Mid-Air Repair
Like most of the city regions in the Lego World, Canterlot City had an airport. It typically wasn’t quite as busy as those in most of the other cities, but it still saw enough air traffic to remain in use. And like any other airport, this one had a control tower, where air traffic controllers would help guide all kinds of aircraft in and out of the city.
Today, there were two people on-duty atop this control tower. One was a guy with dark grey skin and snow white hair. The other was a girl with sky blue skin and hair that consisted of all six colors of the rainbow — Rainbow Dash.
As much as Rainbow Dash enjoyed staying fit and doing all kinds of physical activity outdoors, her true passion was in aviation. Although her ultimate goal in life was to one day join the Wonderbolts Space Fleet, she understood that it would take some time for her to quality for a proper application. Until then, she decided to settle with the only local job that came even close to that, and that was to work the day shift in the control tower.
Rainbow had to admit, there were days when this job could be pretty dull. Most of what she did consisted of monitoring the locations of each aircraft in the area around the city and making sure they followed safety regulations to avoid any disasters. But then there were other days that could get her really excited about this job, and today was about to become one of them.
It started with a call over the radio on Rainbow Dash’s headset. “Mayday! Mayday!” came the urgent distress call. “This is flight 105 from Lego City! We’ve got a serious problem!”
Rainbow Dash quickly responded, “Control here. What’s your status?”
“We’ve just suffered a collision with some wildlife and lost a lot of pieces!” answered the pilot of the aircraft in danger. “An engine is shot, half the roof is gone, and one of the wings is barely hanging on! We’re managing to stay airborne, but we can’t land in this condition, and we’re already low on fuel! Send out some help right away!”
As the pilot on the other end spoke, Rainbow Dash checked the radar screen to locate the current position of the damaged airplane. