“You idiot what did you do that for?!” the captain exclaimed as he stared at the body of a small purple horse with a horn on its forehead.
“What else were we going to do? Its got a horn on its head and it was speaking!”
“That didn’t mean you had to go and knock it out with the butt of that desert eagle…”
Roberts looked guiltily at the firearm in his right hand and then at the small horse.
“You know what? Whatever. I’ve had enough of the craziness here. I don't care if we have waypoints to follow, we’re leaving.” The captain marched back to the cockpit to flip on the power switches and start the engines. The First Officer followed, seeing the closed aircraft door and hurrying up the pace. Once both pilots took their respective seats, the captain fired up the APU while the first officer started to bypass the pre-flight on the flight computer. After all checks had been completed, the captain turned off the ventilation packs and switched the fuel switches to on. Finally he switched the starter valve for engine 1 to ‘valve’, beginning the starting sequence for the engine. The pilots were relieved as the engine began to whir and whine as it started up. The first officer flipped the ‘fuel cutoff’ switch to ‘open’ and the engine spooled up the rest of the way, going to its regular idle hum. The pilots had grins on their faces as they turned engine 2 to the same thing and heard a second whir and whine to their right. After switching off the ‘fuel cutoff’ switch, the pilots were chuckling to themselves as the entire cockpit came to life, now running under the power of the two GE90 turbines.
“Here goes nothing," as the captain placed his hands on the throttles as he pulled them back into the reverse setting. As the engines began to spool up, Roberts switched off the parking brake. As they engines reached full reverse thrust, the pilots crossed their fingers as they prayed for a miracle.
Outside, the tress bended as the force of the engines hit them. Everything seemed still for the longest time. The captain was about to put the reversers back to idle before Roberts stopped him, mouthing, “Wait…” The main landing gear wheels, which were sitting on an incline, slowly began to move backward as the aircraft started to back out of its makeshift parking spot. As it moved down the incline, the aircraft began to move a little quicker, until the pilots pulled the brakes and set the engines back to idle. The aircraft could now turn and clear the trees that were originally in its way. As the pilots slowly began to turn the aircraft 180 degrees, they failed to notice a group of small horses, like the purple one they encountered, come over a hill a short distance away from the aircraft.
*******************
After getting Rainbow Dash out of the hospital, the group began to make their way to the crash site of their great discovery. Applejack was leading the pack to where she remembered herself and Twilight when they originally found the mechanical monstrosity. As they got closer to the site, Rainbow Dash spoke up:
“Anypony else hear that?”
Off in the distance they heard a constant whir and whine, and a softer version of what seemed like thunder. While listening Rainbow remembered back to what had got her hospitalized in the first pace. Rainbow moved to the top of the crest of the hill to behold what she had feared. The others came up shortly behind her.
“What is it Dash…” asked Rarity as she turned her gaze to where Rainbow was staring at. Rarity’s jaw dropped along with Applejacks. Fluttershy stood behind the others, quivering a bit in the sheer size of the purple and white machine.
“Say where’s Twilight? She would love to see this!” exclaimed Pinkie.
Rainbow thought back to the beings she saw inside the machine before it hit her and Twilight’s intentions as she left her hospital room. Rainbow fell on a conclusion she was not happy with, causing her to exclaim in rage.
“THEY HAVE HER! Just before that thing hit me, I saw some weird creatures operating it! Twilight left us to do more investigating on it and I’m willing to bet they have her against her will!”
As she finished her rant, the whines of the machine grew louder into roars as it started to move faster over the grass.
“Common ya’ll its getting’ away!” Applejack exclaimed as she and Rainbow Dash took off towards the machine, which was now picking up speed as it moved away from them.
*************************
As the pilots finished their wide turn around, the first officer looked out the captain’s window seeing what looked like more colored horses standing on a small hill not too far off. He could have sworn one of them looked enraged and didn’t like the looks of it.
