The smoke cleared. Several tons of metal grille shifted upwards as the shutters were winched. There was a drawn-out groan of rusting iron against titanium alloy, and a howl of enraged wind blasted through the corridor, driving the grey plumes into the depths.
A strip light blinked and creaked before fully igniting. Round walls of compressed earth were given a sickly pink sheen. Chicken wire, reflecting the light coming from above, held back the sides of the tunnel (if a cylindrical tube could be said to have sides).
Hoofbeats patted the soil flat underfoot.
Two tired eyes surveyed the place where the light never penetrated. Yet, for them, they could see a streaming hailstorm of charged precipitation shoot through the ceiling, across the tube, and out through the floor like an extremely cheap weather effect in a video game. One of them lowered his goggles.
“I do declare,” he said in a pompous drawl, “those lighting effects are so amateurish, it pains my finely-tuned sensibilities.”
“This will be worth your valuable time,” said his companion.
Over an endless field of clouds, under the blaze of an alicorn-powered sun ascending the sky, nothing happened. Nothing that wasn’t subtle. Gentle currents twisted the small particles here and there, and baby eddies were born aloft in the high winds.
Wings scythed through the atmosphere. Three streaks of feathers lined up, one above the other, keeping their course for another mile. With each second, they were building up speed, and soon their wings were glowing red with the rising friction.
Three helmets blinked. Across the LED visors, the Heads-Up Display blinked and numbers flashed across the screen. One figure in the bottom-left seemed to be a countdown, but was going in reverse and had the letters KM/H next to it. As it passed double figures and began winding up the list of triple figures, the three pilots concentrated on the second figure to the right of it.
Unlike the former, this was a countdown.
Another bar light blinked on, charting the progress of the two ponies below while they descended the tunnel. Up ahead, the wall stopped. Gates of steel barred the way, but to the left a black box indicated where the lock was. One of the ponies shifted his forelock out of the way and creased his brow. A green glow enveloped his horn. In response, the black box’s LED glowed red. Intricate levers clacked as the tumblers were withdrawn. The gate swung towards them under its own weight.
They stepped into the timber box, and turned around to survey the way they had just come. Sentinels rose from the floor to act as a second gate. The planks under their feet shuddered and the platform dropped a few inches. With a whirring of gears, the elevator descended, so slowly that the two occupants had time to see the gates of steel swing back into place with a clang.
Feathers were beginning to blacken and flutter off their supports one at a time, flapping madly in the slipstreams like cinders from a bonfire. The air force’s trajectory, so far as steady as parallel lines, jerked downwards briefly, but continued as if aiming for the sun. A second jerk closer to the clouds brought them in range of the cumulus mountains, which were beginning to grey. Ripples spread across the surface of the clouds in their wake, and cloudslides began at the feet of nearby hillocks.
All three visors darkened, and not a moment too soon. They were at a dangerous angle relative to the sunlight. Whiteouts were a major cause of premature crashes, and in serious cases had crippled a healthy flyer for life. Pegasi never went above the condensation zone these days without the blackout visors.
The countdown dropped by one scale of magnitude. In the middle-right of the HUD, a pinprick of amber began to wink.
The elevator screeched to a halt, and the sentinels retreated into the planks. Both ponies stepped out into a hemispherical chamber, the ceiling a smooth continuum of golden film with barely a line of tile edges visible. Alarms began to sound off around the chamber, echoing twice with each blurt of the horn.
Like a pair of jaws, two blocks of crystallised glass rammed through floor and ceiling and closed before the two ponies, shielding them from the majority of the chamber. Beyond ten inches of distortion – the effect resembling that of immense ice cubes – they could see individual ponies running away from something in the middle of the room and retreating to the corners for the sliding doors, which clamped shut simultaneously once everyone had evacuated.
The two of them peered at the object in the centre of the room.
“You will be amazed,” said the unicorn.
“That remains to be seen,” drawled the Earth pony.
Beeping filled the pegasi’s ears. They could not hear it over the turbulence, but the red flashes of the HUD were enough.
Gritting their teeth, as one the trio readjusted their flight paths and punched holes through the clouds. It took some time for them to force their way through the grey fog, but soon vague outlines started to emerge. The ground came into view: a patchwork of limes and unhealthy dark greens, with not a town or dwelling in sight from horizon to horizon.
