The Engineer’s Wings

Chapters

Chapter 2: The ‘Package’
Chapter 3: Over the Mountains
Chapter 4: Rendezvous
Chapter 5: Welcome Aboard?
Chapter 6: Settling In
Chapter 7: Poorly Chosen Words
Chapter 9: Acceptance
Chapter 10: Clearing the Way
Chapter 11: The Spirit Barrier
Chapter 12: Fading Light
Chapter 13: Take These Broken Wings…
Chapter 14: Spies Aboard
Chapter 15: The Cutie Mark Crusaders
Chapter 16: Crusade to the Temple of the Earth
Chapter 17: Planing is Essential…
Chapter 18: …Yet Plans are Useless
Chapter 19: Looming Nightmare
Chapter 20: The Nightmare Begins
Chapter 21: Seeking the Path
Chapter 22: Tower of Trials
Chapter 24: To the Moon!
Chapter 25: A New Day
Chapter 1: An Adventure Unknowingly Begins
Chapter 8: Trial by Fire
Chapter 23: The Wings that Pierced the Heavens

Chapter 2: The ‘Package’

High atop the northwest cliff, overlooking Ponyville proper, sat the airport. It consisted of a single paved runway, half a dozen metal airship docks, a terminal building, and twenty or so hangers.

In one of those hangers Scootaloo sat hunched over a small wooden crate that she used as a table, looking at a map of the area. Tracing her hoof across the map for the fourth time, she once again found the numbers she’d been given pointing her hoof at the same place. There was no mistake. The coordinates she’d been given were for the southeast ridge, basically the fields on the opposite side of the valley.

In hindsight that made sense as the only structures near Ponyville that weren’t in the valley were the airport on this side and a few mansions where the rich ponies lived overlooking the valley on the southeast side.

Seeing as the aviation map didn’t show individual buildings, she looked to other clues to try to figure out exactly where she was going. Looking at the features that the map did show, she found the point her hoof was resting at was due east of the south edge of Sweet Apple Acres’ plateau and due south of Canterlot’s dot on the map.

She folded up the map and tucked it under her wing. Getting up she gave the small room she called home one last look. In one corner was a potbelly stove that both allowed her to cook and served to heat the rectangular room. In the corner closest to the stove was a hammock. Near those was her crate/table where she currently was. Halfway between those and the door, were a couch against one wall and a desk against the other.

On the desk were a tool belt, a pair of goggles and a small intercom that could allow her to talk to the airport’s main office.

Scootaloo walked over to the desk, took the goggles and put them on so that the lenses were on her forehead. With that she left the room she lived in.

Stepping out the door brought her into the main part of the hanger. The suspended room that was her home was bolted to the walls just before the roof started to curve. A few steel beams served as support pillars, and marked off the area below it as a storage area.

Of course there were only two things on the floor of the hanger. Three, if you counted the base of the stairs to her room. The other two being a blue scooter with red wheels, that was by the base of the stairs, and the silver airplane sitting in the middle of the hanger.

The air in the main hanger had a notable chill to it. But even that couldn’t dampen the warmth of the pride Scootaloo felt whenever she looked on that plane, that Lightning Bolt Mark 1, her Lightning Bolt Mark 1.

It’s triangle shaped wings set it apart from any other civilian airplane. Not to mention gave the wings a shape oddly like those of a paper airplane. In fact, as far as she knew, only the Lightning Bolt Mark 1’s and 2’s used that wing shape.

After descending the stairs she made her way over to the main hanger door. Flipping a toggle switch, she watched as a motor hummed to life and the hanger door began to rise.

The morning air was calm and about as cold as the air inside the hanger. It turned out that metal walls might keep the wind and rain out, but they’re really lousy at keeping the cold out.

Yet standing in the doorway allowed the sunlight to soak into her coat, taking the bite out of the cool morning air.

Scootaloo didn’t have to wait long before Cloud Chaser, a light purple pegasus with a white mane, landed on the tarmac in front of Scootaloo’s hanger.

The mare hit the ground galloping and slowed herself gradually, allowing the pegasus cart she was pulling to come to a halt gently. In the cart were several one-gallon jars of liquid rainbow.

Finally totting over to the filly, Cloud Chaser said, “Heh, it’s been awhile since you called me out here. I almost forgot that if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even carry this kind of fuel. So, how much did you want?”

“Top off the tanks. I’m not sure how far I’m going today, so I want to be ready for anything.”

With a nod, Cloud set about her task.

Scootaloo started walking around her plane, stopping every few feet to look more closely at all of the moving parts and control surfaces of her plane. The Lightning Bolt Mark 1 wasn’t just her pride, it was the pride of pegasus engineering as the first airplane ever completely designed and built by pegasi. Which was one reason that it was also the only airplane based at this airport that used liquid rainbow as fuel, instead of the enchanted steam water of earth pony or unicorn made planes.

Once she was done looking at the landing gear and the under side of the plane, she hopped up onto one of the wings and made her way to the cockpit. The first thing she did when she got there was to toss her map onto the back seat. Taking her place in the pilot’s seat she watched as Cloud Chaser finished topping off the fuel tanks.

Once she was done, Cloud Chaser tapped on the cockpit glass. Scootaloo paid the mare. And once the airport employee had left, she got out and gave the top of her plane a good look.

Between it’s cylindrical fuselage and triangular wings, it really did look like this was the type of plane that paper airplanes were trying to mimic. It only differed in that the the wings came out of the middle of the body of the plane rather than the top. That and paper airplanes didn’t usually have a tail fin, or the part where the fuselage got a little wider halfway back.

Regardless, once she was content that everything was as it should be, Scootaloo returned to the pilot’s seat. As one might have guessed the seats were built for adult ponies, not a filly half the size of an adult. But with a few minor modifications Scootaloo solved that problem long ago.

The first modification was as simple as a large pillow tied to the back of her seat, allowing her to sit at the front edge of the seat and while still having her back against something.

Once she was in place she reached back, pulled out the seat’s harness and strapped herself in.

The second modification was a metal extension rig she’d attached to the hoof pedals that her shorter legs could actually reach.

Reaching up with a forehoof, she then pulled down her goggles. The enchantment within the goggles kicked in and suddenly her plane seemed mostly transparent. More than making up for the fact that she wasn’t quite big enough to see over the instrument panel yet. Maybe if she’d stretched her neck she might have been able to see the horizon over the tip of the plane’s nose. But with the goggles letting her see through her plane the limitations of her size were moot.

Pushing on the hoof pedals, she looked over her shoulder and watched the mostly transparent flap on the tail go left and right. Wrapping her front hooves around the stick, she pushed it forward, back and side to side, watching the ailerons on the wings respond accordingly.

Content that everything was in order, she reached up to the panel and flipped the first switch.

The sound of a slight hum was heard for a moment. The instrument panel lit up, causing the information on all the dials to glow and become clearly visible while still being mostly transparent. Flipping another switch, a soft roar was heard as the main engine came to life and started pushing air around.

Finally Scootaloo pushed the throttle in slightly and her Lightning Bolt started to roll forward.

Quickly twisting both of her hind hooves forward she came to a halt and proved that the brakes were still working. Returning the hoof pedals to their normal positions released the brakes, and she started rolling again. Adding a little bit to the throttle she headed for the taxiways, turning by pushing only the left or right brake instead of both.

Looking back to her own hanger, Scootaloo smiled as she spotted Cloud Chaser closing her hanger door for her. She even mouthed the words ‘Thank you.’ even though she knew the airport pony couldn’t see her from that angle.

As she neared the end of the taxiway, the filly pilot scanned the skies at either end of the runway. Seeing nothing, she reached up, put on her headset, pushed a button on her radio and said, “Ponyville area traffic, this is Lightning Bolt, Charley-Mother-Charley-Zero-Three, taking the active runway.”

Easing off the throttle she pushed on the brakes and stopped short of the runway. A few seconds of radio silence proved that no pony objected to her getting on said runway. So she pushed the throttle in and rolled out onto the runway.

A smile spread across the young pilot’s face as she lined up her plane down the runway. A tingle built in her spine as she touched her hoof to the throttle. Then she shoved the throttle all the way in and reveled in the feeling of acceleration that pushed her into her chair.

She watched as the airspeed indicator climbed. After three seconds she felt the wheels leave the ground. She held the plane level, flying mere feet above the ground for a few seconds more. Once the air speed indicator hit the desired number, she pulled back on the stick and stared to climb into the sky.

An excited ‘WHOO-HOO’ filled the cockpit as the joy of flying her plane made her forget that the wings she’d been born with should’ve given her the gift of flight years ago, but had yet to do so.

Now that she’d reached a respectable altitude, Scootaloo leveled out and pulled the throttle back to that of a slow cruising speed. Circling around she pointed herself toward her hometown, approaching from the west and lining herself up with the south edge of the apple orchard’s plateau.

In the past she hadn’t paid much attention to the mansions on the other ridge overlooking the valley. But now that one of them was her destination, it dawned on her just how big the estates over there really were. From the looks of the hedges that seemed to mark the yards, each must have been at least a mile in any given direction.

In fact, now that she thought about it, she realized that the paved pathway leading from the actual road, to any of the mansions would make a decent makeshift runway.

Also of note was that three of the mansions had red ceramic tile for their roof, while on one the ceramic roof tiles were purple. Also the one with the purple roof seemed to shimmer in the sunlight more than the others.

And given the sheer distance between the rich ponies’ homes, Scootaloo was already fairly sure the one with the purple roof was her destination. Despite that, she kept her east heading and an eye to the north anyway. And sure enough, once the distant spires of Canterlot were due north she was over the mansion with the purple roof.

Looping back around she lined up to land on the marble walkway in the front yard. Pulling back on the throttle, and slowly increasing her flaps until they were maxed, she slowed her plane down. One last check reminded her that she still had the landing gear down. Pulling the throttle the rest of the way out, the engine went to idle and she shifted all of her focus to the stick and guiding the aircraft.

Pulling up as she neared the ground, the nose lifted and the main wheels touched down first. Then as her speed bled off, the nose came down, allowing the third wheel to touch down as well. Once all three wheels were on the ground she started pumping the brakes, a second on, a second off, to kill even more speed.

Much to her surprise, she’d only made it halfway down the pathway before she felt that she could stop on a moment’s notice. She even had to push the throttle back in a little and continued rolling down the path like it was a taxiway, until she neared the fountain that was at the end of the straight part of the path.

Finally coming to a stop near the fountain, and thus a reasonable walking distance to the actual mansion, Scootaloo returned the flaps to neutral, shut down the engine, and double checked that everything was in the off position. Then she popped open the cockpit canopy and climbed out.

Even still standing on the wing of her plane her mouth fell open when she finally got a good look at the mansion before her. It turned out that the reason this mansion sparkled was because it’s white plaster walls also had gemstones embedded in them, mostly in heart and diamond shapes. Even the fountain had sapphires decorating it.

The front porch was framed with Victorian columns, and standing on that porch were two ponies. One was the butler stallion she’d met yesterday. The other was a pink mare with a light and dark purple mane. She also wore an elegant red dress that used rubies instead of sequins to shimmer in the light.

Having never been surrounded by such opulence before, the little pilot filly had to take a moment to recompose herself. Once she was sure she wasn’t staring awestruck at the splendor of this place like the child she was, she jumped down from her plane, fluttering her wings to slow her fall.

As the filly neared the marble porch, the mare gave an amused chuckle at the young pilot’s still wonder-struck expression. “Impressed?” she asked. “Odd, I’d heard you were the pilot with the fastest plane bits could hire. I’d have thought you’d have worked for high-paying clients before.”

“Oh I have,” Scootaloo answered, still taking in the scenery. “But they’ve always met me at the airport. So I’ve never seen a mansion up close before.”

“I see,” the unicorn mare answered in a friendly tone. “And speaking of the fastest plane money can hire, is that a Wonderbolt aircraft?”

“Naw. That’s an old Lightning Bolt Mark 1. The Wonderbolts finished switching over to the new Mark 2s a year or so ago.”

“Interesting,” the mare said politely, but with that look on her face that said this wasn’t a topic she cared about. At the same time she turned, and her butler took that as the sign to get the door.

Following the mare in, Scootaloo once more found herself overwhelmed by her own wonderment as she looked over the mansion’s entry room. Polished marble floors and walls, silk curtains on the windows, soft carpets down the middle of every hallway, pictures with gold and silver frames, and gemstone chandeliers decorating the walls and ceilings. Everything had a stylistic flare that showed the wealth of those who lived here.

As she was lead down one of the side hallways the mare spoke.

“I do have one more question before we discuss business. Just how did such a young filly as yourself come into possession of a military-grade aircraft?”

“Well, my dad was a Wonderbolt. When he died in a crash, I think the Wonderbolts felt bad for me, so they let me inherit his plane. Of course since dad died crashing it, I think they expected me to sell that wreck for scrap and use the money to ease my transition into becoming an orphan. Needless to say I don’t think anypony thought I’d actually be able to fix it and get it flying again. And by the time they realized I had, they’d already phased the Mark 1s out of use, so they couldn’t even claim that I couldn’t have it to make sure that only the military had the best planes around.”

“I see,” the mare said with a simple, yet satisfied smile.

As they walked on, Scootaloo couldn’t help but wonder why anypony would want a house so big that they could walk for over a minute before reaching their destination. Amidst her idle pondering, she also realized that this mare had never bothered to introduce herself, as if she just assumed that everypony knew who she was already.

Speaking up, the filly said, “I get the impression that if I was an adult I would already know who you are. But I’m not, so who are you?”

“Oh? Ah yes! That’s right, I had already been told your name, Scootaloo. That’s why I skipped the introductions. How rude of me! My name is Rare Pearl. My family owns the gemstone mines here on the southeast cliffs. And I dare say, half of Ponyville works for me as a result.”

“Here we are,” the butler announced as he walked ahead to one door and opened it.

Inside, one wall was covered with a world map. On two other walls were a bunch of racks with diamond shaped slots, most of which held rolled up maps. In the middle of the room was a large table with ornate etchings along the sides and legs.

The butler quickly took one of the maps from the rack and unrolled it on the table. The map in question proved to be one of the continent where Equestria was.

On one side of the table was a silver-framed chair, which didn’t match the heavy oak designs of the rest of the room. Yet it’s purpose was clear. It had been brought in from another room to accommodate a filly at the map table. And sure enough the butler motioned for Scootaloo to use said chair. Yet, even from the chair the young pilot had to put her front hooves on the table to look over the map properly.

Now standing on the other side of the table, Pearl’s horn lit up. The glow of her magic levitated out a small slip of paper, and sent it over to the filly across from her.

“These are the coordinates for the rendezvous point.”

Both numbers were smaller than the ones for Ponyville, so that meant somewhere northwest. Using the numbers on the map, she traced a hoof to an area in the northern part of the Unicorn Mountains.

Tilting her head to the side, Scootaloo said, “That’s the middle of nowhere. Are you sure there’s even a place to land out there?”

“Don’t worry, my colleagues there are also heavy airplane users, so I can assure you that anywhere they want to meet can accommodate the landing needs of aircraft like yours. Also, I need to tell you, when approaching the rendezvous point you are to use the call sign ‘Courier Seven’ to identify that you are the one I sent. Understood?”

“Courier Seven, got it,” Scootaloo said. After a quick look around failed to find a box about as big as she was, she asked the only remaining question. “So… where’s the package I’m delivering?”

Rare Pearl clapped her hooves once and looked to the doorway.

Turning to look, Scootaloo saw a white unicorn filly about her own age enter the room.

“Hello, my name is Sweetie Belle,” said the filly with the curly pink and purple mane.

“Uh… hi?” the young pegasus answered with clear confusion in her voice. For a moment she sat there looking to Sweetie Belle’s saddlebags. Then she remembered what she’d been told. Those were too small, but Sweetie wasn’t pulling or carrying anything else in her magic.

The moment lasted a bit longer until Scootaloo finally gave an understanding ‘Oh!’

“Wait a second, this whole time you’ve been calling her a package?”

“There is a need for discretion in this matter,” Rare Pearl said flatly.

“She’s got a point, mom,” Sweetie said with a hint of sarcasm. “It’s not like saying she’d be taking a ‘passenger’ somewhere is any more informative, and you wouldn’t have to talk about me like I was an inanimate object.”

A stare off between mother and daughter followed the filly’s word. Sweetie wore a devious grin, as if daring the parent to respond. Pearl wore a glare that seemed torn between trying to remain graceful and wanting to ground the filly but knowing she couldn’t.

Scootaloo couldn’t help but look back and forth between the two unicorns. They couldn’t be more different. On one hoof the mother had an air of nobility and elegance about her. And on the other, the filly seemed like any other school age kid.

Ultimately the young pilot broke the stare off by saying, “So… Can we go now? Or was there something else you needed to tell me?”

With a dismissive wave the mare sent the two fillies on their way.

Although they only made it to the entrance room before they found their path barred. This time by a white unicorn mare, with a long, purple mane and an elegant, sapphire studded, blue dress.

“Excuse me darling, Scootaloo was it?”

The orange pegasus nodded.

“I’m aware that mother is paying you rather well to deliver my sister one-way to… help somepony, but I’d like to make a better offer. I will double your money, if you stay by Sweetie Belle’s side until she has completed her task, and you then bring her safely home as well.”

A slightly embarrassed blush appeared on Sweetie’s face and she said, “Rarity, you don’t have to do that! I’m sure the… er… mom’s friends would have given me a ride home too.”

“Oh Sweetie, is it really so wrong for me to worry about my little sister?”

Unlike the cloak and dagger attitude of their mother, Rarity’s voice carried a genuine concern for Sweetie Belle. Between that and the fact that she was going to have to come back to Ponyville anyway, Scootaloo didn’t hesitate to agree to the elder sister’s offer.

Not long after that, the two fillies found themselves outside. They’d hardly made it past the fountain when Sweetie’s eyes lit up on seeing Scootaloo’s airplane.

Using her own wings, Scootaloo easily hopped up onto a wing of her plane. Then she offered her passenger a bit of help climbing up to join her there.

However, Sweetie had other plans. She crouched down and shifted her weight like a cat ready to pounce. Then she jumped with all her might, and while it was well short of the pegasus’ jump, it was just enough to get on the wing.

When Scootaloo popped open the cockpit she frowned.

“Sorry about the lack of leg room. If I thought I’d be flying a passenger today I’d have put my junk somewhere out of sight.”

Sweetie Belle just smiled and said, “I don’t mind! Besides it’s not like my legs will reach the edge of an adult seat anyway!”

Sure enough, once Scootaloo had helped her passenger get strapped into the back seat’s harness, the unicorn’s legs didn’t even reach the edge of the seat. With that she closed the canopy and pulled out her own map.

“Is something bothering you?” Sweetie asked when she began to wonder why her pilot was just sitting in the front seat.

“Huh? Oh! No. I’m just planning our rout. If we fly straight we’d clip Crystal Empire airspace. And with all the rumors of war with them floating around I’d rather not get mistaken for an actual Wonderbolt plane near the border. But if we go a little wide and approach from the south that means going right over the Unicorn Mountains, and it’s not too uncommon to run into sky bandits out there.”

“I’ve always wanted to see the Unicorn Mountains.”

Scootaloo just blinked at her map. Did her passenger really just say that? Yet looking back at the map, if she went around the mountains the long way she’d have to overnight and refuel somewhere along the way. And given that she was hired because she had the fastest plane available, she was fairly sure she was expected to arrive at the destination today.

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m the one taking you. No bandit can catch me!”

With that she finally put the map away and went through her startup procedures. The engine hummed to life, she slid her goggles into place, and as she was turning the plane around, Scootaloo couldn’t help but notice that only Rarity and the butler had come back out to watch them leave.

Sweetie Belle was doing her best to stand up in her seat and wave goodbye to her big sister, seemingly unfazed by the clear absence of their mother seeing her off.

Once the plane was pointed back down the path, Scootaloo pushed the throttle in.

This time it was her passenger who gave a cheer when they took off.

* * * * * * *

It had taken over an hour before Sweetie Belle finally seemed to tire of watching the world beyond the canopy go by and settled into her seat.

“Hey, Sweetie Belle?” her pilot said, uttering her first words since they’d taken off. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure!” she answered happily.

“Can you tell me what kinda trouble I’m flying myself into?”

“What makes you think there will be trouble?”

“Because no pony pays this much for a charter flight. You don’t have something illegal in those saddlebags of yours do you?”

The unicorn filly chuckled at the question. “No silly, it’s nothing like that. Do you know what a spirit key is?”

Scootaloo shook her head before remembering that her passenger couldn’t see through the back of her chair. “Never heard of it.”

“Do you know what a barrier spell is?”

“Those are the ones like glass that unicorns use to protect a place, right?”

“Yes that’s right. But the thing is, normal barrier spells have limits. They can be broken. They can run out of magic and get dispelled. But there is one way to make a perfect barrier spell. You create a spirit key for it. And well… the spirit key is a pony and only that unicorn can open the barrier. But while the caster can choose who the first sprit key is, if the barrier isn’t dispelled before that pony dies the spirit key moves onto a newborn unicorn. The thing is, most unicorn families don’t know about spirit keys so they don’t check to see if their foals inherited one. So it’s really easy to lose track of a spirit key for hundreds, even thousands of years”

“So you’re saying that you have a spirit key?” Scootaloo asked.

“Yes, my family did know about them.” Suddenly sounding a sarcastic, Sweetie added, “And lucky me, it turns out I can cast the spirit key spell.” With a hint of happiness returning to her voice, she continued, “But now they think they’ve found the barrier that my key belongs to.”

“So what’s behind that barrier?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t care. Once I dispel that barrier, I won’t be special anymore! I won’t have to stay cooped up in that dumb mansion like some secret treasure anymore! I’ll be able to have friends, and go to school, and be a normal filly for once!”

Scootaloo returned her focus to flying the plane. But in the back of her mind she couldn't help but think of her passenger’s lament. She’d never thought of being special as a bad thing before. Being the only pony to own the airplane that she did was the only reason she’d been able to earn enough to not go to the orphanage. But to the young unicorn in the seat behind her, being special had been a prison.

“Umm… Scootaloo?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the deal with the blanket back here anyway?”

“It just covers some of the stuff I’ve learned to keep in the plane. If you’re hungry feel free to dig through it, there should be some candy bars in there somewhere.”

“Is it supposed to move?”

“What?” Scootaloo asked, suddenly twisting herself to look back.

Sure enough the blanket shuffled slightly. Then it muttered ‘oops.’ Although muffled by the blanket, Scootaloo’s eyes went wide as she thought she knew that voice. Quickly releasing her own harness she jumped up and draped herself over the back of her chair.

Then she reached down and yanked the blanket to the side, revealing a yellow filly among her flying supplies.

“Apple Bloom?”

Chapter 3: Over the Mountains

“Heh, Ah guess Ah’m busted,” the earth pony filly said.

“What are you doing here?” Scootaloo asked, while directing a scowl at her friend.

“At the moment, Ah’m hoping we’re too far from Ponyville for ya to consider turning around and dropping me off.”

The young pegasus shook her head slowly and said, “It’s your funeral.”

“Why do ya say that?”

As Scootaloo slid back down into the pilot’s seat, she answered, “This isn’t a normal delivery. I have to stay with Sweetie Belle until she’s done with all the spirit key stuff and then bring her back home. So we could be out of town for days.”

“Oh,” was all Apple Bloom could say. A look of dread came over her face as she realized just what that meant.

“Yep, Applejack’s gonna skin you alive when she finds out you ditched school several days in a row.” Scootaloo quickly added, “Sweetie Belle, do you mind sharing the back seat?”

“Not at all!” the unicorn filly answered happily. Then she slid over as far as her harness would allow and tapped her hoof to invite the farm filly up off the floor.

* * * * * * *

For a while they simply flew on with the Unicorn Mountains on the horizon growing ever closer.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle passed most of the time talking to each other. Although every now and then they’d come up with a question that Scootaloo had to answer. Like when Sweetie asked why ‘CMC03’ was written on the plane, and she had to explain what a tail number was. Or when Apple Bloom didn’t know why the air in the plane’s wake had rainbow sparkles in it, so Scoots had to explain that it was a because the engine used liquid rainbow as it’s fuel.

As the forested hills at the base of the Unicorn Mountains forced Scootaloo to ascend to a higher altitude, she noticed some movement below and ahead of them.

Of course seeing as her passengers were in the back seat, and neither had enchanted goggles on, only the young pegasus holding the stick could see the dozen or so gyro-copters rising out of the forest ahead.

“Uh, Apple Bloom… You might want to hold on to something.”

“Why? Is something wrong?” Bloom asked, picking up the worry in her friend’s voice.

“Yeah, we got sky pirates coming up to intercept us.”

“Pirates?” Bloom gulped.

“Pirates?!” Sweetie said, as she excitedly did her best to stand up and look out.

Scootaloo took a breath and said, “Relax, I got this. Just don’t distract me once they start shooting at us.”

“Wait? Shooting?” Sweetie asked, finally sounding as nervous as Bloom.

“How else would they force someone to land so they can loot what’s left?”

Scootaloo’s question went unanswered. Which was fine by her given that she wanted to concentrate on the other aircraft around her. They seemed to be in groups of three, spread out just enough that any two could gain firing range if she tried to fly through the gaps in their formations.

The airplane pilot pushed the throttle to full and aimed for the northernmost group of gyros. Pushing the nose down slightly she accelerated even faster. Keeping her eyes locked on to the closest gyro-copter as she closed the distance she waited for the right moment to make her next move.

A second later that moment came.

Lights flashed and puffs of cloud formed from the front of the gyro-copter as its steam-powered machine guns opened up. Scootaloo pushed her plane into a sudden right turn and pulled up. Sweetie Belle gave a squeaky ‘eep’ when she saw yellow streaks zip past nearby.

As two more sets of yellowish-orangeish lines were painted in the sky just outside the cockpit, the young pegasus pushed her plane to the left and back into a shallow dive. By the time she made another right turn all three streams of bullets were coming from behind. Then as she leveled out, the enemy fire stopped.

“Aww Yeah! I didn’t even hear them touch the paint job!” Scootaloo cheered.

“Is it over? That’s it?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Yep!”

“That wasn’t even two seconds!”

That got a giggle out of Scootaloo. “Yeah, gyros can’t really keep up with airplanes. So one pass is all they get. If they don’t shoot you down with that, they just have to go home empty hoofed.”

With a round of relieved sighs and a few laughs to relieve the tension of having faced danger the three youngsters continued their journey through the sky, up and over the Unicorn Mountains.

* * * * * * *

When they’d finally cleared the spine of the mountain range they found a blanket of overcast below them, preventing them from seeing the ground as they continued northward. This forced Scootaloo to do her best to use the mountain peaks poking through the clouds to guess their location.

As the sun approached the 4‘o clock position in the sky the pegasus filly frowned at the fact that they were sill flying over a sea of clouds.

“We should be over the rendezvous point,” Scootaloo announced with a sigh. Then she added, “Can you two help me look for a hole in the clouds?”

“Umm, sure. Why exactly are we looking for a hole?”

“Because there’s no way I’m descending blind through the clouds. I need a hole that I can see the ground through, so we can get below the clouds and search for the landing place. There should be a spare set of pilot’s goggles in my stuff back there, if one of you wants to use them to look down easier,” she added.

With a round of nods three young sets of eyes started scanning the clouds around them.

After a few minutes of quiet searching, Sweetie Belle broke the silence. “Ooh ooh! Over there! Is that good enough?” she asked, pointing a hoof to the east.

Sure enough Scootaloo spotted a patch of green through the clouds.

“Perfect!”

With that she pointed the plane toward it, and smiled even wider as they neared and she could see that it was more than big enough to dive through. And more importantly, she could see that the trees were a good thousand feet down, and that there was several hundred feet of clear sky between the bottom of the cloud layer and the ground.

Scootaloo nosed down and dove through the tunnel of water vapor. As they reach the end the fluffy passage opened up to reveal forested hills and the base of the mountains. A scattered lake here or there dotted the forest, and just like the forests around them, all was shrouded in the shade of the overcast day that had found its way to this part of Equestria.

However, nothing on the ground jumped out as a landing field.

“If anypony sees something like a landing field… or any sign of whoever it is we’re supposed to meet with, say something.”

With the pilot’s request, the other two fillies once again set their eye to the search.

“Ah think Ah see something moving over there!” Apple Bloom called out, pointed a hoof to the southwest.

Squinting her eyes, Scootaloo also thought she saw something appear from behind a mountain for a moment, before it circled back out of view. That was good enough for her. After all there didn’t seem to be anything else worth flying toward around here.

As they crested the hill and gained line of sight on another part of the mountain valleys, all three fillies gasped at what they found.

Chapter 4: Rendezvous

“Wha-huh?” Those were the first words to escape Scootaloo’s lips after laying eyes on the spectacle before them.

There were two large airships, and between them were a few dozen airplanes engaged in a dogfight.

Though both dwarfed the planes buzzing around near them, the smaller of the two capital ships was mostly made of wood and held the form of a traditional water ship. The obvious difference being that this ship had traded its masts for a dozen helicopter engines along the sides of the top deck. The flat top could also be used as a runway for smaller aircraft.

The larger of the two airships was mostly made of metal. If you’d lined up directly in front of or behind it, its basic shape would have appeared to be a trapezoid. Its sheer length also made its top deck an easy runway. As for how the metal giant flew, the bottom wasn’t metal at all. Instead, if one got underneath it, one would find a layer of cloud serving as the foundation of the cloud ship.

The airplanes trading bullets and lightning bolts between the behemoths were of two distinctly different models as well.

While both sets were metal airplanes, the ones shooting bullets had straight wings that looked oval-like. They also had more square-like canopies and a propeller engine on each wing. The flashes of their machine guns came from the rounded noses of their planes. All of which marked them as civilian aircraft that had been modified for combat.

The other set of planes looked a lot like Scootaloo’s, leaving no doubt whose planes these were. Unlike her own plane, the Lightning Bolt Mark 2’s body got noticeably wider halfway back. And on the back itself there were two triangle-shaped thrust ports, to accommodate the second engine, instead of the single engine of her Mark 1. Unlike her silver Mark 1, the Mark 2’s were all painted blue, with yellow lightning bolts.

“Isn’t that the C.S. Cloudsdale?” Scoots muttered. “Wait! We were rendezvousing with the Wonderbolts all along?!”

Sweetie Belle nodded. Then realizing that her pilot couldn’t see her, she said, “Yes. The Wonderbolts are working with somepony who found a spirit key barrier, and they think that it’s linked to my spirit key.”

By now Scootaloo had set her plane flying in a cycle, holding her distance from the dogfight between the two airships. Taking a moment to think, she considered her options. So far, neither side had noticed her flying a holding pattern off to the side of the firefight. But that couldn’t last forever, and the Wonderbolts would certainly know that a silver Lightning Bolt Mark 1 wasn’t one of theirs. And then there was the fact that she hadn’t been given a radio frequency, but she had been given a call sign.

Making her decision, Scootaloo reached into one of the pockets of her chair. Pulling out a small metal cylinder with a cloth strap attached to it, she fastened the device to her front left leg. Then doing her best to stand up in her seat, she pointed the device out the side of the cockpit window, at the C.S. Cloudsdale, and started using her left wing to tap the button on the end, causing the device to flash.

“What’s she doing?” Sweetie Belle asked from the back seat.

“Oh! Ah remember that thing! Scoots showed it to me once! It’s a light gun! Ah think she said it’s for talk’n to folks when ya can’t use your radio, ya just flash em with that code they use in the telegraph office!” Apple Bloom happily answered her fellow backseat rider.

“What’s she saying?”

* * * * * * *

Meanwhile, on command deck of the Cloudsdale, a Communications Officer turned in her seat to issue a report.

“Captain! There’s an unknown aircraft to the northeast flashing us with a light signal. Odd thing is, it looks like one of our old Mark 1’s.”

The yellow mare with a fiery yellow and orange mane in the captain’s chair asked the obvious question.

“Well? What’s it saying?”

“Courier Seven. Intent to land, your field. Please advise.”

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo had repeated her message three times before putting her light gun down. Then she just kept flying in circles, waiting for an answer.

Sweetie Belle was the first to give the young pegasus something to respond to.

“Um… wouldn’t all that flashing bring attention to us from both sides.”

“Yeah,” Scootaloo admitted. “But pilots are supposed to keep an eye on their surroundings anyway, so they were going to notice us anyway. At least this way the Wonderbolts won’t mistake us for the enemy. And whoever those other guys are, their planes are too outclassed by the Wonderbolts to risk turning their backs to them to come over here. Besides all I did was ask them to tell me what to do, and it’s not like they’d tell a civilian courier to fly into a dogfight. They’ll probably just tell me to hold position out here until they’re done fighting over… whatever it is they’re fighting over.”

“Oh, hey! They’re flashing ya back Scoots!” Apple Bloom announced.

“See? What did I-” Scootaloo started, only to interrupt herself. Her eyes went wide and jaw dropped.

Even though they couldn’t see any of that the two fillies in the back could tell something wasn’t right.

“So, what are they saying?”

The question snapped Scootaloo out of her daze. When she answered she spoke as if she was reading back her own death warrant.

“They said, ‘Cleared to land in landing bay three.’”

The orange filly was tempted to pick up her light gun again and flash the message ‘Now?’ back, but the fact that the cloud ship was already turning and opening one of the large sets of doors in the back answered that question.

Then, out of the blue, Scootaloo burst into a fit of cynical laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Sweetie asked.

“I can see why your sister paid me extra to make sure you came back alive. These ponies are crazy!” Shaking her head and giving a heavy sigh, she added, “Hold on to your horseshoes. This is gonna be a bumpy landing.”

With that she broke out of her holding pattern and pointed her plane toward the waiting cloud ship.

It didn’t take more then four seconds to notice that the silver Mark 1 was obeying the flashed light signals from the C.S. Cloudsdale. And as soon as they did, three of the fighters from the unknown airship turned to intercept it. And as a result two Wonderbolt planes ditched the main dogfight to intercept them.

Turning their back to the Wonderbolts proved to be a big mistake for the prop-planes. Outclassed by the top of the line Mark 2s, and now no longer flying erratically in dogfight maneuvers, two of the propeller-driven fighters quickly took hits from the Mark 2’s lightning shots.

Engines shorted out, fuel lines burst into jets of steam and the two planes started to fall away, leaving trails of steam clouds in their wake. A moment later the canopies of the two planes popped open and their pilots bailed out.

The pilots of both planes turned out to be griffins. They spread the wings they’d been born with and quickly retreated toward the wooden airship.

All the while, Scootaloo was trying to line up with the open landing bay. She’d pulled back on the throttle and was just about to add flaps for a landing attempt when the third prop-plane opened fire.

With a stream of bullets suddenly blocking her way, Scoots had no choice to jam the throttle back in and dive away to avoid flying into the enemy fire. Now too fast, too close, and at a bad angle, she had no choice but to call off the landing. She’d need to circle back around and get enough distance to line up to try again. So she pulled her plane into a hard turn.

By then the enemy plane was doing its best to correct its aim, forcing the young pegasus pilot into another evasive action.

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom hugged each other like their lives depended on it and screamed when they heard the rat-a-tat-tat of bullets bouncing off their plane.

Although, thanks to the low angle of impact, the hits only managed to add a dozen or so dents to Scootaloo’s plane.

As she came out of her roll and pulled up to avoid slamming into the forest below, she found herself behind the very airplane that had just added some dents to hers. The jerk who’d damaged her plane turned left. She should have turned right to head back out and try again at landing on the Cloudsdale. But she felt something she’d never known before, something burning inside her.

She turned left, hard.

Her right hoof left the stick and opened a slat in the cockpit wall beside her, revealing a patch of dark cloud behind the panel. And once her turn put the plane that had just shot at her back in front of her she jabbed the little black cloud as hard as she could.

A lightning bolt flashed from the nose of the silver Mark 1. It only struck the tip of the left wing of the prop-plane, but that was enough. One engine started spewing steam and it started to lose altitude.

For a brief moment, Scootaloo found herself unable to look away and in the back of her mind she whispered a prayer for the pilot of the other plane to bail out.

A few seconds passed, then the canopy of the prop-plane opened and a griffin rolled out, opened their wings, and started flying for the wooden airship.

Seeing that, Scoots released the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding since her shot actually hit the target. A new stream of bullets coming her way fully awakened her mind and forced her to roll her plane to the side to avoid any direct hits.

Any thought the young pegasus might have had about counter attacking again were rendered moot when a Wonderbolt plane scored a direct hit on this most recent attacker, ripping one of its wings clean off.

By now thanks to the advantage of both superior skill and equipment, the Wonderbolts had thinned the griffin planes enough that the remaining ones didn’t really have a chance of intercepting the courier with the mysterious delivery that the Bolts couldn’t wait to receive. A few managed some long range shots in the general direction of Scootaloo’s plane, but now that upwards of six Wonderbolts were flying defense for her, nothing could really stop the young pilot from lining up for another landing attempt with the Cloudsdale.

It was in this reprieve of lining up for a landing that Apple Bloom finally managed to gasp, “Wait! This thing is ARMED!?”

“When I said I fixed my dad’s plane, that included its ion cannon,” Scootaloo answered in a matter-of-fact tone. In a more somber voice she added, “I’ve just never had a reason to fire it before today.”

The farm filly might have said something in response, but Scootaloo missed it as she focused her mind on the task of doing something else she’d never done before. Land in a cloud ship’s landing bay.

One last griffin plane tried to take a shot at the silver Mark 1, but was immediately forced to abandon its attack thanks to a Wonderbolt counterattack.

The young flyer had slowed down enough to add flaps and lower her landing gear. Her muscles tensed as she put her complete attention into handling the control stick. As she drew near she realized just how big the open bay door was. Namely that it was wide enough that one could fly two of her planes side by side without clipping the entrance. And yet that did little to ease the butterflies in the filly’s stomach from the knowledge that she’d never landed on a runway that had a roof over it before, or seeing a steel wall at the far end for that matter.

As she zoomed into the metal leviathan, Scootaloo finally pulled her throttle out to idle. Then she held her breath as she waited eagerly to feel the wheels touchdown.

The silver plane zoomed down the short runway and passed many an alcove to the sides some of which had Wonderbolt planes waiting. Although many were empty and no doubt the home of the planes currently flying outside.

The C.S. Cloudsdale may have been large, but truthfully Sweetie Belle’s front yard had been bigger. In fact Scootaloo’s plane was almost halfway to the back of the landing bay before its wheels touched down.

The instant she felt the landing the young pegasus started pumping her brakes furiously. Yet even as she did so, she already knew there wasn’t enough room left between her and the wall at the end of the landing bay.

Suddenly Scootaloo gasped as a prismatic array appeared before her.

It was several nets, seemingly made out of rainbow.

As her plane went into the first net she felt heavy deceleration. All three of the fillies aboard gave startled screams. Also Scoots felt a hard thump through the back of her chair. The net stretched for a moment, then shattered into a shower of prismatic sparkles.

Then her plane went into the second net and it too stretched some, then shattered. The third net stretched some, but this time the plane ran out of momentum and finally came to a stop.

Once she realized they were stopped, Scootaloo gave a nervous laugh and then said, “Oh, so that’s how they land in such a short space.”

“Oww…” Apple Bloom moaned as she tried to peel herself off the back of Scootaloo’s chair.

Thud!

“Oww again,” the farm filly added when she succeeded, only to fall to the floor.

Chapter 5: Welcome Aboard?

After they had landed a brown pegasus stallion attached a tow-bar to Scootaloo’s airplane and guided it into one of the alcoves to the side of landing strip. Once parked she shut down the engine and he then went about attaching some tie-down cables to lock the plane in place.

Only once the plane was fully secured did the stallion with the crescent moon cutie mark fly up and tap of the cockpit glass. And when it opened first he gave a welcoming smile, then an eyebrow raised in curiosity when he notice that all three occupants of the plane were only school-age fillies.

“You’re the pilot?” he asked skeptically of the young pegasus in the pilot’s seat.

“Yes. I am,” the orange filly answered him.

Slowly the stallion started nodding his head. “Ohhh!” he said as if suddenly remembering something. “Right… Firestorm’s kid.”

“You knew my dad?”

“Not really,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m just the equipment manager, I just take care of the planes around here. And your dad was more of a ‘just get the job done’ kind of pony, so when he did talk to other ponies, it was usually the other pilots, not me.”

There was a moment of silence, then he added, “Anyway, the captain wanted me to tell you to sit tight, she’ll have somepony come deal with the package in a bit. So… yeah, just stay in the cockpit for now and somepony will come fetch you later. Probably once they’re done dealing with that mess outside.”

The stallion started to move away, but was stopped by a question from Apple Bloom.

“Who are those guys anyway? And why are ya fighting with them?”

“From what I can tell, they’re griffin mercs. Not sure why anyone would pick a fight with the strongest military airship in the Equestrian fleet, but I can promise you they started this fight.”

With that the equipment manger went back to tending his job. Scootaloo closed the cockpit back up. While the harnesses came off the cabin was too small to really do anything, and so the three fillies started engaging in idle chat while they waited.

It didn’t take long before the Wonderbolt planes started landing and getting parked in their respective spots. The three fillies in the lone silver plane watched in awe as they did. Scootaloo even did her best to name each pilot as they came out of their airplanes. Although it turned out that there were several she didn’t know from her dad’s stories.

“Oh wow! It’s Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo said, beaming, as a sky-blue mare with magenta eyes and a prismatic mane emerged from the most recently parked Lightning Bolt Mark 2.

“Who’s that?” Sweetie Belle asked, innocently.

“Who’s that? WHO’S THAT! She’s only the most amazing flyer both in and out of the cockpit EVER! My dad even told me that the whole reason they made the Mark 2’s was because she could out fly the Mark 1’s with her own wings! She even-”

Scootaloo’s energetic introduction was cut short when she realized the pony she was praising wasn’t heading to a doorway in the side of the landing bay, but was heading over to the filly’s plane.

Sure enough, when the light blue mare arrived, she tapped on the cockpit glass. Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but giggle at the wonder-struck set of eyes looking back at her from inside.

It took a good 3 seconds, but eventually Scootaloo realized she was supposed to open the cockpit. Suddenly finding herself fumbling over her own hooves, she popped the latch and pushed the cockpit open. The young pegasus meant to coolly say ‘hey,’ but after that embracing display all she managed was a goofy smile to greet the hero of her dad’s stories.

For her part, Dash looked over the three fillies inside. She looked over the two in the back seat fairly casually. But she paused for a moment when taking in the sight of the orange pegasus with the pilot goggles in the front.

“All right, squirts! Time to move out. You’ve got a delivery to finish. So come with me,” the mare commanded in a friendly tone.

As they climbed out onto the wing of the plane, they found that somepony had left a ladder at the tail edge. This made climbing down to the floor much easier for the two fillies without wings. Although, even Scootaloo used the ladder too.

Rainbow Dash quickly took the lead and guided the trio out of the landing bay and into the halls of the C.S. Cloudsdale, leading them down a hallway, a staircase up a floor, a long hallway, then a stairwell that went up three more floors. One final, short hallway after those and they finally reached the door that was the destination.

Inside was the command deck. Of the twenty or so ponies gathered, five wore royal blue dress shirts that marked them as officers. Those five were either the captain or the pegasi at the four chairs at each of the workstations scattered about the room. The rest of the pegasi gathered wore the same pilot’s goggles and brown flight jackets as Rainbow Dash, and were lined up along the sides of the room, as out of the way as possible.

Then there was the one standout. A white unicorn stallion with a two-tone blue mane, who wore purple armor with gold trim, was standing next to the captain of the Wonderbolts. His blue eyes locked onto the unicorn of the fillies, ignoring all else. Yet, other than that, he did nothing else but wait quietly.

As for the captain of the Wonderbolts, she raised an eyebrow.

“I was under the impression that we were only foalsitting one pony today,” she said, looking at the trio that had followed Dash in. Yet, Spitfire’s eyes lingered on the orange filly for a moment. And in that moment they showed a hint of recognition, along with something else that the young pilot couldn’t quite place.

“I’m the courier, Scootaloo,” Scoots said. Then looking to her friend, she added, “And this is my… um… navigator! Apple Bloom.”

“And I’m Sweetie Belle. The spirit key,” the young unicorn introduced herself while giving an elegant bow, yet adding no small amount of distaste to the way she said ‘spirit key.’

“I see,” Spitfire said. “Rainbow Dash, take Sweetie Belle here to the room we prepared for her. Then see these two back to their plane.” Then turning to look at the young pegasus, she added, “We’ll send word of your successful delivery. The telegraph should get back before you do. And if you need somepony to sign for it too, then Rainbow Dash can do that when she shows you out.”

Scootaloo cringed at the realization that the Wonderbolts had only been dealing with Sweetie’s mother, and that Rarity’s request had been spur of the moment. Would the Wonderbolts even allow her to fulfill her contract?

“That’s not going to happen.”

Suddenly every eye in the room was on the orange filly.

“I wasn’t just hired to bring Sweetie Belle here. I was hired to stay with her until she did her spirit key thing and bring her back to Ponyville. So I can’t leave yet.”

If looks could kill, the unicorn beside her would not have survived the glare Spitfire gave him.

He only shrugged and said, “I only arranged for the key to be brought here. If her family saw fit to arrange a round-trip ticket, I see no reason to get in the way of that.”

A twitch appeared in Spitfire’s eye. She was clearly opposed to the idea of having more kids around her ship than absolutely necessary.

“I can keep an eye on them,” Rainbow Dash offered.

“Fine, but this isn’t a hotel. If they are staying, Sweetie Belle is going to have to share her room with them.” Then looking more directly at the two extra fillies, the captain of the Wonderbolts added, “And I expect you to stay out of our way. I have to tolerate Miss Belle, but there’s nothing stopping me from kicking you two off my ship the instant you cause any trouble. Are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am!” both fillies answered.

With that Rainbow Dash was given the go ahead to take the three fillies to the room that had originally been prepared for just one.

Once the ‘guests’ had left the command room, a haunted look entered Spitfire’s eyes and she whispered to herself.

“Why is this happening? That plane… That pony… How could they have hired her of all ponies? This can’t be coincidence.”

Chapter 6: Settling In

The room that Rainbow Dash brought the trio of fillies to was a small room meant for a single officer. A lone bed occupied a nook on one side. The back of the room was only wide enough for the deck set against that wall. Just above the desk was a portal type window that offered the only natural light to the room. Small blue curtains flanked the window and a white carpet offered a little more comfort to the room than the full metal setting found in the hallway just outside.

“…and my room is the last door on right, at the far end of the hall,” Dash finished explaining directions to the few places they’d need to know about on the C.S. Cloudsdale. “Need anything or are you good for now?”

“Actually,” Apple Bloom spoke up, with a note of hesitation in her voice. “Your captain said something about sending a message to Ponyville. If y’all are sending a telegraph that way anyhow, could Ah maybe add a note of my own?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged.

“I don’t see why not. Come on! I’ll show you the way!”

With only Scootaloo and herself left in the room, Sweetie Belle took the moment to ditch her saddlebags by tossing them on the floor next to the bed. Then she started to make her way over to the deck intending to search the drawers of the desk. She only got halfway there before the floor shifted suddenly, sending her toppling down.

“OOFF! What was that!”

Scootaloo had been admiring the intercom speaker near the ceiling in the corner and had needed little more than a sudden flap of her wings to stay upright. She couldn’t help but giggle as she offered a hoof to help the unicorn up.

“It feels like they fired up the main engines. We’re on the move now.”

“We’re moving?” the young unicorn asked with a sudden sparkle of excitement in her eye. And rather than wait for an answer, she jumped up onto the desk, put her front hooves on the wall to help her stand up, and plastered her face to the small round window. “We’re moving! We’re moving!” she cheered.

An infectious smile spread across Sweetie’s face as she stared out the window. And as the smile spread to Scootaloo, the young pilot said, “You do realize that we’ve been moving all day, right?”

“Yes,” Sweetie answered with a chuckle. “And riding in your airplane felt like freedom incarnate. But the way the Wonderbolt’s captain spoke made it clear that she expects us to stay cooped up in this fancy room.” She tapped the mahogany desk with gold trim she was standing on. “This place felt like just another guided cage to me. But this view… this reminder that we are still moving closer to my goal… That I’ll soon be truly free to be myself… To discover who I want to be instead of who everypony else wants me to be. Maybe I’ll finally earn my cutie mark, like you… Oh!”

Sweetie Belle had been staring out the window for most of her speech. It was only at the very end that she turned around to see that Scootaloo’s flank was as blank as her own.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean- I thought I was kind of old to still not have one, and I just assumed- Oh! I can’t believe I didn’t even notice before. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!”

“It’s okay,” the young pegasus said.

Yet somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered the time before her father died. When she would spend her days going to school and then her afternoons and weekends trying everything she could in the hopes of finding that special talent that would make a symbol magically appear on her flank to tell her she’d found her purpose in life.

“In a way, I guess you and I are a lot alike. Only in my case time is my cage. I can go anywhere I want. It’s just that ever since my dad died, I’ve been too busy just trying to earn the money to pay the bills and buy food that I’ve never really had time to worry about who I’m meant to be anymore.”

Sweetie Belle finally jumped down from the desk. And placing a hoof over Scootaloo’s back she said, “Then finishing this mission will mean freedom for both of us. Me because I won’t be a spirit key anymore, and you because of how much mom and sis are paying you!”

“Yeah… I guess so,” Scootaloo said, trying to sound supportive despite her doubts.

In truth, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to be as child-like as she had been before the full responsibilities of life had been dumped in her lap.

Thankfully she didn’t have to let her mind linger on such thoughts, as only a few seconds later the door opened and Apple Bloom and Rainbow Dash returned from their trip to the Communications Room.

For a while Rainbow Dash stayed in the room, keeping the fillies company by sharing stories of her adventures as a Wonderbolt pilot. But soon enough, she told the trio of youngsters that she had some work she still needed to do and left. Although not before saying that she’d come fetch them when it was time for dinner.

By then the three had already settled into the room that they would be calling home for the duration of this mission. For a little while they tried to pass the time talking among themselves. But eventually the conversation turned into Sweetie asking Apple Bloom all about what the farm life was like, and Scootaloo had been the farm mechanic long enough to be bored out of her mind by the topic.

“I’m going down to the hanger. I still haven’t taken the time to look over the damage from those hits we took out there,” she said to excuse herself.

“Didn’t Spitfire tell us to stay in here?” Bloom asked.

“No, she said to stay out of ‘their’ way. And I don’t see how ‘me’ being with ‘my’ plane is in ‘their’ way.”

If the others had a counter argument, they didn’t bother to speak it before Scoots was out of earshot.

* * * * * * *

Along the way, the few Wonderbolts whose path Scootaloo did cross gave the filly a wary glare further adding to the feeling that her presence here was only being tolerated because they were under orders to. But given her small size and the fact that the crew of the Cloudsdale tended to fly down the halls, no pony could say the orange filly walking along was ‘in the way.’

When Scootaloo had made her way back to the hanger, the first thing she saw was the equipment manager working on her plane. Her eyes immediately locked onto the spotless, new tires on her plane’s landing gear.

“Hey! What are you doing?!” she shouted.

Although he gave a startled twitch at the sound of an angry pilot, the brown stallion casually answered, “Huh? Oh, your tires were fairly worn out. So I replaced them.”

With the thought that he might not understand the cause of her concerns, she voiced them. “You do realize I’m not a Wonderbolt? And that you don’t HAVE to do anything for me. And that I can’t afford to pay you for any services that I didn’t ask for, RIGHT?”

At first he blinked. Then when he realized the filly wasn’t privy to the ‘common knowledge’ of the maintenance crew, he laughed.

“Don’t worry about money. One of the funny things about militaries is that it takes a half dozen signatures to throw anything away,” he explained.

“What’s that got to do with messing with my plane?”

The Stallion pointed to a pile of crates in an out-of-the-way alcove and said, “Thing is, we still have a bunch of Mark 1 parts laying around. But half of them don’t fit the Mark 2’s, and I still haven’t been able to get the higher ups to let me just toss that stuff. So you’ll have to excuse me if I jump at this chance to use those parts on the only flying Mark 1 left in the world.” Giving the filly a pat on the back, he added, “Just helping me get rid of that junk is payment enough in my mind. No reason for us to keep hauling around stuff we can’t use anymore, right?”

“If you’re not even allowed to throw them away, won’t you get in trouble for giving them to me?”

“Naw. Like I said, procedures require a bunch of permissions to throw stuff away. As long as I USE them, I’m the only one who has to sign off on it. And no pony is going to care that my end of month report has three more in the ‘tires used’ line. Also nothing says I have to mention that three of those tires were Mark 1 tires.”

Scootaloo breathed a sigh of relief at the realization that, from the stallion’s point of view, he was getting rid of useless spare parts the only way he could. But that didn’t completely exonerate the pony with the crescent moon cutie mark.

“You still shouldn’t have touched my plane without my permission.”

“You’re right,” he said, hanging his head slightly. “This isn’t one of our planes anymore. And as picky as Wonderbolt pilots can be about who works on their planes, I can only imagine how much stronger a pilot who actually owns their plane would feel. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.

“Here, let me make it up to you by letting you borrow this,” he added. And then promptly presented a device about the size of the filly’s head to the young pilot.

Naturally Scootaloo had one question. “What’s this?”

“It’s surface mender. We use it to get the dents out of the planes without having to take the panels off and bang them out with a hammer. I wish I could give you something for the hole you got in the left wing, but rolls of sheet metal ‘fit’ all planes. Just put it back in my cart when you’re done with it,” he finished, pointing at a wheeled cart strapped to part of the Cloudsdale’s structure.

With that Scootaloo gave the equipment manager a thankful nod and turned her attention to fixing up her plane as best she could. Sure enough, all she had to do to fix the dents marring her plane was slide the surface of the device over them a few times, as if it were a scrub brush.

Equally true, when she came to the top of the left wing, she found that one of the bullets had hit with a deep enough angle to pierce through the top panel.

Fetching her own tools, the young engineer set about undoing the panel from the frame and, checking inside she found the remains of the bullet. Thankfully she found the cables attaching the control surfaces to the control stick remained undamaged. Then she got out some pegasus tape and taped up the hole in the metal panel from both sides before reattaching it. Finally she went about double checking every screw, nut and bolt on her plane, paying especially close attention to her landing gear.

Her inspection ended when she stepped back from the tail of the plane and sat down atop the fuselage. Even with her wrench still gripped in her mouth, she smiled at the work she’d done. Sure it was nowhere near as good as the day it had first left the factory, but thanks to her work it would continue to fly for the foreseeable future.

“So it’s true,” a somewhat new, but familiar voice said from right behind Scootaloo. “You really did fix up that old wreck yourself.”

Naturally the filly spun around and she found Rainbow Dash sitting atop the cockpit canopy looking back at her. The look on the mare’s face seemed to be an odd mixture, like she was impressed and haunted at the same time, trying to cover up the latter with the former.

“Rainbow Dash! H-How long have you been there?”

“Here? About five seconds. Although, I have been watching you for the last ten minutes or so.”

“You have? Why?” Scootaloo asked, a blush forming beneath the fur of her cheeks.

“Because you’re a lot like your dad. An awesome pilot, but also smart.”

Scootaloo shook her head and looked down. “I’m not smart. I had to drop out of school just to earn enough so I could eat.”

The blue mare placed a firm hoof on the filly’s shoulder. “Don’t think that school is the only place you can get smart at, kid. I couldn’t rebuild this plane from scrap if my life depended on it. You did, and that takes smarts.”

Then Rainbow Dash shifted to sit beside the younger pilot, and once she was facing the same direction, she added, “When we worked together, I always admired your dad. Even if I was the better pilot, I could see that he was the better pony. Me? I’m an athlete and a pilot. That’s it. Sure I could fly rings around him with wings of metal or feathers. But him? He was fit enough, and smart too. And the more I watched him, the more I realized that his balanced approach to life was wiser than my focus on only strength of body.”

For a short while after Dash’s comments, the two just sat there, silently staring down the length of the silver plane. Then the mare got up and used one of her wings to urge the younger pegasus to do the same, while saying, “Anyway… the actual reason I came down here is that it’s dinner time. I already dropped your friends off in the mess hall, but we really should join them before they’re done.”

* * * * * * *

The mess hall was serving pasta in a white sauce with broccoli among other things that night. But at Dash’s strong suggestion, the pasta was what the entire group chose. Of course, by the time Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash got there, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were almost done with theirs, so those two spent most of the time talking while they waited for the two pegasi to eat.

One less enjoyable thing about dinner was that every now and then a fellow Wonderbolt would pass by their table and tease Dash, usually with a remark along the lines of ‘being stuck with baby sitting duty.’ For her part, Rainbow Dash just shrugged it off and even told the fillies to just ignore the unwelcome behavior.

As they walked the halls back to their room, Sweetie Belle peppered her Wonderbolt chaperone with excited questions. Scootaloo listened intently to Dash’s answers, while admiring the hallway’s construction style. At least as much as one can for a facility composed of unpainted steel frames and aluminum panels.

While Apple Bloom also listened, her eyes kept catching an unusual look on Rainbow Dash’s face. It seemed that whenever the mare didn’t think Scootaloo could see her, her smile faltered for a moment, but not long enough to show what emotion she was hiding behind that confident smile.

“Need anything before I turn in for the night?” Rainbow Dash asked, once they’d returned to the cabin that the fillies had been assigned to.

Apple Bloom held up her hood, as if she was trying to answer a teacher. “Actually Ah had a question Ah meant to ask earlier.”

“Alright, shoot. Maybe I’ll even have an answer.”

“Ah thought all Wonderbolts were pegasi. So who was that unicorn we saw next to Captain Spitfire?”

“I think his name was Shining Armor or something. And he’s a captain in the royal guard, not the Wonderbolts.” After putting a hoof to her chin for a moment to search her mind, Rainbow Dash added, “Spitfire hasn’t actually told the rest of us the details, but my understanding is that it was his team that found the barrier Sweetie Belle is supposed to dispel.”

“Remind me to thank him when this is all over,” Sweetie said, as she was bouncing on the bed like it was a mini-trampoline. “What? It’s fun! And I was never allowed to do this on the beds back home,” she added on seeing the look Rainbow Dash gave her.

The slow shake of Dash’s head became a sympathetic chuckle.

“Speaking of beds. If this one is yours I should probably go get the spare blankets from my plane. That way Apple Bloom and I can sleep on the floor,” Scootaloo said, pawing the carpet and finding it soft enough for her idea.

“Oh no you don’t!” Sweetie protested, and stopping her bouncing. “I already told you I don’t like special treatment! I mean, look at this bed! It big enough for all three of us!” she insisted innocently. And there was no arguing that an adult-sized bed was big enough to accommodate all three fillies.

“Are you sure you want to share?” Scootaloo asked. Given how much she was being paid to accompany Sweetie Belle, insuring her client’s comfort, as well as safety, seemed like the least she could do to earn it.

“I insist!” Sweetie answered with a firm stomp of her hoof.

Rainbow Dash just smiled, shook her head and with a slight laugh said, “Kids will be kids. Anyway now that that’s settled, goodnight.” And then she left the trio of fillies.

“I like her,” Sweetie said of the mare who’d just left. “I just wish the rest of the Wonderbolts were as nice as her. It feels like the rest of them really don’t want us here.”

“The maintenance chief seemed nice. But yeah, Rainbow Dash is definitely the best!” Scootaloo volunteered.

Apple Bloom gave a wary glance at the door and said, “Ah don’t know. Ah get the feeling that she’s hiding something…”

Chapter 7: Poorly Chosen Words

When morning came, Scootaloo and friends found the view out the window had changed from forested valleys to snowcapped-mountains below. At breakfast Rainbow Dash confirmed that they were now somewhere over the western part of the Unicorn Mountains.

However, after breakfast the trio of fillies were promptly returned to their assigned room and it didn’t take long for them to get bored of sitting around a small room. While Sweetie and Apple Bloom did their best to pass the time by talking, Scootaloo quickly grew bored with that too.

Luckily for the young pegasus, she was also a pilot, and wasn’t afraid to use that excuse to go to the only other place on this airship that no pony could tell her not to go, her plane.

Of course once she was there, there wasn’t really much to do. First she took the time to take her stuff from the floor of the cabin and put it in the small compartment built into the wall just behind the passenger seat.

Then she attempted to buy fuel from the equipment chef. She got the fuel, but given the nature of the cloud ship the equipment manager wasn’t sure what to charge for it. While he was content to just give her the liquid rainbow, Scootaloo insisted on at least paying the rate her home airport charged for it. But he insisted on pointing out that the cloud ship was big enough to have its own rainbow production facility, so not even they paid anypony for fuel, that and they usually fueled visiting aircraft for free anyway. Ultimately she accepted the fuel for ‘free’ but insisted she give the Wonderbolts a ‘donation’ even it was only a fraction of what she would’ve paid back home.

And then she had nothing productive left to do and soon found herself just sitting in her plane pondering whether it was more boring to sit here in her cockpit and do nothing or sit in the fancy room and do nothing. The fact that Rainbow Dash showed up and started doing a walk around of her own plane heavily swayed Scootaloo into choosing to stay in the landing/launching bay. At least here she could watch other ponies actually doing stuff.

After a while, Rainbow Dash came over and tapped on the cockpit glass of Scootaloo’s plane. Once it was open, the ace flyer joined the filly in the cabin, taking the back seat.

“So… What’s up?” the younger pegasus asked when the elder one didn’t immediately offer a reason for joining her.

“Finished my pre-flight inspection, and didn’t have anything better to do,” she answered. After a moment of the two quietly watching the maintenance crew work, and with a hit of annoyance in her voice the Wonderbolt added, “That and Spitfire sent my wingpony out scouting without me, since ‘I’m on baby sitting duty.’”

“I’m sor-”

“Don’t be,” Dash interrupted. “It’s not your fault that Spitfire can’t see that you three are well behaved enough to look after yourselves. Sometimes I swear she doesn’t remember being a kid, and that getting older doesn’t make you smarter.” With that Rainbow Dash folded her front legs on top of the cockpit rim and rested her head atop that as she continued to look out at the rest of the landing bay.

“It doesn’t?” Scootaloo asked. It seemed an odd thought to the filly. After all, all her life she’d found that asking questions of adults was always more likely to get the right answer than asking others her own age.

“Naw, being older just means you’ve had more time to learn stuff.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not even close!” Rainbow Dash said with a laugh. “I’m told that knowing stuff makes you ‘knowledgeable.’ And trust me, I’ve met egghead ponies that may know lots of stuff, but their idea of ‘common sense’ is worthless. I wouldn’t trust them to think their way out of a paper bag.”

For a moment, she closed her eyes and a faint smile appeared before she went on. “It was working with your dad that taught me the difference between being knowledgeable and being smart, because he was both. No, he was even better than that, he could think clearly and he always seemed to know at least a little about anything, so I’d even say he was wise. When I was still just a rookie Wonderbolt, I quickly learned I could always turn to him for answers, no matter what.”

With a bit of a laugh she added, “Even when he had to guess, his guesses were usually more right than the answers I got from anypony else around here. That’s what made it clear that he didn’t just know things, he understood things.”

Scootaloo could only nod, to signal that she’d been listening. She’d never really thought to put a mental barrier between the concepts of knowledge and intelligence before, let alone divide wisdom into its own category too.

“Did you know my dad well before he… well, you know?”

First Dash nodded, then she shrugged. “I’d like to think we were friends. But like I said I’m not good with machine stuff like he was. So when he did spend time with anypony on his own time it was usually the equipment manager, or one of the other engineers. If he counted anypony around here as a friend I’d think it would be them instead of that dumb pilot always asking for help understanding stuff.”

“I think he liked you more then you realized,” Scootaloo said with a smile. “He really appreciated the challenges you presented to him. ‘That reckless rookie that’s always finding new ways to break stuff.’ That’s what he would say about you, but the way he said it sounded like it was a game you and he played.”

The silence returned as Rainbow Dash pondered the idea, replaying memories in her mind with the thought that they had some kind of friendship going between them. Some of them made more sense… especially the last one.

This quiet pondering didn’t last long as the attention of the two pilots in the silver plane was quickly drawn to the fact that main door began to open. Soon the vision of the open sky stood out among the gray metal that otherwise dominated the color scheme of the launch bay.

Seeing as no pony was lined up to launch, the obvious assumption was that somepony was about to land. But instead of a blue and yellow plane the only thing that entered was a white pegasus stallion who wore a Wonderbolt’s uniform.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes became dots when she realized that her wingpony had comeback without his plane. And when he collapsed to the floor she gasped, “Soarin!” and took off toward the end of the bay in a prismatic blur.

Without thinking, Scootaloo jumped out and ran down to see what was going on at the end of the bay too.

The white stallion with the blue mane slowly got back up, and began staggering his way on three legs, while holding one to his side.

“Soarin! You’re bleeding!” Rainbow Dash shouted as soon as she saw the wound on his side that he was trying to cover up.

He just forced a smile through the pain and said, “It’s nothing the doc can’t fix. Now help me get to an intercom, they shot me down before I could get a radio report out.”

Dash nodded, wrapped her hooves around him and with her wings blitzed the both of them over to the nearest intercom box. Scootaloo arrived just in time to hear him give his report into the metal box on the wall.

“The camp was overrun with mercs, the whole place is an ambush. Oh and I may have brought ‘friends.’”

About a half-second after Soarin finished, the white lights that lined the ceiling dimmed, flashing red lights came on, and an alarm began to sound. The alarm quickly lowered as Spitfire ’s voice came over the intercom in a clear ship-wide broadcast.

“Everypony to battle stations! Launch wings seven through ten! We’ve got incoming hostiles!”

By then one of the mechanics had taken over helping Soarin stand, and had started helping him toward the medical bay.

“I guess you have to go, huh?” Scootaloo asked.

With a shake of the head, Rainbow Dash answered, “Naw, I’m in wings one and four.”

With that the filly tilted her head slightly. “Two wings?”

“Yeah, wing one is a special wing, so most of its members are also part of other wings. When it comes to combat, I’ve always been launched as part of wing four.”

Even as she was answering, Dash had scooped up the filly she was talking to and shuttled her back to the silver Mark 1 as fast as her wings would take them. And just as she finished talking, dozens of other Wonderbolts began pouring into the launching bay, each rushing to their own planes. Which in turn made the only civilian plane in the hanger the only ‘out of the way’ place to be found in the sudden flurry of activity.

It didn’t take more then a few seconds before the first plane was launched. Jets of steam shooting up out of the catapult’s tracks on both sides of the runway accelerated the fighter jet being launched. It only took a minute to reset the catapult and taxi the next set of airplanes into place, before they launched those two as well. The sounds of similar events made it clear that the other three launch bays were also launching some of their aircraft.

All the while, Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo watched, sitting atop the filly’s plane.

Then a powerful shake rattled not only the launch bay but also the whole ship. The distant sound of a heavy crash reached their ears.

In response Dash muttered, “What the hay? Are we taking fire?”

* * * * * * *

Meanwhile, on the bridge, Spitfire shouted, “What the heck hit us!?”

The command room was larger than the rest of the floors of the control-tower-like part of the C.S. Cloudsdale. As such part of the room wrapped around the hallway that allowed entry to the room, so observers could be stationed to watch the blind spot from the captain's chair.

One such observer shouted, “It’s the airship from yesterday! They just came out from behind a ridge! Also I see about thirty fighters approaching from the two and four o’clock positions!”

Spitfire darted to the forward edge of the room, looking out the observer’s windows. Looking back to the left side of the ship she didn’t need anypony to point out the hundred or so planes appearing from behind clouds and ridges to see what was going on.

“So we’re completely surrounded,” she stated the obvious. With a bit of a growl and maybe a hint of a smile she added, “If they’re going to go all out like that, we’ll just have to greet them in kind.”

With that, the captain of the Wonderbolts flew over the intercom system.

* * * * * * *

“Launch all available fighters! All defenders, fire at will!”

Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo shot each other a look as Spitfire repeated her command over the intercom. Then Dash looked to the nearest maintenance crewpony and said, “Hey! Do me a favor and launch me and the kid last!”

Scootaloo’s look of concern became a gasp.

“Wha-huh?! You want me to go out there too? I’m just a filly!”

Rainbow Dash, who’d already started flying over toward her own plane, stopped and looking back to the filly pilot said, “I suppose you’re right. You’re not technically a Wonderbolt so you don’t HAVE to follow Spitfire’s orders. But she did say launch ALL fighters, so she gave you permission to. And didn’t you say yesterday that you were hired to keep Sweetie Belle safe? If the Cloudsdale goes down, she’s not going to be very safe, is she?”

Another heavy bang of a cannonball slamming into the side of the cloud ship punctuated the elder pegasus’ point.

A little more sheepishly she added, “And with Soarin injured I’m kinda short a wingpony.” Then she closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them again only confidence showed on her face, and she said, “Squirt, if you do decide to help out, 721.3.”

Scootaloo blinked for a moment as her mind processed what the numbers meant. When it hit her, her eyes lit up.

“Is that the Wonderbolts radio frequency today?”

With a shake of her head Dash answered, “Naw, Spitfire would get mad at me if I gave you that without permission. It’ll just be you and me on that frequency.”

It only took a few minutes before the bay was running short on planes. Most were launched by the steam catapult in the bay, although some were taken to the elevator and sent up to launch off of the top deck’s runway.

For her part, Scootaloo was sitting in the cockpit of her plane, strapped in, goggles on, and everything was physically ready to go. The only question now was, was she willing to do what was being asked of her?

The maintenance chief flew up to the silver Mark 1 and tapped a hoof on the glass. Though it was Rainbow Dash’s voice that came out of the radio and asked the question clearly written on his face.

“So, do I have a wingpony? Or am I going out there on my own?”

Scootaloo swallowed hard. Rainbow Dash is right. This is what I was hired to do. And I have to prove I’m just as good as any adult that they could have hired instead… just like always. With those thoughts in her mind, she nodded and gave a hoofs up sign to the maintenance chief.

“I’ll try,” she answered through her radio. “Oh and Rainbow Dash?”

“Yeah?”

“Would this be a good time to mention that I’ve never been a wingpony before?”

First Dash laughed, then she said, “The way you flew yesterday, you could’ve fooled me! Anyway, it’s easy! All you have to do is follow me, and if any enemy gets behind me, you shoot them.”

“And if someone gets behind me?” The filly voiced her greatest fear tied to this whole idea.

“Then dodge them. And say something to me and I’ll loop around and take care of them for ya!”

As they were taxied into place and their planes were hooked up to the launch catapult Dash shared a few more pointers with the young pilot.

As Scootaloo had learned watching the rest of the Wonderbolts launch, the launch catapult was built to launch two planes in rapid succession before needing a full reset. Technically both launchers used the same rails. Needless to say Rainbow Dash’s Mark 2 was hooked up to the cable and front set of blocks poking up out of the steam launcher’s channels on either side of the short runway, while Scootaloo’s Mark 1 was attached to the back ones.

The iris glow of the Mark 2’s engines suddenly grew bright. Jets of steam shot up out of the launch rails just behind the front set of blocks, and Dash’s plane shot down the runway at an impossible speed.

As per Rainbow Dash’s instructions, Scootaloo looked to the side of the runway, where there was a set of lights. A fraction of a second after Dash’s Mark 2 had left the launch bay, the red light turned off and a blue light turned on. In response the filly suddenly jammed her plane’s throttle all the way in.

The instant her plane started to roll forward, the catapult responded by firing the steam jets on the second launcher.

The young pilot was pushed into the back cushion of her seat as the power of the steam jets gave her plane acceleration that it never could have had on its own. So much so that it only took two seconds to reach the end of the runway, where the hook connecting her front wheel’s landing gear to the tow cable opened, and she left the launch bay behind, exploding into the open sky at full speed.

Chapter 9: Acceptance

The rest of the battle went as well as a battle could thanks in no small part to the fact that once Dash and Scootaloo rejoined the fray, Spitfire took a defensive position behind the silver Mark 1, protecting it from any who dared make an attack run against the youthful pilot’s plane. More importantly, with the main guns of the enemy air ship damaged beyond function, it had to withdraw, and with the loss of its flack cannon support the remaining enemy airplanes soon found themselves needing to fall back as well.

While the enemy had suffered a major defeat, the Wonderbolts hadn’t gotten off scot-free. By the battle’s end they had lost four planes of their own, five if they counted Soarin’s. Truthfully it had been a minor miracle that all of the shot-down pilots had managed to only get injured escaping their doomed aircraft.

Once the fighting was over, Rainbow Dash gave the Cloudsdale the radio frequency that she and Scootaloo had been using, and they promptly used it to tell the filly to return to the landing bay.

Soon the last of the Wonderbolt’s planes had landed. And Spitfire wasted little time emerging from that last jet and flying her way over toward the silver Mark 1. As she approached a stern glare and a motion commanded the young pilot to come out.

Scootaloo came with her ears low and eyes to the floor. She wasn’t sure why, but everything about the elder pegasus’ stance said that she’d done something wrong.

“What were you doing out there?!” Spitfire demanded.

“I… I…” Scootaloo stuttered as her mind went into panic mode.

Sure, she’d been yelled at before. But ever since her dad died, she hadn’t been yelled at by a pony with authority over her. Yet this angry mare before her had the power to decide if she could complete her job or be sent away a failure with no choice but to apologize to Rarity for being unable to stay with Sweetie Belle until she brought her home.

“She saved my tail! That’s what!” Rapid Fire said, flying over and landing beside the filly.

“And mine,” Fleetfoot said boldly, also coming to the filly’s side.

“Me, too!”

“Ditto!”

Two more mares joined their fellow Wonderbolt pilots.

Seeing this, their captain took a step back, her look of anger replaced with one of confusion. Surely, her subordinates weren’t condoning having a civilian on the battlefield, and one that was a minor to boot.

“More importantly then all of that-” Rainbow Dash said confidently, her words parting the group allowing her to stand directly by Scootaloo’s side. “-I asked her to!”

First Spitfire blinked, then she raised an eyebrow. After a moment of seeming calm, she spoke with a slowly burning fury.

“You ASKED a civilian child to enter a battleground?! Do you have any idea who she is?!”

Despite the harsh tone of her captain’s voice, Rainbow Dash only looked back with convection. “She is Scootaloo! Daughter of Firestorm, the most amazing engineer and test pilot the Wonderbolts’ have ever had!” she answered.

Once again, Spitfire’s anger turned into surprise. “Then… You know… ” she muttered.

“Exactly who she is?” Dash finished the incomplete question. “Of course I do! Or have you already forgotten who was the rookie Wonderbolt you assigned to clean out his locker because he was too dead to do it himself?”

Spitfire’s eyes became pinpricks as she remembered exactly what Rainbow Dash was talking about.

“Let me tell you, every single picture in his locker had her in it!” Dash continued, draping a wing over the orange filly’s back. “Every. Single. One! So yeah, I know exactly who she is! I know exactly why she’s an orphan who has to fend for herself in this world!”

A look of seriousness and focus returned to Spitfire’s eyes, yet she only responded with the words, “Then why?”

The mare with the rainbow mane shook her head slightly. “Maybe you’ve been in the Wonderbolts so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a nopony, but I haven’t. I remember how hard it was to get hired when everypony would always ask, ‘why should I hire you instead of the Wonderbolts?’ And I was an adult! She NEEDS every chance she can get to prove herself! And I’m not going to ignore her skill just because of who she is!”

With the end of Rainbow Dash’s speech, she and Spitfire stared into each other’s eyes, both glaring stubbornly.

The staredown ended when Spitfire turned to Scootaloo instead and said, “For the record, when I give general orders, I only expect Wonderbolts to follow them. If I want you to launch I’ll specifically call for you to launch, Courier Seven. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am,” the filly managed to mutter, trying not to sound like a child apologizing to a teacher, and failing miserably.

Then Spitfire turned and stared walking away. And as she went, she looked over her shoulder, and added, “Dash! Seeing as you’re so keen on building her up, I’ll let you sign off on the endorsement.”

“Endorsement?” both Dash and Scoots asked.

As she walked away the captain casually said, “Last I checked, five shoot-downs officially makes you an ace combat pilot. And she’s shot down more than that in our presence, so somepony should add that to her logbook.”

* * * * * * *

It took only a moment for Scootaloo to fetch her logbook from the cargo space of her plane.

When Rainbow Dash joined the filly atop the silver Mark 1, she had brought her own logbook. Dash then flipped open both logbooks to the endorsement section, and began to copy, word for word, the entry that had noted herself as a combat ace. Until she got near the end anyway, using her own Wonderbolt identification number instead.

“Hey, Rainbow Dash!” an orange stallion with a yellow and red mane called out.

“Oh, hey Firestorm! What’s up?”

Had she forgotten something again? The rookie couldn’t help but wonder as the senior Wonderbolt approached.

“I was hoping to ask you a favor,” he said.

With a bold grin the young mare answered, “Oh? what kinda favor?”

“Well, I brought my daughter to our air show yesterday, and she really liked the performance you put on. And I’m planning on getting her a logbook for her birthday, so I thought I could make it really special if you would sign it for her.”

Her grin only grew at the request.

“Tell ya what, Spitfire has me flying some boring patrol today. And I wouldn’t mind somepony to talk to while I was out there. So why don’t you come with me, and I’ll sign that book when we get back?”

“Deal.”

…I never did sign that logbook…

“Rainbow Dash? Are you alright?” Scootaloo asked, curious as to why the blue pegasus was impersonating a statue all of a sudden.

Shaken from her thoughts, Dash finished adding her signature to the endorsement and pulled her head back. But not before a single tear fell before she could look away.

“I’m fine. Just remembering the day Spitfire signed off on me becoming an ace. That’s all,” she lied.

“I bet that was a good day,” Scootaloo said, with a smile creeping onto her face. “Hey, Rainbow Dash, can I tell you a secret?”

Rainbow Dash answered still looking away. “Sure thing, squirt. Your secrets are safe with me!”

“I always wanted your autograph. But I never thought I’d get it for something important like this! This is so cool!”

“Yeah, I am kinda cool! But you earned it, never forget that.” As she answered, Dash got up. “Look I gotta go… do stuff. I’ll catch ya later,” she added, never looking back.

Only after Rainbow Dash had left did Scootaloo look down at her logbook and notice where a teardrop had fallen near the endorsement that now heralded her as an ace combat pilot.

* * * * * * *

For the Wonderbolts, much of the rest of the day was spent repairing the C.S. Cloudsdale, the gash having rendered the cloud ship unable to move until said repairs could be made.

For Scootaloo, she’d spent most of that time doing what repairs she could to her plane. And much to her surprise, she found Crescent, the equipment manager, intentionally ‘misplacing’ a few sheets of metal already cut to the shape of the more badly damaged panels of her plane. “Like I’m not going to fix every aircraft that fought for us,” he told her when she asked why he’d left them lying on the wing of her plane.

Furthermore, the rest of the maintenance crew also seemed to adopt this unspoken agreement that, as far as they were concerned, they were going to look after the Mark 1 just as if it was an actual Wonderbolt plane. So by day’s end, every hole had been patched, every dent fixed, and even every damaged wire and cable replaced.

Dinner in the mess hall also brought a noticeable change in the atmosphere. The table where the trio of fillies and Rainbow Dash were was no longer shunned or teased. If anything, some of the Wonderbolts made their way over to it to give a subtle sign of respect, be it a nod or a quick salute, all of these leaving the three youngsters feeling far more welcome then their first day aboard. Enough so that none of them noticed Spitfire going out of her way to avoid their table.

Author's Note

…I never did sign that logbook… ...until today.

Chapter 10: Clearing the Way

The next morning, Rainbow Dash found herself delivering orders to Scootaloo from Spitfire. Unsurprisingly those orders were to stay on the Cloudsdale when Dash was deployed for a mission.

However, with most of the Wonderbolts looking favorably on the youngsters now, they found themselves feeling free to explore the ship instead of being forced to stay in their cabin. As a result of this friendlier attitude from the cloud ship’s crew Apple Bloom soon found herself in the map room, learning to make Scootaloo’s lie the truth. That is to say, learning how to actually be a real navigator.

For her part, Sweetie Belle’s exploration somehow led her to landing bay 3, and while nopony told her to leave, she was quickly shooed over to Scootaloo and her plane.

“I guess this is the filly zone around here, huh?” the unicorn asked as she climbed up.

Scootaloo was lying on the wing, with her back propped up by the fuselage. She looked up slightly and said, “Might as well be. It’s not like they can tell me not to be with my plane, and being my plane I get to say who’s allowed on it.”

Sweetie sat on her haunches beside her friend, and for a while the two sat silently. Eventually she started up the small talk.

“So, I take it it’s all fixed up?”

“As fixed as it’s going to get.”

“It seems kind of empty here.”

Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah, Rainbow Dash and the other pilots finished launching a few minutes ago.”

“Any idea where they’re going?”

“I think Rainbow Dash said the mercs we fought yesterday are guarding the place where your spirit barrier is.”

Sweetie Belle sighed at that news. “So they’ve gone out to fight again?”

“Probably.”

…

“Hey, Scootaloo. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do normal fillies get shot at often?”

The young pegasus laughed, then choked on her laugh when she saw the look on Sweetie Belle’s face that said she genuinely didn’t know the answer.

“No! I never get shot at in Ponyville! And normal fillies don’t have to work as pilots, so normal fillies don’t usually go out where sky pirates can take a few shots at me once every few months either.”

The young unicorn gave a deep sigh of relief on hearing that response. “Oh good, I was starting to wonder. You know, with all the fighting that’s happened since I’d left the mansion, I was starting to think mom was right to keep me away from the ‘normal’ part of the world.”

Scootaloo reached over and gave Sweetie a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry this trip has been nothing like normal.”

* * * * * * *

Rainbow Dash gave an impressed whistle as she and came over the last ridge. Before her was a large valley. Part way up the forested valley was a massive cave just behind a lake. The mouth of the cave was large enough that ten fighter planes could have flown in side by side without risking clipping the edges.

“That is one big cave, isn’t it?” she said, although having not bothered to hit her radio button, no pony else could’ve heard her.

On the shores of the lake, part of the forest had been cut away and a small encampment built between the cave and the lake. Two flack cannons were near the lake at the corners of the outpost while the rest of the buildings looked like benign cabins.

“There are a lot more flack cannons along the edge of the forest, around the lake,” Soarin’s voice came over the radio. “And they had at least ten planes based inside the cave. Also watch the ridges on either side of the cave. I’m sure I saw at least a dozen flashes from those positions when they opened up on me yesterday.”

A few of the other Wonderbolts acknowledged the advice from Rainbow Dash’s wingpony.

Dash herself only looked over the last obvious obstacle to consider, the mercenary airship hovering over the lake. Several of its main guns still had signs of the damage she’d done yesterday. Of its dozen helicopter engines, only eight of them were currently spinning, while the other four looked like they’d sustained some damage from yesterday’s fight.

“Here they come!”

She narrowed her eyes, though the warning that came over the radio had been pointless as it was hard to miss all of the airplanes being launched from the airship and emerging from the cave. Even a bunch of gyro-copters rose up out of the forest.

“Rainbow Dash, would you do the honors?”

The voice over the radio had been Fleetfoot’s. Dash was about to respond when a yellowish glint caught her eye. And looking to the source, her eyes widened. A gold-colored bi-wing plane had just been launched from the mercenary airship.

“I’m sorry team, but it seems honor requires me to take a different course of action. Everypony leave that gold one alone. And Soarin, I guess I won’t be needing a wingpony today after all. This is between me and her.”

“You know the pilot of the gold one?” several voices asked in response to Rainbow Dash’s declaration.

“If it comes after me and me alone, then yeah, it’s exactly who I think it is. If it shoots at you, without you shooting at it first, then all bets are off.”

With that Dash flicked a switch normally only used during air shows, and sprayers at the tips of her plane’s wings came to life, leaving fully formed rainbows trailing from the tips of either wing. With the display wakes turned on, she then pulled up and away from the rest of the Wonderbolt formation.

The gold plane also started to climb away from the rest of the merc planes. Rainbow Dash preformed a role as she climbed, and the gold plane mimicked the gesture. For a moment, Dash held a hoof in the air in front of her radio as she searched her mind for a number she hadn’t used in a long time. When she remembered it, she tuned her radio to it and pushed the broadcast button.

“G, since when did you take illegal jobs?”

A female voice even raspier than her own came from the radio.

“Come on, Dash! You know how this works! If you want answers, you have to win!”

The pegasus pilot smiled and she shook her head slightly. “I’m not sure why you’re in such a rush for me to shoot down your… what is it now? Sixth plane? But if that’s what you really want, bring it on!”

While the rest of the mercenary and Wonderbolt planes entered into a chaotic dogfight, the lone Mark 2 and gold bi-wing began a spiral assent taking them high above the main fight. Despite being a prop plane, the gold aircraft had eight engines, four at the front of the wings and four at the back of the wings, allowing it to keep up with the twin jet engines of Rainbow Dash’s Mark 2. As they went up they flew top facing top, close enough that the two pilots could see each other through the glass of their respective cockpits.

Once their air speed began to fall off from their mostly straight up path, they broke away from each other, heading in opposite directions. Then the two airplanes turned to face each other like knights in the jousts of old.

As they raced toward each other, the gold plane’s guns roared to life. To her credit, G’s aim was spot on, but at this distance there was more then enough time for Dash to weave out of the way before the stream of bullets reached her Mark 2.

Reaching up Rainbow Dash answered by pushing a small button on the side and top of her control stick. A single lightning bolt flashed from her ion cannons, striking one of the engines on G’s plane. The propeller in question sputtered to a halt and jets of steam came from the seams of the damaged engine for a moment.

In response, the gold plane fired two rockets and turned away.

At first Dash was tempted to just shoot the rockets out of the sky but opted to dive and punch her afterburners to get out of the way instead. With the rockets well behind her, the pegasus pilot turned to intercept the gold bi-wing plane, ignoring the bright flash of the rockets exploding behind her… until the shockwave from the explosions threw her jet into a wild spin.

Looking back at the blasts her eyes went wide at the shear size of the explosions the rockets had produced.

“What they hey, Gilda? A blast like that could’ve killed me! What are you thinking shooing something like that at me!?” she snarled into her headset’s microphone.

The griffin’s voice crackled over the radio. “I was thinking that if you died from that, you deserved it, because the Dash I know is too skilled to take lightly.”

Just as Gilda finished talking, Rainbow Dash finally managed to pull her jet of its spin. Which was also just in time for a hail of bullets to bombard the Wonderbolt plane. Another quick swerve and jamming a hoof on the tail-fin control pedals allowed Dash to slide the plane out of the line of fire and minimize further damage.

Alarms buzzed to life. But Dash didn’t even need to check the instrument panel to feel the tug that meant that one wing was way more damaged than the other. A glance over the shoulder also showed a rainbow as clear as day, proving that a wing tank was leaking liquid rainbow. A glance at the fuel gauge confirmed that the right wing tank was draining at an alarming rate.

‘She really is trying to win,’ Dash thought to herself. ‘Well, if you’re going to do something like that, then you just asked for my best too!’

Hitting the afterburners she pushed her damaged jet into a loop and a hard turn, putting herself on the tail of Gilda’s golden plane. Holding down the trigger she let the ion-cannons fire shot after shot as quickly as they could.

The griffin pilot tried to dodge, but to no avail. The accuracy of the weather pony turned Wonderbolt was spot on, ripping the golden plane’s left wings to shreds after a three-second assault.

Rainbow Dash watched the golden plane fall for a moment and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her old friend bail out and take flight on her own griffin wings.

The battle below wasn’t going any better for the mercenary forces. The airship had gone down and was now half sunk in the lake. Most of the static anti-air guns had been taken out. And the Wonderbolt jets outnumbered the remaining merc planes. And as far as she could tell, none of her fellow Wonderbolt’s jets had actually been shot down. Although two had been forced to retreat due to damage sustained.

Even with the battle below effectively over, Dash tuned her radio to the Wonderbolt’s frequency and said, “You can stop shooting. They should surrender any second now.”

Needless to say, once the Wonderbolts disengaged from a fight they’d clearly won, the pilots of the remaining mercenary planes started looking around to see why. And it didn’t take them long to noticed the remains of their leader’s plane tail spinning its way to its doom. And once the golden plane crashed into the beach of the lake the rest of the mercenary planes signaled their surrender and landed under the watchful eyes of the Wonderbolts.

* * * * * * *

In less then thirty minutes the Wonderbolts had taken full control of the encampment outside the cave. The half-sunken remains of the mercenary airship loomed over the lake, as it turned out the lake was too shallow for it to sink entirely. And on the beach of the lake, sitting atop the sundered remains of the golden plane, was a griffin with a golden brown coat for her lion half, and white feathers for her eagle half.

A sky-blue Wonderbolt flew over to the griffin and landed beside the only griffin not in shackles yet. For the better part of a minute the two just sat, side by side, watching the waves of the lake water lick at the fallen airship.

“So,” the pegasus with the rainbow mane said. “Why did you throw everything away to fight the Wonderbolts? What were they paying you that made you take the job even though this was the only possible outcome of attacking us?”

“Most likely,” the griffin corrected.

“What?”

“Most likely outcome, Dash. Not the only possible outcome.”

Rainbow Dash gave a slight laugh.

“Even so, Gilda. How come? Why take a job that would make you a criminal?”

Turning her head to the sky and closing her eyes, Gilda said, “What choice did we have? Ever since those cross-country railroads were finished, the legal cargo jobs have been drying up. I’ve had to take shadier and shadier jobs just to keep the group running. You try running a mercenary group. It’s not cheap. But if we’d pulled this off, we all could’ve bought new planes AND been set for life.”

Rainbow Dash nodded slowly, then asked, “So, who hired you?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, come on, G! You lost fair and square, so don’t give me that loyalty to the contract bull!”

“No, Dash. I mean I can’t tell you. We only dealt with a contact. I could tell he was just a middleman, not the one pulling the strings. And whoever he was, I could tell there was some kind of illusion magic about him. I’m not even sure he was really a pegasus. But if you really want to know, he wore Crystal Empire armor. Doubt it was real, but that’s how he showed himself.”

“I see.”

For a short while the two resumed watching the lake waves in silence. Until Rainbow Dash finally turned to look directly at her old friend and said, “Gilda, you know I can’t get you out of this and that you're going to go to jail, right?”

“I know,” was all that the griffin said in response.

With that, Dash stood up and two other Wonderbolts who’d been waiting near the tree line came forward with a set of griffin-sized shackles.

Stopping for a moment, Rainbow Dash looked back to Gilda and said, “G, thanks for the info, I’ll be sure to send a copy of my report to the judge with a note asking him to go as easy as he can on your sentence.”

Gilda only nodded and presented her talons to the shackles awaiting them.

Chapter 11: The Spirit Barrier

By midday most of the strike team had returned to the Cloudsdale with the news that the site was secure. And it didn’t take long before the three fillies aboard the cloud ship were called to the briefing room.

Sitting at a long table built for twenty were three fillies and two Wonderbolt pilots. Standing at the head of the table was Spitfire, and standing in the corner to the left of her was the unicorn named Shining Armor.

“Listen up!” Spitfire said in a commanding voice. “The time has come to take Sweetie Belle to the spirit barrier.”

“Then I’m coming too,” Scootaloo said.

“I know,” the captain of the Wonderbolts sighed. “You’ve made the terms of your contract clear. And once the barrier is dispelled, there’s no reason that you can’t just take Sweetie Belle straight home, so I can’t even hold the threat of kicking you off the Cloudsdale over your head anymore.”

The trio of fillies (and Rainbow Dash) exchanged mischievous glances at each other.

“Don’t encourage them, Dash!” Spitfire snarled. “Anyway that’s why you’re here. On his expedition, Shinning Armor found a temple in a large cavern,” she added, pointing to the drawing on the chalkboard behind her.

The drawing showed a large area with a bunch of smaller shapes in it, and several paths leading away from the temple chamber. Although only one of the paths seemed to be fully drawn, while several branches in the cave network just faded away.

“We’ll be entering the cavern here,” Spitfire said, pointing to the pathway that started in the lower right part of the chalkboard. “We’ll need to fly single file for safety reasons, but according to the scouting reports, its more than large enough to accommodate our fighters. I’ll be flying lead so all you need to do is follow.

“If for some reason you lose line of sight of the plane in front of you, the paths to take the forks in the cave are left, right, left,” she added, tracing her hoof down the path shown on the board.

Moving her hoof to the large chamber with a bunch of other shapes drawn in it, she continued, “At the back of the temple cavern there’s a large platform area not far from where the spirit barrier is. Fleetfoot has already confirmed that it’s big enough to land on. In fact I already sent her back out and she should be installing landing lights there as we speak. Anyway, landing there will allow us to bypass most of the temple. Once we all meet up there we’ll head to the barrier. Any questions?”

Apple Bloom held a hoof up.

Spitfire groaned and motioned to the room around them. “Does this look like a schoolhouse to you? Just ask.”

“Oh, sorry. Ah was just wondering, where do those other paths go?”

Spitfire only looked to the lone unicorn stallion in the room.

Stepping forward Shining Armor said, “Most of them led to other entrances to the cave network. A few led to dead ends with smaller structures carved into the rock. But nothing as interesting or as important as the main temple cavern. We merely set up the camp near this entrance because that one was the closest to the temple.”

After a moment of silence that followed Shining’s answer, Spitfire said, “Given the lack of further questions, we’re moving out at fourteen hundred hours. I expect everypony to be in the launch bays and ready to go then.”

“Isn’t fourteen hundred hours an awful long time?” Sweetie Belle asked.

After a quick giggle Dash clarified, “It means two o’ clock. So that means you have ten minutes to get you things and get down to Scoots’ plane.”

“Oh… never mind.”

* * * * * * *

At first Spitfire wanted Sweetie Belle to ride in her Mark 2. But when the filly insisted on riding in Scootaloo’s Mark 1, the captain begrudgingly relented. Despite the fact that that would mean Scoots would have two fillies sharing the back seat of her plane.

Regardless, with seating arrangements for the fillies set and Shining Armor riding in Soarin’s plane, three Lightning Bolt Mark 2’s and a Mark 1 took off from the C.S. Cloudsdale.

Scootaloo whistled when she first saw the giant cave and lake come into view.

“Wow! I didn’t know caves came that big. It’s almost scary to think we’ll be flying underground and still have that kinda space.”

Not having goggles to see through the walls of the plane, the two fillies in the back seat strained to stand in their seat and look out the canopy glass.

“Oh, wow. That is big!” Apple Bloom said once she caught sight of the cave in question. “Walking around a cave that big would feel more like being outside than a cave!”

“Gold one to base camp, come in base camp!” Spitfire’s voice suddenly came over the radio.

A moment later the radio crackled back to life and a stallion’s voice answered, “This is base camp. Go ahead, captain.”

“Is everything ready?”

“Affirmative. We finished setting up the lamps ten minutes ago. The path is lit.”

“Listen up, team! Everypony shift to a slow flight configuration. The cave may be big, but the slower we fly the easier it’ll be to not hit the walls. I got point, so everypony follow me and fly between the lanterns. They’re marking the widest flight path we’ll have down there.”

With Spitfire’s command, Scootaloo reduced the throttle and started adding flaps as she slowed down, until she had the flaps to maximum deflection. Then she played with the throttle again until she’d found a slow speed that sill felt stable and wasn’t falling behind the Mark 2’s she was following.

While her passengers oohed and awed at the marvels of flying into a giant cavern, Scootaloo tensed up as they flew into the cave. Especially since it didn’t take more then a few seconds before they were deep enough in that the only places they she could see the walls, floor or roof were where the lanterns were.

Of course with only the Mark 2’s having had a forward facing flood light added to their wing attachment points, Scootaloo was the only one who couldn’t see the walls of the cave without help. Or worse yet, she gave herself a heart attack every time she flew close enough to see the walls from the glow of her own aircraft’s engine.

As for the lanterns, they were arranged in sets of four, basically marking the path with a bunch of diamond formations for them to fly through.

Despite the stress and silently gasping a few times when she’d been surprised to catch a stalactite uncomfortably close in her peripheral vision, the flight through the cave was uneventful and they soon emerged into the massive temple chamber.

The chamber floor was actually fairly well lit. Most of the temple buildings had glowing crystals of various colors built into them, making the whole temple facility easily visible throughout the chamber. And that was to say nothing of the twin lines of bright white lanterns that marked the makeshift runway Fleetfoot had set up.

Soon they had all landed and parked their planes near Fleetfoot’s Mark 2 on the massive platform.

Once they’d all gathered on hoof, Shining Armor led the way toward a large building carved into the side of the cavern’s walls.

As they walked, Spitfire made a stray comment. “With a cave like this, I’m surprised a dragon hasn’t moved in.”

Shining chuckled, then said, “I’d be surprised if one didn’t move in after we’re done here. But dragons tend to avoid places with powerful pony magic still active. So I suspect that any dragon that’s wondered in here in the past also found the spirit barrier and thought better than to set up shop here.”

As soon as they entered the building the unicorn was leading them to, the stonework changed from the same gray stone as the cave walls to polished white marble. Unlike the multicolored lights of the rest of the temple, in here the lighting crystals only came in light blue. Every now and then there might be holes or patterns carved into the walls or floors, marking were old traps were. Although on more than one occasion they passed an ancient pony skeleton that had clearly fallen prey to the traps that Shining Armor’s team had disabled on their first expedition.

Then they arrived at their destination.

And there they were faced with a room that had a double overhead, which made it roughly two stories tall. A large, sealed, ornate door was at one end. And to the side of that was a small hallway-like room with an open doorway at one end and windows along the side that could see into this room, not too unlike a security room. Lastly the ornate door was just behind a wall of transparent purple light, the spirit barrier.

Shining Armor pointed to the smaller side room and said, “The spell anchor is in there.” After a short pause he added, “Oh, this would probably be a good time to mention that there’s a defensive enchantment on the anchor point. So as soon as the key dispels the spirit barrier, that doorway will close. And once that’s locked the only way out of the side room will be that path on the other end that’s also blocked by the barrier. Oh, and it might be worth pointing out that we couldn’t clear the traps in the sealed parts of the temple, so you might want to keep that in mind while you’re finding out where that path leads.”

Looking into the side room, sure enough, it did have another exit at the other end that was currently blocked by the same purple wall of light as the ornate door.

“Then which way is the right way?” Sweetie asked.

“I think that depends on what you want. And according to the inscriptions on the ornate door, what I want is through this path out here. I have no idea what’s down the path that awaits you.”

Scootaloo gave a determined nod to Apple Bloom and a wordless agreement was made. They both walked over to Sweetie Belle. “Well, our job is to stick with you, so we’ll find out together,” Scoots said.

Then, at the same time Rainbow Dash and Spitfire said, “I’ll go with them.”

On hearing the other, they both looked at each other.

On seeing a sudden hesitation in Spitfire’s eyes, Rainbow Dash shrugged and added, “No reason we can’t both keep them out of trouble. I’m sure Soarin and Fleetfoot can take care of themselves.”

However, Spitfire came up to Dash and whispered in the mare’s ear. After a moment of whispering between the Wonderbolt and her captain a nod was shared.

Then Spitfire said aloud, “Fine you stay with them. But remember, I’m counting on you to keep them safe, Dash.”

With that, Rainbow Dash and the threesome of youngsters entered the anchor room, while the other three Wonderbolts joined the royal guard captain by the ornate door.

Inside the anchor room by one of the windows was a small pedestal topped with glowing purple runes. As they neared the pedestal, Sweetie Belle’s eyes grew wide with awe. She could feel the magic in the room. And more than that, she could feel the magic connecting to her. This was without doubt the spirit barrier that her spirit key was linked to.

Given that the pedestal was sized for an adult, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo gathered in front of it, offering their backs as a makeshift platform for Sweetie to climb up on.

From atop her living perch Sweetie Belle looked down at the glowing runic pattern. For the most part the glowing lines were circles and triangles. But in the middle was a four pointed star with three rays below it as if to signify a light shining down on something.

The young unicorn smiled nervously as she tossed one last glance to those with her.

“Well, here goes everything!”

And with that, she lit her horn with the light-green glow of her magic.

Chapter 12: Fading Light

Everything shook and the door slammed shut as Sweetie Belle’s magic flowed through the runic pattern on the pedestal, transforming its light from its purple to her light green. Once the glow of Sweetie’s magic had replaced all of the purple light in the pedestal's runes her horn flared up.

The light on the pedestal shattered, leaving the runic pattern nothing but dark etchings in the surface of the stone. At the same time a pulse of green light ran along both visible parts of the spirit barrier, like a ripple in the surface of the walls of light. In the wake of the pulse the spirit barrier shattered like glass. Glass whose fragments flickered out of existence rather than fall to the ground anyway.

For a moment the rumbling came to a stop, but was quickly followed by another rumbling. This time the sound came from the ornate door that Shining Armor and the other’s were near as it slid into the floor, opening the way for them.

Once that chain of events was over and silence had returned long enough to announce that the temple was done reacting to the dispelling of the spirit barrier, the unicorn of the Royal Guard quickly moved forward, into the previously sealed part of the temple. Spitfire managed to spare a worried glance at the ponies in the anchor room, and gave a nod to those who now had no choice but to go into another unexplored part of the temple. Then she darted out of sight to catch up with the Royal Guard captain.

Back in the anchor room, Rainbow Dash took a moment to give the door that had cut off their escape route an upward push. One hard push was all it took to make her say, “Yeah… that’s not budging. No choice but to see what’s further in.”

The party of fillies and a Wonderbolt proceeded slowly down a short hallway and soon found themselves standing in the entrance to a long room. Cautious gazes searched the room for any signs of traps. Yet the gray tiles that made up the floor seemed uniform in appearance. They didn’t see any trip lines, nor did any of them dare to touch the glow-stone-topped rods that served as torches as they inched forward. At the far end of the room were two doorways. The one on the right was open, but the one on the left had a closed stone door.

When they passed the halfway point of the room a pulse of magic ran through the air. Most of the ponies felt a tingle across their fur as the wave of magic passed over them and that was it.

“Let me go!”

Sweetie Belle’s cry drew everypony else’s attention to her as she was lifted up, wrapped in an aura of purple magic.

Scootaloo was first to react. “Oh no you don’t!” she said as she leapt up and grabbed onto her floating friend. Wrapping her hooves around Sweetie, she buzzed her little wings for all they were worth. And though her effort clearly interfered with the magic pulling the unicorn toward the roof, it wasn’t enough to stop it.

Apple Bloom and Rainbow Dash acted next. Apple Bloom by jumping up and biting down on Sweetie’s tail, adding her own weight to group. Whether that had any effect or not could be debated, but it was the only thing she could think to try and help on such short notice.

Rainbow Dash abandoned her position on point to follow Scootaloo’s lead. Wrapping her hooves around the floating fillies and flapping her wings to pull the wayward unicorn from the unwanted levitation spell. And with the addition of Dash’s more flight-worthy wings, the purple glow around Sweetie shattered and she was able to pull the lot of youngsters free. As she set the trio of fillies down an unknown male voice spoke from all around.

“You protect the pony, even though her worth as a key is spent. You are worthy of the greatest treasure this place has to offer. Go, and rejoin those you deemed worthy of that treasure.”

As soon as the mysterious voice finished, the stone door slid to the side, opening the left path.

Yet, Dash’s ears perked up at the words, and looking to Sweetie Belle, she asked, “What did he mean ‘those you deemed worthy’?”

“Oh! Well you see, when I dispelled the spirit barrier, I didn’t have to release the seal on the door Shinning Armor was interested in. So I guess I could’ve left him locked out. But what would be the point in that? I mean, with the barrier dispelled I got what I wanted, so why shouldn’t I let him get what he wanted?”

“Fair enough,” Dash answered as she dusted herself off. “Well Come on! Let’s go see what all this fuss is for!”

A unified nod came from all present, and with that they set off down the newly opened pathway.

Yet, they hardly got more than a few steps before they heard an agonized cry sound out from the destination ahead of them.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes went wide. “That sounded like Fleetfoot!” she called.

Then she spread her wings and shot down the path in a hurry, while the three younger ponies galloped after her as fast as their little legs could carry them. And yet, even as they rushed forward they heard thuds, thumps and pulses, making it sound as if they were running toward a fight.

Scootaloo darted through the doorway and emerged from the hallway just in time to hear Rainbow Dash shout, “What the hay are you doing!”

The young pegasus and her friends came sliding to a halt as they took in the scene before them.

The room they had emerged into was large, large enough to hold a small rodeo in. Arranged about the room were many small pedestals, most holding gold object like cups or jeweled boxes. The noteworthy exception being the area near where Scootaloo and friends had entered the vault room. Here the void of display pedestals created a round clearing.

And it was along the edges of this otherwise clear space that the Wonderbolts were sprawled out on the floor. Spitfire and Soarin were slowly pulling themselves up while holding a hoof to their own chest, as if they’d each just taken a serious kick to the body. Rainbow Dash had landed beside the motionless Fleetfoot, closer to the small doorway that she and the fillies had entered through.

In the middle of the curricular space was Shining Armor. And wrapped in his magic aura was a white, metal staff topped with a clear crystal.

“What the hay is going on!” Dash demanded.

“Shining Armor… betrayed us…” Spitfire groaned between heavy breaths.

An evil smirk appeared on Shining Armor's face. “What’s going on is THIS!” As he said ‘this’ he slammed the staff to the ground, snapping the shaft in half and shattering the crystal at the top.

The instant the crystal shattered a pulse of prismatic light flashed outward. As it passed over Scootaloo the magic actually felt comforting. Yet it sent a shiver down her spine in the way that it confirmed that something good had just been destroyed.

Looking up from the shattered remnants of the staff, Shining Armor grinned and said, “Now that the Staff of True Light is gone, nothing can stop us!” With that his horn flared up one more time and he vanished in the flash of a teleportation spell.

“What- what happened?” Dash demanded looking at Spitfire and sounding slightly less angry then before.

Now on her hooves, Spitfire shook her head once before she answered.

“I’m not sure. One second we’re following him through the vault, and the next he spins around and blasts us. Fleetfoot knocked us away from the shot, but… she took the direct hit. How… is she?”

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and shook her head slowly as she held her fallen coworker.

“No pulse.”

Spitfire opened her mouth to utter a curse. Maybe she even did. But a sudden and loud rumble drowned out any sound that might have escaped her lips.

“What now! An earthquake?” she called out instead.

The captain didn’t really expect an answer to her question, but much to everypony’s surprise one did come. And it came in the form of the disembodied voice from the judgment room shouting back from down the hall.

“I’m afraid that would be the self destruction enchantment. It would seem your traitorous friend took the time to trigger it on his way out. I strongly advise you evacuate before this cavern comes crashing down on your heads.”

With little more than a nod, Soarin took Fleetfoot from Dash just in time for Spitfire to yell, “Everypony fly!”

Spitfire took off, though it was clear she was fighting through a great deal of pain in order to fly. Soarin followed as quickly as he could while carrying the fallen Wonderbolt in his grasp. And being the only healthy and unburdened Wonderbolt in the room, Rainbow Dash bolted for the fillies, where she scooped up Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle

As she was pulled away Sweetie reached out with her magic and grabbed the shattered remnants of the staff, bringing the crystal fragments with her. Although the shaft halves fell behind as she was unable to pull the heavier pieces at the speed she was being carried away.

Dash slowed for only a moment as she flicked her tail at Scootaloo and shouted, “Come on, Squirt! Move!”

The orange filly needed no further prompting to snap out of her stunned panic. She burst into a gallop and her wings buzzed to life adding thrust and allowing her to run far faster than any earth pony or unicorn could dream of moving.

Yet even injured, the ace pegasi of the Wonderbolts pulled away as they flew ahead of Scootaloo despite her impressive running speed. With the exception of Rainbow Dash, who was actually flying slower than she could precisely to make sure the third filly she’d promised to protect was still with her.

As they fled toward the landing platform the rumbling was getting worse. Cracks were forming in the walls and the sounds of things falling behind them joined the sounds of destruction around them.

By the time they arrived at the landing platform Soarin had already taken off. Also stalactites were now falling from the cavern ceiling. Rainbow Dash was quick to deposit the two fillies she had in the cockpit of Scootaloo’s plane before darting over to her own plane. And while Spitfire had had her engines glowing, she waited until she spotted the small orange pegasus scampering toward her own plane before throttling up and taking off.

With a soaring leap Scootaloo cleared the wing of her plane, hooked the rim of the cockpit with her hoof, and landed square in the pilot seat. She quickly started flipping switches, running through the start up process.

As the two planes stared rolling for take off, cracks began to form in the stonework floor of the platform. Yet with no other choice open to them, they both jammed their throttle in and sped up for takeoff anyway, just hoping the damage to their makeshift runway didn’t catch their landing gear before they could get off the ground. And by now chunks of the cave ceiling had joined the stalactites in raining down.

Scootaloo felt her jet plane take flight mere seconds before the platform crumbled away beneath her. Yet any relief she or Rainbow Dash might have felt from their nick-of-time takeoffs was crushed when they saw the pathway Spitfire had just left through collapse in her wake.

“What do we do now!” Scootaloo cried out over the radio.

“Follow me! I see another large opening on the other side of the chamber!”

“Do you even know where that goes? It wasn’t on the map Spitfire showed us!”

“No clue, Squirt! But anywhere is better than staying here!”

