Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet

Chapter 3

"In a world- TZZZZZZT!!!"  There was a sudden flash of light accompanied by the sound of static as all of the power in the enetire zeppelin just up and quit.  Then there was darkness.  And then there was a rumbling noise.

  "What the hay is going on!?" shouted Daring Do as multiple passengers' heads poked out into the aisle to see what the hay was, in fact, going on.  Of course, nopony who knew what the hay was going on could not tell the passengers that, because those ponies were in the pilot's chamber at the front, and all the coms were off.  Well, they were in the pilot's chamber.  Until they jumped out with parachutes.  So, there was nopony that could inform the passengers and the stewards/stewardesses, and the zeppelin chose now to start its slow nose-dive.  Downwards.  You know, towards the ocean.  That's when everypony started to figure out what the hay was going on.  I promise that was the last time I will use the phrase "what the hay was going on".

  Things in the luggage compartment started flying around without the aid of wings and ramming into ponies with a vengeance, as if they were angry at being over-packed with travel guides and underwear, a really unnecessary load of it, seeing as ponies didn't even wear clothes although it was a sort of an unspoken rule that when packing for a trip, there must ALWAYS be an unnecessary load of undergarments.

  Daring Do, though, of course had a bit more than her fair share of reflexes and instincts, and also had the mental capability to almost instantly analyze the direction of the continuously tilting floor, the downward motion of the entire zeppelin, and connect it to the loss of power, and realize that the zeppelin had shut down, and that it had not been an accident, for then the emergency turbines would have turned on.  And so her instincts kicked in.

  "Let's go!" she shouted to Whooves over the din, and grabbed his whoof and started running before he could respond, stepping around the luggage that had already all fallen everywhere, and running up the steep incline that was getting harder and harder to run up as the zeppelin tilted even more and more so in its descent.  They made it to about nine yards awway from the door that lead to the little room with the emergency exit and the doorway to another hall with multiple doors that led to a kitchen, the cargo hold, and such.  But Daring wasn't there yet.  She had actually started to fall backwards now that the floor was much too steep to trot on, and now had to fly upwards while still holding onto Whooves so that he didn't fall onto the pile of ponies that had congregated at the back wall like a barrel of monkeys.

  Daring wasn't used to carrying anything at all when she was flying, so now, carrying a full-grown stallion, she had to strain her wings to keep herself floating.  Fortunately, that was all she had to do, since the zeppelin was falling down around her now like an elevator.  Unfortunately, that also meant that after passing through the doorway they had been headed for, the back wall of the hallway behind said doorway was now rapidly approaching.  Luckily, though, the whole thing didn't stop at nose-down, and it kept turning until it was at an upside-down slant that was barely level enough for Daring to land on with Whooves.  The floor kept tilting until it was almost about level, and by that time she had stretched her hoof far enough to reach the door at the end which they had then jumped over the top of the wall and through, and had found themselves in a very small room with just a hole at the bottom leading down into the cargo hold.  Unfortunaly though, since down was now up, that meant that the hole was now above them, which meant more flying for Daring- but only a minimal amount, seeing as there was a ladder that led down (up now) into the hold.  So she flew Whooves up first and then ascended the ladder herself, so that he was above her and had a higher chance of being caught by the one with wings before falling.  But by this time, there was no need for that, as the zeppelin had once more made a 45 degree flip and was facing straight nose-up, meaning the ladder was level, and they could now walk to the catwalk that would have been descended upon in normal circumstances, but now the rail was being used as a very narrow ledge for the two to shimmy across.

  Daring looked around to see if she could find anything that controlled the power, but she saw an exit at the ceiling of the hold, which extended all the way to the top of the airliner instead, and guessed that it led to the power.  So when the environment had been flipped again to the normal, level position, she knew she had to get there before they were turned over again, or even before they hit the water, which they were getting close to now.  So she grabbed Whooves' hoof and ran along the catwalks, weaving in and out, and making it to the hatch in record time for anypony, except for Rainbow Dash.  But only barely.  In the time it took to get into the hatch with the inner balcony, the thing had flipped again, providing them with a now-level wall to walk on all the way up to the outside exit.

  Daring cautiously opened the exit, keeping her back to the wall so as to not fall out in case of an unexpected jolt.  Peering outside, she saw the horizon where the water met the sky was level to her, and looked up to see another hatch about fifteen yards away labeled simply "Power".  She also noticed that the water was uncomfortably close by now, and that they were about to make their next turn, which would position their hatch and the power one upside down, which would make it much harder to fly to carrying one earth pony's weight.  So immediately she once again picked up Whooves and flew as fast as she could with her worn-out wings upwards to the power hatch and found that, mercifully, somepony had already broken it open, and it swung forward immediately when she touched it with her nose.  Before she had time, though to drag the both of them in there, it tilted AGAIN, pushing them back and positioning the hatch upside-down.  So Daring struggled to flap her wings even harder, straining her everything as she tried to pull herself and another into the opening above.  She didn't manage to do anything but stay in the same spot in the air, though, so when the airliner swung sideways again, the hole in the roof just passed right around them, and they were in the power room.

  Daring dropped almost immediately on the wall at the bottom, taking a moment to catch her breath, as Whooves looked up at the power box with its door barely hanging onto the hinges.  He climbed onto a sideway shelf and from there to the side of a metal container of some sort to see all of the levers and lights next to them, and saw the obvious problem:  Somepony had turned off the main power, and the emergency power, and every other power inbetween.  And so Whooves provided for the obvious solution to the obvious problem:  He turned all the switches back on.

  Just in time as well, for the ship had turned to it's natural position just as the turbines had started working again, and was now sailing straight forward, towards whatever direction straight forward was, although it was stuck on autopilot and therefore positioned only 1.5 miles above the Equestrian Sea, and if they ran out of fuel, they were all screwed.  Luckily though, none of that happened, because there was a trained zeppelin pilot on board, who was more than capable of flying them to the Prance docking station.

  Back to Daring Do, though, she and Whooves had climbed the ladder (normally) out of the power room, and were walking on the top of the ship when it gave out one little involuntary shudder, one little jolt with them standing on it, a jolt that, if it were enough, they would lose their footing and fall.  It was enough.