The first thing I recognized on the surface, or more specifically the airspace overhead, was the darkness. Not darkness like when it was night, but the daylight was somehow... dull, which also reduced the range of vision, so I couldn't see as far as I was used to above the clouds. From my point of view at the alongside vertibuck could barely see the silhouettes of some huge mountains in the distance. Because of that four of us flew next to the vertibuck all the time to "recon" the environment. There was no indication of any kind of life at the ground below, but the measuring devices showed us although the level of radiation wasn't as high and deadly as we thought, it still wouldn't be healthy to live down there for long.
"It's hard to believe that ponies once lived here." I said to my wingpony, Hurricane. "Judging by the looks of it, I heavily doubt anything will live down there ever again."
"Look at those scrubby trees." the buck to my right answered and pointed at some kind of small forest of small, leafless and withered trees. "If those can make it, so surely we can do it too, someday."
"Yeah, someday..." I mumbled to myself. Someday would be a pretty long time.
"But it must be said that the surface, minus all its poison and deadliness, looks quite interesting." the blue buck continued. "I saw trees like those only in the storybooks and now... I'm here, seeing all the stuff live and in color."
"You can hardly call those things "trees", Hurricane." I answered.
Storybook trees were huge, green... thingies with a massive wooden brown trunk, limbs and lots of leaves at the top, things that those plants... hadn't, except for a small trunk-thing. These plants were cheap excuses for real trees and still they had grew and survived in this wasteland, for I doubted they were here before the war.
Our route led us to a medium sized mountain and Sunshine suggested that we would take a break and ask our superiors for permission. It wouldn't hurt anypony. Fortunately they thought the same thing and so we got the permission to land on the mountain below to rest. As we flew towards the landing area I was struck by the thought that this might be the only time in my whole life when I would set hoof onto the earth ground of Equestria.
Apparently I appeared a bit too thoughtfully, flapping in midair, because a surprising force pulled on my tail and I hit the ground little gracefully.
Thank you...Hurricane, I think.
However after I had turned around I saw Sunshine grinning through the end of my tail. "You seemed so vacantly, so I thought I rather take you back to earth." the orange mare said and released my tail.
"I was constructing a catchy line for setting hoof on the surface, you know? Something I can tell my grandfoals one day." Not that I intended to have foals one day myself... whatever! "Something like: that's one small step for a pony, but a great leap... and so on."
As I finished my sentence I noticed that there was no Sunshine standing in front of me anymore, she had edged away to the cliff, where the rest of the pegasi stood and observed something probably interesting. It was interesting indeed: we were looking at the ruins of a small town, but a sight naming it couldn't be seen. A fossil from another time, remnants of a brighter past.
"Almost unbelievable that our ancestors used to live in cities like those." Sunshine said next to me.
I had thought the same thing.
"And it's also almost unbelievable, that everything was annihilated in one single moment." So many lives ended on that one day and not only here, but everywhere in Equestria too and beyond. "It's depressing and somehow... encouraging."
Depressing because of the many lives lost to the war and encouraging if I thought about the possibility to reach the former glory again. The town, even if it lay in ruins, was easily twice the size of Lunar Rock and unlike my hometown, towns like the one in front of us hadn't been uncommon in the days of old.
"End of the break!" Sunshine shouted after several silent minutes of watching the ruins. "Everypony back to the vertibuck. Sky and Cloud, you will replace the left wing, Feather and Hurricane, you will be relieved soon, too. And now let's scram before I get all whiny and depressed."
""")_x_("""
And so we took off again, ending the first and possibly only shore leave we would have in our lives. Flying next to Hurricane I thought a lot about the town.
Why would intelligent life do something like this? What could make somepony or zebra to destroy hundreds of lives, bombing whole cities, even the country itself, to smithereens? What had gone wrong...
"Guys, I think I'm getting something." said a voice and it wasn't Hurricane. It came over the radio and belonged to the buck monitoring the radar-system. "Movements. More than half a dozen larger... life forms? I think... I think this might be... ponies?"
"I want to see this." Sunshine yelled in the background and then we got the message by radio. "Activate EFS-Systems!"
Sweet Celestia, it was true! I could see some dots, maybe ten, moving on the ground. Oh, and there was another one, a few meters in front of the group. The dots were yellow, meaning the... subjects... below weren't hostile towards us. Our EFS could tell this by... magic, I guess? I don't think there's somepony above the clouds fully understanding the EFS-System nor will there be one one day.
