Chapter 6: Takeoff
The next morning the airships were finally finished, and the mane six along with their younger siblings began to decorate. Last night after Twilight and Dusk’s talk she had asked their parents about bringing him on her tour of Equestria. So he could see more of the world, so they could catch up, so he could make some friends. Twilight’s parents had thought it was a great idea and so had the other five new princesses, asking for their siblings to come along as well. Dusk wasn’t exactly thrilled; he was glad to spend more time with his siter but getting dragged about the entire country wasn’t exactly his idea of fun. Especially since Twilight was so neurotic about planning. But all the other foals seemed happy with the arrangement, Scootaloo especially so. Amethyst seemed a little nervous but happy none the less.
Besides their siblings a few of the new princesses had decided to invite others along onto the airships besides their guards. Rarity had decided to let the nobles buy passage on her ship to roam the country with her from the air, might as well have the ships pay for themselves, right? Fancy Pants was given free passage, his ex marefriend Fleur De Lis, tried to buy passage after finding out but just like Blueblood, who had tried bookings a ticket to save face, that they were blacklisted from the airship. There were whispers about Rarity making enemies fast, but no one was to upset about the two not being allowed aboard the ship. Fluttershy obviously asked Discord to come with her, Discord didn’t want his own room on the ship he would just teleport in and out. So instead Fluttershy opted to bring a few more of her animals besides Angel.
Twilight didn’t have anyone she could think of inviting besides Dusk, but that was before Luna approached her. Luna asked Twilight if she could come along. She still felt rather disconnected from the ponies of Equestria and had not seen much of it since before her banishment. Celestia was perfectly fine with this as Luna could still raise and lower the moon from the ship and do her dream walking. Twilight gladly accepted the night princess onto the trip. Applejack invited Babs along as well, but she wanted to go home to tell the crusaders back in Manehatten about everything that had happened and maybe she would meet up with them when they stopped nearby.
Rainbow didn’t invite anyone besides Scootaloo. Her and Applejack were going to be traveling similar routes, so they were just going to hang out with each other instead of inviting more people. The Wonderbolts would also be traveling with her. Dash was super excited by this fact even if she could no longer actually join the Wonderbolts.
As they were all preparing to takeoff at sunset that day Twilight was enchanting some mirrors. She wanted a way for herself and her friends to stay in contact. She made some for all their younger siblings, for any guests on the ship, besides Rarity’s guests as there were so many, she only made one for Fancy Pants, as well as making one for each captain of the guards. Then one for Celestia, Cadence and Shining so they could be updated on anything happening. While she went around passing out the mirrors and helping the others learn the spell Spike was setting up their rooms, he knew where she would want everything.
The ships matched the colors for each of their elements. The inside of Twilights ship had quite a lot of purples, blues, and pinks in the color scheme like a galaxy theme. There were bookshelves everywhere to fit all of Twilights books, it was all lit by candles and had a very calming feeling. Her ship was quite a bit slower than the others because of the weight. Rarity’s ship had a lot of white and gold, very elegant. One might think it had taken inspiration from the Titanic. Rarity also had a secret room just below her regular room for dressmaking, there was an outside entrance where all the nobles were staying, although they thought it was occupied by someone else entirely. Rarity realized quickly if she wanted to continue making dresses, she would need to do it under a different name, as many ponies may just start buying her dresses just because she made them, rather than wanting them. She had a small boutique in the ship for her mysterious new ‘friend’ Sapphire Threads to sell her dresses. Rarity already knew plenty of glamour spells to change one’s appearance and voice temporarily before she had become an alicorn, so doing so now, and for much longer amounts of time, was rather easy. She would show up sometimes to not cause suspicion. Her alter ego was a blue unicorn with black and purple hair.
Fluttershy’s and Applejacks ships were similar in the sense they had a lot of plants but that was where the similarities ended. Applejack had insisted she have a small grove of apple trees on her ship. Being away from her family and her farm had been stressful for Applejack already, traveling farther away was even harder. Many apple family members that had been thinking of moving decided to move to the farm to help as well as Applejack hiring more help. Applejack had Big Mac, much against Granny Smiths wishes. Take her to the doctor to get any type of treatment or surgery she needed. Granny had gotten new hips and was feeling better than ever. Although she refused to admit that to anyone. Having Applebloom with her helped with the homesickness, although Applebloom herself seemed to be more than ready to leave.
