“ … And, yeah, yeah, you’re all looking at me like that. I know what you’re all thinking: just how is Lieutenant Alexandrova so fucking awesome, and so motherfucking badass, on top of that, as well?”
Twilight was shaking in the cold morning air as she was encapsulated by a very thick jacket and the afterglow of her first 3 cups of coffee of the day. She was currently on her fourth.
Dear Lord, why do we have to undergo this? She thought, and then immediately wondered if there would be decent coffee in Canterlot.
“… I mean, not just the awe- inspiring, patented hairstyle really, but how someone so amazingly beautiful can be so skillfully endowed as well… Believe me, kiddies, it’s not as easy as it looks…”
“She does this every flight run she gets. Every. Single. One. Seriously,” Velvet, wrapped in a similar jacket to Twilight’s, groaned.
Lt. Alexandrova flipped her hair with an “ain’t I the coolest?” type grin on her face. She was built tan, wiry and thin, with dark violet, nearly red eyes and messy, shoulder length side parted hair that stuck out in all directions at the bottom; it might have been dirty blonde originally, but it was now curiously streaked with a multitude of multicolored highlights to give the impression that she had a head full of rainbows. Beyond that, she was dressed in a US Navy fighter pilot jumpsuit and a G Suit rig with gloves and black boots. For all her braggadocio, she couldn’t have been any older than Twilight was.
The lieutenant was smiling very broadly. “… And I may be damn fast, kiddies, but I am not as easy as you might think. Sorry to disappoint ya, boys…”
“So why do they call this pilot ‘Rainbow Dash’ again?” Twilight asked her companions sarcastically as she checked out the ‘do.
Spike rubbed the back of his head. “Um… that’s not the only reason…”
Rainbow Dash, even while simultaneously talking, heard Twilight’s cheeky remark and glanced at her detachedly, looked her up and down. She then threw out a lighthearted smirk.
“… or anyone else,” she joked.
Twilight choked on her coffee, blushing, as Spike and Velvet simply laughed.
“So, in conclusion to what I’ve been talking about here for pretty much the past hour, running The Eye will be a pretty gnarly experience, but since you all got me as your pilot, it will also be about 20% more badass than your usual flight route; it all kind of evens out in the end, if you really think about it. Oh, due to all your continual bitching in the past, I will try to keep the barrel rolls to a minimum; make sure you follow all the safety procedures we talked about, and you should be fine. In any event, Uncle Sam provides you with all the complimentary barf bags your heart desires…”
Dash glanced at Twilight again. “… Some of you might need more than one, though.”
Twilight rolled her eyes.
“Alright, eggheads, lecture’s over. Let’s get this over with!” Dash clapped her hands and everybody started to pick up their bags and prepared to board her plane.
Rainbow Dash started up the ramp first, but immediately turned around with a serious look on her face, whipping off the golden aviators she had just seconds before put on. “Oh, and I forgot to mention, food and drinks are still not allowed on The Sonic Rainboom. MY Sonic Rainboom,”
Everybody turned to stare at Twilight. She sighed heavily, said something under her breath about “air jocks”, and downed her coffee in one gulp. Then she displayed the empty cup to Rainbow Dash.
Dash smiled. “Don’t forget to recycle. Ok, everybody onboard!”
The plane itself, The Sonic Rainboom, was a repurposed B- 1 Lancer painted navy blue, stripped of its entire ordinance, with windows cut into its side. On its nose the name had been hand painted in many different colored letters, along with a cloud with a red, blue and yellow lightning bolt protruding out the bottom. Inside was very much an ordinary military transport plane, bare in the middle, with seats all along the sides and handles for the passengers near the top. The civilians all got in and started taking seats along the sides. Twilight noticed that, even though like Velvet and Spike they had all probably done this before, they all looked slightly nervous. There was some amount of chatter going on, but no real sense of ease in the entire fuselage.
“Um, mom?” Twilight turned to Velvet, who was quickly strapping herself in.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Is it just me, or is everybody a little… tense?”
Velvet tightened her buckle. “It’s not just you, honey.”
Twilight gulped. “Is it because of The Eye… or Rainbow Dash?”
Velvet smirked, and then tapped her hand reassuringly on Twilight’s. “A little bit of both. Buckle up, sweetie, things are about to get a little bumpy.”
Twilight turned her head and blinked a few times just as Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy settled into the seats across from her, Velvet and Spike.
“Hello, Miss n’ Mrs. Twilight Sparkleriffics!” Pinkie greeted the Twilights as she started strapping herself in.
“Hello,” Fluttershy smiled meekly as she did the same.
