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// Prologue 
// Story: Dust off 
// by Silver Eyes 
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The cockpit’s interior buzzed as the engine hummed with enough force to send vibrations to the lose components on the floor or taped to the dashboard of the craft’s control panel, combined with the constant wheeze from the respirator every time the pilot took breath the sole occupant was kept on edge.

She preferred it this way though, years of flying in the armed forces rewarded little action of any kind while she was shackled to a cargo plane with obnoxiously loud engines and chatty co-pilots with boring lives and few brain cells. Her new plane was a pleasant change in pace, with a full view of the sky out of the cockpit and relatively silent when she wanted it. 

As a Pegasus flight came to her as naturally as breathing the air that whipped past her windshield adding pale white streaks to the sky like a second tail of sorts before vanishing. It was so beautiful to watch she almost wished she could slow down to enjoy it. Almost. She had pictures on her dashboard to remind her of pretty things when she landed, in the sky her eyes were everywhere  and never lingered for more than a second.

A downside to going private was losing the advantage of backup if things got messy. And miles away from any support in her custom plane getting comfortable would get her killed when there was no co-pilot or even automated assistance that her old plane had for warning her of dangers. In the aptly named Twitchy Devil her eyes had to be everywhere at once from aiming to accident avoidance, her skills were the only thing keeping her alive in a world that was slowly gaining its wings.

A fact that was becoming more aggravating to her with every passing season after nations started to tire of smugglers in Equestrian aircraft and began to level the playing field against magic assisted airplanes. That usually to her meant surface to air spell-swords or rival aircraft trying to escape a rapidly closing net they would not see until the last moment. And if life taught her anything it was ‘when resources become scarce ponies become desperate’ and never was that more true with other species who had grown tired of the slow civilized way of dealing with pirates, and now wanted to try old solutions. 

With the reappearance of the crystal empire, the prices of gems had been falling as the cheaper and often more stable crystals they used in construction went on the market. A crystal pony engineer, who she couldn't remember had helped build this craft on the condition she help him with “foreign trades” having little experience with the outside world himself and paid her services with labour. 
Now with more enough crystal in her engine to carry her wherever she wanted and enough around her to protect her she was far enough ahead of her competition to only fear hungry dragons. That was not what would down her though; one of the few pieces of equipment she kept in her craft besides the chest she was paid to escort was a lock-on klaxon that would give her half a second warning when needed. And as the horn sounded in her ears survival took over. 

She twisted both hooves hard enough to send the plane into a roll, then into a downward spiral, her wings shooting out as the sensation of falling overcame her senses, and before she heard or felt the ripple two white trails flew out in front of her and detonated mid-air as the trace went cold. Still leveling out a third shudder rocked her in her seat, the owner of the two projectiles overshooting her own plane and appearing dead ahead of her.

The other plane, going twice as fast and now with two less cylinders mounted under its wings rolled from her assumed forward guns, trailing white power and heated tin foil in a feeble attempt to save itself from any hidden seeker spells she might have. Recovered from the blast she snarled into her mask and immediately pushed the throttle to maximum and set after her pursuer with both wings working simultaneously to switch the safeties of her weapons and flick the bore sight up over her head. 

Ignoring the occasional thud of aluminium against her windshield or the obscuring trail she flew in tandem from behind and set lose a burst of lightening from the nose of her craft. Concentrated from unstable clouds the dual arcs lanced into the tail of the forward plane with a loud pop and a small trail of smoke as tin and timber caught fire and melted under the raw heat of a lightning arc. 

In response the plane slowed to a crawl and banked left to avoid the collision letting her fly past unchallenged. Rather than re-engage it maintained its speed, a small beep on her radio let her know it was trying to talk now that it had been hit. Circling the smoking place three times before falling from her adrenaline rush and matching speed behind her aggressor, both guns locked on its tail. Commonly border guards shot first then retreated for backup if their target shot back to avoid getting killed over a private’s pay grade.

This was probably the only trait shared between anypony shooting at her though as her fight for survival was done as ruthlessly in the marketplace as it was ferociously in the sky with little room for lenience either way, and as much as she would love to add some more holes into her aggressor’s property money was money. This meant that two missiles would cause more damage than she was willing to deal for another marking on her wings to signify a fourth downed plane.

Cautiously keeping level with the opposing plane she flicked her radio on to send of warning only to receive a debilitating burst of static. Flinching hard enough to tilt the plane saved her glass canopy a spray of deadly silicone that instead tore at her right wing then shot into the main engine’s intake. 

With a cough and bang the Devil rocked in mid-air before falling into a nosedive with a shrieking engine spitting the iconic black smoke that sent shudders up any flier’s spine. Before her eyes the ground was incoming and from behind bullets rattled into her tail as the feigning plane on her tale opened fire from a pair of hidden nose mounted machine guns. 

Death approached from all angles, with a torn hull worth countless bits and the ground she worked so hard to escape dawning on her dying craft with the enemy behind putting cracks in her once immaculate armour coming in closer for the kill. There were three dots on her cockpit, each a tale of a plane she had downed and a pilot that walked away. Never in her life had she engaged in this form of headhunting, and never before had she resorted to her last resort if a battle ever turned this bad. 

