Death Fillies from Aboveby CDRWChaptersChapter 1Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 2Chapter 1Death Fillies From Above Chapter 1 By CDRW "Captain! Pegasus scouts have located the Luna One!" the communications officer called from his station. Captain Octavia of the airship Celestia turned her one-eyed gaze towards him and uttered a single word. "Report." Her voice was soft and she spoke with cultivated propriety, but none of that was a comfort to the poor communications pony who had reluctantly drawn her attention to himself. The Captain was a grey earth pony with a long, straight black mane and a treble clef cutie mark. An eyepatch obscured one of her eyes, and a huge scar ran underneath it from her temple to her jaw. It wasn't her missing eye that was so frightening though. It was the one she still had. She still would have been beautiful if it wasn't for that cold, soulless eye. Octavia had a reputation as being the bravest, smartest, and most heartless bitch of a pony who'd ever sailed the seven skies. And anypony who'd ever met her gaze instinctively knew all the stories about her were true. Captain Octavia always carried a cello bow with her, using it as a pointer or occasionally as a switch to discipline crew members. They said that before she captained her first airship at thirteen she was a prolific musician, and that when she'd taken command for the first time she brought the bow with her as a memento because her cello was too big to bring onto an airship. Then one day a cabin-boy went into her quarters without permission and started rummaging through her underwear drawer while she slept. She'd woken up, grabbed that bow from where it sat on the nightstand, and rammed it through his eye. Then she'd called the entire crew on deck and made them take down the ship's figurehead so they could mount his body in its place. "Your captain just gave you an order sailor!" barked the first mate, Vinyl Scratch. The communications officer jumped, and he was finally able to break eye contact with the Captain. "S-sorry ma'am! Uh. The report is coming in from Scout Rainbow Dash. She says she's found the wreckage of the Luna One a hundred and twelve clicks east of here. The ship is in bad shape but still sort of intact. She also says it's swarming with changelings, including at least three dozen surface-to-air plasmoids. We won't even be able to get close." The stallion paused and put one hoof up to his earpiece. "She recommends you just use an ICBE and Sparkle the whole area ma'am." "Not an option," Octavia said calmly. "The Luna One was Equestria's most advanced science vessel and was the main laboratory for Equestria's weapons development program. Her Majesty needs the contents and data from those experiments and we're going to deliver them. Helmsmare! Set course for the Luna One!" "C-captain?" the helmsmare stammered. Octavia nodded at Vinyl Scratch for her to do her thing. "You heard the Captain!" Vinyl strode across the bridge and bellowed in the helmsmare's face with a voice that could rattle the windows in Canterlot from here. "Get this ship turned around or I'll personally throw you overboard with a boarding hook embedded in your belly! Do you understand me sailor! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" "Y-yes ma'am!" "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!' "YES MA'AM!' "Good!" Vinyl looked around at the rest of the bridge crew. "What are you all looking at me for? You have jobs to do, now do them!" She swept the bridge with her eyes. "BLUEBLOOD!" A white unicorn who was trying to hide something in the jumble of maps at his station jumped about three feet in the air. "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT READING PORN MAGS ON DUTY? GIVE ME THAT! I OUGHTA..." Octavia let her first mate continue to motivate the crew and busied herself with a panel on the arm of her captain's chair. She flipped it up to reveal an array of switches and buttons underneath. With a flick of her hoof, she flipped a switch in the upper right corner, and all throughout the ship the yellow alert sirens started going off. Then she flipped a second switch and an intercom crackled to life. "Hello Captain. My ears detect a clamorous bellow. Is there a reason you've gone to alert stage yellow?" Octavia ignored the zebra's question and snapped out an order. "Start prepping the fillies for a drop, Zecora." On the other end of the line she heard a chorus of three voices shouting "yay" in the background. "No artillery or firearms. This is a retrieval mission and I need the objective intact, so hoof-to-hoof combat only." Two of the "yay"'s turned to "aw"'s but the third just cheered even louder. "Have them waiting in the ready room in fifteen minutes. I'll be there to brief them myself." "Yes ma'am, Captain. I'll see it happens." With that, Octavia cut the line and settled back in her seat, watching the clouds stream past the bridge windows like an ocean of cotton candy as her ship turned hard to port. When Vinyl finished yelling at the bridge crew she came over to stand next to Octavia's chair. For a long moment, she just stood there, watching what the Captain watched, but eventually she tired of that, or gathered up the courage to say what she wanted to. She leaned down to whisper in Octavia's ear. "Do we really have to use the fillies 'tavi? We shouldn't even have those monsters on board. They're as bad as the changelings. You know we can't keep them under control forever." "We don't have any choice but to use them Vinyl. You know as well as I do that they are our best weapon against the changelings," Octavia said, her voice never changing from its steely monotone. "We have to use them because