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// Chapter 13: Take These Broken Wings… 
// Story: The Engineer’s Wings 
// by Keeper of time RD 
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Scootaloo awoke shortly after sunrise. Opening her eyes was all it took for the pain in her heart to return. But with her tears spent the evening before, all her pain could force her to do this morning was give a sad sigh at the sight of her mangled plane around her.

On a more welcome note she found a candy bar sitting on the seat cushion right in front of her. It was one of hers from the supply bag she kept in the back of the plane. No doubt Sweetie or Bloom had put in there after retrieving some of the snacks for themselves.

With more then the needed hours of a good night’s sleep behind her, the filly’s body was eager to get up and start moving around. But at first her mind couldn’t find the will to obey her body’s urging. Slowly she gave in enough to reach out and take the chocolate, caramel and peanut candy bar. When looking at it had annoyed her body long enough she gave in to unwrapping it and finally having breakfast.

The sound of two softly snoring fillies told Scootaloo where her friends were, and that they’d probably raided the supplies looking for dinner rather than breakfast. Moving on, her ears searched for anything else that might prod her mind into getting up. In a way part of her was hoping to find a sign of Rainbow Dash. But she failed to hear anything that said the adult was still nearby.

With that her heart sank and she returned to being a lump on a log. Or in this case a lump on a seat cushion.

That was until she noticed an annoying grinding sound. It was as if something heavy was being dragged along the ground for a second, then silence, then another scoot grinding more dirt underneath it. The fact that the sound was so stop-and-go proved more annoying than the sound itself. Then there was the realization that the sound was coming closer, sparking curiosity to add to the sensations trying to rouse the filly from her melancholy.

Finally giving in, Scootaloo rose. She had to stand up on her hind legs and put her front hooves on the rim of the cockpit to stand tall enough to see out. A part of her wanted to cringe on seeing just how banged up the wings of her plane were for the first time. Yet it was happy words that escaped her lips.

“Rainbow Dash! You came back!”

Her joyful tone shifted to a more questioning one as she beheld the ropes that once belonged to a parachute wrapped around Rainbow’s body and leading to a large sheet of metal that was currently being used like a sled to carry three landing gear struts.

“What are you doing?”

“I know for a fact that this plane was a lot worse off after your dad crashed it. So I figured if you could get that pile of scrap flying again, fixing this up should be a breeze for you!”

“But I did that in town!” she said, gesturing to the endless fields of grass and a nearby river that were the only things in line of sight in the mountain valley. “Where I could buy parts, and tools!”

Rainbow Dash shrugged and looked back toward the collapsed cave, or more precisely the crash site of her Lightning Bolt Mark 2 near by it.

“We got two crashed planes, and between them three broken engines. Any bets that’s enough parts to get this one flying again? So what do you say?”

Scootaloo was tempted to ask about tools, but if her snacks had survived the crash so had the wrench and screwdriver. A smile slowly spread across her face. Then she looked up and answered with something she’d heard her dad say many times, “There is no problem you can’t engineer a solution to.”


* * * * * * *


Rainbow Dash made several more trips to the crash site of her aircraft to scavenge parts throughout the day.

Scootaloo accompanied her on one of those trips after searching her plane so she could tell Dash what parts she thought she needed from the fallen Mark 2 to fix her Mark 1. After that Scoots stayed with her plane putting things in place as Rainbow brought the replacement parts in.

Apple Bloom put her earth pony muscle to use when needed but spent most of the time swapping out torn-up sheets of metal on the wings with more useable sheets from other places, or otherwise banging out dents as best she could.

Lunch had come from some berry bushes near the river that, as Dash had put it, ‘They haven’t killed me yet, so I don’t think they’re poisonous.’

As fate would have it Rainbow Dash had once been a skilled enough weather pony to make her own rainbow fountain and thus her own liquid rainbow. Although she pointed out that what she was able to make from the small cloud array she’s whipped up was low quality stuff compared to what a real rainbow factory could put out with a proper cloud crystal array, it would give a much shorter flight time than good quality liquid rainbow, it should be more than enough to get off the ground and get back to the C.S. Cloudsdale.

The heat of the day had passed by the time Scootaloo crawled out of the engine compartment and didn’t ask for anything. Instead she looked around with a look in her eyes that made it clear that she considered her job complete and was more interested in how the others were doing.

