//------------------------------// // I'm Outta Here // Story: Storming Out // by Mocha Star //------------------------------// The door vibrated twice from impacts, then swung open as a guard walked in, then the door swung back into his face and he went down like a sack of potatoes. The next guards moved him aside, saying a quiet prayer for his own sacrifice while marching into the medical room looking for Tempest. The chants of ‘union now, oppression never’ and ‘unite against the ghost’ echoed through the halls and walls of what felt like the whole ship from where Twilight was hiding. She began to walk slowly so she could hear the chanting going between three languages and her body fluffed when she realized she could use Ponish to translate the other two languages. The chanting quieted to a murmur over a few seconds and what she was able to learn from her time aboard the ship already, the new linguistic base she could understand, and a whole lot of guessing; she heard one say something loudly and clearly. “Fellow gumdrops, commentator Tempest is jelly s’more. We are food for beef, god of limes!” There was a lot of cheering that startled Twilight back into the moment, she shook her head and tried to think if her translation was right, but quickly decided to move on since the cheering began to vibrate the walls she was walking between. She yelped when a hot pipe brushed against her hind leg because it wasn’t her fault since she was keeping a very close eye on where she was going and wouldn’t make such a simple mistake. It was the pipe that budged out and touched her other side, right on her cutie mark, that was at fault for the yelp she made. After that, even though they seemed to be in place, the next several paces of pipes made a point to burn her as she stumbled through them. Once past the last one, she looked back and stuck her tongue out at them, a final spite for them attacking her during her heroic escape. It was most definitely a mean-spirited hot water pipe that lowered and swung into her horn when she turned back to look where she was going. The next few burns Twilight might have admitted were actually her fault, if anypony was there to see them happen, but since she was alone with a bunch of stupid pipes that had it out for her, she wasn’t going to bring this part up, ever. The cheering, and now music, seemed to come from all around her. Every room had music vibrating the walls and as Twilight passed peepholes she noticed ponies jumping on the bed, and nodded. “Thought so.” She grinned to herself and peeked into the room with a couch and flinched back, a traitorous pipe attacked the back of her head and she jerked forward, getting her horn stuck in the hole. The music was loud enough to hide her pained whimpers, and she made a point to not look into that peephole ever again… After a minute had passed she looked ahead and behind her, to remind herself of where she was, then with a final glance that lasted a few seconds she gulped and pulled her attention away. “Wow… I didn’t think they could do that,” she said and started to walk again, backwards. “Oops, wrong way,” she rolled her eyes and walked back to the peephole. … Twilight climbed a ladder she finally came across, gaining a level to a new floor and new set of walls to hide within. She stepped over several mouse traps, a rat trap, and a small one wheeled toy that she picked up and introduced itself as Claptrap. She set him on her back and resumed her path, stopping at every peephole she came across to a disappointed sigh each time. Each one was just a normal room, in their own way, until she met a ‘T’ intersection and there was no sound to the right. She quickened her step into an area lit red; the peephole showed a command room with only one short, spiky-haired, ugly, smelly, grey, bug-eyed, poorly dressed, nasally voiced rodent that looked exactly like the rodent she had nothing but respect for. She glared at him, opened the nearest panel, then teleported behind him and threw him out of the open deck door. She slammed it closed and hopped back a little when she met the steely eyes of Tempest. “Wha-, how’d you get here?!” “I walked here and waited. You left me for dead nearly an hour ago! What took you so long?!” Twilight inhaled sharply and looked side to side. “Nothing! I wasn’t watching anypony do anycreature do anything that shouldn’t have been anatomically possible!” Tempest gave Twilight a disgusted look then shook her head. “Anyway, you aren’t getting away that easily. You see,” she gestured to the window with pride, “there is a window! That’s what I’m going to have installed in every room on every ship with my share of the profits, ha! Canterlot is only a few minutes away, princess Twilight. The ghost of future unions past… or whatever! “You turned my crew against me, convinced them they’re being led by a tyrant who doesn’t care about their rights, and you think I’m a bad guy?” she asked condescendingly. Her horn sparked and cast her face in dancing lights and colored shadows that made her grin all the more malicious. “Maybe I’m a little bad.” Twilight leapt to her right and rolled as a ball of electricity flew past where she was, then she leapt up and flapped her wings to dodge over and barrel roll around two more blasts. She lit her horn and blasted out a beam of pure purple magic, which we all know is powerful because it’s a secondary color, as opposed to the bright primary colors Tempest tends to use. Their magicks met and the resulting explosion sent them both flying into the nearest walls with loud grunts and groans of pain. A cracking sound tickled Twilight’s ears and she clenched her eyes just before the shatterproof window -that must have been standard