Chapter 77 - Captain Awesome
Living in the Everfree Forest throughout her whole life would have hindered her opportunities to hone her flight skills. Living amongst birds who often found their babies falling off trees compelled her to take flight to save their younglings, and the passing years allowed her flight abilities become passable. At first, it was hard to fly through the trees without having to break through the canopy, but she eventually mastered cramped-quarters flying. Breakneck speed was not needed in her forest home.
Now her wings beat furiously as she sped back to the igloo encampment where the thick column of wind had trapped her friends. She didn't care if she was the fastest, but she had to make it, and eventually she did. But Fluttershy could go no further. The tornado column was too strong to penetrate, even if she was twice or ten times the Fluttershy. Her panic rendered her almost numb at the quandary before her eyes. Block by block, the gale-force winds whittled Rarity's igloo mansion down to two floors. Even with Pinkie suddenly flying out of the window and hanging on a literal thread from Rarity's draperies barely appeared comedic.
The feathers in her wings tingled again. The sky flashed, and Fluttershy sped backwards to avoid a lightning bolt. She thought it would disappear like normal lightning, but it whipped back around for another strike at the fleeing yellow pegasus.
She backed away into a something bulky--somepony bulky. Behind her, a muscular white stallion with a buzzcut blonde mane and red eyes snorted down upon her. She knew not how he could keep his bulk airborne with such tiny wings. When Fluttershy tried flying away from him, two more blue-armored pegasii descended to obstruct her escape. One was a dark gray stallion with a thundercloud on his flank, and the other was green-maned mare with three raindrops on hers.
"Um, are you the ponies, er, pegasii who made this column of wind?" she asked them.
They answered her with a cold stare.
"If you don't mind, do you think you can stop doing what you are doing? My friends are in there, and I don't think they are enjoying it."
The three pegasii soldiers nodded to one another before Fluttershy heard a loud battle cry. The sudden rush of air spun her around, and saw the bulk of the white stallion's massive shoulder ramming towards her. The yellow pegasus squeaked, and as she snapped her eyes shut, she felt a warm glow on her chest. She felt a powerful boom before her, and she opened her eyes to see the white and muscular pegasus hurtling far off towards the western horizon as if a massive truck struck him.
She looked down and saw one of her Butterfly Stars pinned on her chest.
"I'M SORRY!" Fluttershy yelled at her distant and defeated opponent. "Eep!"
The remaining pegasii stallion formed a whip of lighting from his hooves that he hurled at Fluttershy, who narrowly dodged it only to encounter rain drops that fired upon her like piercing bullets. The green-maned warrior mare chased after Fluttershy down to the ground, and then punched another stream of raindrop bullets. Fluttershy landed on the snow and once more she cowered and curled up in a ball. Yet her own Element of Empathy sensed her need for survival. It pinned a Butterfly Star on the snow, and then another on the warrior mare firing the raindrop bullets. It happened so fast that nopony saw the Element's magic being applied to both target and recipient. Immediately after the warrior mare fired, her entire body suddenly became bruised and her feathers shot apart.
Oh no. She didn't intend for her Element to work this way. Fluttershy wanted to live, but not at the expense of another pony's safety. The green-maned mare's body lay ruined on the snow bleeding, but still alive. Fluttershy wanted to trot over and dress her wounds, but the remaining pegasii warrior hurled his lightning whip at her once more. So far, she only dodged his attacks narrowly, but she did not want to continue. She did not want to get hurt, and she did not want to hurt him. The teleorb Ingrid gave her was still in her faux-mink coat pocket. She could summon help and end everything here and now, but instead she decided to stand her ground and face up to the lightning-wielding warrior.
"STOP FIGHTING!"
Her burst of spiritual pressure froze the pegasus stallion in midair, and his lightning whip disintegrated. He trembled not from the winds or from her stare, but his shakes soon became worse when a pair of armored stallions, one dark brown and one tan, emerged from behind from a cloud of transparent mist. The dark brown one had a platinum blonde mane and had something like a dumb-bell as his Heaven's Insignia. Almost true to the mark on his flank, he wielded a long ice lance with a club at the end. The tan one had a brown mane, and he had what looked to be a trio of orange balls as his Insignia.
"What are you doing down there, Thunderlane?" asked the dumb-bell stallion. "You know the law of our Cloudland: a pegasii warrior never flies from battle."
"Captain D-B!" cried the dark gray pegasus stallion. "I wasn't--"
"You were thinking of doing it, weren't you? Hoops, make sure he doesn't get away."
