- Intro
[Author's Note] This was written at silly o'clock, so it won't be the best piece of writing ever. Hell, it wouldn't be anyway, but enjoy.
“Ugh, how long did they say this flight was gonna last again?” The question came from Rainbow Dash. They had been flying in the luxury zeppelin days now, and Rainbow hadn't been able to fly inside the zeppelin in case she broke something, much to Rainbow's chagrin. She just wanted to get to their destination, Marebourne, as quickly as possible, so that she could spread her wings again. The rooms in the zeppelin were small and stuffy, which was definitely not the ideal environment for her. She was lying on a couch like a carsick dog, with her facing the back of the seat, and her head resting on her crossed forelegs.
“Rainbow, this is the fifth time today you've asked. We already told you that you've only got a day left to wait,” Applejack said. She let out a short sigh as she tried to think of a way to help her friend. “Listen, Ah know you're uncomfortable in here, but thinking about it is only going to make it worse.”
Applejack was trying her best to console Rainbow, but she got a less than positive reaction. Rainbow just stood up, murmured something about “stupid flight attendants not letting me fly”, and stormed back into her cabin, slamming the door behind her.
Twilight was sitting on the bed in her cabin reading a book entitled 'Customs and Traditions of Marebourne'. She insisted on being aptly familiar with any new place's culture, as she felt that knowing about another pony's culture helped you understand that pony. So far, she had learned that Marebourne ponies often played a sport called 'cricket', and they enjoyed barbecues. There was also a section for Marebourne slang, but Twilight figured she would just be able to refer to that page if she needed to. She felt that she had read enough for the time being, and she decided to see how the others were doing. Just as she put her bookmark between the pages, there was a loud bang.
Twilight instinctively flinched, and climbed off her bed to see what had happened. She opened the door to her cabin and stepped out into the lounge, where a disappointed and slightly bewildered Applejack was sitting on the floor.
“Applejack? Are you okay? What happened? Where are the others?” Twilight was subconsciously interrogating Applejack, not realising how many questions she was asking at once.
Applejack sighed. “Ah'm fine, Twilight. Rainbow's just on edge a bit. Ah suppose Ah would be too, if Ah were her. She hasn't been able to fly in days. It must be awful for her... Oh, and by the way, Ah think Fluttershy was with Rarity in her cabin, and Pinkie's just...”
“Being Pinkie?” Twilight finished for her. Pinkie was always just being Pinkie, but on the zeppelin, Pinkie was being even more Pinkie than usual. Twilight imagined it was just the altitude getting to her, but with Pinkie, it could be anything. “Should I try and talk to her?”
“Ah wouldn't bother, Twi. Ah think it might be best if we just left her until she's in a better mood. In the meantime, why don't we see what Rarity and Fluttershy are doing?”
***
Fluttershy gasped excitedly. She was staring out of her cabin's window from her bed, and Rarity was sitting next to her. “Look, Rarity! It's an albatross! Do you know how rare they are? They're amazing birds! They fly over entire oceans, and they sleep while they fly! Isn't that incredible? And they have such majestic plumage!”
Rarity looked up to see the 'amazing albatross'. When she looked out the window, she saw the albatross. Or at least she assumed she did, as it looked exactly like the last 6 birds Fluttershy had pointed out to her.
“Why, that is simply lovely dear!” Rarity said that, but she didn't really mean it. As much as she enjoyed spending time with Fluttershy, she could get a bit over-zealous about animals sometimes. Luckily, a knock on the door prevented any awkwardness that could've arose. “Oh, do come in!”
Twilight open the door and trotted into Fluttershy's cabin, with Applejack following close behind. “Howdy, you two! What're you doing in here?” Applejack could see that Rarity had a handkerchief with a needle through it next to her on the bed, so she assumed she was embroidering, but she couldn't work out what Fluttershy was doing. She almost looked like she was in a trance, just staring out of the window.
Rarity turned Toward the door. “Hello Applejack! Oh, and Twilight too! Fluttershy is watching birds out of the window. She's seen quite a few rare birds so far, haven't you?”
“Oh, um, yes! I've seen plenty! Just before I saw an albatross! It was beautiful. It's a shame you missed it.” Fluttershy always sounded oddly confident when she was talking about animals.