As if fate intended to punctuate Rainbow Dash’s point, a boulder fell from the ceiling and smashed Fleetfoot’s plane into the crumbling platform, releasing a flash of prismatic light as its fuel splashed out among the debris.

Not that Scootaloo had any choice in the matter. With no floodlight attached to her Mark 1, she could only follow Rainbow’s Mark 2 wherever it went anyway. And so the two planes flew down the unknown path as quickly as they could, weaving and dodging falling stones, all the while avoiding smashing into the sides of the tunnel with every sudden turn or dip in the path.

It was truly beyond Scootaloo how the elder pilot was managing to weave her way through the falling debris and navigate the tunnel, let alone choose which forks in the path to take while miraculously not leading them to smash into a dead end path. It was all the filly could do just to follow the glow of the lead plane’s lights and pray that she didn’t get hit by anything along the way at these speeds.

Then they rounded a bend and saw the light of day.

Hope turned to horror as Scootaloo saw a stalactite impale the right wing of Rainbow Dash’s aircraft.

Dash clearly fought with the controls for a second, but as soon as her plane cleared the mouth of the cave, a prismatic motion blur proved that she'd abandoned her plane and taken flight on her own wings.

At the same time the cave collapsed completely just behind Scootaloo’s plane, launching it out of the cave in a blast of dust and dirt. She emerged from the dust cloud just in time to see Dash’s plane smash into the rolling hills that made up either side of the wide valley outside the cave.

As much as she wanted to breathe a sigh of relief when she spotted Rainbow Dash soaring high and to the side as her Mark 1 zoomed passed the blue pegasus, she couldn’t.

“Scootaloo, why’d it get so quiet?” Apple Bloom asked, clearly having perceived the problem Scootaloo already felt.

In return the young pegasus in the pilot seat flipped all of the switches to the off position and repeated the started up process.

“Scootaloo?!”

Frowning, she finally answered her friend. “No good. We lost the engine. Buckle up, this is going to be a bumpy landing.”

Thankfully the electrical systems worked well enough to get the landing gear down and the flaps in a landing configuration. All that was left now was to hope the grassy fields of the valley were as smooth as they looked, or at the very least, that they'd luck out and avoid hitting any large rocks or holes with the landing gear when they landed.

They touched down and for a good three seconds Scootaloo was able to slow the plane normally. Then her worst fear came true. One of the landing gear hit something and snapped clean off. As the plane fell the shifting of the weight put impossible stress on the two remaining struts and they too ripped off at the first less than perfectly smooth patch of ground to add to the stresses on them.

Fillies screamed and the plane rattled like mad as it went sliding down the field on its belly, rocking back and forth violently every time one of the wings bounced off the ground.

Finally the plane came to a stop. And it do so a good three seconds before the two fillies in the back seat stopped screaming and realized that they were going to be okay.

Scootaloo opened her eyes to look out at the world through the cracked lenses on her goggles. Several more instances of cracked glass on the instrument panel told the story of how she got the massive headache she had right now. And yet, the more she looked around, the more the pain of her body ceased to matter, the more it was eclipsed by an even greater pain.

Rainbow Dash tapped gingerly on the canopy, as the twisting of its frame had cracked the glass.

As Scootaloo did nothing but stare blankly into space, Apple Bloom released the latches and helped Dash slide the canopy open.

“Is everypony alright?” the Wonderbolt asked as she hovered above the fillies.

“Ah think so. We’re all alive at least.”

The aircraft was without question in a sorry state. While the warping of the frame wasn’t too bad, many of the skin panels had been cut, bent, or outright ripped off. Not a single pane of glass had escaped un-cracked or unbroken. And of course there was the whole landing gear stopping a good hundred feet sooner than the rest of the plane thing.

Looking the airplane over and coming to the obvious conclusion, Rainbow Dash said, “Come on, let’s fly, I can carry these two.” She motioned to Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle as she finished talking.

“I can’t fly.”

Misunderstanding the young pegasus’ response and looking to how low the sun was on the horizon, Dash replayed, “Yeah, our planes are shot. But if we leave now we can probably get back to HQ with our own feathered wings before nightfall.”

“I can’t fly,” Scootaloo repeated, this time her voice was cracking and a tear came rolling down her cheek. “My wings don’t give me the sky,” she continued, her voice turning pain into rage to steady itself. “Only dad’s wings! These wings!” She tapped a hoof on the frame of the cockpit in the direction of the jet plane’s wings. “And unlike you, I can’t just go back to base and get assigned a new plane! This was it! And… and it’s ruined… I’m ruined…” The anger in Scootaloo’s voice lessened as what she’d said sank in, the sound of despair returned as she continued, “It’s all over. I’ll… I’ll never fly again…”

With that, she curled up into a ball right there in the pilot seat and began sobbing.

Apple Bloom tried to reach forward to comfort her friend, but Rainbow Dash put her own hoof in the way and shook her head. “There’s no point wasting your breath when they’re beyond listening.”

Scootaloo was only loosely aware of what was happening around her as she cried her heart out. All she really knew was that she felt the presence of Rainbow Dash leave after saying something. Then after a while, when it started to get dark, she felt somepony drape a blanket over her before she truly fell asleep.

Chapter 13: Take These Broken Wings…

Scootaloo awoke shortly after sunrise. Opening her eyes was all it took for the pain in her heart to return. But with her tears spent the evening before, all her pain could force her to do this morning was give a sad sigh at the sight of her mangled plane around her.

On a more welcome note she found a candy bar sitting on the seat cushion right in front of her. It was one of hers from the supply bag she kept in the back of the plane. No doubt Sweetie or Bloom had put in there after retrieving some of the snacks for themselves.

With more then the needed hours of a good night’s sleep behind her, the filly’s body was eager to get up and start moving around. But at first her mind couldn’t find the will to obey her body’s urging. Slowly she gave in enough to reach out and take the chocolate, caramel and peanut candy bar. When looking at it had annoyed her body long enough she gave in to unwrapping it and finally having breakfast.

The sound of two softly snoring fillies told Scootaloo where her friends were, and that they’d probably raided the supplies looking for dinner rather than breakfast. Moving on, her ears searched for anything else that might prod her mind into getting up. In a way part of her was hoping to find a sign of Rainbow Dash. But she failed to hear anything that said the adult was still nearby.

With that her heart sank and she returned to being a lump on a log. Or in this case a lump on a seat cushion.

That was until she noticed an annoying grinding sound. It was as if something heavy was being dragged along the ground for a second, then silence, then another scoot grinding more dirt underneath it. The fact that the sound was so stop-and-go proved more annoying than the sound itself. Then there was the realization that the sound was coming closer, sparking curiosity to add to the sensations trying to rouse the filly from her melancholy.

Finally giving in, Scootaloo rose. She had to stand up on her hind legs and put her front hooves on the rim of the cockpit to stand tall enough to see out. A part of her wanted to cringe on seeing just how banged up the wings of her plane were for the first time. Yet it was happy words that escaped her lips.

“Rainbow Dash! You came back!”

Her joyful tone shifted to a more questioning one as she beheld the ropes that once belonged to a parachute wrapped around Rainbow’s body and leading to a large sheet of metal that was currently being used like a sled to carry three landing gear struts.

“What are you doing?”

“I know for a fact that this plane was a lot worse off after your dad crashed it. So I figured if you could get that pile of scrap flying again, fixing this up should be a breeze for you!”

“But I did that in town!” she said, gesturing to the endless fields of grass and a nearby river that were the only things in line of sight in the mountain valley. “Where I could buy parts, and tools!”

Rainbow Dash shrugged and looked back toward the collapsed cave, or more precisely the crash site of her Lightning Bolt Mark 2 near by it.

“We got two crashed planes, and between them three broken engines. Any bets that’s enough parts to get this one flying again? So what do you say?”

Scootaloo was tempted to ask about tools, but if her snacks had survived the crash so had the wrench and screwdriver. A smile slowly spread across her face. Then she looked up and answered with something she’d heard her dad say many times, “There is no problem you can’t engineer a solution to.”

* * * * * * *

Rainbow Dash made several more trips to the crash site of her aircraft to scavenge parts throughout the day.

Scootaloo accompanied her on one of those trips after searching her plane so she could tell Dash what parts she thought she needed from the fallen Mark 2 to fix her Mark 1. After that Scoots stayed with her plane putting things in place as Rainbow brought the replacement parts in.

Apple Bloom put her earth pony muscle to use when needed but spent most of the time swapping out torn-up sheets of metal on the wings with more useable sheets from other places, or otherwise banging out dents as best she could.

Lunch had come from some berry bushes near the river that, as Dash had put it, ‘They haven’t killed me yet, so I don’t think they’re poisonous.’

As fate would have it Rainbow Dash had once been a skilled enough weather pony to make her own rainbow fountain and thus her own liquid rainbow. Although she pointed out that what she was able to make from the small cloud array she’s whipped up was low quality stuff compared to what a real rainbow factory could put out with a proper cloud crystal array, it would give a much shorter flight time than good quality liquid rainbow, it should be more than enough to get off the ground and get back to the C.S. Cloudsdale.

The heat of the day had passed by the time Scootaloo crawled out of the engine compartment and didn’t ask for anything. Instead she looked around with a look in her eyes that made it clear that she considered her job complete and was more interested in how the others were doing.

Seeing this Rainbow Dash asked, “Are we ready?”

The filly’s purple eyes looked around. There were dozens of holes in the skin of the body of the plane, but the wings were as good as they were going to get with what they had available to them. Half the instrument panel probably didn’t work. The flaps were jammed in the full up position, so she basically didn’t have flaps. And the fuel lines were more pegasus tape than original material. The plane was a mess and would only have a fraction of its original capability, but it should fly.

Turning her eyes to Apple Bloom, she asked, “How’s the runway?”

Bloom gestured toward two piles of rocks in the distance. “Ah did the best I can out to those rock piles, after that Ah can’t promise there ain’t any big rocks in the grass.”

Scootaloo gave a nod. That would be enough room to take off. And that only left one question.

“How about you, Rainbow Dash? Think we have enough fuel to get somewhere?”

Hovering up to the small cloud with the makeshift rainbow fountain she’d whipped up, she examined the pool of liquid rainbow and said, “Seeing as this is low quality stuff, I’d say we can get maybe two hours out of this. They should still be fixing HQ, so that should be more then enough to get over the mountain and back to base.”

“Then yeah, we’re ready.”

As everypony was climbing into to the plane Sweetie Belle pulled Scootaloo aside. And with a mixture of hope and sadness on her face she said, “Scootaloo, I’m I know I’m not any good with all this machines stuff, but I wanted to help anyway. But since I couldn’t, I wanted to make something for you instead.”

With that she used her magic to present Scootaloo with her spare goggles. Only now, Sweetie had attached the crystal fragments from the shattered staff to the lenses, making a four-pointed star formation in front of the lenses.

Scootaloo’s eyes went wide with borderline panic as she looked over her modified goggles. At the moment she couldn't care less that the modifications made her spare goggles look as silly as those star framed tourist glasses one might find in Applewood. No, her thoughts immediately went to the fact that her main goggles were broken to the point that their enchantment had faded.

Quickly grasping the goggles, the young pegasus pleaded, “Please tell me the enchantment still works!”

Sweetie’s green eyes went wide as she realized her mistake. Donning a sheepish smile she answered, “I don’t know, I didn’t even think about that!”

“Sweetie Belle! I broke my main goggles in the crash! If these don’t work, I won’t be able to pilot my plane!” Scootaloo said as she scrabbled up into the cockpit.

“I’m sorry! I just wanted to help! I’ll buy you some new ones once we get back to Ponyville, I promise!” Sweetie cried, and then held her breath as she watched the orange pegasus put the goggles on.

Scootaloo breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did I mess them up?” Sweetie asked timidly.

“No. Everything’s all rainbowy but they still work.”

As her answer had told, as she looked around, Scootaloo found that having the crystals on the lenses made looking through the goggles like looking through a prism. Every point of glare became a rainbow, and everypony seemed to glow. And while her plane appeared to be a faint, transparent rainbow, it was still transparent.

Rainbow Dash took a moment to ruffle Sweetie Belle’s mane and said, “Even if you had messed them up, I’m big enough to not need magic goggles to pilot a jet plane. Only you short stuffs need something like that.”

The young unicorn relaxed a little with the realization that there was a plan B available. But she still felt compelled to apologize again for her shortsightedness and promise to buy Scootaloo a proper replacement.

With everypony else piled in the back, (Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle in the back seat, while Rainbow Dash stood in the space between the seats, holding onto the back of the front seat.) the moment of truth came. Scootaloo flipped through the switches and everypony held their breath until they heard the hum of the engine coming to life.

After joining in a collective sigh of relief, Scootaloo pushed the throttle in and pointed the airplane down the makeshift runway Apple Bloom had cleared of rocks. The plane rattled its way down the dirt and grass runway and, thanks to the many holes in the sides of the plane, the wind in the cabin built up. Then their bumpy ride smoothed as the wheels left the ground to the cheers of everypony on board.

The flight had been slow and uneventful. Scootaloo had simply gained altitude until they were high enough to get over the ridges to the north. Once on the north side of the mountain ridge they were able to spot the C.S. Cloudsdale limping slowly in the direction of the actual city of Cloudsdale. Rainbow Dash borrowed Scootaloo’s light gun and singled their request to land, which was promptly granted and they soon found themselves landing aboard the Wonderbolt’s flying carrier.

Chapter 14: Spies Aboard

They had expected a commotion aboard the Cloudsdale due to the ongoing repairs, so no pony was surprised to find that there was a cargo plane parked on the top deck, and several strangers about helping with said repairs.

As soon as they’d been parked, Rainbow Dash jumped out and asked the nearest pony if Spitfire had returned yet. They confirmed that Spitfire and Soarin had returned the previous day and were currently preparing a proper funeral for Fleetfoot.

The whole time Rainbow Dash had been talking, Scootaloo had been gawking at what she saw the minute she’d climbed out of her plane. Namely a strange bug-like pony. His skin was a black chitin shell, his eyes were blue orbs and he had bug-like, transparent wings on his back and a jagged horn on head. And to top it all off, the lower half of his legs sported holes that further made his appearance unnerving.

Yet the thing that bothered Scoots the most was that fact that no pony else seemed to notice this type of pony that she wasn’t even sure was a pony, or even care that he was working on the plane next to hers.

With Dash’s conversation seemingly over, Scootaloo asked, “What IS that?”

The elder pegasus tilted her head askew after tracing where the filly’s hoof was pointing. “Crescent? He’s the equipment manger. I thought you already knew him.”

Scootaloo blinked. The creature she was looking at was clearly not a pegasus, let alone the equipment manager. The prismatic glare coming off of every light and shiny surface reminded her of her current eyewear. Pushing her crystal infused goggled up she looked again and saw the brown stallion she knew.

Doing a double take, she lowered and raised the goggles a few more times. Looking at him without the goggles he was clearly the pegasus equipment manager. But looking at him through the crystal fused lenses he was clearly something else entirely.

While never taking her eyes off of the pony who wasn’t a pony, she finally took the goggles off, held them out, and said, “Rainbow Dash, you might wanna see this.”

Dash took the goggles. But she didn’t so much put them on as she dangled them in front of her and tilted her head slightly to look through them. Her eyes widened when she looked at Crescent through the goggles’ lenses. Just like the filly before her, the Wonderbolt pilot did a series of double takes, looking both through and not through the goggles’ lenses.

Yet even as she did so all the pieces fell into place in Dash mind. The Staff of True Light, Shining Armor’s betrayal, Gilda’s suspicions. They all pointed to one thing, and they all gave Rainbow Dash the sneaking suspicion that the Staff of True Light had been able to see through illusions, and now Sweetie Belle had accidentally recaptured the staff’s power by fussing its crystal’s fragments to Scootaloo’s goggles.

Suddenly, Dash tossed the goggles back to Scootaloo and pounced.

“Traitor!” she yelled as she clobbered the equipment manager.

That was about the same moment Spitfire came into the hanger. Naturally she demanded to know what was going on. Much to her dismay Dash seemed to ignore her and continued to wrestle the stallion to the floor. It was Scootaloo who responded by running over and offering her a pair of goggles with comically aligned crystals attached to the lenses.

“Use these!” the filly offered.

Unfurling her wings, Spitfire hooked the goggles on the tip of her wing and then dangled them in front of her face. Much like Dash, she didn’t bother putting them on and just looked through one of the lenses as they dangled just in front of her muzzle.

“What the heck?” she muttered, as she saw the same dark form replace the stallion everypony knew as the equipment manager.

After a few double takes and looking at everypony else in the room with them, she turned to Scootaloo and asked, “What’s with these goggles?”

“Sweetie Belle modified them with the crystal from the Staff of True Light,” Rainbow Dash said. Then looking to the creature she had pinned down she added, “And you just condemned yourself! I felt the way you reacted to that! You ARE a spy working with Shining Armor!”

With Dash’s words, Spitfire made the connection and her eyes widened with fear.

“This isn’t good. We could be surrounded and we wouldn’t know it!”

Then she stopped and thought for a moment. First she had the imposter taken to the brig. Then she tossed the goggles to Rainbow Dash and said, “We need to search the ship for others now! But I can’t go around with something that goofy on. Everypony would know something was up the instant they saw me with those on.”

Rainbow Dash looked at the goggles again. With the four-pointed star formation of the crystals fused to the lenses they really did look like the sort of thing only a tourist would wear. A tourist or…

“You’re right, chief. Only a filly could wear something like this without drawing attention to themselves. And they are your goggles, Squirt,” she added as she gave them back to Scootaloo. Then looking back to her captain with a sinister grin, Dash added, “And you know… With all the repairs going on, it’s not like the captain of the Wonderbolts has anything better to do then finally give our guests a full tour of our flagship.”

Spitfire returned the grin.

* * * * * * *

The tour found two more bug-like ponies among the staff of the C.S. Cloudsdale.

“Changelings, we’re called changelings,” the imposter previously known as Crescent said in response to Rainbow Dash’s more recent attempt at interrogation.

“Good, now we’re getting somewhere. Now why were you spying on us for Shining Armor!”

The three changelings tossed questioning looks at each other before the one who’d spoken before answered, “If he was one of ours he didn’t bother to mention it to me.” The other two made similar responses.

“And yet, you knew exactly what the Staff of True Light was! But I’d never heard of it before he said it! No pony I know has ever heard of it!”

“You’d be hard pressed to find a changeling that doesn’t know about the one pony artifact that can reveal our true forms,” the changeling captives’ chosen spokesman offered.

Stepping forward, Spitfire said, “I don’t believe you. But if we pretend I did and you weren’t spying on us, then why are you here?”

“We’re a harvesting team.” The questioning look from the ponies in the room prompted the changeling to continue. “Changelings feed on love. That’s what we harvest. Why do you think we’re the three most appreciated ponies aboard the ship?”

“Most appreciated? Wouldn’t that be the captain?” Rainbow Dash asked.

The changeling smiled and, in a flash of green fire, briefly retook the form of Crescent. “Come now, like most of the pilots, even you have a special fondness for the pony who keeps your plane working.”

“Or the pony who notices when you’ve had a hard day and whips up a dinner that reminds you of home,” the changeling who’d been the ship’s head chef said.

“Or the nurse who tends the wounded with a gentle touch,” added the last changeling.

Dash backed away from the holding cell with a sudden look of confusion in her eyes.

“Wait, so all you’re trying to do is make ponies happy?”

“Your happiness is irrelevant,” the changeling that seemed to be the leader of the three said. “We just need you to send love our way so we can feed on it without your noticing.”

As the conversation had been going on Spitfire’s eyes had been narrowing into a scowl. “I think the better question is, where are my actual crew?” she said accusingly.

Caught off guard the changeling paused for a moment, the way one does when they need to think out an answer because they don’t think the true, snap answer will go well. Yet at the same time the ponies had seen that this creature was taking way too long to give the answer that he gave.

Almost as if he knew that, the changeling sheepishly answered, “What makes you think that there were other ponies to begin with?”

“You forgot my dad.”

All eyes fell to the orange filly who’d spoken. Shifting her gaze to Dash, Scootaloo continued, “Rainbow Dash, didn’t you say my dad was friends with the equipment manager?”

The elder pegasus nodded. “Yeah, I got that impression. He was always hanging out with the ponies he could talk engineering with, instead of us dumb pilots that only knew how to fly planes.”

Scootaloo looked back to the changeling who wore the name Crescent and said, “Yet when I met you, you said my dad spent more time with the pilots then you engineers. It’s almost like you forgot you were supposed to be friends with somepony who died before you replaced the real Crescent.”

Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash shot accusing looks at the changelings inside the holding cell. Spitfire’s glare returned to deadly levels. The changelings backed away from the front of the cage with as nervous and fearful a look as one might expect from those who’d been caught in a lie to someone that you really shouldn’t lie to.

And then the door to the brig swung open.

“Captain!”

Spinning to face the newcomer, Spitfire’s gaze fell on an innocent victim. “What’s so important that you’d interrupt an interrogation?” she demanded.

“Urgent message from Canterlot, Ma’am!” the Wonderbolt communications officer said. “It’s the Crystal Empire! They declared war on Equestria!”

Chapter 15: The Cutie Mark Crusaders

Three months had passed since Scootaloo’s adventure with the Wonderbolts. Once war had been declared, she’d been sent back to Ponyville with Rainbow Dash in tow so she could borrow Scoots’ goggles as soon as she was done using them to fly her plane. With the goggles in her possession, Dash met up with Spitfire in Canterlot, and they presented their report regarding Shining Armor and the changelings to Princess Celestia. Naturally they then used the goggles to search the staff of the royal castle and the command structure of military for any changeling spies.

Once back in Ponyville, Sweetie Belle made good on her promise to get a replacement pair of enchanted goggles for Scootaloo. Apple Bloom was promptly grounded for a week for skipping town without permission. And Scootaloo set about giving her plane some proper repairs now that she was somewhere she could buy parts and materials.

Much to Scootaloo’s surprise, Rainbow Dash actually returned the Goggles of True Light the next time she came to Ponyville. And she even stayed in town for a week, offering what help she could to the filly pilot in finishing up the repairs on her jet plane.

As for the war, it had been fought to a stalemate. With Celestia convinced that changelings were the source of the attacks on both nations’ caravans, she refused to enter Crystal Empire territory. However King Sombra rejected Celestia’s explanations and led several attacks into Equestria only to be pushed back to his own borders by the larger and more resource-rich nation’s forces.

But all of that was not the concern of Scootaloo’s here and now.

Yesterday she’d made a decision. And today was the time to follow through on that decision. With her airplane in as good a condition as it was going to get, thanks to what Rarity and her mother had paid her, for the first time since she’d become an orphan, Scootaloo didn’t feel any immediate need to be out earning money. And that meant that for the first time in a long time she was free to do what a filly her age should be doing. Going to school.

Her wings buzzed softly as she rolled along the cobblestone road leading to the schoolhouse and let the cool morning air flow around her body. The bell was ringing as she rode down the path to the schoolhouse. She rolled onto school property just in time to see the last tail disappear into the schoolhouse. Setting her scooter aside, she rushed up and opened the door mere seconds after the last schoolpony had closed it.

“Oh? Oh! Hello, Scootaloo!” Cheerilee greeted the unexpected late arrival. The pink mare with the two lighter shades of pink mane then motioned to an empty seat and added, “You’re always welcome.”

“Well, well, well, the dropout finally came crawling back,” said a pink filly whose two-tone mane was faded purple and white.

Most of the class gasped at the putdown.

“Diamond Tiara!” Apple Bloom snarled.

Cheerilee put a hoof on Scootaloo’s back, stopping her from leaving the front of the room. When the filly looked back she found a devious smile growing on the teacher’s face.

“You know, I just realized that I was going to teach a math lesson today.” The teacher’s declaration drew a few disappointed groans from the class, yet she continued, "And I recall you asking me to tutor you on that so you could handle your business transactions yourself. Seeing as you already know what I was going to teach, why don’t you teach today’s lesson, Scootaloo?"

The pegasus filly looked back at the teacher in stunned silence.

Yet, Cheerilee only added, “Why don’t you start with percentages?”

The sly grin spread to Scootaloo.

* * * * * * *

The bell sounded and class let out for the day.

“Congratulations, Diamond Tiara, You just got schooled by a dropout,” Cheerilee said as the filly in question neared her desk on the way out.

With a huff she answered, “It’s not like I learned anything.”

With a bit of a grin the mare countered, “The fact that you actually got the percentage and conversion ratio questions right this week says otherwise.”

Diamond Tiara folded her ears and left with an embarrassed grumble.

After having watched that spectacle, three friends were the last young ponies to leave the schoolhouse.

“Ah thought that went well!” Apple Bloom said with a smile.

Scootaloo turned to look at her own flank. “Guess I’m not cut out to be a teacher, still no cutie mark. Although I can’t say I’m surprised. Standing up there at the front of the class all day wasn’t fun. The only time I want everypony looking at me is when they’re cheering for me because I just won a race or something.” A shiver ran down her spine. “But when they’re all just looking at me like they expect me to have all the answers or something… no thanks.”

“Yeah I can see why you might not like that. But even so, recess is a lot more fun with two friends!” Sweetie Belle chimed in cheerfully. Then she added, “So what are we going to do today?”

Apple Bloom answered, “Same thing we do every day, Sweetie.”

“Try to take over the world?”

The other two fillies, turned to look at their unicorn friend.

Then after a moment Apple Bloom said, “You say the weirdest stuff sometimes.”

“Sue me, I’ve only had three months practice at being normal!” she answered and all three laughed it off. Once they’d conquered the latest round of giggles, Sweetie Belle said, “Anyway, as far as earning our cutie marks go, I was thinking we could try bowling. Normal ponies do that, right?”

Apple Bloom nodded, but said, “Yeah, but I’m not sure. Didn’t Mr. Kingpin leave to go fight in the war? Ah haven’t seen him at market in forever! Is the bowling alley even still open?”

Scootaloo shrugged. “Can’t hurt to go check. Worst thing that can happen is finding the doors locked when we get there. But that’s going to have to wait a bit. I need to go home first. So I can check and see if I have any work waiting for me.”

“That’s perfect!” Sweetie said, with her eyes lighting up. “We need to drop off our schoolbooks anyway, so we’ll meet back up at your place, Scoots!”

At first Apple Bloom was as curious about Sweetie’s expression as Scootaloo, but then the young unicorn shot a wink at her farm friend. While this only confused Scoots all the more, Bloom suddenly smiled.

“Oh!” the yellow filly said with her eye lighting up in the same way Sweetie Belle’s had. “We’ll drop off our school stuff and catch up with ya at yer place, Scoot!”

With that Scootaloo’s friends scattered. Sweetie scampering off to the southeast, toward the gondola station that connected the southeast ridge to the town in the valley. Apple Bloom galloped off toward the southwest bridge that connected the central mesa to the mesa her family farm was on.

This left Scootaloo standing atop her scooter, pondering what she’d just witnessed. There was clearly some hidden understanding between her friends. With a smile, she chuckled at the thought of just how far Sweetie Belle had come. Three months ago, the unicorn couldn’t claim to have a friend. Now she and Apple Bloom had been going to school together long enough to have a secret together.

Then the young pegasus sighed. Those same three months that she’d spent repairing her plane and getting her courier pilot business back up and running. Sure, she’d spent slow days playing with her friends and trying to earn their cutie marks from time to time, but sometimes Applejack needed a mechanic, or she’d spend the day working on her plane or fulfilling a pilot job. And all of that had meant Sweetie had had the time to become better friends with Apple Bloom than with her. No wonder they could have secrets without her these days.

She sighed again as she started flapping her wings, getting her scooter rolling again. What choice did she have? The money she’d earned from Rarity and her mother might last a while, but it wouldn’t last forever. And it wasn’t like she could just stop being Applejack’s mechanic, or she’d need to find a more reliable one who would be available when she needed it and not just when they felt like working. And on top of that, the piloting business was still so slow that she clearly still needed to build her reputation as a contract pilot, so she couldn’t afford to turn down those jobs when they came up either.

Pointing her scooter toward the northwest bridge, she brought her wings up to speed and zoomed off toward the valley cliffs that led up to Ponyville’s airport.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo crested the last ridge of the zig-zag road that came up the valley cliff side and let herself roll to a stop. For a moment she looked out over the valley, lingering in the sight of the town built on the mesas and cliffs above the forest within that valley. From this vantage point one would never know that half the town was missing because it’d marched off to war.

Flying had the same effect, really. It too got you far enough above everything to make the flaws of the world below too insignificant to notice. Or maybe it was just distance that did that, regardless of direction.

Shaking the idle thoughts from her mind, the orange filly brought her wings back to life and set out once again. Zooming past the large, open, hanger-like building that housed a heavy cargo lift, she zipped onward toward the airport proper.

When she arrived at her hanger, an eyebrow went up as she found the personnel door wasn’t locked. The young pegasus cautiously pushed the door open. Then a smile graced her face as it was hard to miss the small cloud that had been parked next to the suspended room she called home, or the blue pegasus sleeping on said cloud.

“Rainbow Dash!” The youthful cry roused the sleeping mare. “What are you doing here?” Scootaloo added happily once the mare looked awake enough to actually hear her. Slightly more warily she added, “Shouldn’t you be off fighting a war alongside the other Wonderbolts?”

Dash put on her signature confident smile and said, “We’ve got a new mission.”

“We?”

“Yep! Celestia thinks she’s found a way to convince King Sombra that we aren’t making up the whole changelings story, no matter how stubborn he’s being about it. We just need to find something first. And that’s why we need you!”

Dash’s little speech might have convinced the filly that she was important if not for a sudden third voice that joined the conversation.

“Actually we just need the goggles fashioned from the Staff of True Light. You’re the one who insisted on hiring a filly to be on an archeological search party,” the new speaker said as she stepped out from behind a supply crate.

The mare was a purple unicorn. Her mane was a darker shade of purple and had a lighter purple and a pink stripe through it. The mane style was straight combed, straight cut, making it very simple and very plain and practically screaming ‘librarian.’

“Who’s this?” Scootaloo asked the obvious question.

“Oh! This is Twilight Sparkle! She’s the egghead who knows what we’re looking for.”

“I’m not an egghead, I’m well read!” Twilight protested her introduction.

“Whatever you say, chief. Why don’t you tell her about the mission already?”

The unicorn rolled her eyes. But then she pulled a book from her saddlebags and levitated it out anyway. She opened it to a page that showed a picture of the staff as it had been before it was shattered, cleared her throat and began speaking.

“There are many legends about magic artifacts. The only one that speaks of the Staff of True Light says that it was created as one of a set of three artifacts. And while a year ago I personally thought this story to be false, the discovery of the staff means that the other two artifacts also likely exist. Although, for our purposes, we’re only interested in the second of the three artifacts.

“According to the legend, the second artifact is the Tranquility Stone. It also says that the Staff of True Light is the only way through the labyrinth that guards the Tranquility Stone. Needless to say, even though the staff has been destroyed, the goggles you have would likely still be powerful enough to guide somepony through that labyrinth, and the extremely powerful illusion spells likely within it.

“Finally, one of the legends states that the labyrinth that holds the Tranquility Stone is hidden in the Temple of the Earth. Of course ancient earth ponies built many shrines, and none of the known ones are said temple. But, thanks to my research, I think I might know where it is. I just need to follow up on some clues I found to be sure.”

“Temple of the Earth? You’re in luck, Ah know what that is!”

The new voice drew everypony’s attention to the doorway where Scootaloo’s friends now stood. Although Scoots couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow when she saw the Sweetie had only traded one set of saddlebags for another rather than coming unburdened like Bloom had.

“You do?” Twilight asked of the yellow filly.

Apple Bloom paused for a moment as she searched her mind. Then she blushed slightly and corrected her previous assertion, “Okay, maybe Ah don’t remember exactly where Granny Smith said it was. But Ah do remember that one of her stories was about the time she went to the Temple of the Earth.”

* * * * * * *

One thing lead to another and, before anypony was entirely sure how, they found themselves having been invited to dinner at the Apple Family’s home.

Granny Smith, an elderly, green earth pony mare with amber eyes, a gray mane going on white and the cutie mark of an apple pie, sat at the head of the dinner table. Along one side of the table sat Big Macintosh, a red earth pony stallion with a sandy blond mane, green eyes and a cutie mark of a green apple half. Next to him was Applejack and next to her was Apple Bloom. On the guest side of the table Twilight Sparkle sat nearest Granny Smith, then Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle.

The table itself held a bounty of food, mostly fruits, vegetables, and a great deal of apple pastries. Unsurprisingly, apple cider and juice were the drinks of the day at the apple farm. The nearby fireplace crackled softly, filling the room with both warmth and light. The fading light of the setting sun did what it could to add some light from the windows, but as it dimmed the Apple Family’s dinning room took on the feel of a homely inn.

As dinner wound down and Granny Smith shared her story, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle pulled Scootaloo off to the side.

“What’s up?” the young pegasus asked before taking another sip of apple juice and joining her friends by the fireplace.

“Well, Apple Bloom and I were thinking that the three of us have been trying to earn our cutie marks for three months now and, well…” Sweetie tossed a glance at her still blank flank. “Since it’s looking like we might be at this awhile… we thought we could make a club of it.”

“A club?” Scootaloo asked with a curiously raised eyebrow.

“Yeah! A club, like our own secret society! One dedicated to helping ponies earn their cutie marks! Apple Bloom even thought of a name!”

“Yeah, the Cutie Mark Crusaders!” Bloom chimed in.

A smile found its way on to Scootaloo’s face. “I’m liking this idea!”

“Perfect!” Sweetie cheered. Then her horn lit up with a light green glow. “To make it official, I made capes!” she added as her magic pulled three purplish-red capes from her saddlebags. Her magic quickly guided one of the capes to herself while sending the other two to the backs of her friends.

As Sweetie’s magic tied the tops of the capes, securing them loosely around the necks of their wearers, Scootaloo noticed that the capes had blue shield crests positions on them so that the crest would rest where a cutie mark would be when the cape was resting in a neutral position. As for the shield crest, it had a yellow silhouette of a pony standing in an adventurous stance.

Looking to her friends, Scoots couldn’t help be smile. The three of them really did look like a team now.

“Say, was there a reason you decided to do this now?”

Apple Bloom blushed slightly, then answered, “We felt like we needed a way remind ya that we consider you an important part of our team, no matter how often your life may make you skip out on hanging out with us. That and Ah may have mentioned to Sweetie Belle that it looked like you felt like you were missing out a few days ago. So we wanted something to remind ya that we’re friends no matter what!”

“Thank you,” Scootaloo said as she pulled her friends in close.

While the young pegasus had only pulled her friends in close, they wasted no time finishing the gesture by wrapping their front legs around their friend in a hug.

The three fillies basked in the moment for a few seconds before their youthful curiosity drew their attention to the most interesting thing still happening in the room, the conversation back at the dinner table.

“So, Granny Smith, do you think you could take us to the cave where you found the temple?” Twilight asked.

“Wait, y’all planning on actually going to that there temple?” A nod answered the elder pony’s question. “Well, Ah reckon Ah’m getting a bit old to be walk’n around a forest where Timberwolves prowl. Although ya can see it from the edge o’ this here mesa, so Ah can point her out to ya.”

“Wait! You can see it from here?” Apple Bloom piped up.

“Well, ya would be able to see it from here if not for all them trees in the way. Ah suppose it’s easier to see the edge o’ this here mesa from the cave than see the cave from here. Being easier to see through the trees up close and all.” Granny looked to the window and the young night beyond it. Then she looked back to Twilight Sparkle and finished by saying, “Why don’t y’all come back in the morning, and Ah’ll point ya in the right direction.”

Agreements were made and conversations carried on a little longer before those who didn’t live on the Apple Family’s farm retreated to their homes. Or rather the fillies retreated to their homes. Twilight Sparkle returned to the hotel room she’d rented earlier. Rainbow Dash actually returned to Scootaloo’s hanger and whipped up a cloud tent on the opposite side of the hanger from the room Scootaloo used like a home.

* * * * * * *

With the light of the morning sun shining down on them, the Apple Family and their visitors stood along the southwest edge of the mesa, while Granny Smith walked back and forth.

“There she is!” Granny called out as she finally came to a stop and pointed a hoof out to the canyon beyond the ledge.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash quickly moved to her side and looked out to try to see where the elder pony was pointing.

“Near that stone pillar?” Twilight commented, taking notice of a natural stone column that rose out of the forest in the direction Granny Smith was pointing.

“Naw, ya silly fillies! Open yer eyes! That there pillar is just the needle that points the way through the ring!”

