“Honey, kids, wh… why are you following me up here?” Haystack asked when he saw his family all trotting along him all the way to the bridge.
“Bring me with you, honey. I don’t want you to leave us anymore!”
“Yes dad, I want to go with you too!” Moonbeam squeaked.
“She’s right. I’ll do anything to work along with you on this ship!” Applesauce said as he breathed constantly “Captain, are there any jobs for me up here?”
“Uh… apparently not yet!”
When they arrived, Yellow Pickle showed them, the Princesses, Celaeno, and Discord the three large red dots on the radar screen. There are two of them that they already knew: the Cloudsdale and the New Hampshire, with which the crew of the ship has clashed before.
But the anomaly that they caught is another one right in the middle of the triangular formation, the one that leads that small flotilla.
“I don’t want to mention THAT vessel, but it seems like it is a completely new one!” Discord stroking his beard “I don’t even hear anything from our intelligence lately…”
“Nope, that’s really their new ship!” Bonbon and Lyra arrived at the bridge, taking out their documents with some photos on it.
“Ah… just mentioned!” Discord chuckled.
“We beg your pardon, your Majesties…” the spy couple bowed before the Caninian sisters, before proceeding to explain “…according to our intelligence info, that one will be at least double the length of the current Cloudsdale, the one that currently housed both the Psycho MkII Gundam and the Alicorn Gundam. More firepower and mobile suit carrying capacity are what we are really worrying about…”
“Do you know about its name yet?” Katherina questioned. “That name should be spreading like wildfire within their military right now!”
“Negative, Princess. Contrary to popular belief, they kept secret about their mobile suit force really well! We from S.M.I.L.E actually knew about those ships and mobile suits better than the average Equestrian soldier! Yes, they can see all those assets before their eyes, but some of them don’t even know the phrase “Minovsky”, “beam saber”, or even “mobile suits” yet!”
Katherina looked away, seemingly digesting the information she just received.
“It seems like they are heading straight to the South East…” Yellow Pickle zooms out the radar, while also checking the compass to find out which direction they are heading for…”
“They… they are heading right for us!”
“Alright, if they wanted, we would have headed right for them too!” Bonbon ordered “Discord, set our course to that fleet. We're gonna shock them to the core!”
…
“Hey bud, more mock battles. This time, your own ship!” Black Wine was ordered curtly.
“Huh?” Both Flash and Aki stopped at their job and looked up to the Chancellor. Flash frowned upon him every time he saw that smug face approach him, always trying to be his good pal. But he just went insane after every day passed, so he always took his word with a grain of salt. Flash jerk off his chin and ask:
“What do you mean by that?”
“I want to know how much you can guide them, to help them see their real enemy…” Black Wine looked up to the suit and prayed “Mea summa celsitudo, quaeso requiem.” (My supreme Highnesses, please rest). He then turned back to Flash and continued “The next target will be your old ‘comrade’ on the Canterlot. You sin you committed against us, the ponies will be forgiven if you can help them bring that ship to bits, and send all those bits to Tartarus!”
“Are you telling me to kill my own friends…” Flash clenches his teeth in anger, again, with his fist readied to punch into “that filthy snout of him”.
“Ah… You must realize that they are the anti-pony devils now. We must exterminate all those devils from our land, permanently! Or at least push them back to where they are supposed to be!”
“I swear this guy is just more delusional every day…” Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Dude should have his 24/7 therapist.”
“Thanks to you, that goal will be done faster, faster than any prediction. We can complete our ethnic cleansing in not several generations, but in years! We can fix Princess Twilight’s mistake. We can make her sinless!”
“Sin… less? What the hay is he talkin’ about?” Applejack raised her eyebrows “Twilight, do you hear this?”
“I guess you can hear what they are talking about now? So c’mon, please tell me what wise words they are saying! Princess, Lady Rarity, Lady Rainbow Dash… Please give me direction for this journey!” Black Wine suddenly came and hugged Flash, then proceeded to violently shake his body. “Tell me all of their secrets!” He pushes Flash's eyes towards his, allowing Flash to hear his breath, which contained the smell of the poorly made mint chewing gum smell and his sweat on the forehead skin.
Flash’s anger goes off the chart long enough he has already prepared his fist and punches the Chancellor in the snout. Only when a guard pony noticed that he jumped right next to Flash and put his fist in the air.
“Oh… thank you!” he sighed, then looked at that smooth head pony with no mane at all with the eyes covered with a cold-looking gray sunglasses.
