//------------------------------// // Into This World We're Thrown // Story: Urohringr // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// "Elma...?" Pilate stammered, his face tilted in the direction of the weeping changeling. "Elma, wh-what's happening to you?" The shape-shifter choked on a sob, burrying its fangs in a pair of black-webbed forelimbs. Nothing but indecipherable squeaks came out. "Please, speak to us—" The zebra took a step towards her, only to be yanked back by a pulse of telekinesis. "Pilate, give it up!" Josho exclaimed. "She's nothing like she seemed! She's worse off than Prowse!" "But... but she couldn't possibly have known that—" Rainbow Dash flew in, inadvertently knocking Pilate to the ground as she gripped Josho's shoulders. "Josho! You gotta teleport us out of here!" "Huh?!" Josho exclaimed. "Wh-what?!" Seclorum stammered from a few feet away. Arcshod and Aatxe glanced over in concern. "Don't you get it?!" Rainbow's voice cracked. "There's another me out there—a false me—and she's gonna be trashing the Noble Jury the first chance she gets!" "Rainbow, even if that was true, I can't just randomly port us out of here—" "Yes you can!" Rainbow shouted. "You have to! As long as we're stuck here, our friends are screwed!" "I have no clue how this whole stupid place is built!" Josho roared. "We could materialize in pure rock or in a bolt of lightning—" "Dang it, Josho!" Rainbow Dash growled. "Think of Eagle Eye! You want him being torn to bits while we wait here, arguing!" Josho's teeth clenched tightly as he anxiously contemplated that. "Old friend..." Seclorum stumbled forward, squinting. "Don't tell me that you're thinking of—" "Alright, but if we explode into pony oatmeal, I'm putting the blame on you!" Josho exclaimed. He gripped Rainbow's forelimbs while his horn started to glow. "No!" Seclorum shouted, rushing forward. "Don't do it! Don't separate from us! That's exactly what the changelings—" A peach-colored hoof tripped him. "Gaaah!" The stallion fell hard to the ground. "Propsicle!" Prowse gasped. Props pulled her hoof in and spun towards Rainbow and Josho. "Go, Jurists! Work your magic! Snappity snap!" "Hold your breath," Josho wheezed as his horn glowed to a blinding degree. "There's no telling how much this is going to suck—" FLASH! Before the survivors shocked faces, the two ponies disappeared... ...and materialized upside down in a mess of stormclouds. "Gaauchkkkt!" Josho hissed, sputtered. He fell instantly, along with Rainbow Dash. Lightning struck, throttling their ear drums as they plummeted through the hurricane winds and rain. Rainbow Dash shouted something, but couldn't hear over the ringing of her ears. Rolling about, her eyes settled on a dark circular spot above them—when in fact it was below them. Wheezing, she spun around, spotted the flailing figure of Josho in her peripheral, and propelled herself directly towards him. The winds tore at her feathers and a consistent gale shoved her sideways. Nevertheless, with tearing eyes, she sliced the air sideways, diving towards Josho's figure as it flew like a living anvil towards the largest building's rooftop. "Hurry hurry hurry!" Ebon Mane's voice rattled down the rattling bulkheads of the Noble Jury. He clamored after Floydien as the elk made his way towards the front crawlspace. "Mr. Floydien, we gotta take off! We're seconds away from turning to dust—" "Sailboat boomer means Floydien has to get out of here!" The elk shouted as he threw himself into the vertical crawlspace. With strained hooves, he pulled himself towards the cockpit above. "Get to the womb of Nancy Jane with the sailboating!" "Wh-what?!" Ebon skidded to a stop, wheezing. "The engine room?! But... wh-why me—" "If some boomer doesn't fire up the glimmer shimmer, Nancy Jane dies, and Floydien's friends along with her!" Floydien glanced down once to shout, "You are blonde boomer now! Make with the quick quick!" Hyperventilating, Ebon dashed forward, kick-slid along the floor, and dropped like a stone down the crawlspace opposite of where Floydien was climbing. He nearly slammed into Zaid while scrambling to gallop down the belly of the ship towards the stern. "H-hey! Are we taking off or what?!" Zaid exclaimed above the rattling noise of the bulkheads. "What!" Ebon shrieked, then flung a hoof towards him. "You find a secure place for yourself and Kera and hunker down! This is about as bumpy as it's ever going to get!" "Wait, are you the engineer now?!" Zaid