Twilight’s eyes widened at the mention of the ‘needle’ and ‘ring.’ Clearly that clicked with something she knew.

Looking again, those gathered around Granny Smith saw that, well beyond the pillar, near an eastward bend that took the valley out of sight was a natural arch that connected one side of the valley to another stone pillar in the canyon’s middle. The void space of the arch was a near perfect circle and, from where Granny was standing, the top of the first pillar they’d seen appeared to be dead center in that ring. Almost like an aircraft’s gun sight.

Although, that last thought only came to the two pilots present. However such a thought wasn’t needed for Twilight to get the idea anyway.

“So, somewhere in the trees, at the bend in the canyon then?”

Granny Smith nodded. “Sure is. Though Ah don’t remember thinking it was part of the far canyon wall. Ah think it was just near it, in its own outcropping or some such thing like that.”

“Hmm…” Twilight mused as she looked out at the area that had been pointed out. “At this distance that gives us a search area of about a square mile. Still that’s better than searching the whole forest. Thank you for your help, Granny Smith!”

“Don’t mention it. But Ah can’t let y’all go galloping on into that there Everfree Forest when yer only local is just a filly who ain’t even familiar with it. Applejack, could ya go with them?”

“Me?” she answered her grandma. “But what about-”

Before she could finish, Granny Smith motioned the farm mare over to her. After obeying, Granny whispered in her ear. While Scootaloo couldn’t tell what she said, whatever it was made Applejack glance at Apple Bloom.

When they were done whispering to each other, Applejack said, “All right. Ah’ll be their guide.”

With that they set out. Although they didn’t get more that a few steps past the farmhouse before Applejack asked her little sister, “Just where in tarnation do you think you’re going?”

“With you! Duh! We crusaders gotta stick together now that we’re a team!” Bloom answered, motioning to her friends.

“No. You ain’t. You heard Granny. The Everfree Forest isn’t a place fillies should be. And besides, it’s a school day! You got someplace else to be!”

“But Scootaloo’s going!”

“She ain’t got no pony left who can tell her what to do! But you do! And Ah’m telling you, go to your room and stay there until it’s time to go to school!”

“That’s not fair!”

“Life ain’t always fair, Sugarcube. In fact it’s rarely fair. Now GET!”

Chapter 16: Crusade to the Temple of the Earth

Naturally, the first thing Applejack did to prepare for the trip was head over to Sweetie Belle’s home and make sure the filly had permission to go on a dangerous adventure. Much to her surprise, and disappointment, Sweetie’s mother had answered by saying, “Whatever she wants to do is fine.” The thing that bothered AJ the most was that she’d said it as if it wasn’t even possible for Sweetie Belle to come up with a dangerous idea and hadn’t really listened to the question.

Regardless the reason, Applejack found herself stuck with two fillies on the team. And of them she only really had confidence in Scootaloo thanks to life forcing the orphan to grow up far too quickly.

“Y’all ready?” the farm pony asked as Twilight joined them near ‘the old gate.’

‘The old gate’ was what ponies called a gate on the northwest ridge of the valley at the edge of that plateau part of town. It led to an old mine, and more importantly it also led to the only lift that went down to the valley floor.

By now Twilight and Applejack both wore saddlebags. In addition to her pith helmet and archeologist shirt, Twilight’s bags held books and food. AJ’s bags held rope and apples. Sweetie Belle wore only her crusader cape, while Scootaloo wore her cape along with the goggles that were the only reason she was coming on this trip. Rainbow Dash brought only herself.

“What?” the Wonderbolt asked in response to the look she got from Applejack.

“Not bringing any supplies for this trip?”

Dash blinked. “Why? I could fly back here in like two minutes. In fact, if we haven’t found what we’re looking for by sundown I plan on flying the kids back here so they won’t have to camp in that forest.”

“Good point,” Applejack conceded. “And a good plan,” she added as she opened the gate and ushered everypony through.

As they headed down the path, it got narrower as it neared the final bend to the abandoned mine and lift. And when they made their way around that last bend, Applejack’s eyes grew wide in surprise as she beheld the small yellow figure already waiting on the lift.

“Apple Bloom! Ah thought Ah told Big Mac to lock you in your room until it was time to go to school!”

“Oh, he did,” Bloom answered her older sister. “Pity he didn’t think to lock his window, though.”

“Lock his window? Wait! You crawled across the roof from your window to his! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”

“Ya say that like Ah ain’t ever taken a tumble before. Besides, if Ah dangled myself over the edge and let myself fall, it’d only be like ten feet!”

“That’s still far enough to hurt yourself!”

“Well, Ah didn’t fall! Ah’m fine, and Ah’m here! So too bad! Ah’m following, whether you like it or not!”

AJ grumbled something about ‘Granny being right,’ before she more clearly said, “Fine, just stay close so Ah can protect ya if something attacks us down there.”

Within the forest itself, the usefulness of Scootaloo’s goggles quickly became apparent. Allowing her to see magic allowed her to keep everypony clear of many dangers, both known and unknown. Be it the unassuming blue flowers with the powerful magic aura. Or magic creatures like a manticore that she was able to steer the team around thanks to being able to see its magic through the trees.

Of course that only worked when there weren’t too many magic plants around to obscure her view as much as they did physically for everypony.

One time, as they were making their way through a patch of wild zap apple trees, a pack of timber wolves managed to sneak up on them. Or rather, sneak up on Scootaloo, as it was Applejack who alerted the team to the sounds of something stalking them. When the timber wolves pounced, Twilight placed a shield around herself and the fillies, while Applejack and Rainbow Dash fought. As soon as the wolves’ wooden forms were shattered the group ran for it, putting as much distance between themselves and the timber wolves as possible before the fallen wolves pulled themselves back together.

It took a few tries but eventually they managed to lose the timber wolves on their tails.

Eventually, they came to the area that Granny Smith had pointed out, where the top of the stone pillar seemed lined up with the center of the arch and the edge of the mesa Sweet Apple Acres was on. Searching the area they came across a large outcropping with a cave opening where one could still see the arch, pillar, and mesa from the entrance.

They didn’t have to go far into the cave before they started finding parts that had been carved or filled in to make a smooth pathway. A few hundred yards down the path and the cave opened up into a large room. Although nowhere near as large as the cavern that the Staff of True Light had been found in, this one was big enough that a one-story building might fit in this chamber.

Along the sides of the chamber were rectangular pools that created a pathway between them. Along the sides of the pathway were statues of earth ponies kneeling, facing the back of the chamber. At the back of the chamber were stairs that went up a little way and ended with a doorway with an ornately carved frame.

Passing through the open doorway, they found a chamber twice as large as the previous one and four times as deep. Along the sides of this grand hall were more doorways, but between the doorways were murals. Many of the murals seemed to have a green earth pony mare as their focus.

“Wow! So this the Temple of the Earth!” Apple Bloom said in awe as she took in the sight of the chamber.

“It’s certainly an ancient earth pony shrine,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Whether it’s the Temple of the Earth or not has yet to be seen.” Firing off several sparks of magic that lingered and glowed brightly where they landed, she added, “None of these doorways are marked, and the murals don’t seem to indicate which of these paths might lead to a labyrinth either.”

One by one, they started searching the side doorways. The ones they searched all seemed to lead to a small room, each with a lone statue of a different ancient earth pony hero.

“What about this one?” Scootaloo asked of the doorway halfway down the right side of the grand hall, that everypony else had just ignored as they walked passed.

Looking up to the mural above the doorway, Twilight said, “It looks like the story the Earth Mother fighting a volcano demon. What of it?”

“I meant the doorway.”

“What doorway?” Applejack asked.

With that Scootaloo pushed her goggles up onto her forehead. “Oh!” she exclaimed, pulling her head back in surprise. Sliding her goggle back in front of her eyes, she stepped forward and put her hoof into the doorway and said, “This doorway.”

Everypony else gasped at the sight of the orange filly’s outstretched leg disappearing into the wall. Then Twilight lit her horn with magic, bathing that part of the wall in purple light. Her horn got brighter and brighter until it resembled a sparkler stick at a fireworks festival. Then a portion of the wall that matched the shape of the other doorways in the grand hall began to waver.

“Oh wow,” Twilight gasped as she brought the light show to an end. “That is one well hidden illusion spell. I didn’t even notice the magic there until you pointed it out.” Following Scootaloo into the hidden hall, she added, “This is certainly promising.”

The secret passage led to a stairway that went down a short distance.

At the bottom Applejack shot out her hoof, barring the path of the others.

“What’s wrong?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Y’all smell that?” the farm pony asked in return.

“Incense,” Twilight confirmed. “Freshly burned incense. We’re not alone.”

With that the three fillies scampered to the back of the group, letting the adults take the lead. Twilight put a little more magic into her horn, adding a forward spotlight to the simple glow she’d been using before.

They didn’t have to go far before they came across a cloaked figure, sitting between two bowls with the embers of the incense still glowing.

“Who are you!” Rainbow Dash demanded.

The stranger answered back in rhyme, “Zecora is my name, I will go no further down this hall and I advise you do the same!”

“Why? Is something dangerous down this hall?” Twilight asked in an inquisitive tone.

“We came here as three, now there is only me.

“The walls of the maze shift without end, the paths thus always bend. The way never known, I escaped through luck alone.”

As if on cue, a wall a few dozen feet down the hall shifted, changing the straight hall into a T-section.

All but the zebra mare looked to Scootaloo. The pegasus filly only nodded and said, “Just stay close to me.”

Zecora made no move to stop them, but once they’d passed her, she said, “If you insist on going into the maze, might I trouble you to bring peace to my days? If you find the place of my friends’ doom, could you bring their bones that I might lay them in a proper tomb?”

“Are you sure you know the way?” Sweetie Belle whispered once they were far enough that she didn’t think the zebra could hear her.

“I’m guessing none of you see the glowing green path on the floor, right?” Scootaloo responded.

The others shook their heads.

“Then yeah, I know the way,” she finished with a grin and a slight tap on her goggles.

* * * * * * *

As they traveled through the maze the walls would shift every few minutes. And when they did, so too did the path of light Scootaloo was following. Sometimes the change was minor, like turn left up ahead instead of right. Other times the path turned Scootaloo around completely, making her backtrack to a pathway that didn’t exist when they’d passed by before.

In a few tense moments when the maze shifted, Twilight Sparkle was forced to cast teleportation spells to pull ponies who’d dodged a moving wall in a different direction than Scootaloo back to the filly’s side. But thanks to the unicorn’s efforts the team was kept together.

After about an hour of wandering the maze they emerged into a large rotunda. In the center of the room was a circular set of stairs that made a small raised platform. Atop that platform were four earth pony statues gathered around a small pedestal.

The statues were all crafted in the form of armored ponies having the look of warriors of the distant past. Each was armed with a spear and facing outward as if standing guard over the pedestal in the middle.

Floating just above the pedestal was a small stone about the size of a filly’s hoof and glowing with a soft green light.

“Is that the Tranquility Stone?” Rainbow Dash asked, starting to hover toward it.

“Wait!” Scootaloo called out, halting the elder pegasus. “There’s all kinds of magic in those statues!” the filly explained.

Twilight’s horn started to glow.

“I can confirm that. It looks like animation spells, so it’s a safe bet that they’ll wake up if we go near them.” Turning her gaze to the filly with the magic goggles, Twilight asked, “Scootaloo, since you can see magic with those goggles, can you see anything else the statues' magic is tied to? Something that might serve to disable them?”

The orange filly shook her head. “Nothing stands out to me. But I’m not a unicorn, maybe you should take a look,” she said, taking the goggles off and offering them to Twilight.

The purple unicorn put the goggles on and instantly her eyes grew wide in amazement. After looking about the room for a moment she returned her focus to the statues. “Ah, so it’s that kind of animate guardian spell.” Then, as she removed the goggles and returned them to Scootaloo, she said, “If we approach slowly, the guardians will awaken and ask us a riddle. If we answer properly they will let us take the Tranquility Stone. They’ll only fight us if we try to take it by force.”

“So what’s the riddle?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“I don’t know. None of my research mentioned any guardians at the heart of the labyrinth. But there’s an easy way to find out!”

With that Twilight walked up the steps.

As soon as she reached the top, the ground rumbled slightly and the two statues closest to her crossed their spears, baring her path.

The one to her right turned its head to look her in the eyes and said, “I have countless beginnings. I end all the time. Yet, I am eternal. What am I?”

Twilight sat down and raised a hoof to her chin. After a moment she looked to her companions.

Rainbow Dash just shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Riddles aren’t my thing.”

Applejack gave a similar response, although, the three fillies huddled together and started whispering amongst themselves.

Twilight gave a low groan because she’d already calculated four concepts that could meet all three conditions of the riddle. But that only left the question what type of pony set the riddle, and thus which one did they choose as the answer?

“Life!”

The sound drew everypony else’s eyes to the youth who’d spoken.

“An individual life starts and ends all the time,” Apple Bloom explained. “But like ya always say, sis! As a whole, life always finds a way. It always goes on, no matter what.”

As she spoke, the young earth pony walked up the steps. When she got right in front of the statues, they returned their spears to their sides, letting the filly through.

Twilight nodded. “Temple of the Earth, of course earth ponies would have chosen ‘life’ as the answer,” she whispered to herself as she watched Apple Bloom approach the pedestal.

The yellow filly had to balance on her hind legs and stretch out as much as possible to reach up to where the Tranquility Stone was floating. When she pulled the stone from its place, the guardians returned to being inanimate statues and the ground rumbled.

Looking to the entrance of the room, the team found that the reason for the rumbling was because the walls of the labyrinth were sinking into the floor, leaving the former maze as a now wide open room with only the rotunda room in the middle.

With the walls gone, finding the bones of the zebra’s friends on the way out proved to be a simple task. And with evening fast approaching Zecora offered to let the ponies stay the night at her nearby hut. The offer was declined however, in favor of having Rainbow Dash fly and carry the fillies back to town in mere minutes. Then Twilight made signal lights with her magic so the ace pegasus could fly back two more times to bring the remaining adults of the expedition back one at a time.

Back in Ponyville, the natives returned to their homes, yet only Twilight Sparkle retreated to an inn. Rainbow Dash asked to campout in Scootaloo’s hanger again and she allowed it.

Chapter 17: Planing is Essential…

When morning came, Scootaloo awoke to unusually comforting warmth. The usual morning chill was missing from the hanger air. The sound of sizzling and the sent of eggs and hash browns coming from the stove mere feet away from her hammock gave a strong hint as to why. Somepony had fired up the stove.

Lazily opening her eyes, Scoots found her guest was indeed making breakfast. Although that conjured another question in her young mind.

“Rainbow Dash, where did you get the food?” she asked knowing that she didn’t keep perishable foods like eggs or potatoes in the hanger.

The blue mare gave a small chuckle. “It turns out that the market in a small farm town like this is open early enough to buy actual breakfast food in the morning. Back in Cloudsdale, there was maybe a bakery or three open that early. So if you wanted anything other than muffins or bagels in the morning it had to come from your fridge. But not here! I saw Applejack was already in the fields and the morning market had several stalls already open!”

“Wait, you’ve already been to the market and back this morning?” the filly asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Of course! It’s not that far!” Rainbow Dash answered, opening her wings and giving them a mock flap.

“Right. To an awesome flyer like you, the whole town is like just a minute away, huh?” Scootaloo said, giving her own flightless wings a wistful look.

Reaching a hoof over to ruffle Scootaloo’s mane, Dash smiled and said, “Squirt, to an awesome flyer like me, Canterlot is a minute away.”

With that said, she took the frying pan off of the stove and divided its contents among two plates sitting on the crate-table. Sitting down by one of the plates, the blue mare tapped the table by the far plate and said, “Eat up. We have a long day ahead of us.”

“We do?” the filly asked as she climbed down from her hammock.

“Yeah, I thought you three deserved to see what your efforts amounted to. That and I think we’re borrowing your goggles again for our next mission. Although I really do just mean borrow the goggles this time. I’m fairly sure this next mission will be too dangerous to ask you to join me in the field. But that’s no reason you can’t watch from the safety of H.Q.”

With that, Scootaloo dug in to her breakfast. It wasn’t until she was almost done that something Dash had said finally registered in her mind.

“Wait, you three?”

After finishing her own breakfast, Rainbow Dash looked up with a guilty smile and said, “I may have intercepted your friends on the way to school. In fact they’re already downstairs. At this point, we’re just waiting on Twilight. Once she’s here, we’re heading out.”

Scootaloo quickly finished her food, guzzled down the glass of orange juice Dash had provided with it and headed out to the main hanger room.

Sure enough, she found Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle gathered around a map that they’d laid out on the floor not far from the base of the stairs. And apparently, Rainbow Dash had given the farm filly the coordinates for the rendezvous point and Bloom had already worked out where it was and what flight heading they’d need to fly there from Ponyville.

Scootaloo couldn’t help but chuckle at the realization that what had once been a bluff about her friend being her navigator was now true.

That was also about the time Twilight Sparkle showed up.

“What an interesting town,” the unicorn said mostly thinking out loud. “I’d have never guessed that an inn with a bear standing guard in the lobby would be run by such a kind mare.”

“I take it you stayed at Fluttershy’s Sanctuary Inn?” Scootaloo asked.

“Wait! Did you say Fluttershy?” Dash interrupted.

“Yeah. She owns the inn near here. Why?” the orange filly answered with an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

The mare with the rainbow mane drew a hoof up to her chin and put on a rare thoughtful look. “I used to know a Fluttershy growing up in Cloudsdale. We lost touch when we went our separate ways after school. Me off to become a Wonderbolt, and her… Well, I always took her for a homebody, so I thought she’d still be there when I got out of the academy. But by the time I did, she’d moved out, and I never did find out where to. I wonder if this is the same Fluttershy…”

“Potential reunions will have to wait. We have a task to accomplish this morning. Speaking of which, are we ready, Rainbow Dash?” Twilight asked.

“I’m always ready!” the ace pilot boasted.

With that the two adults left the hanger, heading for the tie-down area, where Dash’s fighter jet was parked. And the three fillies pilled into Scootaloo’s jet.

“Are you sure about this, Apple Bloom? I can’t imagine that Applejack’s going to go easy on you for ditching school two days in a row.”

The yellow filly gave a wily grin. “Actually, Rainbow Dash talked to us early enough that Ah was able to tell Cheerilee about it. She gave me permission to ditch today as long as Ah write a report on our adventure. She even said she’d let it be makeup work for yesterday. As long as she’s happy with my work, she’s got no reason to tell AJ that Ah wasn’t there today.”

With the back of her seat between them, Scootaloo settled for shooting a scornful look at the instrument panel in front of her and said, “…So you’re betting everything on the hope that AJ doesn’t find out?”

“The Cutie Mark Crusaders are a team! Remember?” Bloom defended her choice.

To that the young pilot smiled. Then she said, “Speaking of team, Sweetie Belle, can you see that switch by the hanger door?”

Sweetie did her best to stand up in her harness and spotted the industrial-grade electric switch by the open hanger doors. “Yep, I see it! What of it?”

“Think you can flip that switch with your magic once we’re outside?”

“Sure!”

“Thanks!” Scootaloo responded.

A smile graced her face at the realization that with her unicorn friend around she didn’t have to turn the plane off, jump out to go close the doors herself and then start the plane back up every time she left when the airport staff weren’t around to close the door for her.

And true to her word, once they’d rolled out of the hanger, Sweetie’s horn glowed its soft green glow for a moment and the hanger doors started to close. With that out of the way, Scootaloo pointed the plane to the taxiways and followed Rainbow Dash’s Mark 2 toward the active runway.

* * * * * * *

The flight to the north proved to be an uneventful one. Perhaps not a surprising revelation, after all how many sky pirates would attack two military-grade aircraft, one of which was painted in official Wonderbolt colors?

The rendezvous point was a little north of where the city of Cloudsdale was normal parked. Although ever since the Crystal Empire had declared war on Equestria, the cloud city had been moved down near Las Pegasus instead.

Yet as they drew near enough to make out the shapes that were there, Scootaloo’s eyes grew wide in awe. In addition to the C.S. Cloudsdale with its Wonderbolt flag, there were three more cloud ships flying the flag of the regular E.U.P Guard.

With her mouth slightly agape, she managed to mutter, “The Storm Breaker, the Las Pegasus, the Sky Haven… If they’re all here… This is the entire Air Force!”

The young pilot and her friends didn’t have long to admire the sight before Rainbow Dash radioed in and got landing assignments for the both of them. Once on board the Cloudsdale, they were instructed to head up to the bridge where Spitfire was waiting for them.

As they were making their way there, Twilight Sparkle turned to Rainbow Dash and asked, “When Shining Armor betrayed you, do you remember what color his magic was?”

The ace Wonderbolt shrugged and said, “I don’t know, some kinda purple. I wasn’t paying that much attention to it. Kinda like yours, I guess.” As she answered Dash couldn’t help but notice a frown appear on the unicorn’s face. And so she added “Why?”

Looking up and gazing through the ceiling, Twilight answered, “Because I didn’t want to believe that my brother betrayed Equestria… I don’t want to…”

“Wait! Shining Armor is your brother?!”

The revelation brought Dash and the fillies to a stop.

“Well, I’m sure the Shining Armor we met was a changeling,” Sweetie Belle offered.

“Yeah… a changeling…” Twilight responded in a distant tone.

Rainbow Dash wore a concerned look, but resumed leading the team toward the bridge. It seemed clear to her that the purple unicorn knew something that she wasn’t sharing, and Dash suddenly found herself questioning the loyalty of the unicorn researcher. Although she kept her thoughts to herself, she decided to keep a wary eye on Twilight whenever circumstance allowed.

On the bridge, they found that several ponies in officer uniforms of the E.U.P. Guard had joined the usual Wonderbolt staff, as had a regal white alicorn who was instantly recognizable as Princess Celestia. Most of the non-Wonderbolts raised a curious eyebrow when they saw three fillies enter the room.

The exception being a mint green pegasus mare with a fancy cap and shoulder boards that marked her as the commander of the E.U.P.’s air forces. Making her and Celestia the only two ponies above Spitfire in the chain of command. For her part, Commander Spring Rain looked on Scootaloo with both recognition and annoyance. She recognized the filly she’d dragged into court trying to repossess her Lightning Bolt Mark 1. And without a doubt she still remembered the face of the child that surprised everypony and turned an act of charity into a huge tactical mistake.

Scootaloo returned the commander’s glare with a timid smile. And quickly decided that it would be best if she didn’t speak unless spoken to. As the commander still seemed sour over the judge pointing out that the manufacturer’s agreement only forbade THEM from selling Mark 1’s to civilians, and the law only forbade civilians from owning the top of the line fighter jets. Nether condition was true by the time Scootaloo’s ownership of a Lightning Bolt Mark 1 was challenged. Regardless the look in the commander’s eyes made it clear that a grudge was still held against her for having the plane that no pony else was supposed to have yet.

Despite all of that, it was the earth pony stallion with the general’s cap that motioned to the youngsters and spoke up. “Should they even be here?”

“Relax, they’re just here to watch,” Rainbow Dash said in response. “They won’t even be leaving the bridge until the operation is already underway.”

With that, Spitfire motioned to an out-of-the-way corner between two workstations. The trio of fillies took the hint and got ‘out of the way’ while the adults gathered around the central table of the command room.

The ruler of Equestria, Princess Celestia, was first to speak. Although all she did was ask, “Do you have the items?”

Twilight nodded and brought out the Tranquility Stone. At the same time Rainbow motioned to Scootaloo, and the filly came forward and placed the Goggles of True Light on the table in front of the elder pilot.

The princess looked to the captain of the Wonderbolts and simply asked, “Spitfire?”

“They’re fitting it onto Dash’s plane as we speak.”

“Then all the pieces are in place,” Celestia said with a solemn tone. “Seeing as King Sombra refuses to see the truth of the changelings for himself, we must force him to see it. While we can not force him to wear the goggles, we can use the Tranquility Stone to dispel the changelings transformations and expose whatever advisers have been whispering lies into his ear. That should get him to see that it was indeed the changelings behind the attacks that provoked this war.”

Moving a hoof to the map on the table, the alicorn with the sun cutie mark traced out three paths. “General, your ground forces will push into the Crystal Empire along these paths. We have no interest in the outlying towns along the way, only the capital. The air force will cover your attack and harass the defenses in the outlying towns until the ground force near the crystal city.”

Then the princess looked right at the Wonderbolt ace. “Rainbow Dash, Spitfire tells me you’re the best flyer we have. Your task is to take the goggles and use the special modification on your plane to point out any changelings among the enemy ranks for our unicorns on the ground to expose. That should help create confusion among the enemy. When the strike team breaches the castle, abandon your plane and join us.”

Looking up from the map, the princess with the rainbow-like mane that flowed in an unfelt breeze said, “The anti-air guns in the southern part of the city need to be disabled by the ground forces and the castle plaza secured. Once that’s done and it’s safe for us to air drop, I will personally lead the strike team with the Tranquility Stone into the castle. We storm the throne room and set off the Tranquility Stone right where he can see it so there will be no doubt as to what just happened. A unicorn of his caliber will know the legends. As long as he sees the magic come from the stone, he’ll know it's dispel magic and not some kind of illusion spell.”

Stepping back from the table and casting her gaze to the room at large, Celestia continued, “While I realize that our troops must prioritize their own wellbeing, keep in mind that these crystal ponies are convinced that we are guilty of crimes we did not commit. Their only crime is believing reasonable-sounding lies over the unlikely truth. So whenever possible, have your ponies disarm or disable even though the enemy will be trying to kill us.

“That said, time is of the essence. Confusion will only buy us so much time. We’ll have an hour, maybe two before they realize that softening up the defenses of the outlying towns was a bluff. Once that happens, the outer forces will converge on our ground forces. If that happens, we’ll have no choice but to unleash the full force of these cloud ships to bring the fighting to a stop… Needless to say, I’d rather not reduce the city to rubble as such a fight would be a slaughter for both sides. So let’s be sure to get King Sombra to surrender with the Tranquility Stone before then.”

With one last look around the room, Celestia stood confidently before those gathered in the command room and finished by saying, “You have your orders and my trust. Operation Shattered Veil begins now!”

Chapter 18: …Yet Plans are Useless

Things started out smoothly. Equestria’s forces punched through the border defenses, deploying mostly tranquilizer darts and sleep spells. Above, the special module on Rainbow Dash’s plane was basically a laser pointer that she used to point out any changelings she spotted with the crystal-lensed goggles. As expected, revealing the black, shapeshifting, bug-ponies for what they were indeed created confusion among the regular crystal-pony troops.

Within twenty minutes the ground force entered the capital city of the Crystal Empire with the four cloud ships parked just out of range of anti-air cannons throughout the city. The ground forces had secured about a city block… And that’s where things stalled.

Not far from Celestia, the three young crusaders stood up with their front hooves on the window to help them see out. While it was difficult to figure out what was happening on the ground, the air battle before them was easy to watch from the bridge of the C.S. Cloudsdale. The Crystal Empire planes were a purple color, which set them apart from the gray E.U.P. and blue and yellow Wonderbolt planes of Equestria.

Although the Empire’s planes were badly outnumbered, with the help of the AA cannons, it was a fairer fight than anypony on the Cloudsdale would have liked.

Amidst all of that, the three young observers did their best to stay as quiet and thus ‘out of the way’ as they could. But youth being what it is, they couldn’t help but offer each other a low cheer or hoof bump whenever they saw a Crystal Empire plane go down or a gasp whenever they saw an Equestrian plane go down.

As they watched, the radios calls from all of Equestria’s forces could be heard coming from the workstations around the bridge. Spitfire was also doing her best to send out orders to match up Wonderbolts with air support strike requests from the friendly ground forces.

For her part Scootaloo did her best to ignore the half dozen or so radios constantly blaring to life with one pony or another trying to relay information in the middle of a battle. But then one conversation did catch her ear, mostly because it contained voices she’d heard before today.

“I’m hit! I’m-” the male voice started only to get cut off.

“Rapidfire! What are you waiting for? Bail out!”

Scootaloo’s heart froze. It wasn’t hard to spot the only Wonderbolt plane spiraling toward the ground at the moment. She felt an ache in her heart, and while she didn’t know Rapidfire all that well, she did remember that he was one of the ones who’d been quick to accept her after she’d filled in for Dash’s wingpony.

The pain in Scootaloo’s heart spiked the moment the blue and yellow jet crashed into the streets of the crystal city with still no sign that anypony had bailed out. In the back of her mind she saw his face flash in her memories.

“RAPIDFIRE!” The cry over the radio confirmed that those with a closer viewpoint hadn’t seen him escape the doomed plane before impact either.

Then Rainbow Dash’s voice came over one of the radios. “Dang it, ground team! What’s the hold up on taking out those AA cannons? We’re getting torn apart up here!”

“We’re working as fast as we can!” some mare’s voice responded. “But if you think you can do a better job of clearing machine gun nets with nothing but tranquilizer darts and sleeping gas, feel free to get your flank down here and show us!”

Although the words that followed from Dash seemed calm on the surface, those who knew her could tell she was trying to keep the anger out of her voice. “Command. Requesting permission to fire missiles.”

That got Spitfire to look up from the radio station. She turned her gaze to Princess Celestia with a questioning look. When the Princess failed to say anything in the first second, Spitfire said, “We’ve lost twenty planes. Five no bail outs. The Empire’s border forces seem to have called our bluff and are moving in. The ground forces have maybe twenty minutes before they’re surrounded. Isn’t it time?”

Celestia retained the impassive composure she’d been holding ever since the fighting had begun as she finally pulled her gaze away from the windows and answered, “No. Those missiles are too powerful to be used in civilian areas. The Crystal Empire is almost out of airplanes. Tell the air forces to focus on finishing the air sweep, then they can fall back, out of the AA cannons’ range. It won’t matter if our air support withdraws if the enemy doesn’t have it either. And tell the ground forces they have ten minutes to secure the castle plaza.”

Spitfire scowled but jumped back on the radio and relayed the orders as given.

Meanwhile Scootaloo’s eyes were steadily growing wider in fear as she was coming to a rather childish revelation. Rainbow Dash wasn’t safe. The fact that she’d thought the ace Wonderbolt would be safe in a war zone was proof enough of her childishness. But the fact that she'd just heard a Wonderbolt die over the radio drove home the idea that if one Wonderbolt can die, so can the one Wonderbolt who meant the most to her.

The young pilot’s eyes came back into focus and started darting around the battlefield beyond the window. “Come on Rainbow Dash, why can’t you see it? You have the goggles, why can’t you see it?” she muttered to herself. Then she turned her head around, letting her gaze fall on the Tranquility Stone still sitting on the table behind her.

‘Of course she can’t see it! She’s not looking for the same thing!’ Scootaloo thought to herself.

Turning to the purple unicorn at Celestia’s side, the filly asked, “Twilight?”

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“Can anypony use the Tranquility Stone?”

“Uh? Of course! According to the legends it was made to be used by earth ponies. From my testing all you need to do is put a little magic into it to set it off. For a pegasus I figure you’d just need to squeeze it with your hooves and pretend it’s a cloud that you’re trying to interact with to impart some of your magic into it. Why do you ask?”

Rather than answering Twilight directly Scootaloo turned to the Princess and said, “Celestia, all we need to do is set off the Tranquility Stone in the throne room right?”

“Yes, I sense he is commanding his forces from there.”

“And the throne room is right behind that window?” Scootaloo asked, pointing a hoof at the stain-glass window just above the crystal castle’s southeast balcony.

“Yes, I’ve been there a few times in the past. That is indeed the one that frames the throne. But how did you know that?”

“It’s always had two more guards on it then the other one we can see,” the orange filly answered dismissively. “But that’s not important,” she continued in a more focused tone of voice. “Let me take the Tranquility Stone! I can get it in there!”

Celestia’s impassive mask was broken by an eyebrow raised in curiosity, yet her response was, “While I’m sure they would hesitate to fire on a filly with no uniform, I seriously doubt they’d just let you enter the castle in the middle of a fight either. Let alone let you run all the way to the throne room.”

“Please, Princess! I can do it!”

Celestia shook her head. “Young, innocent ponies like you and your friends are exactly the kind of subjects I’m trying to protect from war. I can not in good conscience ask a child to enter a battlefield, no matter the reason.”

With that the princess took Twilight Sparkle aside and started a whispered conversation with her prized pupil.

Scootaloo looked at the Tranquility Stone and blinked. It was alone on the table… and now the two powerful magic users, that might have been able to stop her with a thought, were distracted and had their backs turned…

In the blink of an eye Scootaloo jumped over the table, took the stone in her mouth and blitzed out the door.

“Oh no you don’t!” Spitfire shouted and she jumped up from her station and bolted out after the filly.

To her credit, Scootaloo managed to make it down the stairs and halfway to the landing bays by the time Spitfire tackled her. As the two came tumbling to a stop the elder pegasus put out a hoof to ensure that the rolling stopped with herself on top and the filly pinned down.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” Spitfire shouted.

“Please! Let me go! I can do it!” Scootaloo said as she squirmed in vain, trying to get free.

“No! I have to protect you!”

“Why me?! Why am I more important to you then Rainbow Dash or Rapidfire?!”

“Because I didn’t get their father killed!”

Spitfire’s eyes became pinpricks as she realized what she’d just said. Scootaloo finally stopped struggling and silence filled the hallway for a moment.

When the filly finally broke free of her confusion enough to respond she said, “Wha-huh? What are you talking about? The letter said dad died in a training accident… Nopony can blame you for an accident…”

Bowing her head slightly the Wonderbolt captain answered, “That was a cover story. Rainbow Dash was supposed to fly that patrol alone… I knew I was sending her into a trap. But that information was classified. So when she asked your dad to go with her I couldn’t say ‘no‘ without sharing information they weren’t cleared to know…”

By now Spitfire’s legs had moved into a more proper standing position, so she was no longer pinning the younger pegasus underneath her. Despite that, Scootaloo continued to lie on the floor staring into the elder pegasus’ eyes.

“You sent Rainbow Dash into a trap?” she muttered.

With a sigh Spitfire continued her explanation. “I figured Rainbow Dash was the only flyer skilled enough to survive getting surprised like that if the information was correct… Turned out I was right…”

“You sent Rainbow Dash into a trap… And you let dad go with her… Without telling them what you thought they were up against?…” Scootaloo’s voice trailed off as her mind tried to process this new revelation.

“They weren’t cleared to know! I had no choice! My orders from Celestia were clear! I couldn’t tell them!”

At that moment, Scootaloo turned her eyes away from Spitfire, and her gaze happened to fall on the Tranquility Stone that she’d dropped when she’d been tackled.

Scootaloo was too stunned to cry, even with the return of the memories of the day that fateful letter had arrived. Her heart ached as the old wound, once as closed as it was going to get, reopened. With her heart and mind screaming very different thoughts, the filly knew she didn’t know what to think. But looking at the magic stone lying on the floor beside her, she did know two things.

That was in the past. She could figure out what she thought about that later. That, and today needed her attention right now.

Closing her eyes, Scootaloo spoke with her head still turned to the side. “So you followed orders and my dad died. Now Rainbow Dash and a bunch of other ponies are out there, dying by the minute, and you’re still just going to blindly follow Celestia’s orders? Help me end this fighting! Right here, right now!”

* * * * * * *

On the bridge concerned glances were starting to be passed around between the fillies still there.

“It’s been a few minutes. Ah thought they’d be back by now,” Apple Bloom whispered.

“I don’t know. I figured she’s throwing Scoot in the brig by now,” Sweetie Belle countered.

Suddenly Spitfire’s voice came over the radio. “Open launch bays one and three! Wing one, fall back and form up! Courier Seven is going in and we’re defending her with everything we got!”

“Everything?” Rainbow Dash’s voice asked from the same radio.

“Everything! All weapons hot! If anything even thinks of pointing a gun at her, obliterate it!”

The officers on the bridge all stared at Princess Celestia in wide-eyed disbelief, knowing that those orders weren’t from the princess. Not to mention that they were the opposite of what the princess had just said minutes ago.

“Princess? Aren’t you going to cancel those orders?” one of them finally managed to say.

The white alicorn only shook her head. “No. I’ve been around long enough to notice the patterns of fate. That child has become far too intertwined in the threads of destiny, and I am not foolish enough to try to defy destiny itself. Whatever that child has in mind, I suspect it will work. I only pray that she survives the attempt.”

* * * * * * *

Two jets burst into the sky from the launch bays. The Lightning Bolt Mark 2 with the Wonderbolt paint job took the lead. Within seconds five more Wonderbolt planes formed up in a V formation using Spitfire’s plane as the point of the V, and leaving the silver Mark 1 in the space between the V’s lines.