As she was about to carry on about the albatross, Pinkie Pie cantered into the room, as peppy and barmy as ever. “Hey, there you all are! Wait, where's Rainbow Dash? Oh, I know! Is she it? I get it! Okay, where should I hide?”
“No, Pinkie, Rainbow Dash is in her cabin,” Twilight replied matter-of-factly. “She's just not in the best of moods, that's all.” Twilight didn't really know the entire story, but she felt it her job to explain what she knew.
“Oh, I see. Huh..?” Pinkie's eyes suddenly started winking completely out of sync. “Blinky eyes? Well what does that mean?” Pinkie Pie was always an expert at knowing what her Pinkie Sense was telling her, but this sign had her completely flummoxed.
Fluttershy turned around to look at the commotion, but quickly turned back to looking out of the window. She was sure it would be fine. When she resumed her post, she could see a pair of dark green birds off in the distance. They were flying in the same direction as the zeppelin, at about the same speed. Slowly, the birds began to edge closer, as they leaned towards the ponies. However, as they got closer, they got bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And bigger still. As they neared the zeppelin, something hit Fluttershy. They were propeller planes. And as they carried on in their direction, the rest of the ponies noticed them through the window too. And as they got closer and closer, their shapes got clearer and clearer.
Twilight made a horrifying realisation. They weren't just planes. They were armed planes. Not a second later, they unleashed a hail of bullets on the aircraft. The ponies all managed to duck just in time, as the glass of the zeppelin's windows shattered into a thousand shards. As soon as she was safe, Twilight put a magical force-field around the hull of the zeppelin.
They were all panting and taking in deep breaths as their minds adjusted to the situation. While the other ponies were trying to calm themselves down, Twilight was wondering. She was wondering why so few bullets had hit them. She had heard the sound of dozens upon dozens of bullets being fired, yet there only seemed to be a twoscore of bullet-holes in the cabin's back wall.
She stood up carefully, so as not to cut herself on the broken glass, and looked out of the space where the window used to be. She propped her front hooves up on the window ledge so she could poke her head out further, and she looked straight down. She saw the sea fast approaching. Then she looked up, and saw that the zeppelin's balloon had been riddled with bullet holes, and it was deflating fast. As their speed of descent rapidly increased, and the sea was getting closer and closer, all Twilight could do was black out, her unconscious body falling out of the window, dropping some 25 metres into the ocean.
2. Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach
“JESUS CHRIST! What in the name of Satan was that!? Uh, right, you're listening to me, Murdoc Niccals on Point Nemo FM, and we'll be back in a minute.” Murdoc was sitting up rather straight, probably due to shock, in the top of his lighthouse on the eastern shore of the Plastic Beach. While he was not normally one to leave an audience hanging, a zeppelin crashing into the sea right next to his island wasn't really something he could ignore. He sprung out of his chair, and started the long descent down to the ground floor of the lighthouse. Since he had at least two or three minutes before he got to the bottom, Murdoc decided to have a bit of a think.
Well for a start, what the bloody hell was that thing doing out here? This is Point Nemo, the furthest place from any land in the world! Why is there a bloody zeppelin out there!? And on top of that, there was apparently something to sink it too! I should set up a bloomin' toll booth! Hang on, maybe they're here to kill me . . . Or maybe the people who sank it are here to ki-
Murdoc's train of thought was interrupted by the brick wall at the bottom of the stairwell. As he peeled himself off the wall, he caressed his nose, checking if his (self-proclaimed) beautiful image had been damaged. It hadn't. Well, no more than usual, anyway. “Ow. Thanks, wall.” Murdoc just decided to forget the incident for the time being. He could get his revenge on the wall another day, because right now he had bigger things to worry about.
When he reached the entrance to the main building on the Plastic Beach, which was a 5 storey tower built into a mound of plastic that had somehow formed here, Murdoc saw a seagull and a pelican sitting on the railing behind the door having an idle chat about . . . something. Murdoc really couldn't tell what they were going on about, because the seagull sounded like he'd drank a pint of absinthe and smoked all of the marijuana on the planet, and the pelican just sounded like a plain smeghead. “Oh lord, don't make eye contact Murdoc, don't make eye contact and they'll ignore you, just don't look and they won't even notice you,” Murdoc muttered under his breath while covering his eyes with one hand so that he couldn't possibly look at them.
