatively between Farkas and the projected beam on the whiteboard, Radiant and Pulp both too busy quivering slightly at the sight of the computer and projector.

“You know, I think at this rate you’re gonna break the both of them with all your casual shows of technology.” He said, poking the immobile Radiant with one hoof.

“Can’t help it.” The lioness shrugged with her wings.

“I honestly think that’s amusing.” Cheese giggled.

The Equestrians spent the better part of the afternoon preparing their presentation in the Office, with the help of Farkas who stayed there to help them figure out how to use a computer.

Sidereal was forced to admit she didn’t know much about non-pony species, and what little information was available in the books her expedition had brought along was rather lackluster. Gust, by virtue of being an Everfree Ranger and thus slightly more familiar with foreign species, managed to offer a few tips, but the Doctor had to send him off later in the afternoon anyway.

Both him and Radiant actually. The two pegasi needed to report to the Third Officer up on the bridge because apparently the griffon needed their help to better plan out some evening flying lessons for the crew. To the Equestrians, it seemed as if all these sailors were extremely meticulous in their work with how much they insisted on doing things like pre-briefings, presentations and safety plans…

Considering the high-risk reputation of navigation in Equestria and how futuristic human society appeared to the ponies, maybe it was actually a natural development and not them being overly cautious.

Meanwhile on the Rhine Forest, a pink unicorn filly grumpily slammed down a shot of schnapps.

“I don’t think that’s particularly healthy with a body as young as yours.” Dilip commented from his seat in Raimund’s Office.

“Shut it Dilip, that’s precisely why I need the liquor.” She huffed. “You got two eyes last I checked, you clearly saw the looks I was getting from these…”

“Equestrians.” Dilip completed. “I did, but can we really blame them for it? You would be dubious too if a prepubescent kid turned up saying he was a Merchant Captain. It’s only your crew and mine that got used to it you know.”

“Understand it? I can, but liking it? That’s a big no.” Raimund shook her head. “And you really do believe them with that whole…” She rolled her hoof vaguely. “Alien jig?”

“I had the one called Sidereal show me some of her ‘magic tricks’ during lunch. I can honestly not believe a transformed human could have mastered such skills even if he or she reappeared as little as a second after the Event.” Dilip explained. “As for the sensitive information thing…”

“So does she actually know what happened or not?”

“She doesn’t. From the vibes that mare gives me, she was probably fed some horseshit –no pun intended- explanation by her superiors with just enough truth that it somewhat matches reality. She seems to know it as well by the way but…” He shrugged. “… I did get her to open up and complain about it. Bizarre or not, she still seems to trust her superiors blindly. Says they know better than her.”

“Weird, considering she presented herself as a high-level academic. So what are we going to do about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The HPI.” Raimund uttered flatly.

“For now? I think we shouldn’t say anything. I just want to keep a couple assets out of their reach, just in case.”

“Like a tank.” She snorted.

“That wasn’t exactly planned… but them having an inaccurate idea of our combat capabilities won’t hurt.” Dilip told her. “As for the ponies they really do seem to know a lot more than us, and I think we can barter a bit of their medical know-how to the HPI without revealing its origin and trade it for the location of some more colonies.”

“Dirty. You do know they’re going to be pissed if they ever discover we’ve been dealing with aliens and haven’t told them.” She pointed out.

“They will be. Thing is, Eko is only one agent in their organization, and I think I’ve got him mostly figured out, at least as far as his ambitious streak is concerned. His colleagues though? I don’t want to completely depend on the whims of a shadow council, so we need a few aces up our sleeves.”

Raimund sagged a bit.

“Agreed but…” She sighed. “This seems all so needlessly complicated. Bear with me, weeks ago it was still all about getting to Lagos and doing offshore work not… getting turned into a tiny pink unicorn and then having to play mind games in a post-apocalyptic world between alien nudists and super-secret UN agencies while monsters are on the prowl and magic is somehow real.”

“When you put it like that… Ah screw it, pass me some of that schnapps.”

“Good evening fair mares and gentlecolts, my name is Doctor Sidereal Venture and I come from the world of Equus.” Sidereal began.

The mare stood in front of a crowd of sailors coming from both ships inside of Amandine’s cafeteria. They had gathered them after dinner to get a larger audience, the works on the Rhine stopping during the evenings according to their planning. That meant that except for the sailors on watch on the ships’ bridges and those guarding the terminal; everyone was available, including those that had been sent on an expedition in the morning.

Something about getting more power tools and oil reconditioning equipment for some experiments, not that she fully understood.

“My team and I…” She waved a hoof towards the four ponies that stood in a row behind her. “… have been sent as aid to survivors by our government, Equestria that is. You see, while my world certainly doesn’t have access to the kind of technology yours boasts, our expertise in magic far exceeds yours. This is how we managed to cross worlds, with an elaborate spell conceived by the best mages our capital city of Canterlot could offer.”

