Corkscrew · 3:29am Jun 1st, 2012
"Are you excited? I've never been so excited!" she chittered happily, steak-knife fangs clacking together as her mouth twisted into the closest approximation of a smile.
Rainbow Dash peeled her bleary eyes open, focusing slowly on the dashboard in front of her, followed by the windscreen, and the rows of jagged quarry rock that raced by along the side of the road. Avaylia twisted the throttle with her hind claws, coaxing a throaty rumble from the engine as the car sped over the uneven hills.
"Ughhh," she moaned, letting her head lay against the bulk of Avaylia's chitinous scales. "Yeah, I'm excited... Just tired. I thought we were going to a hotel first, or back to your place."
"Schedule. Gotta stay on schedule," her head stayed fixed on the road as the entire car bobbed and weaved. "Prototype delivery is today. Flight trials next week. Need all the shakedown time I can get before..."
"Corkscrew! I got planetside like, five hours ago!" she moaned, swatting her with one blue wing inside the cramped convertible. She looked back outside at the dark hazy horizon. "Hey, is it AM or PM?"
"AM."
"Figures... Pfff... Never thought I'd see you waking up before noon."
She giggled with a raspy reverberating rumble, sounding not unlike a chainsaw buried in a tree trunk.
"We can save the rack ops for later. I know I could use it. Been up since yesterday on fried khat berries and lil cubans," her head shook away the encroaching fog of drowsiness like a dog shaking water from its fur. "But it's getting delivered today, and I wanted you to see it with me!"
"Izza deal," Dash snorted as she slumped back in the articulated restraint, eyelids clamped shut for what few minutes remained. "Then straight to bed"
"Yours or mine?" she sported an impish grin.
Dash swatted her with her wing again.
"Jeez. I thought you'd have met some nice... Er... boy whatever dragon thing by now. At least you're back home here."
Avaylia sighed.
"It's sorta complicated."
"Yeah."
"Kinda weird too."
"You're kinda weird."
She snorted.
"I honestly don't know where you get that impression."
Dash groaned, pressing two light blue hooves over her eyelids.
"By the way. The Four told me to say 'Hi' for them."
"And you think I'm weird... How are they been doing back at the Schoolhouse?"
"Moving on to bigger things by the sound of it."
The car roared over the hill crest, cutting through the murky fog as the flat tarmac and squat buildings appeared before them in the valley below.
"Think I know that feeling," she said with a terrifyingly toothy smile.
Rainbow Dash drifted between sleep and semi-lucid awareness. The thrum of the engine, the whistling of the wind, and Avaylia's non-stop chatter about reaction control system modifications blended into a soft fuzzy background static. It seemed like only moments later she was getting poked in the chest by a set of blackened talons normally reserved for snatching prey from the desert savanna. She woke with a start, looking out the window at the grey chain link fence.
"Here we are!" she squealed. The roof of the convertible unlatched and folded itself like an accordion into a recessed hatch near the back. Likewise, and in a rather opposite manner, the bright orange winged serpent unfolded herself from the confines of the car, stretching as she went, one manic cheshire-cat grin peering through the fence.
"Is that it?" she pointed one hoof to the squat hulking craft in the distance.
"Mmm, yeah. That’s mine. All mine. Oh hey, hold on a second..."
Avaylia wrapped her good wing across her face, shielding it from the cold damp breeze A short flash of light shone through the leathery skin, as the oversized tin lighter scratched steel to flint. She folded the wing across her back as she reared up on hind legs. A long fat brown cigar stuck from the corner of her mouth, blazing brightly in the chilly pre-dawn air.
Rainbow Dash shook her head as Avaylia caught up. Her body undulated with a sinusoidal grace, claws ticking against the tarmac with each pouncing step.
“First full power test is in two days. Too much for the test stand. Need a full run-up to map out the IMI over the high spool range.”
“The what?” Dash muttered, as she painstakingly dragged each hoof forward.
