High Shelves, Higher Stakes
The clock struck five.
Time for a shift change.
For the average warehouse monkey, that meant a sedate walk to the exit, whereupon they would clock out on the punch clock and exit.
But Rainbow Dash was no mere warehouse monkey.
Rainbow Dash was a forklift operator, and there was absolutely nothing sedate about five o’ clock for a forklift operator.
A forklift driver couldn’t simply walk out of the warehouse at the end of their shift and leave her ride stranded any more than a balloonist could simply step out of their balloon, or a watercolor artist drop their canvas. No, a forklift was a companion, a trusty steed, and it was one that required a certain gentle touch. An inspection of the lines, a leak check, an electrical shut-down. It took time. It took space.
There was only one space for inspection.
There were two forklifts.
So if a forklift jockey wanted to get out of the warehouse in any kind of reasonable time frame, that meant she needed to get there first.
As the clock struck five, Rainbow Dash, already prepared with empty forks and a clear line to the exit, eased off the brakes, creeping around the corner of the shelving onto the central aisle. There was no reason to punch it immediately, not when Rainbow Dash didn’t even know who she was up against.
Not that she would have, anyway. The two forklifts were in opposite sides of the warehouse, and the main aisle was just a little too tight for two heavy lift forklifts to operate at once. A forklift and a few squires on pallet jacks? Sure. But two full Knights of The Forked Table? Hardly.
If she was lucky, Rainbow Dash was up against a rookie who would have no idea of the gravity of the situation and would graciously allow the senior member of the forklift nobility to go first, stranding him or her to a painful fifteen minute wait. More likely, she was up against one of the regulars. They were well acquainted with the importance of this little joust, of course, but Rainbow Dash could always cut them off at the very start and end any kind of race before it began. Getting out on time was important, but it wasn’t important enough to justify breaking company policy by cramming two forklifts side by side on one aisle; it wasn’t quite right to say they were content to seethe behind Rainbow as she cruised to the inspection zone, but it was a lot better than getting chewed out by the foremare.
But there was one mare who was not content to simply wait behind Rainbow. One mare who would challenge her to a race down the aisle to get out, even if neither had actually committed to it up this point. One mare to whom the ROSHA regulations weren’t just optional, but a challenge.
Lightning Dust.
Dash would like to say that she had no idea how she and Lightning Dust ended up in the same warehouse, but that wasn’t really true. Pinkie Pie, warehouse manager extraordinaire, demanded the best, and Dash had to begrudgingly admit Dust was very nearly the pallet ninja that she was. Nearly.
Dash rounded the corner, spotting – no.
There she was. That sickly green. That impossibly smug and ever present sneer.
Both mares stopped at the threshold of the main aisle, posturing like bucks in rut, tines at the ready.
Rainbow threw the forklift in neutral and gave the motor a rev. She knew that she could get out first – Dust’s dually heavy-lift had the power to out-drag Dash’s single wheel model, but Dash could get into the aisle before Dust could, and not even she was crazy enough to try and pass Dash in the aisle.
Dust answered with a rev of her own, big diesel engine clattering through the corrugated steel rafters of the warehouse like war-drums. Her tines wiggled up and down, a clear challenge.
Eager to end this little dance, Dash threw her forklift into drive with a kick, punching the throttle all the way open and squealing little tires on the polished concrete floor as she careened onto the main drag. She breathed a sigh of relief at her victory, knowing –
No!
That was impossible!
Right along side her was Dust, eyebrow raised in bemusement as she pulled alongside Dash, her own forklift’s motor screaming, forcing Dash to run perilously close to the shelves of merchandise. Dust waved a hoof in dismissal, as if to inform Dash of her defeat.
But Dash wasn’t defeated yet. She pressed the throttle past the kick-down switch, tinny four-banger screaming at its operational limits as she pulled back in front of Dust.
If it was a race she wanted, it was a race she would get.
