Pilot's Story

Pilot's Story

Chapter 5: Protein

"What kinda monster are you!?" the orange cowpony roared as she charged the gray pegasus, her head low as she crashed into Eva's chest, knocking her onto a tarp in the back of the plane. Applejack kept charging.

Eva hooked her hoof around a canvas strap and kicked off of the deck plating, sending herself out through the open cargo door. She could feel her heartbeat in her neck, she knew she was overdoing it, first the run and now this... but she didn't have a choice. "It's not what you think!" she yelled as the orange mare chased after her.

"Oh, so ah didn't just find a box full a' meat in that there flyin contraption?" Applejack spat as she spun around to buck Eva, both of her legs kicked out at the pegasus but deflected off of something hard, "So what, ya come to turn some more ponies inta jerky?"

Eva gripped the brush gun tightly in her hooves as the impact against it sent her tumbling backwards away from the DC-3, she caught herself after a couple of yards and extended her wings to balance her on her rear hooves as she cycled a round into the chamber on her rifle. "Look, it's not pony meat, if you'll let me explain..." she started before Applejack cut her off.

"Not pony meat? That don't make it okay!" she roared as she charged in for another attack, her hat flying off of her blonde mane as she ducked her head for another headbutt.

Eva looked down at the rifle in her hooves, her mind racing, weighing the choices, did this orange mare even know what a gun was? With a sigh she dropped the lever and tossed the gun off to her side, holding out her forehooves and waiting for the blow.

The cowpony hit her like a locomotive, the orange mare's head crashed into the gray pegasus's sternum, knocking the wind out of the pilot and rocketing her into the air. Eva flared her wings at the apex of her 'flight' and glided awkwardly back to the ground, crashing onto her knees and gasping for breath as she stared down at the grass, spitting blood where the hit had made her bite her lip.

Applejack started to charge again... and then stopped as the events processed in her mind. The other mare hadn't tried to get out of the way, hadn't tried to fight back. Heck, she'd thrown away that stick at the last second, leaving herself wide open. Applejack was completely taken aback at the sudden turn of events.

"Why did ya let me hit ya?" Applejack finally said, standing over the wheezing pegasus, "Ya... ya didn't even try to get out of the way."

"I... I told you," she choked out, "It's not what you think. I didn't make the meat, I'm transporting it..." She dropped from her knees to her stomach, laying down on the soft grass, "and... it didn't come from anything that can talk... and you weren't supposed to find it."

"Not supposed to find it still doesn't make it okay."

Eva looked up and saw the purple unicorn from before trotting over, her expression... troubled. Twilight's horn glowed purple for a moment and Eva felt a tingle on her lip, the bleeding stopped, though her lip felt... bizarre. "There's more to it than that." Eva said, finally.

"So what is it then?" Dash asked as she landed next to the other three ponies. "This is kind of a big deal."

Eva pushed herself back onto her hooves with a wince and looked off towards the DC-3, "If you haven't noticed by now, I'm not from around here. Dash picked up on it first, small toggle switches are not exactly something a being with hooves would come up with, I'm sure you've noticed too, Twilight, how... off... everything in there was, as if it was built to be used by a being not like you."

The three ponies stood and listened intently, Twilight's face painted with an expression of interest, Dash and Applejack looked more uncomfortable than anything. Eva continued, "Before I go farther, I just want you to know, I didn't know. Where I'm from... before I was a pegasus pony, before I came through... whatever that flash of light was, where I came from there's nothing like you. Ponies don't talk where I came from, they don't... think, they don't reason the same way, they're animals."

The three gasped, almost unwilling to process that there could be a place where ponies were... not as they knew them, the very idea of it was insane and yet... this gray pegasus didn't seem to be lying.

"So, yes... that is meat, and what I used to be ate that. What is in there is cargo, food that I was delivering with other supplies to a settlement in a place called Alaska, that's where I was heading when I ended up here. I.. I never knew that anything like this place could exist, and I don't want you to be afraid of me, I'm not going to try to hurt anybody." Eva explained, still refusing to make eye contact with the ponies in front of her.

"Well... ah guess if ya didn't know... and ya didn't mean any harm..." Applejack started, looking down, a little ashamed of herself for how she acted, attacking Eva like she was some kind of monster, "ain't sayin it don't make me mighty uncomfortable... ah guess ah could look past it, long as you don't give me a reason to worry again."

Eva jerked her head at the sudden sound of wings and saw Dash flying away, "I guess she's not as forgiving."

