Equestria Rim

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Chapter 5

Dash glanced over at the filly who had been sharing her head for nearly half an hour straight. She was beginning to grow tired. Dash could tell. The filly was not the most athletic pony she had ever met, but even the great Rainbow Dash had her limits, and this fight was reaching them. She used both wings to grab a pair of piles of crates, trusting that Scootaloo, despite her exhaustion, was still doing what she did.

They smashed the boxes into the Kaiju’s head until the boxes were no longer useable, only to get thrown again, this time into the water. Dash came up with a cargo ship in her wing and prepared to switch it to the Jaeger’s fore-hooves, activating a gripper system that acted like the magic that adhered things to Pony hooves. Together, the two ponies stood in the awkward stance, hefting the ship like a bat before the Kaiju arrived. They swung as one, then hit it with a backswing, and a third blow to the head.

JaegerJaegerJaeger

Twilight looked up at the ceiling of the shelter her and Rarity had been funneled into, “We’re not deep enough Rare. This isn’t a shelter. It’s a buffet!”

Ponies started panicking around the two, even as it dawned on Twilight why the Kaiju was digging for this shelter when there was obviously at least two Jaegers fighting it. It shouldn’t still be attacking. “It’s after me Rare. Get back. Get that Kaiju brain and get it to Celestia!”

Everyone formed a wide circle around her, watching fearfully as the roof broke open and the creature’s disgustingly long glowing tongue drooped down into the chamber, flopping around like it was looking for something, “Whelp. That’s it. Princess, I’ve failed you.” The tongue touched her, and she shuddered, only to feel it quickly whipping away and retreating. The thunderous hoof-steps she heard explained the whole thing. A Jaeger.

JaegerJaegerJaeger

Applejack pulled on her emergency breathing system, for evacuation under-water, and dove from the top of Mother-Bucker’s muzzle, right onto the crushed back of Alpha Canterlot. She made her way to the hatch and yanked it open, head still a little off from the blow of the wall, and the deck when Big Macintosh had dropped so fast. Still, she was able to get into the Conn-pod easily, and noticed a yellow Pegasus, wearing the harness, nose dripping blood into the helmet she was wearing. Lying on the deck beside her, tucked under one of the Pegasus’ wings, was a blue Pegasus with a black mane.

Applejack, knew both that the structure was too weak to stay up much longer, and that if the mare disconnected, Alpha would fall into the ocean again. She grabbed the stallion, tying him to her back before looking the mare in the eyes, “Come on. After disconnect, it’ll be, oh, thirty seconds before we hit the water again. Before then, we need to be up topside, where my brother can pick us up.”

Spitfire unhooked herself and followed the newcomer up the ladder and onto the top of Alpha Canterlot, where she saw a sight she never expected to see, the top of Mother-Bucker’s Conn-pod, hatch open. It was at that point she realized her rescuer was wearing a piloting suit, “Wait, who’s driving your Jaeger?”

“My brother. Big Macintosh Apple.”

The two mares jumped onto the Conn-pod and stepped away as the heavily damaged Jaeger dropped into the ocean. As the two slipped down the ladder, Spitfire noticed that almost everything was still dark, “Why is it so dark in here? You’ve got power, right?”

“Backup batteries,” Big Mackintosh grunted, “’nough to run the radio. Call for help. Already did.”

“But, you’re moving? By yourself?”

Applejack set Soarin’ down on the deck and pulled Spitfire over to show her inside the control legs, where cable harnesses sat alongside the main joysticks, “Raw power, through wires. We’re diesel, not radioactive nuts like you and Storm-Breaker.”

JaegerJaegerJaeger

Dash encouraged Scootaloo to try something new when they got the Kaiju in their grip after dragging it away from a public shelter. Scoots thought about it for a moment, then reached a hoof into the creature’s mouth and grabbed the tongue like they had the ship-bat. This time though, she had no intention of letting go, and she ripped back on its tongue, tearing the writhing muscle clean out.

Scootaloo hollered at it, making noise without words, even as Dash punched it square in the face with a rocket-propelled hoof. The Kaiju seemed to take offense to that, and grabbed the Jaeger, digging claws into its abdomen and lifting the machine into the air. Dash clenched her wing in, “Scoots, wing in! Get it out of the slipstream!”
Scootaloo obliged, closing the wing in as tight as she dared, “C’mon, C’mon. How’re we gonna get out of this one Dashie?”

Rainbow flinched as the familiar nickname hit her hard. Somehow Scootaloo had gotten Fluttershy’s memories. “Ok, I think we’ve let him pull us high enough. SWORD!” The right foreleg opened slightly, slinging out a chain of blade segments that went stiff at a jerk from Dash, “Die! You! Stupid! Kaiju!”

She swung the blade, tearing the Kaiju’s wing off cleanly. Both started falling, and Scootaloo went to open her wing, only to find that the harness was stopping her. Dash was quite a bit stronger than her she’d noticed, and wasn’t letting her open her wing for some reason. “Hold on Scoots. If you open your wing too early, it’ll cook. The control surfaces need to be cooled down first.”

“Won’t we be going too fast by then?”

