Grey.
The walls of the maintenance stalls were all a very monotonous, dull grey. The particular wall I was staring at had the merit of being a very clean grey. PipBucks were notoriously hardy and reliable, so being the Stable’s PipBuck Technician meant that there were long periods of nothing to do. Being the PipBuck Technician’s apprentice meant that I was assigned all the mundane daily chores while my trainer took extended naps in the back room. Chores like cleaning the walls.
“This wall needs a mural.”
I let myself fantasize, picturing the Overmare agreeing and ordering Palette herself to--
“PipBuck technician?! I have an emergency!” My ears perked at the voice. Her voice. Could it be...?
It was! Velvet Remedy, Stable Two's and possibly Equestria's most gorgeous and talented singer. Her voice was as smooth as silk and rich as--
"Technician?!" Velvet shrieked, shocking me out of being starstruck and into the present. "Please, I need my PipBuck removed right now!"
"W-Why?" I stuttered. "Is something wrong with it?"
"Technician, if you don't remove my PipBuck," Velvet said, her tone weighed with the utmost sincerity and gravitas, "I won't be able to perform tomorrow at the Stable Two Saloon."
I felt my stomach curdle. Velvet never missed her weekly Saloon performances! "I don't understand! What is it that's going on?!"
"Please!" Velvet begged, on the verge of tears. "Please, remove my PipBuck! I don't have time to explain!"
"I..." I was so confused. I honestly still wasn't sure whether or not what she was saying made any sense at all or if she was just raving, but I was already levitating my special keys used to unlock her PipBuck from her foreleg, and it clicked free before I was quite sure what I was doing.
"Thanks!" Velvet said, turning and galloping back out the door. I watched as her cutie mark disappeared around the doorway. Then she was gone.
I blinked. What on earth...? Looking down numbly at Velvet Remedy's stylishly decorated PipBuck in my telekinesis, I finally grasped what exactly had transpired. "W-Wait!"
I dashed to the door, throwing my head past the frame to see her tail vanish behind a corner. I took only a second before deciding to run after her--it wasn't like my teacher was out, and it was a slow day anyway--and sprinted after her, still holding her PipBuck in my magic. "Velvet, wait up!"
Despite her lead, I caught up with her on the stairs leading up to the Stable's top level, and ran side-by-side as we both headed toward the room holding the Stable door. "What's going on?! Why are you running?!"
"No time!" she yelled back, bursting through the hatch into the Stable door's room. She activated her magic, bashing the two earth pony guards' heads together, and they slumped over, both knocked unconscious.
"What are you doing?!" I shouted, rushing over to them and trying to see if they were seriously injured.
"I told you, I don't have time to explain!" Velvet stopped short of the guards, screeching to a halt in front of a terminal standing in the Stable door's anteroom and inputting several commands. "Have to do this fast!"
"Have to do what fast?!" I was quickly losing my patience. "Please, tell me what's going on!"
Velvet hit the ENTER key, turned to face me as the Stable door clunked and hissed, and planted a deep kiss onto my lips.
All my fear and panic dissolved instantly. The Stable door's rumbling was drowned out by my heartbeat thumping in my chest and ears as I suddenly felt weightless, only not leaving the ground from Velvet's kiss grounding me.
She broke contact, looking me deep in my eyes. "Now will you stop asking so many questions?"
I rose a hoof halfway up to touch my lips before stopping myself, not wanting to taint where I'd been kissed by an angel. "O-OK..."
Velvet smiled before her eyes drifted behind me, and she leapt past, squeezing through the Stable door just as it began to open. Giggling to myself, I did my best to follow, trying not to let her out of my sight.
"Velvet, slow down!" I jumped from one precarious outcropping to the next, struggling to keep my footing.
"Can't!" she responded, several spots ahead of me. "First, I have to get some spark plugs, then to the crashed Enclave skiff!"
"The crashed what?!"
Velvet didn't answer, opting to make another impossibly tricky jump. I felt my jaw drop as she balanced barely on her hooftip, climbing sideways on a near-vertical rockface as if it were second nature to her. Looking down, I realized we were both quite far above the ground; while a sudden landing probably wouldn't kill us, it would still probably be very painful, and might even cripple a leg.
"Velvet, this isn't safe!" I yelled after her, struggling down to a slightly safer position. "You're going to get hurt!"