“I can only guess as to why they’re here…”
“Hmm?” the captain looked to his left and saw the sight as well. A light bulb went off in his head when he saw one with wings that looked really mad.
“Great…” the captain muttered.
“I’m guessing now would be a good time to leave?” Roberts asked.
“Damn right it is.” The captain said this firmly as he quickly moved the throttles forward to take off thrust. The engine display responded with showing the engines moving up to max power, the takeoff grind coming in right on cue.
Roberts did a quick check of the instruments as the 777 started to roll forward, not turning back. He quickly set the flaps lever to 15, realizing they had not already set it. Everything else was in order according to his eyes, all he could do now was hope for the best as he saw the speed tape on his PFD start to pick up in acceleration as it reached higher and higher speeds.
*********************
Applejack and Rainbow were moving as fast as their legs would carry them as the machine sped in front of them, slowly moving ahead but still gaining more speed than them. Rainbow made a quick decision and jumped into the air and sped in front of AJ, catching up to the left wing of the giant. However, as she approached, the wings seemed to extend a little further. A little confused, she did not realize that she moved right behind one of the giant cylinders hanging from below the wings. She was immediately hit by what felt like a giant gale force wind blowing right in her face. The force was tempting her to barrel roll out of control, but she held strong. Dash eventually moved away from the wing, losing a bit of ground on the machine. She pushed herself, trying to keep up as the machine started to rotate its ‘nose’ towards the sky. She quickly moved out of the way as it suddenly started gaining altitude, passing her current altitude and climbing into the sky. She saw the black wheels below it start to fold up beneath it, as well as the wings shrinking back a small bit. She did her best to follow it as it climbed into the clouds, disappearing from her vision. She flew up into the clouds herself, immediately being blinded by clouds as she flew in the direction the roars of the flying machine were loudest.
On the ground, the others had stopped running as Dash disappeared into the cloud cover above them. Applejack panted from running as she muttered, “Be careful Dash…”
***********************
Back in the cockpit, the pilots had successfully rotated off the ground into the sky, raising the gear and starting to retract the flaps back a small bit as the plane continued to accelerate towards its peak cruising speed.
“Well, that went well, more or less, right?” Roberts looked over hopefully at Beckham as he said this.
Beckham responded with a grunt as he said, “We still have that ‘new cargo’ we have laying back there.”
Roberts realized what he meant and sighed, realizing they were still far from the clear. He flicked on the weather radar as the plane banked back towards the forest as it continued to climb, now clearing the small cloud cover below them. In the distance they saw the formation of a cold front in their path. This was confirmed by some readings from the weather radar now displaying on their Nav displays. Before the first officer was about to bank the plane away from the distant storm, the captain stopped him.
“You know I’ve been thinking about how we ended up in this messed up reality,” he muttered.
“Yeeeeeaaaaaah?” Roberts responded, not sure at what the captain was trying to tell him yet.
“Remember when we flew through that freak storm before ending up here?”
“Yeeeeaaaaaah?” Roberts responded once again, still curious as to what the captain was thinking.
“What do you remember happened that seemed 'off' to you?”
Roberts started thinking for a second before answering, “It seemed just like a storm to me with the lightning and-”
“The lightning. Tell me you ever read science fiction much?” The captain asked.
“Not really, but I’m guessing you did?”
“A little. What fascinated me most is bizarre ways of travel, such as teleporting to a new land.”
“Okay, what has this got… to do… with…” Roberts stopped talking as he started to put some pieces together, eyes widening as he did so. He turned to Beckham, staring at him with large eyes before saying, “You can’t be serious. That's more crazy then the multi-colored horses-.”
“After what I’ve seen all I can say is this: What have we got to lose? Just think about that.”
Roberts sighed as he took his gaze back to the distant storm in front of them. Another phrase popped into his head as he retracted the flaps further as the plane continued its acceleration. What goes around comes around again…