Releasing her controls and letting the feeling of weightlessness overtake her senses she grabbed a needle from underneath her chair, right next to the ejector leaver that her baser instincts screamed at her to pull instead, and jammed it into the largest vein in her opening wings that were instinctually trying to slow her descent. 

Distilled from a number of plants found around the world, the powerful stimulants the mixture created was often used in lower dosages by non-pegasi to stay awake or match the response times that winged creatures had adapted. When taken by a Pegasus though the serum caused mass damage with only marginal gain, when applied in triplicate though and mixed with other ingredients the hit became a powerful amphetamine that effected perception differently than its comparatively harmless lower dose form. 

With a dry heave her head shot forward as her body tried to purge the toxin entering her heart and spreading to her extremities. As her head bobbed back up the world had seemed to grind to a near halt. Stray shots flew past her glass cage, one in particular that seemed to tear through her crystal armour in particular caught her eye as the blue trailed round orb cut past her glass dome shattering nearly gutting her plane. A hypervelocity gun she thought, tilting the flaps on her wings and sending the plane into a spin to avoid more fatal gunfire as another crazy idea came to her. What an outside observer would see as a flurry of movement, were to her meticulous and agonisingly slow: her engine was cut, cooling ports were opened, fuel was stopped and then dumped back in en-masse and finally the re-igniter was keyed three times in under a second. Aerated and now pumped full of fuel the solid crystal burst into flame just as the throttle in the cockpit was pushed to the maximum.

With a feral scream from the pony at the helm and roar that would have been more akin to a Manticore than a piece of machinery metal melted and the engine leapt to life as the mare tugged yoke with bared teeth. With its belly facing the sky the mare could almost make out the blades of grass as she flew by the ground in her heightened state, images of crashed craft and broken fortunes going before her eyes briefly before vanishing back into memory. 

Faced with the sky again she saw only the underside of her enemy, a Kestrel if she remembered the build model correctly from this angle, a gryphon made craft as the name implied, that relied heavily on magic items and talismans to stay airborne rather than inherent magic that their builders usually lacked. To survive a hit from a lightning arc, and better yet rebuild itself from the looks of its tail the craft must have been heavily modified with some enchanted wood and military grade weapons. 

A split second survey of her own plane revealed heavy damage for a single strafe, but nothing that would impede her flight. Strangely though as the costs mounted up in her mind the desire to try and outrun the gryphon plane shrunk in indirect portion to her repair bills. That flier had tried to KILL her, hunting her down to the ground and riddling her craft with rounds even after she was in a tailspin, even when she offered mercy.

There was almost resignation in her actions even in her drug induced state as a few weapon safeties were quickly taken offline. They were quickly squashed as her opponent, unaware of her recovery, left their underside exposed to the hell she had unlocked. Above her desire to kill was simple logic, there was not a mission around that would cost her life itself even if it meant removing her opposition. 

As she tasted iron in her mouth and looked down on her nose to see blood seeping from it the deal was sealed. As the vestiges of her rush started to wear off her the small dot that was her aim finder doubled in size as safeties were switched off and new weapons were brought to bear. Growing with every passing second she waited until her craft was close enough to cause maximum damage. As the range finder fell under a kilometer with a manic grin a series of thuds shook the craft as tiny bolts of fire shot from her plane’s wings and streaked toward her foe.

Explosions rattled their craft closing the short distance between them before her cylinders had time to reload, her instruments beeping at her from all directions reminding her of the impossible. Lack of fuel, lack of ammunition and the final dial reading only “five thirty, out of time” which was impossible she had been up only a couple of hours there was plenty of time...





With a shudder the mare awoke on her desk and shook the crumbs and stray sheets of paper off her muzzle with disgust. A dream no less, and now of all times. Huffing in displeasure she turned to her usual bedfellows, a bottle and a knife lying side by side. With a quick look at the brown fluid sitting just above the label and the now blaring alarm clock she set about putting things in order for the day downing most of the contents with one hoof and flailing blindly at the off button on the alarm with the other. 

Today was a rare day indeed, requiring less booze than usual to enjoy but more than her drier days off to get simply get through creating a conundrum she settled by limiting her intake to the bottom of the brand marking plus whatever she could get while on duty provided the bosses were busy.

With a satisfied hum she corked her drink and dropped it into her waiting saddle bag on the ground, normally nothing would make her happier than to immediately fall back onto her desk until she had to run as fast as her legs could carry her to workstation. With alcohol on board she could perhaps find some precious dreamless sleep or at least look better than any number of hours getting ready. 

A moment's peace would be undeserved for a day such as this one of all things, if anything this particular day was just another cycle of repetition that was now sought rather than avoided. No Nightmares so realistic as to carry the foul smell of sterilized air as a Blimp beaconed into existence or the perfect pitch of a trench full of stallions shouting "oooh-ra" before charging over would bring the weight of her new duties the same way as a mistaken memory of her time flying.