Loathe as Twilight was to step aboard Rainbow’s ship again, it was now the only plausible way off-planet. According to the multicolored pilot, it was still parked out next to the Apple homestead, where, hopefully, the enemy hadn’t discovered it yet.
In such hopes Twilight had only been partially justified, but close enough. There had been a few Sith troopers guarding the beak-shaped vessel’s boarding ramp, but nothing a few silent, swift kicks to the back of the head couldn’t fix. Upon finding her vessel empty, Rainbow jumped into the cockpit and immediately started barking orders.
“You girls get everything tied down back there.” Rainbow said. “And strap yourselves down, while you’re at it.” Her front hooves were already flying over the controls at the speed of light, closing the boarding ramp and spinning up the engines.
Twilight worked as quickly as she could to secure the cargo, knowing from personal experience how rapidly Rainbow could lift this hunk of metal into the air if she wanted to. Luckily, Rainbow seemed to be going easy on them today, and the mares had just enough time to secure everything, including themselves, before the force of takeoff pressed them into their various seats. Rainbow eyed Pinkie, who had taken the co-pilot’s seat.
“Do you even know how to co-pilot?” Dash asked.
“Eh, how hard could it be?” Pinkie said, shrugging.
Dash shrugged. “Alright, then, Pinkie. Punch it!”
Pinkie went ahead and punched a hoof towards a random lever on the control panel before her. Luckily, it was more or less the one Rainbow had wished to indicate, and the ship surged forward, and upward, into the sky.
Twilight was strapped into the side booth next to the table, along with Applejack and Rarity, whose hooves were wrapped around a very contented baby dragon. Twilight’s attention, however, was focused on Fluttershy, who had improvised a harness from among the cargo straps on the other side of the hold. She had very purposely chosen a seat that was away from everyone else, and whimpered slightly with every bump of the ascent, and Twilight wondered if this was the same pony who had given her that fierce look of determination earlier in the alley.
That was far from the only strange thing Twilight had observed about the pegasus, but she couldn’t quite figure out the puzzle piece that could complete Twilight’s picture of her.
Soon the atmospheric pressure on the hull waned to zero, and the shaking of the ship ceased. A second later Rainbow dash’s face emerged from the cockpit with a cocky grin plastered on it.
“We’ll be ready to land on the second planet of the system in just a few minutes.” She said; then she recited “In the meantime, you are free to move about the cabin.”
Fluttershy relaxed her grip on the cargo straps, taking a deep breath to center herself. Twilight unstrapped herself as well, and after a moment of thought, walked towards the yellow pegasus, leaving Spike to enjoy Rarity’s fond attention.
Fluttershy was still breathing slowly and heavily with eyes closed while Twilight approached her. When Twilight was within a private speaking distance, she cleared her throat to get the pegasus’s attention.
Fluttershy’s eyes shot open and looked at Twilight. Pretty soon, though, her one visible eye began flitting back and forth between every conceivable spot in the cargo hold before pointing back to Twilight and beginning the cycle anew.
“Um… hello. Sorry.” Fluttershy said. Twilight wasn’t sure why she had apologized, but after a moment of thought she wasn’t sure Fluttershy entirely knew, either.
“Hello.” Twilight said. “I was wondering… could I talk to you for a bit?”
A sort of long, barely audible whimper issued forth from Fluttershy’s vocal chords, and the slow nodding of her head caused Twilight to believe it was meant to be an affirmative.
Twilight sat down next to Fluttershy against the wall. Fluttershy was staring at nothing in particular across the room, occasionally gaining the courage to briefly meet Twilight’s eyes.
“I was just wondering how you knew so much about the elements.” Twilight said. “You seemed to remember it rather quickly.”
“I- um… Well I… I used to um… read a lot, when I was training in Canterscaunt.” Fluttershy muttered.
Twilight’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “You lived on Canterscaunt? What were you training for?”
“I- um… I was just a youngling.” Fluttershy said. “At the Jedi temple.” she quickly added.
Twilight’s mind suddenly began putting the pieces together. “You’re a padawan too?” Twilight asked, almost excitedly.
“Umm… no.” Fluttershy said, her head lowering a bit so she could hide behind her mane a bit more.”I, um.. I failed the test.”
“er… oh.” Twilight said, more than a bit disappointed. For a moment, she copied Fluttershy’s stare at the ground. After a few seconds of silence, Twilight looked back towards the pegasus.
“What happened?” Twilight asked. “I mean, that is, if you don’t mind talking about it.” She added hastily.
Fluttershy’s head rose a bit, her gaze lingering a bit longer than usual on Twilight. When she looked back to the floor, she said “They… the Masters, I mean, they said I had too much… attachment.”
The picture in Twilight’s head was nearing completion. “Oh.” she said, unsure if she wanted to press further. It turned out that Fluttershy needed no further encouragement.