“So, what’s the plan?” Rainbow Dash’s voice called over the radio.

“I have no clue,” Spitfire answered. “Care to enlighten us?”

Scootaloo chuckled to herself. Something about the fact that the caption of the Wonderbolts was asking her for orders was just too funny to the filly. As soon as she’d brought her giggles under control she hit her radio button and said, “We’re going in low and fast! And although I know you can’t follow me exactly, Rainbow Dash, can you try to stay close? I’m probably going to need your help at the end of this.”

Many of the Wonderbolts in the formation raised an eyebrow, thinking to themselves, ‘Does this kid really think she’s a better pilot than us?’

Only Rainbow Dash gave a silent smile and thought, ‘I knew you were a smart one, squirt.’

Yet the time for thoughts was over. With her piece said, Scootaloo pushed her throttle to max and put her plane in a dive, swerving to line up with her intended path through the crystal city. The Wonderbolt jets scrambled to follow suit. Of course the newer Mark 2’s only needed 70% throttle to keep up with the smaller, older Mark 1, so they quickly reformed their formation slightly above and behind the silver jet they were watching over.

When the silver jet pulled out of its dive and banked hard to point itself at the crystal castle, the intent of its pilot became clear.

The flack cannons watching over the city were positioned to have a clean line of fire over the tops of most of the buildings and the wide open streets and roads. But there was one narrow alleyway that had no cannon pointing down it. Although it had been left that way for a reason.

“Uh, kid! That’s too narrow!” Spitfire called out as soon as she figured out where the filly’s path was taking her.

“You’re right,” Scootaloo’s voice answered over the radio. “It is too narrow. For a Mark 2.”

The Wonderbolt planes all jerked up above the rooftops. But the smaller Mark 1 shot down the alleyway between the rows of two-story crystal houses. On any other day, Scootaloo would have cringed at the screeching sounds that came every time one of her plane’s wingtips brushed one of the buildings, but right now she was too focused on keeping those sounds limited to just scrapes.

“Punch a hole!” Spitfire commanded as all hell broke loose above the rooftops.

With that, the Wonderbolt planes above wavered from their formation and fired missiles at every anti-air cannon that turned their way. With one exception: Rainbow Dash held her path just above the alleyway, wavering only to dodge when a cannon shot came at her from between the chimneys.

Scootaloo’s jet roared down the alley mere feet above the ground. At one point, crystal pony and Equestrian soldiers alike dropped to the ground as the jet raced by just overhead, leaving both sides gawking as they watched it fly on down the alleyway. At least until the Empire soldiers fell over with tranquilizer darts in the back of their necks and the Equestrian ones thanked the winds for the unexpectedly convenient distraction.

Back on the bridge of the Cloudsdale, Celestia closed her eyes and tightened her mouth into a frown for a moment with every anti-air cannon destroyed. Between the missiles and the munitions stored at the cannons, they exploded with enough force to demolish any building immediately adjacent to them. Aost of those seemed to be regular homes.

As the bold fighter wing made it halfway to the heart of the city, Spitfire’s voice came over the radio.

“As clever as this route is, we don’t have any napalm! So how exactly are we going to take control of the castle plaza with just a few fighter jets?”

Those familiar with the Crystal Empire understood that the Crystal Castle wasn’t really a castle as much as it was a tower. And a tower built on top of four massive pillars that created a massive plaza directly underneath the actual castle part of the tower. At the moment, that plaza had a small battalion of troops manning dozens of machine gun nests, not to mention the unicorn units and the gunners manning the balconies that overlooked said plaza, making it a difficult place for a hostile force to take. And certainly impossible for a few enemy fighters to land and storm the gates of the castle.

“We aren’t.”

Spitfire’s eyes became specks as she put the pieces together in her mind.

“Dang it kid! You could’ve told me that was your plan! I would’ve happily flown your plane for you!”

Scootaloo blushed. In hindsight it would have been smarter to let one of the highly trained Wonderbolts deliver the Tranquility Stone instead. Her plane was the only thing needed to make the plan work. Who piloted it was optional.

“You’re probably right! But it’s too late to turn back now!”

“Wait! What’s going on?” Rainbow Dash interrupted.

“Rainbow Dash! When I eject, please follow me in!” Scoots answered.

“Eject?! Why would you? Oh, pony feathers!” Dash swore as she realized what was about to happen.

That was the moment the alleyway came to an end. The silver Mark 1 burst forth into the plaza area. Scootaloo pulled up and veered hard to the right, then leveled out and turned back to the left, pointing her plane right at the stained glass window of the Crystal Castle’s throne room. In the next heartbeat, the filly slammed one hoof on the eject button and the other on her harness’s release mechanism. Then she wrapped all four legs around the Tranquility Stone as the canopy slid open above her and her chair shot free of the plane.

When the parachute opened the chair was yanked back. But without her harness, Scootaloo kept going. Opening her wings, she slipped into a glide behind her plane.

Rainbow Dash had followed the silver jet into its upward hard right turn, but when the filly’s plane veered toward the castle she kept turning right and punished one of her bail out buttons. Technically the Mark 2 had two buttons meant for bailing out. The traditional ‘eject’ one like the one in the Mark 1, and a second ‘bail out’ one more tailored to the Wonderbolts. Dash used the second one. This caused her canopy to slide open and the controls to lock the plane into flying straight and level.

She slammed a hoof on her own harness release. Then she stood up and opened her wings, which caused her to get sucked out of the cockpit and slide along the top of her plane. As soon as she slid off the back of her plane she started flapping her wings for all they were worth and shot off toward the orange filly.

* * * * * * *

Inside the throne room of the castle made of blue crystal, King Sombra sat on his throne. He was resting, recovering from his recent use of magic to aid the city’s defenders from afar. Not far from him was a pink alicorn mare with a tri-color mane of purple, pink and yellow. And not far from her was none other than Shining Armor. A hoofful of other advisers were gathered around a table with a map of the city talking amongst themselves.

The expected commotion of a command room was interrupted when a door leading to the balcony behind the throne swung open and a soldier in crystal armor jumped in. Not even trying to catch himself, he yelled “INCOMING!” and hitting the floor, covered his head with his forelegs as if expecting a bomb to go off.

The unicorn king with black fur’s first thought was, ‘I thought most of the enemy was still at the edge of town? How did they get enough pegasus ponies here to overwhelm the balcony so suddenly?’

He didn’t have time for a second thought.

Time seemed to slow down as a thunderous boom filled the room. Over the king’s head, shattered glass, protective magic and the twisted metal shards that had once been a jet aircraft all flew across the room, peppering the far side with their remains.

On instinct alone Sombra managed to raise a shield of magic around himself and his daughter.

In the wake of the destruction an orange pegasus filly shot into the room through the gaping hole the plane had just made. The instant her eyes found the black unicorn with a king’s crown, she squeezed a small stone grasped close to her chest.

The stone let off an immense wave of white light. As the light washed over the room, another pegasus entered through the shattered window, this one a blue mare with a rainbow mane, and a Wonderbolt uniform on.

The mare’s speed was incredible. She managed to catch up to the filly by the time she was two-thirds of the way across the room. Snatching the filly out of the air, the elder pegasus pulled to the side in a clear attempt to avoid either of them being impaled on the wreckage now imbedded in the wall opposite the shattered window.

With that, time seemed to return to its normal pace. In the wake of the wave of light, Sombra felt his magic wash away with the light wave, and his shield shattered. Half the crystal ponies in the room flashed with green fire, becoming black bug ponies of some kind, including the one that had been Princess Cadence. The two pegasi hit the floor tumbling and slid all the way into one of the still smooth walls. Finally a flash of teleportation magic brought Princess Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, and a dozen unicorns of Equestria’s Royal Guard into the room.

Heated words were exchanged, hostile gestures were made, especially toward the now revealed changeling queen that had been masquerading as Sombra’s daughter. And Twilight ran over to her brother, who had been knocked out by the Tranquility Stone’s magic.

But right now, all Scootaloo could hear was every clang of metal shrapnel falling to the floor. All she could see was the hopelessly mangled metal plastered across the wall. All she could feel was Rainbow Dash’s embrace holding her tightly as the weight of her sacrifice, the price of her plan, finally registered in her mind.

Scootaloo buried her face in Rainbow Dash’s chest with only one thought repeating in her mind, ‘I hope this was worth it.’

Chapter 19: Looming Nightmare

Shortly after the events in King Sombra’s throne room, the Crystal Empire surrendered, ending the war. In exchanged for giving up the locations of the ponies replaced by the changelings, Queen Chrysalis was allowed to take her changelings and leave the pony lands forever. Although rumors that the shapeshifters didn’t abide by the terms of their banishment as fully as they put on abounded, those in the know were fairly confident that the changelings had at least retreated into the shadows enough to not get spotted by either of the known means of revealing them.

As for Twilight’s brother, it turned out that he hadn’t been a changeling at all but had been under the influence of a mind control spell. It had been dispelled when the Tranquility Stone had been set off and he woke up hours later with the mother of all headaches. And though he didn’t really remember what he’d done when everything was a haze, he apologized for his actions anyway.

The day after the peace treaty with the Crystal Empire was signed, Celestia organized a memorial service for the ponies who had died in the war, personally reading the names of every single one.

Shortly after that, Scootaloo and the Wonderbolts who had defied the Princess’s orders and brought a swift end to the battle of the Crystal Empire were given a hero’s welcome with a grand celebration at Canterlot Castle. Much to the filly’s surprise, even Commander Spring Rain joyfully praised Scootaloo as a national hero. Although that might have had something to do with the fact that the filly’s Mark 1 had been totaled smashing into the crystal castle.

When the day of celebration in Canterlot was over, even Ponyville welcomed her back as a hometown hero. The mayor and town council even went so far as to give her a house in town. While it wasn’t the same one she’d lived in when her father was still alive, it was nice to have walls that retained heat again. Not to mention having an actual bed again instead of the hammock she’d been using while she lived in the aircraft hanger.

Thinking of her hanger, Scootaloo wasn’t entirely sure why she was still paying the rent on it. It wasn't like she had an airplane anymore. Although when Celestia realized that the young pilot had sacrificed her livelihood for Equestria, the princess had awarded her a large sum of bits. So she could technically afford to buy any civilian aircraft she wanted.

And that was the problem.

In the past, ponies had hired her because she could offer them something no other civilian could. But now what could she offer? She didn’t have the fastest plane a civilian could offer. And after the first week, most of the ponies trying to hire her stopped asking especially once she’d told them she hadn’t replaced her plane yet, and even if she did, she couldn’t get another Mark 1 Lightning Bolt.

Although a few super wealthy ponies still insisted on hiring her, even supplying an aircraft for the flight. But Scootaloo quickly realized that these ponies were only doing it so they could brag at their high society parties that they’d hired a national hero as their charter pilot, not because they actually wanted her: only her fame. So she stopped accepting even those offers after a few weeks.

The one exception to that being her hometown Mr. Rich, who’d actually hired her more than once. And more importantly had always been open and honest about how employing her was basically an advertising campaign for his stores. Somehow the way he treated her really made it feel like she was being hired for the right reasons instead of feeling like she was being used.

Clink…

But those flights were few and far between.

Click…

And flying somepony else’s plane from time to time didn’t change the fact that her own hanger was empty. Or more importantly how underwhelming flying airplanes without rainbow fueled jet engines felt.

Clink…

The slow, soft tapping of metal on metal greeted Applejack’s ears as she entered the Apple Family’s hanger. Of course, being the Apple Family, they kept more than just a crop duster in the hanger. In fact the orange filly and favorite mechanic of the Apple Family was currently sitting on top of a tractor, slowly tapping her wrench on the hood while she stared off into space with unfocused eyes.

Clink…

“Ah take it you’re done?”

Clang!

“Wha-huh?” Scootaloo said with a start as she scrabbled to pin down the wrench she’d just dropped. “Oh! Yeah! I finished awhile ago. It shouldn’t be giving you any trouble any time soon.”

“Ya know, Ah’m real grateful you’re still willing to do this. Ah was afraid Ah might have to find a new mechanic after ya became a big hero an all.”

The filly gave a melancholy laugh. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“How ya holding up?” the farm mare asked with concern in her voice.

Scootaloo sighed then answered, “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always known I was nothing special. But ponies treated me that way because my plane was special. Now I don’t even have a plane and ponies treat me like I’m special for me… And to be honest, I think I liked it better when ponies thought I was special because of my plane. At least then I felt like I could DO something for them.”

“Well, Ah know at least one pony who thinks ya still can do something. In fact a little birdie told me she’s looking for ya,” Applejack said with a hint of a grin.

The filly’s purple eyes shimmered with new excitement. “Rainbow Dash? She’s in town again?”

AJ just chuckled. “She’s at the house. Ya might want to go save her from another of Granny Smith’s stories.”

The mare with the cowboy hat could only smile as she watched the young pegasus practically fly out the door, even getting a good twenty yards from it before her hooves touched the ground. The poor filly seemed to have lost her way in life without her airplane, but at least this proved there was still something in the world that could bring the kid joy.

* * * * * * *

Scootaloo found her favorite Wonderbolt at the farm’s main house, just as promised. Rainbow Dash was doing her best to be polite and pretend to be listening to the elder earth pony but quickly excused herself at the first opportunity once Scootaloo had joined them.

Placing the filly on her back, Rainbow Dash flew Scooraloo away from the apple farm.

Once they had the privacy of the sky, Scootaloo happily asked, “So what brings you to town this time?”

“I have some good news. I just wish I had better news. The Wonderbolts have managed to cobble together enough money, but we can’t get the commander to sign off on ordering a Mark 1 for ya. At this rate, Spitfire and I have taken up pushing the R&D guys to hurry up with the Mark 3 so we can ‘misplace’ a Mark 2 when they’re decommissioned.”

“It’s okay,” Scootaloo said, adding a sigh that was lost to the wind.

“No! It’s not! You’re an awesome pilot, and it’s just wrong to let you pay the price for saving the day like that!”

For a while they flew on in silence. Scootaloo spread her wings, careful not to get in the way of the wings actually supporting the both of them. The feeling of the wind rushing past her wings had always comforted her, calmed her. Perhaps that’s why she’d always enjoyed riding her scooter. Even if her wings couldn’t give her flight, they could give her speed. But up here, far above the ground, riding on Dash’s back, the feeling was that much stronger.

And even without words, she could feel it did the same for Rainbow Dash. She could feel the muscles in the shoulders her front legs were wrapped around easing as time went on. Soon the mare started to weave a path through the sky, using small clouds as pylons in some imaginary course.

After a few minutes, Scootaloo tightened her grip on Rainbow Dash, pulling herself forward slightly and said, “You know, you still haven’t told me what the good news is.”

“Huh? Oh yeah!” the mare with the rainbow mane said. “The whole reason I wanted to talk to you! I’m moving to Ponyville!”

“Really!?”

“Really! Between you and Fluttershy, the ponies I care most about live here. But I was hoping I could crash at your place while I wait for the town council to approve the plans I have for my house.”

Scootaloo blinked in confusion. “You need the town council’s approval? I thought ponies just had to buy the property.”

“Yeah, but in case you didn’t notice, there aren’t any cloud houses around here. So it turned out the patch of airspace I was hoping to park the one I want to build isn’t technically a property. So the mayor said she didn’t know if I was allowed to build there or not and she’d have to bring it up with the town council in a few days. So what do ya say? Can I crash at your place while they sort that out?”

“Of course you can! You’re always welcome with me!”

With Scootaloo’s cheerful approval, Rainbow Dash headed the two of them toward the filly’s house. Although they didn’t quite make it as along the way they spotted Twilight Sparkle, and their curiosity led them into landing and talking to her instead.

“Hey, Twilight! What brings you to town?” Rainbow Dash called out.

“Princess Celestia asked me to oversee the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration. But, Rainbow Dash, if you could help me out, I think we may have bigger problems than making sure a party goes off without a hitch.”

“Oh? What’s up?”

Rather than Twilight, a small, scaly, reptilian, purple fellow who stood about as tall as Scootaloo answered in the unicorn’s stead. “Um… Twi? Isn’t talking about that what made Celestia tell you to stop worrying and do this instead?”

“I know, Spike, but what if I’m right? What if we do need to worry about this?”

“Worry about what?” both pegasi asked in unison.

“While I was researching, I ran across an old prophecy that says ‘on the longest day of the thousandth year, Nightmare Moon would return and bring eternal night.’ The thing is, tomorrow is the one thousandth Summer Sun Celebration!”

“Nightmare Moon? I thought that was an old mare’s tale they told to scare little fillies,” Rainbow Dash asked skeptically.

“And I thought the Staff of True Light and Tranquility Stone were just old mare’s tales,” Twilight countered.

“Fair enough. But even if it is true, what can we do about it?”

“Well, before Celestia ordered me to come waste my time preparing the celebration, the legend I found mentioned that Nightmare Moon was defeated by a set of magic artifacts called the Elements of Harmony. While it’s no doubt nothing compared to the Canterlot Archives, maybe you could search the library here for anything on these Elements of Harmony. Preferably something that mentions where they were last seen.”

“Not exactly my idea of a fun day,” Rainbow Dash responded with a frown. “But I suppose the worst case is we waste a day digging through books and nothing happens tomorrow. Pretty small price to pay if it turns out we really are about to be attacked by a crazy mare trying to bring eternal night.”

“Maybe we could even get Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle to help!” Scootaloo suggested.

“Why not? The more the marier,” Twilight Sparkle said as she put a hoof to her forehead. “Now if you’ll excuse me I need to find some baker named… Spike, who was left on the list?”

“The baker is somepony named Pinkie Pie! After that, we still needed to see a Fluttershy about a songbird choir, and somepony named Rarity is supposed to be handling the decorations at town hall.”

“Ah yes, Fluttershy is the innkeeper with the trained animals, right?” Twilight said as she and the young dragon walked off.

* * * * * * *

Several hours later the sun had set. Scootaloo looked out the window of her living room. Sitting on the coffee table was the lone book she and Rainbow Dash had checked out of the town library. Yet the orange filly’s eyes looked only to the moon beyond the window.

“It really does look like a mare’s face on the moon. Do you think somepony really got banished to the moon?” she asked with a yawn.

“Do I look like I’m an expert on banishing spells?” the older, blue pegasus responded.

“Heh, I guess that would be a better question for a unicorn, huh?” Another yawn prompted Scootaloo to add, “I’m going to bed. Wake me when it’s time to go to town hall for the raising of the sun.”

“Sure thing, Squirt!” Dash said.

With that, she watched the youngest homeowner she knew of head up the stairs to her bedroom. Then her gaze found its way back to the book. It hadn’t said much, but if this whole thing turned out to be true, it just seemed uncanny that according to it the elements resided at a ruin just southeast of Ponyville. If there really was something to it, it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that Celestia had chosen the town closest to that ruin as the site for the one thousandth Summer Sun Celebration. Could it?

Chapter 20: The Nightmare Begins

The appointed hour came, and ponies gathered at the town hall. At first, fun was had by all as they waited in the pre-dawn hours of the morning. Friends talking, music to dance to, food and snacks galore, it was truly a party worthy of passing time as they awaited the main event.

Once they’d arrived, Rainbow Dash was quick to seek out Twilight Sparkle and pass along what little they’d learned about the Elements of Harmony. Scootaloo eventually found her way over to the punch bowl on one of the snack tables, where her friends were.

Sweetie Belle was bouncing up and down, jittering like she had the mother of all nervous twitches and smiling ear to ear.

The young pegasus asked the obvious question. “Sweetie Belle, are you alright?”

“Ifeelgreat!I’veneverhadthismuchsugarinmylifeanditfeelsamazing!” Sweetie blurted out, then disappeared leaving a dust cloud where she’d been as she galloped off along the edges of the room like a rocket on legs.

“Apparently she’d never had a Pinkie-party-level sugar high before,” Apple Bloom answered casually before taking a sip of fruit punch and passing a fresh cup of punch to Scootaloo.

“Wow. If she’s never made herself sick with candy before, it makes me too afraid to ask what she’s been doing for Nightmare Night all these years.”

“NightmareNight?IloveNightmareNight!Rarityplaysdressupwithmealldayandwemakeallkindsofcostumes!It’ssooomuchfun!” the unicorn answered as she finished her laps around the room and stuck back in her spot like a rubber arrow that had just hit the ground.

“That’s nice and all, but have ya ever been Trick or Treating?” Bloom asked.

The Sweetie only tilted her head and asked, “What’sthat?”

“This year, we’ll all go together and we’ll show you then.”

“Sweet!Ican’twait!infactIdon’tthinkIwill!” And with that the unicorn of the group darted off toward her older sister already asking what ‘Trick or Treating’ was.

The two Pinkie party veterans couldn’t help but giggle as they watched their sugared up friend while casually sipping their punch.

Then the mayor stopped mingling among the crowd and went up to the podium that had been set on a small stage in front of a set of double doors. The brown mare with the gray mane cleared her throat and said, “Thank you, everypony, for coming! This year, Her Highness has chosen to grace our humble little town with the honor of hosting the Summer Sun Celebration! And so without further ado, please welcome Her Highness, Princess Celestia!”

The crowd hushed, the songbird quire chirped like a blare of trumpets, and the curtains shrouding the balcony just above the mayor opened. The regal white alicorn stepped out onto the balcony, and the ponies in the crowd greeted her with a hushed awe. Without a word and with a kind smile, Celestia’s horn began to glow with the golden light of her magic.

Then her eyes shot open in surprise, her gaze drawn to the high window through which the moon could still be seen.

Naturally, the crowd did the same. Murmurs began to make their way through the crowd at the obvious observation until somepony finally said it out loud. “The mare in the moon is gone!”

From all around, a slow and dark cackle filled the room.

Stamping her hoof, Celestia demanded, “Show yourself, Nightmare Moon!”

“And come trotting right into your trap? No, I think I shall pass on that idea. But do not fret. My friends shall come play with you soon enough!”

Celestia lowered her head thoughtfully and whispered to herself, “But she’s been banished for a thousand years. Nightmare Moon doesn’t have any friends.”

That was about the moment Twilight had made her way up to the balcony. Joining her mentor she asked, “Trap? You had a trap planned? But you made it sound like you thought I was worrying about nothing when you ordered me to make preparations here in Ponyville!”

Right then, the front doors of the town hall crashed open, and a pegasus stallion of the Royal Guard flew in. Spotting his princess, he darted over to her, and while still gasping for breath he said, “Princess! Canterlot is… under attack by… actually we’re not sure… what those things are.”

Expression drained out of Celestia’s face as she donned the emotionless mask she’d used in past battles. Yet she muttered, “I was certain she’d come straight for me. She knows I’m here, but that means she also knows there’s nothing of value to her in Canterlot…”

For a little while the Princess went quiet, finally keeping her thoughts to herself. Then Celestia’s horn glowed brightly for a moment, and she muttered again, this time not by accident but clearly intending to be heard by her pupil. “That can’t be right,” she said. “Nightmare Moon’s magic is still centered on the moon. She’s clearly broken the banishment spell. Why would she stay on the moon?”

In response, Twilight Sparkle wondered aloud, “How did she even get to the moon? Don’t targets of banishment spells reappear more or less in the place they were banished from? No matter where their essence was imprisoned? But if she is there, even if we had the elements, could we use them if we can’t even reach her?”

A moment of revelation flashed in Celestia’s eyes. Quickly turning to the purple unicorn at her side she said, “Twilight, I trust you are aware of the ruins to the southeast of here?”

“The castle of the two sisters? Yes, princess… Wait, you really did plan this as a trap all along, didn’t you?”

Rather than answering the question, the princess leapt down to the ground floor with everypony else, and in a commanding tone said, “Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash! Gather your friends and go the ruins of the castle of the two sisters! You know what you need to find there! Guards! Half of you will remain here and defend this town if anything hostile appears! The rest of you will be coming with me to defend Canterlot!”

Then she set her gaze on three fillies and startled half the room when she gave one last command out loud. “Scootaloo! Come here, I have a task for you and your friends as well!”

Apple Bloom spit out her punch.

Sweetie Belle suddenly sobered up from her sugar rush.

Even Scootaloo raised a curious eyebrow. While all three fillies could guess why the princess of all of Equestria would want something from their orange friend, none of them knew what the princess would want from the other two.

Once they’d come close, Celestia leaned down and spoke softly enough that only those nearby could hear her when she said, “Scootaloo, take your friends and go to the Ponyville library. In the basement there should be a hidden chamber. Find it, open it. If it’s still there, there should be a book that will tell you the location of the final treasure linked to your goggles.”

Lifting her head back up and once again speaking aloud, Princess Celestia added, “All of you, once you have found what you’re looking for, rally to the inn Twilight is staying at. I will send instructions to you there once I’ve confirmed my suspicions in Canterlot.”

With that the princess and half the royal guards in the room disappeared in a flash of teleportation magic.

* * * * * * *

The three Cutie Mark Crusaders and six mares ran through the streets of Ponyville. Among the mares, most weren’t surprised to see Applejack, Fluttershy or even Rarity accompanying Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle. Although most didn’t seem too clear on why Pinkie Pie was tagging along. When asked on the matter, she answered with, “I can’t let anything bad happen to you before I’ve even had the chance to throw you a welcome to Ponyville party!”

Anything else the adults may have said was lost to the Crusaders as the two groups went their separate ways, the six adults galloping off toward the lift to get down to the Everfree Forest, while the three fillies made their way through the moonlit streets to the library.

Although once they reached the front door of the library, Scootaloo slammed a hoof against her own forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Bloom asked.

“If we’re looking for secret stuff I should probably go get my goggles that see through secrets,” she groaned at her oversight. “I’ll be right back. You two get started without me!” And with that the young pegasus galloped off toward her house instead.

“Great, so what do we do now?”

Sweetie Belle shrugged and answered, “Well, Princess Celestia never told Scoots to get her goggles. So maybe we can find the hidden compartment without them.”

“Oh! Good point! Maybe we can even find it before Scootaloo gets back!”

With that the two set about the task of searching for the hidden secrets of the library.

The first obstacle to confront them was the simple fact that the door to the basement was locked. After a bit of searching, Sweetie Belle found the key in a desk in the library’s loft. In the basement they found a bunch of machines, although the only one they could identify was the water boiler.

They didn’t have long to search before they heard the telltale and oddly motor-like hum of their friend’s wings returning.

“Cool!” Scootaloo said when she came down the stairs and beheld all of the old machines. Although her goggle clad eyes were quickly drawn to the far wall and she added, “Bingo!”

“Do you see something?” her friends asked as she darted over to the wall that had caught her interest.

Tapping on the wall between two machines quickly made it clear that Scootaloo had found a part of the wall that sounded more hollow than the rest.

After a moment of looking the area over, the pegasus stepped back, sighed and said, “There’s definitely magic in the shape of a book on the other side of that wall. But I don’t see any magic linked to opening it. The compartment must be locked mechanically.”

“So maybe one of the machines in here opens it?” Sweetie Belle thought out loud.

“Naw, Ah doubt it. If all we had to do was flip levers and push buttons at random, somepony else would have opened that chamber a long time ago!” Bloom countered.

“That’s probably true. But I don’t feel anything on the fake wall, so it has to be opened from somewhere else. So unless you have a better idea, I say we go with figuring out what all these machines do,” Scootaloo said.

Turning her attention the ceiling, the young mechanic took note of where the pipes coming off of the boiler went and frowned. Some of the pipes disappeared into the ceiling, no doubt going up to the library for normal use. Some of them went to a few of the other machines around the room, and some of those machines had pipes that came off of them. But none of the pipes disappeared into the wall with the fake section.

Then there were the machines that didn’t use steam power at all and must have been built to run on electricity or magic. The goggles allowed Scootaloo to see that two of the machines had enchanted power sources. Seeing as magic could do just about anything, she figured she’d try her luck with the one to the immediate left of the fake wall.

Finding only one switch on the machine, she flipped it to the ‘on’ position. A few lights flickered to life and a roll of paper began to rotate while three tools drew three straight lines on the paper before the machine began to spit the feed of paper out of a slot just below the roll.

“I think somepony is supposed to have the funny hat on,” Sweetie Belle suggested, pointing a hoof to a metal hat thing hanging on the side of the machine.

Using her magic, the unicorn took the metal helmet with all the lights, doohickeys and wires tethering it to the machine. And as soon as Sweetie put the helmet on, the tools began to wave back and forth making the lines on the paper feed all wavy. She made her horn spark a few times and smiled.

Scootaloo only cocked her head and said, “I don’t get it. What’s it do?”

“I think it measures the magic of the pony wearing the hat!”

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised it didn’t open the secret door. With only one switch it would be way too easy to trigger on accident.” With that said, she turned it back off and moved on.

Apple Bloom pushed a large lever on another device. Puffs of steam began to come from the motor on the device, and two pumps in glass chambers came to life. Water began to flow through the glass tubes connected to the pumps. And as the farm filly experimented with the dials and buttons on the control board, the water changed route, burners came on and off, and currently empty chambers opened and closed.

“Neat! But Ah think it’s just a fancy potion making set,” she concluded.

Next Sweetie Belle picked out a machine that was topped with two glass spheres and a glass tube between them. Turning it on the spheres lit up with lightning, and electricity began arching silently between the two spheres.

“Oooh! It’s like those fancy pegasus machines!”

Scootaloo smiled. “We do like electricity based machines! But…”

All three fillies looked to the fake wall and sighed, “Still no open door.”

* * * * * * *

Several hours later found the three flopping down on the floor with glossed over eyes, gazing through the ceiling.

“We’ve tried everything!” Sweetie complained.

After a round of agreeing moans, Scootaloo asked, “Do you think we could use dynamite?”

“…You want to use explosives in a library?”

“Well, Celestia did tell us to get the book. She didn’t say HOW we had to get it. And there’s no magic in the fake wall, so it can’t be indestructible, can it?”

“With all the electrical stuff around, we could probably just set the whole library on fire,” Apple Bloom suggested sarcastically.

“Oh yeah! That probably would be easier than trying to find somepony willing to give us dynamite!” Scootaloo responded perking up at the idea.

“Ah'm pretty sure books burn too,” Bloom pointed out the flaw in her own plan, while slapping a hoof to her own forehead.

“Oh… Right… Dang!” Scoots said, slumping back down.

After another long moment of nothing, Apple Bloom piped up again. “Is it just me or are some of those stars different?” she asked, pointing her hoof to the ceiling.

The fact that the ceiling had been painted like the night sky had been a moot one up to this point. So much so that Scootaloo hadn’t even let that fact register in her mind until now despite having been staring at it for several minutes. But now that Bloom had made her think about it, she traced her friend’s hoof to the part of the ceiling in question.

At first she didn’t see what her friend was talking about. But when she looked at the ceiling as a whole she noticed that almost all of the stars had been painted as five-pointed stars. Almost, but not all. Where Apple Bloom was pointing there was a four-pointed star, and near that was a six-pointed one, and even ones with seven and eight points.

“I think you’re right! But… I don’t usually fly at night, and when I do I just use a compass. So I’ve never gotten around to learning the constellations.”

“My studies did include the constellations,” Sweetie said. “But I don’t remember any of the four star ones looking like that. So if it’s supposed to be a real one, it’s not one of the commonly known ones.”

A smile suddenly appeared on Apple Bloom’s face. “That’s because it’s not a four star constellation. It’s a five star one!” she said. “If ya use the five-pointed star in the middle of them, too, it’s the Northern Cross!”

“Let’s see, if that’s the Northern Cross…” Sweetie said, trailing off. Tracing her hoof away from the odd stars, she started tracing out the patterns of the stars off to the side of the oddly pointed ones. “Pegasus… Delphinus… Yep, that’s the Northern Cross alright!”

Apple Bloom cheered as if she’d answered the pop quiz at school correctly.

But Sweetie Belle frowned and said, “Okay, so it’s the Northern Cross. But how does that help us open the secret room?”

For a moment the trio of fillies went back to staring at the ceiling. Then another piece of information that had seemed useless at the time flashed in the back of Scootaloo’s mind.

Jumping up, she practically shouted, “Apple Bloom! You’re a genius!”

“Ah am? That’s great! Uhh… Care to tell me how Ah’m a genius?”

“The stars in the constellation are numbered four through eight! And the machines are numbered one through ten! But I didn’t notice before because they aren’t arranged in that order! But…” she trailed off as she ran to one side of the room. “Four! Five! Six! Seven!” she read off of the machines as she ran the pattern of the Northern Cross’s stars, turning them on as she passed by. “And eight!” she announced proudly when she arrived at the machine just to the right of the fake wall.

When she turned on the last of the devices, an additional mechanical whir was heard, and the fake wall suddenly slid into the floor.

Chapter 21: Seeking the Path

Once they’d retrieved the book from the secret compartment, Scootaloo and her friends made their way to Fluttershy’s inn.

They had all read the book, although it was actually rather generous to call it that as only a few pages had anything on them. What little information was in the book amounted to three riddles, each with an accompanying picture. And from their own experience, it was easy for the crusaders to see that the first two riddles pointed to the caves of the Unicorn Mountains and the Temple of the Earth in their own valley. With that figured out, it was equally easy to see that the third riddle was pointing to a tower on the peaks of the Foal Mountains.

One big problem came up when they tried to find said tower, that being that none of the maps of that area showed any towers in the Foal Mountains. Let alone one on a peak.

With nothing more to learn on the topic, the Cutie Mark Crusaders waited for the adults to finish their task and return to the inn as well.

Scootaloo was asleep but fidgeting by the time Rainbow Dash and the others did return. While the fillies who were awake told tales of nightmares plaguing everypony who dared to sleep under this eternal night, the adults had returned with stories of nightmares given form by dark magic hounding their every step through the Everfree Forest.

“In a way, I’m envious,” Sweetie Belle said softly. “At least her nightmares aren’t bad enough to wake her up.”

“Don’t be,” Apple Bloom responded. Although she wasn’t certain, the farm filly could guess that no nightmare could rouse her pegasus friend because what pain could possibly compare to what the waking world had already given her?

Although it had been unsaid, Sweetie Belle could see as much written in Bloom’s eyes. “I’m scared,” Sweetie said. “I wish Celestia hadn’t asked us to be a part of this! I wish I could just hide under a bed and wait for all of this to be over…”

“So do Ah. And Ah’m scared too,” Apple Bloom answered. Then looking to their sleeping friend, she added, “But crusaders stick together! If Scootaloo is going to see this through to the end, then we owe it to her to do the same. So? Crusaders forever?” she asked holding her hoof out.

Sweetie Belle looked to the slumbering pegasus filly, bumped her hoof to Apple Bloom’s and whispered, “Crusaders forever!”

“Feel better?” Bloom asked.

“Yeah,” Sweetie answered. “Although I still with I could get some sleep instead of just rest.”

With a yawn, Rainbow Dash said, “If we’re still waiting on Celestia, then rest sounds like a good idea right now.” Then after looking at the clock and seeing it saying eight o’clock, she added, “Eight huh? Is that AM or PM?”

“With the night refusing to end, does it even matter anymore?” Scootaloo said, rubbing her eyes.

“Sorry, Squirt. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay, it was a nightmare anyway.” Stretching and accepting a cup of hot chocolate from Spike, Scootaloo noticed the new golden necklace with a ruby in the shape of a lightning bolt that Rainbow Dash had, and added, “Are those the Elements of Harmony? Cool!”

“Yeah, turns out I’m the Spirit of Loyalty. Pretty cool huh?” After posing heroically for a second, Dash continued, “AJ’s the Spirit of Honesty, Flutters is Kindness, Rarity’s Generosity, Pinkie Pie’s Laughter, and Twilight’s crown thingy means she’s the Spirit of Magic.”

“Cool!” all three fillies said in awe.

“So what do we do now?” Sweetie Belle added warily.

Twilight Sparkle stepped up to answer. “Well, according to the legend, these Elements of Harmony are what defeated Nightmare Moon the last time. Now that we have them, and given Celestia’s orders, I suspect we are stuck waiting for the Princess to tell us when and where we need to be to confront Nightmare Moon.”

As if on cue, not more then ten seconds after Twilight finished speaking, Spike let lose a belch of green dragon fire. As the flames dispersed in the air in front of the youthful dragon, they left a rolled-up letter in their wake.

The purple unicorn was quick to move behind her assistant and read the letter over his shoulder.

“Well? What does it say?” Rainbow Dash asked impatiently.

Spike cleared his throat and read aloud, “My most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle. It is as I feared. It seems that Nightmare Moon is content to besiege us from afar. Sending only nightmares given form by her magic, while remaining on the moon herself, and thus out of our reach.