“Hello… everybody,” Twilight smiled. She had inherited neither her father’s social grace nor her mother’s way with names.
“Pinkie, Fluttershy, hello,” Velvet replied.
“So how’s your widdle baby doing?” Pinkie winked.
“Um, he- it- is doing really good actually,” Twilight gestured to her beloved EGO on her wrist. “Thanks again… Pinkie Pie was it?”
Pinkie nodded hard, happily, as if Twilight had just guessed her Pictionary drawing. “Wow, I have to say I can’t believe that they’re letting me back into Canterlot! I thought I was going to stay in Ponyville forever!”
“Why wouldn’t they let you back into Canterlot?” Twilight asked.
Pinkie frowned and pouted. “Awww, Director Everstar is such a party pooper. One time, just one time I synchronized the entire city’s lights to dance music…”
“Wait, Director Everstar?”
“Luna Everstar, dear,” Velvet clarified.
Twilight looked at her. “Celestia’s sister?”
“Ok, ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention,” Rainbow Dash’s voice came on abruptly over a speaker somewhere. Twilight turned to see her down the long, open cabin. “This is your Captain- well, Lieutenant- Dacha Alexandrova speaking, we have just closed the cabin door and will be taking off soon. Please fasten your seatbelts, we don’t have any lighted signs, and if anybody smokes on my plane, you will find yourself thrown out of a moving aircraft with a courtesy parachute thrown out after you.”
Twilight gave her a funny look.
“Huh... she must be in a good mood today to have mentioned the parachute,” Spike mused.
“Thank you for flying Equestria Airlines; we know that you have a choice when flying to and from secret government installations, and we appreciate that we can be of service to you today. From all of us here at the flight deck, please take care, and we do sincerely hope that you all have a really bitchin’ day. Peace out!”
And with that, the jet engines roared to life and the plane started towards the runway.
Twilight looked at her mother. “I hope you know that I am now on a military transport flying to somewhere through an “Eye” of some sort, and you still have not told me anything.”
“Oh, honey,” Velvet smiled, “welcome to my world.”
The Sonic Rainboom aligned itself perfectly at one end of the dirt runway, its engines standing idle.
“Rainboom Five to Town Hall, requesting permission for takeoff, over,” Dash asked.
“Town Hall to Rainboom Five, you are cleared for takeoff. Godspeed, over,”
The Rainboom started picking up speed down the runway until it was going so fast that the winds picked it up. Twilight stared out the window, the crowded vestiges of Camp Ponyville fading behind her.
After a while spent stabilizing in flight, the plane’s cabin lights turned on, and all of the passengers were bathed in a dull green aura.
Velvet stared at her daughter for a long time.
“Ok… so, during World War II, the Italians discovered something here in Ethiopia…” she began to say.
Twilight crossed her arms. “Oh, so is this you letting me in?”
Velvet smirked. “Kid, this is the beginning of me letting you in.”
Twilight smiled back and looked out the window.
“The Italians found something,” her mother continued, “Something… that has been here since as long as anybody who lived here could remember. The locals didn’t quite know what to make of it after so much time; they came to fear and respect this thing, which they eventually came to call ‘The Seal of Solomon’.
Anyways, when the Italians invaded Ethiopia, they soon discovered ‘Solomon’s Seal’ for themselves. They must’ve expected a bunch of demons and mythology, but instead they found something that even they themselves, the European conquerors, couldn’t comprehend. So, in exchange for extra support in their war campaign, they handed over the location and control of ‘Solomon’s Seal’ to the Nazis. The Nazis couldn’t really do anything with it, either, mind you, but observe and record its inherent electrical phenomena. The Nazis, of course, had their own problems to deal with, and they eventually lost ‘The Seal’ in location and control to the Americans, who had captured all of the relevant documents and films in Germany near the end of World War II.
From then on, since the end of the war, our government has negotiated the rights to the area surrounding ‘Solomon’s Seal’, which hides what we know now as The City of Canterlot and The Kingdom of Equestria… what may be, sweetie, the most important scientific discovery known to mankind.”
Twilight sat listening to her mother’s story, an unreadable look on her face. When Velvet finished, Twilight didn’t say anything for a while.
“Celestia was right, mother,” she finally said.
“About what?”
“I didn’t believe a single word you said.”
Velvet chuckled. “Seeing is believing, Twi.”
Suddenly, the entire cabin exploded in alarms, and the light switched from green to red.
“Alright people, we’ve reached the edge of the cell. It’s go time... condition red, I repeat, condition red,” Rainbow Dash blared on the loudspeaker.