“Inter-modulation interference testing!” she squawked. “Krauf sjaa... I was talking about this like, what.. five minutes ago! Anyways, you know how the main shafts have the hybrid mag bearings right? The dynamo induction effect on the different spools can match up at certain harmonic frequencies and create enough back EMF to melt the shaft, discharge a five hundred kilo-volt amp arc, or induce mag lock in the fans. Either way, you know... Boom! So anyways, when the engines pass the IMI frequency nodes, the mags are supposed to disengage and the rollers snap in place. It’ll probably shake up the whole ship while you’re passing that RPM. Kind of like that stick-shift in Dhuk Saeed’s old car.”
“You will call me Duke Speed,” Rainbow Dash giggled, trying to imitate the Persian imitation of a ‘John Wayne’ accent, and failing miserably.
Her dragonesque friend snorted in agreement.
“Anyways, what do you think?!” she beamed.
The ship was nearly a football field away, yet large enough to cover half of one. Two large.. no, ridiculously oversized turbofans straddled the smooth curves of the hull. The prow jutted out sharply, a sleek nose with a mult-part ramp that hung below like a ravenous jaw. The tail stuck out on a spindly stalk, giving the impression of a land-dwelling manta ray. Rows of stubby gull wings added a streamlined appearance to the otherwise brick-like shape of the craft.
“It looks like two engines, and a bunch of afterthoughts.”
It also looked slightly familiar.
Avaylia hissed, clacking her teeth in annoyance.
“Hey, just kidding ya,” she slapped her hoof on her friend’s scaly haunch. “I’m proud of you, actually.”
“Thanks,” she sniffed. “I guess my cutie mark came through, eh?” She tapped at the black and yellow crash-test roundel painted on her haunch.
“Oh that’s just morbid!” Dash snickered. “Do you remember when you had that painted? Do you know how much I got yelled at for that?”
She puffed hard on the nightstick-sized cigar.
“Yep!”
“Did you know I had to write the amended section to the rules and regulations for allowable body art at the Schoolhouse after that?”
“Yep!”
“And then everybody and their interstellar cousin started copying you.”
“You had it first,” she snarked.
“Totally besides the point!”
The two shared a brief satisfied sigh. Arguing was their second favorite past-time.
“Anybody else from the Schoolhouse remember me?”
“It would be easier to count the ones that didn’t, and I can do that on one hoof.”
The wire-thin tip of Avaylia’s tail whipped around and smacked Dash’s flanks lightly.
“The EOD team remembers you.”
She puffed hard on the cigar, rolling her eyes in two directions simultaneously.
“Their class of ‘45 actually made you their honorary instructor!” Dash started giggling madly.
A dull rumble from Avaylia’s chest cavity was her only reply.
“And that one time...” she started laughing hard enough that her knees wobbled. “That one time, you got it stuck in a tree!”
“I WAS KEEPING A LOW RADAR PROFILE!”
“And... And, oh Celestia... The EOD team had to call a logging company,” she paused to break into a loud snorting laugh. “And when they showed up, they stared, took a few pictures, and just left. Priceless!”
“It fell down eventually!”
“Yeah, that’s where ‘Krauf Crater’ came from! Oooh, did you know they made a bomb-shaped pinata for the Christmas party? And they hung it from a tree branch. Then all the EOD students got a blindfold and a stick and started smacked it while shouting ‘This was the only good idea we had!’ Bwaaa ha ha ha!”
Avaylia huffed. Twin mushroom clouds of thick acrid smoke erupted from her upturned nostrils in the same manner that steam might shoot from the ears of an enraged cartoon character.
Suddenly her ears started to twitch, standing upright and unfurling their rows of dark taut hairs. It was still too dark to see, save for the bright patches near the buildings where the sodium vapor floodlamps cast their sickly yellow beams. She grabbed the cigar as she reared her head up and opened her jaw until it fell flat against the hackles of her neck. Long teeth unfolded with the swiftness of a switchblade, opening the tiny infrared eye-pits that dotted her gums.