Twilight put her hoof up on Eva's shoulder, "She's... probably feeling a little betrayed right now... we'll have to work on that later... for now... do you have a place to stay?"

~~

"If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer we keep this incident between the four of us," Eva said as she, Applejack, and Twilight sat at a table in the library, "somebody should ask Dash to keep hush about it... but this isn't the kind of thing that would go over well if the entire town knew about it."

"It's not like we don't know that there are some things out there that eat meat... it's just that finding so much of it was kind of alarming, and in the possession of a pony... the situation could have been handled better though." Twilight said, sipping at a cup of tea levitating in front of her in a purple aura.

"Well, it's not from here... not by a long shot, so, at least it's nobody you know, nobody you've ever met. I'll admit... Being a pony kind of puts a different perspective on it now, we should get rid of that crate as soon as we get a chance." Eva added as she balanced a teacup between her front hooves.

"Can't say ah hate that idea." Applejack interjected, a slightly sick look on her face as she thought back on that box full of dried meat. Eva swore that she could almost see a green tinge on the mare's face. "What's in those olive green cans anyway?" she asked, changing the subject.

"That's... ammo." Eva said, eying the orange cowpony for any signs of recognition.

"What's ammo?" the aforementioned pony asked, an uncomprehending look plastered across her features. She looked cute like that, the freckles didn't hurt, Eva decided.

"It's what you load into a gun." Eva continued, eying both the unicorn and the earth pony now, still looking for any hint they knew what she was talking about.

"What's a gun?"

That was a new voice, Eva turned and saw a small purple and green... dragon standing at the foot of the stairs, her thoughts turned to a certain television dinosaur, she shook the thoughts away from her head. "That's not something you really need to be concerned with right now." she said hastily, all too aware of the rifle slung across her back at that very moment.

"Oh, Spike, this is Eva, she's... new in town." Twilight explained to her fire-breathing companion, "she's going to be staying here for a few days.

"Thank you for that, by the way." Eva said to Twilight as she set down her cup and turned to the dragon and extended a hoof, "Heya Spike, put 'er there."

Spike hesitantly clasped his claw around the offered hoof and shook, "Nice to meet you Eva."

The gray pegasus smiled at the little dragon and turned back to the table, "So, Twilight, where can I find Rainbow Dash?"

"It's getting late, we should probably wait for tomorrow." Twilight replied.

~~

"...and I get up there how?" Eva asked as she stared up at the...cloud house. Pegasi could walk on clouds, she'd been told, and Dash's house was made out of clouds. It was in the sky. Isolated. 'Still, I guess that explains the cloudaseum.'

"Well, ya fly up there, ya got wings right?" Applejack stated as if it was painfully obvious, her face set into an almost smug expression. The orange cowpony had agreed to show the pegasus where dash lived when she'd woken that morning.

Eva sighed, having figured that it was going to be something like that. "Well, flight, that's just lift and thrust versus gravity and drag, that's no problem..." She said hesitantly as she started to flap her wings, the sensation still disturbingly odd for her.

To her great surprise she started to lift into the air, clumsily, but she could more or less point herself in a vague direction, and she was gaining altitude. Fortunately the house wasn't very high into the air and she soon found herself approaching it... backwards.

She collided with the door of the cloud house with a loud crash, finding herself on her back staring up at an unamused rainbow-maned pegasus. "Oh, it's you." Dash said flatly.

Eva rolled onto her hooves and stood up, "Look, I came to explain things... I didn't mean to upset you or anyone else. I didn't even think about what it was that they actually found, I was worried about something else... but it seems like nobody actually knows what guns are around here, let alone how to use them or anything like that... but anyway that's not why I'm here, I came to apologize for not telling you everything sooner."

Dash stood still, her face pensive as she mentally reflected on the eventful previous day. 'Okay so she didn't actually lie, but that box...' she thought with disgust. "Fine, apology accepted... but only if you get rid of that disgusting box."

"Twilight is already taking care of it. When I started to think about it, I kinda got a little freaked out myself at the implications so... yeah I asked her to dispose of it." Eva offered while rubbing the back of her neck with a fetlock.

"That's... probably for the best." Dash said flatly. She turned her eyes from Eva to the now broken front door of her house, "So, you flew up here? You kinda suck at flying."

"Ah... yeah well it was my first time flying so what can you do?" Eva offered with a shrug.

"Well, you show me how to fly that plane of yours, and I'll teach you how to fly like a pegasus." Dash said finally with a smirk, "Sound good?"

"Just like that?" Eva asked incredulously.

"Just like that."