those fillies don't love anypony." "All right, I trust your judgement on this 'tavi, but those three are scaring the crew. They're unstable and dangerous. Please tell me you have a plan to deal with them if things get out of hoof." Octavia didn't say anything. She just started humming an eerie tune and watched as the clouds floated by. Only Vinyl was close enough to see, but there was a ghost of a smile on her lips. I hope you liked the first chapter of Death Fillies From Above. I'm doing this just for fun and am mostly writing by the seat of my pants, so if you have any ideas for awesome stuff I should totally do, go ahead and suggest them. I might even write it into one of the future chapters! Chapter 3Death Fillies From Above Chapter 3 By CDRW The poor oval table in the ready room had taken quite the beating acting as an impromptu stage for the three fillys' musical number, but it had totally volunteered for the job by virtue of being large and wooden and very stage-like, so it was all right. Therefore it came as a bit of a shock when Captain Octavia strode in, took one look at the gouged and dented surface, and said, "That is coming out of your paycheck." "What!" Exclaimed all three of the fillies in unison. "That's not fair!" Applebloom cried. "Yeah! You can't do that!" Scootaloo jumped down from the table with Sweetie Bell right behind. Flapping her tiny wings as fast as she could, she managed to hover high enough to yell in the Captain's face. "You're not going to get away with this!" "I assure you, I can and I am," Octavia answered smoothly as she walked around her and sat in the chair at the head of the table. Scootaloo's front right leg had once been replaced with a mechanical one and whenever she walked around the ship every step she took made a little clang (except when she was trying to be stealthy of course). This time it made a big CLANG when she punched the wall. "You piece of..." She whirled around and drew an eight inch, serrated knife from its sheath on her belt. "I'm gonna—" Quick as lightning, Captain Octavia ducked her head inside the jacket of her dress uniform and pulled out a squirt bottle, which she sprayed in Scootaloo's face. The orange filly reared up and fell over backwards, clutching her face. "My eyes! Oh Goddess it burns! What was in that thing?" "Ammonia." Applebloom burst out laughing. Holding her sides, she collapsed on the table top and started rolling back and forth. "Scootaloo, you sissy!" Scootaloo stood up and stretched out her hoof, peering through the haze of tears in her eyes and feeling for Octavia so that she could throttle her. "You are so gonna pay for that you cunt! When I find you—" Applebloom started pounding the table in glee. Sweetie Bellspoke up and said, "Oh put a sock in it Scootaloo. You can shank her later. I wanna hear about the drop." Scootaloo finally found one of the walls with her hoof, and she plopped her rump down on the floor next to it with a "Fine. Whatever." "Applebloom, kindly get off the table so we can start this meeting," Octavia said. When she'd done that, with a bit of a scowl and a sniff, the Captain continued. "Good." She brushed a speck of dust off the front of her jacket. "Five weeks ago, the Luna One, Equestria's most advanced mobile laboratory was working on a vital experiment for the weapons development program. Something, we don't know what, went wrong and she disappeared without a trace. Rainbow Dash has just reported in that she's found the wreckage. "In approximately fifty minutes we will be passing overhead. Heavy plasmoid fire is expected, so we cannot land. Instead, the three of you will be making a HALO drop. You have three objectives in descending order of importance. First, locate the central laboratory. Inside, there will be a large metal box six feet long, three wide and two deep with various magical equipment attached. Retrieve that box. And don't open it!" The three fillies started grinning evilly. Octavia glared hard at them. "If the box is open when you get back, you will get no dessert for a month." Their grins faded, replaced with looks of dismay. "Second, Rainbow Dash reports that there are entirely too many changelings in the area for it to be just coincidence, and there aren't any more coming in from the outside to explain their presence. She believes that the Luna One has crashed on top of a changeling hive. If that's true and you cannot secure the area, activate the Luna One's self-destruct mechanism. It should be enough to take out the hive." Applebloom rubbed her forehooves together with glee. "Third. If possible, clear the area of changelings so that the Celestia can land and do a more thorough recovery of the Luna One's contents. Any questions?" "Yeah." Sweetie Bell raised her hoof. "I get why you can't trust Applebloom with her grenade launchers and all that stuff." She shot a look at her 'friend.' "She's kinda messy. But why can't I have any guns? They aren't gonna hurt anything!" "The contents of that box are delicate. We cannot risk having it get hit by a stray round. If it does, everything you're going down there for will be useless." "Ha ha! Suck it bitches!" Scootaloo crowed from the floor. "I'm the only one who gets to have any fun this time around!" Sweetie Bell and Applebloom shot her a glare that she still couldn't see. "Oh come on, I promise I won't use any inside the ship! Just let me take my BAR ok? What use is a weapons expert if she can't take along any weapons?" "Yeah!" Applebloom chimed in. "And I want at least three grenades. It ain't no fun if there's no explosions!" "No!" Octavia glared even harder at them. "Your record speaks for itself. There will be. No. Guns. Or. Explosives." Sweetie Bell folded her