wheezed, hugging Kera close. "M-maybe!" Ebon was already tossing himself into the engine compartment. "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww boogers." Zaid flung open the curtain to the observation room and practically tossed Kera into one of Rainbow's hammocks. Next, he gathered all the pillows from every netted bed and piled them around the filly. "Oh blessed Spark..." Belle sat on her haunches atop the round building's balcony, chewing on the edges of her hooves as she watched two looming buildings soar towards the temple where the Noble Jury was. "Oh please... oh please oh please oh please!" Her voice wavered, on the virge of tears. Thoroughly rain-soaked, Eagle Eye squinted through the howling window. Above the thunder, he heard a high-pitched whistle. Nervously, he wrenched his eyes off the doomed Jury and blinked skyward. Through the swirrling eddies, he spotted two tiny dots—a pair of flailing bodies that plummeted through the storm. He sucked his breath in. "Rainbow...?" "Josho, hang on!" Rainbow Dash finally resorted to coiling her wings at her sides and aiming her body like a living torpedo. She plummeted at a diagonal angle, plowing into Josho's belly with a full-on tackle. "Ooomf!" The unicorn grunted. Rainbow Dash twirled with his weight. She saw the world spin, and in a blink spotted the domed roof of the circular structure. The pegasus hugged her friend tighter and dragged a wing out. She gave the two of them last-second lift, so that they approached the rooftop at a nearly-even angle. Wh-Whud! The two bounced off, flew, came down again, and slid across the water-slick surface. Rainbow gnashed her teeth and grunted from the careening movement. There was little friction, so when the two reached the building's edge, they shot off like cannonballs. Rainbow gasped, helpless to slow their descent. That's when Josho's horn glowed. In desperation, he telekinetically tugged at the first thing that he could reach with his magical grip. It turned out to be the rusted chassis of a crashed zeppelin against the far side of the building's round balcony. The two braked in mid-air like a ball tethered to a rusted pole. Josho's horn started to short out, and Rainbow saw it. With a grunt, she flapped both wings, shoving against the hurricane winds. Before Josho's telekinesis could wear off, she succeeded in shoving the two of them onto the precarious edge of the balcony. "Ooof!" Rainbow Dash grunted as she landed, sprawled out onto the water-soaked ledge. She barely had a moment to breathe when she heard an obnoxiously loud grinding sound. The pegasus looked up to see that the hulking piece of aircraft had cracked down the center from Josho's anchoring tug. Before her ruby eyes, the thing split in two, and a large chunk of rusted metal inevitably plunged off the balcony ledge... and towards them. "Josho, roll!" Rainbow kicked him in the fat flank. The two tumbled in opposite directions, avoiding the grinding chunk of metal by mere inches. With a brief vomit of sparks, the wreck slid past them and plunged violently into the depths below, where it eventually collided with two buildings that were already smashing into each other on account of their converging obelisks. Breathless, Rainbow Dash stumbled up to her hooves and sprinted towards Josho. "You okay?! Speak to me!" Josho hissed, gagged, and curled up. "...Josho?" Rainbow Dash shook his shoulder. "Hrgghghhllllghl!" The stallion hurled, vomiting up a bucketload of rainwater. His eyes rolled back as he let loose a low, sickly grow. "Ledo's scrotum, I hate blind teleports—" "Just hang in there! I'll get you someplace dry—" "Balls to that!" The stallion snarled, shoving at her hoof. "Get your ass to the control room! Save our friends! I didn't throw myself into vomitland for nothing!" Rainbow nodded... then nodded again. "R-right. Right!" She spun and took off in a burst of air, hurling herself down one of the corridors beyond the balcony's edge. "Try not to get washed up!" Josho wheezed, crawling limply towards dry cover. "A little... t-too late..." Ebon panted and panted, rushing from instrument panel to instrument panel in the lavender-glowing engine room. "Come on, Ebon. Come on..." He gulped and trembled, fiddling with a dozen levers every ten seconds. "You've seen Propsy do this a million times! What turns the whole thing on?! What?!" "Scrkkkk! Sailboat boomer?!" Floydien's voice echoed from the nearby intercom. "I'm working on it!" Ebon