Pilot's Story

Pilot's Story

Chapter 10: Morning After

Eva was floating on a large cloud made of cotton candy, all around her straws were sticking out of it. She trotted around on the soft-sticky cloud, examining all of the straws with a critical eye before she picked out a three foot long crazy straw colored like a rainbow. She sucked on the straw and found herself with a mouthful of Irish Cream and... another taste she couldn't identify. "hmmmmm..."

~~

Twilight Sparkle was a reasonable mare, at least, she thought so. If there was anything her time in Ponyville taught her, it was that there was always more than one explanation for things, and she shouldn't always jump to the worst conclusions. She was also taught that sometimes you should just trust what Pinkie says at face value.

This was an example of one of the former. She let out a yawn and froze, on her floor, the two drunken pegasi she'd chastised the night before, one of her best friends, Rainbow Dash, and the newcomer, Eva Lohengrin, were spooning. Unconscious and spooning. In the middle of her library.

She blushed slightly at the possible implications and shook her head, 'Nope, there's no way, at all, gotta be something else.' she told herself. This was probably completely innocent, drunk ponies were known to find themselves in strange positions the next day without anything having actually happened.

At least that happened in a lot of the comedy plays she'd read. Usually there was some simple explanation and they spent most of the story trying to figure out what that was and... Eva was chewing on the back of Rainbow Dash's head. Twilight could see the latter's rainbow colored mane matted to the back of her head by pony saliva.

"No...nooo...my...no...brains..." She heard Dash moan in her sleep. Twilight's legs locked up and she face planted the floor in her shock, the floor rattled slightly and Dash stirred in her sleep.

Eva's jaw clenched as she bit down on Dash's head particularly hard, the blue pegasus's eyes snapped open and she launcher herself onto her hooves, screaming. "It's eating my brain!" she yelled as she ran around in panic, knocking books off the shelves as she dashed in circles through the room.

Eva's head popped up muttering something about 'a pitcher of gin' before dropping back down onto the floor, it seemed even a miniature stampede wasn't enough to keep her up for long.

Twilight grabbed Dash with her telekinesis to stop the panicked mare from trashing her home any further, "Dash, she's not eating your brain, it was a nightmare, calm down!" She yelled, pointing a hoof at Eva and her distinct lack of blood on her mouth.

Dash stared at the passed out pegasus with a raised eyebrow, a thin stream of drool was rolling out of her open mouth, along with... a few strands of polychromatic hair. Dash's polychromatic hair. She rubbed the back of her head with a fetlock and it came back sticky. She groaned, "I need a shower."

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, "So you didn't do anything... Thank Celestia." Dash watched as it seemed like all of the tension suddenly melted out of her purple friend.

Dash raised an eyebrow up to her mane. "What are you talking about Twilight?" Dash asked, apprehension and confusion thick in her voice.

"Well you two were... spooning." Twilight said nervously, "and you both did drink a lot last night..."

"What? No! No way! Twilight, I don't... not... mares!" Dash stammered out before thrusting one of her hind legs into the back of Eva's head, "Wake up, mare!" she yelled.

"Ah! Airmen are not ordnance, airmen are not ordnance! Sir, I'm sorry sir, it won't happen again, sir!" Eva yelled as she scrambled to her hooves, her eyes wide open and bloodshot as she swayed slightly. She blinked a few times and then spit out the hair hanging from her mouth and looked around, aware of a sudden and throbbing pain in her head.

"Cuddle much?" Dash asked, accusingly as she stared down the older mare, a slight blush unmistakable on her pale blue face.

"Sometimes?" Eva said, uncomprehending, though her brain was starting to formulate a picture, based largely on her dream of strange tasting cloud beverages and the hair in her mouth. The light bulb lit up. "Oh, that! I was cold." She said, mirroring the same wing-shrug she'd seen Dash perform before.

Dash face-hoofed, Twilight laughed.

Eva vomited into a potted plant.

~~

"You know, I'm kind of surprised it was this easy." Tommy said offhand as he typed away on his laptop. The soft glow of the screen complimented the lighting from the instrumentation panels, bathing the darkened cockpit in a soft blue-green aura.

"Well, now that you've said that, I'm sure things are going to stay easy." James deadpanned, giving his brother a harsh look from the other side of the cockpit, his hands working the throttles delicately, easing the four engined cargo plane away from the hanger and into the night.

"So, Tommy, it's it going to work?" James asked as his eyes scanned the small airstrip, looking for anybody that might notice the Lockheed L-100 rolling down the taxiways. He turned up the volume slightly on his headset, waiting for the inevitable questioning from air traffic control.