front legs and chewed on her lip. "Fine, but you're paying us extra for this. A lot extra." "You'll save a lot of money without wasting all that ammunition," Octavia replied. "Not good enough. Ten thousand on top of our usual price." "One thousand." "Eight." "Two, and you don't have to replace the table." "Deal." Sweetie Bell spit on her hoof and held it out. The Captain in turn stood up and walked to where Sweetie Bell was standing, spit on her own hoof, and bumped hooves in agreement. All done, the fillies started filing out one by one. Scootaloo brought up the rear and paused to wait for Octavia. "Don't think I haven't forgotten," she hissed. "You better watch your back. I know where you sleep." Octavia pulled out the squirt bottle and sprayed her in the face again. Chapter 4Death Fillies From Above Chapter 4 By CDRW "Aw come on Zecora, please?" Applebloom looked up at the zebra with eyes wide and an adorable pout on her lips. Unfortunately for her, Zecora was immune to cute. That was a big part of why she was in charge of looking after the three fillies. Also unfortunately for Applebloom, giving Zecora a beating wasn't an option either. Unfortunate accidents tended to happen to ponies that came after her. It wasn't that Zecora was dangerous or anything. The only thing she could do to get somepony back directly was to spike their dinner with one of her more specialized potions or something like that, but whenever somepony tried to hurt her they would trip over an exposed wire and break their neck, or have a loose crate fall onto their head and break their neck, or start choking on a piece of carrot, try to give themselves the heimlich maneuver and break their neck. Somehow. Sweetie Belle thought Zecora was giving sexual favors to Lady Luck. The weird stuff. "Don't bother with your wiley charms. I won't give you any firearms," Zecora said as she turned to her shelf of potion ingredients and pulled down a few jars. The zebra's quarters and workshop were just off the aft cargo bay, which was convenient for them because that's where they made their jumps from. The room they were in resembled nothing so much as a witch-doctor's hut on the Marengetti. Mostly because that's exactly what it was, just transferred to the Celestia. Sort of. Zecora had never been to the Marengetti. She'd lived her whole life in that tree-hut in the Everfree forest (which if anything was more dangerous than the deep dark reaches of Zebrica). Scootaloo had once said that meant Zecora wasn't a real witch-doctor right to her face. Somehow, a baleful polymorph potion found its way into her dinner that night and she spent the whole next week as a chicken, trying not to end up on the menu for some griffon. When Zecora turned back around to face her general direction, Applebloom waved her hoof at the weapon locker that took up one entire wall of the room. "But flamethrowers aren't firearms," she countered with perfect logic. "They don't shoot bullets or shells! No risk of puncturing anything with shrapnel or a lucky shot. An' I won't use it inside, so there's no chance of hurtin' the big mysterious box thingy!" Zecora completely ignored her. Instead of responding, she walked straight over to her cauldron and started mixing ingredients. Applebloom followed right behind her, gesticulating wildly and in general getting in the zebra's way. "Come oooooon," she whined. Zecora whirled around and practically shouted, "No! No no no I say! I'm trying to mix your potions, so go away!" And that was all they needed. Zecora couldn't see the door or the gun cabinet from where she stood. While she was busy yelling at Applebloom, an orange filly wearing a black sweater darted silently behind her back and made straight for the other side of the room. Pulling her goggles down over her eyes and switching them to their high power magnification setting, Scootaloo set about working on what was quite possibly the most dangerous mission she'd ever undertaken, breaking into Zecora's weapon locker. *** "Here's your flamethrower Applebloom." Scootaloo passed an object about the size and shape of a stubby pen to her fellow Crusader while the two of them huddled behind one of the crates in the aft cargo hold. "You owe me big time for this," she hissed. "You almost got me killed, staring at me like that! What if she'd noticed and turned around?" "Jeeze Scootaloo, you always turn into such a chicken when Zecora's around," Applebloom retorted as she checked the extra-dimensional fuel reservoir level. At the low blow, Scootaloo's eyes narrowed and she reached her head around to draw the knife she kept on her utility belt; but Applebloom waved the flamethrower in her face threateningly. "Uh uh uh." She pointed to a little green indicator on the side. "It's full. I got enough fuel here to incinerate your flightless butt and then melt through three or four bulkheads behind ya." Scootaloo slowly drew her head away from the knife handle, but she didn't drop the glare. "That's better. No don'cha worry your pretty little head. I'll pay you back. Always have before, right?" Scootaloo let her glare linger for another few seconds, and then let out a sigh and slumped back against the crate. "Yeah, you have." She adjusted her sweater and then peeked around the edge of the crate to see what was going on in the rest of the hold. The aft cargo hold was teeming with activity. Even without firearms, it took a lot of work to prepare the fillies for a jump, mostly Applebloom. There was a big square by the outer door marked on the floor with yellow paint. That was Applebloom's staging area. Normally it was kept all clear except for a large stack of wooden crates against the wall, but now there was hardware and