A Journey Unthought Of

by Hustlin Tom

Chapter 25 REVISED

Rainbow Dash put her jaw down on the tabletop, and let out a long drawn out breath through her nose. "We've been sitting in this shop for three hours now," she exclaimed in frustration to Pinkie and Rarity, "I hate being sidelined like this, and these donuts aren't doing me any favors when it comes to my barrel!"

"Aaaaw, don't be such a fitness junkie, Dashie," Pinkie replied as she shoved a second full donut into her left cheek after the one in her right, allowing her to speak through the middle, "These are the simple joys in life: donuts, coffee, and friends! Besides, I'd rather be happy than thin."

"Being fit is kinda necessary for my job!"

"Everything in moderation, dears," Rarity said as she tried to work her way through the recently delivered afternoon paper, flipping to the next page with her magic, "It has been an awfully long time since the others left. I suppose if things had gone poorly they would've already been back by now. Perhaps they've managed to secure Adam's release."

"I don’t think so," the pegasus replied, "With as determined as those guys were to grab us there's no way they'd just let him go, not without a fight."

"Can I get you ladies anything else," Joe asked as he made his rounds about the seated area, "I'm thinkin' with the way your friend here's eating I might close shop early and call in my retirement!"

Pinkie jokingly pouted, her ears curling back as she did, "But if you retire who's gonna make the best glazed and sprinkled things in Canterlot, Donut Joe?"

The shopowner smiled and waggled his hoof at her, "You got me there, Ms. Pie! Guess I can't go outta business just yet. Gotta secure my legacy and protect my franchise! What'll it be?"

"Another dozen raspberry jam donuts please, with a round of coffee too!"

"Dozen scoops of sugar?"

"Yeeeeessir," she chirped with a smile.

He looked to Rarity expectantly, who sheepishly waved her hoof away, "Oh, nothing more for me, thank you."

"And you, Ms. Dash?" Rainbow Dash blew a sigh out the side of her mouth, resting her face on her left hoof, "Just a water, please."

As the proprietor made his way back to the kitchen area Pinkie's backlegs began to shake, her hair recoil back and forth like a spring, and her shoulders shook up and down. Rarity saw what was going on with a glance and simply asked, "Too much sugar, Pinkie?"

"Thaaaat would be the diabetes kicking in," Rainbow said with a smirk as she leaned back, putting her hooves behind her head.

"N-n-n-n-o! Th-i-i-i-i-s is diff-f-f-ferent," she said as she rode out the convulsions, then her eyes scoured the window to the right of their booth. "My Pinkie Sense is tingling," she said as her voice lowered in octave and became more raspy for dramatic effect.

This pronouncement caused Rarity to give her her full attention, placing her paper down in front of her, "What do you mean? What's happening?"

"Hey Joe," the earth pony called out, "Can we get that order to go?"

"Sure thing," he called out from the kitchen before he shoved the door open, "Give me a sec to get them in a box!"

"Can do," she replied, and then turned to her friends, "We're being watched. And followed." She paused a moment, rubbing her chin for the right word, then murmured, "We're being wallowed."

"Three guesses who," Rainbow said before she looked over her shoulder to the booths and tables behind theirs, "Are they already in here?"

"Nope, but they will be soon." Pinkie slunk out of her seat and tiptoed towards the front counter, where Joe was just coming out to offer her her donuts, "Say, you wouldn't happen to have a backdoor would you, Donut Joe?"

"Um, yes," he replied, perplexed by the sudden and unusual inquiry, "Why? Is this the start of a joke or somethin'?"

"No, not really. We were just wondering, that's all!" With that, Pinkie bolted through the kitchen door, while a bewildered Rarity and Rainbow Dash rushed after her to keep up. There was the sound of a door opening followed shortly by that same door slamming shut.

"Hey, wait," the poor baker exclaimed, "You didn't pay your tab!"

"Oh right," a muffled reply came from Pinkie. A large bag of bits suddenly landed in the open window between the kitchen and the public area, "Sorry! Everything else is the tip!" The door noises were heard shortly after again.

It was only a few seconds later that two ponies entered the front door, each as average looking as imaginable. They looked around the shop carefully before one said to the other, "They must have slipped out the back. You follow them around towards Broad St., I'll go through here after them."