Once they got into the air, they should be fine, as long as nobody actually saw them on visual, he'd swapped transponders with his own, much smaller, aircraft and filed a VFR flight plan, as long as nobody saw them before they got into the air they should be able to avoid much suspicion before they succeeded... or failed, by either eventuality it wouldn't matter anymore.

"By the time they do anything about the radar signature being... off... they won't have a chance to intercept us before we reach the fissure," the younger man said. "Probably, anyway." he added with a shrug. The bespectacled scientist tapped another sequence of commands into his laptop and a loud whirring noise permeated the aircraft.

"I take it that's what's getting us to wherever Eva is?" James asked as he swung the large aircraft onto the runway, lining up for the take-off roll, "because if it isn't going to work, we still have time to walk away."

Tommy laughed, starting out as a low chuckle before it built up to a body-shaking guffaw, "James, we've comitted at least six felonies today, more if you include specific NFA violations. No, we're in this, we'll deal with the consequences when we get Eva back, alright?" His laughing died down as he set one final command into the laptop and closed the lid, "No, it'll work. Punch it."

James nodded and shoved the throttles forward.

~~

"This is bullshit!" Eva yelled through the door before her body convulsed again, her body ejected another mass of stomach contents into the toilet, her eyes watered and the splatter made them burn.

"So you've said." Twilight muttered from the other side of the bathroom door, "If you'd asked I would have told you this would happen, you know!" The purple mare sighed, 'She just had to egg Dash on, they both acted like such foals!' she thought angrily to herself.

"Horses can't--" Twilight heard another choking sound and another splash in the toilet. She was going to have to clean that up later, she put a hoof to her forehead. "-puke!" she heard Eva finish as the sounds died down again.

"Ponies! and we can, obviously!" Twilight yelled through the door as she stomped the floor with a forehoof. 'and she still insists of saying horses, we're ponies, what's not clear about that?' She sighed, "If you want I have a spell that should help with that."

The door creaked open slowly and the haggard face of Eva poked out, her eyes bloodshot watering, the fur on her face matted with tears and... other things that Twilight didn't want to think about, "Why didn't you say that before?" she asked with a quiet voice.

"Well... you were too busy yelling... and ruining my fern." Twilight said, shuddering a little bit at the memory, she liked that fern, she really did, and now it would never be the same again. 'Such is life.'

Eva lurched out of the bathroom and put her front hooves on Twilight's shoulders, pressing her face nose-to-nose with the latter mare. Twilight could smell the alcohol and... other things on her breath. "Magic. Me." Eva said forcefully, her eyes wide as saucers.

"Okay, okay, calm down..." Twilight started, trying her hardest not to visibly betray the sick feeling in her stomach from the... fumes. She touched her glowing horn to the other mare's forehead and concentrated.

Eva's eyes started to drift shut as she relaxed, the headache and sickness leaving her body... Her eyes snapped back open, she shoved herself away from Twilight and dove back into the bathroom. The pegasus's body emitted sounds and fluids best left undescribed for what Twilight counted out to a full fifteen seconds.

A ragged and worn looking Eva shambled back out of the the bathroom, water from the sink dripping from her mouth. "What...the...fuck?" she ground out in exhaustion as she stared at the unicorn. Twilight could see that one of her eyes looked to have a burst blood vessel in it, red discoloration was creeping across the white of her eye, that wasn't unexpected.

"Well, it all still had to leave your body... the spell makes it all leave at once so you can get past it quicker. You feel better now don't you?" Twilight asked, her voice full of concern. Eva found it hard to be angry.

"Hmm... Yeah, actually. I uh... I'm gonna go pour myself into the shower now." Eva mumbled as she turned back around and trudged back into the bathroom, not bothering to kick the door shut as she climbed into the bathtub and looked at the confusing shower controls.

"Uh, hey Twi? Could you help me out here?" Eva called out in confusion as she fumbled with the strange knobs.

~~

The brown stallion stood in the middle of the empty field, the sun just beginning to clear the horizon behind him as he stared in open eyed panic through his glasses. The rupture was growing at an alarming rate, he almost didn't need to be a Time Lord to see it.

Almost.

The swirling polychromatic matrix of time-space quivered in the air above him, growing and massing upon itself as it spun, he could feel the time vortex calling out to him from behind the veil, it's call so long absent from his life, like everything else he'd he'd left behind.

'...and everyone' he thought sadly. "Well time to fix this before it becomes a problem." He said, entirely to himself. 'Still have talking to myself, at least.'

He pointed his sonic screwdriver into the sky and pressed the button. The device instantly began to emit green light and a high pitched squeal.

Then it exploded.

That, was something he hadn't been expecting.