Chapter 10: A New Threat
Rainbow Dash flew through the darkening clouds, hardly able to see in front of her. She forgot how long she had been flying after this mystery flying machine, but she figured it had to have been a good while. She could still hear the faint roar of the machine somewhere in front of her, but it was slowly being overshadowed by the sound of distant thunder. Everything around her was telling her to turn back, that flying through these clouds was becoming a dangerous position to be in. She fought back against these signs with two words she kept repeating in her mind: For Twilight.
She had been following the flying machine ever since it took off from Ponyville, as it climbed, and seemed to level off. She knew she had the capability to fly faster than it could, but was not sure if she would be able to keep up that speed for too long. She instead compromised to fly at a bit slower pace that she could hold easily for an extended period of time. Lucky for her, this speed was not too much slower than the flying machine. Thus, she was able to keep the machine in sight even if it was slowly pulling away from her. That was, until it flew into the clouds above the Everfree. From then on she only had the roar of its engines to go by. As the winds picked up a bit, the roar generated by the machine started to waiver then seemed to fade out altogether. Confused, Rainbow stopped and hovered looking around and straining to hear where the roar had gone. She flew a bit more forward and then heard the roar again. It seemed to be coming from above and was headed almost straight down. The roar got extremely loud, as it seemed to pass her altitude, and then began to fade as it continued downward. She began to fly forward again and suddenly,
“WOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Rainbow Dash was shot higher into the air by a large updraft. Another large wind shot at her from the side sending her barreling off course. A large downdraft then sent her plummeting to the ground. She recovered as quickly as she could, narrowly escaping the top of a tall tree extending up from the Everfree. She hovered as she searched for the roar of the machine once again, praying silently that she had not lost it for good. A part of her relaxed as she heard the faint roar somewhere off to her left. Dash wasted no time as she climbed back into the cloud layer to hunt down the metal monstrosity that held her friend captive.
~FedEx 715: A few Minutes prior~
“Man this turbulence is hating on us right now,” the First Officer commented as the 777 shook about as it bounced randomly up and down. The Captain acknowledged the comment with a nod as he gripped the armrests of his seat. Both pilots monitored the instruments as the autopilot flew them through the rough air that hugged the edges of the storm. The view outside was a pale grey as the plane flew through the cloud cover. The only way to see outside was the NAV display’s weather radar, which so far was only displaying large patches of turbulence and not much else. The Co-pilot looked at the fuel display, showing they still had a descent amount of fuel left, but it would only last a few more hours at the rate the engines were running. Another shudder shook the aircraft, this time a little more violently. The pilots began to feel the aircraft bob up and down and be shoved left and right. Their eyes both widened as the audio warning system of the 777 cried out,
“WINDSHEAR! WINDSHEAR!”
The aircraft suddenly shot up a couple hundred feet before being pushed back down by another set of winds. The airspeed tape was jumping up and down as well as the altitude tape on the right side of the PFD. The pilots decided to disconnect the autopilot and try to keep the aircraft level themselves and veer away from whatever part of the storm they stumbled into. They tried banking the aircraft to the right. As the jet began to bank right, a large gust blew in from their left. The wind caused the aircraft to bank more than the pilots wanted, causing the aircraft to give out another warning message,
“BANK ANGLE!”
The pilots jammed the control column back to the left, fighting against the offending wind and were able to level the jet again before something more drastic could happen. As the pilots fought the strong winds, their unwelcome guest in the cargo hold began to stir.
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Twilight groaned as she tried to stand up, immediately failing to do so as her head throbbed. She slowly tried to open her eyes, but all she could see was pitch-black darkness. She attempted to stand up again, only to be thrown to her left into something hard and metallic followed by a bang as she collided with it. The floor shook accordingly as well. She pulled herself off of whatever she had collided with while nearly falling a second time. She then realized the floor seemed to be constantly shaking and changing its angle with the ground. She cast a light spell just to see where in Equestria she ended up, not remembering what happened before she blacked out.
