Trekking through the snow...
High up in the mountains, two pegasi stallions slowly trekked along, guided by the deep gouges and pieces of debris littering the area; with the Renegades' blizzard in full swing, they couldn’t rely on light from the sun helping them see. Even though he was smaller than most of the Wonderbolts, Lucky was still larger than Rivet, thus the orange mail pony lead the way, his wings spread out so the high winds didn’t send Rivet rolling away in a ball…
...again.
After clearing the blizzard, Rivet suddenly found himself with a mouthful of tail as Lucky stopped, then broke off into a gallop. Rivet followed, catching up as the other stallion slowed once more, and that is when he saw it.
Lying not two foot away from Lucky was the body of a Shadowbolt, very much dead and frozen in the deep snow. Lucky suddenly brought a hoof up and stomped on the body, causing Rivet to jump back as a shower of pink sparks filled the area. Turning to the smaller pegasus, Lucky raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you read the reports?” he asked.
“We’ve been kind of busy, you know!” Rivet responded, glaring at Lucky. "Wait, you read them?"
"Even I know what's going on. Those are the things that give them their power," Lucky said, walking a little bit away from the body, with another shower of sparks following after he stomped again. "I'd rather not have this lot come back alive on us. Now, it should be arooowww!"
Rivet snickered to himself, walking over to where Lucky was stood with a raised forehoof, and a piece of metal jutting out of the snow. "Found it, did we?" Rivet asked with a chuckle. Lucky just grumbled in response and set about clearing the snow from around the downed machine. Rivet joined in, and soon it was free. "This thing... is amazing!"
Rivet went to dart forward, but Lucky jumped at him from the side, knocking him into the snow. Rivet was about to ask just what Lucky was thinking, but as he followed the mailpony's gaze, he understood why; from the hatch came a battered, bruised, and bleeding Shadowbolt mare, one eye closed as red liquid gushed from the wound on her head. "You... the Wonderbolts' engineer!"
Lucky and Rivet scrambled to their hooves, galloping back the way they had come as fast as they could. Even limping, the mare was still faster, coming around from the side to bodycheck Rivet, but Lucky took the hit. The mare growled in frustration, lifting her hoof and bringing it down on Lucky's wing joint. Making no noise other than a grunt, Lucky rolled away and placed himself between the mare and the rapidly receding Rivet. “Sorry to disappoint you, haven’t felt anything there since my accident.”
"This will be the last thing you hear," the mare said, ignoring his comment as she stepped up to Lucky and placed a hoof on his chest. "So listen carefully. I..." She was cut off as a light blue blur slammed into her side and lifted her into the air.
Lucky raised both eyebrows and turned his head, his ears perking in the direction the mare had been stood in. "...I'm listening." Above him he heard the familiar sound of a crystal being shattered, stepping to his left as the now powerless Shadowbolt crashed next to him and sent up a large pile of snow. "Well, that was interesting. And uh... thanks I guess..."
Lucky smiled sheepishly as Fleetfoot landed in front of him, with a clearly unamused expression on her face. "This was beyond reckless! Right now, you and Rivet are our biggest hope!" Fleetfoot began to hover in the air, looking back towards the crashed Wonderbolt compound. "I'll be right back with Rivet, then you colts can finish your little project." With that, she took wing after the running stallion.
With Fleetfoot sat just outside in case anything else happened, Rivet and Lucky sat inside the compartment of the vehicle, looking around. Except for the odd panel fallen from the sides, everything looked to be in a somewhat decent condition. As Rivet moved to replace the panels, Lucky settled into the seat at the head of the downed craft and looked over the controls. There were two sticks, each with a button on the front, which he assumed was for activating the weapons; he quickly labeled it as a ‘no touch’ button. “Interesting set up.”
Gripping the left stick, Lucky pulled it backwards, looking out of the window as the rotors moved, then pushed in the opposite direction, the rotors following. Side to side revealed the same result, and that’s when Lucky glanced at the right stick. “Okay, left for directional movement, so… right for pitch and yaw?” he asked out loud. Turning around, he saw Rivet at the back, looking into another compartment. “Sooo… think you can fix this thing?”
“...think you can fly it?” came Rivet’s reply. The machine he looked at through the panel was much more complicated and advanced than those under the Wonderbolt’s compound. A large ring of metal chambers formed around a large barrel, and from the back of it came two tubes that ran to where the pink glows on the back of the vehicle would be. Noticing some wiring and one of the smaller chambers had come loose, Rivet carefully put them in place and stepped back as a low hum began.
Starting at the top and going clockwise, auras of pink energy began to form, overlapping and making a larger one in the centre. Closing the panel and double checking to make sure it was secure, Rivet made his way over to Lucky and looked over his shoulder. “I think it should work. Have you found a start button?”
Lucky looked at the controls in front of him, seeing nothing of the sort, then up to a panel above his head where several switches awaited, and right in the middle was the device he was looking for. “Might want to tell Fleetfoot to give us some space.” Rivet nodded, going to deliver the message to the mare as Lucky began to strap himself in.
Hearing the hatch shut he went to press the button, but looked over his shoulder when he heard a third set of belts done up after Rivet was secure. “What?” Fleetfoot said. “It’s safer to be in here right now.”
“Not if we explode,” Lucky whispered to himself, praying to anypony that might be listening he was wrong. His outstretched hoof hit the button, closing his eyes as the machinery behind them quietly started to whine, slowly getting louder. Cracking an eye open, Lucky looked out of the window to see one of the rotors start to turn, and a look the other way confirmed that the other one was moving too. Lucky waited until they seemed to be at full speed then gripped the controls and took a deep breath. “...and here we go.”