She hooked her front hooves around the rock face's peak, hoisted herself up, and disappeared without another word. Taking a quick look around, I couldn't see an easy way to pursue her past the natural obstacle.
Sighing in defeat, I started working my way back down, glancing at my PipBuck on my right leg as Velvet's was secured on my left; Velvet had yelled back at me she didn't need hers anymore and to throw it away, but I couldn't bring myself to discard it like trash when preserving her property felt so much more important to me. I opened my map, grimacing when it told me I was in the middle of nowhere.
My radiation marker, a cute little rainbow dial, had variously pointed from green to yellow and back in the several hours we'd traveled since leaving Stable Two, and now it was back on green. At least here is safe, I thought to myself. All the same, the outside was sobering to see: Endless stretches of brown and green, only broken by spindly wood that I could only guess made up what were once trees.
I closed my eyes, trying to keep my panic from rising again but not doing too well at it. I perked my ears, hearing only faint rustles from atop the cliff.
"Got 'em!" I heard faintly, before looking up and seeing a dark silhouette jump overhead, falling to the ground.
Velvet! I tried sparking my magic to stop her, but as unexpected as her sudden leap was I was sloppy in trying to catch her, and she slipped from my grip, landing hard on her right foreleg with a sickening crunch. I winced, expecting her to start screaming in pain.
Instead I heard her say, "Yes!" and she absolutely blasted off, making serious tracks for the horizon.
I blinked, dumbstruck. Watching her navigate a cliff face with little to no hoofholds was one thing, but somehow moving faster after breaking her leg was another thing entirely.
Shaking myself, I realized she'd already gotten quite far away, and without me, she was alone. I hesitated for a second before jumping down myself, being low enough to where I managed to land safely without breaking anything, and took off in pursuit.
I eventually lost sight of her, but after galloping for what felt like almost an hour I eventually saw a broken heap of metal rising out of the wasteland's rolling hills. About half was scattered around the landscape in bits and pieces, but the main section still looked like it was mostly in one piece. Velvet was banging what looked like the tail end of a rocket thruster attached to it back into alignment, the thick metal sheet she was using as a makeshift hammer held tightly in her magical grip.
I slowed to a stop beside her, gasping for air and wishing I had water. I rubbed at a painful stitch in my side. "Velvet... what are you... doing...?"
"Almost done!" she replied, tossing her metallic sheet back at me. Unable to react in time to catch it, it smacked me right in the face, and I fell onto my back, groaning. I heard her grunt as the sound of hooves pounding against steel met my ears, clomping away from me a few paces before stopping. I thrust the metal sheet off me, struggling to my hooves and looking up to see Velvet in the machine's cockpit fiddling with some controls. "If you're just gonna lie there, help me put these spark plugs in!" she demanded, removing several casings with her telekinesis and tossing them carelessly out onto the ground.
I slowly climbed up the metallic and approached the cockpit. "Where did you get spark plugs?"
"From the cliff," she said, inserting them into their resting places with methodical precision. "There's a dead griffon up there who always has some." She flipped them back into place, sealing them inside the contraption. "Buckle up, we're about to take off!"
"T-Take off?!" I spluttered. "But this thing probably can't even fly! Half of it isn't even attached anymore! And you don't even know the controls!"
"Oh, it'll fly," Velvet assured, pressing several buttons. The entire contraption rumbled and started to hum with power and energy. "And of course I know the controls, I've played this section millions of times."
"Wh--"
"I said buckle up!" Velvet seized me with her magic and pushed me roughly into what I assumed was a passenger's seat as the mechanical beast shuddered.
"Wait, Velvet, this is really dangerous!" I protested, growing desperate.
"Duh!"
"But--"
I didn't get another word out as the flying vehicle we were sitting in roared to life, jarring me and making me bite my tongue, hard. I pitched forward then back, pressing into the seat as a powerful force lifted us up, up, up into the sky. I managed a look back to see our vessel's rockets burning, propelling us forward faster and faster.
Tears streaming from my eyes, my ears buffeted by the deafening noise of our transportation's rocket engines, I forced my head to turn toward Velvet. She was looking straight forward and squinting, her hooves keeping the wheel surprisingly steady as we flew through the air. I saw her lips move, mouthing words, but I could only make out "Wait for it... Wait for it..."