tools strewn all around it as half a dozen ponies huddled around something in the middle. Occasionally one of them would move out of place to get something from one of the crates or off the floor, affording Scootaloo a view of the thing they were working on; a filly-sized suit of magitech power armor. "So how are you gonna do this Applebloom? There ain't no way even I could sneak into the middle of that, and I wouldn't know where to attach it anyways. Can't hide it in mine or Sweetie Belle's stuff either. They're gonna search us so thoroughly we'll still be walking funny a week from now." She ducked back behind the crate when one of the workers glanced her way. "Oh come on Scoots," Applebloom teased her with a grin on her face. "You're the sneaking expert an' you can't guess how a pony could hide a little thing like this on her person?" Scootaloo stuck out her tongue. "Well I can think of one way, but even you aren't stupid enough to swallow a flame..." Applebloom's grin grew three times wider and thirty times nastier. "You're right. That would be stupid because I'll be shut up all tight in that there tin can. What am I gonna do, upchuck it in my helmet?" "No." Scootaloo said flatly. She knew where this was going and wasn't going to have any part in it. "Aw come on." Applebloom sidled up to Scootaloo and put her foreleg around the other filly's neck all buddy-like and gave her a friendly hug. "Be a pal Scoots." "I said no, and no means no means no. And don't think I won't kick your butt six ways from Sunday if you try. I don't care how strong you are, hoof to hoof fighting is my specialty." "Poo buckets." Applebloom pouted at her. "Well, what else are we gonna do then?" "I don't know and I don—" "There you are!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed as she walked around the corner of the crate. "I've been looking everywhere for you two. Zecora says it's time to start taking our potions... Why are you two looking at me like that?" She took a step back as the matching evil grins on Applebloom's and Scootaloo's faces threatened to split their heads in two. "Oh, we were just tryin' to figure out how to solve a personal issue." Applebloom said casually as she stepped up to Sweetie Belle's right side and put her foreleg around her friend's neck, just the same way she had done to Scootaloo. "Yeah," Scootaloo said, appearing at Sweetie Belle's left. "We just couldn't figure out what to do, but now you've come along and volunteered!" Sweetie Belle's eyes darted back and forth between the two of them and her breathing started to speed up a little when Applebloom's leg tightened its hold. "Hey, I didn'—" "Thanks Sweetie Belle!" Applebloom said with loads of enthusiasm in her voice. "You're a real pal, you know that? Not everypony would do something like this just to help out their friends. Now hold still, okay?" Sweetie Belle tried to bolt, but Applebloom's foreleg tightened around her neck like a vise, stopping her dead. "Hey! Let me go! I didn't volunteer for a—rghlaak!" Chapter 2Death Fillies From Above Chapter 2 By CDRW Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Everypony on the bridge could hear the racket even through two doors and a short corridor. "Sounds like our filly friends are waiting for you," Vinyl remarked. "Indeed," Octavia said. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. "Blueblood, what is our distance from the Drakenridge Mountains and the Luna One?" "Uh," Prince Blueblood consulted the map in front of him, his lips moving silently as he did a few quick calculations in his head. "Fifty kilometers to the mountains. The Luna One is on the other side, another eighty kilometers." "Razorback pass is in that area correct?" "Yes ma'am," Blueblood replied. "Two kilometers north of our current course". Stomp stomp CLANG. The voice of Sweetie Bell soared above the rythmic stomping, clear and pure as the voice of an angel. Buddy you're a foal make a big noise Playin' in the street gonna be a big mare some day You got mud on yo' face You big disgrace Kickin' your can all over the place Singing Applebloom and Scootaloo joined her in a shouting chorus. We will we will rock you! Stomp stomp CLANG. We will we will rock you! "Helmsmare. Turn two point two nine degrees port and nose down five degrees. Take us down to two six hundred meters." The helmsmare turned around and stared at her. "But ma'am, that takes us below the ridge line!" Octavia simply looked at her in silence. "Yes ma'am!" She turned back to to the wheel and pushed a lever next to it forward and the nose of the Celestia started tilting downward and ever so slightly to the left. Stomp stomp CLANG. Buddy you're a young mare hard mare Shoutin' in the street gonna take on the world some day You got blood on yo' face You big disgrace Wavin' your banner all over the place We will we will rock you! Stomp stomp CLANG We will we will rock you! Octavia looked down to the open panel on the arm of her chair and flipped a switch. The intercom crackled to life. "Fluttershy, prep the Sparkle unit and bring her up to one quarter power." "O-okay," a small voice squeaked on the other end. Octavia flipped another switch and a different voice sounded on the other end of the line. "Engine room!" "Applejack, Fluttershy is powering up the Sparkle unit. You have thirty minutes to integrate its power relays into the mana-drive." Stomp stomp CLANG. "...You sure 'bout that...ma'am? I can do it, but the engines won't last long under that kind of punishment." "Yes, I'm sure." Octavia cut the line. Buddy you're an old mare poor mare... Octavia stood up. "You have the bridge Vinyl. It's time I go brief the Cutie Mark Crusaders." First mate Vinyl Scratch saluted as the Captain stood up and walked out the door.