Stopping for a second to muster the courage to spit it out, the red furred mare repeated to the sailors the exact same thing she had told Dilip about the Event. She flinched when the crowd erupted in shouts of anger and cries of despair. They had her sympathy. If they were anything like Equestrian sailors, they used to have families waiting for them back home and she had just quashed any hopes they may have that said families would be there when they got back.

Or that they would ever get to see them again in their lifetime.

A stern-looking blue teenaged dragon with a beret managed to get the rowdy sailors to calm down. Well, for a dragon he was a teen. Sidereal was pretty sure that he was actually a middle-aged human if her assumptions were correct. Naturally even if the surge didn’t rejuvenate him he would have still turned into a teen by dragon standards, what with how slowly they aged.

Tartarus be damned, she was pretty sure most of the females she saw in the assembly used to be male. Very few mares ever went for that kind of nautical lifestyle in Equestria… ponies at least, she wasn’t too sure about how it went for parrots and Abyssinians, let alone centaurs.

The sight of the red skinned centaurs made her mind flash back to the ravages caused by Tirek. She forced herself to push the memories aside; they had no ties to that Demon of a sorcerer, much less considering the former Prince had been disavowed by his homeland.

“Now, I’ll pass the floor to Cheese Cake who shall give you a short presentation on the species you have turned into. Please do remember that we have training planned for flight and magic. The Officers should already have distributed the rosters for tonight’s session.”

Behind the computer hooked to the projector, Farkas moved on to the slideshow they had spent the afternoon preparing. The end result was… nothing spectacular really, but Cheese really had a blast making it under the sphinx lioness’ tutelage.

“Hi there!” The lanky yellow unicorn mare waved cheerfully at the crowd. “I’ll start off honestly: we don’t have much practical data on most of the species you’ve become, but I can still give you the basics.”

Cheese started off with the biggest slice of the pie they had available, one document she was even surprised they had. The interspecies reproduction chart. They had all agreed it was relevant to everypony on board, even though the genderswapped crewmembers might take it badly.

What appeared on the slide was a chart that depicted which species Equestrian creatures were able to reproduce with. Cheese had a lot to say about it, particularly as far as ponies were concerned.

Effectively, there were three possibilities on the chart: two different species (and the pony tribes counted as different species) could produce either a hybrid or a ‘pure’ (the term was a bit shoddy after passing through the Canterlot political mill) offspring; or they simply couldn’t.

Ponies for instance, were recorded as able to produce pure offspring with any of the other tribes. Cheese explained that in mixed families, the end result could often be affected by ancestry and that it was not uncommon for families to rediscover their family history when for instance two Earth ponies (she very much insisted on telling the sailor this was the right terminology, not draft pony) had a unicorn filly.

The four pony tribes were also able to produce pure offspring when reproducing with two species they had yet to meet, those two being what she labeled as the reindeer and the so-called ‘Everfree Deer’. Records also had it they could even mate that way with species as different as the centaurs and the hippogriffs.

In the back of the room, Carla gave Sebastien an interested look. That changed everything.

As for the matter of hybridization and ponies, she went on to explain that mating with one species known as the Zebricans would result in hybrid offspring . Some assumed it only resulted in a difference in fur coloration -of course the kids would be born with stripes-, but Cheese insisted that many species had innate magic influenced by hybridization as well. Like the Zebricans' alchemical skills.

“Wait, if a griffon and a pony do it, you get a hippogriff then?” A Diamond Dog with a broken paw asked.

“Weirdly enough, yes.” Cheese said, thinking back to a certain incident that occurred at the consulate in Fillydelphia. “The matter has puzzled biologists for decades, even more considering that many of these species should not be able to biologically reproduce with each other. Some mages attribute that to the inherent magic that permeates our universe… and now yours.”

Cheese decided to not go too much further on the matter of hybridization –they could check the books for that- and went on to the intricacies of… sexual intercourse. Obviously the mere mention of that raised a few ears and crests in the crowd, and she even spotted a few blushes.

She had gotten an explanation from Farkas on how humans reproduced. While similar to many of the mammalian species, she had to warn the sailors about heat season for equine species. She was certain about it being a pony thing, but other species didn’t go around shouting their mating habits so she couldn’t really tell about the rest.

On the bright side, she didn’t know of any species that ovulated as frequently as humans did. Celestia knew she would be hard pressed to live with a heat season every month. She had been told it had an influence on humans, but apparently nowhere near as strong as it did for ponies.

“What happens if the mare isn’t impregnated?” An indigo unicorn stallion asked from the back of the room. His white coveralls prevented her from looking at his Cutie Mark but she was pretty sure he was an engineer.

“Menstruation of course… and the obvious crankiness that ensues.” Cheese Cake told with a barely concealed wince.

That occurring during a visit to her family in Ponyville really hadn’t been the best of experiences.

“Can you avoid it?” The same unicorn asked.

“I’m sorry?” One of her ears twitched. “Self-control is hard but can work… otherwise we have contraception. There are rumors about potions and herbal medicine being able to stall ovulation or mitigate the effects but they’re rather uncommon. Now, we have plenty of literature available on the subject we will give you… for keeps of course, but there are other species I can mention, like griffons and hippogriffs. They’ve been Equestria’s allies for a while so we know a bit more about them.”

