Stratosphere
By: The Grey Pegasus
Twilight Sparkle looked down.
Then she felt her gut twist into an even tighter knot than it already was.
It was a strange thing. It was a mix of many things. Rainbow going on and on about how it's good for one's self to take a flight somewhere up into the sky all alone, as far as one could be from anypony else. There was her own curiosity about what was up above them all the time. To get closer to Celestia's celestial ball of light, or Luna's lunar body. To see and be with the wonders of the heavens above.
'I don't remember why I ever thought this was a good idea. I don't remember how I agreed with myself to this.'
Twilight didn't quite expect it to get so... eery, lonely, and... dark. Upon a small cloud she had conjured up for herself to stand on and catch her breath, she observed the world glow below her.
Even the sight took her down from her trembling stance down to her knees. Sitting, she continued to stare at her vast surroundings. Off to her sides, the globe dipped down, dropping to a darkening blue, and above the curving horizon was just black. Just... dark.
She gulped down air, the height getting to her even more. She had remembered that air became thinner the higher one went, and so she had cast a spell on herself earlier to counteract altitude. With every nervous breath she took air rushed into her lungs furiously. She didn't feel it, actually, but she knew what was happening.
It was amplified as she was the only audible sound in her vicinity. The silence pressed against her ears with the occasional inhale softly breaking that silence. She felt herself as a lonely speck in a very large universe.
And yet, sitting upon her tiny cloud, she wondered, 'What's higher up?'
Twilight didn't know and it wasn't the time to find out. She hadn't really prepared for such a journey.
Besides preparation, she wasn't up to it in the first place. She felt her spine chill every time she saw land, be it below her or straight ahead at the horizon. She felt herself chill from how high up she was.
Twilight didn't really like heights. Sure, she had been an alicorn for a while by now, but she hadn't been used to the 'wings' thing her entire life. Her natural instincts—her inborn senses—told her that height was bad. Within her brain, her genetics were screaming at her that being really high up was not good for a unicorn's health.
Naturally, she safely cast aside those warnings for survival, given that they didn't really apply to her anymore. Or at least attempted to consciously cast them aside. Still, she consciously knew that subconsciously she was still not at agreeable terms with her current situation.
'42,000 meters... 42,000 meters...' "I'm in the stratosphere... I've been in the stratosphere... since more than 10,000 meters ago..."
Yes, thinking statistically would get her head straight and composure settled down. Recite the facts. Remind herself that she knew what spot she was in and that knowledge was power. And with that power, she still had control over her situation.
"... The air is extremely thin... and oxygen in breathable form is actually starting to decompose at these heights... ha ha..."
Okay, well, mostly had control over her situation. Twilight knew she had stepped into the trap of analyzing a fairly precarious scenario, which really just served to accentuate the kind of spot she had flew herself into. She had control over that, and she chose to inform herself of where she was.
It comforted her to know how insane of a position she was in, if that made sense to herself. She looked down at the dot that was Ponyville. Or what might have been Ponyville. It was hard to tell against the slightly larger and darker green spot that might have been the Everfree Forest.
"Ha ha, yeah, that's quite a drop."
Twilight hovered a hoof in front of her gaze, moving it over the landscape below. With a single slight motion of her hoof, she spanned the Canterlot Mountain Range. Bringing her eyes farther up revealed the Frozen North, where the Crystal Empire lay. For the alicorn, the wintery land seemed quite warm at that moment.
The glowing blue line of the edge of the horizon brought her eyes farther up. The curvature of the earth still continued to impress her. The thin line of the atmosphere curving away reminded her of the emotions running within her at that moment. A thin fence between the comforts of familiarity and safety, and the thrill of somewhere new and bold and definitely frightening.
Twilight sighed, and it mentally clicked in her head that it was only by magic that she was actually breathing.
"Well... flying up here was kind of hard... since wing magic does work by manipulating the air around it. I'm not sure if evolution ever intended for ponies to go up this high..."
Upon her little cloud, Twilight took one last chance to take in her surroundings. The Eastern Sea was not far away at all. Every city on the coast she felt like she could reach out and touch.
Twilight truly felt like a princess right then. With just a lift of a hoof, she could reach out to any pony in Equestria from her small floating throne in the heavens. Everywhere below her was her land, and even farther out, she could still reach out and touch. She could touch the world.