“I gotta say Pinkie, I was pretty skeptical when you pitched me your idea for a centralized inbound-outbound distribution center for Ponyville, but you’ve definitely proven me wrong!” Twilight sipped from a can of cola. “And what a great place for the schoolfoals to learn about modern business, too!”
Pinkie smiled, shrugging. “Oh, you big ol’ flatterer! It was suuuuuper obvious that this place needed an organized method of distributing out goods across the country, Twi, I was just the first clever pony to think it up!”
“Well, that may be, but I’m still impressed at how well you run this place. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single employee complain.” Twilight returned the smile, a proud, warm grin for a dear friend. “Speaking of, isn’t it about time for them to go home?”
Pinkie kicked a button under her desk, causing a spring loaded bird to shoot from a wall flap. It screeched out the time. “THE TIME IS FIVE-OH-ONE, PINKIE!”
“Thanks, Mr. Bird!” The puppet retreated into the wall. “Righty-ho! It looks like it’s about that time. You probably ought to tell Cheerilee to start wrapping up, because I’ll be locking the–” Pinkie convulsed violently, right foreleg twirling in circles. “Whoa, Twi! It’s, it’s –”
Twilight had leapt out of her chair, soda can splattering to the floor. “It’s what, Pinkie? Changeling invasion? Radioactive incident? Biological attack?”
Pinkie shook her head. “Worse, Twi.” She pulled her face directly against Twilight’s “It’s my one, greatest, fear.”
“You don’t mean–” Twilight looked out the window of the foremare’s office.
“Yeah, Twilight, I do.” Pinkie shuddered. “Somepony’s stunting the forklifts.”
Rainbow Dash, never one to back down from a challenge, was now screaming along the main aisle of the warehouse at full throttle. To Dash’s credit, Dust, who had previously been smug in her victory, was now white-wristing her forklift’s steering wheel, considerably less confident in the prospect of actually committing to the race she had challenged Dash with so many times.
Even so, Dash knew she had to make a move fast. Her forklift was nimble, sure, but the other side of the warehouse’s machine was unquestionably the more powerful machine, and even now Dust had put her front wheels a good three feet in front of Dash’s.
Dash reached down, turning off the hydraulics for her forks, rendering them limp at their bumpstops at the bottom of travel. The reduced parasitic loss on the motor gave Dash’s machine a minor burst of speed, closing her front wheels up to Dust’s and giving her the speed advantage. Reconnecting the forks at the end would be a major pain, of course, but the discomfort of a little extra labor was nothing compared to the eternal shame of defeat. She shot Lightning Dust a rude gesture off the side of her forklift, rubbing in her now assured victory.
Lightning Dust’s eyes shot wide open at the sight of Dash pulling away, She, seeing that her forklift simply didn’t have the horsepower to to close the now widening gap, did the only thing she could.
She put Dash in the wall.
“Alright, now, I want you to think about what questions you have for Miss Pinkie, okay?” Cheerilee informed her students. “We’re only going to have a little bit of time to ask questions, so please–”
The window to the foremare’s office blew open in a purple blast, throwing glass onto the warehouse floor. Pinkie threw herself out of the window, landing on her hooves in an impressively gymnastic maneuver. Twilight followed, fluttering to the ground behind Pinkie as both began to run towards the schoolteacher.
“CHEERILEE!” Pinkie shouted. “CHEERILEE, YOU’VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE!”
“Oh, well, I suppose it is closing time, so–”
“You don’t understand, Cheerilee.” Twilight countered. “Somepony’s stunting the forklift.”
“Oh.” Cheerilee responded. A moment passed in silence. “What?”
“Don’t worry about it!” Pinkie shook her head. “All you need to know is that you’ve got to get out of here, now!”
A wet sounding crash reverberated from deep in the warehouse. The clattering of engines had begun to reverberate around the building.
“Right.” Cheerilee blanched. “I suppose I can start rounding them up to get them out.” She turned to Twilight. “But, surely, you could just stop the forklifts from, um, stunting, right? I’m not exactly sure what ‘stunting’ is, but, I mean, it can’t be beyond what a princess can do, right?”