"Wingponies, get down there and check it out, but stay covered. I don't want anything or anypony do spot you until I do want you to be spotted." Sunshine commanded and Sky Striker,
Hurricane, Cloud Striker and I dived towards the running horde. There were ponies for real, but the marks on theirs flanks were... strange, bizarre and they seem somehow mean. The cutie marks of the ponies of the horde showed bludgeons, cages and hoofcuffs. Their clothing didn't look much better: the cloths were hoofmade, torn in several places and darkened. Was... was that blood? Oh Luna, this is getting worse and worse. The pink mare with the flower cutie mark they were following was the only pony around looking nice, left alone the rushed expression on her face. This looked like some kind of pursuit and I doubted the result would be pleasant.
"Reconnaissance unit to commanding officer. We identified the target: they are ponies and they are chasing somepony else. Some of them are armed with blunt weapons, melee only."
"Understood, reconnaissance unit. I will inform High Command."
There was a soft clicking noise as Sunshine activated the communicator to call our superiors.
"This is reconnaissance team Delta-4, lieutenant Sunshine to High Command. High Command, please come in."
"This is High Command." I heard a male voice answering. "Is there a problem, lieutenant?"
Sunshine cleared her throat, than she said: "We have encountered a group of locals, ponies according to our reconnaissance unit, and they are endangering another local. They're slightly armed, I don't think they're a threat to us. Asking for permission to intervene."
Silence.
"Repeat: I ask for permission to intervene."
The silence continued and with a crackle the line went dead. Was this another "test" like the one with the drones?
But shortly afterwards the communication was restored and there was Sunshine's voice again.
"This is lieutenant Sunshine speaking. Both wingteams, I command you to fly down there and solve the conflict whatosever. Intervene!"
The four of us dived towards the gap between the chasing ponies and the mare, who was stumbling over a rock or something right now and went down slitheringly, holding her hooves in front of her face in terror. Just a few more seconds and the other ponies would catch her...
The horde was obviously surprised at the two power-armored pegasi and me as we hit the ground right in front of them and aimed our guns at them. Cloud Striker landed next to the fallen mare, carrying a first-aid with her.
"Halt!" I shouted as loud as possible and Sky Striker shot the ground between us and them to emphasize my words. "Stay where you are! This coursing ends now!"
A dark brown earth pony buck with a nail board kept in his mouth, possibly the leader, looked at us with ill-concealed anger and equally concealed fear in his eyes.
"Who are you?"
"We're the ponies with the big guns." Hurricane answered threateningly. "I doesn't matter who we are."
I as the commanding officer of this unit stepped forward and talked to the leader of the group. "We watched your cruel and relentless pursuit. We want to know why you do this and after that, we will part company."
"That's none of your business, pidgeon!" somepony shouted from the background. "Just bugger of already!"
"Yeah, get lost again!"
Hurricane fired into the air, silencing them..
"Why were you chasing this mare? What's she accused of?" I asked and the ponies answered by bandying uneasy looks.
"It's... business, you know. You wouldn't understand it." the leader answered hesitantly.
Oh Celestia, this doesn't sound good...
According to rumors there were only cannibals and other abominations living on the surface and this ponies look awfully like the first. Bloody clothing, chasing a single mare... but there wasn't any blood around their muzzles, so...
"Then make me understand it." I demanded and my wingponies intensified their aim at the group to substantiate my request.
"Feather!" Cloud Striker called from behind. "She's responsive again. I'll take her to you."
The light pink mare leaned against the power armored pegasus as both of them moved slowly towards me. The horde in front of us grew disquiet, but were silenced again by some warning shots.
"Hello, my dear." I said and the mare's ears raised. "We're not your enemies, we don't want to hurt you. We want to know what happened just now. Why were you running?"
Now she lifted her head from Cloud Strikers shoulder and glanced at me uncertainly.
"I... I had been running. My companions... did they... did they make it?"
"We saw only you, nopony else."
"They didn't make it then..."
"Didn't make what?"
"We were running... away..."
Yes, I got that.
"Yes, but from whom?"
The mares eyes widened as she noticed the crowd behind me. "From them!" she yelled trying to move away from the pegasus mare supporting her and pointed at the ponies, which looked ashamed to the ground.
"Please, calm down." I said calmingly and she actually stopped shaking. "Why are you scared? Who are they?"
"They are slavers! The wanted to capture me!"
Slavers?
"Is that true?!" I asked reproachfully.
"It's... it's just business..." the leader stammered
"Is that true?!" I screamed and aimed Wing Beat at him, the red dot shaking at his also shaking forehead. "Did you want to capture this mare and sell her to somepony else as a... slave?" I badly wanted to turn his head into bloody chunks. Freedom was obviously one of the only things the pink mare possessed and this pony wanted to take this from her as well.