I looked ahead to see a mountain range materialize from the landscape, and Velvet was aiming straight for the tallest one, rising so far above the wasteland its peak pierced the omnipresent clouds. I gripped my seat tightly as it came closer and closer, eventually picking out individual trees and then individual boulders. I closed my eyes and prayed to Celestia and Luna above in my last moments that they might be merciful and not judge me too harshly for deciding to follow who was clearly a lunatic out into Equestria's shattered remnants.
"Now!" Velvet's voice pierced through the wind's whine and the engines' roar, and I felt our vehicle veer upward. I opened my eyes to see our machine's nose end brush against treetops, but remain unharmed as we rocketed up the mountainside. Glancing over at Velvet, I saw her pushing the wheel down as hard as she could, her eyes shut tight.
Our vehicle bucked, and I looked back to see our rocket boosters flicker and die. Velvet thrust the wheel forward again, and the fuselage dipped back down as it collided with a relatively smooth section of the mountain. I felt my seatbelt dig into my skin painfully as the skiff shook and jostled us, plowing to a halt right before a sheer drop, its true height masked by the roiling clouds below.
Velvet didn't waste a moment, unbuckling herself and dashing up a narrow path to the mountain's peak. I unstrapped myself as quickly as I could, chasing after her and somehow managing to match her stride.
"I'm starting to get really nervous!" Velvet yelled to me.
Her statement almost caused me to stumble "You're getting nervous now?! We've probably nearly died several times at this point!"
Velvet shook her head but didn't slow as we rounded the last turn before the mountain's peak. An enormous, yawning cave revealed itself, glowing dimly from within.
"Last tough spot! Stay here!" Velvet said, rushing inside. Too exhausted to argue, I tripped and rolled to a stop, unwilling to move any further. Hopefully she'd come out soon and explain everything to me. I prayed to the Goddesses above she would, so that I might finally make sense of what had happened today.
Noise reached my ears from deep within the cave's interior, and I swallowed as best I could with my parched mouth and listened hard. I heard Velvet laugh tauntingly, mixed with deep roars that made me shudder.
I saw Velvet reappear from within the cave's mouth, and I raised my head as she made her way back to me. I opened my mouth to ask what had happened, but my question caught in my throat as hot green fire ignited behind her, rushing toward her.
"Velvet, look out!" I rasped as she turned. The flames swallowed her up as a massive fireball flew from the cavern entrance out into the sky, leaving only scorched black rock behind.
An enormous purple scaly beast burst from the cave, its maw still smoking with licks of green fire. It gazed down at me with beady green eyes and roared, and I could almost feel the air distort with its deafening volume as a wave of horrendous-smelling breath washed over me, making my eyes tear up again.
It snapped its jaw shut, staring me down with a ruthless glare. I returned its stare for a moment, then delicately lowered my head onto my hooves and closed my eyes, deciding to just try to sleep.
I was 7000% done with today.
Velvet Remedy rematerialized and flopped onto a cold steel floor, struggling to her scorched and blackened hooves and trudging forward through a hallway containing several pegasus corpses in various states of decomposition. Stopping by one shallowly breathing body, Velvet gripped it in her magic, carrying it forward with her as the corridor opened up into a small anteroom.
Three TV screens flickered to life, displaying a cruel, sneering black visage. Her vast wings filled the screens to the left and right. On the center monitor, her turquoise, dragon-like eyes stared down at Velvet with utter contempt from behind a helmet forged of bluish metal.
“You trespass in the sanctum of Nightmare Moon!” she said icily. “I give you this one--”
Velvet utterly ignored her, hopping to the cloud terminal before the door and using the pegasus's hooves to manipulate the interface.
“...What are you doing?!” Nightmare Moon asked, her sneer growing mixed with confusion. “Leave at once!”
The cloud door clicked open, and Velvet carelessly tossed the pegasus's body aside, bursting through and barreling down the hallway. Entering the last door, Velvet dove forward, grabbed a piece of black headgear, and shoved it on her head.
The S.P.P. hub was quiet for a moment before Velvet erupted into squeals of happiness. "Yes! I did it, I finally, really did it! World record! World record...!" Her eyes misted, and she began choking out sobs, laughing while lying prone on the facility's floor.
Nightmare Moon blinked, unsure what had exactly happened. "...Who are you?"
Velvet pulled herself up into a sitting position and waved a hoof at the nearest screen. "Who am I? Who am I?! I'll tell you who I am!
"I am the greatest speedrunner who has ever lived!"
Author's Note
There's always a faster way.
