“Awwww… come down, Simon!” Kera giggled as she squatted before the middlemost mast of the top deck. She gazed up at the rodent who was perched halfway up to the enchanted skystone. “I promise I won’t shoot at you anymore! I just wanna pet ya!”
The creature barked between flashes of its tesla coils.
“Of course I’m telling the truth!” she barked. “I swear on… uhh… uhhhhh… Belle’s mane! Yeah!” She smirked. “It’s gotta grow back at some point, right?”
“Leave Simon’s furriness alone, boomerette,” Floydien grumbled as he trotted out of the cockpit, sans antlers. His muzzle twitched as he said, “He doesn’t understand the whim of foal foal.”
“Well, maybe I can teach him!” Kera turned to pout at the elk. “He hasn’t had much friends, has he?” She blushed beneath her tattoos. “Besides you, I mean.”
“Hmmph…”
Kera raised her eyebrow as he trotted swiftly past. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“The room that is both small and belonging to little elks.”
“Huh?” Kera’s face twisted. At last, she exhaled. “Ohhhhhh. Jeez. Say it. Don’t spray spray it, yes yes?”
Floydien paused. He turned to squint at her.
She stuck her tongue out.
With a sigh, the pilot continued shuffling forward. “Scampity scampness…”
Kera spun about to return to the mast. Something darted in the corners of her eyes. She jerked to the side. “Huh?”
Three shadows loomed across the platform.
She brightened. “Belle! Pilate! You’re back!” She galloped to the Noble Jury’s edge. “Didja bring me more ball bearings? Huh?” She skidded to a stop, her jaw dropping. “...huh?!”
Multicolored feathers hung within the shade of each equine’s hood. With a ruffle of their cloaks, they dove forward.
“Gaaah!” Kera fell back on her haunches, hyperventilating. Her wide green eyes reflected the approaching trio of ponies.
“What the what?” Floydien spun about.
All three figures flinched upon seeing him.
He gritted his teeth. “Off!” He galloped forward, his massive hooves thundering over the deck. “Off off! My beloved’s wooden flank is not for your smelliness!”
Two ponies side-stepped. A third simply braced himself. When Floydien headbutted him, he took the brunt of the blow. His partners dove in, suddenly latching chains around Floydien’s body in a flash.
“Raaaugh! Rotten boomers of rot rot!” Floydien snarled and thrashed between all three of them. “Nancy Jane did not invite your glimmer!”
“Hey!” Kera stood up, gulping as she summoned an angry frown. “Get off him, ya creeps!”
Above, Simon let loose a shrill bark. With his mana-nodes shimmering, he launched a vaporous bubble of telekinesis. The magical blast knocked all three ponies to the ground.
Floydien shook half of the chains loose. Panting, the frenzied elk flashed a look towards the cockpit. His sparkling antlers were several feet away, fused to the ship’s energy manifold. He limped forward, dragging a rear leg encumbered in chains. He was barely within reach of the source of his magic when a fourth figure dove in, slamming into Floydien’s body hard.
“Aaaugh!” Floydien flew into the railing of the ship’s edge.
Simon shrieked again. It spun towards the other side of the mast and prepared another blast.
One of the first three ponies got back up, pulled out a steam powered tube, and fired a dart at the rodent’s neck.
A needle stuck deep through Simon’s skin. The creature hissed, its black eyes clamping shut as it fell from the mast like a sack of birdseed.
“Simon!” Kera stammered.
Two more cloaked ponies glided down. Along with the others, they grabbed Floydien from all sides and held him to the deck while a seventh landed holding two needles that glistened in the hangar’s lantern light.
“Nnnngh! Remove your hooves before Floydien bites them off!” The elk growled. “I had enough of the stabby stabby at Deep Ridge! Do the boomers hear Floydien?! No more! No…”
His eyelids went heavy as the serum was introduced to his bloodstream. With a groan, Floydien’s heavy body went limp. His slumbering breaths wheezed against his captors’ limbs.
A ball bearing flew against the back of a cloaked figure’s skull. Calmly, the pony turned around, glaring.
Kera seethed. She dropped her slingshot and grinded her hooves against the ground. “If you don’t wake him back up, I’m gonna make you pay!”
The figures said nothing. All seven turned about and slowly approached the lone foal.