Fluttershy’s ship was more like a giant garden. She had a very big platform on the ship that had a mini forest and a field. She brought some of her animals with her although not all of them would fit, as well as her wanting to make room just in case she found some poor animals that needed her help while they were traveling. Rainbow’s ship was plain, normally she would hang Wonderbolts posters everywhere, but it felt weird to do that while they were on the ship with her. She did have a case with some old memorabilia she had collected that the wonderbolts hadn’t seen in decades and Spitfire had seemed quite impressed with her collection. Most of the furniture in her airship was made of cloud. As everyone on her staff was required to be able to fly, it also allowed her airship to be the fastest out of the six.
Lastly Pinkie Pie’s ship. It had party cannons on both sides. The inside of the ship was decorated like a perpetual party, and there was a separate kitchen from the main kitchen where her cooks worked, so Pinkie could bake to her hearts content without interrupting the cooks. They did need to eat actual food rather than just sweets. Pinkie had brought all her filing cabinets full of pony’s info and their likes and dislikes with her and had bought 10 more empty ones to store the info on all the ponies she was going to meet along the way.
The girls had all also met their guards and given them their badges. Twilights guard was mainly made up of a mix from the Day and the Night Guard, mostly the night guard with Twilights pension to stay up late into the night reading and their calmer demeanor then that of the day guard who tended to shout quite a bit. Twilight had dubbed them the Galaxy Guard and their badges were the constellation of an Ursa Minor. The captain of the guard was a very tall noc unicorn. Noc unicorns are much like bat ponies as they are awake in the night and have many of the same features as the bat ponies such as tufted ears and slitted pupils but instead of having bat wings, they were unicorns, not many noc earth ponies existed because of the nature of their magic and its connection to the earth and plants, most of which need sunlight. The captain’s name was Star Vision, he was a dark blue and had a darker blue on his legs and the tips of his ears. His mane was a mix of white and light blue. He was a rather stoic pony and didn’t talk much.
Rarity’s guard was mostly made up of women. Most of them had worked undercover for quite a long time and would be very unsuspecting opponents. There where male guards as well but they would mainly be staying on the ship itself. Rarity didn’t want to intimidate anyone and have them be too afraid to approach and speak to her. Rarity had dubbed her guard the Diamond Guard, their crest was a simple gemstone. The captain of her guard was a pegasus much the same height as Rarity, which was odd for a pegasus, her name was Ivory Fire. Ivory had a shiny silver coat; Her mane was red, orange, and yellow. It was quite long although, most times Ivory had it in up in a ponytail.
Applejacks guard was quite the mishmash of ponies there where even a couple Apples in the mix which she had been glad to see her cousins. There were a couple of donkeys and mules as well. Almost all of them came from some sort of farming background. Celestia had wanted Applejack to feel more at home knowing this type of thing was rather uncomfortable for her. Applejack had named her guard the Orchard Guard. The captain was one of her cousins, his name was Jazz Apple. He was Braeburn’s brother, he was a lot more colorful than most apples, his coat being a tan color like his brothers, but his hair was pink, red, yellow, and green. No one was quite sure where all the colors came from, but it reminded everyone of jazz apples, they are a very hard and crisp apple and the same could be said for Jazz. Despite his fun-loving personality, he was also very thick like a brick wall. No one had been too surprised when he got a cutiemark for protecting other ponies. He had challenged a timberwolf, and once he became old enough had joined the guard. The Orchard Guards crest was an apple tree.
Fluttershy’s guard had a lot of gentle giants in her guard. All except its captain Bulk Biceps. Celestia thought it would be funny. Which it was, to nearly everyone but Fluttershy. Discord himself was upset he hadn’t come up with the idea. Fluttershy immediately started trying to teach Bulk Biceps voice control and it was certainly, going? She named her guard the Butterfly Guard and their crest was a butterfly wings outspread.
Rainbow Dash had a very small guard, smaller than the others since the Wonderbolts were technically a guard in themselves. Although they didn’t do much of that these days, they were still trained in it. So, Rainbow was just given a few extras with no captain. There was an unofficial leader among the group consisting of all pegasi however, and that was Flash Sentry. All the guards assigned to Rainbow needed to be able to keep up with the wonderbolts at the very least. The others did meet that requirement if they pushed themselves to the limit, but Flash kept up just fine, he could have joined the Wonderbolts himself had he wanted to but that wasn’t his sort of thing. He thought the wonderbolts were a bunch of showboats and could be using their speed to help save ponies quickly rather than go around showing off all over Equestria. He resented the fact he would have to follow them around along with Princess Rainbow Dash, the biggest showboat of them all. They were dubbed the Lightning Guard and given a thunderbolt as their crest.
