The whiskey was gone, and my hardened tolerance to alcohol was gradually throwing my previously incapacitated faculties back at me. Cloudchaser was clearly not in the right frame of mind. She hated me, yet she was currently grinding her junk against me like a mare in…

Oh god.

The strong, intoxicating scent, the crazy eyes, the persistent/borderline rapey persona seemingly out of nowhere. Was Cloudchaser actually in heat?

“Umm… Cloudchaser?” I timidly asked, discreetly withdrawing my hands from her flanks.

The mare didn’t appear to have heard me. She continued to press her muzzle to my face, her eyes glazed and her hips undulating against my junk. Carefully placing an arm behind her, I leaned forward, attempting to pull my legs out from beneath her.

“No!” Cloudchaser suddenly growled, her irises shrinking and her wings clamping my arms once more. “This used to be Windrunner’s duty. Now, it’s yours.” The manic gleam in her eye left no doubt in my mind that she meant business.

In that moment, Spitfire’s warning rang through my head. ‘One of them is bound to take an interest in you at some point. You might as well learn how to deal with it when it happens.’

Well, shit. Was I about to become a victim? I could hardly imagine Cloudchaser would actually force herself on me if she was of sound mind, but under the influence of her heat, it could well become a reality. I only had two choices: accept it, and do my best to rut the crazed mare into submission, or fight, and escape.

Cloudchaser was a very pretty mare, and after my earlier conversation with Flitter, the reservations I once held regarding the taboo no longer held as much merit. I could just do the deed, banishing her lust and keeping my dignity. There was only one thing holding me back, and as it turned out, she was currently gazing at me through the open cockpit door, her eyes and pendant glowing azure…

* * *

Having successfully slipped out of sight after a—thankfully short—encore, Felix scanned the entertainment district for any sign of drunken human pilots. Unfortunately, she found nothing other than a pair of navy pegasus stallions, that whilst indeed drunk, were neither pilots, nor human.

“Blimey! That’s Jewel, that is!” one of them slurred, barely managing to keep his drunken gaze focused on her. “You fancy comin’ back to the barracks, gorgeous?” he asked. His companion, on the other hand, had no trouble letting his eyes wander all over her body. Particularly her tail.

Felix rolled her eyes as the siren let out an internal hiss of disdain, sensing their intentions. Lust was not a meal she very much cared for. Turning her back on their ogling, she swiftly set off into the night.

Jack was a clever enough guy—when sober. When he was drunk however, he was as stupid as they come. That’s why Felix found it highly unlikely he’d chosen the rational option of heading back to the barracks. No. He was a flight risk at the best of times…

The unicorn paused, slowly turning her gaze toward the gargantuan Airbus looming in the mist.

Jack, whined the siren, breaking a rare period of silence.

Flight risk… Felix grinned. Yeah, he probably would, wouldn’t he?

Without another thought, her hooves automatically turned towards the jet. Teleportation was out of the question, given the time of night. Spitfire would have her horn on a platter for the sheer noise pollution alone. Speaking of noise pollution, if Jack actually managed to get the APU started then he’d end up waking half the base.

Breaking into a brisk semi-gallop, Felix bounded across the tarmac, deftly launching her lithe form into the air when she reached the jet, allowing her magic to propel her straight up and through the open cabin door. She landed softly on the carpet, and was immediately aware of a very pungent odour hanging in the air, slightly accented by the scent of hard liquor.

Awoken by the unmistakable odour, the siren began clawing at the confines of Felicity’s mind. The cockpit door was ajar, a soft glow escaping from it. Sompony was in there. Somepony in heat. Sompony with Jack.

Don’t jump to conclusions, Felix determinedly thought. You knew we’d have to deal with something like this eventually…

Unconsoled, the enraged hissing grew louder. Felicity’s pupils began to dilate. The cockpit drew nearer, yet simultaneously farther away as her field of view increased. A voice could be heard… feminine moans perhaps? Four sharp pinpricks of pain emerged between her teeth—something she hadn’t felt in years. Something she dreaded. Ponies were about to have a bad time.

A new light joined the glow from the cockpit. A deadly blue shimmer, erupting from her very own eyes.

Having finally reached the doorway, Felix laid her spotlight gaze upon Jack, lying on the floor, his discarded whiskey bottle beside him. The dishevelled, lust-crazed form of Cloudchaser lay on top of him.