She turned to her co- pilot, who nodded. He pushed a button on the console and the top opened as a small glass vial popped out. In it was a very old looking, nearly black necklace- like object with small wings and a horned horse on top. In the center was a perfectly shaped red diamond. Rainbow Dash and her co- pilot both inserted keys from around their necks into slots beneath the vial. Looking at each other, they both turned them at the same time. Suddenly, the device in the vial lit up a bright red and started to hum with energy.
Twilight watched as every single passenger around her pulled an oxygen mask and a helmet from above and put them on. Pinkie flashed her a thumb’s up.
“…..Mom??” She asked.
Her mother, already wearing her gear, helped Twilight put hers on.
“Whatever happens dear, remember that I’m right here!” She secured Twilight’s mask. “And that I love you very much!”
“Not helping, mom!!!” Twilight screamed through the mask covering her mouth.
Twilight looked out the window.
Yes, we are clearly approaching a storm supercell head on. Yup. Yup, yup, yup.
“Mom!!! Why are we heading INTO that storm?!?!”
Velvet was trying to scream an explanation but the alarms were still going up and, as Twilight could feel from the turbulence, the winds had picked up considerably. The jet engines whined in protest and the plane angled up suddenly.
“STANDBY, STANDBY!” Rainbow Dash’s voice shouted over the alarms. “CONDITION RED! CONDITION RED!”
Oh, shit, Twilight panicked.
The Rainboom flew straight into the dark, heavy clouds immaculately manicured by invisible, gusting storm winds. Soon, the air pounded loudly against the plane windows, and big, fat droplets of rain gave way to literal torrents streaming against the reinforced glass. Twilight was trying to hold onto her breakfast (which was mostly coffee, anyway) as the engines screamed and the plane dipped to and fro to avoid gusts of wind.
“She’s a little more cranky than usual today,” Dash said through her oxygen mask.
“We should be able to breeze right on into Canterlot if that wind shear doesn’t change too much,” her co- pilot dismissed.
The Rainboom creaked more and more as she became entangled in high- powered winds. Her wings kept on extending and closing as she tried to maintain her altitude. Lightning began to flash all around the plane, and thunder boomed intermittently like flak shells.
Twilight was dizzy from all the hyperventilating that she was doing. Her brow under her helmet was drenched in sweat.
Am I going to die? She asked herself quite unexpectedly.
At that moment she felt an arm grab her around the shoulders. She looked to see her mother hugging her, trying to reassure her. Wordlessly, Twilight grabbed onto Velvet and held on tight.
“There it is,” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “There’s The Eye. But- wait a second…”
Her co- pilot did a double- take.
“Holy shit… that doesn’t look good…”
And then Twilight saw it for the first time, The Alicorn Eye. Scared shitless, she looked out her window at the maddening sheets of lightning almost licking the plane. And then she saw it. Beyond the blinding blue- white flashes, she made out a vague, steadily glowing pulse in the distance. As the plane fought to get closer, she could make out its fuzzy, diamond shape from her seat. Twilight was petrified. She had never seen anything like it before.
Her wonder was abruptly cut short when a brilliant lightning bolt arced across her window and struck the wing. The plane rocked suddenly, then dropped like a rock. Twilight screamed, clutching onto her mother.
“SHIT!” Dash cursed, trying to bring the plane back up. “THUNDERLANE!!!”
“I can’t do anything- we’ve lost variable wing controls- FUCK!”
The plane dropped out of the sky, it’s right wing twitching. Suddenly, both wings shot out and the plane leveled out.
“There, back online!” Thunderlane reported. “Fuck, we can’t take another one of those hits, that’s for damn sure!”
“What the hell is going on with that thing?!?!” Rainbow Dash pointed to the crackling necklace in the vial, under which monitors were going haywire.
“Do I look like I have a fucking clue?!” her co- pilot shouted back.
Shaking her head, Dash opened up a channel of communication to Ponyville.
“May Day, May Day, Town Hall, Town Hall, this is Rainboom Five, we cannot maintain our present course, The Eye is too unstable and The Amulet is malfunctioning! Requesting permission to cancel run and return to base, over!”
The radio was scrambled. If Ponyville heard or responded, Rainbow Dash couldn’t tell.
“May Day, May Day, Town Hall, this is Rainboom Five, we are flying under severe weather conditions and have been hit by lightning, we cannot maintain our present course, requesting permission to return to base, over!”
Again, there was no response.
“Shit!!! The Eye must be interfering,”
“Well we couldn’t turn back anyways, we’d be torn clean apart by those walls behind us!” Thunderlane reasoned.