growled. Floydien stared out the wind-swept top deck of the Noble Jury. At an angle, his red eyes spotted the approach of two massive temples as they converged on the floating building where they were stranded. "Now would be a good time!" the elk throated, his expression wincing. Just then, the temples struck. A crumbling wave of imploding stone rippled towards the Noble Jury. Floydien's cloven hoof slapped a button, shutting the cockpit's rear door to the deafening thunder and wall of destruction. He spun about, hopped the vertical crawlspace, and gripped the controls. "Come on, worthless sailboat! Spark the Nancy! Spark the Nancy!!" "Hey, uh, Ebon?!" Zaid's voice rang down the bottommost corridor as the entire ship shook like the heart of an earthquake. "Now might be a good time to rethink your cooking career!" "Got it!" Ebon shouted through a grinning muzzle. "I found what switches on the skystone!" He clamped his hooves over a lever and gave it a crank. "Hnnnngh!" The lights along the rim of the engine room flickered on and off. "Come on! Hrrrghh!" He yanked and yanked and yanked and— A tongue of flame erupted around the caged tome, then shrunk back into the runic pages. A loud hum erupted through the ship's manaconduits. Up in the cockpit, Floydien saw his instrument panel light up. "The skystone drive...?!" He gritted his teeth. "It's not the steam thrusters, but it'll do!" He shoved a throttle forward. "Hold on to boomer butts!" Sparks splashed across the leftover granite floor as the Noble Jury rushed forward in a scraping burst, outflying the wave of crumbling devastation behind it. The temple lost cohesion, plummeting into the thunderous clouds. As a result, the Noble Jury spat out the far end, launched from the thin space of the collapsing building like a limp bullet from a lopsided gun. When it emerged into open space, the vessel had lost much of its acceleration. It twirled, toppeled, and drifted sideways with chaotically sparkling skystone bits. Then, to add insult to injury, the temples behind it exploded from the cores of their weighted bodies colliding in bulk. Chunks of debris flew outward in every direction, including one massive chunk that struck the broadside of the Jury. CLANKKKK! "Graaaugh!" Floydien shouted, his antlers sparking at random while the heavy impacted jolted him off his hooves. His grip slipped from the controls as the Noble Jury spiraled out of control. Feeling weightless, the elk toppled backwards... and plummeted down the crawlspace. Whud! His body slammed against a ladder... Th-Thwack! and then pinballed off the wall on the other side of the narrow passage. Zaid was leaning over the hammock where he had laid Kera, covering the filly with his trembling body. Thud! A brown figure collapsed like a huge chunk of meat on the bulkhead directly outside the observation room. Zaid spun to look, breathless. "Mr. Floydien...?" The elk lay dead-still, his antlers dim, his limbs limp. Zaid panted, eyes widening. "Elkster?!" He gulped. "Buddy—?!" He could only gasp, for the unpiloted Jury was instantly swept up in a hurricane force gail. Zaid's body rolled away from the hammock and collapsed hard against the opposite bulkhead. "Oh no..." Eagle Eye stammered, his eyes locked on the plummeting image of the Jury as it disappeared in the thundering mess below. "...Ebon..." Bellesmith hyperventilated. Her eyes teared against the wind as a growing grimace consumed the golden contours of her face. "I left her... I... I-I abandoned—" "Bellesmith!" The mare jerked in place, feeling the warm grip of Eagle's hoof on her shoulder. Both ponies looked up. More and more temples collided, their obelisks flinging them into suicidal paths. With each successive explosion, a broader and deadlier array of stones were being shot skyward. Suddenly, a merciless rain of rocks and granite chunks were plummeting their way, accelerated murderously by the hurricane winds of Stratopolis. "Quick!" Eagle Eye shouted, pulling at Belle's forelimbs. "Inside! Run inside—" But it was too late. The rocks rained down, thunderously pelting the balcony of the round building in dozens of different places. Columns shattered. The crashed shells of airships imploded. Rivulets of cracked fissures formed everywhere, spreading the stone platform beneath the ponies until— "Gaaah!" Belle tripped, as did Eagle Eye. Gripping on for dear life, they watched in horror at the ground beneath them split apart, breaking off into the chaotic winds beyond...