Hearing that, Farkas moved on the next part of the slideshow. A picture showing griffons and hippogriffs appeared on screen, accompanied by pictures of eggs, a pregnant-looking griffon and some notes.

These two species were truly peculiar when it came to reproduction as Cheese told them. They were the only known sapient species able to reproduce either via eggs or mammalian style. Many theorized that this allowed them to pick which method was the most efficient depending on environmental factors, though that had taken a completely different turn with the advent of modern society as various groups forged their own opinions on which was better, often pulling out pseudo-scientific arguments.

And then family planning institutions in Griffonstone got involved which made the whole thing even more confusing. That didn’t matter much to the sailors so she explained them how the method was determined by the ambient temperature during the first two weeks of incubation. If the temperature was high enough, griffon and hippogriffs would then lay eggs. The exception to the rule would be when a hippogriff female mated with a pony tribe, because then the offspring could be a pony. There was no ‘choosing’ to speak of in that particular case because the species of the offspring was determined earlier than the type of incubation.

In practice that meant that if a hippogriff mare was to bear ponies, it would be via pregnancy. If it was a hippogriff, then the options remained open.

That alone would have already been considering enough ‘originality’ in terms of biology, but it went further. The two avian chimeras didn’t ovulate at determined intervals like most species, no. Instead, they had ‘triggers’ which caused it. For griffons it was repeated sexual activity that caused ovulation.

Cheese was pretty sure she saw a glimmer of recognition in the eyes of a bald eagle griffon in the front of the crowd. Idly, she wondered if that may be about the young chick that lay between her and the grey falcon griffon next to her. They did behave like a mated couple after all, and the chick looked suspiciously similar to the two of them.

Also why was there a hatchling present for what was basically a sex-ed class? At least she didn’t seem to understand what she was saying…

Hippogriffs were a bit different. Ovulation wasn’t triggered by sexual activity but instead by calorie intake. The numbers were a bit iffy but it was often said they needed thrice their daily food intake to cause ovulation.

That method wasn’t unheard of on Equus actually. They had a couple sources citing it was also the case for dragons as well, but Cheese lacked an actual number on how much food the reptiles needed to gorge themselves on before they were able to reproduce.

As far as she knew, the phenomenon had a deep impact on hippogriffs society. Holidays and family reunions in Mount Aris always had an impact on the nation’s birthrate… and brought a whole new meaning to granny telling you you’re too skinny.

“Wait, does it affect sea hippogriffs as well?” A hippogriff stallion asked.

“Sea hippogriffs? I’m sorry?” Cheese tilted her head in confusion.

“You mean seaponies? I haven’t seen any on your crew, are they down in the water?” Sidereal jumped in.

“No… we’re here.” Said hippogriff told her, quickly transforming back and forth into his ‘marine’ form to show her.

That didn’t really have the expected effect because the red mare rushed over to the sailor and proceeded to look him over thoroughly.

“This shouldn’t be possible…” The Doctor muttered, much to the confusion of the sailors around her.

“Is there anything wrong ma’am?” The hippogriff shuffled awkwardly under her scrutiny.

“Oh, pardon me mister…” She trailed off.

“Yuri.” The seafoam colored hippogriff said, his orange coveralls depicting him as one of Amandine’s crewmembers.

“Right. Sorry Yuri, but back home I’m pretty sure hippogriffs and seaponies –as they’re called- cannot shift back and forth like you do. They need an… artifact of sorts to do it, a transformation pearl shard, and even then they are in short supply. Last I checked it was about… one per family if memory serves.” Sidereal rubbed the edge of her muzzle with one hoof pensively. “I mean… it could be that… Do you feel anything particular because of the transformation?”

“A bit of exertion maybe.” Yuri shrugged. “We can’t really shift back and forth many times in a row… leaves us winded see.”

Sidereal was about to ask him another question when she was interrupted by a polite cough from Farkas. Right, the presentation. The Doctor quickly excused herself, figuring out just how they could do that would have to wait for later.

“Where were we already?” Cheese asked.

“Seapony reproduction.” Aleksei called from the back of the room.

“Right.” Cheese nodded. “Simple enough actually. Similar to hippogriffs, but without the possibility of laying eggs. For hybridization… same thing as well, though it might be a bit hard for certain species in the water.” She mused. “But what can I say, if the flopping fish routine is your kink, I won’t judge.”

Amazingly enough, someone actually laughed at that.

The rest of her presentation was a bit more innocent. There was a lot to be told about each species, but Cheese settled for the simple, verified stuff.

For instance, she had to correct them on the proper naming for some species. There was no such thing as regular ‘dogs’ and ‘cats’. The correct terms were ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Abyssinians’ instead to differentiate them from their less developed quadruped cousins.