“Naw. I’ve gone faster without rocket assist, so no worries there.” Dash kept pressing the fear in her mind down. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust herself. It was that her wing wouldn’t extend fully, and if Scootaloo’s did, the pull would shatter her wing like balsa wood, oh how she wished she hadn’t given up on the physical therapy to get it back to full functioning. “Wait for my signal.”

The heat roaring outside the Jaeger faded, and she braced herself, “Alright, so here’s what we’ll do. Wings straight out, then straight back. That’ll fire the thrusters. Hold like that until I say.”

“Ok. You sure?”

“NOW!” Both Pegasi snapped their wings out, Dash wincing as the tendons she hadn’t used in five years were torn from their fixtures. Her fifteen foot wingspan crossed most of the Con-Pod, feathers brushing the tips of Scootaloo’s wing as they snapped back together. The pain was immense, but they were slowing down. As they slowed, she watched the sky, using her internal altimeter to judge when it was time. Five hundred feet above the city, she hollered, “Retract!”

Her wing was pushed back into place on Scootaloo’s side, even as her other wing clamped tight to her side. Hooves down, they crashed into the asphalt, shattering it, and throwing up a dust cloud, “That’s how it’s done. Sonic Braking for the beginner.” In her mind, separated from Scootaloo, her shoulder was screaming.

Scootaloo started trembling on her hooves, looking just about ready to pass out, “Relax kiddo. Helicopters are inbound to pick us up, then you can sleep.” She smiled as the filly started loudly, and as off key as she could possibly be, singing some thrash metal song. Dash listened for a moment, letting Scootaloo follow the rabbit into a pleasant memory, before joining in, singing the lyrics horrifically off key, and knowing instinctively that they were, but so what.

They were disconnected and dropped out of the memory together when the helicopters connected, “Need a lift, Jaeger?”

“Yes ma’am. Get us home. Li’l Scoots here’s about to fall asleep on her feet.”

JaegerJaegerJaeger

Twilight stared at the corpse of the Kaiju, stunned that she was so close, yet all her equipment was back at base. She could see the Jaegers being carried off. Only, one of those two wasn’t even supposed to have been there, and there was supposed to be three.

“Rare?”

“Yes Twilight?”

“Do you still have your phone? I’m afraid the EMP killed mine.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Rarity reached into her saddle-bag and produced a small oil lantern glimmering with celestial magic, “Can’t be without a reliable, and stylish, communication device, can I?”

Twilight sighed, used to the antics, as she scribbled instructions on her blouse and handed it to Rarity, who lit the lantern and shoved the fabric bundle into it before handing over her shawl, “Cover up dear. Ponies might stare.”

Twilight took the offered shawl and pulled it on, smiling at Rarity as she secured the shawl over herself. As they moved closer to the Kaiju corpse, she noticed that Trixie Gee had already arrived, and she walked up to her, “Alright, so I still need that brain.”

“Oh, so you survived then? Lucky mare. Well, I guess I owe you one Kaiju hindbrain then. My boys are already in there, working on it.”

“Hey, boss? This Kaiju’s makin’ a funny noise.”

“Snips, I told you, before. It’s just the CO2 trapping the nitrogen in the Kaiju’s blood, so you don’t get corroded or anything.”

“No, Boss, I think it’s something else, I think he might be a she,” Snails responded.

Trixie growled, “Really, and what gave you that idea?”

The Kaiju baby that rocketed out of the split in the side may have been the clue. Twilight shoved Rarity aside and ran the other way as fast as her legs could carry her, “It’s alive!”

The Kaiju infant finally stopped as it ran out of umbilical cord and started choking. Trixie joined Twilight a few moments later and drove her knife into the nasal crest, “Knew it. They can’t survive more than a minute outside the womb, not this young. Tartarus, it’s not even fully developed, look at this nasal crest. It’s still a single piece. She yanked her knife back and wiped it on a rag, “There’s your brain.” The infant lurched forward, engulfing Trixie head-first before dropping dead again.

“Gross,” Rarity walked up behind Twilight, “Maybe we should stake it to the ground first. There’s some rebar over here.”

The two worked on using their powers to bend the rebar into giant staples that they planted through the Kaiju’s face into the ground, so that even when it did lurch again, the sheer weight of the concrete slab kept it down.

The helicopter arrived with the portable laboratory, with a note from the Princess stuck to the outside of the shipping container, “Twilight, while I appreciate receiving word that you were alright, charcoal on silk is not an appropriate medium, as magic fire makes it smell quite similar to dragon farts.”

“Ohh, right. Forgot about that. Rare, why didn’t you stop me?”

“I was getting the lantern out, and it didn’t feel right to waste your first letter, now let’s get this gear set up and finish the princess’ mission, whatever it was she wanted that brain for.”

Twilight opened the box and started setting up the equipment, placing an oversized version of the Pon over the Kaiju’s scalp and securing it with more rebar, against the protests it made. “Alright, now help me get hooked up. I’m going to Drift with it.”

Rarity scowled, “Oh no. You almost died. It’s too much, even for you Twilight. There’s no way…” Twilight’s face fell, and she tensed for a fight “…I’d let you do this alone. Give me that!”