Pinkie Pies Guard consisted of ponies from many different walks of life, some had been bouncers at clubs in Las Pegasus, some had just grown up in very big chaotic homes, while some were more serious in hopes of grounding the team in times of intense antics. Like captain Golden Victory, he had met Pinkie Pie before, he was one of the soldiers that had been sent with the mane six to the Crystal Empire. So he was already acclimated to Pinkie Pies antics, she had tried to include a birthday party into the Crystal fair for him despite his protests. Golden was a white earth pony with golden hair, he had a couple of scars from defending the crystal ponies from Sombra’s dark crystals while Princess Cadence, Spike and Shining Armor were trying to get the heart. Pinkie was very excited to see him again. She was already planning a late birthday party for him to which he rolled his eyes to while trying to hide a small smile. After all was said and done, and as sunset was coming close, meaning take off, everyone got together at the docks to say goodbye.
Pinkie was sobbing because she wasn’t going to be able to throw Twilight a birthday party next month while Twilight was patting her head. “Pinkie its ok really. You can just call me on my birthday over the mirror and that would be plenty.” Pinkie just wailed louder at this but then gasped and jumped up suddenly fine, she flew up to Discord and whispered in his ear.
“Why Pinkie I think that is a wonderful idea I can certainly help!” He said clapping his paw and claw together. Twilight’s face paled slightly, and Luna laughed before Twilight quickly turned to glare at her. Luna whistled as if she had no idea what Twilight was glaring at.
Everypony laughed before the mane six plus Spike got into a group hug “I’m really gonna miss you girls, even if we do got some fancy mirrors” Applejack said almost squeezing the life out of the others. Fluttershy squeaked and Applejack loosened up her grip “Ohp I’m sorry Fluttershy.” Applejack said looking over her frail friend.
“I’m ok Applejack thank you; I’m going to miss you girls too, but this is also so exciting! I can’t wait to get to meet all sorts of new animals.” Fluttershy said her eyes sparkling.
They all sat talking about what they were excited to see until they absolutely had to leave and board their ships as crowds started to form on the edges of Canterlot to watch them take off.
The crowds cheered as the air ships took off, Twilights ship was first as she headed east to Baltimare, there was a large school of magic there and she obviously had to check it out, whether there would be potential alicorns there or not. Her and Luna stood on the balcony of the ship waving to the crowds as Luna also slowly raised the moon.
Rarity came right after Twilight, she was heading west to Applewood, The center of the entertainment world! She stood with all the nobles on her balcony waving to everyone as nobles popped bottles of champaign off the side of the ship.
Pinkie followed, shooting off party cannons and jumping around excitedly waving to everyone. She followed right behind Rarity to Applewood, except her destination was Las Pegasus, which floated directly above the shining city.
Fluttershy followed behind Pinkie, she was heading to the Whitetail Woods, which wasn’t too far from Ponyville itself. But it was said deep in the forest there was a kingdom of deer, there had also been some strange vines growing from out of the forest and ponies around had requested help. Celestia told her she would need to find the heart of the forest and see if he knew what was happening and if he could help. So off she went, her and Discord waved to the crowd and Discord sneakily snapped his paw, a giant mass of pink and blue butterflies flew alongside the ship.
Applejacks came next, she was headed south to Appleloosa. Granny Smith and Big Mac were going to meet her there, neither had gotten the chance to visit the place and with Granny feeling so much better she wanted to visit. It would be nice to be somewhere familiar having been stuck in Canterlot for over a month.
Rainbow Dash was last out of the port also heading south to Appleloosa, since Ghastly Gorge was right next to Appleloosa they were doing a show inside Ghastly Gorge, it was going to bring strong fliers with hopes on impressing the Bolts from all over the place as well as just a mass of ponies Rainbow could use the spell on. And as her ship finished exiting the port Rainbow flew out into the darkening sky and did a sonic rainboom, much to the delight of the crowd but it did grant an eyeroll from Flash Sentry.