The Hoops stallion summoned a large ball of ice between his hooves, and then slam-dunked it onto Thunderlane, whose ruined body crashed onto the snowfields below. The blood coloring the ground and his mangled wings was almost too much for Fluttershy to stomach, but it gave her courage to face up to her two aggressors.
"Why did you do that?" she asked. "He was your comrade!"
"The punishment of cowardice is death," said D-B. "Now stand aside you pretty little mare. We'll take care of the losers before we take care of you."
"Losers? You mean these three who attacked me? No, I won't let you hurt them!"
"Hurt them? After they tried to attack you? Honestly, I don't get pacifists like you."
"Pacifists such as you are the worst," said Hoops. "We do much more to them than clipping their wings."
"Just for that, we'll make sure we'll kill you first in the most dishonorable way possible. Hoops, let's go!"
The two pegasii dove down with ice lance and ice ball in tow, and they continued to do so when Fluttershy had purposely pinned the Butterfly Stars on their bodies. Then to her disappointment, they stopped just a few feet above and before her, and carefully looked upon her body and their bodies.
"Yo, dude," said Hoops. "We've been marked."
"I guess there's no other way," said D-B. "Hoops my friend, it's nice knowing you."
"Wait, no!"
D-B swung his icy club-lance straight into his comrade's being, and Fluttershy found herself receiving the all the brunt of the damage of he should have received. The force of the damage threw her backwards off her hooves, and upon landing, she coughed up blood as she rose back to her hooves. Her tormentors laughed at her. They called her a cowardly klutz, and then spat on her. Still, she was not willing to let them get away after hurting their own comrades as well as, by all assumptions, trapping her friends in a thick column of wind. She took a deep breath, and she released the Butterfly Star off her body. However, the ones on D-B and Hoops remained.
She did not expect them to be blind to her tactics, but she didn't care either way. The pegasii stallions had stopped laughing moments ago, and looked at one another in silence. A slight motion from their heads and their forelegs caused them to flinch as if they were stung by bees. The more they moved, the more they were stung. Eventually they purposely froze in their places barely beating their wings in the frosty of the autumn winds. Fluttershy had them right where she wanted them. She had to thank Twilight's teachings about gas molecules, upon which she used her ability to apply them on every air particle surrounding D-B and Hoops.
"Clever girl," said D-B, "but you might want to consider releasing us when we show you this."
D-B raised his free hoof to summon from a cloud of mist a third armored pegasus stallion warrior with three brownish ovals as his Heaven's Insignia on each of his gray flanks. To Fluttershy's horror, the stallion held Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Angel Bunny between his forelegs. Even with Angel repeatedly gnawing on his hoof until it became red, the latest stallion remained unfazed.
"Fluttershy, don't worry about us!" Apple Bloom cried.
"Kick their flanks, Fluttershy!" cried Sweetie Belle.
"You forced our hoof, mare," said D-B. "Release your magic or my brother-in-arms Score will drop-kick these fillies and your little rabbit into the snow."
How could she be so stupid? She shouldn't have left the girls alone, or at the very least whipped the Quartz Sentinels to drive them away from the battle. Regardless, they were here in the hooves of the enemy, and there was no creative plan she could think of to get out of this situation. Despite Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle pleading for her to not give up, she did it anyway. The Butterfly Stars vanished off the two pegasii stallions and the nearby air particles. Her Element reverted to its necklace state that she immediately dropped on the snow.
"There," she said. "I released my magic. Will you let them go?"
"You should have thought about defeating us instead of surrendering," smiled D-B. "A pegasii warrior shows no mercy for the weak and takes every advantage to defeat an enemy. But don't worry. We'll let them go."
In one mighty flap, Score soared up into the heavens with the girls and the rabbit in tow. Fluttershy clumsily took off after him with no other pony behind her. Instead, D-B and Hoops laughed as their compatriot ascended higher and higher. Despite her best efforts, Fluttershy could not catch up. The winds were too strong. The air was too cold. Her body was still weak from the reverse-blow she received from D-B. She couldn't fight or fly fast enough, and her hoof was steadily gravitating towards her coat pocket that contained the only Tele-orb that could solve her situation. Fluttershy had no choice. She had to save the girls at all costs by summoning a highly destructive force, but she was too late. A shadow crashed down to earth, and she expected the worst.
However, the body on the ground was not that of the girls or a white rabbit. It was Score's plump body with twisted wings, chipped teeth, and a goofy wince frozen on his face. His two compatriots barely moved when a rainbow blur flew past them and then uppercut Hoops across the sky. The same rainbow blur dove down, shot up, and launched a devastating kick on a well-placed cloud, sending out a lightning bolt that fried D-B unconscious and caused him to fall.