Seeing this Rainbow Dash asked, “Are we ready?”

The filly’s purple eyes looked around. There were dozens of holes in the skin of the body of the plane, but the wings were as good as they were going to get with what they had available to them. Half the instrument panel probably didn’t work. The flaps were jammed in the full up position, so she basically didn’t have flaps. And the fuel lines were more pegasus tape than original material. The plane was a mess and would only have a fraction of its original capability, but it should fly.

Turning her eyes to Apple Bloom, she asked, “How’s the runway?”

Bloom gestured toward two piles of rocks in the distance. “Ah did the best I can out to those rock piles, after that Ah can’t promise there ain’t any big rocks in the grass.”

Scootaloo gave a nod. That would be enough room to take off. And that only left one question.

“How about you, Rainbow Dash? Think we have enough fuel to get somewhere?”

Hovering up to the small cloud with the makeshift rainbow fountain she’d whipped up, she examined the pool of liquid rainbow and said, “Seeing as this is low quality stuff, I’d say we can get maybe two hours out of this. They should still be fixing HQ, so that should be more then enough to get over the mountain and back to base.”

“Then yeah, we’re ready.”

As everypony was climbing into to the plane Sweetie Belle pulled Scootaloo aside. And with a mixture of hope and sadness on her face she said, “Scootaloo, I’m I know I’m not any good with all this machines stuff, but I wanted to help anyway. But since I couldn’t, I wanted to make something for you instead.”

With that she used her magic to present Scootaloo with her spare goggles. Only now, Sweetie had attached the crystal fragments from the shattered staff to the lenses, making a four-pointed star formation in front of the lenses.

Scootaloo’s eyes went wide with borderline panic as she looked over her modified goggles. At the moment she couldn't care less that the modifications made her spare goggles look as silly as those star framed tourist glasses one might find in Applewood. No, her thoughts immediately went to the fact that her main goggles were broken to the point that their enchantment had faded.

Quickly grasping the goggles, the young pegasus pleaded, “Please tell me the enchantment still works!”

Sweetie’s green eyes went wide as she realized her mistake. Donning a sheepish smile she answered, “I don’t know, I didn’t even think about that!”

“Sweetie Belle! I broke my main goggles in the crash! If these don’t work, I won’t be able to pilot my plane!” Scootaloo said as she scrabbled up into the cockpit.

“I’m sorry! I just wanted to help! I’ll buy you some new ones once we get back to Ponyville, I promise!” Sweetie cried, and then held her breath as she watched the orange pegasus put the goggles on.

Scootaloo breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did I mess them up?” Sweetie asked timidly.

“No. Everything’s all rainbowy but they still work.”

As her answer had told, as she looked around, Scootaloo found that having the crystals on the lenses made looking through the goggles like looking through a prism. Every point of glare became a rainbow, and everypony seemed to glow. And while her plane appeared to be a faint, transparent rainbow, it was still transparent.

Rainbow Dash took a moment to ruffle Sweetie Belle’s mane and said, “Even if you had messed them up, I’m big enough to not need magic goggles to pilot a jet plane. Only you short stuffs need something like that.”

The young unicorn relaxed a little with the realization that there was a plan B available. But she still felt compelled to apologize again for her shortsightedness and promise to buy Scootaloo a proper replacement.

With everypony else piled in the back, (Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle in the back seat, while Rainbow Dash stood in the space between the seats, holding onto the back of the front seat.) the moment of truth came. Scootaloo flipped through the switches and everypony held their breath until they heard the hum of the engine coming to life.

After joining in a collective sigh of relief, Scootaloo pushed the throttle in and pointed the airplane down the makeshift runway Apple Bloom had cleared of rocks. The plane rattled its way down the dirt and grass runway and, thanks to the many holes in the sides of the plane, the wind in the cabin built up. Then their bumpy ride smoothed as the wheels left the ground to the cheers of everypony on board.

The flight had been slow and uneventful. Scootaloo had simply gained altitude until they were high enough to get over the ridges to the north. Once on the north side of the mountain ridge they were able to spot the C.S. Cloudsdale limping slowly in the direction of the actual city of Cloudsdale. Rainbow Dash borrowed Scootaloo’s light gun and singled their request to land, which was promptly granted and they soon found themselves landing aboard the Wonderbolt’s flying carrier.