Rainbow Dash punched the side of her cockpit. “FUCK!”
“Dash, we can’t land anywhere here even if we want to. We have to finish the run!”
Dash’s mind was scrambling to come up with a solution. On a whim, she opened up a channel with every single passenger’s helmet in the cabin.
“I need one of you eggheads to get up here now if you want to land, RIGHT NOW! One of you needs to fix The Amulet!”
All the civilians started to freak out, scream and stare at each other in sheer terror.
Are we all going to die? Twilight wondered numbly.
Suddenly, Velvet undid her buckles and stood up, shakily, as the plane lurched and rolled around.
“Mom!” Twilight yelled at her in her helmet.
“Sweetie, come with me,” she instructed, and Twilight froze. Eventually, she slowly undid her fastenings and shakily joined her mother.
“Pinkie Pie, let’s go!” Velvet shouted, and Pinkie saluted and got up as well.
The three of them slowly made their way up to the cockpit. Twilight saw flashes of terrified people all along the way. As they were almost there, the plane suddenly rocked and dropped again and Twilight, Velvet and Pinkie were forced to grab onto the handrails as their bodies swung with the G forces. Twilight thought she was going to pass out, but her feet eventually hit the floor again and she regained clarity of her senses. Velvet patted her on the shoulder and she nodded.
The three of them entered the cockpit, walking a little unsteadily. They found Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane scrambling all over the consoles, trying to keep control of The Rainboom. Outside, the clouds look like they were being bombarded. Twilight’s eyes flittered from the exotic looking Amulet on the dashboard to the great, big Alicorn Eye spewing electricity in front of them.
“Holy Moly, That’s an Angry Holey!” Pinkie gasped.
“Please tell me one of you knows how to fix this damn thing!” Dash pointed to The Amulet spitting sparks in its vial.
Velvet walked up to it and examined the monitors. Twilight saw her mother’s lips moving wordlessly as she read the data.
“This can’t be right. The energy levels are way too high to be normal,” she concluded.
“I don’t care if they’re over 9,000, just fix the little fucker!” Dash was losing control of the plane, fast.
Velvet started manipulating her EGO.
“Pinkie!”
Pinkie came over and examined the same data. She pressed the monitor a few times, changing screens. “All systems are functioning 100%, the power levels shouldn’t be cutting through the safety breakers like that. It… it looks as if The Amulet is drawing the extra power from Canterlot itself!”
“Can you re- establish the system limits?” Velvet was tapping away madly on her EGO.
Pinkie checked her own EGO. “No dice! The Amulet is running remotely off of an Equestrian subroutine from within Canterlot’s Mainframe! I can’t stop it or rewrite it from here!”
Velvet turned to her. “What? Are you absolutely sure?”
Pinkie nodded. “Positive! As far as the computers and The Amulet are concerned, this is all ‘business as usual’!”
“What part of this current fucking scenario is ‘business as usual’ to you?!?!” Dash screamed from the pilot’s seat.
“Pinkie, can you patch me through with a Unicorn Interface?” Velvet asked.
Pinkie nodded, then tapped on her EGO. Velvet’s EGO beeped, and she tapped it. A glove made entirely of purple light appeared and twisted itself around her other forearm; she examined it carefully. All the while Twilight stared in shock.
Velvet walked over to The Amulet and pressed a button under it. The vial disappeared and red electrical energy crackled around the cockpit.
“Woah!” Rainbow Dash dodged a bolt. “Hey, watch it, lady!”
Velvet gingerly touched the crackling necklace. It’s jewel glowed brighter and EGO- like holographic projections popped out. However, they were written in a strange, curving script that Twilight didn’t understand at all. Velvet seemed to be using the device like an EGO, reading the alien data and whispering under her breath.
“Well?!” Dash asked after a few seconds.
“She’s right, The Amulet is sucking up energy straight from Canterlot’s power core, making The Eye too unstable to approach, and… it gets worse…”
Dash said something like “Are you fucking kidding me?!” before Velvet continued. “It looks as though all the extra power is creating a feedback loop within The Amulet itself. Physical Disintegration is imminent,”
“ENGLISH!”
“It means that if we try to cross The Eye, we could be torn apart by the energy field surrounding it. However, if we wait long enough, The Amulet will explode, or we’ll eventually crash in this storm.”
Rainbow Dash looked at Velvet with an expression in her eyes that clearly registered her remorse over asking for a clarification.
“Mother?!” Twilight finally spoke.
Velvet turned and was about to say something when the cockpit rocked amidst a loud bang and flashes of light. More alarms went off.