“While the royal guard can most certainly fight off the dark magic creatures for a time, with the nightmares interfering with restful sleep, it is only a matter of time before grave mistakes are made. If Nightmare Moon will not come to us, then our only hope is to take the Elements of Harmony to her and face her on the moon.”

“On the moon! How are we supposed to do that? No pony has ever been to the moon! Not before Nightmare Moon anyway!” Twilight interrupted.

“I don’t know, but there’s more to the letter, so maybe Celestia will mention that if you let me finish. Now where was I? Right, there!

“If Scootaloo and her friends succeeded, they should have with them the tome containing the full version of the legend of the Triple Crown, the treasures created by three friends who were also craftsponies of exceptional skill. Each crafted an artifact, one for each race. The Staff of True Light was the unicorn treasure and The Tranquility Stone was the artifact of the earth ponies. While not even the full version of the legend names the pegasus artifact, it does say where the three chose to hide it. And I can personally assure you it can help you reach the moon. –Celestia.”

* * * * * * *

Several hours had passed since Celestia’s letter had arrived. Twilight had studied the full legend of the treasures of the Triple Crown. She agreed with the fillies’ conclusion that the tower was somewhere in the Foal Mountains. Although she also deciphered that the legend was hinting that the Staff of True Light was intended to reveal the tower and the Tranquility Stone was the key needed to enter it.

“This isn’t good!” Twilight kept muttering with every map or book she tossed aside.

“Y’all keep saying that, sugarcube,” Applejack said. “But ya have yet to share ‘what’ ain’t good.”

“It’s just like the Crusaders said! None of the maps show any tower in the Foal Mountains! And what’s worse is that none of the books here have any record of a tower out there either! At this rate we’re going to have to hike over the entire mountain range to find it!”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. Everypony else offered words of determination along the lines of ‘if that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do!’

Then the door to the room swung open and a pegasus in E.U.P. Guard armor entered. He quickly made his way over to Twilight Sparkle. He then pulled the Tranquility Stone and a scroll out of his saddlebags and presented them to her.

“Thank you, sir, but what’s this?” Twilight said.

“A spell scroll. Celestia said you would need to cast the spell within it in order to survive the conditions on the moon once you get there.”

“I see, thank you.” Then turning to the others she added, “Come on girls, we’d best head to the train station. We’d better get started since it looks like we have a lot of hiking to do.”

Scootaloo couldn’t take it anymore and voiced her confusion. “If we’re looking for a tower in the middle of nowhere, shouldn’t we be flying? That sounds like something that’d be easy to see from the air!”

Pulling the orange pegasus aside, Rainbow Dash said, “Scootaloo, in case you didn’t notice, flying at night is really dangerous. Especially far away from towns where their lights can show you where the ground is. These are exactly the conditions where a mountain really can sneak up on you. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not crash into the side of a mountain I couldn’t see.”

“I can see just fine,” Scootaloo said, tapping the side of her head, or more precisely the strap of her crystal-lensed goggles.

“Wait! Those goggles give you night vision?”

“I don’t think it’s the same thing as night vision. It’s like when a cloud gets in the way in the middle of the day. When you can see fine but everything’s in the shadow of the cloud so there are no shadows. That’s what it’s like. Why do you think I’ve been wearing them since the night refused to end? I like being able to see what’s around me!”

A smile slowly grew on Dash’s face. “Forget the train station, we’re going to the airport!”

* * * * * * *

They wound up ‘borrowing’ a small cargo airship from Ponyville’s airport. Technically it belonged to Mr Rich, and technically the airport staff had taken refuge in the central part of town, so there wasn’t anypony around to relay a note informing him that they were borrowing it.

And by now nightmares given form had been seen fighting the guards around town, so it was decided that it would be just as safe for Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle tag along on this expedition. Maybe even safer given their intention to be in the air and away from all the towns being attacked.

Scootaloo stood on a box and gave the control wheel a spin, guiding the air ship into a turn to continue their search. They’d reached the Foal Mountains and been searching for over ten hours now. Twilight had insisted on a systematic switchback search pattern, and it was time for another wide turn as they slowly progressed eastward.

Then a distant peak caught her eye. It seemed to have a much more needle-like point than the rest of the peaks on the spine of the mountain range.

Turning the ship toward the mountain peak drew Twilight’s attention. “Why are you deviating from the search path? Do you see it?”

“I think so. Over there,” the filly answered, pointing out the front window of the airship’s bridge. As the seconds ticked on a smile grew on her face. It took a moment, but then they were close enough for Scootaloo to see what she’d been looking at. “Whoo hoo! Found it!” she cheered now that she could plainly see that it was indeed a tower atop that peak.

With a few tries and little bit of coaching from Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo was able to bring the airship down and park it on a ridge not more than a few minutes’ walk away from the tower. As they approached, they found three large stone obelisks set in a triangle formation with a smaller stone in the center.

“Are we there yet?” Pinkie Pie asked as she hopped along.

“Yes,” Scootaloo said, approaching one side of the formation.

To everypony else, the filly seemed to be looking at the stars above an empty plateau beside the stone formation. But to Scootaloo, she was looking on a white stone tower with a base as wide as the airport hangers back in Ponyville and well over a hundred feet tall, maybe even two hundred. There were no windows on the tower, but there were two sets of runes, one about a third of the way up and the other at the two-thirds mark. A cone shaped roof made from what looked like a silver metal capped the top of the tower.

“It’s right here- Whoa!” That last part being when Scootaloo startled herself by pushed her hoof into the steps leading up to the Tower’s front door. “It’s not just invisible! I can’t even touch it!” she declared, pulling her hoof back.

“Wow! A phasing spell powerful enough to hide an entire tower is a true marvel! I didn’t even know that was possible! I wish I had time to study it!” Twilight said in a voice of pure awe.

Yet the unicorn pulled the Tranquility Stone from her saddlebags and used her magic to levitate it over to the center stone of the formation, which had an indention of the same size and shape as the Tranquility Stone.

“Everypony, stand back!” she warned just before putting the artifact into the groove of the center stone of the triangle formation.

Immediately, the Tranquility Stone’s light flowed into the center stone, causing runic patterns to appear as the light made its way down the small pillar. The light spread along the ground to the three larger stones of the triangle. Then the magic moved into the air off to the side, swirling its way upward until the tower appeared in the wake of the magical torrent.

Once the tower had fully appeared, the simple iron door at the base of the tower opened. And with that, the nine ponies gathered before it entered the tower.

Chapter 22: Tower of Trials

Inside the tower, the ponies found a large foyer with checkerboard black and white tile floors, white marble walls, and crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. To the left, right and along the back sides of the room were three staircases each.

Rainbow Dash looked around with a suspicious raised eyebrow and asked, “Why would there be nine staircases to the next floor?”

Scootaloo shook her head. “There’s magic everywhere in here. It’s kinda bright to me, almost like they meant to blind the goggles when they built it.”

“It was a staff at the time,” Twilight corrected. “Though I suspect you are correct. Given that whoever built this place intended the Staff of True Light to be used to find it, they would have assumed that anypony who got this far could see magic.”

However, Rainbow Dash’s eyes were drawn to a crest painted on the floor in the middle of the room. The crest was a maze-like pattern surrounding a four-pointed star. The star was aligned to the door and the three sets of stairs. And just beyond the three points of the star that were aimed at the stairs were a horseshoe, a horn and a set of wings. “It’s almost as if they made a path for each of us,” she commented.

“Yes,” Twilight said. “But, we really should stick together.”

A round of nods agreed with the idea as the team gathered near the middle of the room.

As they looked at the nine staircases, it was Applejack who asked the inevitable question. “So, which one are we taking?”

“This is supposed to be the pegasus treasure of the set, isn’t it? So maybe we should take one of the three on the wings side of the room,” Sweetie Belle suggested.

“That still gives us three options,” Apple Bloom said.

As they looked up, what they could see of the next floor was that all of the staircases led to a different, narrow hallway.

Pinkie Pie hopped forward, saying, “Eny, meany, miney…” She didn’t get the chance to say ‘moe’ before light came rushing in toward the team, forming magic barriers.

It wasn’t hard to notice that ten walls of magic were forming, and it wasn’t hard to guess that the tower wasn’t happy that the ponies had chosen to stay together. Yet the magic came so quickly that only Rainbow Dash reacted in time.

“Lookout!” she cried. Leaping and tackling Scootaloo, Dash managed to get trapped in the same magic pathway while the others each found themselves isolated by transparent walls of magic.

“Twilight can you get us back together?” Sweetie Belle half asked, half pleaded.

The elder unicorn’s horn glowed for a second, then she shook her head. “No good. There’s a teleportation ward in here.”

The magic barriers now clearly left each pony with a staircase of their own. And the pathways formed did indeed force the earth ponies up the three stairways closest to the horseshoe symbol on the floor. And the pathways where the unicorns stood clearly took them up the stairs closest to the horn icon.

Yet before anypony could think to set out down their path, a mechanical pony seemingly made of bronze came walking into view from behind one of the staircases. Its form was a frame with exposed gears at the major joints, monocles seemed to be in place of eyes, and a brightly glowing gem held in the chest seemed to be the source of the magic making it move.

It reached the side of the barrier, and the barrier seemed to weaken, allowing the mechanical pony to push its way through the magic wall and into Pinkie Pie’s lane.

“Hi!” the pink pony greeted it cheerfully as in neared her.

Opening its mouth, the bronze pony revealed a nozzle. Rather than answering with words, a spray of steam came from the nozzle.

“Pinkie! Run!” Twilight and Scootaloo yelled simultaneously.

“Why? It’s not that hot,” Pinkie Pie said. “It even tic-” she started to add, but her giggling voice was suddenly cut off once she was fully enveloped in the steam.

Then the flow of steam stopped, and the cloud evaporated, leaving no trace of the pink pony.

“What happened! Where did she go?” Fluttershy cried out with clear panic edging its way into her voice.

“There’s banishing magic in that steam!” Twilight answered. “From what I felt of the magic, if somepony reaches the top of the tower, the defensive magics of the tower will shut down and the banishing spell should cancel.”

Then the bronze guardian started pushing its way into the lane of the earth pony filly.

“Apple Bloom! RUN!” Applejack cried out, kicking the barrier that separated her from her little sister.

The younger farm pony didn’t need to be told twice and bolted the only way she could, down the path and up the stairs.

With the filly off at a gallop, the mechanical construct seemed to lose interest in her and started pushing its way into Applejack’s lane instead.

“Ah stand corrected,” the elder farmer said. “Everypony RUN!” she finished then followed her sister’s example and scrambled up the stairs before her.

The guardian hadn’t even made it halfway into the next lane before the remaining six ponies bolted, each going up the stairway assigned to them. With the one exception of Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo who had gotten trapped in the same lane and thus headed up the same set of stairs together.

The next few floors were like a maze. Endless marble halls with pointless turns and branches, some ending in dead ends, forcing them to backtrack and try another way. They found the occasional trap that tested the speed or timing of those running the maze, like nozzles that would spray banishing steam for a moment then turn off for a moment. Every now and then, they heard the sound of a friend’s hoofsteps on the other side of a wall. But most of the time, they heard the heavy hoofsteps of the bronze guardians. Although the guardians never seemed to move faster than a walk, so even when they did cross paths with one, Rainbow Dash would just scoop up Scootaloo and fly past it so quickly that it never had the chance to spray them. But their appearances were enough to make the two pegasi feel that slowing down to a trot was always a bad idea.

Eventually they arrived at a floor that contained three metal arches, each attached to a mechanical frame. The frames had a few gears here, a few wires there, but not enough to make anything. As a result the box-like frames looked like incomplete machines. The room was also divided into three sections, each separated from the others by a magic barrier like the ones that had divided them from their friends. But each section also had three stairways that could emerge into it.

Then Scootaloo spotted the shelves in each section holding parts. And not just any parts, but the parts that mixed cloud, solid rainbow, and silver metal. In other words pegasus engineering parts.

“There’s no more stairs up. Are we supposed to do something with these arch things?” Rainbow Dash asked the obvious question. Then looking to the two stairways they could reach but hadn’t come out of she added, “Or are we supposed to go down one of those?”

Almost as if fate was answering them, Applejack came up one of the stairways in one of the other sections. And a few seconds later, Apple Bloom came up another one, entering into the same space as her big sister. A few moments later, and Rarity and Sweetie Belle reached the top of their paths emerging into the third space.

“What do we do now!?” Sweetie Belle asked, her breathless tone telling the tale that she too had been pressured by the metal guardians to keep a brisk pace in the labyrinth floors.

“It’s kinda obvious,” Scootaloo said, pointing a hoof to the shelf of spare parts in the pegasus section of the room. “We use these to fix the arch machine things.”

“Darling, you’re the only mechanic among us! I haven’t a clue where all these parts would go!” Rarity said, pulling Sweetie Belle into a hug.

Scoots just rolled her eyes and darted for the silver gears on the pegasus section's spare parts shelf. Apple Bloom, Applejack and Sweetie Belle were quick to catch on. They didn’t need to be mechanics. The machines and the spare parts in each section were all identical, so all they had to do was copy Scootaloo as she put the parts into hers.

And while the earth ponies and unicorns couldn’t handle the cloud-based parts directly, they could still move them by grasping the silver conduits fused to them.

“Do you know what these things do?” Applejack couldn’t help but ask as she tried to copy the wires that Scootaloo had attached to the pegasus section’s machine.

“Not a clue!” she answered, grabbing another cloud part and lining up its connection points where the best fit seemed to be.

“Well, whatever these things do, you’d better make them do it soon! I think we’re running out of time!” Rainbow Dash said with her ears keyed down one of the stairways.

Turning her ears to do the same, Scootaloo heard the slow clang of a bronze guardian’s hoofsteps.

Stepping back, she looked over the machine she’d assembled. Everything seemed to be in place, but the parts she’d put together had left a hoof-sized space for one more part. Yet dozens of parts still remained on the shelf. She darted over to the shelf and gave the remaining parts a closer look. At first, the ones that were the right size were all the wrong shape, so she started moving the larger parts to see if they were hiding anything.

The guardian’s hoofsteps grew loud enough to make it clear that one was coming up the stairs behind her.

“Scootaloo!” Sweetie Belle said, now that she and the Apples had caught up and found themselves in the same conundrum of having a clear gap where something should be and the sound of a guardian approaching from one of the stairways.

“Working on it!” she answered with a mix of annoyance and panic in her voice.

Then the young engineer’s eyes fell on a large, dark cloud part that had a silver rod sticking out of it. While the part as a whole was way too big, the rod sticking out of it was just the right size and shape to fit in the gap. Grabbing it, she rushed it back over to the machine attached to the archway, jammed it into place and pulled the lever that seemed to be the ‘on’ ‘off’ switch for the device she’d assembled.

All three archways flickered to life and a portal of swirling magic appeared in each. Through the earth pony portal an apple orchard could be seen, through the one by Rarity and Sweetie Belle a cavern glittering with crystals, and the portal before the pegasi showed several cloud structures awaiting on the other side.

“Huh? I guess you only need to fix one of them,” Scootaloo said, noting that activating hers had opened all three archways.

The labyrinth guardians had finally reached the top of the stairs.

“No time!” Rainbow Dash said. Then she scooped up the filly and darted through the portal before her, just as the others were jumping through their portals.

* * * * * * *

Dash and Scootaloo found that the portal had deposited them on a small cloud with a few small cloud houses attached. It soon became apparent that the guardians had no intention to, or simply couldn’t, follow through the portal. But after searching the houses, they found them to be normal in all ways except for the lack of anypony living in them, and they soon found themselves forced to fly to the next cloud. Of course since Scootaloo couldn’t fly on her own, Rainbow Dash had to put the filly on her back and carry her instead.

It was in this moment of reprieve that Scootaloo put a thought that had been bothering her since the battle in the Crystal Empire into words.

“Rainbow Dash, can I ask you something?”

“Ask away, Squirt! If you’re lucky I might even have an answer!”

“Is the only reason you’re my friend because you feel guilty over what happened to my dad?”

“W-What? W-Why would I feel guilty about your dad?” Dash asked with a sheepish voice that practically screamed she knew exactly why. Yet at the same time she was desperately searching her mind, certain that she’d only ever mentioned cleaning out his locker in Scootaloo’s presence before.

Despite the mare’s words, Scootaloo felt her answer, for at the same time as she was speaking, Rainbow Dash’s wings had stopped flapping for a split second and her muscles had tensed up. All of which the filly riding on her back felt as clear as day.

“On the day we fought in the Crystal Empire, Spitfire told me everything.”

“Everything, huh?” Dash responded no longer confused but actually suspecting that Spitfire had withheld a fair amount of information from the filly. She let the thought hang, waiting to hear just what the younger pegasus actually knew.

“Yeah, she told me all about how she’d scheduled the patrol when you’d have to go alone. How she knew she was sending you into a trap. And how there was too much secret information involved, so she couldn’t stop you from inviting my dad on a mission she thought only you had the skill to survive.”

Rainbow Dash’s wings stopped flapping once again at the answer Scootaloo gave, and not for just a moment either. This time they locked into a steady glide. Her eyes became unfocused at the realization that apparently Spitfire did tell Scoots everything. Or at least more than she had told her fellow Wonderbolt.

Spitfire sent him into a trap… Spitfire sent us into a trap! And she didn’t say anything!

The revelation of betrayal burned at Rainbow’s mind, her heart, her very soul. Yet, a squeeze from the orange legs wrapped around her chest snapped her out of her daze. “I see,” was all she could manage to say at first. But once she’d landed on the largest cloud around, she added, “Spitfire was wrong. I never saw it coming. It was your dad who blocked the shot aimed at me. He… I’m only alive because he took the hit for me.”

Setting Scootaloo down on the cloud in front of her, she bowed her head so she could look straight into the filly’s eyes when she continued.

“I didn’t know who the pilot of the silver plane was when you first impressed me. That said, yes, in the landing bay when I saw it was you, I went out of my way to be on your side because I knew I could never repay your dad directly, and so helping you seemed like the closest thing I could do to repay him. But! That day you agreed to be my substitute wingpony, from then on I was your friend because of you!

“After all the awesome adventures we’ve been through together, I want to be your friend because I know you’re an awesome pony with a good head on your shoulders and an even better heart. You are a pony worth being friends with. Even better than friends, in a way you’re like the little sister I never had!” Dash said, pulling the younger pegasus into a hug.

“Like… a sister?” Scootaloo said in a daze as if somepony had just told her that her wildest dream was true. “Do you really mean that?”

Adding her wings to the hug, Dash wrapped all but the orange filly’s head in blue feathers and nodded.

Scootaloo let herself sink into the elder pegasus’ embrace, feeling as if a weight had been taken off of her. Any fear that Rainbow Dash was only her friend because she pitied her melted away with the knowledge that their friendship was not only real but apparently stronger than she’d even known. Strong enough that she had family again.

Finally pulling herself free of the elder pegasus’ embraces, Scootaloo looked toward the massive three-story cloud building nearby and said, “Thank you, Rainbow Dash, you have no idea how much this means to me! But I guess we should get back to finding out how to get out of here and up that tower, huh?”

“Yeah, we probably should,” Dash answered. Then she took a moment to ruffle the filly’s mane before walking toward the front door of the only non-house, cloud building in the area.

* * * * * * *

Inside they found a large room like the pegasus version of a dojo. With the noteworthy exception of the fact that the entire far wall was a mirror. The three walls made of cloud were etched with a swirl pattern that seemed to be depicting wind. Also a few star-field or ocean-cliff paintings adorned those walls. The floor was especially soft, like the cloud version of a dojo’s practice mat.

The striking absence of anypony or even armor that might come to life under the power of some ancient enchantment caught their attention.

“Hello! Anypony home!” Rainbow Dash called out. Yet, like the cloud houses they’d searched, no answer came here either.

As the two pegasi drew near to the mirror, Scootaloo said, “I hope they don’t expect us to fight each other.”

“Not each other-” her own voice answered her question.

Both ponies jumped back in surprise as they watched their reflections walk out of the mirror wall.

“-Just yourself,” Mirror Scootaloo finished.

With that Mirror Dash gave a battle cry and lunged at Rainbow Dash. Hardly a moment later and Mirror Scoots also charged at her real self.

Immediately Rainbow Dash led her double into the air where the two punched, blocked and dodged each other with the speed, precision and fury of the trained combatant that Dash was. As the two blitzed around the air, striking and bouncing off of one another, it seemed clear that adult and her reflection were evenly matched.

The brawl on the floor was another story. Scootaloo did not meet her reflection head on as Dash had. Instead her first instinct was to bolt to the side. But that only bought a few seconds before her other self got close enough to tackle her, sending both tumbling along the mat.

It had been years since the filly pilot had been in a schoolyard fight, and it showed in both herself and her reflection in the brief exchange of completely undisciplined and ineffectual wild punches that were tossed about.

But unlike the even battle in the air, this fight on the floor quickly proved to be lopsided. Even though Scootaloo had come out on the bottom of the tumbling tackle, she was able to push her reflection off of her and pounce to put herself on top. Sitting on her reflection, she was able to pin her down in a way that prevented her from using her hind legs. Then Scoots used her forehooves to pin down her other self’s front legs. And as her reflection squirmed under her, it quickly became clear that, as weak as both fillies were, the reflection Scootaloo didn’t have anywhere near the physical strength of the original.

“Stop it! I don’t want to fight you!”

Scootaloo’s demand got her pinned reflection to stop squirming as if finally realizing that she had no chance of braking free as the original had when their positions were reversed. The anger that had been in Mirror Scootaloo’s eyes faded, and she even began to smile and start nodding her head.

“Yes,” the pinned filly mused. “If this is all the rage you have within your heart, you are truly worthy.”

“Rage?” Scootaloo asked.

Nodding her head toward the two Rainbow Dashes still fighting in full force, the pinned Scootaloo said, “Don’t you see? The rage in her heart is just as strong as the rest of her. But it seems you gave up on rage a long time ago. But the lingering spark I was created from hardly feels like rage at all. What was it? Righteous indignation, maybe? Whatever it was, it doesn’t feel like you let malice be a part of it.” Then turning her head toward the two blue pegasi, she shouted in a commanding voice, “Enough!”

With that, Mirror Dash broke off her attack, and Rainbow Dash fell back to a defensive hover, both looking toward the source of the command.

With the rest of the fighting stopped, Scootaloo felt free to back off and let her reflection up.

The two reflection ponies made their way over to the mirror wall. As they walked back into the mirror, a beam of blue light shot down from the ceiling. The beam stopped just in front of the mirror and started pooling in the air. Swirling faster and faster, the ball of blue magic opened up into a ring and continued to expand. Once the expansion stopped, the ring of magic was twice the size of the average mare. But more importantly, stone walls could be seen beyond the ring of magic. Although the energy crackling over the surface made it difficult to see what exactly was on the other side of the portal, it was definitely a portal.

“You did it Squirt!” Dash cheered.

“Yeah…” Scootaloo said nervously. Then after swallowing hard, she added, “I guess we have to go see what I did, huh?”

“Yeah! Come on!”

Despite her words, Rainbow Dash didn’t actually give her honorary little sister a chance not to. Scooping up the filly with her front legs and holding her close in a tight hug, she flew through the portal.

Chapter 24: To the Moon!

“So… What now?” Twilight asked once Scootaloo had finally stopped woohooing like a school filly on Hearth’s Warming Day who’d discovered a massive pile of presents. “Do we head for Canterlot? Ask Celestia how an airplane is supposed to get us to the moon?”

Both of the pilots laughed.

“What? Why is that funny?”

“You’re kidding right?” Rainbow Dash asked. “With this much power, I’d think it’s obvious!”

Scootaloo showed the elder pilot’s point by pulling back on the stick and pointing the craft at the moon.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Don’t all aircraft stall once they reach their operational ceiling?”

Dash just smirked and said, “I seriously doubt this thing has an operational ceiling.”

The night sky somehow managed to get even darker. Then Scootaloo’s eyes were drawn to the dashboard. Some of the instrument readouts weren’t actual instruments but illusions displaying the same information that the instrument would have. And at that moment, the altimeter readout had transformed into a model of the solar system. On top of that, the artificial horizon had become a small outline of the Silver Nova in an otherwise empty display in a way it reminded her a radar screen minus the sweeping line spinning around.

Not only did the instrument readouts change nature, but she, and everypony, felt the change, too. Given the location of the moon, their assent had been at most a sixty-degree angle, and yet they all felt that gravity had stopped competing with acceleration for the G-forces being exerted on their bodies.

At first, Scoots pulled the throttle back to one third, the same as she’d found most other planes used for cruising speed. But she saw that the speed indicator was still going up at an alarming rate, so she slowly pulled back on the throttle even more. It wasn’t until she’d brought the throttle all the way back to idle that the acceleration stopped.

And when it stopped, everything that could float did. Mostly in the form of tails floating up off of the seats and manes of those who wore them long enough, too. That and Applejack’s hat escaping from her head. Rarity quickly complained and used her magic to pull her mane back into a more normal position, and most everypony else laughed it off.

Releasing her magic, Twilight also found herself soon floating. Rainbow Dash also let go of the back of Scootaloo’s chair and found she could hover without flapping her wings.

Yet it was the oohs and awes of Scootaloo’s friends that commanded the attention of those in the cockpit. The other two fillies were making use of the illusion magic painted on the back of the cockpit walls to look behind them. When Scootaloo, Dash and Twilight looked back, they couldn’t help but join them in gasps of awe as they beheld the world behind them. The giant blue, white and green sphere stood as the final piece of unquestionable proof that they weren’t on ‘the world’ anymore.

“Outer space,” Twilight muttered in a mix of awe and disbelief. “We’re in outer space. We’re in outer space!” she finally cheered.

“That’s nice and all. But what’s that with us?” Apple Bloom asked, pointing a hoof back toward the moon.

Several dark specks had appeared between them and the lunar body. Although in Scootaloo’s case, the Goggles of True Light showed her more.

“It’s the same magic as the rest of the nightmares Nightmare Moon made to attack everypony back home!”

Rainbow Dash just shook her head and sighed. “I guess we should have known that Nightmare Moon wouldn’t just let us fly up to her front door unchallenged. But that begs the question, what kind of weapons does this thing have?”

“What makes you think it has weapons at all?” Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.

Pointing to the control stick in Scootaloo’s hooves, Dash answered, “The stick has a trigger on it. I’ve only ever seen that for weapon systems.”

While the two mares continued to argue over the possible reason for a trigger on the control stick, Scootaloo searched the dashboard. Her eyes quickly locked onto a button that had a picture of four lightning bolts arranged in a cross, as if they were exploding outward from the center. ‘That looks dangerous enough,’ she thought to herself.

When she pushed the button, a new display appeared amidst the illusion of the outside world painted on the walls. Namely a set of light blue crosshairs appeared just beyond the transparent nose of the spacecraft.

Looking back at the dashboard, Scootaloo saw that the display she’d assumed was some kind of radar was living up to that assumption. It now displayed several red dots ahead of the tiny model of this Silver Nova star fighter. And those dots were lined up in the same way as the closest of the conjured nightmares ahead of them.

With a sigh, Scootaloo realized if she was going to fight, she needed to maneuver. And that meant dangerous acceleration be danged. She needed thrust.

“Hold on!” she said.

Although she only gave a fraction of a second’s warning before she pushed the throttle back in a little. The trio of rainbows coming out of the exhausts returned, and they shot forward all the faster. But more importantly, she could steer the craft again.

Rainbow Dash managed to grab onto the back of Scootaloo’s chair again, but Twilight reacted too slowly and was thrown back into the cargo hold before she got her magic to root herself to the floor again.

The young pilot pulled the stick and re-aimed the craft. All three fillies aboard screamed. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle did so like foals on a rollercoster enjoying the G-forces. But Scootaloo’s yelp had been one of surprise.

Rainbow Dash had also felt the unexpected. Possibly making her the only pony on board who understood why Scoots was sweating bullets right now. The craft flew differently in space than an airplane in the air. The G-forces were not what either pilot had expected to feel from such a turn.

With her hooves preoccupied with clinging to the back of the pilot’s chair, Dash stretched her wing down and pressed its tip against Scootaloo’s shoulder. “You’re a smart kid, Scootaloo,” she whispered into the filly’s ear. “If anypony can adapt to handle a machine, it’s you!”

The young pegasus relaxed her muscles a little and collected her thoughts. The G-forces had been… for the lack of a better term, slidey. Like riding her scooter on ice, when the thrust from her wings did more to steer than the wheels of the scooter.

Just like her scooter on ice.

With that thought, Scootaloo narrowed her eyes, tightened her grip on the stick and whispered to herself, “I got this.”

Once again manipulating the stick, Scootaloo piloted the spacecraft. This time she didn’t bother trying to aim properly. This time she squeezed her hoof around the trigger right as the crosshairs slid across her target.

Twin lightning blasts launched from either side of the Silver Nova’s nose, racing toward the nightmares closing in on them. One of the lightning bolts struck the target and exploded with ionic fury, destroying the nightmare given form.

At that, one of other the nightmares, one that had taken the form a dragon, took that as its cue to shoot back. And so it opened its mouth and shot a dark purple fireball back at the silver spacecraft. As did any other nightmare with a means of ranged attack.

Slightly surprised by the volley of shadow magic, Scootaloo threw the Silver Nova into evasive action. And while she dodged most of it, one blast of dark magic tipped the wing of the spacecraft. When it did, she noticed a blue bar on one of the displays deplete slightly and then began to regenerate slowly. Given the bubble-like symbol next to it, it wasn’t hard to guess that the blue bar was the shield strength indicator.

And so the battle began.

Scootaloo blasting and weaving her way through wave after wave of nightmares, and the conjured nightmares shooting at or trying to ram the silver fighter craft in the brief moment they had in range before it zipped on to the next wave.

Although the sheer speed she was flying at meant she was only close enough to actually make out what the nightmares were for a brief moment before zipping past them to the next wave, the orange filly couldn’t help but feel a shiver run down her spine every time she passed a headless horse. Or worse, her own nightmare as represented by the occasional crashed Lightning Bolt Mark 1’s that somehow still flew and took a few shots at her.

Unnoticed by those amid the battle, an ursa minor was herded away from the fighting by its mother, who watched with wary eyes. And the ursas weren’t the only two celestial creatures who had come to a sudden understanding of that mortal word ‘fear’ as they pondered if the silver invader’s wrath would be sated with the moon who had provoked it, or if it would sunder all the heavens in its vengeance.

Eventually Scootaloo broke through what seemed to be the last wave of summoned nightmares. Yet her reprieve didn’t last. Even before Sweetie and Bloom had said, ‘What’s that?!’ she’d seen the giant, starlight form of a massive nightmare creature rising up off the surface of the moon to intercept her.

The leviathan coming at them was easily the size of Ponyville or at least its mesas. Although it could have easily shrouded the town’s cliff districts too with its wings spread. Scootaloo couldn’t put a name to the creature’s form, though. It looked like the winged-shadow-wolf-from-hell to her, but if there was a breed of wolf that had wings, she didn’t know of it. Although now that she was looking at it, she had to agree that it was a truly nightmare worthy sight.

If that wasn’t enough, the nightmare hell-wolf opened its mouth. But rather than howl or growl, the nightmare-induced screams of a billion foals filled the minds of everypony aboard.

Like everypony else on the Silver Nova, Scootaloo grasped her head, putting her hooves to her ears in a vain attempt to block out the sound of terror incarnate.

Well, almost everypony else. Rainbow Dash shuttered at the sound, but she wasn’t about to surrender her death grip on the back of the pilot’s chair. More importantly, as soon as she opened her eyes, she saw Scootaloo with her hooves clasped over her ears instead of the control stick. With her hooves occupied, Dash reached out with her wings and used them to push Scoots’ forelegs down from her head and back to the stick.

Having her hooves forcefully moved snapped Scootaloo out of her panic enough for her piloting instincts to wake back up. And the first thing they told her to do was to grip the stick and resuming piloting the spacecraft.

And not a moment too soon, either. As soon as she turned her attention back outside, the first things she saw were five orbs of dark magic that had appeared near the massive nightmare creature. One just beyond the tip of each wing, more in front of each forepaw and the final one just beyond the creature’s open mouth.

With the moon framing it, everypony could see the starlight beast perfectly, and no pony needed the help of Scootaloo’s goggles to guess just how bad the impending attack would be. Most screamed in panic. Rainbow Dash managed to gasp the word ‘dodge,’ and even before she heard it, the filly at the controls quickly pushed the stick forward to do just that.

The orbs erupted into columns of purple flames that shot out at the small silver star fighter. Although with the sheer size of the nightmare beast, there was plenty of room between the beams of dark magic. And with a dive and a swerve, Scootaloo managed to mostly get out of the way.

The one beam that had been the most centered on where they were did manage to graze the tip of a wing. Blue magic light flickered over the surface of the silver wing as the craft’s shield magic was made visible while it struggled to protect the spacecraft.

And poor Scootaloo practically had a heart attack when she noticed that the blue bar showing the shield strength had lost 40% from the hit. If a grazing blow could do that much damage to the shields, she didn’t even want to think what a direct hit would do. No, unlike the smaller nightmares, there was no margin for error with this behemoth.

With that thought in mind, she jammed the throttle to full and squeezed the trigger to get off a few shots of return fire.

For such a large thing, the nightmare moved with surprising speed, actually managing to dodge some of the shots. Although its sheer size allowed some of the shots to land, just landing far from their intended target, like striking the lower body instead of the head, for example.

And to everypony else, the shots that did land didn’t seem to do anything. The surface of the hell-wolf only rippled for a second like drops had fallen in a pond reflecting the night’s sky, but the wolf didn’t seem to respond as if it had been hurt. However, thanks to her goggles, Scootaloo could see the truth. The nightmare’s magic did in fact weaken with the blows. Not much given how much magic was in the gargantuan conjuration, but it did weaken.

With a swerve and a roll, she dodged the house-sized claws that took a swipe at the silver star fighter. With that behind her, Scoots zoomed along the creature until she was over the spine. As she zipped between the demon wolf’s wings, she pulled the throttle mostly out and made use of the sliding nature of flight in outer space by pointing the nose of her craft at the beast and holding down the trigger to strafe the nightmare’s back the rest of the way. As soon as she neared the nightmare wolf’s tail, Scootaloo put the thrust back up and pointed the spacecraft back at the moon.

They didn’t get far before Apple Bloom gave a slightly panicked warning, “It’s gaining on us!”

A glance over her shoulder confirmed the claim. On top of that, the nightmare was gathering the magic for another volley of shadow beams. Scootaloo’s heart was racing as she wove her way through the beams. A shiver ran down her spine as she watched five new craters appear on the moon thanks to the missed shots by the nightmare. A yelp escaped her lips when the beast’s jaws slammed shut close behind. Then a sigh came when she accepted the truth, as impressive as the Silver Nova was, it wasn’t fast enough to run away from this fight.

With her eyes focused, Scootaloo spun around to reengage the hell wolf.

Worried glances were exchanged by the others as another strafing run against the nightmare beast seemed to produce no results. Thankfully, Rainbow Dash silenced the muttering that started by reminding everypony to let the pilot focus.

It didn’t take long before Scootaloo noticed the beast slowed and became an easy target for a second or two after firing a volley of shadow beams. And so she took up squeezing in a few return shots as soon as she’d dodged said blasts.

Every near miss practically gave the young pilot a heart attack, be it dark magic, massive claws or jaws. Doubly so whenever a grazing blow ripped away a large chunk of shield energy from her star fighter. Then the moment of truth came. One of the hundreds of lightning bolts fired from her ship’s cannons struck the nightmare wolf and it suddenly stopped. Cracks formed in the starlight beast’s form and spread across its body. Then it exploded in a shower of purple stars flicking out of existence against a background of true starlight.

“You did it, Squirt!” Rainbow Dash shouted among the other cheers that filled the space plane.

With the nightmare beast destroyed, nothing remained to stop them on their way to the moon. As they neared the moon, an obsidian castle came into view and gave them a clear indication of where they needed to land. Landing took a few tries before Scootaloo finally managed to put the spacecraft down without bouncing back into space, but she eventually managed to touch down softly enough to stay on the lunar ground.

The three fillies watched from the cockpit as the six mares galloped through the gates of Nightmare Moon’s castle. Scootaloo sat with an itchy hoof over the throttle, ready to take off on a moment’s notice should anything attack. But now that the mares with the Elements of Harmony were here, the owner of the lunar castle seemed to have lost interest in the vehicle that had brought them.

“So… how long do ya suppose they’re going to take in there?” Apple Bloom asked after a few minutes of staring at the keep’s open doorway.

