Pilot's Story

Chapter 17: True Freedom

"So, you've got a helicopter." James commented offhand as the quartet walked steadily down the well trodden dirt path. 'Well, we're walking at least...' he thought to himself; the blue pegasus was flying, the Pink One was bouncing along.

"Oh that? Well, I figured that since Dashie lives up in the clouds and she's one of my very-very-bestest-best friends that I had to have some way to get up there and see her!" Pinkie explained as she continued to bounce, "So I invented it!"

James raised an eyebrow, "And... how? I mean, that's... not something you would just... come up with out of the blue."

Pinkie shrugged mid-bounce, "It's just lift versus drag and rotation, how hard could it be?"

"But... How-" James started dumbly.

"It's Just Pinkie being Pinkie," Rainbow offered, "It's best not to question these things."

"That way lies madness, James," Eva declared with a far off look in her eyes.

The man sighed and rubbed his temples. The headache would be a doozy, he decided, "Fine, fine. But don't expect my brother to give up so easily."

"So, where did you two crash my plane?" The gray pegasus asked as she nudged the man with her wing. "How bad am I gonna have to hurt you?"

"Well... You remember that one time in Korea?" He asked hesitantly.

Eva's eyebrow twitched, "Vividly."

"It's not quite that bad," he answered with a perfectly straight face.

"That's not really saying much you know," she replied, "there isn't a lot about Korea that could have been worse."

"I don't remember it being that bad," the man deflected as he raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"That's because you weren't the one with an engine fire," the mare shot back.

"Okay, fine, well it'll still fly... probably," he finally said, sheepishly.

Eva slapped her forehoof into her forehead, "What did you do?"

"The flaps wouldn't deploy and... I may have pulled reverse pitch while still in the air," the man admitted while taking a step away from the gray mare.

"Starting to sound a lot like-" she broke off as a loud buzzing suddenly deafened her. Her hooves went straight to her ears to try to block the sound out. A quick look around showed that her three companions had a similar reaction. Pinkie had stopped bouncing, Dash had stopped flying, and James...

James was wincing in pain, but he'd drawn the rifle from his back, was searching for the source of the noise. Eva could tell he was in pain, but not debilitated, perhaps he was less sensitive to the sound than she and her other two companions were.

Eva was aware of the weight on her own back, she'd almost forgotten about it, not that it would do her much good when she didn't even know what was making the noise, or if it was even hostile, "What the hell is going on?!" she yelled over the roaring noise.

"I have no damn idea!" he yelled back as he took off at a run towards the DC-3, it was only but a few hundred yards ahead of them, their conversation having taken up the better part of the walk.

Eva cursed under her breath and charged after him, her ears pressed down in an attempt to drown out the noise without her hooves to do the job for her. The pain in her body from the exertion was a nice distraction from the noise as she pushed herself faster.

"Eva. what is that bucking noise!?" Dash yelled. Her face was twisted up in pain, but she seemed to be handling it better than the grey pegasus she was keeping pace with.

"I was hoping you knew!" Eva shouted back over the ever-intensifying drone, the sound seemed to be coming from every direction at once. Her head was pounding, the plane wasn't much farther.

"Why would I know!?" Dash yelled back incredulously.

"Well why would I kn-" Eva paused as she cross the threshold into the DC-3's cargo bay; the pressure let off at once and the pain went away, "-ow, why did the buzzing stop?"

"Pinkie is still out there!" Dash yelled as she extended a hoof out of the open doorway; the pink mare was lying on the ground, holding her head and groaning. A faint distortion passed through the air above her. The buzzing sound came back, but it was from a clear direction, and not as intense or painful.

Eva's eyes widened as two metal spheroids descended over the incapacitated mare, "What the hell are those?"

"If I was gonna bet money... I'd bet they don't mean anything good. Eva, get ready, on three?" James asked as he brought his rifle to his shoulder, took aim down the sights.

"Dash, cover your ears, this is gonna be loud," Eva said as she turned to her cyan friend. She slid the rifle off her own back and brought it up to her shoulder, lined her eye up with the scope, "I'll take the one on the left, James. On three," Eva said finally as she cycled a round into the rifle's chamber.

Dash covered her ears with her forehooves and looked anxiously between her friend lying in the field and the two next to her. Looked with uncharacteristically undisguised fear at the two... 'somethings' descending towards Pinkie.

"One," the pair counted off together, the spheres descended lower, compartments began to open up on them.

"Two." Sparks issued from open compartments as tools extended. Rainbow Dash closed her eyes.

"Three."

~~

Twilight's ears perked up and swiveled as the sound of two closely spaced pops reached her library. Her good mood evaporated with a frown. "Spike, I'm going out, I feel like our new friend has done something foolish again!" She yelled into the air an instant before her horn charged up and she disappeared with a snap.

Sound alone was not enough for Twlight to navigate by--it gave her a direction but that was all. Still, she had a suspicion as to her destination as she navigated the aether for the brief eternity before she snapped back into reality. Twilight emerged from her teleport with another snap, and stood just off the left wing of the DC-3.

She was nearly knocked over when Rainbow Dash burst out of the open hatch on the side of the plane and shot past her like a rocket. She turned her head to follow the hurried pegasus and froze as her eyes locked on Pinkie Pie, who was lying on the ground rubbing her head.