Chapter 1Death Fillies From Above Chapter 1 By CDRW "Captain! Pegasus scouts have located the Luna One!" the communications officer called from his station. Captain Octavia of the airship Celestia turned her one-eyed gaze towards him and uttered a single word. "Report." Her voice was soft and she spoke with cultivated propriety, but none of that was a comfort to the poor communications pony who had reluctantly drawn her attention to himself. The Captain was a grey earth pony with a long, straight black mane and a treble clef cutie mark. An eyepatch obscured one of her eyes, and a huge scar ran underneath it from her temple to her jaw. It wasn't her missing eye that was so frightening though. It was the one she still had. She still would have been beautiful if it wasn't for that cold, soulless eye. Octavia had a reputation as being the bravest, smartest, and most heartless bitch of a pony who'd ever sailed the seven skies. And anypony who'd ever met her gaze instinctively knew all the stories about her were true. Captain Octavia always carried a cello bow with her, using it as a pointer or occasionally as a switch to discipline crew members. They said that before she captained her first airship at thirteen she was a prolific musician, and that when she'd taken command for the first time she brought the bow with her as a memento because her cello was too big to bring onto an airship. Then one day a cabin-boy went into her quarters without permission and started rummaging through her underwear drawer while she slept. She'd woken up, grabbed that bow from where it sat on the nightstand, and rammed it through his eye. Then she'd called the entire crew on deck and made them take down the ship's figurehead so they could mount his body in its place. "Your captain just gave you an order sailor!" barked the first mate, Vinyl Scratch. The communications officer jumped, and he was finally able to break eye contact with the Captain. "S-sorry ma'am! Uh. The report is coming in from Scout Rainbow Dash. She says she's found the wreckage of the Luna One a hundred and twelve clicks east of here. The ship is in bad shape but still sort of intact. She also says it's swarming with changelings, including at least three dozen surface-to-air plasmoids. We won't even be able to get close." The stallion paused and put one hoof up to his earpiece. "She recommends you just use an ICBE and Sparkle the whole area ma'am." "Not an option," Octavia said calmly. "The Luna One was Equestria's most advanced science vessel and was the main laboratory for Equestria's weapons development program. Her Majesty needs the contents and data from those experiments and we're going to deliver them. Helmsmare! Set course for the Luna One!" "C-captain?" the helmsmare stammered. Octavia nodded at Vinyl Scratch for her to do her thing. "You heard the Captain!" Vinyl strode across the bridge and bellowed in the helmsmare's face with a voice that could rattle the windows in Canterlot from here. "Get this ship turned around or I'll personally throw you overboard with a boarding hook embedded in your belly! Do you understand me sailor! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" "Y-yes ma'am!" "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!' "YES MA'AM!' "Good!" Vinyl looked around at the rest of the bridge crew. "What are you all looking at me for? You have jobs to do, now do them!" She swept the bridge with her eyes. "BLUEBLOOD!" A white unicorn who was trying to hide something in the jumble of maps at his station jumped about three feet in the air. "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT READING PORN MAGS ON DUTY? GIVE ME THAT! I OUGHTA..." Octavia let her first mate continue to motivate the crew and busied herself with a panel on the arm of her captain's chair. She flipped it up to reveal an array of switches and buttons underneath. With a flick of her hoof, she flipped a switch in the upper right corner, and all throughout the ship the yellow alert sirens started going off. Then she flipped a second switch and an intercom crackled to life. "Hello Captain. My ears detect a clamorous bellow. Is there a reason you've gone to alert stage yellow?" Octavia ignored the zebra's question and snapped out an order. "Start prepping the fillies for a drop, Zecora." On the other end of the line she heard a chorus of three voices shouting "yay" in the background. "No artillery or firearms. This is a retrieval mission and I need the objective intact, so hoof-to-hoof combat only." Two of the "yay"'s turned to "aw"'s but the third just cheered even louder. "Have them waiting in the ready room in fifteen minutes. I'll be there to brief them myself." "Yes ma'am, Captain. I'll see it happens." With that, Octavia cut the line and settled back in her seat, watching the clouds stream past the bridge windows like an ocean of cotton candy as her ship turned hard to port. When Vinyl finished yelling at the bridge crew she came over to stand next to Octavia's chair. For a long moment, she just stood there, watching what the Captain watched, but eventually she tired of that, or gathered up the courage to say what she wanted to. She leaned down to whisper in Octavia's ear. "Do we really have to use the fillies 'tavi? We shouldn't even have those monsters on board. They're as bad as the changelings. You know we can't keep them under control forever." "We don't have any choice but to use them Vinyl. You know as well as I do that they are our best weapon against the changelings," Octavia said, her voice never changing from its steely monotone. "We have to use them because those fillies don't love anypony." "All right, I trust your judgement on this 'tavi, but those three are scaring the crew. They're unstable and dangerous. Please tell me you have a plan to deal with them if things get out of hoof." Octavia didn't say anything. She just started humming an eerie tune and watched as the clouds floated by. Only Vinyl was close enough to see, but there was a ghost of a smile on her lips. I hope you liked the first chapter of Death Fillies From Above. I'm doing this just for fun and am mostly writing by the seat of my pants, so if you have any ideas for awesome stuff I should totally do, go ahead and suggest them. I might even write it into one of the future chapters!