Pinkie took the lead out of the alley, with Rarity not far behind while Rainbow Dash flew directly overhead. They spilled out into the street, Pinkie shouting over her shoulder, "This way," as she turned to her left, leading further up and in towards Canterlot Castle. Trying to take the sharp turn as close as possible, Rainbow rolled through the air, coming close to veering into the shops on the other side of the street before she corrected and returned to her friends. A pegasus was just on their trail, holding the same speed as them but keeping his distance. On hoof a unicorn kept up the chase: she was gaining on them. Her horn lit up, and she cast a bolo hex after them.

"Jump," Pinkie blurted, her hooves skipping a beat as she brought them up as close to her body as she could. Rarity got her legs up just in time so that she saw the yellow energy pass underneath her. The energy continued on its vector until one of a group of bystanders just in front of them, where it bound his legs together, causing him to fall off balance to the sidewalk a cry of alarm. The unicorn dissipated her bonds on the unintended target as she passed, not even stopping to check on his condition. The pegasus flying overhead paid no mind.

The two agents locked eyes as they ran and silently agreed on their next move. He flapped his wings harder, covering the space between him and Rainbow Dash easily as he gained altitude to be just above her. The multi-chromatic element bearer only saw him as he was about to drop nearly on top of her left side. With a cry she flapped towards her right to avoid him, unaware that a new bolo was headed to the space she had just occupied. The yellow mass snared her, wrapping around her wings and legs, drawing them tight to her barrel, and she plummeted to the street not far below. She bounced against the cobblestone street twice before coming to a halt, a yell of pain escaping her lips.

The other two stopped in their tracks and turned. "Dashie," Pinkie yelled in horror. The two agents were closing in on their captured friend, the unicorn picking her up in a telekinetic bubble. Rarity, ever the quick thinker, reached into her friend's box of donuts with her magic and popped the lid open. Pinkie gave a surprised "Hey," before she let the first one fly toward their aggressors. While not traditionally aerodynamic, the jammy donut flew straight and true, slapping against the back of the unicorn's head. The bubble surrounding Rainbow Dash disappeared, and she fell to the street again with another grunt of pain.

"Let our friend go you miscreants," she yelled as she chucked one directly at the pegasus' face, and another at the unicorn. Before she could get her guard up against the sugary assault the second stuck to the unicorn agent's horn, while the other splatted against the pegasus' wing just he brought it up to protect his eyes. The bonds around Rainbow vanished, and she quickly rolled her legs under herself and sprang off to join her friends, her right wing hanging limp and slightly open at her side.

"Just what is going on here?" The five ponies turned to look at a single member of the Royal Guard who was in the process of walking towards them from his post nearby. Even as he was walking up to them the other three Elements rounded the nearest street corner, and upon seeing the others in a state of injury and alarm they rushed towards them.

"This is is an official state matter," the pegasus agent said as he walked toward the guardspony, "Please return to your station and we will resolve this shortly."

"Let me see some credentials first, then I might start to believe this is a 'state matter' instead of 'harassment' and 'assault'," the guardspony replied. Neither stallion looked as if they would give any ground.

"Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy exclaimed, "What happened to you? Who are these ponies?"

"Just a dislocated wing," she said with a wince, "Figures that I can't skip out on an injury even when I'm not training, and just when I was almost all patched up. They're with the RSD, and they're after us, maybe all six of us!"

"We are members of the security team of the Royal Science Division in the process of detaining and questioning that mare," the unicorn agents said with a pointed gesture at the pegasus, never taking her eyes off the six of them in case they meant to run off, "It is a matter of national security that they be brought in immediately."

"I'm still not seeing anything that would actually authenticate your status as government associates," the guardspony said stubbornly, "Produce some identity papers now or I will have to ask you to leave immediately. You're accosting citizens without a verifiable arrest warrant, and national heroes at that."

The bureaucratic contest was about to step up another level it seemed, but the nine ponies were silenced by the presence of an alien noise that suddenly crossed their ears.

VroOOOm. VroOOOm. VroOOOm.

The noise was getting closer, and coming from above. As they all looked up they were met with a strange sight: from out of the late afternoon sky came a blue shed twirling end over end, hurtling directly down into the area they were standing around in.