The siren screamed.

* * *

Felix took one look at the pegasus pinning me to the deck and released the most bone chilling, unequivocally terrifying shriek I’d ever heard. My skin began crawling with the unchristened toddlers of the first circle of hell, whilst Cloudchaser seized up as though she’d just flew into a power pylon. Before I even had time to cover my ears, the pegasus emitted a terrified squeak and scuttled around the enraged unicorn with the almost comical agility of a cartoon road runner. Launching herself from the plane, she somehow managed to slam the door shut behind her.

She needn’t have bothered, however, seeing as it was blasted clean off it’s hinges by a blinding ray of blue light less than a second later. Shards of scrap metal rained down the tarmac below, the door nothing but a memory.

CRACK!

Felix vanished, the rebounding vacuum shockwave of her violent departure wrecking my eardrums. I grimaced, tinnitus ringing. I could only hope Cloudchaser managed to hide herself. If not, Spitfire would more than likely have another dead pegasus on her hooves.

A dead silence filled the air for a brief moment, only to be broken by the sound of distant explosions and panicked shrieks. I shook my head in disbelief. For a smart pony, Felix could really be an idiot at times.

The lateness of the hour finally catching up with me, I sat down on the cabin floor, my legs hanging over the edge of the now doorless exit. She wanted me enough to be jealous. It was more of a surprise to me that I was actually happy about it, truth be told.

A disgruntled looking Spitfire appeared through the foggy void surrounding the plane. When I saw she was wearing a nightgown with a floral pattern embroidered onto it, I laughed aloud.

“What the hay is the meaning of all this noise?” she yelled, her wings beating to keep her aloft through strategically cut slots in the back of the gown. “Wait, why are there bits of your ship on the floor?” she shot me a puzzled gaze.

“Ask Felix,” I chuckled, enjoying the cool breeze provided by her wings. “Nice nightgown, by the way. It really brings out your eyes.”

* * *

Stupid pegasus with her stupid high rank. I kicked a bench aside, dragging my mop back and forth over the seemingly endless mess hall floor. As if Captain Horse Feathers had given me a disciplinary—when I hadn’t even done anything wrong! What was more—she’d refused to listen to my argument, instead setting General Batshit-Crazington on my ass and laughing as I ran for cover.

“Hmmmph-hmph-mmphm!”

“Oh, now you wanna talk?” I shot at my partner in crime. Even stood next to a rubbish bag with the weathered handle of a sweeping brush stuck in her maw, Felix still looked ten times hotter than any other mare on the base.

Spitting the wood out, she scowled at me. “I said, at least you have hands. Jackass.”

“Y’know, there are stallions that’d pay top bits for a show like that,” I observed, motioning to saliva-covered handle of the sweeping brush.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Felix growled, the solid alloy inhibitor ring encompassing her horn glowing red hot and beginning to smoke.

I rounded on her. “Why are you acting like you’ve got a stick up your ass? Christ, Felix, shove that broom back in your mouth and it’s like you’re a ponified skewer snack.”

Felix feigned ignorance. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you ratted me out to Spitfire!” she spat, bellowing the last five words at me.

I gave her an incredulous look. “Oh, sure!” I mocked, holding my arms up in frustration. “The busted door was the real kicker. It obviously wasn’t any of the three huge craters in the runway, the half-demolished cloud hanger, or the disintegrated Raptor!”

Sobered a little, the unicorn turned back to the rubbish bag, nudging it forward a bit with a forehoof. “I could have cleaned that up if I’d had time. Still doesn’t change the fact that you snitched.”

“I wasn’t thinking, okay?” I said, letting out a sigh, kicking the bench back beneath the table and grabbing my discarded mop. “Why did you go all murder-corn on Cloudchaser, anyway? If your aim was any better, she’d be a pile of ash right now.”

Felix hissed, before slapping a forehoof to her maw and looking every bit as shocked as I felt.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “Okay… That was creepy. Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?” she asked, sounding like her normal self once more.

“You sounded like that crazy bitch from The Exorcist. If you start randomly pissing everywhere I am not cleaning it up,” I warned, brandishing the mop at her with an air of finality.

Felix frowned. “What?”

“Token movie reference—not important. Just tell me you’re not secretly evil inside or whatever. I’ve nowhere near enough whiskey to deal with that bullshit.”