“No!” Pinkie was sweating now, shooting glances at the main aisle of the warehouse. “I don’t know what is is, but not even Twilight can, uh, un-stunt the forklifts.”
“Yeah.” Twilight added. “They’ve got some kind of field around them” She shook her head. “Even I’m powerless in the face of such energy.”
"What? A field?" Cheerilee shook her head. "Since when are forklifts magic?"
"No, it's, er, not magic, per say." Twilight shook her head emphatically. "It's something deeper than that, something about causality or timelines or something. Once they start, um, stunting, they collapse the wave function on probability, reducing the universe to, in some small part, a certainty! It's like nothing I've ever seen!"
Cheerilee stared back in confusion.
"Look, nevermind that!" Twilight looked nervously towards the shelves, from where the sounds of engines had grown louder. "All you need to know is that there's absolutely nothing I can do. I can't teleport them, I can't move them, I can't even use something like time travel! Zilch! Nada! No matter what you do, it always turns out the same. One simply cannot un-stunt the forklift!"
Cheerilee looked between her worried students. "So what do we do?"
Pinkie nodded gravely. "Run."
Rainbow Dash wiped a line of soap-drenched cardboard from her eyes, slamming her forklift into reverse and extricating her tines from the now-collapsed shelf of detergent. The prongs pulled their way out of the cardboard with agonizing slowness, all the while accentuated by the clattering booms of the other warehouse charger.
Oh, so that was how she wanted to play, huh?
Dash, having finally freed herself from her soapy prison, mashed the throttle to the firewall. The little four-pot under her shot back up the limiter, tiny tires squealing in protest. Even still, it was too late; even with the slightly slower forklift, Lightning Dust had too much of a head start, and unless Rainbow Dash could make her machine substantially faster, she was doom–
Wait, there was a way she could do that. Rainbow Dash, with a hoof always on the pedal, ducked down under her seat, popping the latch for the engine compartment with her teeth. No, no, no there! With a firm yank, she ripped out the overspeed governor from the carburetor. Almost instantly, the forklift leaped ahead, nearly throwing Rainbow Dash out the side of the cab with the force of acceleration. The engine, running at a speed it was explicitly not designed for, already sounded like it was in trouble, but all it had to do was make it long enough to pass Lightning Dust.
Rainbow Dash looked back up from her engine compartment. Her right tong was just about to – no, there it went, straight through those dresses Rarity had palletized to send to Fillydelphia. More importantly, however, Lightning Dust's forklift wasn't just in sight, Rainbow Dash was reeling her in with haste. As they rounded the final turn, Rainbow Dash's forklift tipping onto two wheels, Rainbow Dash knew her victory was only a matter of time.
But winning was boring. Question was, how could she make it awesome?
"Thirteen, fourteen, fiftee – OKAY, that's all of them!" Cheerilee, panting, finished up her count of pupils.
"Okie-dokie! Now scram, okay?" Pinkie ordered playfully.
"A-alright!" Cheerilee gave the maze of shelving another nervous look before turning back to her students. "Okay, class, let's leave in an orderly line, okay? No need to run, just walk, oka –"
"What? No, run!" Twilight, dropping from the aerial look-out post she had previously occupied, landed onto the concrete with a loud "CLACK." She shook her head in disbelief. "What part of 'unstoppable multi-ton death machines' do you not understand? Run!"
Cheerilee's eyes shot open in panic. "Bu-but where's the door?"
Twilight flicked her head towards the steel wall, horn lighting at the tip of the flick. A bolt of magic shot out, blowing a hole in the wall. She pointed with a hoof at the new opening. "It's there now! Now go!"
With a hurried nod, the teacher bolted out the door, foals in tow.
As the last set of little hooves left the building, Pinkie and Twilight breathed a sigh of relief.
"Well, at least I won't have to add 'fifteen squished children' to the ROSHA write up," chuckled Pinkie darkly.