Someone actually made a joke about Roberto being an Italian Abyssinian. What it referred to, the unicorn had no idea and apparently it was so obscure it flew above the heads of most of the sailors in the room so she just shrugged it off. Abyssinia was a respected trade nation, and their activities had been pivotal in rebuilding after the ruin caused by the Storm King. They were still hunting for the missing pieces of their treasury to this day, but even a fraction of it had been enough for the felines to regain their economical might.

What she told them next surprised the hell out of her audience. The next part of the slideshow showed them a picture of former Dragon Lord Torch next to one of an adolescent dragon. Apparently the dragons on the crew weren’t even aware they were young by dragon standards, so she explained what she knew about dragons aging extremely slowly, their need for a hoard of jewels and precious metals to be able to live to their full life expectancy when they got older, and even the need to consume jewels and metal to maintain proper growth rate and scale durability.

“You really mean that I can grow that huge?” Schmitt asked incredulously.

“Torch was a rare thing, but going by the dragons I met in Manehattan…” Pulp interjected. “… You can reasonably expect to be at least three times as tall as you currently are by the time you turn two hundred.”

“Two… hundred…” Schmitt’s face fell.

“Rather young by dragon standards I’d say, must be the young adult range for them.” Cheese said. “It’s about that time they all start their hoard. Before then they’re a bit more nomadic in their lifestyle.”

“How long does a dragon actually get to live?” Schmitt asked.

“Depends on the hoard. Some of the biggest ones are millennia old; most live for around six centuries. I could be wrong of course; the old ones don’t like ponies much and are basically hermits so it’s hard to get a word out of them.”

Schmitt may have raised her eyeridges when she heard about how griffons reproduced, but she had to admit having your life expectancy determined by what basically was the size of your bank account... that was something else. Of course that also explained the compulsions she had discovered during an expedition way back in Antwerp. The diamonds still sat in a satchel underneath her mattress along with her now irrelevant wedding band.

But eating them? Seriously?! She thought what happened in Rosenborg was just Artyom going berserk, not biology at work.

The presentation was immediately followed by magic lessons for the handful of unicorns on both crews, as well as the first batch of flight lessons.

Cheese and Sidereal took their group out on the main deck for training. The Doctor really doubted much would be achieved that evening but she could show them the basics on how to use spells. She only took the unicorns along because she had honest-to-Luna absolutely no clue how creatures like sphinxes did their magic. She was familiar with horns, not whatever the winged felines used as their foci.

Also she was pretty sure there were more races that could actually do magic, she just wasn’t able to remember which since there were so many.

The parrots? Nah, they would know with celebrities like Celaeno frequently appearing in Equestria.

Plus, magic training was hard enough to do correctly that the batch of trainees she had been saddled with was enough. No need to add the sphinxes to the lot.

She had them form a circle around a specific item to try and feel out the magic it emitted. The item in question was nothing special, just a mere magic lantern that ran on ambient magic. She explained them that unicorn magic was based around their metabolism’s capacity to process ambient magic at a higher rate than other species. The processed magic then flowed towards their horns which, with rigorous and careful training, were then able to bend the magic into spells for various purposes.

She showed them some basic spells like a simple magic missile fired out of her horn and a light orb that floated above her and followed her. The magic missile was the most basic form of combat magic she could think of, one even fillies often managed to master.

Of course, colts and fillies grew up with their horns in a world where magic was considered normal so they had that advantage going for them.

Technically, the mage sight spell she used was a simple cast too. The catch was… it had a stupidly high learning curve. It required meticulous control for unicorns to actually be able to draw conclusions from what they saw because of how you had to tune it back and forth from coarse to fine, toy with the sensitivity, filter out the ‘noise’ and all that jazz… Most unicorns didn’t even know it existed until well into their adulthood, let alone know how to use it properly.

Good thing she was an academic.

Still, mage sight would have been overkill to feel the flow of a mana lamp from up close. That they could do just by focusing and closing their eyes. They first needed to see it before she could go on and show them how to warp spells with their horn. This was more than mere levitation (which was an instinctive trait), and her experience in magical fields of study had showed her numerous times what recklessness could lead to.

“Can you pick it up for an instant Cheese? I need to check something.” Sidereal called to her teammate.

She distanced herself from the circle of unicorns sitting on the deck and proceeded to take a good hard look at the ongoing flow of magic.

Sure, the magic was similar to the energies she had grown accustomed with during her career… but there was also this completely alien… flavor to it. Staring at her 'pupils' through a magic lens made her keenly aware of it.

She could see the familiar signature of Cheese Cake near them. The usual for an Equestrian creature: warps magic around it, takes it in, releases the excess slowly.

But the former humans were different. They did process the magic field around them, but comparing them to Cheese was like comparing a candle to a light bulb. They actually produced magic of their own. It radiated off of them like a tinted lamp, familiar, but definitely alien.

And that, according to Equestrian magic theory, should be strictly impossible. Magic was an ambient thing, a field, an energy that encompassed the whole wide world… but it was not made by beings. They processed it like air.