“I-I mean it!” Taking a deep breath, she exhaled her lungs’ worth in a high-pitched war cry. “Yaaaaugh!” Horn sparkling, she charged the six large ponies directly.
One of them met Kera’s charge, unsheathing a razor-sharp dagger from beneath his sleeve.
“Listen!” Rainbow Dash’s voice echoed against the metalworks all around her. “Don’t do this! If you want to teach me a lesson, fine! But don’t steal the book! Don’t take it out on my friends!”
“It is too late,” Khao said coldly, stepping back and flexing her limbs. “It is already done.”
“You… uh… you wanna be my Eljunbyro?!” Rainbow frowned. “Then fine! You can join us! We could totally use a guide! But let us just work things out together! No need for all of this intimidation crud!”
“You do not know the sheer immensity of that which you face in the long course of your journey,” Khao said as the shadows closed in from all sides. “It amazes us that in spite of all the pain and anguish that you have been through, Harbinger, you still need to be taught the gravity of your quest.”
“Rainbow…” Pilate leaned in to nervously stammer, “If they were swift enough to get the drop on you…”
“I know, dude.” Rainbow nodded as she looked over her shoulder. Several ponies trotted closer and closer. “We gotta get back to the Jury. And now.” She gripped his side. “Hold on tight!”
With a gust of air, Rainbow Dash launched herself directly towards the ceiling. She and the zebra were airborne for no less than five seconds when three gliding figures slammed into her simultaneously.
“Gaaah!” she grunted, immediately losing her grip of Pilate.
The zebra fell, then went tumbling onto a slowly rotating gearhead. He winced, his manasphere flickering like mad as he fought to ascertain Rainbow’s location.
The pegasus was presently wrestling with three figures in the air, struggling to get a hoofhold over one of them in order to shove them off. “Ugh! Get off--I said, get off!” She finally slipped one hoof loose and uppercutted one of the figure’s cloaks off. As his body fell back, she spread her wings wide, knocking two of them off of her. Twirling in mid hover, she bucked another across the jaw and prepared to punch the third.
A fourth figure slammed into from behind, followed by fifth on steam rockets who was swinging a length of metal chain.
Rainbow Dash flew through the underbelly of Gray Smoke, gliding through pulleys and past swinging pendulums as she struggled to disentangle herself from the two equines. At last, she freed herself by headbutting one pony and biting onto the chain of the other. With a jerk of the head, she guided his trajectory into the path of a conveyor belt, smashing his gliding gear into leathery bits as his body went ragdolling to a platform below.
“P-Pilate!” she sputtered into the noisy ear.
“Down here, Rainbow!” Pilate stood up on wobbling hooves. “I… I-I can’t tell what I’m standing on!” Unbeknownst to him, the gear was rotating his body slowly into the murderously fast swing of a metal pendulum.
“Awwww shoot…” Rainbow Dash dove down. “Pilate! Gallop forward!”
“But I’ll fall!”
“Just do it!” She shouted above the swishing sound of figures diving at her. She held her breath, twirled, and threaded through the ensnaring forelimbs of half-a-dozen attackers. “I’ll catch you!”
Pilate bit his lip and trotted blindly forward, just in time to avoid being impaled by the machinery behind him. He fell like a limp sack of meat into open air. “Gaaugh!”
Rainbow plummeted towards him, just meters away from catching his body.
In a brown blur, two enemies glided by and snatched Pilate. They carried him--gasping--towards a mess of platforms above.
“Hey! Hooves off his stripes, ya melon fudges!” Rainbow spun about, dodged three more attackers, and kicked off a rotating gear. With the extra boost, she ascended through the metal mess, catching up to the two captors. Just when she was within a sneeze of his tail hairs, Khao flew into view.
Rainbow gasped.
Khao hovered on steam thrusters, calmly shoving two hooves forward to catch Rainbow’s chest. “Relinquish yourself.”
Rainbow snarled and swung a hoof at the mare’s face.
Khao calmly caught in the crook of her forelimb. Her nostrils flared. “Then endurance remains unborn.” With a breath, she spun and used their combined momentum to launch Rainbow through the sunlit window.
“Giyaaaaaugh!” her voice cracked helplessly.
Smasssh!