Chapter 3Death Fillies From Above Chapter 3 By CDRW The poor oval table in the ready room had taken quite the beating acting as an impromptu stage for the three fillys' musical number, but it had totally volunteered for the job by virtue of being large and wooden and very stage-like, so it was all right. Therefore it came as a bit of a shock when Captain Octavia strode in, took one look at the gouged and dented surface, and said, "That is coming out of your paycheck." "What!" Exclaimed all three of the fillies in unison. "That's not fair!" Applebloom cried. "Yeah! You can't do that!" Scootaloo jumped down from the table with Sweetie Bell right behind. Flapping her tiny wings as fast as she could, she managed to hover high enough to yell in the Captain's face. "You're not going to get away with this!" "I assure you, I can and I am," Octavia answered smoothly as she walked around her and sat in the chair at the head of the table. Scootaloo's front right leg had once been replaced with a mechanical one and whenever she walked around the ship every step she took made a little clang (except when she was trying to be stealthy of course). This time it made a big CLANG when she punched the wall. "You piece of..." She whirled around and drew an eight inch, serrated knife from its sheath on her belt. "I'm gonna—" Quick as lightning, Captain Octavia ducked her head inside the jacket of her dress uniform and pulled out a squirt bottle, which she sprayed in Scootaloo's face. The orange filly reared up and fell over backwards, clutching her face. "My eyes! Oh Goddess it burns! What was in that thing?" "Ammonia." Applebloom burst out laughing. Holding her sides, she collapsed on the table top and started rolling back and forth. "Scootaloo, you sissy!" Scootaloo stood up and stretched out her hoof, peering through the haze of tears in her eyes and feeling for Octavia so that she could throttle her. "You are so gonna pay for that you cunt! When I find you—" Applebloom started pounding the table in glee. Sweetie Bellspoke up and said, "Oh put a sock in it Scootaloo. You can shank her later. I wanna hear about the drop." Scootaloo finally found one of the walls with her hoof, and she plopped her rump down on the floor next to it with a "Fine. Whatever." "Applebloom, kindly get off the table so we can start this meeting," Octavia said. When she'd done that, with a bit of a scowl and a sniff, the Captain continued. "Good." She brushed a speck of dust off the front of her jacket. "Five weeks ago, the Luna One, Equestria's most advanced mobile laboratory was working on a vital experiment for the weapons development program. Something, we don't know what, went wrong and she disappeared without a trace. Rainbow Dash has just reported in that she's found the wreckage. "In approximately fifty minutes we will be passing overhead. Heavy plasmoid fire is expected, so we cannot land. Instead, the three of you will be making a HALO drop. You have three objectives in descending order of importance. First, locate the central laboratory. Inside, there will be a large metal box six feet long, three wide and two deep with various magical equipment attached. Retrieve that box. And don't open it!" The three fillies started grinning evilly. Octavia glared hard at them. "If the box is open when you get back, you will get no dessert for a month." Their grins faded, replaced with looks of dismay. "Second, Rainbow Dash reports that there are entirely too many changelings in the area for it to be just coincidence, and there aren't any more coming in from the outside to explain their presence. She believes that the Luna One has crashed on top of a changeling hive. If that's true and you cannot secure the area, activate the Luna One's self-destruct mechanism. It should be enough to take out the hive." Applebloom rubbed her forehooves together with glee. "Third. If possible, clear the area of changelings so that the Celestia can land and do a more thorough recovery of the Luna One's contents. Any questions?" "Yeah." Sweetie Bell raised her hoof. "I get why you can't trust Applebloom with her grenade launchers and all that stuff." She shot a look at her 'friend.' "She's kinda messy. But why can't I have any guns? They aren't gonna hurt anything!" "The contents of that box are delicate. We cannot risk having it get hit by a stray round. If it does, everything you're going down there for will be useless." "Ha ha! Suck it bitches!" Scootaloo crowed from the floor. "I'm the only one who gets to have any fun this time around!" Sweetie Bell and Applebloom shot her a glare that she still couldn't see. "Oh come on, I promise I won't use any inside the ship! Just let me take my BAR ok? What use is a weapons expert if she can't take along any weapons?" "Yeah!" Applebloom chimed in. "And I want at least three grenades. It ain't no fun if there's no explosions!" "No!" Octavia glared even harder at them. "Your record speaks for itself. There will be. No. Guns. Or. Explosives." Sweetie Bell folded her front legs and chewed on her lip. "Fine, but you're paying us extra for this. A lot extra." "You'll save a lot of money without wasting all that ammunition," Octavia replied. "Not good enough. Ten thousand on top of our usual price." "One thousand." "Eight." "Two, and you don't have to replace the table." "Deal." Sweetie Bell spit on her hoof and held it out. The Captain in turn stood up and walked to where Sweetie Bell was standing, spit on her own hoof, and bumped hooves in agreement. All done, the fillies started filing out one by one. Scootaloo brought up the rear and paused to wait for Octavia. "Don't think I haven't forgotten," she hissed. "You better watch your back. I know where you sleep." Octavia pulled out the squirt bottle and sprayed her in the face again.