Dash took a deep breath to steady her laughter.
“What do you see out there?”
“Mmm. Heat source. Right on time,” she said, folding her teeth back in place.
“Your idea of breakfast?”
She shook her head.
“Nope! I think that’s the...”
Across the tarmac, a diesel engine begrudgingly rumbled to life.
“Yep! Thirty thousand litres of CEMH fuel!”
“See Eee Emm what?”
“Carbon Encapsulated Metallic Hydrogen. I told you about it last month.”
“Ahh. I think I was pushing my class through their final flight evals around that time. There’s a very strong chance that I probably wasn’t paying attention.”
“Well it’s good stuff! Five times the density of LH2, and six times the specific impulse! And it’s room temperature stable too! Can you believe that? Krauf jeh!”
“For that? That sounds like some kind of rocket fuel. That craft of yours looks like an SR-71 had a three-way with an F4 Phantom and a Hercules gunship, and they couldn’t tell who the father was! It’s not...”
“It kraufeteh well is! Combined cycle hybrid system with Single Stage to Orbit capability!”
She grinned through a grossly disproportionate display of teeth.
“Get outta here... There’s no way...” she trailed off. She couldn’t quite place her hoof on it, but the craft was looking slightly more familiar.
The tanker slowly rolled towards them. For a moment, the craft was entirely backlit by the truck’s headlights, revealing its blocky aquiline profile.
Dash’s jaw dropped. She stared breathlessly for a moment, before snapping her mouth closed. The craft was very familiar now.
Green Hopper. Not the same one, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
Trent had some explaining to do.
“...And those fans on the front are mechanically decoupled from the low spool. A gearbox would have been too big, so there’s an integrated armature bus shaft. Basically an electric motor turned inside out. Yeah, forgot to mention that too. Electrically driven high spool startup. It’ll compensate for flameouts and unplanned restarts. Oooh, and since they’re not mechanically coupled, they can adjust their speed ratios for different air density and cut it closer to ideal efficiency!”
“Huh,” Rainbow Dash shook her head, still staring at the ship.
“And those blades on the front aren’t even part of the engine. That’s the lift fan. Totally electrically driven. The blades can also feather back along the shaft and open up the cavity for scramjet operation! Well, first the internal baffles have to choke it down for low speed combustion. You know. Anything under Mach four...”
“Hey!” came a voice from the tanker.
One eye twisted in its socket, aiming down to the human that had jumped from the cab of the truck. Her head and neck twisted in turn, bringing her balefully inquisitive gaze upon the man in the winter coat.
“Yesss?” she hissed.
“You can’t smoke here!”
Her eyes went wide for a moment, a mixture of confusion and indignant surprise. Her jaw fell open, as she grasped the cigar with her forked tongue, tapping it against her gums until the wad of ash fell from the end. She puffed on it several more times, furiously pondering her next words.
“Why not?”
“We’re scheduled to start fueling,” he gestured back at the craft. “No open flames. It might cause an explosion!”
Her head jerked up, staring at her craft, and back to the scowling man. Anger flashed in her eyes at the very implication.
“It wouldn’t dare!”
“Lady! Get that cancer stick away from my fuel truck, before I get my fuel truck away from your new toy.”
The two glared at each other for a brief moment. She puffed hard on the cigar one last time, and wordlessly twisted her body in the direction of the fence.
“Back in a minute,” she growled.
“Yeah... Probably a good idea,” Dash muttered.
The two watched Avaylia stomp across the tarmac as slowly as her spindly legs would take her.
“Say, that’s Corkscrew, right?” the older man asked, as soon as she was out of earshot.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Heard about her,” he cracked a wry grin.
“From a few lightyears away?”
“Yep! Man, there’s a lot of stories out there. Do you know about her, by chance?”
She sighed.
“I was her instructor back at the Schoolhouse.”
“Holy jumping Jeezus! You’re her? Rainbow Dash? Maaann, never thought I’d get to meet either one of you.”