So badly...
"Is that true?!"
"Yes, dammit yes!" the buck shouted at me and his group readied their weapons as did the pegasi next to me.
For a while we just stood there, aiming at each other, than I hissed: "What about her companions? Have you captured them and don't lie to me."
"They ran away after they had seen us." the brown buck answered through his clenched teeth, still in a battle stance. "We lost them half an hour ago. They escaped."
"So there's nopony captured until now?"
He nodded.
"Then get lost. Now!"
The ponies didn't need to be told twice, they turned their backs on us immediately and galloped away as fast as they could.
"And get another job!" I shouted after them, but most likely they didn't hear it over the noise of their hooves.
My friends looked at me confused for a short time, but I didn't elaborate on my actions any further.
"Whirling Feather to Sunshine. We resolved the issue, but we also go ta a wounded pony."
"One of us?"
"No, the mare they chased. Cloud patched her up, but we have to take her back home."
Sunshine didn't thought about it for a second and replied instantly. "I take the vertibuck to your position. Find out where she lives, so we can take her there."
I nodded, not aware that Shunshine couldn't see it, and than turned to the pink mare, which lay on the ground again, Cloud Striker standing next to her.
"Everything is alright." I said as I kneel down. "It's over, they're gone and can't hurt you anymore. Not while we are here." I put my hoof on her shoulder and she shivered briefly, but calmed down after all.
"Am I... are they really gone? Am I safe?" she asked snifflingly and I nodded as confidently as possible.
"As safe as somepony can be down here. And don't worry," I added and pointed at the two armored pegasi, which were talking a short distance away. "They're no threat to you either. And guess what: we can take you home as well."
"How!"
"Our vehicle will be here soon. You just have to tell us where you live, so we know where to drop you off."
She nodded, the vertibuck drew closer, indicated by the roaring noise of its storm cloud engines and as its tailgate opened and Sunshine, accompanied by two power armored pegasi, came out, her jaw dropped. Without saying another word my superior nodded towards the vehicle, directing the mare to enter the aircraft and after she did so, the orange mare came over to us.
"Feather, Hurricane, Cloud, Sky: you're relieved, somepony else will be the wingponies for the rest of the flight." And with that, we all mounted the vertibuck again.
""")_x_("""
While we were flying towards the mares home, we tried to star a conversation with the rescued mare, but she seemed to be to startled by the technology around her to say anything. But for an earth pony she had been very precise about the location of her home town, even though we traveled there by air.
"You did well down there, Feather, even if those slavers deserved to be torn to pieces by Hurricane. I probably would have shot them in the back the moment they turned their backs on me." Sunshine whispered to me. "On the plus side, we made a good first impression, nopony dead on the slavers side and a ex- mare in distress, rescued by us. And she doesn't look too bad, does she?"
Sunshine? What's your point?
"I... don't understand..."
"Oh, come on, I saw how you were looking at her."
Looking? Me? I... I...
"I... I wasn't..."looking"... at her. I wasn't!" I stammered while blushing with the brightest red the rainbow could offer. Sunshine sized me up, said nothing and looked at me... Uh, I couldn't read her look.
"Well... maybe I'm wrong..."
"Visual contact with the target!" the pilot called from the cockpit and ended this embarrassing moment. Celestia may bless this buck.
"I'll begin the final descent, prepare!"
"Both wingteams, back to the vertibuck immediately, I don't want to take a risk of any kind." Sunshine called out into the radio, the tailgate of our vehicle opened and four pegasi landed next to us.
Shortly before we were going to land, Sunshine, the pink mare and I assembled once again to talk about what was going to happen.
"The best would be to go out there alone, one of us or both and she. The other would appear to scary with those power armors, the guns and stuff... " I said to Sunshine, who answered by excessive nodding.
"And if they're hostile, which I hope they aren't, since we rescued you, we still could fly away and figure something out. The vertibuck is well armor-plated, there's no way the ponies in here will be harmed." she added and looked over to the pilot. "So if there's shooting out there, you will fly the bird away to a save distance and don't shoot back, until I give you a different command. Understood?"
He nodded in response.
"Well then, we'll be landing soon. So when we go out there, you'll to the talking, Feather."
Me?
"Why me?! You're in command, you'll do the talking."
"Yeah, but, you know... you're white and got this nice feather on your flank... it looks kind of peaceful and diplomatic, doesn't it? More peaceful than my burning sun or Hurricane's hurricane, right?" She got a point.