"Hey Twilight," the unicorn heard from behind her. She turned to see the human, James, saunter nonchalantly past her and towards a vague wisp of smoke rising slowly from the ground near Pinkie Pie.

"Hey?" Twilight said back with no small measure of confusion evident in her voice. She'd teleported because she suspected gunfire, saw James carrying a gun in his hands, completely nonchalantly, and nothing seemed to be amiss aside from Pinkie, who was finally sitting up.

"Hey Twilight," Eva said in greeting as she dropped out of the plane next to the other mare, "You missed the fun-"

A sharp report pierced the air and masked the rest of Eva's sentence; The two ponies turned their heads to see James standing over one of the metal spheres. The man pointed his rifle at the one at his feet and casually fired another round into it, then shifted his aim and fired two more rounds into the one six feet to the left of the first.

"-and James shoots it in the head, just to be sure," Eva muttered as she rolled her eyes. "I mean, granted, as spheres they are all head, but still," she continued as she waved her foreleg around.

Twilight blinked and then facehoofed, "Could somepony just please explain what just happened?"

"Hey Twilight."

The unicorn's head snapped around and she was greeted by a wall of flesh; her head pivoted upwards until she saw the man's face. "You're Tommy, right?" she asked, "I don't suppose you know what's going on?"

The man scratched his chin and surveyed the scene. He took in the myriad details; a pink pony sat in the middle of the field with a confused expression on her face, two sparking metal spheres flanked her on either side. He spotted his brother poking the sphere to his left with a bayonet, while a rainbow-maned pegasus poked at the one on his right using her hoof. He turned towards the plane and saw a pair of spent shell casings reflecting the sunlight in the corner of the cargo bay door frame.

Finally, he turned back to Twilight, "It appears to have been some form of ruckus."

"That's your scientific opinion?" Eva joked as she prodded Tommy with her forehoof.

"Absolutely."

Twilight's eye twitched, "Could somepony please explain what happened?"

"You know, I'm not sure," Eva admitted. "We were headed to the plane when this, sensation hit us. It was like something buzzing inside our bones, hurt like hell. We ran for the plane, but Pinkie collapsed on the way. I think those spheres did something to her. They looked like they were going to harm her, so we shot them. Twice. Well, I shot one once, James shot them both, two in one, one in the other, so that kind of averages out--"

"You're rambling," Tommy cut in.

"Make yourself useful and go do science-y crap over there before your brother starts shooting those things again," Eva shot back as she pushed the man towards the damaged spheroids. "Maybe figure out where they came from?"

"Hmm, yeah, sounds about right. Yes ma'am, I'm on it, ma'am, please don't beat me, ma'am!" Tommy rattled off with a mock salute before he turned on his heel and marched towards the spheroids.

"What was that all about?" Twilight asked the other mare with a raised eyebrow.

"He's being a wise ass is what that's all about," Eva muttered while rolling her eyes.

"By saluting you?"

Eva blinked and turned towards the lavender mare. She cocked an eyebrow. 'So they have that here too...' she thought. "Well, yeah. He was picking fun at me since, well, his brother and I used to serve in the military together, that's how we met," she explained. "Major Eva Lohengrin, United States Air Force, at your service," She offered with a halfhearted salute.

"Air Force... so, you were in an airborne military?" Twilight asked as the gears started to turn, "Wait, is your plane, is that for... war?" The mare's ears drooped as the implications started to run through her head.

"This thing?" Eva asked, gesturing towards the Dakota with her forehoof. She sighed and smiled a little as she thought back on better days, "No, James and I, and the rest of our squadron, we flew..." she trailed off, noticing the disturbed look on Twilight's face, "what's wrong?"

Twilight shook her head, "I just... I guess I should have suspected, the way you were with the hydra, the way you and James were here just now but... with what those 'guns' can do and how happy you looked when you started to talk about it..." she trailed off as she took a few steps backwards.

Eva's eyes widened and she put a hoof on the younger mare's shoulder, "No it's nothing like that... I think Rainbow Dash might understand better, but, I was just thinking back on all the good times we had back then, when we were all still together. Flying the DC is one thing but, twenty years ago, all of us up in our F-15s..." she trailed off, closed her eyes and smiled again, "that was something else entirely, fifty thousand pounds of thrust, breaking the sound barrier in a ninety degree climb like there was nothing to it, that was true freedom."

Eva paused and cleared her throat,

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

The pegasus wiped her face with her fetlock and blinked a few times, "Well... That's how it used to be anyway, but that was a while ago, have to move forward now, right? Can't live in the past."

She turned her head when she felt a hoof on her shoulder, Rainbow Dash was staring at her with a look of contemplation.

"I'm not usually one for poetry but... I think I get it, and there's nothing wrong with remembering the past, especially when it's something good," she said to the elder mare. "But uh... don't tell anybody I said that, I have a reputation you know!" she added with a laugh.

Twilight looked between the two pegasi and stifled a snicker, "Well I think that-"

"Guys, we've got a problem!" Tommy yelled from across the field, "It's still alive, and uh, on fire!"

Author's Note

This was painful to write, I was trying *really* hard not to screw it up, and eventually I got it somewhere that it's readable.

Enjoy, I'll try to be less of a failure in the future.