In fact… her head turned towards a pair of hippogriffs on the dock which she saw just in time as they dove in the water, transforming mid-air. Even they produced magic as well, and in their case they clearly used it to turn into seaponies, something the ones on Equus definitely weren’t able to do without the help of a magically-imbued artifact.

She was now certain her superiors had omitted a lot of details during the preparatory briefings. The motive behind it might be benevolent… but it didn’t make it any easier when she had to repeat what she had been told to the likes of Captain Gerig.

Dispelling her magesight, Sidereal nickered in annoyance. She felt like a tool… but she was a Doctor for a reason. She could think her way through that situation and… maybe even work something under the table with Captain Prateek to actually discover what in Tartarus was going on on Earth.

One of the pupils around the mana lamp got carried away and accidentally summoned a powerful light orb to the surprise of Cheese who fell back on her haunches.

Right, she had a lesson to go back to. A quick blast of her horn cancelled the light orb and she separated the unicorn (a young teal stallion with a paintbrush for a Cutie Mark, one of the Rhine’s cadets) from the rest of the group.

“How in the blazes does this even meet safety standards?” Aleksei called out.

“You’re a flyer!” Micha yelled several containers below her. “Just open your wings and they will catch you. It’s safe for us, just mind your landing and aim for the landing pad.”

They did have to revise their training procedure a bit, but now that they had the expertise of trained flyers in the way of two pegasi, it actually turned out that the initial method wasn’t so bad.

Once the Pegasus got over the hype of seeing the bridge of a modern vessel (and that took well over an hour and dozens of questions), Radiant had given them an actual explanation on how winged species managed to stay airborne.

It wasn’t physics. Their wings were too small for that, regardless of species. Instead, they used ambient magic to gain lift and remain aloft.

That didn’t change much in practice, except for the ability to do things Micha was pretty sure normal physics didn’t allow like flying backwards or hover without much effort, something Gust seemed to do a lot.

The weirdest thing was how little downdraft the Ranger produced when he did that.

“Are you sure I won’t plummet to my death? ‘cause I don’t really think I want to do that!” Aleksei insisted, talons clenched around the edge of the green container she was standing on.

“Quit yappin’ and get flappin’!” Boris bellowed at her.

And in a move that surprised absolutely no one, the goshawk griffon came up behind the hippogriff and tossed her off the stack.

Admittedly, the shrill cry that escaped her beak was pretty funny. Aleksei’s wings instinctively opened the moment she went airborne and slowed down her fall. The light green hippogriff screamed all the way down until she careened in the soft pile of materials they used as landing pad.

“See? No need to be afraid, your wings will catch you.” Boris chuckled.

“Ej ellē!” Was all that came from the landing pad.

Andy sauntered over to the fallen hippogriff and looked at her curiously for a few seconds before the griffon chick’s short attention span deemed the Second Engineer uninteresting and she went back to playing with her toys in a pile of cotton next to Micha.

Aleksei wasn’t the only trainee of the group that evening. After much discussion with Vadim and Micha, the two pegasi had decided they would start the first training phase with only part of the quadruped flyers. The sphinxes, gargoyles and dragons had been postponed for later, which still left them with a significant amount of griffons and hippogriffs, and the two batponies.

Gust and Radiant first had all of them jump off of a mid-sized container stack to assess their skills. Most of them barely knew how to fly and could only glide down inelegantly, with the exception of Micha, Boris and Vadim who were somewhat better.

By the pegasi’s reckoning, the three of them were the closest to actually flying. Radiant waited until they all jumped once before beginning a short speech about the matters of control. The glide method of training had two goals: on the surface layer they had to get an understanding of how the magic flowed around and through their wings and learn how to manipulate it, as well as learning the importance of limb and tail positioning. Beneath all that, gliding also strengthened their wings. It wasn’t really about physical muscles, but they did need to exercise their wings so the magic would be strong enough to keep them airborne.

Taking Andy for an example, Radiant explained that most species were born with their wings and gradually gained power as they matured to the point where they managed to take off late in their childhood. The griffon cub playing near them under the careful surveillance of Micha and Vadim would get to do that the regular way, as was healthy for cubs her age. The sailors on the other hoof… Radiant was forced to admit the gliding method was one that was frequently utilized for the reeducation of injured pegasi.

There were more things to be said too of course. Each species had their own specificities in how they flew like how pegasi were better flyers at high altitude and often managed better cruise speed. Griffons were better divers and could climb pretty quickly generally speaking, with some measure of variation depending on which type of bird their avian half was.

As for the hippogriffs, them being half seabird meant they often performed better above the water. They could often master techniques like dynamic soaring or transition from water to air and back.

And then they had the batponies, who were the masters of maneuverability. Like bats, the bones in their wings could bend and were gifted with an impressive range of motion that allowed them to pull off tricks only the best flyers of other species could manage. It wasn’t that uncommon for them to be able to fly full speed through a forest, something only matched by griffons with specialized avian halves like harpy eagles.

“Alright peeps, let’s move on to the bulk of the training and climb up those stacks. The more you glide today, the faster you will be actually flying.” Vadim told the group, all assembled sailors bursting into motion.