Who? Who was this dashing pegasus rescuing her? And what of the girls and Angel? As it turned out, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Angel precariously balanced themselves on a hovering air-scooter piloted by a deep orange pegasus filly with who had no Heaven's Insignia on her flank.
Then Fluttershy turned and saw her: a blue pegasus with the image of a white cloud and a rainbow blotted on her flank. Even just by hovering before Fluttershy she exuded arrogant confidence coupled with a sharp grin on her face and pointed shades. Her rainbow-hued mane and tail fluttered handsomely in the breeze, leaving Fluttershy paralyzed in awe.
"Rainbow Dash!" cried the pegasus filly on the aeroscooter. "The wind!"
"Never fear, Scoots," said the blue pegasus. "I'll knock that tornado away in ten seconds flat. Hold onto to these, babe."
Rainbow Dash transferred the weight of her personality onto Fluttershy's hooves in the form of her cool shades, and even then the blue pegasus had enough spunk to dive head-first into the tornado column. She spread her rainbow streaks across the winds, and true to her word, she destroyed the column in ten seconds in the most spectacular fashion by far. A booming explosion of rainbow radiated from above the igloo mansion, which had now been reduced to one floor. Clouds rippled away the epicenter to reveal a small cloudship equipped with a downward wind cannon, which was now sinking in the air and expelling all its fleeing pegasii passengers. Rainbow Dash landed on the snow just as the ruined vessel crashed in the ground, and she was too cool to look back as the ship's final explosion filled the background.
Fluttershy soon touched down on the ground alongside the filly-driven aeroscooter and immediately found her friends huddled in what remained of Rarity's enhanced igloo mansion. The very same parlor room where their fated day had started, and one by one the mares and their animal companions cautiously stepped outside to meet their rainbow-maned savior who had extended her ear out in anticipation of the glowing praise she expected to receive. Only the deep-orange filly pegasus in the aeroscooter enthusiastically clapped her hooves for Rainbow Dash.
"No, no," said the blue pegasus. "No need to thank me. I'm just an average but awesome mare looking out for out cute babes and cute guys."
"We appreciate it," said Applejack, "but dontcha think we should save the thanks for later?"
"What for?"
"For the armada of cloudships right behind us."
Applejack might be an earth pony, but her eagle eyes spotted a fleet of pegasii cloudships and cloudskiffs breaking through the gray cloud layers with their giant aero-oars slowly undulating in their descent. Their crew flew out like a hornets prepared for war, and their Atmos Cannons pointed directly down towards the group of traveling ponies. While everypony froze in fear, the blue pegasus kept her composure, and looked upon the armada with a half-hearted frown.
"Seriously?" asked Rainbow Dash. "That's it?"
"That's it?" asked Twilight Sparkle. "That's about a hundred cloudships over there!"
"Only a hundred, no big deal" said Rainbow Dash before she pressed the tip of her hoof on her earpiece. "Helmsmare Cherry Berry--bring the Spitfire down and fire the Bass Cannon!"
Above them, another airship appeared, but the way it manifested was not done through pegasii Atmos technology. One by one, the bottom hull's many carapace panels flickered in the light before it appeared black solid. Soon, the full form of the Spitfire revealed itself to be a windswept design unlike that of Gaea or Pegasopolis. It wasn't ugly, but it wasn't pretty either. Its simple and rugged design look and the blue pegasus's Heaven's Insignia prominently emblazoned its front hull made it look badass.
The fore of the airship dropped open to reveal itself to be an integrated cannon weapon. It started glow blue deep inside its lighted barrel, producing a repetitious "wub" sound faster and faster until produced a loud boom that nearly shattered ears and ice. A spiral blast of blue energy smashed upon the Pegasopolis armada, and in only needed to hit one cloudship to create a "wubbing" chain-reaction that ignited the other cloudships like fireworks. Rainbow Dash decided to accentuate her easy triumph by allowing the pegasus filly to adorn her back with a lavender cape and retrieved her sunglasses from Fluttershy's hooves.
"A hundred cloudships or a thousand," said Rainbow Dash as the pegasus filly waved a flag of rainbow behind. "I can take them all on, for I'm Captain Rainbow Dash of the Chroma Pirates, savior of all the pretty mares and handsome stallions."
"Wait," said Applejack. "You're the dreaded pirate captain of the Chroma Pirates?"
"Isn't that what I just said?"