on flying airships because they have to; it only makes sense- shattered, luckily not one shard of glass happened to hit the two fighters. Twilight was the first to stand and shake herself. Pain throbbed at spots around her body and her mane was singed lightly, which she knew was going to get her a stern talking to by Rarity. She looked to the windowless window at the fast approaching castle and looked at the fried controls. The speed gage was climbing and Twilight could see some kind of tall ape standing on the public speaking mezzanine, approaching quickly. “Ah-ha! You see, princesses? We’re on our way to par-tay! Whoo, yeah! Come to papa, little princess; daddy needs a new marketing team,” he whooped as the ship approached. “Yeah, Tempest! Bring her here! Right to me,” he shouted while he hopped between his legs and clapped his hands like a very happy primate. His eyes narrowed and he sneered, speaking as though anyone more than a dozen feet from him could hear him clearly. “Tempest, what’re you doing?” He stood tall and spoke loudly, as though any creature thousands of feet away, inside a ship, in a room full of whipping air, would hear him clearly. “Tempest?! Slow down, papa doesn’t need it that badly! He can, I can wait a few more minutes!” Twilight opened the door she’d slammed closed and ran past Grubber, turned down a hall, then another and kept galloping for all she was worth. Past ponies and other creatures dancing, drinking, and one awkward bipedal creature with thick glasses and an obvious underbite who was leaning against a door frame awkwardly looking into a room with a couch in it. Twilight skidded to a stop and teleported back, shoved herself into the doorway and looked around the room. “How can you two do that?! It shouldn’t be possible that way!” The two creatures dropped their cards that bore six very famous mares’ cutie marks and one pointed to the other. “That’s what I said! There’s no logic to this game, what are we supposed to do with cutie marks that aren’t even ours?” “Hey, I hear it play fun in Equestria. We learn play, we win big gamble money and buy own ship.” Twilight snorted loudly. “I don’t have time for this; that isn’t a real card game, bye,” she stepped back into the hall and resumed her gallop to the back door. Twilight ran to the window beside the door and leapt out, opening her wings just as the ship crashed into the castle because it was way cooler, just as the ship crashed onto the Storm King, luckily causing virtually no other damage to the superstructure of the castle tower he was standing on or anything below it. As luck would also have it, a glowing green orb of power bounced from the Storm King’s satchel -it’s not a fanny pack!- and rolled into the room that conveniently held the three very stoned princesses. With a flash of light, they all breathed a deep breath of fresh air and coughed a couple times, Cadence the most as she tried to get used to it. They looked at the threshold that had part of a smoldering staff and the billowing black smoke that blotted out their vision of everything beyond and looked between one another. “So, Luna,” Celestia said with a content expression, “do you remember when we’d play catch the cockatrice?” Luna giggled and nodded, giggling a lot more. “Yes, dear sister. I recall it was a most relaxing time.” Both elder princesses looked at Cadence who had stopped coughing finally and looked at the others with lidded eyes. “Woah, I can… feel the love in the walls right now,” she turned and moved to nuzzle a wall while her aunts joined her. “Twilight? Are you in the wall?! Sweet Auntie, she saved us and is cursed in the walls, I can feel her!” BACK TO TWILIGHT The shockwave sent Twilight tumbling out of the air end over end. She wasn’t experienced enough to recover from the sheering winds and she knew it, so she covered her face with her forehooves and watched the ground approach, signaling her doom. She impacted and thought for a second, This isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. At least it only hurts a little, I can’t imagine how bad I look right now, though. Goodbye Rainbow, you were always there for me. Goodbye Rarity, you’ll never know what happened to my mane, and it’s for the best. Goodbye Fluttershy, you smell really bad, like a bunch of gross animals, but I loved your tea. Goodbye Applejack, and all your apples. Everything was apples… everything. Goodbye Pinkie, I can still taste your cake and pie, so warm and sweet. I can imagine it now, even… wait. She moved her legs and felt a familiar resistance, then swam her way in a direction she hoped was up, then felt the cool air against her ears. She opened her mouth and exhaled cake, then inhaled fresh air. A pair of ponies gripped her forelegs and pulled her from the cake and she blinked her eyes open to see the mountain of cake from the beginning of the movie Pinkie was supposed to serve. Her four best friends, and the other one, hugged her and squished cake into her so tightly she thought she could feel the sweet mess getting in places it shouldn’t; like under her horseshoes and to her mane roots. She laughed, ignoring the cake in... places, and hugged her friends. Girls, I did it! I saved the day, the princesses are finally going to approve of me in a way I find satisfying and can finally stop being an overachiever and live a couple years as a relatively normal pony! “Girls, we did it. We stopped them and saved Equestria, together,” Twilight hugged tighter as a lot of love flowed across the city from the princesses and fixed everything except plot holes and the building structure of the utopian city it currently is to what it was when Trixie bought the Alicorn Amulet and dozens of other times.