Sweetie Belle shrugged as there hadn’t been anything for them to see since their older sisters had busted down the doors and stormed in.

Then almost as if on cue, a prismatic tornado emerged through the back of the keep and was quickly followed by a bright flash filling all the windows. “I’d say about that long,” Scootaloo answered.

Sure enough, a couple minutes later the mares reappeared. Although the fillies raised an eyebrow when they noticed a seventh mare was now among them. Their curiosity peaked even higher when they noticed that the newcomer was an alicorn with a midnight blue coat and silver mane.

“Who’s this?” Scootaloo quietly asked of her honorary big sister as the mares came back aboard.

“According to Twilight, she’s Celestia’s sister, Luna,” Rainbow Dash answered.

Chapter 25: A New Day

The shutters of the upper floor window swung open, and the orange filly who owned the house peered out at the sunrise. Her eyes settled on the northwest ridge or more precisely, on the tall cloud house with a rainbow fountain that floated near the ridge and belonged to her honorary big sister.

Three weeks had passed since the Nightmare Moon incident. And for the second time in her life, she had been heralded as a national hero. All nine ponies who’d gone to the moon to face Nightmare Moon had. Even if the three youngsters had stayed on the sidelines in the end, that didn’t seem to diminish the praise they’d received when they’d returned.

That might have had something to do with the return of Princess Luna as it was news to most ponies that Equestria had once had two princesses. Needless to say, the return of the long forgotten second ruler of the land overshadowed the details of just how the princess of the night had returned. Especially since Celestia hadn’t mentioned that detail when she announced the return of her sister. In fact, as far as Scootaloo could tell, only those who had actually gone to the moon were truly in the know as to the fact that Luna and Nightmare Moon had been the same pony.

But how Equestria ruled itself wasn’t a concern for the young pegasus. One of the more interesting things that had happened in the past weeks was the fact that she now owned an E.U.P. flight suit. Not because she was actually part of the E.U.P. Guard, because she wasn’t. In fact it lacked the badges of a proper E.U.P. pilot’s suit. Instead it had been given to her because she’d become the unofficial favorite mercenary to hire for the E.U.P. Airforce, and Rainbow Dash was now considered her primary contact for jobs from them.

And yet, today was not a day for her military grade flight suit. Today was a day to shoot out the door on her scooter with her usual purple sport helmet. Despite her casual attire, the destination of the filly buzzing her way through the streets was still the Ponyville airport. For today was the best kind of day in her mind.

As she pulled up to her hanger, she found Sweetie Belle’s family butler waiting. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Rarity’s family butler, as it was the elder sister of that household who usually hired the young pilot for courier jobs these days.

You see, today was the kind of day that proved that her life had finally returned to normal.

Once she’d strapped down the package and double-checked the delivery information to see where the winds of fate were taking her today, a smile graced her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a reason to fly into that airport, or maybe she’d never been there before. She wasn’t sure. Either way it wasn’t a familiar enough part of Equestra, so going there would feel like exploring.

“So, where are you headed today?” Rainbow Dash’s voice called out.

Poking her head back outside, Scootaloo found her honorary big sister coolly leaning against the frame of the hanger door.

“Apparently today is a Las Pegasus day,” she answered.

The blue mare nodded her head and said, “Fun place. Not sure how fun it would be to you, though. I think half the things to do there have age restrictions, so I’m not sure how much they’d let you look around. But still, they’ve got some good sights to see over there.”

“Can you close the door once I head out?” the filly asked, taking note that the elder pegasus was only a few feet from the switch that controlled the hanger door.

The answer came with a casual salute when Dash said, “Sure thing, Squirt! Have fun out there!”

“So, are you coming?” Scootaloo asked, knowing that the reason the Wonderbolts had stationed Rainbow Dash in Ponyville was to keep tabs on the only pony with a space plane that the Equestrian Air Force had access to.

“Naw, I just need to know where to find you. Besides, you know I’d rather hang out with you on my days off then when it’s part of the job, when we can both drop off the radar and I can just be your big sis.”

The two shared a laugh. Truthfully Rainbow Dash didn’t have the professionalism to stop acting like her honorary big sister even when she was on the clock for the Wonderbolts. But Scootaloo could only linger so long. She was on the clock, too, after all.

Soon she had taxied out to the runway and done her preflight checks, as improvised as it was given the lack of a proper instruction book to follow anyway. With one last look to make sure no one else was using the runway, she pushed in the throttle a little bit, rolled out and lined up with it. She gradually increased the throttle and started down the runway with rapidly building speed.

Then she felt the ground pull away as her wings took her into the sky. Those metal wings may have been the wings of an engineer, but they were every bit as hers as the ones she was born with. And it was riding these engineer’s wings that made everything feel right with the world. Here in the sky was where she felt she truly belonged.

So much so that she didn’t even notice the radiant light that flashed from her flank in agreement.

Chapter 1: An Adventure Unknowingly Begins

The Sanctuary Inn wasn’t the biggest or fanciest inn Ponyville had to offer. But it was the one closest to the airport. As a result most pilots who needed to overnight in the small town found their way here, as evidenced by the fact that half the room wore a pilot’s cap or goggles, the other half being locals who came for a good home cooked meal from time to time.

The inn itself was a simple wooden structure, simple enough that brass pipes could be seen running along the walls and ceiling. A stone fireplace helped provide a homely atmosphere to the humble inn, as did the many critters that also resided at the inn.

Most of the customers were speaking among themselves, enjoying a good breakfast before they planned on heading out. And that was just fine to the lone yellow mare, and owner of the inn, manning the counter. With the skillful flick of her wing and a kind smile, she sent a mug of the local cider down the counter to the pony who’d ordered it.

He returned a thankful smile to the shy mare with the long, pink mane.

One might have thought that a room full of high-flying airship and airplane pilots would be a rowdy one. And it might have been if not for the insistence of calm of the establishment’s owner. That and the large brown bear standing by the front door like a night club bouncer.

Speaking of the door, it opened and Hairy the Bear looked to see who the newcomer was.

“I came as soon as I got Fluttershy’s message,” she said.

He greeted the double pink mare and local baker with a friendly grunt and pointed a paw toward the table in the far corner.

She nodded and then took a moment to wave at the innkeeper before hopping her way over to the corner table.

At the table sat a gray stallion with a white mane and mustache, nursing a cup of tea. And if it were possible to dress in a way that screamed ‘I don’t belong here’ the fancy suit that made him look like a butler was doing a real good job of it. Honestly, he hadn’t paid much mind to the pink mare with the blue eyes until she sat down at his table.

“So, I hear you’re looking for some information,” she said.

After setting his tea down he looked the mare in the eyes and answered, “I’m told you know every pilot here.”

“Don’t be silly, I know everypony in town. So, what did you want to know?” she said in a tone that somehow managed to be both playful and ominous at the same time.

With a raised eyebrow, the stallion said, “I see. I’m looking to hire the fastest pilot courier I can. One who won’t ask too many questions. So who would that be?”

Instantly she answered, “Fastest is easy! She even lives here in Ponyville!” Taking a moment to stroke her chin with her hoof she added, “But… she knows her airplane makes her valuable. So, if you don’t want her asking too many questions, don’t let who she is catch you off guard and wow her with your first offer.”

“Alright, and who am I looking for?”

The pink pony leaned in close and whispered in his ear.

* * * * * * *

Armed with a name and a place, the butler stallion now walked the streets of Ponyville as he trotted onward.

Around him the buildings were primarily wood and plaster walls, with metal roofs. Most sporting bronze or brass pipes, further showing that the town shared Equestria’s recent fascination with engineering.

The town as a whole was divided into five sections. The three mid-valley mesas, that the town had been founded on, and two plateaus halfway up the walls of the valley that Ponyville called home. All together they were positioned roughly like the dots of the five side of a six-sided-die.

At the moment the stallion was on the west side of the central mesa, where the heart of the town was, heading south. The schoolhouse hadn’t been far from the northwest bridge, and unsurprisingly many a family had built their home here to be near both that schoolhouse and the market near the middle of town. Most shared the same style, although the ones at the edge of the mesa often had windmills attached.

Even here he managed to draw odd looks from the ponies he passed on the cobblestone streets. Yet despite that, or even the occasional blast of random steam vents moving his mustache, he kept a stoic aura about himself as he walked along. And the closer he got to his destination fewer and fewer ponies seemed to think his presence in this part of town seemed odd.

Not because the surroundings better matched his upper-class appearance, because they didn’t, but because the closer he got to the southwest bridge the more ponies could guess his destination.

Rounding a corner, he found said bridge before him. The sturdy steel beams of its industrial style filled his view. Honestly he found it somewhat of an eyesore. Though he would never admit it, he didn’t much get why ponies were so fascinated with machines these days that they felt everything needed to look like a mechanical frame. Whatever happened to the good old days, when a clock kept its gears hidden away? Not that the bridge had gears, it had no moving parts. It just shared the same skeletal look as if somepony had forgotten to put paneling on the frame.

The clink of his horseshoes on the steal path rang out as he crossed. Halfway, he approached the side of the bridge and looked out between the support beams and let the breeze blow through his mane for a moment. Down below he could see the forest that covered the valley floor. The Everfree Forest. Having grown up in this town he’d heard the stories of wild and dangerous creatures living down below, although he’d never been down there himself. Though looking down on it from way up here it seemed a beautiful sight. But it had nothing to do with why he was out this way, so he stepped back and resumed his trek toward the southwest mesa.

As he set hoof on solid ground he was greeted by rows of apple trees and a sign that read ‘Welcome to Sweet Apple Acres.’ A single family, the first family to live in this place, owned this entire mesa and this orchard was the very reason the rest of the town sprung up on the adjacent mesa.

He’d made it halfway between the bridge and the farmhouse at the center of the orchard when a voice with a country accent called out to him.

“Howdy! What bring ya to these parts, sir? Ya don’t strike me as somepony who couldn’t wait till market to buy some apples.”

The speaker turned out to be Applejack, an orangish-tan mare, with a blond mane and a brown cowboy hat.

“I afraid not, my good mare. I’d heard that the fastest courier in town also happens to be your mechanic.”

The mare gave an understanding ‘ooohhh’ and then added, “Ah reckon ya’d find her in the hanger, over in the north orchard.”

With a gentlemanly bow the butler thanked the farmer and headed in the indicated direction.

Sure enough, he soon found a path through the north orchard and after a few rows of apple trees it suddenly opened up to a small airfield at the north edge of the mesa. A dirt runway ran east-west, just beyond that, at about mid-field, was a traditional half-cylinder shaped hanger building. And not far from the hanger was an old wooden airship dock, Although at the moment nothing was anchored there.

After a quick check to insure that the runway wasn’t in use, he crossed it. As he approached the hanger he found one of its barn-like doors was open slightly, not wide enough for any vehicles, but more than wide enough for any pony to come or go.

Inside the first pony he found was a filly sitting by a tractor. The yellow filly had a large pink bow in her red mane and had been looking off to the side before she’d noticed the stranger enter.

“Uh… Howdy. Can Ah do something for you?” The filly’s unsure tone hinted that she was both trying to be polite and figure out why this overdressed stallion was here instead of dealing with somepony else.

“Perhaps you can,” he answered. “I was told I could find somepony named Scootaloo here. That’s not you is it?”

The filly giggled. “Naw, Ah’m Apple Bloom,” she answered. Then looking back to the side she called out, “Hey Scoots! Somepony’s looking for ya!”

Following the filly’s gaze, the butler found a wood and canvas bi-wing airplane. More importantly he also noticed the ladder and open maintenance hatch on the far side of said plane’s engine compartment.

A sudden thump made the hatch shutter for a moment and a groan hinted that the mechanic had raised their head unintentionally to the filly’s call. A set of orange hooves and a violet tail came into view as the mechanic descended the ladder.

As the pony continued to come into view, the butler raised an eyebrow at the realization that this pony was also a school-age filly.

When her purple eyes came into view, she hopped off the ladder and made her way over to the newcomer.

“Hey, how can I help you?” she greeted the stallion.

For a moment she started to offer her hoof for a shake, but then seeing she still had motor oil on it, she withdrew it and just smiled instead.

“I’m told you’re the fastest courier pilot in these parts. Is that true?”

“Pretty much,” she said beaming. “Only the Wonderbolts have faster planes. And last I checked they don’t hire themselves out as couriers.”

“I see,” he said. Then turning to Apple Bloom he said, “Excuse me, little Miss, would you mind if we spoke business in private?”

At first the farm filly tilted her head at the stallion. Then she hopped up with a gasp as she seemed to understand what had been asked of her. “Sure thing! I’ll be outside,” she said to her fellow filly before she left the hanger.

Once the butler was satisfied that they were alone he turned back to the young pegasus. For a moment he considered his next move. But he’d been warned not to underestimate this pony, and now that he’d seen her, he could understand what Pinkie Pie had meant. Finally he reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a large coin pouch.

“My employer needs a package delivered,” he said. Then he tossed the coin pouch to the ground, so that it landed with a heavy jangle, right at her hooves. “I’m authorized to offer one-fifth up front if you accept, the other four-fifths will be paid on successful completion of the job.”

To the filly’s credit, she didn’t immediately say yes, instead she nudged the pouch open. Her eyes growing wider as she realized that it had only gold coins and no silver ones to make it sound more impressive than it really was. Her eyes turned inward and continued to grow as she seemed to calculate just how much was being offered to her.

Finally Scootaloo looked back up and asked, “Just how big is this package of yours?”

“Why do you ask?”

Scootaloo recoiled at the suddenly hostile tone of the stallion’s response. Questions clearly weren’t welcome.

“Because I normally charge by weight. But even at my express delivery rate-” She gave the coin pouch a nudge. “-I can’t fit an elephant in my plane.”

After a short delay, the butler said, “The package is roughly the same size as you. Will that be a problem? Or do we have a deal?”

On one hoof, Scootaloo really didn’t like the secrecy and lack of information about the deal. But on the other hoof, ever since her father had died, leaving her orphaned, could she really afford not to take the deal? Then again, what if the package contained something illegal? She couldn’t really afford to get busted for smuggling either.

She dismissed the last thought with the idea that nothing could stop her from checking the package once she was alone with it in her plane. And if it did turn out to be something illegal she could just turn it in to the authorities.

Her final consideration was simply the fact that it had been over two months since she’d last had the chance to fly. While working for Applejack allowed her to get by it didn’t pay enough to buy fuel for her plane, so she could only do that when somepony was paying her to fly. And what she was being offered was more than what she usually earned in a year as a pilot.

“You have a deal.”

“Very good then,” the stallion said. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a small piece of paper and gave it to the filly. “Land at those coordinates, tomorrow morning at eight’o’clock sharp. You will be given the package and the details of the delivery then.”

With that the butler pony left.

A moment later, Apple Bloom returned.

“Ah take it, he give ya a job,” she said, looking at the coin pouch beside her pegasus friend.

Scootaloo only nodded to answer the question.

“Can Ah come?”

“No.”

“Aww, why not?”

“For starters, tomorrow is a school day.”

“You don’t go to school! And yet you’re smarter than most of my classmates! And even Applejack said that ya don’t have to learn in a classroom if ya just learn from the world around ya instead!”

“True. But I don’t think Applejack’s going to give you permission to come with me. Especially since I don’t even know where I’m going yet, so I don’t know if I’ll be gone an afternoon, or a few days, or what.”

With a heavy sigh, Apple Bloom conceded, “Fine.” Then with a more cheerful voice she added, “So what’s with the numbers?”

Looking back to the paper she’d been given, Scootaloo answered, “They’re coordinates. And I know these big numbers by heart. These are for Ponyville. The ones after the decimal points should be precise enough to tell me exactly where. But I need to look at a map to figure that out.”

Author's Note

Well this is my first attempt at a true alternate universe story. So here’s hoping that goes well.

And this is the story that got much bigger than I thought it would be… so yeah, I’ll be editing this one chapter at a time like I did with the Paladin of Prismatic Light.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the story.

Chapter 8: Trial by Fire

The chaos of battle was all around Scootaloo. Streams of bullets here, flashes of lightning there, mercenary prop-planes and Wonderbolt Lightning Bolt Mark 2’s weaving all over the place in the mother of all dogfights. Speaking of the Wonderbolts, they were clearly outnumbered at least 10 to 1.

And yet Scootaloo managed to follow Rainbow Dash’s Mark 2 for about fifteen seconds before she lost track of which Mark 2 was hers. In the filly’s defense, unless you were close enough to make out the cutie mark painted on the tail, all of the Wonderbolt’s planes looked the same.

That said, when two Mark 2’s wove past each other, Scoots chose to follow the one that had two enemies on its tail, shooting down one and causing the other to brake away. It took about five seconds for her to notice that she was now protecting the ‘wrong’ Wonderbolt.

Jumping on her radio she said, “Rainbow Dash! I’ve lost sight of you!”

Even as she called out, the orange filly pulled away from protecting one Wonderbolt plane to another, This one having three enemies on its tail. Punching the storm cloud connected to her ion cannon a few times, she managed to get one bolt to land, sending another merc plane down and scattering the other two into evasive maneuvers.

“Don’t sweat it, Squirt! I still see you! Just make your way to the north edge of the battle and we’ll join back up there!” Dash answered over the radio, the boom of her own ion cannons catching the mic before the transmission cut off.

Then a stream of bullets whizzed by in front of Scootaloo’s fighter. Pulling up hard she shot almost straight up and did a spin. Although she did it only to fly erratically, this spin also resulted in her silver plane reflecting the sun into the eyes of anyone looking right at her plane. Conveniently enough this bothered the enemies chasing her much more than the Wonderbolts looking to shoot down those chasing the silver jet fighter.

However, this maneuver caught the attention of more than just the planes on the battlefield.

* * * * * * *

Spitfire muttered a curse under her breath as she darted over to the nearest radio.

Right as she hit the broadcast button the silver fighter plane she was watching dove through the dogfight, scoring another shoot down before it pulled out heading north.

“Courier Seven! What the heck are you thinking? Get your tail back in here this instant!” the captain of the Wonderbolts shouted into the microphone.

The response that came wasn’t the voice of a filly, instead it was the male voice of a Wonderbolt named Rapid Fire. “I’m guessing she’s thinking she just saved my hide. Oh, and captain, I don’t think you invited her to this morning’s briefing. So I doubt she’s on this frequency.”

The eyes of the yellow pegasus shrank into dots as she realized she couldn’t recall the silver plane. Turning her gaze down to the instrument panel Spitfire pushed the button for the intercom.

“Engineering! What were you thinking launching a civilian into a firefight?”

If looks could kill, the microphone would have melted into slag under the gaze Spitfire was giving it.

A short moment later, the speakers once more crackled to life, this time with the sound of the maintenance chief’s voice. “You said launch ALL fighters, and last I checked a Lightning Bolt Mark 1 is a fighter jet.”

The pony on the other end of the intercom continued to speak, but whatever else he said fell on deaf ears.

“No,” Spitfire whispered in a tone of pure dread. “I can’t have her blood on my hooves, too.”

Then she pushed the intercom button again, and said, “Get my plane ready for launch.”

* * * * * * *

A Wonderbolt fighter jet shot down two enemy planes that had lined up behind Scootaloo before passing in front of her.

“Told ya I’d keep an eye on you!” Rainbow Dash said over the radio, as the blue and yellow plane rocked its wings.

Scootaloo released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and answered, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Getting shot at is scary.”

“Then don’t thank me yet. Somepony needs to silence those cannons on the enemy airship. I don’t need you to get too close to the airship, but I do need you to keep the fighters off me while I take care of it. So kid, can I count of you for that?”

The filly pilot looked back toward the Cloudsdale. A gash had been blown in the side and cloud was leaking out of the hole. Rainbow Dash was right. Even with its own defensive cannons returning fire, the cloud ship couldn’t take much more punishment before it would be forced down. It needed help from the fighters, and it needed it now.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Scootaloo envisioned Apple Bloom shaking in fear, trying to hide somewhere in their room. Oddly enough she also imagined Sweetie Belle with her face plastered to the window cheering her and the Wonderbolts on and even wishing she was out in the firefight.

Shaking the thoughts of the suicidally adventurous unicorn filly from her mind, Scootaloo refocused on the damage to the ship that said filly was on.

“I’ll try my best,” she finally answered.

“That’s all I ask. Now let’s go!”

With that Rainbow Dash turned her plane back toward the fight and Scootaloo followed.

As they headed for the enemy airship, five planes broke away from the main fight, assembled into formation and moved to intercept the two jets.

Dash turned to face the enemy formation head on. She managed four shots of her ion cannon before she zipped past them, scoring four shoot downs in the process. Scootaloo had turned a little wider thus avoiding the hail of bullets sent at Dash’s plane. The filly also managed to kick four shots out of her cannon, one even taking down the last enemy plane before it could turn onto Dash’s tail.

“Nice shooting, Squirt! But this is as far as you need to go! Stay out of the flack cannon’s range. I can handle this part myself!” Rainbow Dash called over the radio.

The orange filly didn’t need to be told twice. Banking hard, she peeled away from the attack run, perfectly happy to not go anywhere near the enemy airship with at least ten flack cannons on the top deck. And yet even as she put as much distance between herself and every enemy she could, she could only watch in awe as Dash’s plane wove its way through the exploding flack shots with unreal precision.

Scoots wasn’t sure how any plane could manage to last more than two seconds with so many explosions all around it, yet Rainbow Dash not only lasted, but was dodging everything thrown at her so well that her plane hadn’t even acquired any damage visible from the filly’s distance.

And once the Wonderbolt was through the flack field, she returned fire with lightning, raking the side of the airship. The row of long-range cannons exploded one by one as lightning bolt after lightning bolt came from Dash’s cannons. The instant her targets exploded in flashes of ionic destruction, Rainbow Dash rolled and dove, causing her plane to slip underneath the airship. Continuing to dive low, she skimmed along the snow-covered treetops until those manning the flack cannon finally managed to figure out where their target had gone. By the time the flack cannons spun around and opened up on her again, she was already halfway out of their range, so with a little more evasive flying she was quickly free from their threat.

Any sigh of relief Rainbow Dash might have given was cut short by a cry over the radio.

“Help!”

Spotting the only silver jet in the sky was easy enough. It seemed Scootaloo had three enemy planes on her tail. At the moment she seemed to be doing a repeat performance of climbing and spinning. Unfortunately, this time her pursuers didn’t seem phased as they managed to stay on target and dodge any fire being sent their way.

Dash put her throttle to full and slammed a hoof on the button for her afterburners. Surging forward she aimed for her fill-in wingpony and hit her radio.

“I’m coming! Just hold out for ten seconds!”

Scootaloo cringed as she heard the sound of the air change for the third time in as many seconds. Which meant that there were three new bullet holes in the cabin of her plane. Half of her mind was thanking her lucky stars that SHE hadn’t been hit by any of the bullets that had made it in here. The other half of her mind was wondering if she even owned enough pegasus tape to patch up all the damage her jet plane was taking.

The part of her mind thankful for still being alive was also trying very hard to keep her that way and decided that this would be a good time to bank hard and dive for speed. Doing just that, she also found the lone Wonderbolt plane out away from the main dogfight, the one she knew was Rainbow Dash, and made another hard turn to start heading more or less toward the one pony she knew was trying to help her.

Another stream of bullets informed her that she’d been flying straight for more then a half second, allowing those chasing her to try aiming again.

Rolling to the side and giving climbing another shot bought her a moment’s reprieve from the sound of bullets bouncing off of her plane’s wings. Glancing back at her enemies, she growled at what she saw.

Steam clouds were being left in the wakes of the three planes chasing her.

She wasn’t surprised as she had seen them using steam boosters as soon as she’d launched from the Cloudsdale. The large cylinders under each wing of the prop-planes were the steam boosters. They were basically fancy bottle rockets. But it was enough to let a propeller-driven plane keep up with a jet for about thirty seconds or so.

Just as the three enemy planes were lining up to unleash another burst of gunfire, all three exploded so quickly that Scootaloo only heard one crack of thunder, despite the obvious fact that three shots had been fired. It took another second before her mind realized that the flashes had come from the opposite direction as Rainbow Dash’s plane.

Sure enough, another Wonderbolt Mark 2 zoomed out of the mess of a dogfight and flew a loop around Scootaloo’s still ascending Mark 1. Then the Mark 2 cut its engines, stalled, flipped over and fired its engines back up to dive back into the dogfight with a vengeance.

After breathing a sigh of relief, Scootaloo hopped on her radio and asked, “Who was that?”

As Rainbow Dash’s plane slid into formation ahead of Scootaloo’s, the elder pilot answered, “Only pony I know who can fly like that is Spitfire. But she rarely flies combat missions, so I wonder what these poor mercs did to tick her off? Heh, I guess it doesn’t matter now. Come on! Let’s get back in there!”

With that Dash dove back into the fight. Scoots only lingered a second to calm herself before following.

Chapter 23: The Wings that Pierced the Heavens

“Is that what I think it is?”

The question went unanswered while the two pegasi stared at the object in the center of the tower’s top chamber.

The object was slightly larger than the Lightning Bolt Mark 2. Its shape set it worlds apart from the aircraft the two observers knew, however. If one looked at it from above or below it looked like a giant arrowhead, or maybe a spear tip. Its wings were extremely thick at their base and tapered out slowly enough so that they weren’t entirely sure where the fuselage ended and the wings began. Or perhaps it would be better to describe the plane as just thick wings, which happened to have a cockpit built into them. On top of that, the design wasn’t rounded like the aircraft they were used to. This thing was mostly flat surfaces with sharp angles instead. For its colors, most of it was silver, although did have blue stripes on the leading edge of the wings and two down the middle, going from just behind the two off-center windows to the base of the twin tail fins at the back.

“Will wings like that even fly?” Rainbow Dash added another question to the one the filly had asked.

As they continued to look the thing over, they couldn’t help but notice how small the three windows near the front were. Not to mention the angle they were at seemed awfully low. As a result they would give a very small amount of vision if the pilot was trying to see what was in front of the plane. Although given that both of them were accustom to the use of enchanted pilot goggles, they just assumed the windows were a failsafe and the pilot was expected to be seeing through the opaque parts most of the time.

Finally moving from their spot just in front of the portal they’d come out of, Rainbow Dash set Scootaloo down on the floor and flew a quick lap around the strange aircraft. Then she landed on it.

A moment later, she called out, “Hey squirt! You might want to come up here!”

Whipping her wings into a buzz, Scootaloo ran forward and leapt up onto the strange craft. Once she was on top she found Dash was about halfway between the front and back of the plane and was examining a rectangular line in the metal skin of the aircraft.

The size and shape of the groove certainly made it look like a hatch or doorway akin to the apple cellars she’d seen on Applejack’s farm. But it didn’t seem to have a latch or anything to open it with.

“Any idea how to open it?” Rainbow Dash asked now that the young engineer could see the obvious problem.

With nothing else she could see that looked like a latch on the door, she looked near the door for anything that might be useful. But she couldn’t see anything that looked like a panel that would open up and reveal the locking mechanism for the door. Then she tried running her hoof along the groove that outlined the door to see if she could feel something too fine to see, just as Dash had been doing when she first jumped up.

Or at least she would have, but the moment her orange hoof touched the door it slid back a tiny bit and then slid sideways, opening the way.

“That, I guess… Not that I know what ‘that’ was.”

Inside they found a space that amounted to a short hallway that had been filled as if somepony were trying to stuff a one-room apartment into it. The space was wide enough that three adult ponies could walk side by side down it. That is, they would have if not for the beds and counters on either side. As a result two adult ponies would have to squeeze past each other if they were going opposite directions.

At the far end was a small doorway that went to the cockpit. At the back end, the hall was even narrower than when going toward the front and ended in three doorways. The two doors on the sides looked like they might led to small closets, but the door at the back was marked with a high voltage warning sign. Unlike the outside of the plane, on the inside all the doorways had ‘open’ and ‘close’ buttons next to them, even the one they’d entered through.

There were two beds, one on each side of the ‘hallway’, and each was then followed by the counters. Like the beds, the counters mirrored each other, being identical save one feature: the one on the left side had a stove/oven built into it while the one on the right had a refrigerator built into it.

While it was hardly the first time they’d seen the cargo hold of an airplane converted into a livable space, such an airplane wasn’t what either pegasus expected to find at the top of the tower.

It was Rainbow Dash who put the obvious question to words. “So, how do you suppose an airplane is supposed to help us reach the moon? I mean, fancy plane or not, they all have altitude limits, don’t they?”

That was also the moment that curiosity had drawn Scootaloo to the high voltage door, right when she’d pushed the ‘open’ button.

The silver metal door slid open revealing a glass door. Beyond the glass door was a ball of lightning in a chamber made of dark storm cloud, solid rainbow arranged in magic rune like patterns, and over a dozen cloud crystal spikes holding the ball of lightning in place as it arced with power.

“This isn’t an airplane…” Scootaloo said, staring with awe at the sight before her.

“It’s not? Sure looks like one to me. A weird airplane sure, but still an airplane,” Dash answered skeptically, clearly not drawing the same revelation from the plane’s power source that Scootaloo was.

“Rainbow Dash, do you even know what this is!?”

The elder pegasus blinked, shrugged then answered, “Yeah, it’s a storm core generator. The Cloudsdale is powered by one, so I’ve seen one before.”

Scootaloo slowly pressed the close button and let metal door once again seal chamber of the craft’s power source, all the while still holding a haunted look in her eyes.

Finally turning to look Dash in the eyes, she said, “I can’t imagine what such a small plane would do with a power core that could run an entire city.” With a slow shake of her head she added, “Whatever it is, this thing is on a whole different level that any plane I know of.”

“Oh.”

Rainbow Dash’s one word answer was accompanied by a slight widening of her eyes as she finally grasped what had Scootaloo in awe.

Both pegasi slowly turned their heads to the door at the other end of the room, the door to the cockpit.

Rainbow Dash opened the door and the two entered the cockpit. The pilot’s chair sat in front of a curved control panel that was loaded with buttons, switches and instrument displays. At the back were two foldout chairs built into the wall on either side of the door. So the cockpit could accommodate three, but the craft was clearly built to be piloted by one.

And as they’d suspected from outside, the three small windows didn’t offer a vary useful field of view. As a result, the first thing Dash did was look around to see if there were any enchanted pilot’s goggles keyed to this aircraft. But as far as she could tell, the only goggles in here were the ones she and Scoots had brought with them.

After concluding her brief and unsuccessful search, she joined the filly beside the pilot’s chair in looking over the control panel. Scootaloo already seemed at work deciphering the symbols on the panel. Some were clear, like the small lightning bolt that was the same one pegasus engineers had been using since the dawn of pegasus engineering for the main power switch. Other symbols were a mystery as they seemed to be tiny pictures custom made for whatever button or switch they were near.

“Well?” Scootaloo asked, shaking Rainbow Dash out of her thoughts. The orange filly was looking at her as if she expected the elder pegasus to hop into the pilot’s seat and go through the craft’s startup sequence.

Instead, Dash leaned over, grasped Scootaloo in her forelegs and pulled the filly up onto the seat.

“Go for it, Squirt.”

Scootaloo just looked at her in bewilderment for a moment, then said, “Are you sure? With all the magic runes and stuff, it might bind to the first pony who turns it on! What if it binds to me?”

Dash just smiled and said, “The way our reflections were talking, I think it already is. The door opened for you, after all.”

The young pegasus’ eyes went wide. Then she shook her head back into a focused look. Slowly she reached her hoof out toward the main power switch.

When she flipped it, the control panel lit up. With the next switch in line, the instruments came to life, and with the next one the radio lit up. With the last switch in the start up line, a pulse of magic filled the cockpit, and then the walls went transparent, offering a full view of everything around the craft.

With that, the images of three ponies flickered into existence. One was a pegasus, one a unicorn and one an earth pony. Their transparent nature made it clear that these ponies were magic imprints made long ago.

“Scootaloo,” the pegasus said. “Of those who faced the tower’s trials, you were deemed most worthy of our greatest work, The Silver Nova.”

“Why?’ she asked.

“These wings that pierced the heavens.” He continued, making it clear that it truly was just a magic recording. Even if it had added her name to the message, it couldn’t hear or respond to her. “After completion of our work, we realized that ponykind wasn’t ready for such a thing. And so we hid it away, to await the day that they would be. Knowing this, I implore you to use its power responsibly. Or even not at all, if you also come to believe that ponies aren’t ready for its power.”

With its message finished, the spell ended, and the three ghostly ponies vanished.

And yet, Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo were still able to see through the walls of the cockpit. And with that freedom of vision they saw two more portals open up beside the one they had come through. Within seconds Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and their elder sisters came out of the two new portals. And a few seconds after that Twilight, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie appeared in a flash of purple teleportation magic.

Scootaloo quickly gasped when she saw her friends. Apple Bloom was sporting a few new bruises, and Sweetie Belle had scorch marks all over her. Applejack and Rarity weren’t fairing much better as they also sported wounds of similar natures.

“What is that?” one of the newcomers to the room asked, pointing toward the craft.

While those outside pondered over the strange craft, it immediately became clear that the see-through walls of the cockpit was a one-way feature to those inside. Once it was clear that none outside were able to see the gestures of those in the cockpit, Dash instead headed out to gather the others inside.

“We found a pond, and our reflections came up and fought us!” Apple Bloom explained once she was inside. “Sis’s was a bit tough. Ah can’t believe how mean hers was!”

“At least your reflections didn’t shoot fire,” Sweetie Belle offered.

Fluttershy hung her head in shame and weakly apologized for getting caught in the maze and thus being unable to help in the portal. Yet at the same time something in her eyes almost seemed grateful that she hadn’t faced her reflection.

Dash did her best to comfort her childhood friend, but the tight circumstance didn’t help. Between the two harness attachment points on the walls next to each bed and the three seats in the cockpit, the craft was able to accommodate seven ponies. Of coarse with the size of the craft’s interior, it was clearly only meant for two ponies, three tops. Needless to say, having nine ponies in it had left things a little cramped.

Given how crowded the main room of the craft was, Scootaloo and her friends were standing more or less in the doorway to the cockpit. And it was here that the pegasus of the three youngsters turned her gaze back to the transparent walls around her with one question on her mind.

“Anypony know how we’re supposed to get this thing out of here?”

A sudden quiet filled the craft as they all seemed to realize that the top floor of the tower both lacked any apparent hanger doors and certainly had no runway long enough for any airplane they knew of.

“How about that?” Apple Bloom asked, pointing a hoof off to the right side of the craft’s nose.

Where she was pointing there was a lever built into the wall.

“Sweetie, can you pull that?”

The young unicorn quickly lit her horn, and the lever was surrounded in a matching light green glow. With a slight crane of her neck, Sweetie pulled her head back, and the lever on the wall flipped. With that, the wall peeled away as solid stone rolled up as if it were nothing more than curtains, revealing the starry night’s sky beyond.

At first, Scootaloo smiled as the tower’s magic opened up the side of the tower, but that smile slowly faded when things stopped moving and there was still no runway. The opening was large enough for the craft to escape the tower, but that direction was not only going to dump them out the side of the tower but over the side of the mountain cliff, too.

“So… What? We’re just supposed to do the mother of all short field takeoffs?” Scoots thought aloud.

“Looks like it,” Rainbow Dash answered, sounding notably less bothered by the idea than the younger pegasus.

It took a moment for everypony to get in place. Not to mention with only seven seats and nine ponies aboard, Rainbow Dash and Twilight wound up standing. Dash sat with her hooves wrapped around the back of Scootaloo’s chair so she could look over the filly’s shoulder. And Twilight did the best she could to brace herself in the doorway between the cockpit and cargo hold.

“Ready?”

In response to the question from the filly in the pilot’s seat, Twilight focused magic into her horn. First casting the spell she’d learned from the scroll Celestia had sent on everypony on board, then she channeled her magic to both protect herself and Dash and root the two of them in place to try and make up for the insufficient number of harnesses.

“Ready,” Twilight said hesitantly.

Once Scootaloo had strapped into the pilot’s seat, the magic in the craft seemed to sense that its pilot was a filly and had moved the hoof pedals up to within reach of its pilot’s short legs. Pressing on the pedals to put full brakes on, she pulled the throttle to idle and flipped the switch that she’d interpreted as the ‘thrusters’ switch.

She felt a slight nudge of the craft as the engines came to life but were held back by the brakes. “Here goes nothing!” she announced. Then she jammed the throttle all the way in and released the brakes.

Pretty much everypony had expected the plane to accelerate, fall out of the tower, achieve flight speed while falling and have to pull up. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the craft shot forward explosively, leaving the tower crumbling in its wake, and immediately soared heavenward.