Chapter 4Death Fillies From Above Chapter 4 By CDRW "Aw come on Zecora, please?" Applebloom looked up at the zebra with eyes wide and an adorable pout on her lips. Unfortunately for her, Zecora was immune to cute. That was a big part of why she was in charge of looking after the three fillies. Also unfortunately for Applebloom, giving Zecora a beating wasn't an option either. Unfortunate accidents tended to happen to ponies that came after her. It wasn't that Zecora was dangerous or anything. The only thing she could do to get somepony back directly was to spike their dinner with one of her more specialized potions or something like that, but whenever somepony tried to hurt her they would trip over an exposed wire and break their neck, or have a loose crate fall onto their head and break their neck, or start choking on a piece of carrot, try to give themselves the heimlich maneuver and break their neck. Somehow. Sweetie Belle thought Zecora was giving sexual favors to Lady Luck. The weird stuff. "Don't bother with your wiley charms. I won't give you any firearms," Zecora said as she turned to her shelf of potion ingredients and pulled down a few jars. The zebra's quarters and workshop were just off the aft cargo bay, which was convenient for them because that's where they made their jumps from. The room they were in resembled nothing so much as a witch-doctor's hut on the Marengetti. Mostly because that's exactly what it was, just transferred to the Celestia. Sort of. Zecora had never been to the Marengetti. She'd lived her whole life in that tree-hut in the Everfree forest (which if anything was more dangerous than the deep dark reaches of Zebrica). Scootaloo had once said that meant Zecora wasn't a real witch-doctor right to her face. Somehow, a baleful polymorph potion found its way into her dinner that night and she spent the whole next week as a chicken, trying not to end up on the menu for some griffon. When Zecora turned back around to face her general direction, Applebloom waved her hoof at the weapon locker that took up one entire wall of the room. "But flamethrowers aren't firearms," she countered with perfect logic. "They don't shoot bullets or shells! No risk of puncturing anything with shrapnel or a lucky shot. An' I won't use it inside, so there's no chance of hurtin' the big mysterious box thingy!" Zecora completely ignored her. Instead of responding, she walked straight over to her cauldron and started mixing ingredients. Applebloom followed right behind her, gesticulating wildly and in general getting in the zebra's way. "Come oooooon," she whined. Zecora whirled around and practically shouted, "No! No no no I say! I'm trying to mix your potions, so go away!" And that was all they needed. Zecora couldn't see the door or the gun cabinet from where she stood. While she was busy yelling at Applebloom, an orange filly wearing a black sweater darted silently behind her back and made straight for the other side of the room. Pulling her goggles down over her eyes and switching them to their high power magnification setting, Scootaloo set about working on what was quite possibly the most dangerous mission she'd ever undertaken, breaking into Zecora's weapon locker. *** "Here's your flamethrower Applebloom." Scootaloo passed an object about the size and shape of a stubby pen to her fellow Crusader while the two of them huddled behind one of the crates in the aft cargo hold. "You owe me big time for this," she hissed. "You almost got me killed, staring at me like that! What if she'd noticed and turned around?" "Jeeze Scootaloo, you always turn into such a chicken when Zecora's around," Applebloom retorted as she checked the extra-dimensional fuel reservoir level. At the low blow, Scootaloo's eyes narrowed and she reached her head around to draw the knife she kept on her utility belt; but Applebloom waved the flamethrower in her face threateningly. "Uh uh uh." She pointed to a little green indicator on the side. "It's full. I got enough fuel here to incinerate your flightless butt and then melt through three or four bulkheads behind ya." Scootaloo slowly drew her head away from the knife handle, but she didn't drop the glare. "That's better. No don'cha worry your pretty little head. I'll pay you back. Always have before, right?" Scootaloo let her glare linger for another few seconds, and then let out a sigh and slumped back against the crate. "Yeah, you have." She adjusted her sweater and then peeked around the edge of the crate to see what was going on in the rest of the hold. The aft cargo hold was teeming with activity. Even without firearms, it took a lot of work to prepare the fillies for a jump, mostly Applebloom. There was a big square by the outer door marked on the floor with yellow paint. That was Applebloom's staging area. Normally it was kept all clear except for a large stack of wooden crates against the wall, but now there was hardware and tools strewn all around it as half a dozen ponies huddled around