Chapters "ROCKET MALFUNCTION! EVERYBODY TO THE ECAPE POD!" cried Starry Night, securing on his helmet. "An stray asteroid hit the back of the ship!"
Twilight looked around. The small spacecraft was surrounded by huge asteroids. The ship must have swerved INTO the Cloud. Everyone sprang into action. As Spike and Starry bolted through the escape pod door, Twilight fumbled with her suit. Her thoughts swam, her head spun, she was sweating like crazy. All of a sudden, while she was putting on her helmet, everything was quiet. Then a giant space rock crashed head-on into the cockpit. The shrapnel hit Twilight at a thousand miles per hour, taking of a chunk of her right leg. She cried out in agony, but there was no sound. She realized all at once that she didn't put on her helmet in time. She immediately thought The other escape pod, it's my only chance. Her vision was going fuzzy as she floated her way to one of the remaining escape pods, but she looked out the observation deck only to her friends' damaged pod swerve into an asteroid of equal size.
The collision shook the space shuttle. Twilight bit her lip, and tears began to flow as she opened the airlock to the pod. Those were her only peers on the mission. She couldn't get help. The ship was in kaput, and there was no hope for her precious friend, Spike. He had been one of her closest friends for over fifty year since he had been hatched, and he was gone. Twilight knew it was her fault, that if she had triple checked the ship, she could have prevented it. And Starry Night was gone, too. Their computer scientist and co- navigator, now in bloody, messed up pieces floating around in the vast expanse of space. Twilight had sealed the airlock, gasping for breath. Luckily, she had some. She pulled a lever on the control pad, and pressed a big blue button labeled "LAUNCH". The small craft immediately burst forward. Twilight collapsed on the floor and began to sob. There was no hope for her. She couldn't go out of the ship without suffocating, she had no help, and she to navigate a tiny ship through a giant asteroid cloud. She suddenly realized that she had let go of her helmet during the chaos. Damn. She thought shuddering.
She banged her head-on the tiny dashboard. She had to try to get to the Space Station.
Twilight's craft hurled through the vast expanse of the asteroid field, sometimes narrowly missing the huge rocks by inches. Suddenly she could start to see tiny lights off in the distance. A tiny flicker of hope and relief died when she started to see dark spots, and a feeling of light-headedness. Her vision was blurry and she was very confused. Then, a blob of blood floated up from her face. She looked down, at her hooves. The leg that had been torn off hadn't just magically grown back, and she hadn't stopped the bleeding. Twilight had been so heartbroken and full of terror to even realize that her leg was still missing. "Shit," she said woozily, seconds before collapsing onto the control console, and died.
This was it. This is what Twilight had been waiting for her whole life. THIS will dictate weather she can or cannot reach up to the heavens and touch the clouds. This alone will decide if she is worthy to rule Equestria in place Luna or Celestia. She had anticipated this. She had stayed up late reading magazines and books on recent tech milestones. And, this space shuttle was of her own design. If it failed, then all of Equstria would would be ashamed of her-embarresed by her. Just the thought of it was unbearable. She was in the cockpit now, with full view of the sky. A bead of sweat trickled from her mane and of of her ear, and onto the seat. I mean, sure, she liked the ideas of being IN one of her favorite areas of study, but she still had a feeling of impending doom. She shared the cockpit with a military pony named Starry Night, and Spike. Good ol' Spike. He was still the same baby dragon she had always known: the same potbelly, the little way he walks.
Wonderful, wonderful Spike.
The point of this trip was to get new food and supplies to the Equestrian Space Station. It was also meant to test out Twilight's ship design.
The countdown had started...
Twilight was having second thoughts.
10...
9...
"Um, I'm getting a bad feeling about this."
8...
"Are we insured for asteroid damage?"
7...
"We left the door locked, Owliscous has enough food, WE have enough food..."
6...
"Did we say goodbye to everyone?"
5...
"I've checked and re-checked and quadruple checked everything..."
4...
"So why does it feel like something's wrong?"
3...
"Did we bring any Aspirin? I might need one...or two."
2...
"I don't feel so good..."
1...
*VOMIT*
"BLAST OFF!"
They suddenly went straight into the great beyond , where nopony had ever been. The sudden acceleration pushed everyone into their seat. As they reached 60,000 feet, everything seemed to slow down. Twilight started to float. This was like nothing she had ever read before in books describing 0-g. Of course she had experienced being in the air before, but nothing like this. She unbuckled and had Starry Night man the controls. It was wonderful.
Things had been going as planned, except the fact that Twilight had puked all over herself and the seat. Suddenly, Starry stated that the ship had entered outer space. He pressed a series of buttons and flipped a switch. The walls sprang to life; folding, creasing, and sliding back to reveal a sleek, transparent observation deck around the cockpit.
"Cool ," Spike said, eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.
Twi motioned for Spike to follow. The two wandered over to the side and looked out. The ship appeared to be approaching a cloud of clustered brownish gray rocks, ranging from the size a pebble, to the size of small cities. She had expected this, and had observed it from her telescope and in books. The Cloud orbited Equestria at 600,000 miles per hour. It was a relatively small cloud too, so she calculated that it would be 5 hours until The Cloud completely passed. Twilight entered the data into the autopilot, and had Starry enable it. Now she just had to wait.
Twilight decided to do liked to do most , she liked to read . She read one of her favorite books. She read for 2 hours and finished nine times, and there was nothing else to read so she slept. And slept...
And slept...
And woke with alarm blaring in her face.
A purple alicorn tossed and turned in a small red cot. Her Cutie Mark pictured a big pink star. This ailcorn's name was Twilight Sparkle. She heard a small cracking noise, followed by burping. Twilight opened her eyes and sat up. "What the hell?" she muttered to herself. She had just died, in the most tragic way possible, and now here she was? She was right to say "What the hell.''
"What the HELL is going on?!" she screamed and through her hooves in the air. (like she just don't care)Twilight stomped out into the hallway, looking for an explanation. She was back in the ship, all right. The exact same details were in place. When Twilight come into the cockpit, only to see Starry Night fumbling with the controls and Spike munching on freeze-dried diamonds. I don't remember putting diamonds in the inventory check. She thought.
"Oh, hey Twilight, we just passed the asteroid field, and we're headed to the space station ahead of schedule," said Starry Night. "In fact, we get there and back in less than a few days!"
"But, how is that possible when the Space Station is 100 million miles away?! It should take weeks!"
"What? No. It is only 3 million. Maybe you should go take a nap."
"I just took a nap."
"Fine."
Twilight was probably about the most confused she had been in her entire life. Nothing was wrong, but everything was wrong. How could she have DIED? She came up with several ideas, all of which she doubted. She could have been dreaming, she might have fallen into another dimension, she probably had a weird disease and hallucinated. Just as Twilight made her way to her room, she heard a loud banging sound and jumped with surprise. She ran back out into the cockpit area, and saw something that literally made her crap herself. That was the least of her problems. Twilight's main priority at the second was getting rid of the giant mutant alien on the ship.