A United Land

"Everybody looks brave holding a machine gun."

                                            -Unknown

    "And now please welcome Ace Nova, age...oh Celestia, am I reading his correctly? Truly unbelievable! He's only 9 years old! Everyone give it up to his contraption, the FB-3-8 Clydesdale!"

   A big round of hoof stomping later, a white vehicle zoomed out of the artificial fog to this tune.

                                                    --------------------------------------------

   "Here we go, buddy!"

   Ace Nova was strapped firmly to his seat, his plane barreling at over 400 hoofmeters per hour. As soon as he passed through the clouds, he noticed the four alicorns sitting at the top box of the bleaches. It added a lot of pressure on his part, but he carried on. He began his solo of rolls, dives, loops, and a certain maneuver that he was sure even Rainbow Dash wasn't capable of; a cobra. He gunned the throttle, then stood the plane in it's tail. The crowd oohed and aahed as he brought the "standing" plane right in front of them, and noted to his satisfaction that all four diarchs had their jaws slack. He nosed the plane back down, throttled to Wartime Emergency Power, climbed to 100 hoofmeters, did a barrel roll, then disappeared back through the artificial smoke.

     After he left, Spitfire watched the place his machine left, and muttered under her breath, "I ain't ever seen a foal fly like that."

                                            --------------------------------------------------

     After returning his plane at the hangar, he went back to the area to watch the other contestants. He happily watched as none of the planes had any advances he had, like cut out control surfaces, retractable gear, or an inline engine. The closest one that actually had any form of leverage against him was a high wing monoplane that, quoting Spitfire's words, was "Slower than molasses going uphill in the Crystal Empire."

     Princess Celestia had announced him as the winner and awarded him the sack of bits and a tour throughout Equestria. Luna, who worked more to the military side of things, formed the Royal Equestrian Air Force on the spot and ordered a squadrons worth of the FB-3. The Flim and Flam brothers offered him a contract as he was leaving; he would design new airframes, while they would work on the engines, and they would split the profits three ways. Saying he was the happiest foal on Anima would be the understatement of the week.

     Ace managed to design a rapid fire version of the griffin fire stick with exploding rounds. Four of 20mm exploding rounds were put in the wings with enough ammunition to last for 45 second, while a monster 37 mm ap cannon was put in the spinner, and conserved ammo by jamming periodically. In the nose, a pair of standard machine guns were fitted to fire through the three propeller blades using tracer bullets to allow the pilots a marker to adjust the firing angle. The rounds all met at 150 hoofmeters in front of the plane, allowing maximum destructive power.

    In less than a week, the first Clydesdales began rolling off the production line, and the REAF swelled with new recruits all eager to fly the legendary machine that practically raided the newspapers. A slow trainer had been quickly conceived to train the new group, and gave neighboring nations another reason to not attack Equestria. But in Ace's view, he was just happy that he moved from "school nerd" to "most popular colt ever." The first day he came back was be best for him, watching Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon try to make him look back.

     "Oh look, it's the teacher's pet!"

     Diamond Tiara only accomplished to get some new enemies and a couple glares.

     "Hey, is there any lunch aides nearby?" Ace asked Diamond Tiara nonchalantly.

     "Um...no?"

     "Thank you. You're a bastard."

    He turned away and held his head high.