//------------------------------// // Discovery // Story: FedEx 715 // by BronyPilot //------------------------------// Chapter 6: Discovery Twilight and Applejack trotted silently through the fog. After Rainbow had her confrontation with the flying metal object, she had fallen unconscious. Twilight instructed Rarity, Pinkie, and Fluttershy to take Rainbow to the clinic just to make sure she was okay. In the meantime, Twilight asked Applejack to join her in a search for a trace of the mysterious flying machine. Twilight knew that she had struck two direct hits on it. What she was unsure of was if it was even affected. “Twi, how far do ya suppose this thing is?” “I don’t know to tell the truth AJ. From what I could tell, its speed is incredible. I have a feeling its still nearby, but it could be likely that it is extremely far away as well.” “Well, I hope its not too much farther then. Ah really want to see if Rainbow is okay after her… incident.” “As do I AJ, as do I.” The two continued walking through the fog. Their eyes were concentrated more on the sky than the ground. If it was a flying machine, then they did not expect it to be on the ground currently. They continued their search until Applejack slipped. “Whoa Nelly!” Applejack recovered before falling and looked down upon what had caused it her to slip. “Horseapples, that storm turned this entire area to mud.” “AJ, I don’t think the storm caused that.” “What do ya mean Twi?” “Look…” Twilight was a distance back from AJ’s position, staring at the ground AJ was standing on. When AJ looked where Twilight was looking, her pupils dilated. “My stars…” The mud she was standing on was part of a large streak of mud, stretching out into the fog. A similar streak was a short distance from the former, running parallel with it. “What do ya suppose did this Twi?” “I really don’t know. And I’m not sure if I want to find out.” Twilight approached the streaks of mud. At one end was the start of the streaks, the other end stretched into oblivion, covered by the fog. After a short moment of building courage, she started to follow the streaks. As they followed the streaks, they noticed a third streak form in-between the other two. These streaks continued on for a significant distance. Then the fog began to clear slightly. It was at this point that AJ and Twilight looked up simultaneously and beheld a jaw dropping sight. What they saw was a towering metal object above them that had a set of metal wings and a large ‘fin’ sticking up above the wings. Twilight quickly moved farther to the right side to view the side of the fin. It read ‘FedEx’ in orange and white lettering with a purple background. She looked to her right even further and beheld the rest of a giant metal machine with wheels just inches from slamming into the trees of the forest. She cautiously approached the front end of the machine. She found what made the mud streaks. The machine had a decent number of wheels extended below it. She passed giant cylinders hanging down from what she guessed to be the main wings of the object. Looking inside on of them, she saw innumerable blades connected in a circle, with a cone standing out in the center. She continued to the front part of the machine and found something that was not there when she first beheld the machine in the air. A large yellow slide seemed to extend from a door on the side of the machine. The slide appeared solid, but one touch of Twilight’s hoof on the surface revealed it to be a slick substance filled with a gas of some type. IT was at this time AJ caught up with Twilight to give her recommendations. “So lemme guess… this is what hit Rainbow?” Twilight nodded. “Shoot, no wonder she’s unconscious. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was killed instantly I must say.” Twilight just kept looking up at the door to the giant flying machine. AJ took note of this and decided now was the best time to voice out her opinion. “Twi, I know this seems tempting but I ain’t so sure that going up there is such a great idea. Maybe we should leave this to the princesses or somethin.” This only provoked Twilight further as she teleported up to the door. She found herself standing on sturdy ground just after the doorway. She looked out over the threshold of the door and saw just how high this thing was off the ground. She shivered at the thought of falling off the top of the fin of the machine. She left that thought alone and went ahead to investigate her surroundings. There was not much to see. She was in a dark hallway of sorts that was quite narrow. There was another opening in the middle of the hallway. It opened up to a room with a few windows, seats, and innumerable switches and buttons. Twilight gasped. Never before had she seen anything like it. Her mind now began wondering about the room. It seemed to be a central control room for the machine. She could not comprehend what kind of creature could use this machine though. The switches were tiny and there were knobs that only one with opposable thumbs or magic could turn. There was also a column with a ‘W’ shaped steering mechanism on top of it. There was one of these in both of the seats that occupied the front area of the control room. There were also a few levers in the center of the room. Two of these levers were pulled back towards her and seemed to line up perfectly with each other. There were two other levers on either side of the center two. Both of these were pushed away from her and had different shapes. Beside one of the seats she found a good sized book. The title was most strange: “Boeing 777-200LRF Operations Manual.” She couldn’t figure out what the name meant, only that is on how to operate