Oh Luna, this feather brought me nothing but trouble.
""")_x_("""
As we had landed in the village - I presumed it was a village – and the three of us stood before the opening tailgate, the last thing I had expected to see of the "civilisation" on the surface were over a dozen guns, pointed straight at us. Although I kind of expected it, but fewer weapons and more friendly faced would have been nice.
"Don't move!" a male, brown stallion with some crazy metal thing as a cutie mark, shouted at us while stepping out of the armed crowd, a rusty yet functioning revolver in his makeshift battle saddle. "What do you want, poultry?"
"Please calm down." I said and emerged with my wings hold close to my body as a sign of peace. By the noise of many clicking hammers I recognized that the surface-dwellers didn't know this gesture. Why should they knew it at all, stupid Feather! "We haven't come to harm anypony."
"Why you came than? You won't buy from us and we don't want to buy anything from you for sure."
"All we want is to help you." I said and his face darkened.
Well done, Feather, this works any time. You could have said: "We come in peace, surface dwellers." too, it wouldn't have been less persuasive.
"We don't need your "help" and we don't want it twice as much. Poultry like you just spell trouble, so get back into your tin can, before anypony's tongue slips."
"Dad!" somepony yelled from behind me and the brown one's eyes widened as the pink mare, the one reason we were here at all, passed me by and positioned herself between me and the stallion.
"Dad, they are the good ponies, they won't do us any evil."
Some of the guns seemed to be lowered.
"Sunflower?" the he brown one said doubtfully. "Sunflower, get away from them, those creatures are dangerous." And after a short pause of thinking he added fast and with a threatening voice: "What have you done to her? Abducted her? Cut her open? Experiments?"
What? Experiments? We weren't aliens. Well, we might look like some kind of extraequestrian beings, the wings, the aircraft, clean manes...
"We haven't..."
"They are no aliens, dad! And they're no "creatures" either, they're ponies like us and they rescued me."
As the crowd slowly realized that neither Sunshine nor I made any move to shoot all of them at once the remaining guns were lowered as well and everypony just looked at each other.
"Rescued you? When, where, from whom? Are you alright, girl?" the stallion sputtered and took a few steps forwards his daughter, presumably to see if there wasn't any evidence of experimental treatment after all.
"Can't we discuss this somewhere else? Somewhere inside, where I could get some water?"
"Of course, of course, we..."
"And those two will come as well." she added, nodding towards us.
"You... all right, they can come along. And you are..."
"Liet... Whirling Feather." I answered with a friendly smile and reached out with my wing, only to be reminded by a shove that this wasn't a known gesture down here.Instead I just nodded, smiled and let Sunshine introduce herself. The crowd scattered quickly and the four of us went over to the building, but only after Sunshine had attained that the other pegasi would get a loo around the village to fight the boredom.
""")_x_("""
"Welcome to my home." Sunflower said happily as we entered the house, her father had vanished into a side room, perhaps to inform the mare of the house, and she added whisperingly:
"I'm sorry for my father's and the villagers' attitude, maybe you were a bit to much for them with your wings and your machines..."
"No big deal." Sunshine answered while we were led into some kind of living room. "We were prepared for something far worse."
"For example the crowd not lowering their weapons, it would have been ugly... for us." I muttered to myself.
Really ugly.
"But you haven't told us from what exactly we have rescued you. Because I don't think there are simply groups of ponies, wandering around, telling other ponies: "Too bad, folks, but from now on you belong to us."" The pink mare looked at me as if I had asked her about what kind of pony has a horn and no wings. "Right?"
"Unfortunately there are." the brown stallion answered after putting a tray with some drinking glasses of water down on a table next to us and offered us to sit down. "I'm very sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Plumb Line, kind of mayor of this village. And I also want to apologize for the harsh welcome, we just aren't... used to pegasusses like you. No offense." he said after everypony had one of the glasses standing in front of her or him.
"None taken, but it's "pegasi"." Sunshine said smilingly.
"What?"
"Pegasi. The plural of "pegasus" is "pegasi"."
"Ah, well, I got this. But what happened to you, Sunflower, tell me. Usually there aren't any slavers around here and we're far away from places like Paradise."
"I was... I kind of..." Sunflower started hesitantly. "Old Pipe said the water purifying thing will went dead soon if he doesn't get his hooves on some replacement parts or repairponies, so I asked one of the traders from last week if they have something like this in stock. He couldn't offer them to me, but they were on their way to the ruins anyway, so I decided to accompany them to..."
