//------------------------------//
// Zaid Spins You Right Round 
// Story: Urohringr 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

	Struggling to catch his breath, Ebon Mane trudged out of the Noble Jury's engine room and limped through navigation.  He had to hop over a flood of books and maps that had fallen off their various shelves from the ship's numerous rolls.  At last, he made it to the base of the vertical crawlspace right before the observation room.

"Floydien!"  As the ship veered at a slight angle with regular turbulence, the earth pony knelt low and stirred the elk's upper body.  "Mr. Floydien, say something!  Anything!  'Spit this' and 'spit that!'  Come on!"

The elk lay silent, his antlers dim and his limbs still.

"Nnnngh..."  Ebon hissed through clenched teeth.  "Darn it... darn it!"  He leaned over, pressing an ear to Floydien's chest.  After a few blinks, he exhaled with relief.  Nevertheless, he sat up and muttered in a low tone, "He's out cold.  Worst timing, too..."

"Scrkkkk!"  The intercom in the observation room crackled to life.  "Where the heck are ya, Burgundbro?  Did the engine room blow up or something?!"

With a gasping breath, Ebon tripped over Floydien, floundered through the doorway, an entered the gray-lit chamber.  The bubbled windows splashed refracted light all over his body from the waves of rain pelting against the glass.  "Gnnngh!"  Lunging forward, he slapped his hoof towards an intercom hanging high along a bulkhead.  "Wish I was flippin' taller... or had wings."  At last, his hoof made contact.  "Hello?!  Zaid?!"

"Hey!  You're alive!  Zippo!  Where in the heck are you?"

"Uhm... the observation room!" Ebon shouted.  The stallion stared pensively out the windows, watching as waves and waves of obelisks and temple debris streaked past the port and starboard sides of the cruising manaship.  "How'd you get us flying even?!  That's incredible—"

"Crkkk!  Never mind that crap!  Check on Little Comatose Annie!"

"Huh?!"

"Kera!"  Zaid's voice barked.  "Is the little squirt still squirting?"

Ebon rushed towards a thick hammock.  His eyes bulged, for the thing had twisted around itself four times.  Nervous, he unraveled the thing and spread the pillows piled within.  Kera's limp figure lay inside.  Her nostrils flared while her eyes twitched somewhat.

He exhaled with, "She's okay!"  A gulp, and then, "As okay as ever, I guess."

"Hot damn!  I told Bellesmith I'd kinda-sorta keep her alive.  I'd hate for my track record as a nanny to be ruined on day one."

"Zaid, I... I think Mr. Floyd is hurt badly," Ebon said, glancing nervously at the elk as the ship continued its speeding course.  "It's hard to tell, exactly.  He's lying dead as a doornail."

"But is he deader than a doornail?  Or, y'know, dead—dead?"

"No, thank goodness!"  Ebon nodded, then trotted out to shout up the crawlspace.  "And thank goodness you took the controls of the ship!"

"Yeah, well, don't thank me yet!" Zaid's clear voice shouted down.





The stallion tilted his sweating face up towards the hurricane mess beyond.  He winced, having to jerk the controls slightly left and right to avoid bits of floating and wind-blown debris along his cyclonic path.

"We're caught in a crazy-ass circle!  It's taking all of my concentration just to avoid crashing into something!"

"Well, how about getting us out of this 'crazy-ass circle?'"

"Are you kidding me?!" Zaid shouted once more over his shoulder.  "I was never allowed to pilot any of the Herald's ships!  All I know from airshipping is from watching other ponies do it—and only half the times sober!"

"Well, what can you do?!"

"Keep us alive by flying at this regular velocity!"  Zaid exclaimed.  "Landing on one of the surviving temples?  That's a whole 'nother situation altogether.  I mean, I could try, but odds are we'd all blow chunks out our stomach after the hulls of Floydien's Nancy Jane blow shrapnel chunks into us!"

"And if we slow down..."

"...then we become mince meat in these winds!  I dunno how much you can see from the observation room, but this is like trying to swim a fly—"  He had to grunt and jerk the controllers in time to avoid a flying piece of a shattered airship.  With a shudder, he exhaled, "—through an alphabet soup of death!"

"Well, with Floydien down for the count and the others unaccounted for—"

"Look, all I can do right now is keep us in one piece!" Zaid exclaimed.  "Whatever went down in that doom-and-gloom temple, we owe it to the rest of the Jurists to keep our one single piece of transportation intact!  Maybe—I dunno—they can shut the magic wind muscle down from the inside out or something!  Whatever the case, I'm sure it's going to involve Rainbow Dash and a whole lot of flank kicking!"

"What if she's dead?!"

"Then, buddy, I hope you can cook a good last meal."





Ebon Mane sighed, bowing his head towards the floor of the crawlspace where Floydien lay.

"Right... read you loud and clear," the earth pony mumbled.

"I'd rather you read Rainbow Dash loud and clear!" Zaid's voice rang down.  "I've got my hooves full!  I need you to—"

"Keep an eye on the Engine Room?"

"You've been around Blondie long enough to know a lick of sense in that department, sure, but couldja at least try spamming our friends' sound stones?"

Ebon nodded and galloped briskly back towards the stern while the ship veered and rattled. "On it!"

"Try and get them to respond!" Zaid's voice rang.  "I'd give everything to know that they're still sexy!  Also alive!  But mostly the sexy part!"

Meanwhile, Ebon scrambled his way back into the engine room.  Keeping an eye on the flickering lavender tome, he slapped a hoof over Props' communications array and spoke into the quivering mic.  "Rainbow Dash!  Pilate!  Josho!  Is anypony there?!"  He fidgeted, bit his lip, the stammered, "Eagle Eye?  If you can hear me... we'd really like to hear back from you right now..."





The Noble Jury glided in and out of cloud cover, hurling itself against the howling winds.

Josho saw this from a distance as he struggled to slide his obese self down the sloped rooftop of the circular building.

"Hey..."  He waved his forelimb.  "Hey!"  He waved both legs.  "Heeeeeeeeeey!  Crack a window and take a look, ya melon fudges!  We need some pick-ups!"

The stallion's cries were left unheard.  The familiar skystone ship blurred on, stuck in its clockwise rotation as it disappeared beyond the frames of half-destroyed temples and obelisks..

"Hrnnngh..."  Josho's nostrils flared.  Using his shotgun like a staff, he slid himself the rest of the way down the domed roof.  "I swear, I need an airbag for how many dayum times my life hits the bedrock of Hell."

Something soared straight past him, too quiet to be a granite shard, too light to be a normal pony.  Josho heard the flitting of gossamer wings, and then wind once more.

He paused, looking up the roof from which he came.  Rain pelted his coat, sending rivulets of water dribbling off his horn and muzzle.

After a sputtering breath, he returned to his task.  "One of these days, I wanna have a death-defying adventure at a beach resort."  And, with a grunt, he jumped down to the rubble-strewn balcony below.