“There were other, smaller things, of course. I was scared a lot; I used to keep little creatures who snuck into my room at night and feed them crumbs from my breakfast. I wasn’t very good at lightsabers either, but… I don’t think I wanted to be.”
That last bit felt like it made Twilight’s brain do a backflip inside her skull. “You.. didn’t want to be a Jedi?” Twilight asked, bewildered.
“No.” Fluttershy said. “I mean… maybe a part of me did, at the time, but now… I don’t think it’d be worth what I’d have to lose.”
Twilight scrunched her muzzle in further confusion. She spent a few seconds tempering her response into something that she hoped wouldn’t sound incredulous.
“What would you have to lose to become a Jedi?” Twilight asked.
Fluttershy was silent for a bit. For a few moments Twilight was sure that she had been too forceful with her question and scared the pegasus back into her shell. However, Fluttershy didn’t look back at the ground. Instead she planted a hoof under her chin and looked at the ceiling, as if in deep thought.
“I don’t know, exactly.” Fluttershy finally said. “Life. Things to need, or things that need me.”
“But.. everypony needs the Jedi.” Twilight said. “They’re mediators, they’re peace-keepers…”
“I know.” Fluttershy said. “Everypony needs Jedi, but if I was one of them, nopony would need me… y’know?”
Twilight scrunched her muzzle again, trying to puzzle out what exactly Fluttershy meant by that. Before she could make any meaningful progress, however, her train of thought was interrupted by a loud rumbling, accompanied by the ship underneath them briefly rocking like it had been picked up by a gigantic foal.
As soon as she regained her balance, Twilight darted towards the cockpit, getting there just before Rarity and Applejack. There they found Rainbow Dash, who was currently in the process of waking up from her nap and frantically checking her instruments, and Pinkie, who had been experimenting with the vibrato effect the shaking of the ship had on her voice.
“What was that?” Twilight demanded. A moment later, the ship shook again, followed by four sleek, vaguely crescent-shaped ships flying into view of the cockpit. Twilight’s stomach sank.
“They must have followed us!” Dash said as she seized the controls and began evasive maneuvers.
“Does this ship have any weapons?” Twilight asked Frantically.
“Don’t exactly need ‘em for deliveries!” Dash said. “Besides, I know a few maneuvers; we’ll lose ‘em. Pinkie! Do literally anything you want to that control panel!”
Pinkie limbered up her forehooves a second before slamming her face down on the controls and wiping it around like she was trying to suck the last crumbs from a cookie platter. Swathes of buttons and switches triggered back and forth in waves, causing the ship to shake and spin erratically. Dash, to her credit, did a remarkable job of keeping the ship generally on course, but after a few moments of nausea-inducing g-forces, she said “Okay, Pinkie, nevermind. Urp.. Bad idea.”
Another blast shook the hull. “Horseapples!” Dash said as she took a quick glance at her instruments. “Shields can’t take much more of this.”
Twilight spotted a vague cloud of debris some distance off to the starboard side and pointed a hoof towards it.
“Do you think we could lose them in there?” she asked. Rainbow took a look at the direction Twilight was pointing and gained a worrying gleam in her eye.
“You’re not actually thinking of flying into an asteroid field?” Rarity demanded from behind Twilight.
“They’d be crazy to follow us, wouldn’t they?” Rainbow said as she accelerated toward the vast cluster of flying rocks.
The closer they got to the asteroid field, The more Twilight could see, and the less sure she was about this strategy. chunks of stone were flying everywhere, orbiting around each other and colliding in erratic patterns she couldn’t hope to parse. Rainbow, however, was still accelerating, which was keeping a good distance between them and their pursuers, but Twilight couldn’t help but think that at these speeds, the only thing waiting in that asteroid field would be a very, very hard landing.
“Rainbow Dash…” Twilight said warily.
“I got it.” Rainbow said, steely-eyed. She was still pushing the ship forward. “Pinkie, when I say, flip the bottom switch on the right.”
“Flip the what?” Pinkie asked.
“I’ll do it!” Twilight said, using her telekinesis to trade spots with Pinkie. Her hoof hovered over the appropriate switch, and sweat began to develop on her brow. Flecks of debris from the outer edge of the asteroid field began to pound the cockpit like hailstones. Simultaneously, Rainbow Dash began adding seemingly random bits of sideways thrust into her maneuver, but didn’t let up on the forward propulsion. Blaster fire flashed past the cockpit from behind, signaling that the pursuing fighters were getting closer.
Twilight began to be able to make up details on some of the larger asteroids; mountains were formed and destroyed in moments thanks to the massive objects that brushed past each other. Craters from high-speed impacts formed constantly, spraying out hundreds of smaller asteroids in turn.
“N-now?” Twilight asked.
“Not ‘till I say!” Rainbow said, still pushing forward.