something in the middle. Occasionally one of them would move out of place to get something from one of the crates or off the floor, affording Scootaloo a view of the thing they were working on; a filly-sized suit of magitech power armor. "So how are you gonna do this Applebloom? There ain't no way even I could sneak into the middle of that, and I wouldn't know where to attach it anyways. Can't hide it in mine or Sweetie Belle's stuff either. They're gonna search us so thoroughly we'll still be walking funny a week from now." She ducked back behind the crate when one of the workers glanced her way. "Oh come on Scoots," Applebloom teased her with a grin on her face. "You're the sneaking expert an' you can't guess how a pony could hide a little thing like this on her person?" Scootaloo stuck out her tongue. "Well I can think of one way, but even you aren't stupid enough to swallow a flame..." Applebloom's grin grew three times wider and thirty times nastier. "You're right. That would be stupid because I'll be shut up all tight in that there tin can. What am I gonna do, upchuck it in my helmet?" "No." Scootaloo said flatly. She knew where this was going and wasn't going to have any part in it. "Aw come on." Applebloom sidled up to Scootaloo and put her foreleg around the other filly's neck all buddy-like and gave her a friendly hug. "Be a pal Scoots." "I said no, and no means no means no. And don't think I won't kick your butt six ways from Sunday if you try. I don't care how strong you are, hoof to hoof fighting is my specialty." "Poo buckets." Applebloom pouted at her. "Well, what else are we gonna do then?" "I don't know and I don—" "There you are!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed as she walked around the corner of the crate. "I've been looking everywhere for you two. Zecora says it's time to start taking our potions... Why are you two looking at me like that?" She took a step back as the matching evil grins on Applebloom's and Scootaloo's faces threatened to split their heads in two. "Oh, we were just tryin' to figure out how to solve a personal issue." Applebloom said casually as she stepped up to Sweetie Belle's right side and put her foreleg around her friend's neck, just the same way she had done to Scootaloo. "Yeah," Scootaloo said, appearing at Sweetie Belle's left. "We just couldn't figure out what to do, but now you've come along and volunteered!" Sweetie Belle's eyes darted back and forth between the two of them and her breathing started to speed up a little when Applebloom's leg tightened its hold. "Hey, I didn'—" "Thanks Sweetie Belle!" Applebloom said with loads of enthusiasm in her voice. "You're a real pal, you know that? Not everypony would do something like this just to help out their friends. Now hold still, okay?" Sweetie Belle tried to bolt, but Applebloom's foreleg tightened around her neck like a vise, stopping her dead. "Hey! Let me go! I didn't volunteer for a—rghlaak!"
Chapter 2Death Fillies From Above Chapter 2 By CDRW Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Everypony on the bridge could hear the racket even through two doors and a short corridor. "Sounds like our filly friends are waiting for you," Vinyl remarked. "Indeed," Octavia said. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. Stomp stomp CLANG. "Blueblood, what is our distance from the Drakenridge Mountains and the Luna One?" "Uh," Prince Blueblood consulted the map in front of him, his lips moving silently as he did a few quick calculations in his head. "Fifty kilometers to the mountains. The Luna One is on the other side, another eighty kilometers." "Razorback pass is in that area correct?" "Yes ma'am," Blueblood replied. "Two kilometers north of our current course". Stomp stomp CLANG. The voice of Sweetie Bell soared above the rythmic stomping, clear and pure as the voice of an angel. Buddy you're a foal make a big noise Playin' in the street gonna be a big mare some day You got mud on yo' face You big disgrace Kickin' your can all over the place Singing Applebloom and Scootaloo joined her in a shouting chorus. We will we will rock you! Stomp stomp CLANG. We will we will rock you! "Helmsmare. Turn two point two nine degrees port and nose down five degrees. Take us down to two six hundred meters." The helmsmare turned around and stared at her. "But ma'am, that takes us below the ridge line!" Octavia simply looked at her in silence. "Yes ma'am!" She turned back to to the wheel and pushed a lever next to it forward and the nose of the Celestia started tilting downward and ever so slightly to the left. Stomp stomp CLANG. Buddy you're a young mare hard mare Shoutin' in the street gonna take on the world some day You got blood on yo' face You big disgrace Wavin' your banner all over the place We will we will rock you! Stomp stomp CLANG We will we will rock you! Octavia looked down to the open panel on the arm of her chair and flipped a switch. The intercom crackled to life. "Fluttershy, prep the Sparkle unit and bring her up to one quarter power." "O-okay," a small voice squeaked on the other end. Octavia flipped another switch and a different voice sounded on the other end of the line. "Engine room!" "Applejack, Fluttershy is powering up the Sparkle unit. You have thirty minutes to integrate its power relays into the mana-drive." Stomp stomp CLANG. "...You sure 'bout that...ma'am? I can do it, but the engines won't last long under that kind of punishment." "Yes, I'm sure." Octavia cut the line. Buddy you're an old mare poor mare... Octavia stood up. "You have the bridge Vinyl. It's time I go brief the Cutie Mark Crusaders." First mate Vinyl Scratch saluted as the Captain stood up and walked out the door.