“Vadim is it? May I have a word?” Radiant asked behind the griffon.

“Of course. Something the matter?”

“Sort of I guess? It’s just, me and my group we were curious about…” The Pegasus waved his wing in the general direction of Andy, who was now play-fighting with Micha.

“Not my kid.” The Ukrainian told flatly.

“Really? She’s your spit image…” He wondered with one hoof running through his mane. “How?”

“No idea. Micha found her on the other side of the Oresund a few days ago and…” He shrugged. “No parents in sight apparently. Can’t leave a cub unattended you know?”

“That’s noble of you. I know how it can be for griffons.” Radiant nodded.

“What?”

Radiant’s muzzle opened and close once before he muttered a little ‘ah, right’ under his breath and faced the grey falcon griffon with an awkward smile.

“I must ask, have you experienced any particularly strong um… instincts, for a lack of a better word?”

Vadim’s mind flashed back to the impulses that had spurred him into a relationship with Micha. His pale grey feathers barely managed to conceal the blush that spread around his beak.

“I may have, why the question?”

“You see, there is this thing about griffons some like to call their ‘primal instincts’. In modern society that only leads to them being known as somewhat… rough and impulsive to others. No real harm there, but… there is the danger of ferals.”

“Ferals?”

“Wild griffons. See, ponies need a community to thrive, a herd. For griffons… some deem it to just be a nice bonus. Griffonstone has laws designed to limit the growth of the feral population, and it’s basically forbidden for griffons to become hermits, but it still happens sometimes. They will disappear into the wilderness since it makes little difference to them, and while the parents are still sane, their offspring isn’t. Then you get the ferals, griffons that haven’t been raised in society. They do have the intelligence of sapient beings, but they’re no more than feral animals.”

“You’re telling me this could have happened to Andy.”

“Had she been left alone, most likely. How did Micha find her?”

“Roaming the streets and eating pigeons. I can see how this could have evolved…” He sighed. “How do I avoid this?”

“I don’t think you should be afraid of it. Not with your current lifestyle.” Radiant told him. “I may not… approve of it for obvious reasons, but it is considered normal in griffon society to go on hunts and outings. Nothing to be afraid of with that. What you need to be on the lookout for, is individuals that start isolating themselves, they’re the most likely to deem civilization isn’t worth the bother and go off in the wilderness.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Not to griffons. Maybe not to hippogriffs, but we have no record of such an encounter…” The pegasus shrugged with his wings. “But to ponies and anything else? They see us as prey.”

Vadim paused for a second, staring at Micha and Andy.

“You know this was a fluke right? We may have found Andy, but there is an unfathomable amount of kids… cubs, chicks, foals, calves or whatever, they will just… reappear out of thin air, in foreign bodies and with their parents gone.”

“It’s a tragedy.” Radiant’s face fell and his wings slumped. “I’ll give you that yes… but that doesn’t mean nothing should be done about it. Look at you, first thing you and your mate did was basically adopting the kid. I don’t know much about humans, but with that kind of attitude you’re on the right track.”

“Thanks.” The Ukrainian nodded curtly before moving on to continue his training.

The training lasted for a whole two hours. Vadim and Micha alternated keeping an eye on Andy and even went as far as helping the cub get onto a container and do a bit of gliding herself, the young griffon laughing happily all the way down to the landing pad and raising the spirits of everyone around.

Nobody had actually any idea what life Andy had before they found her. In fact they didn’t even know if she was a girl before the Event, though fortunately she didn’t appear overly concerned about it. The fact she wasn’t old enough to talk either made it hard to guess. Micha tried her best to keep the child busy so she didn’t have time to dwell on it too much.

That didn’t work all the time. It was very clear to her caretakers how much she held on to her plush toy and blanket, and Micha was also pretty sure she had spent her first night on Amandine crying in her cabin.

She would have to talk to Vadim about it.

The grey falcon griffon had actually achieved the most progress during that specific session. For a minute, his erratic flapping managed to keep him at the same altitude before the effort wore him out and he was forced to land, panting from the exertion.

That got Gust to take him aside and start giving him hints on how to improve while Radiant kept an eye on the rest of the group.

“You flap too much, that tires you out and the erratic flapping makes it harder to stay balanced.” The gambeson wearing Ranger told him. “You try so hard that your wings are not properly synced, you noticed?”

“Yeah.” Vadim nodded. “Makes me bank to the left and start turning without wanting to.”

“Exactly! Tomorrow I want you to take it easy, you’re not a hummingbird remember?”

“Will do.”

Not a quarter of an hour later, one grey coated Pegasus found himself giddily waiting by Amandine’s stern ramp. Radiant could barely contain himself, that minotaur named Angelo had actually promised to give him a tour of the engine room along with any of his teammates that were interested.

Only Pulp actually. Gust claimed to be too tired and wanted to go catch some sleep in an actual bed, while the two unicorns of the group were still busy with their own trainees.

“You’re really into tech ain’t you?” Pulp asked.

