A Dream

by totallynotabrony


A Health of Information

I stared forward from the cockpit.  The former Wonderbolts floating island lay ahead.  Gabby had to know I was here, though I was far enough away to be out of range of any weapons.

What weapons there might be were a good question.  I had Tin Mare running scans on the airwaves, looking for missiles or magic.  I’d managed to get her hooked up to enough systems to function as a copilot.  I still had to fly, but she could do everything else.

“We’re getting some early warning radar spikes,” she said.  “The fact that Gabby has early warning radar troubles me.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Are you up to taking a missile hit to find out what we’re dealing with?”

“Scanning.”  Tin Mare reviewed the airframe.  “Maybe one.  However, doing so would likely put this temporarily-repaired airframe down for more maintenance.”

“I’ll risk it.”  I advanced the throttles.

Maybe I should have thought about the risks a little more.  We had a nuke in the back, after all.  Tin Mare, I’m sure, was thinking about it.  But she knew me, and decided not to mention it.

We advanced on the floating island.  Under the Wonderbolts - both the originals and the group led by Wind Rider - the place usually hovered over Equestria with clouds around it.  However, Gabby seemed to have pushed it out east, over the Rarity.

I had never done an inspection on the place to figure out how it moved.  That might be worthwhile.  First I had to kill her.

I actually wasn’t planning to use the nuke if I could help it.  After some thinking and soul searching, I had decided that the only way I could convince myself she was actually dead was if I did it myself.  While I would have been content with bombing any other adversary, I really needed to see Gabby’s body.

I didn’t think getting to the island was going to be a cakewalk, but I couldn’t imagine what kind of defenses Gabby might have.  She didn’t have any henchman I didn’t think, so that kind of limited the ability to reload weapons on the fly.  Even if she did have missiles, there were only so many she could shoot.

“We are being targeted,” Tin Mare announced.

“By what?”

“Unknown.  Radar has shifted frequency.  Additionally, I have just detected a laser pointing and ranging system.”

Missiles we could handle.  High-powered lasers would also probably be fine for a little while.  I was convinced that the airframe could shrug off any direct-fire ballistic weapons short of a railgun.

Unfortunately, this was Gabby we were talking about.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a railgun.

Shit, why didn’t I have a railgun?  Also, why didn’t I have a railway gun?  Hell, I could mount a railgun on rails and have both.

Unless I used the electromagnetic propulsion for both the weapon and the train.  A railgun on a MAGLEV.  Nice.

Wait, I’m getting off track here.  Yes, right, being targeted by Gabby’s floating island.

We kept flying, tense and ready.  Tin Mare scanned the signals and sky, using the high-zoom cameras to search the approaching island.

But nothing prepared me to stop dead like we hit a brick wall.  I slammed into my seatbelts so hard it felt like my eyes were rattling in my skull.

Quite unexpectedly, the missile in the back appeared in the cockpit, flying forward until it bumped into something and stopped just like me.  Hello nuke.

“What the hell?” I muttered as well as I could after having the breath knocked out of me.

“An unexplained force has struck us.  In the absence of any other explanation, I’m going to call it a tractor beam,” Tin Mare said.  “Also, with no airspeed, we’re falling now.”

She was right.  I pointed the nose down to attempt to gain control.  However, the beam kept pushing us backwards.  I could occasionally dodge around it, but it would steer back on us.

I had to turn the aircraft around in order to get the required distance to build up airspeed, but by the time I did that, the surface of the Rarity was coming up awfully fast.

With no other choice, I flipped the engines to the hover position and managed to bleed off enough speed to come in for a mild splash on the surface.

Rarity was still colored from the recent chemical spills.  In fact, I wondered if she was doing it on purpose.

I stuck my head out the window as the aircraft hovered with its belly touching the water.  I didn’t think it would float very well, so I didn’t shut down the engines.  “Sorry about that, Rarity.”

“Nice of you to drop in,” she said.  “What are you doing?”

“We’re trying to go after Gabby’s floating fortress,” I said.  “What’s up with you?  Why the colors?”

“Well, I decided that just featureless and blue was rather boring.  By manipulating my currents, I can affect patterns in the color.  It may even draw more visitors to the seashore to see it.”

“See the seashore to see she?”

“I’m going to pretend that was exactly what I said, yes.”

Not everyone appreciates alliteration.

I lifted off again, gaining altitude and airspeed to try again.  This time, I slowly eased into the beam, flying parallel to the island.  The harder I banked the aircraft into it, the harder it pushed back.

“Can we figure out where it’s coming from?” I asked.

“Triangulating.”  Tin Mare zoomed in on the island and attempted to correlate the force pushing us away with a specific location.

“There is an unknown building with equipment on the roof near the runway,” she reported.

“Can we sling a rocket that far?”

“Possible.  Enough speed, altitude, and angle may allow it.”

I broke off from the beam and circled around, building up more of both.  “Let’s do this.”

“Designated.”  Tin Mare aimed the guidance laser.

Just before we got back into the beam, she fired the rocket out of the pod on the right side of the aircraft.  I pulled away so we didn’t hit the beam.

However, the beam steered away, targeted the rocket, and threw it back at us.  I just barely ducked under it.

“Huh, well, it seems like it can only aim at one object at once.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Let’s try it,” said Tin Mare.

We fired the other five rockets in the pod while diving at the island.  I had to do my best to dodge them all as they got flipped back at us, but it worked pretty well.  At least, until we ran out of rockets.

After that, we got pushed out again, and a lot more forcefully than before.  It seemed like the beam got stronger the closer to the island it was.

Also, I got the feeling that we wouldn’t have much ability to try that again, considering Gabby wasn’t dumb and would probably set up more than one beam in the future.