Suddenly, the strong and bulky guard decided to punch Flash in his stomach. That pony then followed it with a smash into his cheeks, breaking several teeth in the process. He doesn't know why, as his vision slowly blurs. Flash struggled to keep himself conscious. A few seconds later, the Chancellor slowly trotted before Flash, using one of his forehoofs to lift his face up, forcing Flash into looking at his face once more. With his grinding teeth, the Chancellor growled, making sure every single word was crystal clear to Flash:
“What. Did. They. Say.”
“They… They said that… curse your racism!”
“Liar!” he punched Flash in the other side of his face and yelled. “What I do is to make sure our kingdom doesn't get run over by those dirty, filthy creatures’ politicians. They want to exploit our prosperous nation to feed their own dying kingdom, don’t you see?” he said “You are not converse in their words accurately!”
The dark blue unicorn punches him in the right cheek again. His face is full of blood. It bleeds long enough the mobile suit deck can be seen with dark red droplets, the types of blood from his missing tooth. Aki gasped and covered his mouth, horrified. Twilight and her friends also reacted the same. But they are powerless. “Without pilots inside, we can’t do anything!” Starlight said “This mechanism is pure evil! He wants us to be his slave!”
“Flash, Flash! Let's just say we approve of his plan!” Twilight jumped to Flash and begged.
“No… freaking… way…” Flash mumbled.
“What did you just say?” Black Wine growled.
“No… freaking… WAY!” Flash growled back, in a way to make sure the words are as clear as possible.
“This is not how you serve the Council, you traitor!” He punched right into his face, leaving his mouth and nose with further bleeding and 2 of his front teeth fell off, before literally picking him up with his magic and throwing like a toy into one of the mobile suit's armor. A fellow mechanic swears he has heard sounds of broken bone once Flash touches the floor, an indication of how powerful that throw was.
“We approve your goodwill to save Equestria!” Twilight ran right next to Flash along with her friends, yelling. In his blurred vision, Flash can see her eyes are in tears. She tries to hug him into her long front hooves, but it is just in vain.
“Flash… I wish I could hold you like a teddy bear right now…”
“We... approve... your goodwill... to... save... Equestria…” the blue-headed pilot mumbled again, grinding every single word he said. His voice sounds blocked due to all the blood in his mouth.
“Say again?” Black Wine put his ears into Flash’s mouth.
“We approve... your goodwill... to save... Equestria!” he said with a clearer voice, but still a hard line to say for him. The blue-headed pilot then proceeds to spit out all the blood, making a large pond of dark red condensed body fluid on the floor. Then, I fell down like a doll.
“Yup, that’s what I wanted to hear!” Black Wine laughed loudly “I knew it! I knew they loved me!”
Right after that, his assistant pony ran up to him. She has to cover her mouth once seeing the scene, eyes widened. Black Wine saw that. He quickly cleaned up his hooves with his handkerchief, making it shiny again, and put it on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I just evict the devil’s spirit out of his body. They are corrupting our dear Elements of Harmony there…”
Although the calming voice, Red Velvet still gulped, shaking her body like she is in the middle of a maximum power fridge in a butcher shop. But still, she manage to speak to Black Wine about their next move, as she handed out some papers to her superior:
“Si… Sir… The Las Pegasus has arrived.” She said, “The Captain needs you to sign these papers.”
“Ah! So my request for a Ra Cailum class has been satisfied. Kudos to them, of course!”
On the radar, Madison was to see on the radar a large, menacing vessel approach them from above and landed a spot in front of his ship and the New Hampshire, making it the leading ship of their newly formed triangular formation. That is exactly how Yellow Pickle found their flotilla.
Flash was picked up by the guards as if he was a toy, and he was thrown onto the stretcher just like that. “Hang in there buddy…” Applejack said. He can’t do any fancier type of paying gratitude other than a nod and smile. But even those bring him immense pain in his gum and lips, mainly because the broken teeth just stab into the lips.
Black Wine sighed. He felt sorry for Flash, too. But his head quickly did its best to justify his brutal action against him: “It was to evict the devil”, he said.
After seeing Flash disappear into the main hangar’s door, as it closed off, the Chancellor goes back to his cabin. He started his own cleaning job along with Red Velvet in order to move all the furniture and papers to his new one onboard the Las Pegasus. He wanted it. The old Cloudsdale, while it is the ship he holds dear to, is a bit too cramped with all the suits and the equipment needed for both the Alicorn and the Psycho MkII, to the point he has to move most of her mobile suits to the New Hampshire to give more space for even more weapons. Unlike the smaller Cloudsdale, the Las Pegasus’s size (nearly double the length) allowed it to have not one, not even two, but three mobile suits hangars and three launch pads. Coupled with that is a stronger overall firepower as well.