"I'm just clarifyin'. Can you excuse us? We, uh, need to do a quick huddle to come up with some words of praise for your captainess."
"Don't take too long. This pegasus and her crew needs to be on the go for their next plunder."
Applejack kept her eyes on the blue pegasus and her loyal paige as she led her the group off to the side step by step. It didn't seem like Rainbow Dash was planning anything devious. She was still flexing and posing as the orange pegasus filly snapped pictures from the camera she pulled out from her saddlebag.
"Not sure if we can trust her," whispered Applejack from within the huddle.
"I agree," said Rarity. "I mean, that airship she has looks like some kind of insect. It smells too."
"Well, I think she's brave," said Fluttershy.
"Brave with a reason," said Applejack. "I have heard about the Chroma Pirates. Rogues they are, rulers of the skies above No Mare's Land and in-between. The Captain likes to fancy herself like a robber-king who steals for her ego. I hear she robbed President-Adviser Ace's train convoy of every mare and left all the gold alone."
"Dash is a Pirate King?" asked Pinkie Pie. "NO! MY DREAMS HAVE BEEN DASHED!"
"Shh!" Twilight hissed. "Applejack, I admit I am wary of her as well, but this is the only chance we have to get to Pegasopolis."
"It is the only chance," said Rainbow Dash.
Fluttershy had taken her eyes off Rainbow Dash the moment she got into the huddle, and she assumed Applejack or some other pony kept their eyes on her. Yet even the pegasus realized too late the speed of the blue pegasus, who appeared almost in a blink above the mares and the baby dragon with a sly grin.
"So you wanna get to Pegasoplis, right?" Dash asked. "If that's not a crazy plan, I don't know what is, but it's crazy enough to keep me interested. Sure, I'll help you cuties out. But first, all of you have to earn my loyalty, and you can start by joining my crew."
"Join your crew?" asked Applejack. "I may be rebel, but I ain't no--"
"We'd be honored to join your crew, Captain," Twilight bowed.
"Babe, you can call me Rainbow Dash, Rainbow, or just Dash," said the blue pegasus.
"Or Pirate King?" asked Pinkie Pie.
"I don't ever recall giving myself the title 'Pirate King', but it has a cool ring to it."
"Ah, I wanted to be a Pirate King all my life."
"Hey, don't feel bad. You can be my Pirate Queen."
"I can? Yippie! I won't let you down Dashie! As for you landlubbers here, swear your loyalty to the Pirate King!"
"Look, Pinkie," said Twilight with a hint of a groan. "There's no need to--"
"Swear it! With a Pinkie Swear! A Pinkie Promise Swear!"
The mares, the dragon, and even their animal friends carefully performed their Pinkie Promise in a frighteningly perfect unison. The absurdness of the pledge in both words and action caused dashing captain to chuckle, and she humorously mimicked it for whatever promise she had in mind.
From then on, Pinkie Pie bounced to the blue pegasus and latched on to her like glue. The airship known as the Spitfire lowered its rear before all to open its loading hatch. Even at idle, its engines continued to emanate its low "wub" sounds. Fluttershy had thought Rarity was exaggerating about the airship's smell, but already it had a unique scent. It wasn't outright sickening, but if she allowed it, the strange smell would make her throw up.
It seemed that the Crystal Empire or their own entourage wasn't the only ones to have a mixed-race culture. Two grayish pegasii had flown out to assist their Earthian compatriots in loading the Spitfire with Fluttershy and her friends' luggage. This was going to take a while given the amount Rarity had packed and the fact many of it had been scattered all over the snow.
However, the yellow pegasus's thoughts remained preoccupied at the bodies of her defeated enemies within her vicinity. Nopony was helping them, and she tiphooved towards the blue captain as two beautiful twin earth mares of pink and blue walked alongside her.
"Um, Miss Rainbow Dash," squeaked Fluttershy. "Do you think we can take the six pegasii who attacked me onboard?"
"Are you out of your mind?" asked one of the twins, the pink one. "The Captain has neither the time nor the resources of taking prisoners."
"Please? Even if they are the enemy, they're hurt, and I don't want their deaths to weigh on me."
"Maybe if you haven't realized, but the Captain had tried many times to convince her brethren to join her crew. A few escaped, and many more committed suicide in shame. She cannot have that weighing her consciousness more than it already has."
"Aloe," sighed Dash, "Lotus--contact the doctor and get a medical team down here to recover these six pegasii."
"Captain," said the other twin, the blue one. "Surely you have a reason for accepting her mad request."
"Oh, I have a reason: this mare here is cute."