"You're telling me." Twilight shook her head. "I can already imagine the headlines now. 'Princess watches as crazed machine turns entire school into jam!' Would have been a media nightmare!"
Pinkie looked at her oddly. "Uhh, yeah Twilight, I guess it would be." She scratched her head with a hoof. "Kinda different priorities than I was thinking about, y'know, kinda-sorta mostly didn't want a bunch of, y'know, foals to get squished."
"Things change when you're a princess, Pinkie," Twilight responded with a shrug.
"*SCREEEEEEEEECH*"
Both mare's ears flicked towards the central aisle, followed a moment later by their eyes. Off in the far distance, the lumbering shapes of two warehouse monsters were just becoming visible. The two machines were slamming into each other as they went along, pushing each other towards the shelving and occasionally smashing a pallet.
"Uh, hey Pinkie?" Twilight started.
"Yeah, Twilight?"
"There's not anything, um, dangerous on those shelves between them and us, is there?"
Pinkie shook her head. "Not really. Mostly just soap and apple juice, honestly, and that's all safe – oh, wait, no, there's about a skid's worth of pressure-sensitive binary explosive in stall forty-three B."
"Oh, that's good, I guess." Twilight looked back at the forklifts. "You don't think Dash's crazy enough to do something with that, is she?"
Pinkie chuckled. "No, she's crazy, but she's not that crazy."
The two mares watched a little longer. The smaller forklift punted the heavier one into the shelves with a brutal shunt, sending it careening into the next stall.
Pinkie swallowed loudly. "Boy, I really hope that's not–"
"KRAK-OOOM"
Rainbow Dash ducked behind her seat as the fireball flew past her forklift, letting out a combined yelp of pain from her now-singed feathers and a roar of victory at her domination of her enemy. "YEAH! How do you like that?" Rainbow Dash shouted from her chair, pulling her foot off the accelerator and letting the engine gracefully brake the forklift to a crawl.
The forklift did not slow down.
Concerned, Rainbow Dash gave the accelerator another two stomps.
The engine did not respond.
Slightly worried now, Rainbow Dash poked the brakes. A spew of hydraulic fluid flew from the severed hoses at the front of the forklift.
Ah, right. Those worked on that too.
Now truly alarmed, Rainbow Dash looked around the cab for another method of braking. There was a parking brake, right? She gave it another glance, mindful that she was quickly running out of aisle real estate.
Quite suddenly, in fact.
Pinkie and Twilight cringed as the forklift's tines speared through the warehouse wall, forklift crashing to a misshapen halt at the edge of a concrete loading dock's bay. The driver, not quite so lucky, flew out of her chair and into the corrugated steel, bouncing away and skidding to a crumpled halt a few paces away from her friends.
Twilight sprinted over, assessing Dash's consciousness. Finding her lucid, she slipped into an angry lecture. "Are you kidding me, Dash? You nearly blew us up! You nearly ran over–"
Pinkie cut Twilight off with a hearty slap on the back. "OUT-standing, Dash! That's the kind of hustle I love to see! Great work!"
Rainbow Dash blinked her eyes a few times. "… Wait, really?"
"Ha!" Pinkie guffawed. "No. not really. You destroyed two forklifts, did a million bits of damage, nearly crushed an entire class of schoolfoals, and probably knocked off your coworker. You aren't just fired, you're probably going to jail for, like, ever."
"Oh." Rainbow Dash thought for a moment, visibly wincing from the delayed pain of flinging one's self into a steel wall. "But was it, uh, awesome, though?"
"Uh, duh! Of course!" Pinkie nodded. "You hockey-checked another forklift into a bunch of explosives, then launched yours through a wall! That was the coolest thing I've ever seen!"
Rainbow Dash, lids fluttering into unconsciousness, got out one last word. "… Sweet."
Author's Note
Just an very silly old story I finished up. This is not that spiritual sequel I was talking about, for what it's worth.
How big is this warehouse? It follows "Fast and Furious" rules, so it's as big as the plot demands, so, uh, very.