After another second of acceleration, Twilight could begin to conceive of the scale of the objects she saw; many of the asteroids were moon-like in scale, which meant that any one of the tiny fragments left over from an impact could easily squash their tiny ship with momentum to spare.
“Now?!” Twilight demanded.
“Shut it and wait for the signal!” Rainbow said.
“Rainbow knows what she’s doin’, Twilight.” Applejack said from behind them.
Rainbow somersaulted the ship beneath a roughly house-sized chunk of stone before continuing her forward acceleration. They were beginning to come up on one of the bigger ones.
“Are you crazy?!” Twilight shouted “There’s no way we pull up if we keep going!”
“Rainbow knows what she’s doing.” Applejack repeated. Rarity apparently didn’t share her optimism, as she soon retreated into the cargo bay to see what sort of crash-proof shielding she could find before their inevitable splatter on the side of a small moon.
“We gotta slow down!” Twilight said frantically.
“If we slow down, we’ll be shot to pieces!” Rainbow yelled as she narrowly avoided another speeder-sized boulder.
“We need to pull out, now!” Twilight said. “I’m gonna press it!” She had been about to, too, but a microsecond before she could, her shoulders were seized by Applejack, who spun her around to look her in the face.
“Don’t you dare!” Applejack said sternly. “Rainbow Dash says to wait, we wait!”
“I can’t!” Twilight shouted. “She’s gonna get us all killed!”
“No she won’t!” Applejack said sternly. “You gotta trust her; and if you can’t, then trust me! Either wait for her signal or let me into that copilot seat!”
Another precious second of acceleration passed as Applejack’s eyes bored into Twilight’s. Twilight was shaking uncontrollably, desperately wanting to break free, but Applejack’s steady gaze provided an unwavering foundation, and that alone caused her to think. Time seemed to slow down as Twilight’s thoughts reached lightspeed.
Could Twilight trust these ponies? They were just backwater folks from a small town in the outer rim. Pinkie was undeniably crazy, Rainbow was some kind of adrenaline junkie, Rarity wanted to play dress-up with her, Fluttershy could hardly get a word out without whimpering, and Applejack… had wanted to share her family with her. Applejack had also, on multiple occasions, declared Twilight a friend, despite how rude Twilight may have been during her visit. Twilight found, to her surprise, that she did trust Applejack; in fact she trusted the moisture farmer more than she did herself, at this very moment. It was illogical, she knew, but… maybe the Force didn’t always have to rely on logic.
“Take the chair.” Twilight said shakily, stepping to the side.
Applejack nodded and leaped into position, her hoof soon hovering over the switch. Rainbow dash began counting down to the supposedly correct moment.
“ten...nine...eight…”
It seemed to Twilight that Rainbow was counting down to the precise moment that their ship would impact the surface of the upcoming moon-sized object. Rainbow’s volume was rising, like she wanted to make absolutely certain that Applejack could hear her.
“Seven...six...five…four...”
Twilight hid her eyes. If they were about to hit that surface at several-hundred kilometers-per-hour, she didn’t want to see it. Rainbow finally let off the accelerator, allowing their already considerable momentum to do the rest of the work.
“Three.. Two… NOW!”
Applejack flipped the switch, which, coupled with a jerk on the controls from Rainbow’s side, spontaneously spun the ship nearly one-hundred-eighty degrees, which afforded a good look at their pursuers. Rainbow was too busy strangling the controls to notice, however, as she throttled the accelerator and pulled sideways with two hooves. Near simultaneously, she brought a third hoof up from under her chair and bucked a control to her side. Twilight’s expression quickly turned from fear to horror as she recognized the control; it was for extending the boarding ramp.
“Hold on!” Dash shouted back into the cargo bay. A moment later a cacophonous noise flooded the ship as air began escaping through the back hatch. As the escaping gasses exited the ship, they acted like an extra thruster, giving Rainbow Dash just enough momentum to pull into a rapid skim across the asteroid’s desolate surface. Just before Rainbow closed the back door again, Twilight could see the shapes of several fighters struggling to make the same maneuver. The luckiest of them escaped with a nasty scrape on one flank that caused them to wobble and spin uncontrollably; The other three made spectacular craters.
As the cabin repressurized, Twilight took a deep breath. “Everypony okay back there?” she eventually asked.
Fluttershy nodded from her position, still clinging shakily to the cargo straps.
“I’m good, too. Thanks for asking.” Spike added sarcastically from the spot next to her. Confirmations from Rarity and Pinkie soon followed.
Satisfied by what she heard, Twilight put her back against the doorframe and allowed herself to slide down its side until she was sitting down on the metallic deck.
“You’re crazy; you know that, right?” Twilight said breathlessly in Rainbow Dash’s general direction.
Rainbow gave Twilight a quick smirk before bringing her attention back to the asteroids.
“Crazy awesome, maybe.” Dash said.