Except for the outhouse, alone and rotting in the middle of an overrun plain.
Two dive bombers lined up behind the third, clutching a side each, careful not to obstruct the wings roasting either side of the withers. For the third, both hooves that were thrust out before it began to strain. The visor cracked in one corner. Lips were pulled back over teeth crushing themselves into the gums, and even with protection the eyes were watering furiously. Her mane was beginning to catch fire – already, her tail was smoking with the effort.
The air screeched in pain. A white cone began to shine before the outstretched hooves.
“Any second now,” said the unicorn. His companion checked his watch.
The white cone flexed and flattened itself against the two bodies, which clung tighter to the third and began stretching and reddening. All the helmets were beginning to run wild with cracks. Sparks leapt from every hair follicle exposed.
The lonely outhouse simply sat and waited.
It had barely counted its third second when three bodies blasted the air aside, smashed into the roof, and blew half the atmosphere to the other side of the world. All light flashed over the surrounding plains until everything was pure white. When it died away, a rainbow mushroom cloud rose from the hill and a ring of multicoloured plasma sliced through the air, expanding outwards and towards the horizons.
They heard the boom below ground, with a double echo around the chamber. The gold glowed until the roof seemed to be forged from the sun itself. The Earth pony lowered his sunglasses.
“Is this–” he began.
An arc of rainbow light cut through the ceiling and slammed into the thing at the centre of the room. Through the goggles, both ponies could see the fiery rain scatter in its wake. Then the glass turned completely blank.
There were several seconds of silence. The Earth pony gave his ruffled hair a cursory pat and smoothed it down, glancing with wide eyes from his partner to the whiteness.
Eventually, the white died. The room returned to normal. Through their goggles, they could see the precipitation resuming its path as before. Both crystallised glass blast doors retracted, while elsewhere a drone sounded. Red, green, yellow, orange, and purple wisps of smoke slid across the floor before shrinking away. Air crackled around them.
The unicorn nodded to the middle of the room. Hesitantly, the Earth pony took a few steps inside the chamber, though he looked relieved when his companion followed not long after. They kept their eyes fixed on the mannequin in the centre of the room as they approached.
On a flat circle of plastic, with a pole protruding from its belly and connecting it to the floor, a pony-shaped mannequin froze in the act of galloping away, though fortunately for the Earth pony’s feelings its face was completely featureless. A dress was draped over its outline, a froufrou with more frills, more lace, and more gems and pearls on it than would be enough to scream wealth and prosperity. Whoever wore it would have looked like the ponified version of a Tudor monarch.
The dress, formerly pure white, was now radiant with all the colours of the rainbow, which shifted along its aura as though the dress was cloaked in northern lights. Around it on the floor were the splashes of multicoloured liquids, similarly glowing.
“Nuclear fabrics,” said the unicorn, patting the mannequin on the rump proudly. “Silk specially irradiated by sonic rain-bomb radioactive fallout. The most expensive dye alternative on the market, or at least it will be.”
The Earth pony gibbered. He had taken off his glasses and his goggles, trying to believe what his disbelieving eyes were seeing.
“It took a team of crack unicorn physicists to calculate the trajectory for that sucker, not to mention how to correctly position the mannequin and prevent the heat flash from burning it to a crisp. You think this is impressive? Just wait until you get up top and see what the pegasus division left.”
All the colours of the spectrum reflected in the Earth pony’s eyes. His lips began to quiver.
“Uh… you OK, sir?” said the unicorn, lowering his hoof from the mannequin.
Hoity Toity’s lips burst into a ravenous grin.
“It’s… it’s… magnificent!”
After several minutes, prevailing south-easterlies blew the cloud into submission. It drifted across the fields like a collapsing tower clinging to the sky. Behind it, a splattered crater lay cooling where the hill used to stand, the earth having popped into an inverse pattern and rippled out. Frozen crests of soil spread around it, giving the impression of a petrified dirty sea overgrown with plant life. Every tree within a one-mile radius was now horizontal, bowled over by the blast front and resembling an impressed audience. Every other cloud was gone, leaving the sky more barren than an ice cap.
A rainbow arced from the pit of the crater and soared up and over. It hadn’t quite met the horizon yet – a distant dot was leading the way, leaving the rainbow behind it as a contrail. The arc of light stood as a monument to its proud achievement. Finally, the speck disappeared in the glare of the sun.