But still, there’s a burning question within him: should he move both experimental suits onto the new ship, or two should be kept separately? He personally leaned more toward the two mobile suits, two ship options, based on strategic analysis. “Don’t ever put all your eggs into the same basket” is the basic principle that any military school would teach you, and he is well aware of that. However, he wants to keep his eyes on both machines, as near as it could possibly be for him. Additionally, to make the “Don’t ever put all your eggs into the same basket” principle to be really effective, he had to make both ships to be far away so that they could separate the Alliance navy, further weakening their main force. But to make sure his eyes are on both ships, as he has started to fear that Brandon Cultrich guy could go berserk and steal one of the mobile suits, he needs to keep a strong connection between both ships as well. The thing is, he fears his enemy’s intelligence can easily catch the signal and know everything about his “wonder weapons”.
“Whatever you think is the best for you, Chancellor…” Red Velvet told him while packing the remaining documents in the boxes when she was asked for her opinion “The enemy is obviously too scared to do anything to us right now. Your last mock battle with him and the explosions that occurred have struck their fear of total destruction…”
“Yeah, you are right!” he sighed while cleaning up his soon-to-be old office with the broom “They will be crushed to oblivion if they dare to attack us!”
His cabin has a large window that allows him to have a full view of the hangar. Thanks to it, he can still have a complete glance at the hangar, including the Alicorn and the Psycho MkII standing side by side with all the wires and hoses attached to them. “They seem to be impossible to separate, don’t they?” he thought.
“Hmm… I think I would just group our ships together like right now…” he told Red Velvet while putting his broom into a corner “…just move us to our new ship, and make sure I still have a view like this there. I love seeing them together!”
Red Velvet took a glance outside of their office towards where both machines were standing, seemingly understanding the order. She nodded.
A few minutes later, his wish was immediately granted. Luckily, all of the things he needed, including the suits, and the sick bay right inside the main hangar itself where the Council of Friendship and Starlight was housed, were all modules. They are building like that to serve what Black Wine called as “unpredictability of the battlefield”. That's exactly what happened.
A small airship was placed just outside of the hangar, levitating itself above the launch pad. It was called in to lift those modules off and transfer them to their new ship. Flash had to be transferred by foot, as Aki volunteered to hold him behind his back with all of the cast on his left arms and leg, as well as the bruises.
“Geez… But I know… we must make sure he’s fit enough to continue our experiment no matter what.” Black Wine chuckled while putting his mask on. “You can toss him into a random junkyard when they’re finished, Aki”.
Aki nodded his head before bringing the blue-headed pilot onto the MkII Gundam cockpit and cuffing him up.
But the process was ruined when the alarm rang. “Enemy inbound! Enemy inbound!” the speaker urgently said. Red Velvet immediately gets to the nearest phone and directly up to the bridge to ask what’s going on.
“It… It… It’s the Canterlot! We’re completely exposed!” Madison said with fear in his voice before a large explosion occurred.
It was the New Hampshire. One of her main turrets has completely blown up. Everyone on board quickly abandoned their current moving works and immediately ran to their battle station.
“Aki, don’t let him out!” Lieutenant Mark screamed at Brandon Cultrich’s mechanics “Bring the guy back to our main sick bay, immediately!”
But when he turned around, that ‘Brandon’ guy gave him a feeling that he had already fully realized what was happening around him. And despite the cast and the pain, somehow, he still managed to break from Aki and ran towards the Psycho MkII Gundam.
“Yee haw! Good job ponies!” Applejack yelled gleefully. “The Magic of Friendship gets to work again!”
It was not him. His body was temporarily taken over by Twilight and her friends. They skillfully cooperated with each other to steer him through the busy crew members, and also, the guards ponies. Only when Flash truly gained his vision again, he realized he had sat inside the Psycho MkII’s cockpit. The main control monitor is flashing its “Start” button in front of his eyes. “Tab it!” Rainbow Dash ordered, “I need you to verify that this is you in order for me and my friend to help you control this thing!”
He doesn't know what she means, but he still follows her instructions anyway.
The dark blue painted mobile suit flashes its eyes, ready to commence its own mission: to escape the ship.
“Baby step, Twilight! Baby step…” Starlight said with a smile.