Sat in her office, Spitfire looked over Rivet’s preliminary report, and things didn’t look good. The parts they’d need to get power back would be difficult to transport to their current locations, and that’s if they were even available. Then she thought about their pilot, who had said he ran away and hit the controls by accident, but the more she thought about it, the more that didn’t make sense; he had guided the compound through the mountains with seemingly expert precision, even with the lack of power.
Just as she was about to send somepony to find Lucky, static began to fill her office, and she frowned in confusion. It was coming from her desk, but there was only the intercom on top, and that is when she noticed part of the wood that was different to the rest of the op. Giving it a tap with her hoof, it popped out to reveal a microphone, speaker, and a couple of dials; it was also the source of the static.
Both curiously and carefully she began to turn the dials, honing in on the strongest signal, and that’s when she heard something she could comprehend.
“For a mailpony, he flies pretty good.”
That was Fleetfoot’s voice, and Spitfire knew she was out watching over Rivet and Lucky after they had spotted the two stallions wandering off into the mountains. Grabbing the microphone, Spitfire waited until the static returned and depressed the button. “Hello? Can anypony hear me?”
After releasing the microphone, Spitfire waited patiently. It would be presumptuous of her to assume they had the machine figured out completely, so she just hoped her message got through. Picking up the fresh coffee on her desk, she reclined in her chair and waited for the response. She didn’t wait long.
“Tower, this is Mail-stallion requesting a flyby.”
“The hell does he mean by that?” Spitfire asked, about to take a sip of her coffee when a shadow zoomed past her window. The window then banged loudly and violently, causing her to jump, and her coffee to spill into her lap. “SON OF A BITCH!” Turning around, Spitfire glared out of her window as one of the Shadowbotls’ flying machines made another pass, but further away this time. She could however make out the orange pony at the controls. “Oooh, he is so dead!”
“So how did you learn to fly like this in just a few days with no practice?” Fleetfoot shouted over the noise of the vehicle, now no longer gripping her belts tightly, Lucky having flown close to the ground in order to get through the weakest part of the Renegades’ blizzard. Lucky’s ears flattened when he realised what she had asked, but he wasn’t the one to answer her.
“Because he’s flown before,” Rivet said, staring at the back of the other stallion’s head as he eased off on the throttle and the noise died down a little. “Before I worked for the Wonderbotls, I was an engineer with the air wing of the Royal Guard. We had a new prototype completed and it was time for a test flight; the Ragnorak.”
Lucky turned the vehicle back towards the Wonderbolt’s compound, saying nothing as Rivet continued. “I was in the engine room when something went wrong. Three generators exploded, and the other two couldn’t compensate. Yet, somehow, somepony at the controls brought us down. If I recall correctly, caused millions of bits of damage to the environment, let alone the ship. The pilot was discharged from the service, and wasn’t heard from again.. until now. We’re they, ‘Pilot Officer class two’ Lucky?”
The vehicle suddenly stopped in the air, Fleetfoot and Rivet feeling knots in their stomachs as they began to drop down, but they weren’t crashing. Just a few feet from the ground, Lucky slowed down, then settled gently onto the ground, pressing the start button again and waiting for the power to die off before answering. “That was another life,” Lucky said rather apathetically, giving a shrug. “They said I’d never fly again, not professionally anyway, and the Wonderbolts mail pony was as close as I could get to doing so. You’re going to tell Spitfire, aren’t you?” Lucky asked Fleetfoot as he looked over his shoulder at her.
“I have to,” she said. “I can understand, why you’ve kept it a secret, but now we know…. oh boy, she looks pissed.” The two stallions followed her gaze out of the window, where Wonderbolts and Renegades were gathered, staring warily at the airship. But behind all of them stood Spitfire, a rather calm expression her face. “Come on, time to face the music.”
The trio were soon out of the vehicle, walking up to meet Spitfire as she came towards them. She ignored Fleetfoot and Rivet, marching right up to Lucky and jabbing him in the chest. “Idiotic! Reckless! What the hell were you thinking?” Lucky went to ask what she meant, but the mare glared at him, then continued her rant. “You’re lucky, no pun intended,” Spitfire said, momentarily glancing at Fleetfoot as she snickered, then returned her gaze to Lucky. “You’ve got some good skill, flying this lump like you did, and without you… well, I might not be here to give you this warning. NEVER, EVER SPILL MY COFFEE IN MY LAP AGAIN! Understood?”
“Yes ma’am!” Lucky said, nodding his head rapidly. Spitfire narrowed her eyes at him and leaned closer, then turned with a snort and wandered back into the compound. Feeling a hoof on his shoulder, Lucky glanced around and saw Rivet nodding after the receeding mare. “You sure you don’t want me to help… yeah, I should go tell her,” Lucky said, giving a sigh as he too made his way inside.
Spitfire hadn’t gotten far, only to part of the lobby where a coffee machine had been set up. Lucky approached, clearing his throat to get her attention. “Uh, Captain? There’s something you need to know. I didn’t give you my full employment history when I applied...”
Several nearby Wonderbotls and Renegades tried to listen in, but Lucky spoke too quietly for them to hear. They did however clearly hear Spitfire’s reaction.
“COULD YOU FUCKING SAY THAT AGAIN?” Spitfire shouted, making the spectators cringe and wonder just what the mailpony had said to her.
“Yeah, she’s pissed,” Fleetfoot said as she sat next to Rivet, Spitfire’s shout coming out clear as day through the broken lobby windows.
Author's Note
I was bored in work one day and this little part of the back story popped into my head.
I typed it up, and then this idea began to form. I regret nothing.