But even with the world so vast, her own home called for her. The humble surroundings she had settled within with the ones she was close with. From far above, they were as small as anyone else could be, but to her, they were so much more. Twilight couldn't resist craning her neck around one last time.
"I wonder if this is how Celestia feels... So powerful... yet somewhat disconnected... I used to wonder before, but now, don't think I can fathom how important to her getting Luna back was."
Twilight looked up. The black void opened up to her again. Celestia's sun bore down bright rays, but she couldn't feel them bring any warmth to her cold. Somewhere out there was Luna's moon. Even farther from Equestria than her small cloud in the stratosphere. So far from home. Was it cold there too?
Twilight peered over the edge of her cloud.
"I think it's time to go home."
The small hint of a smile from the prospect of returning home disappeared as Twilight considered the journey of getting down. She clenched her eyes a few times, blinked deliberately, and continued looking down.
"Heh... heh... they say to not look down..."
She built up her composure. Her heart raced as her eyes took in the distance between her and the earth. It was a very long way down. Her chest heaved as she vaguely neared the end of her abstract mental countdown.
The fall began when she made the cloud burst into a larger cloud of intangible ice particles in a flash of magic. She gasped as she felt gravity grip her and pull her through the remnants of her ethereal throne.
Her fall began uncontrolled. The distant horizon rose up in her vision until she saw the ground. The ground rolled by near-instantly, giving way to the horizon once more. The horizon disappeared towards the top her her vision until all that was left was the endless void.
It repeated. And repeated. And repeated. As the image looped in Twilight's eyes, her nervous breaths slowed, then turned into small chuckles. The small chuckles turned to heavy, more pronounced laughs. Until the laughs disappeared and all that was left was a grin.
The grin came at the onset of a tugging sensation from inside of Twilight's wings. It quickly grew more and more. It had barely been twenty seconds of just plain falling, but Twilight knew what the tugging meant. Even as she spun at a slightly dizzying rate, her analytical mind functioned perfectly.
"Ha... ha... gravity! Gravity... 9.8 meters per second... squared... second squared... Nearly 400 miles per hour already! Beat that, Rainbow!"
The tugging at Twilight's wings seemingly snapped and she felt a different sensation. Like bleeding. But it wasn't really bleeding. It wasn't painful. It was exhilarating, actually. It felt like an outpouring. It essentially was, since it was like a unicorn getting their magic sucked out through their horn. Except this felt good, and there was nothing wrong with it.
The alicorn continued lazily tumbling earthward. She laughed as she effortlessly broke the first speed barrier. If only Rainbow Dash knew.
"Oh, Sonic Rainbooms. The limit at which a pegasus, or any creature with wings, can no longer exert their flight magic to fly faster. And so conversely, speed is linked to the ability to fly. And then breaking the barrier causes a large magical reaction between the magic-channeling organ and the stream of magic, which manifests as the Sonic Rainboom! No wonder Rainbow Dash performed a Rainboom so young. It doesn't take too much speed to outrun a filly's flight magic potential... Well, it does, but not for Rainbow Dash."
Twilight's thoughts quickly shifted back to how long she had just been simply falling towards the earth. Lazily falling while the coldness remained still around her and as her mane flipped and flopped in and out of her eyes.
"Just about thirty seconds, really..."
The Rainboom was exciting, but just because she had outflown her own speed potential didn't mean she had passed her maximum speed possible. The alicorn, supposedly a master of magic, didn't even pay attention to the excessive magic exiting her wings. No, she preferred to keep riding on the force of gravity.
The smile had disappeared, but only because it made way for a contemplative expression. There was no doubt it was to return later, and it would return much wider. She had already began subconsciously tipping her wings out, slowly influencing her fall while she mumbled through her thoughts.
"Acceleration... by gravity... 9.8... but the force of air drag... air drag..."
Twilight continued enjoying her experience of falling. It was hard not to admire seeing the different patches of land below the different patches of clouds. But Twilight, being the mare she was, was also admiring the intricacies of nature's physics.
"Terminal velocity... terminal velocity, the root of... of all problems... of all problems, why should I be worried about this right now?"
Finally, her conscious mind caught up with her subconscious. Twilight began adjusting her wings, still mostly tight against her sides, to slow the rate of her rolling. Each small intrusion of her wings against the thin air passing by helped her control her orientation in the sky.
"40 seconds? About. Would equate to... 392 meters per second! But terminal velocity is a property of an object's projected area and the density of the fluid..."