Her light shone upon the ground, revealing a metal floor with narrow strips of similar looking metal jutting up from the floor in straight lines. As she turned around to face what she hit. She nearly blinded herself as the surface of the object reflected her light like a mirror. She adjusted the angle of her light and beheld the large shape in front of her. It resembled a rectangular prism, except for one of the corners, which was curved to fit the wall of whatever room she was in. Looking to the left ofs the metal prism, she spotted more similarly designed prisms in straight lines that flowed back into the dark. She could hear a faint mechanical roar coming from the other side of the wall as well. Twilight walked around to the other accessible side of the prism and found what appeared to be a large sticker with letters that she recognized instantly. In front of the white background of the sticker was the purple and orange lettering spelling “FedEx.”
The floor shook harder for a second time, shaking the prism with it. Instantly memories flashed through her mind of her discovering a large metal flying contraption, and then hiding from voices approaching the contraption. Her last memory was the door to this room opening followed by pain and darkness. She reached up with her left forehoof to the area she remembered the pain originating from. “Ow!” The spot was still sore. She concluded that somepony or something had wacked her on the head with something hard for whatever reason. This got her thinking back to her memories. Okay, so I got hit on the head and blacked out. That wasn’t very nice. Twilight, focus! I got hit over the head. Before that there was... “A door!”
Scanning her surroundings, she found that there was indeed behind her what appeared to be a sliding door. Twilight cautiously approached it, her mind racing with horrible things that could be behind it. Part of her did not want to go near it, but the rest of her could not resist. Carefully, she used her magic to slowly slide the door out of the way.
The brightness in this next space caused her to squint her eyes for a moment. It was not really that bright, she had just spent too much time in the dark was all. Looking around once more, she found herself in the small hallway with three seats against one of the walls. Each of the other walls had a door. Two of these doors had a small window that looked to the outside. There was another shudder, not just shaking the floor but the whole frame of the space. She quickly moved over and peered through the window closest to her and confirmed the fears that had rested in the back of her mind. Outside, there were only gray clouds that seemed to be surrounding the contraption she was aboard. Worse, the clouds seemed to be darkening where the machine was headed. Suddenly the whole frame shook again for a second, causing her to stumble a bit. Twilight stumbled backward and ended up falling back against one of the three seats. Maybe it will be better if I think through this before going any further. She then looked to the door on the opposite wall opposite her. It had another sticker with clear black letters spelling ‘Crew Only’.
Twilight’s train of thought was suddenly paused by a deafening crack followed by a deep rumble outside the aircraft. She rushed to the small view hole once again to see it being stained with rain droplets. She jumped as a bright flash lit up the clouds surrounding the craft. What followed was the familiar crack and rumble. There was a storm approaching and she was headed right for it. Then there was a faint dark blue flash that was followed by the whole frame shaking violently, causing Twilight to fall on her side. She then heard a noise coming from behind the ‘Crew Only’ door.
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The warning horn blared in the cockpit with the Master Caution and Master Warning lights flashing. In the background there was the unwelcome sound of an engine shutting down. This was reflected on the EICAS as the N1 kept decreasing past idle towards 0.
Captain Beckham asked, a bit ticked, “What the hell just happened?”
His First Officer looked at the different displays trying to get an answer. He switched the displays through fuel, hydraulics, anything that might give him an answer. He finally replied, “Engine 1 flamed out but I don’t see why. Hydraulics look fine and we’re not low on fuel so I don’t know where else to look.”
“Alright, lets worry about that later. Run through the engine failure midflight checklist.”
Roberts pulled out the checklist book for the aircraft and flipped to the appropriate checklist and started reading through it accordingly while Beckham flew the plane. Before Roberts could do anything though, a deafening voice thundered through the cockpit.
“THOU WILL SURRENDER OUR SISTER’S STUDENT AT ONCE OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!”