“I’m not evil… even though…”

“‘Even though?’ There’s an ‘even though’?” I questioned.

A flash of worry clouded her pretty sapphire eyes for a fraction of a second, but then it was gone, as if it had never been. “Nothing. Some ponies can be prejudiced because of my parentage, but I don’t let that get to me.”

“Your... parents? How so?”

“Well, it’s just ‘parent’ these days, but I come from a very wealthy family.”

“You’re rich?” I chuckled.

“My mother is worth more than Filthy Rich’s entire business empire.”

“Really?” I exclaimed, genuinely surprised. “Why the hell are you working on a military base, then?”

“I love my job. Fixing things makes me happy, and the military has a lot of broken toys.”

I stopped mopping for a second. “And yet, you’re currently stuck cleaning up a mess hall with your zapper in a chastity belt,” I pointed out, grinning.

Felix rolled her eyes, clumsily attempting to sweep up a few stray breadcrumbs using her hooves to hold the broom. “If my mother ever saw me wearing this thing, she’d have a fit. Do me a favour, and don’t ever tell her. She’d probably try and get Spitfire Spit-fired.”

“What makes you think I’ll be meeting your mother? Doesn’t she live in Canterlot?”

“Yes, but she’ll no doubt want to meet you when we fly out there to show Princess Celestia the latest addition to the war effort.”

I paused once more. “Wait—are you telling me Spitfire wants to parade us around like a circus freak show?”

“Well, not so much you. More the huge flying medical base that isn’t dependant on magic to function,” she smiled, flicking her mane out of her eyes. A high-frequency “crack” echoed around the mess hall, and Felicity’s mane was suddenly showered with tiny fragments of inhibitor ring, some of which rained down on the floor. “Oh, ponyfeathers!”

“Did you just break it?” I chuckled, rinsing the mop head in the steel bucket I’d been nudging along the floor in front of me.

“No, I transfigured it into a teapot,” Felix snapped, brushing the remaining shards out of her mane with a forehoof. “Of course I broke it.”

“How? Aren’t they supposed to be indestructible, or something?”

Instead of answering, Felix gathered all of the broken pieces up in her pink magical aura. They flew back together so fast the fully intact inhibitor ring was left spinning end over end in mid-air. When her magic receded, it fell neatly back onto her horn. She gave me a look as if to say “what?”.

I rolled my eyes, casually resting my upper arm against a message board full of newspaper cuttings. “You really are OP. It’s almost getting old at this point.”

BANG.

The double doors to the mess hall burst open, and I hastily sprang back to mopping the floor—but not before Captain Horse Feathers got a freakishly large eyeful of me slacking off.

“Jack! Stop leaning on that wall. Felix, take that broom out of your mouth. You don’t know where it’s been.”

Felix spat the broom handle out. “Where’s it been?” she hastily asked.

Spitfire ignored her. “The trip to Canterlot has been moved,” she said, not even bothering to look at the floor, despite claiming she’d be conducting a meticulous inspection earlier.

“You mean the one you didn’t even bother to tell me about?” I sniped.

“Yes. That one. We’re leaving tomorrow,” she coyly replied.

“Tomorrow?” Felix all but screeched. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Spitfire demanded. I had to admit, I’d seen funeral directors with less serious expressions.

“But, what about the sky iron? It hasn’t even finished being cast yet, let alone fitted, and the structural enhancements? They take twelve hours to cast, not to mention the two days of solid meditation I need to outfit a ship the size of the Airbus-”

“Have you fixed the engine?” Spitfire interrupted, holding up a hoof.

“Well, yes, but we haven’t tested the new components-”

“As long as you can get it flying. You can add the armour and enchantments at Foal Mountain,” Spitfire cut her off again, trotting over to the unicorn and deftly plucking the inhibitor ring from her horn. “Oh, and try not to destroy half of the base while you’re at it? There are only so many times I can get away with slapping your hoof, when I should have court martialled your reckless ass.”

Felicity’s ears dropped a shade as Spitfire turned to leave. “Get to work on the ship. It needs to be ready by sunrise.” With that, Spitfire trotted from the mess hall, the doors closing behind her.

Author's Note

Just a short one this time, but don't worry, a larger update is coming soon.

In the meantime, here's a pic of Atomflank. I'm no artist, so excuse the n00btastic quality...

If you find any errors, let me know down in the comments.