“Hello Murdoc!” Pelican shouted in an enthusiastic yet flat way.
“Oh you can just piss off, you bird-brained git! Just hang yourself now, would you? It'd save me the trouble.” While Seagull could quite easily tell that Murdoc was more than a bit annoyed, Pelican didn't even seem to hear his response.
“By the way, did you see that zeppelin, Murdoc? It made a really big splash it did, got me all soaked.” As Pelican carried on talking, Murdoc carried on getting pissed off at him.
“You're a sea bird, you lump. You're supposed to get wet.” Seagull's reply was nonchalant.
He understood Murdoc. He understood how nice it was to just get away from all of the idiots in the world, and enjoy some peace and quiet without any tarts like Pelican around to mess your day up. But unfortunately, he'd never actually been able to do that. Wherever he went, Pelican somehow seemed to follow. Half of the time, Pelican wouldn't even be trying to follow him. He'd just get “blown along by the wind”, or “eaten by Moby Dick and spat out next to him”. While he doubted these stories sometimes, Seagull thought that Pelican probably wasn't smart enough to make them up.
“Right, listen you two, just shut up and go and sit somewhere where you won't bother me, or you'll both be mounted above a fireplace before you can say “Murdoc, you are God”! Got it? Good! Go on then, scram!” And with that, they both flew off in different directions, with Pelican then quickly turning to follow Seagull. With those two idiots out of the way, Murdoc opened to door to the plastic tower and stepped inside.
There really wasn't much in the first room you'd see when you went into Murdoc's home. An open, grotty pipe, muck, grime, rust, moss, junk and an old lift. Murdoc was only interested in one of these things: the lift. The lift was the only way to get between the floors of the tower, as there wasn't really enough room for stairs. Murdoc walked up to the lift, and pushed the call button. Unsurprisingly, the lift was already on the ground floor, so he just waltzed through the now open lift doors.
Knowing exactly where he was going, Murdoc pressed the button on the lift's control panel marked “3”. The third floor was home to both Murdoc's study and the Plastic Beach's only recording studio. There was a satisfying ping when the lift reached the third floor and the doors slid open. “Oh, I never get sick of that sound. Very retro.” Murdoc mused.
Murdoc's study was a large, open room which didn't really have a great deal of things in it. There was a fish tank, an office desk, some seats, a large wall-mounted bookcase and a classic diver's suit, complete with silly spherical helmet. There was also a wall covered with framed pictures, all of various captains. Among them were Captain Kirk, Captain Caveman, Captain America, and Captain Collingwood.
Murdoc decided to peek out of a window facing the zeppelin's crash site. He immediately regretted having the windows put in so high up the walls. Murdoc was not a small person, but the windows were about 2 and a half metres off the floor, which made seeing anything useful out of them useful pretty much impossible. Giving up on the idea, he instead headed over to the bookshelf.
There was a yellow sticky note on one of the shelves. It read “Push The Bastard.” The note was in Murdoc's handwriting. “I really should get rid of this if I might have guests. I mean, I can't have them getting inside, now can I?” Murdoc said aloud to no-one in particular. He scrumpled up the sticky note and threw it behind him in a random direction. Murdoc then proceeded to do what the sticky note had said. He looked along the shelf for a book titled “The Bastard”, and when he found it, he pushed it. The bookshelf then slid open to reveal a hidden staircase. A bit cliché, yeah, but Murdoc was proud of his handiwork. Murdoc then started on his way down the all but endless staircase.
By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, Murdoc was panting and wheezing. While there were quite a few stairs, his chain-smoking habits definitely didn't help. The room at the bottom of the stairs almost seemed like it was the set in a James Bond movie. There were multiple computer screens and keyboards on the same 3 metre desk. There were at least 10 TVs in a glass case behind the computers, showing footage from various CCTV cameras around the island. In the centre of the room, there was a high-tech war table, about the size of a billiards table, with a Tron-esque grid on the screen.