Twilight had finally eased her rolling to a stop. Her eyes locked with the green landscape below. She positioned herself to present the most aerodynamic shape possible. She felt herself rush down faster, leaving the void behind.
"Okay, so I'm probably not at 390 meters per second yet, but now I've solved the area problem! Mass... well, it's not like I can eat anything up here. Air density... thin, compared to regular airspace. Coefficient of drag..."
Twilight scrunched her face as she considered the last value.
"Well, that's hard to say, since flight magic has strange effects on that. But who cares?!"
Her expression returned to a grin as her last words trailed off. Or rather, were being left behind, literally.
If Twilight wanted to hear herself laugh, she was a moment too late. She felt like she hit a bump, but continued going on faster. She didn't dare move her wings, as moving her wings would only slow her.
'Haha! I was right! My terminal velocity would exceed the local sound barrier! Amazing.'
It had been barely one minute since Twilight began her fall. Yet that one minute seemed like five. Letting nature run its course, she found herself as one of the fastest ponies in existence.
'Although this may or may not count as cheating when it comes to speed records.'
Speaking of speed, Twilight finally felt the thin air push against her. She'd reached her maximum speed.
'Well... I could just go back to spinning around. It would slow me down slightly, but I think I'd have to keep thinking to myself even if I did.'
To slow down would be a travesty. After all, she did begin her drop by resolving to go home. And there really was no other way to go faster.
'Unless... I fly?'
The contemplative expression returned. Aerodynamics would be a bit tricky, but between having an incredibly sturdy alicorn skeleton and having a large reservoir of magic at her disposal—
'I can afford to be... somewhat more...'
Twilight considered the word 'reckless', but she wasn't Rainbow Dash. 'Risky', maybe, but she was still calculating every variable in her situation.
'... adventurous. Yeah! Adventurous. For science!'
Twilight squinted. She was focused. She was in the zone.
She couldn't flap. Opening her wings would actually just be detrimental to her goal. No, she had to will herself to go faster. Magic was still trailing out of her wings at an incredible rate, much more than when she did the Sonic Rainboom.
'But I'm an alicorn... magic is easier for me to manipulate...'
The alicorn probed herself with magic, searching for the right way to go about, well, going faster. She braced herself. She suspected that her ears, muzzle, or mane wouldn't take too kindly to going even faster, especially once she hit denser air.
Then again, she'd been thrown into a mountain before and came out fine, so probably her only concern was making sure she didn't make a partially-controlled flight into the terrain. At a speed over Mach 1.
'Maybe if I just—'
:::::
"Twilight! Twilight!"
"Oh, hi, Rainbow! Can this wait? I gotta—"
"Wait, did you hear those booms like two minutes ago?! There were, like, three booms from the sky! Like thunder, but there's no storm! Or that Sonic Rainboom that came before them?! Did you see that?! I mean, hey! Who else can do a Sonic Rainboom other than me?!"
"Right, right, uh, I don't think I was able to hear the booms—"
"But how?!"
"I can tell you later—"
"Later?! But—... Hey, Twi, why do you look kinda... worn? You look like yourself after you come out of those super-long study sessions but also figured out something cool. Also you look like you smacked into a mountain again."
"Yeah, yeah, let me just write to Princess Celestia that I figured out how to break the speed of sound."
"The... the what?! Where were you?!"
"Well I was at 42,000 meters—you were right, by the way, the world is awesome up there—but then I decided I wanted to get home fast."
"Twi—Twi—just... just stop jumping around for a sec! You were—were... were past 135 thousand feet... and... then what?!"
"No damages no hospital bills got a letter to write bye!"
Author's Note
Alternate title: Terminal Velocity (although arguably, it's already a subtitle)
Today's my 3rd year anniversary on FiMFic!
Also, terminal velocity is the root of all problems, where all problems = mass times the acceleration by gravity over the function of air drag, which consists of half of the density of air times the coefficient of drag times the projected area.
However, the coefficient of drag is a different value for each pegasus/griffon/alicorn, which involves calculations including their inherent magic potential (variable per subject), body area (also variable per subject), wing area (again, also variable per subject), and species coefficients (which is not as variable per subject). The alicorn values are still a bit experimental, but Twilight's been working on that, although she suspects Celestia knows but just isn't telling her.
Yes, I did come up with this idea during physics.