So we came at it from the bottom.  I dove down and came in for a hover and lightly kissed the surface of the water.

“Rarity, if you please, could you get a little current going and push us under the island?”

It seemed to be working.  The going was slow, but we were getting closer.  However, I didn’t count on the island coming down.

I was watching our progress as it got closer.  Then, suddenly I realized it was getting closer in the wrong axis of movement.

“Get us out of here!” I shouted.  Rarity complied with a wave and we surfed it back out from under the island as it finished settling down just at the surface of the ocean.

Now that the beam generator was at the same altitude, it started pushing us again.

“Rarity, can you splash the island or something?  Wash some of the infrastructure away?”

Just then, the island rose again, going up a few dozen feet.  Rarity could make waves, but not fifty feet high.

Also, I saw the doors of another building on the island open.  A green glow began to build from inside.

“Break,” said Tin Mare.

When she told me to do things, I did them.  I’d programmed her to be subordinate, so when she issued clear, directive commands it was pretty damn important.  I slammed the stick over.

A freaking hyperbeam flashed by the aircraft where it had been a fraction of a second earlier.  I call it a hyperbeam because it was either that or a big goddamn laser.  It looked wider than my body and was somehow visible in the air.  Gabby apparently wasn’t playing around anymore.

Well, shit.  It was time for a new gameplan.

I headed back for Ponyville, but changed course as we got close.  I’d had an idea and instead headed for Zecora’s place.

Unfortunately, Zecora didn’t answer my knock.  I opened the door to see if she left a note or something.  Instead, I found a tree growing inside her tree.  That was strange enough, but it had weird blossoms that tried to shoot pollen or something at me.  I was still wearing my power armor so it didn’t matter.

“The hell is this?” I said.  I walked around looking at it.  Down near the base of the trunk I found a distinctive swirl that heavily resembled Zecora’s cutie mark or whatever the zebra equivalent was called.

“Oh shit.  Um, Zecora, if you can hear me, I’ll try and get some help.  Stay, uh, stay right there.”

I flew back to Ponyville to find Twilight.  She was in the library with the others when I bust in and said, “Zecora’s been turned into a tree.”

“So what?” said Rainbow.

“That’s nice,” said Twilight.

I shook my head.  “What?  Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care, but-”  Twilight didn’t even bother finishing the sentence by transitioning to a new point, she just changed the subject.  “Valiant, we need to talk about the recent shareholder report.”

I hadn’t read the report.  “What about it?”

“Profits are down.  You’ve been spending a lot.”

“I’m trying to get Tin Mare back to being fully operational.  In fact, I’m going to need to spend more now because Gabby’s floating island had some unexpected defenses.  Besides, who cares about Valiantco® profits when we’re saving the world?”

“The shareholders.”

I stared at her.  “Who are the shareholders?”

“You, me, and the estate of Bruce Springsteen.”

“Oh yeah.”  I shook my head.  “But I don’t care.  Something’s happened to Zecora and I need to upgrade Tin Mare to take out Gabby’s Death Star-like fortress.”

“Her what now?” asked Applejack.

“She took over the old Wonderbolts floating island,” I explained.  “But back to Zecora-”

“Are you still on about that?” said Rainbow.  “Why do you care?”

“Why don’t you care?”

“Because my life sucks.”

I paused.  “Yeah, okay, I can live with that.  You being miserable is almost enough tradeoff with my concern about Zecora needing help.  You deserve it too, you piece of shit.”

Rainbow didn’t even rebuke me for that, which in hindsight was stranger than anything.

I left and headed for where Fluttershy was generating electricity.  After explaining what I had seen at Zecora’s place, she decided it was probably Swamp Fever.  It came from being exposed to the airborne stuff the plant sprayed.  The victim would turn into one of those same trees.  There was no known cure.

I took a deep breath and sighed.  “Shit.  Okay, I’m not sure if she counts as dead if she’s now a plant.  I hate to do it, but I feel like we should go cut that tree down so it can’t infect anyone else.  Then I guess she’ll be officially dead.  Either way, I should probably contact Bible and get a funeral planned.  That is, if anyone would actually come.  Nobody seemed that interested.”

“I would, but…”  Fluttershy gestured to the shed and electrical equipment.

“Yeah, and Pinkie and Rarity are out, for obvious reasons.”

It bothered me that nobody seemed to care about Zecora.  I mean, okay, if there was nothing we could do for her there was no point in hurrying to do it, but still, I would have thought more than just two or three of us at least cared.

Damn, Gabby was apparently really coming down hard on everyone.  The survival instincts were really kicking in and it was every man for himself.

But not me because I was a nice guy.  God, if I had to be the one looking out for everyone else…

I headed to my place.  I had a vague sense of what needed to be accomplished to take out Gabby, but needed a little help.  The former Wonderbolts HQ/Death Star was going to be a tough nut to crack.  But if it floated, we could sink it.

I found Pinkie’s skull.  “I need you to plan me a party.”

“Sure, what kind?”

“A boarding party.”

“Uh huh.”

“Against the Death Star.”

“Okay.”

I stopped and looked at her.  “You know, that giant floating thing with ninjas and pirates and lasers and shit?  A boarding party to that thing?”

“Come on, Valiant, give me a hard one.”

“That’s what she said,” I couldn’t help but mutter.

Pinkie’s eyebrows knit, deep in thought.  Okay, they didn’t really because she didn’t have eyebrows but the blue points of magic light in her eye sockets did something that kind of looked like it.  They widened as realization slowly dawned.  “Ohhh!  That’s a good one!  I’m going to have to remember that.”

I really hoped she wasn’t going to just start making ‘that’s what she said’ jokes from now on and instead actually go ahead and plan the boarding party.