“Well duh.” Radiant said. “Part of my job with airships really, and now I get to see stuff that Equestria only ever dreamed about, put in use at a scale beyond what our biggest yards can produce.” He hopped from hoof to hoof and casually did a flip using his wings. “It’s just… buck! Why are you interested by the way?”

“Meh, they got plenty of small steamers in Manehattan.” Pulp Orange shrugged. “Never got to see the insides of one, not even those that carried the family’s cargo.”

“Your family’s?”

“Well, duh, where do you think the Orange name comes from?” The Earth Pony looked at him. “Even after the feud with the Apples’ branch of the tree, we still have our bit of economical clout.”

“Well yeah, that made the headlines. It’s just…” The Pegasus shrugged with his wings. “Thought it was a coincidence really. Is it really that bad nowadays?”

“Tense I’d say.” Pulp huffed. “Many don’t like the idea of splitting a family over money matters… but now they got their territory and we have ours. Manehattan, Fillydelphia and Trottinggham are ours to conduct business in; they got Ponyville, Baltimare and Dodge Junction.”

“Wait a bucking second, didn’t you tell us you were scheduled to work in Baltimare as an agronomy consultant after this expedition?”

“With the Apples. The journalists may say whatever they want, but we are trying to mend this whole mess.”

“Makes me realize I really should hang in Equestria more.” Radiant commented dejectedly. “Sometimes with my job as navigator I wind up away from the homeland for so long it barely feels like home anymore.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s subtle really; I just… pick up some mannerisms. Fish for instance, pegasi can eat that but we just don’t in Cloudsdale. In Mount Aris though? Barely raises any questions.”

“Ever tried to take some holidays? Or even just pick up a contract that actually stays in Equestria for once.” Pulp offered. “Stick with the herd for once.”

“Herd? Gimme a break with the ground pounder talk, us pegasi, we flock.”

“Whatever suits you birdie.”

A thudding sound coming from the staircase told them their guide was coming. Minotaurs were never particularly stealthy, and Angelo was no exception with the noise his large hooves made as he went down the stairs. He emerged into the car deck with the upper half of his coveralls tied around his waist and a large thermos of coffee in one hand.

“Heads up ponies, hope I didn’t make you wait for too long. How was training?”

“Interesting. Andy’s a cute kid.” Radiant replied.

“That she is. Sorry about the delay by the way, I got held up upstairs with a bit of paperwork.” The grey furred minotaur told them. “Ready for the engine room? Hope you don’t mind heat and noise too much ‘cause it gets steamy down there in the summer, even with just the one generator running.”

And this is how the Greek led the two Equestrians down in the engine room proper. A particularly giddy Radiant followed him down the steep stair/ladder that dove beneath Amandine’s car decks. They went past the office part of the control room since the minotaur doubted Pulp would have much interest for the schematics and manuals he could show them there.

Carlos was there sitting behind a console in the control room. The white cockatoo didn’t have much work since they were just running their electricity production on a single generator at the moment, so he was just stuck there for a couple hours making sure nothing bad happened and periodically recording values like temperature, rpm and output in the logbook.

It was thus rather understandable that the Filipino would be reading a magazine whilst running his watch.

“Everything in order?” Angelo asked.

“Yeah, had a bit of a worry earlier but it was just a bad contact on some of the main switchboard’s sensors.”

“Rewired already?”

“Running smoothly, written down in the logbook and signed.” Carlos said, patting the tool pouch on his belt. “It’s my bad in any case; I installed the bloody thing in the first place. Those two the visitors?” He waved a talon at the two ponies behind Angelo.

“Eeyup. Radiant, Pulp, meet Carlos, our resident electrician.”

The two visitors exchanged greetings with the Filipino before Angelo went into an explanation on how they ran things there.

Amandine was a four-year-old vessel, meaning that she benefitted from the latest technologies available to commercial vessels.

The first thing that meant was that they basically were able to run everything from the confines of the control room. They had the command consoles in front of the observation window to run most of the stuff, which were also equipped with CCTV cameras to look around the engine room and at some subsections they couldn’t see from the control room’s window.

They also had the main switchboard’s controls in the control room to manage electricity production on board. Angelo explained how it allowed them to direct power to certain systems and how the base system was equipped with ingrained priorities in case of damage to the installation. Without input, the ship would cut off power from non-essential areas like the accommodation, kitchen and car decks to maintain power in key systems like the bridge and servers.

Amandine was equipped with four 1MW diesel generators to produce electricity when she was anchored or in port. They were also designed to provide power to the bow thruster when the ship was maneuvering without stealing power from the main engine.

Speaking of which, the main engine was the thing that got the most attention from the two visitors, both looking at it in awe from the observation window.

Not without reason either. The Wärtsilä 16V46F that powered Amandine was considered extremely powerful for a ship her size. At its maximum output of 600 rpm, the sixteen cylinders fed more than 19MW of power into the switchboard. They didn’t use that speed frequently, but when push came to shove Amandine could reach 25 knots. Not bad for a merchant vessel.