"You... you "accompanied" them, just like that? You should have told us, we were worried sick. You..." Plumb Line yelled.
"I know, I know. But... you know... the caravan was leaving right then, I simply had to go with them, no time to tell anypony anything."
Waiting would have been too much to ask from them, I thought to myself while Sunshine and I were listening to the mares story, nodding from time to time.
"And..." I asked eagerly and took a sip of water.
"Well, last night we camped near the ruins and we wanted search them tomorrow, but one of the guards saw this heap of ponies coming right at us, we thought they might be other merchants, it was dark after all. And as we could see their cutie marks it was too late already. I don't know what happened to the merchants afterwards, I ran away and then you saved me. End of story."
Very simple indeed, kind of disappointing. I had expected it to be more... complex. But this is the real world, Feather, not some story from a book somewhere on the shelf at home. For a while we all just sat there doing nothing but looking at the each other from time to time.
Now what?
"And what happened to the slavers?" Plumb Line asked to break the silence. "You brought them dow, didn't you?"
Oh. yeah... that...
"We..we drove them off, they ran away."
"Ran away? " I shrank back as the stallion shouted at me. "You let them get away? They're still alive, still out there to do the things they did to my daughter to other ponies?! Are you out of your mind?"
"Dad!" said mare interjected deprecatingly. "Don't be ungrateful, just because the pegasi didn't kill anymore ponies than die everyday anyway. Maybe those slavers become better..."
Yes, maybe. After all it maybe had been a bad idea to let those slaver walk away. Maybe we should have demanded to see their camp and maybe they had captured Sunflower's companions.
"It doesn't matter now." the pink mare said calmly. "I'm back and everypony is happy, except for the purifier and Old Pipe..."
"Yes, that..." Sunshine said and raised a hoof. "You said you need some replacements parts or repairpoies?"
Both the earth ponies nodded. "I don't know if there are spare parts in our vertibuck, but I know we got a capable technician. They could take a look at your water purifier. Should we go get them?"
"You... you would do that...?" Plumb Line asked doubtingly.
"It's the least we can do, isn't it?" With this my superior raised and together we walked to the door.
""")_x_("""
We spent the following hours at a round of questions, answering the local foals' questions about the life up there in the clouds. Well, except for Sunshine and our technicians, which were busy patching up the water supply. And the pony answering was mainly Hurricane, telling stories about how he slew dozens of combat robots, unarmed and all by himself, giving me the opportunity to steal off, since everypony was hanging on his every word.
Inside the water treatment plant I saw our technicians at work. The problem seemed to be some leaking pipes and several wrong adjusted pumps, but I'm no technopony, maybe it had been something more difficult. Just as I had entered the building the engines were turned on.
"It's hard to believe that the surface ponies suffer from small things like this." Sunshine said with a shake of her head and told the technicians to get back to the vertibuck, since we had been here for a while now, sometime we had to get back home after all.
As interesting as the surface had been, right now I desired nothing more than to lie down on my bed at the dorm at home. There were scattered tears among the foals, which were sad about the end of Hurricane's stories, as we said goodbye to the villagers and some of the adults even wanted to give presents to us, which we could turn down fortunately, but we couldn't stop Sunflower from giving me a kiss on my cheek.
Sweet Celestia, surface ponies were so... weird...
There was an unpleasant silence inside the vertibuck as we were flying back towards the great cloudgate, first-class culture shock I assumed.
I tried to start a conversation with Sunshine several times, but the orange mare was only wriggling uneasily about on her seat.
"Whatever happens now, I take over responsibility." was the only thing she said as we were just a few minutes left until we would reach the gate.
Did I really want to know, what she was worrying about? Had there been an incident at the village? Something concerning the treatment plant?
As we had passed the cloud gate, had landed in the hangar and got off the vertibuck we were surprised at the sight of... energy weapons pointed at us? Wind Claw clenching his teeth in anger? Hadn't we just saved a pony from slavery or worse? What was happening?
"What's happening?" Cloud Striker voiced my thoughts behind me, but before her brother could answer me, three pegasi stepped forward.
"Commander Sunshine." my father said with a threatening voice and the two Silverish Guards next to him activated ther battle saddles with a just as threatening clicking.
"You are under arrest. You will be court martialed for insubordination."
""")_x_("""
Level up: Level 3
Skill(s): Barter 25
New Perk added: Peer Pressure
"You may not be the most impressive pegasus, but with a little backup you still can be quite persuasive."
Your barter skill is increased by 10 points whenever you are accompanied by two or more companions.