“Jesus, we just lost an engine!” Thunderlane screamed.
Velvet turned back to Pinkie. “Pinkie, set Twilight up with another Interface!”
Pinkie looked at Twilight and then back and Velvet and nodded, fiddling with her EGO.
“Done!”
“Twilight, honey, mommy needs your help, OK?”
Twilight looked pale. “What?”
“I need you to activate the Unicorn Interface on your eggo, just like mommy did. Can you do that?”
Shaking, Twilight looked down at her wrist. It was flashing. She touched it, and her right hand was covered in a twirling energy glove, a different shade of purple than her mother’s.
“Good. Now, sweetie, do you still remember how to operate a thermal reactor?”
Twilight nodded wanely.
“Good. Now, I’m going to remotely access Canterlot’s power source. I need you to maintain the reactor at optimum level, so to speak, while Mommy stabilizes this device. Can you do that for me?”
Twilight, shaking like a scared child, nodded again. “I can try.”
“Good girl. Just prevent it from melting down, and mommy will do the rest. Come here, baby, put your hand here. I’ll walk you through it. That a girl,”
Velvet gestured for Twilight to come towards The Alicorn Amulet. Twilight approached it slowly, as it was still crackling like a live wire. Outside, the world looked like it was heading to hell in a handbasket.
“Now put your hand here, just like mommy...”
Cautiously, Twilight inched her hand closer and closer to The Amulet. Finally, she made contact and her Interface glowed brightly. Suddenly, a shockwave issued forth from The Amulet in all directions. Twilight screamed and collapsed into Velvet’s arms.
“TWILIGHT!!!”
The Amulet, previously red, now pulsed with a bright purple light. Suddenly, it charged up and fired a pure beam of energy through the cockpit window, phasing through it, straight at The Eye. Velvet watched as the beam from The Amulet connected with The Eye. For a moment, it just hung in the air like a ghostly fishing line, but suddenly The Eye exploded outward in a great shockwave of energy. The wave barreled at The Rainboom at supersonic speed; the two pilots and Pinkie immediately hit the floor as Velvet covered her daughter protectively. The wave of purple energy issued forth in all directions around The Eye, rapidly changing color as it expanded. It hit The Sonic Rainboom and passed right on through it harmlessly, rapidly blowing away all the storm clouds surrounding and brutalizing the plane. A strange, phasing sound was heard as the energy wave dissipated, leaving a huge ball shaped area of calm air around the jet.
Twilight opened her eyes. Her ears were ringing, and her vision was strewn with white, fuzzy static. She raggedly breathed in through her mask. On her arm, her EGO was endlessly spewing the same alien language that was displayed by The Amulet, but she didn’t notice.
“Twilight?!” Velvet tore off her’s and her daughter’s oxygen mask. “Twilight, baby, are you ok?!?!”
“ COUGH- Just peachy, mother,” Twilight rasped from the floor.
“And you can call me Peachy Pie!” Pinkie sat up from the floor. “Cough cough- woah, that sure was a doozy.”
“Christ, that was not a usual run,” Thunderlane panted, and then leaned over his console in exhaustion.
Rainbow Dash was panting as well. She stripped off the top of her jumpsuit to let her t- shirt air out, and then slowly reopened communications to the cabin.
“This is… This… Give me a minute…. This is your Captain speaking. No more jokes for today. We will be landing shortly. Over and out.”
“Twilight, look,” Velvet propped her daughter up towards the cockpit window.
Twilight looked down, but her eyes would not believe what was in front of them.
Below, The Eye was as calm as a gigantic open gate in the sky. Twilight’s brain malfunctioned, because through the large, diamond shaped expanse, the dessicated Ethiopian desert had given way to lush, green pastoral forests and fields. In the center of this very real Eden, there stood a magnificent, ancient city built upon a spired peak of a mountain. It gleamed white, gold and multitudes of striped colors, with grand towers ending in gleaming gold cupolas. Nestled in the mountainside amongst the castles were waterfalls so high, they evaporated upon falling. The bright, clear sky revealed a gigantic sun keeping watch over this beautiful, forgotten land. Twilight’s newly regained breath jumped in her throat.
“Welcome to Equestria, honey.” Her mother smiled and kissed her forehead.
Rainbow Dash, still sweating profusely, swiveled in her seat and looked hard at Twilight.
“You… just who are you, anyway?”
Twilight was still panting, but breathed a little easier now and tried to compose herself.
“I’m Twilight Sparkle… I… I… ” She sheepishly gestured to Velvet. “I’m here with my mom.”