"So, what do you think?" She asked her blue passenger with a smile, "Pretty cool right? Probably not as cool as being able to just, you know, fly around, but still" she continued as she adjusted the throttles, backing off her airspeed as she descended into a slow turn to circle the town, Ponyville, dash had called it, to look for a good landing site.
"It's... not as fast as i thought it would be," Dash admitted, her face still pressed up against the cockpit window, "but it's... a lot different being up here with something else doing the flying."
"Not as fast as you thought it would be? How fast can you fly?" Eva asked as she fiddled around next to her seat with her left forehoof, trying to manipulate the buttons on her cassette player without looking. Looking at rainbow dash, at her wings specifically, she couldn't see how she could possibly generate enough lift to fly, let alone fly faster than... one hundred ten miles per hour indicated, she noted, looking over at the airspeed gauge.
"Faster than sound." She answered plainly, as if it wasn't even really a thing, "Most pegasi can't, but I'm the first pony that I've ever heard of to actually pull off a sonic rainboom, I mean, I am pretty amazing. I actually did one earlier today, won me first place in the best young flyer competition!" she explained, her face curling up into that same toothy smile that Eva had seen earlier.
Eva raised her eyebrows 'faster than sound? interesting...' she thought to herself as she finally got the cassette into the tape player. "That's pretty impressive... damn impressive actually, I'd like to see that sometime, if you don't mind, that is." This place was full of surprises, it seemed.
Dash rubbed her chin with her forehoof. "You know, I could probably do that some time, kind of worn out today but... yeah, I can totally show off some other day" she said, leaning back in the co-pilot's seat, trying to resist the urge to press her nose back against the window and ruin her attempt at looking cool and nonchalant.
Eva stepped into the left rudder pedal gently and with a smirk on her face. "So, miss Dash, this old bird may not be the fastest thing in the sky but... there is something I've always wanted to do. Keep an eye on this bank of gauges," she gestured a hoof towards the panel in front of the pegasus, "If any of the needles dip into the red let me know" she finished as she started to advance the throttles, the rumbling of the engines raising in pitch as they revved up.
"Wait, what? what are you gonna do?" Dash asked splitting her attention between the cluster and the pilot, a small part of her brain wondering who would build such a machine that had so many small switches and buttons that were difficult to operate by hoof.
"Goose, it's time to buzz the tower." Eva said with a toothy grin as she shoved the throttle and propeller controls to the stops. The roar of the engines thundered through the flight deck as the engines ran up to full rated power, the aged aircraft surged forward under full thrust as her pilot dropped the nose and banked towards the town ahead. Still grinning, Eva pressed her hoof down on the play button on the tape deck and the cabin speakers screamed the sounds of an electric guitar.
The aircraft started to shake as it dropped through the sky, airspeed indicator climbing as it shed altitude, the town of Ponyville rapidly growing in the cockpit wind screen. 'Might not be the most diplomatic way to introduce myself to the town' she thought 'but damn if i haven't wanted to do this my whole life.' "Shoot to thrill, play to kill, I got my gun at the ready, gonna fire at will!" she screamed along to the song, barely able to even hear herself over the sound of the engines and the song.
Dash was yelling something but Eva couldn't make out what it was, though from the smile on the pegasus's face she didn't imagine it was anything too bad, though the light blush on her cheeks indicated that she may have understood the lyrics of the song 'hmm, interesting.... Looking out of the windscreen she saw she would be over the town in moments. Pulling out of the dive, she pushed the fuel mixture control to full rich, the extra unburned fuel leaving a trail of black smoke behind the plane as it cannon-balled through the sky, clearing the first rooftops by only tens of feet.
Pulling off a few inches of throttle, the grey pilot-mare eased the control yoke over, putting the aircraft into a shallow turn to bleed off a little of the... two hundred sixty miles per hour indicated airspeed... that she'd built up in the full throttle dive and pulled the mixture back to auto rich, having cleared the entire town in only a matter of seconds.
"Not so slow now, eh Dashie??" Eva joked to Dash as she slowed the plane to circle around and land.
"Twitchy tail, twitchy tail!" Pinkie yelled as a sudden roaring sound bombarded her as she walked next to Twilight towards the latter's library-house-tree.
"What is that noise!?" Twilight yelled as she put her hooves to her ears trying to block out the thundering rumble. The shine of sunlight hitting bare metal almost blinded her as she looked up in time to see the same machine she saw at the airshow shoot across the sky, nearly touching the rooftops.
The propwash blasted straw free from the rooftops and leaves from the trees as smoke trailed behind the machine. The ground itself seemed to shake but the scientist in her told Twilight that it was no earthquake. Narrowing her eyebrow in concentration, she teleported onto the top of her library and looked out over the horizon, the flying machine still... flying. 'I should learn what that thing is called...'
Abruptly the smoke stopped pouring from the machine's engines as the sound reduced in volume and the pitch started to change. Twilight watched the silver machine begin a slow arc to the left as wheels started to drop from under the wings. Metal plates started to swing down from the trailing edge of those wings as it fell closer and closer to the ground, its speed slowing all the while.
"It's landing..." she thought out loud as she teleported herself back to the ground and started running for the edge of town, following the ever fading sound of engines.
"Alright, let's try not to pass out this time," Eva said mostly to herself as she pulled more throttle, shedding airspeed as she deployed more flaps, the nose rising a little as she settled into a controlled stall, a second later the main wheels touched down on the soft earth with a gentle thud.
Pulling throttle down to idle, she leaned into the brakes, a little lighter than she had the last time she set down, slowing the plane as she hauled back on the yoke to keep the tail down, slightly off-put by the awkwardness in pulling so hard on the controls using hooves.
As the plane finally slowed to a manageable taxiing speed she spotted a pair of rather large trees and decided on her 'parking spot'. "Hold on, I'm gonna swing the tail around," she announced as she leaned into the left brake and throttled up the right engine slightly, gently but briskly swinging the plane around one hundred eighty degrees around the left main.
She let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding as she pulled back the mixture and cut the ignition to the pair of thousand horsepower radials, the propellers freewheeled for a few seconds before stopping along with the engines.
Finally, she shut down the electronics and awkwardly extracted herself from her seat. "So? What did you think?" she asked her winged companion with a smile while balancing on her rear legs, to get out of the cockpit.
Dash climbed out of her seat and followed the pilot towards the back of the plane, "Well, I thought it was pretty awesome actually, but I don't think Twilight thinks it was, because I just saw her running out here through the window and she looked pretty mad."
"I'm sure it won't be that bad, I mean, my little... conversation... with Princess Celestia went over... decently." Eva said while judiciously applying hoof to the cargo door catch. After a few seconds of pounding the latch released and the door swung outwards.
"Hey Dash, this Twilight, purple unicorn by any chance?"
"Yeah, she's got a stripe in her mane too." Dash answered as she came up to the door behind Eva.
"Well, you're right, she does look pissed."