Pinkie's tail twitched, and her left fore leg seized up. "Right," she yelled.

Those who understood what it meant immediately bolted to the right, while the three government ponies were taken by surprise when the box veered right into them, sending them flying across the street into some vendor stalls. The doors to the Tardis flew open, and the Doctor's human face popped out. He looked to his right to see the six mares lying in a collective dogpile, and waved for them, "Come on, get in!"

"Doctor, where's your disguise," Twilight asked as she disentangled herself from her friends, then she continued in frustration, "I thought you were trying to be subtle!"

"Prison breaks aren't typically what I'd call subtle, so I think we're a bit past that point," he yelled, then muttered to himself, "Along with other contributing factors." He waved again, his voice again at a normal volume, "Now come on; time is literally a-wasting!"

"I believe in this context you mean to use the word 'figuratively'," Twilight said as she launched into a teaching moment, "For time to 'literally' be wasted means that there's a finite amount of time left, as opposed to the idiomatic form meant to cause ponies to hurry up whatever it is they're doing."

The other girls were already climbing up into to the box, which was hovering a good six inches off the ground.

"Well lucky for you it's a case of both! Now quit arguing semantics and get in the bleeding Tardis!"

Twilight's eyes grew wide as the box began hovering a little closer, the Doctor bracing against the doorway as it did, dreading what implications he had meant from his correction. Their assailants and guardian angel were beginning to recover and remove themselves from the stalls they had been thrown into. Waiting not another instant, Twilight galloped to the Tardis doorway and leaped up into it.

The Doctor was already running up the ramp to the central control module, where the pale green glass column was rhythmically going up and down, producing the foreign sound they'd all heard before. Ditzy Doo, who had been managing the controls to hold them all stable, backed away as the Doctor approached. "Thank you, Ditzy," he said in a hurry, then began his work on the console, pumping what looked to be the end of a bicycle pump, hitting a large opaque button that lit up, then twirling a gyroscopic ball in its housing. "Everypony hang on to something," he said as he pulled down a large black-handled breaker, "She handles rough without dematerialization!"

The doors, having never been closed showed a fragment of the world outside. The buildings they had just been surrounded by disappeared beneath the door frame: they were ascending. Everypony was gripping onto whatever structure of the Tardis interior they were nearest to. Pinkie was closest to the door, hanging onto the ramp's safety rails, and she squealed in delight as they twirled up into the air higher and higher.

"We're about to descend," the Doctor called out.

"That's just where we came from," Twilight yelled.

"Oh, you think so two-dimensionally Twilight," he said with lopsided grin, "We're not aiming for the street, but beneath it!"

"You'll flatten us," she yelled as she tried to reach out with her magic to stop his hands from touching the controls.

"No," Ditzy yelled, "Just trust him! We'll make it where we need to go!" Then the plummet began.

Clouds zoomed upward outside, the highest spire of Canterlot Castle flashing into view before it was lost in the twisting horizon of their door frame to the outside world. Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth through the pain and the disorientation of what she was seeing, and gave out a yell in growing pitch and volume as she gripped to the support beam she was on even tighter.

"Now then, bring us out of Safe Mode," the Doctor muttered to himself as he flipped a row of switches on the console, stopping short on the last two. "No Time, but everything Space."

Sparks flew from the console after he'd made his adjustments, and he as well as the others were draw suddenly towards the floor at an angle. "Gravity's on the fritz," he blurted out, as he reach for the console and pulled himself back up, "We're about 30 degrees askew Normal!" He looked outside in time to see the street level buildings come into sight, "Here we go!"

From the outside the box hurtled toward the street from above, ready to be smashed to splinters. Everypony was keeping clear, including the three government ponies. Just as it seemed it was about to impact, the box passed through the street all together and vanished, leaving nothing behind as evidence that it had ever been there.

Comments

[ArceusFan493]

This is really fun

[Luckyfanisaac]

I'll go through here after them."

and he as well as the others were draw suddenly towards the floor at an angle.

From the outside the box hurtled toward the street from above, ready to be smashed to splinters. Everypony was keeping clear, including the three government ponies. Just as it seemed it was about to impact, the box passed through the street all together and vanished, leaving nothing behind as evidence that it had ever been there.

What a trick!!