“Ahh, it’s all right. No autographs though,” she chuckled.
“So,” he nodded his head toward the fence. “Is she just about as crazy as I’ve heard?”
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash jumped up, hovering directly in his face. “She’s my friend, got it? I don’t care what you’ve heard, but I wouldn’t go around repeating it, if I were you!”
“Ahh, sorry Miss Dash, didn’t mean it quite like...”
“That’s Captain Rainbow Dash. And yeah, I know she can be a little weird. I know she can’t control her temper sometimes. Maybe she’s just a little too eccentric! But I’m right there with her! If anyone’s got something to say about my friend, they better say it to my face too!”
Just then there was a sharp crack, as if a tea kettle had violently exploded. They both turned to look.
Avaylia stood on her hind legs with her triple-jointed pelvis thrust toward the distant horizon. The golden glimmer of dawn cast an impossibly long shadow along the dew laden asphalt behind her. A caustic mist of superheated steam, hydroquinones, peroxide vapor, and other various chemicals for self defense, territory marking, and pheromone dispersal, hung before her like smoke from a cannon barrel.
The cigar tumbled end over end, arcing high across the morning sky, before disappearing from sight.
She twisted around and started slithering back, rubbing her belly through a shallow puddle on the tarmac.
“You didn’t see that!” she shouted.
that ending. what the hell.
and somehow my head hurts trying to make sense of this and trying to imagine how impossibly long "The End" is going to be if it's going to lead anywhere near that scenario. I am really on edge to see what's going to happen in between.
This is incredibly interesting. I require moare.
Iiiiiii have no idea what happened there at the end, with the dragon's pelvis.
146677
Her species seems to have borrowed some notes from the bombardier beetle. Along with having some prehensile bits in places where it wouldn't be expected.
"Oh, that's neat! You drink like the humans do!"
Rainbow Dash looked up from the birdbath shaped fountain recessed into mil-spec trimmed lawn. Her student towered over her like a cobra set to strike. She finished lapping at the clear shimmering pool, greedily gulping to recover from the Schoolhouse's blistering summer heat.
"What do you mean? Humans don't really drink like that."
"Well they kinda do." The plastic lobe in her ear translated the contemplative hissing from Corkscrew.
"Whatever. Anyways, I've got training with the Four at eleven hundred. And I believe you have class around that time."
She nodded.
"But after that, did you want to meet up later? I've got some flying moves that I'll bet you've never seen around here," she grinned.
"Sounds more fun than chewing on my dorm furniture," her teeth clacked inside her mouth. "Seventeen hundred on the dot then?"
"Works for me. You're dismissed Lieutenant," she saluted with a wry grin.
"Aye Acting Captain Rainbow Dash!" Corkscrew twisted her head upside down and raked her claws across the hackles of her throat.
It wasn't a standard salute, but a very close approximation as far as her species was concerned.
"Just gonna get a drink first," she heard the translator chirp in her ear. Dash turned around to see Corkscrew straddling the wide stone fountain, lifting her tail, and planting her equivalent of a rear end into the burbling water.
There was an audible sucking sound as the pool quickly drained.
"Ahh! That's better! See ya later Rainbow Dash!" she hopped up and took to the air. One good wing flapping, with the other stunted wing held out like a rudder, as she spiraled up and over the well manicured grove of trees.
While ponies are physiologically incapable of vomiting, Rainbow Dash was determined to try.
146720
As an aside, how are these related to The End? Are these bits in the future from the events in The End, or an alternate reality, or what? Rainbow doesn't seem that much older, if at all, than canon Dash, and she hasn't mentioned any of her canon friends, so I'm hesitantly guessing alternate reality. You probably can't (or won't) say, since spoilers or some such, but I have to ask anyways, lol.
146759
She hasn't been gone for very long. Time flies when you're having fun!
But she does come home eventually, after she learns a valuable lesson. And by eventually, I mean about a week after the party at Sweet Apple Acres.