Murdoc leaned on the back of the swivel chair in front of the desk, and started to skim over the various pictures on the TV screens. When he found the screen that had the best view of the crashed zeppelin, he couldn't quite work out what he could see. He could see the wreckage of the zeppelin just fine, but there were some . . . things whose shapes escaped Murdoc's grasp. He could see that they were fairly colourful, whatever they were, but he just couldn't work out what they were. There was a blue “thing”, an orange “thing”, a white “thing”, a pink “thing”, and a yellow “thing”. The picture was too unclear to make out any real details about the “things”, other than that they seemed fairly small. Murdoc was puzzled. “Just what ARE you?” He tried pushing his face up against the glass to try and get a closer look, but that (needless to say) didn't work.
Murdoc scratched his chin in confusion. What on earth are those things? If they're here to kill me, then I think they chose the wrong uniforms . . . Well, I might as well go and see what they want. Hopefully it's just a cup of sugar and a pint of milk, but I somewhat doubt that. And with that, Murdoc left for the crash site, taking a cup of sugar just in case.
“Hey mate, it's waking up!”
“Oh, goodie. An idiot for you to compete with.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you're an idiot, and this . . . equine most likely will be too. Then you'll have some competition.”
“Oh, I see. Thanks Seagull. You're a great pal.”
“No, I'm not. Now shut up, will you?”
Twilight slowly began to open her eyes. At first the light of day was blinding, but as she adjusted to the brightness, the first thing she saw was the sky. She rubbed her eyes with her hooves and groaned. Her head was pounding, and her body was battered. She tried to recall what had happened. She remembered that the zeppelin was attacked, and that she looked out of the window, but she could remember nothing after that. When she opened her eyes for a second time and looked around, she was surprised by what she saw. There was a seagull and a pelican standing next to her, staring straight at her. Twilight decided to break the ice. “Uh, hello . . . ?”
“Yeah, hi. We were wondering when you were going to say something,” Seagull replied.
“Would you mind telling me where I am?” Twilight said.
“You're on the Plastic Beach. Point Nemo. Furthest point from land in the world. Nice, quiet place. Well, usually, anyway. You're being oddly quiet over there, Pelican. Is something wrong?”
“No, I was just thinking about something,” Pelican said, as dense as ever.
“Well, that makes a change.” Seagull's reply was snarky and insouciant.
“You see, I was wondering; is it a boy or a girl?”
“Are you serious? You can't tell she's a girl,” Seagull scoffed.
“He's right. I don't really know how you couldn't tell. But anyway, you say we're at Point Nemo? Well, that's great . . . Did you see a zeppelin crash somewhere? I need to find my friends to make sure they're okay! Was there any explosions?” Twilight started to panic as she thought of all of the bad things that might have happened to her friends.
“Nah, just a big splash, really. They'll be fine. Well, provided they can swim. And I suppose they might get stuck in the wreckage and drown there. And that's assuming they weren't just crushed by it. And even then–” Seagull was interrupted by a short sniffle. “Look love, I'll try and help you find them, alright? Only if it'll stop you crying, though. I can't put up with much more noise than Murdoc and this git.” He glanced over at Pelican when he said this.
“Which git?”
“You, you half-brained twat.”
“Oh. Well thanks for sparing me the thought.”
Seagull just sighed.
“Can we just go now?” Twilight interrupted their very one-sided argument. Her patience for the duo's squabbling was running dry.
“Well, while we're young, eh Seagull?”
“Are you trying to say I'm getting old?”
“Let's just go already!”
“Alright, miss . . .” Seagull still didn't know her name. How rude of her.
“Oh, I never told you my name! My name is Twilight Sparkle.”
“Well that's a bit of a poncey name. Anyway, I suppose we can get going now.”
“Hey, what's that supposed to mean!?”
“After you, ma'am,” Seagull said mockingly.
[A/N] Wow, this took longer than it should have. I've really not been writing often enough. I only ever seem to be able to write late at night, and late at night I'm usually sleeping. Either that or doing something completely unproductive like playing Dark Souls. Even when I did finish this, my new pet proofreader RussellLawliet has been busy with personal stuff, so it took him a while to proofread this (he's still a great proofreader, though!). Well, I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