The massive engine weighed over 230 tons, spread over a length of nearly thirteen meters that completely dwarfed the little ponies looking at it. In fact it was so tall that they could see the walkways wrapping around the engine block to allow the crew to access it.

After his little explanation, Angelo passed them each a headset to go through the airlock and into the ER proper for a tour. They were as much of a protection as an aid for him because of the integrated radio.

Yeah, tearing your vocal chords to shout over the noise of the ER was a thing of the past, hail technology.

Angelo stopped them next to a massive blue steel assembly connected to the main engine that fed into a cluster of grey boxes covered in switches and gauges.

“That here is where the magic happens. See, the engine doesn’t actually directly turns the propellers. It’s diesel-electric. The engine's power is converted into electricity by the central generator which feeds it into the main switchboard.” He told them, pointing at the grey boxes. “The switchboard in turn transfers that power towards a pair of electric motors connected to each propeller shaft.” He went on, pointing towards two areas on either side of the room where massive red boxes connected to the extremity of the shafts.

“The switchboard also does more than that. It’s the central position where most of the transformers are. Part of the power is converted and taken to high voltage appliances like the radars or industrial appliances all over the engine room for auxiliary systems, and then some is spared for ‘domestic’ power consumption in the accommodation. The diesel generators are connected too, so technically we could start them all to run the main propulsion… but they’re not very good at it.” He snorted.

Walking over to one of the shaft’s motors, he pointed at a green structure connected to its tip.

“That’s one of the pumps for the controllable pitch propeller system. One per shaft. See the shafts, they’re actually hollow. The propeller outside at the extremity is fitted so that we can change the orientation of the blades depending on our needs by applying hydraulic pressure on it.”

“What happens if the pump breaks down?” Radiant asked, one primary feather pressing against his headset’s button.

“Good question. The propeller blades are balanced in such a way that without pressure, they fall into ‘half-ahead’ position, meaning we can still limp back to port in case of breakdown. Makes maneuvering much harder though, and it screws with the autopilot because the pitch control is used to balance thrust between port and starboard. It’s much easier to adjust thrust via pitch control than by changing shaft rpm. For instance when we maneuver, changing thrust from forward to backwards can’t be done easily by stopping a shaft. With pitch control? Keep them running at speed, and then we can adjust pitch from full ahead to full astern in a matter of seconds. No thrust needed? Then we put them in neutral.”

The tour went on to show them the many systems that coursed beneath the surface of the vessel, from the sewage system to the desalination plant including the cooling circuits. The amount of different subsystems quickly lost him Pulp, though Radiant hung on with rapt fascination, always managing to ask him relevant and interesting questions.

“Buck…” Radiant sighed as he hung his headset after their tour. “How did you humans get to such a point where you would get ships like that? I mean, screw science-fiction and spaceships, this one is enough.”

Angelo laughed.

“I know the feel. You know, a hundred years ago we were still running on barebones steam engines, and a hundred years before that sails were the main propulsion system. All things aside, this escalated pretty quickly; we got thousands of years of sailing and rowing, but less than two hundred years worth of actual engines.”

“Really? That fast? What in Tartarus happened?”

Angelo raised an eyebrow at the Tartarus thing but put it aside for now.

“War happened probably. We tend to do that a lot. It starts off easy, your neighbors get better warships so you upgrade yours and it all escalates from there.”

“Bit oversimplified there Angie’” Carlos commented.

“’cause I’m fit to give history lessons?”

“Maybe not… but may I offer an idea to you lot?”

“Shoot, it’s not like I have any.”

“Civilization 5. Show them a quick game; that should give a quick appreciation of human history.” The Filipino cockatoo offered. “I know you got it on your computer.”

“You know it’s a game, not a history book right?” Angelo tilted his head, mindful not to snag something with his horns.

“I know, but it’s got the Civilopedia and an actual human to set things straight.” Carlos insisted before calling out to the two ponies. “You guys know of video games? It’s like a board game but on a computer.”

“I kinda like board games.” Pulp said.

And that settled it, Radiant and Pulp would get to witness a game of Civilization.

Later though.

Author's Notes:

On the list of not-so-bright ideas:

Using a videogame of dubious accuracy to teach aliens human historyTeach them the sacred art of Powerpoint-Fu (also known as: the dreaded safety brief)

While I can find a lot of data on the actual Amandine, info on her propulsion was hidden behind a paywall. For the record, the Wartsila 46 engine she's equipped with is also found in a diesel-electric configuration on board of M/V Symphony of the Seas (although of course, the latter's installed power is far beyond that of a workhorse like Amandine). Originally I didn't plan to have her run on diesel-electric but that system should prove more flexible than a dual engine/dual propeller system with mechanical transmission.

For those wondering, the racial compatibility sheet Cheese referred to in the briefing is the one I made a blog post on (second sheet). That's the data I'll be following for 'alien' biology.

On a more meta level, I have no idea why but somehow I got views on my buffer chapters even though I didn't hit 'publish' yet. Weird...