something. Then an idea came to her. What if it was the operations manual to the flying machine? She desired to open the book and see all the knowledge needed to fly this machine. Just as she was about to levitate it up to her eyes to feast on what the small manual beheld, a country voice called out to her from below: “Twilight, what is going on up there? You sure yer alright? Answer!” Twilight snapped out of her thoughts and went back to the ‘door’ of the contraption to ease Applejack’s concerns. “I’m fine Applejack. You won’t believe how amazing that thing is. Its control area is so complicated, and… and I found a book that promptly says in the title ‘Manual’. Think of all the possibilities we could learn from this!” “Twi, calm down. I’m still not so sure we should be searching that monster of a machine. I mean come on! We haven’t even seen who or better WHAT uses it. We don’t even know what its for! You saw what happened to Rainbow, are you so sure its not something meant to hurt other ponies?” Twilight gave a look at Applejack and replied; “Now I think your overreacting. It’s obviously used for flight. Though, I haven’t figured out why it had to be so big. Maybe it's a physics thing? Nevermind that, you have to see it! And so do the princesses! It’s such a wonderful discovery! We could use this as an alternative for fast transport all across Equestria at speeds that Rainbow flies at!” On that note she teleported down to Applejack and darted off in the direction of Ponyville, using her magic to drag Applejack along until she got the message and started running with Twilight. “Where are we goin?” “Ponyville Medical of course! We have to tell the others!” ********************** The two pilots journeyed on through the wilderness of the Everfree with their stuff until first officer Roberts realized something. “Hey Beckham?” “What?” “We need to go back.” At this the captain turned around and looked at his first officer in disbelief. “Do I really want to know why?” With a matter-of-fact tone in his voice, Roberts responded: “Yes. I forgot something and we need to go back and get it.” “Forgot what?” “My cell phone.” Beckham groaned and, in a very annoyed tone responded, “Ok, do you REALLY think your going to need your cell phone HERE?!” “Maybe?” The first officer quietly responded Rolling his eyes, Beckham considered his options. On the one hand, they go back into the forest in search of a place to stay for a while. On the other, they go back to plane not just for his co pilot’s cell phone, but maybe to use the navigation system to figure out where they actually were, let alone find a way to a nearby airport. With the two options now laid in front of him, going back to the plane seemed like the better idea. For all they knew that could be walking into some trap out in this forest. Sighing he spoke up to Roberts. “You know what? Fine. We’ll go back. I didn’t see much point in going into this forest anyway.” A little confused Roberts made an Inquiry. “Huh? Well if that's the case, what are we going to do back at the plane?” “Were going to try and get some info out of the navigation system.” “Didn’t we already try that?” “Kind of. But I think we can do better if we try again and keep our focus on it, instead of trying to actually fly at the same time.” Passing this logic through his head, Roberts nodded and replied, “I guess that sounds right. And if that's the case, lets get moving.” The two pilots had already begun to walk at a slow pace at the start of the conversation. Now that they had finished the discussion of the immediate topic at hand, they picked up the pace as they marched back towards their flying machine, with hopes of finally finding a way back. “So what are we going to use to get the navigation system online?” inquired the co-pilot. “What do you mean? We should be able to use the APU* as always.” “But is that going to put the entire navigation system online?” “It should, but if that does not work I think we could fire up one of the engines and see if that helps.” “What if we actually end up finding a way back? What then?” “Well…I guess we should just be able to fire up the engines and get airborne.” “I thought that we had the nose about a foot away from a tree in a head-on configuration?” The captain thought about this. They were in the middle of nowhere, which meant no tug to push them back as if they were at a cargo ramp. As he kept pondering his mind came upon a YouTube video he saw a kid watching in an airport café. The video showed a C-17 using reverse thrust to reverse taxi during a demonstration. 777s were not designed for that kind of thing. It was a long shot, but it was worth trying. The captain smirked and glanced at Roberts and responded with another question. “You ever heard of a ‘Reverse Taxi’?” The co-pilot rolled the phrase around in his mind and responded with an elongated yes, until his eyes widening in realization. “You can’t be serious.” “Well think of it this way: what have we got to lose?” The captain made a good point. It wasn’t like they were going to get in trouble for trying something like that out here, right? “Fair enough.” The co pilot sighed as they continued walking towards their destination. He fully knew the ‘Reverse Taxi’ concept, but it was a long shot for an aircraft that was not designed to perform such a thing, let alone it being fully loaded cargo-wise. At times like this he recalled a phrase he heard once a long time ago: Expect the unexpected. *APU: Auxiliary Power Unit; Commercial jet aircraft use this to provide electricity to their systems during preflight before the engines are started. Also used after engines are shutdown at a parking area to perform proper shutdown of systems.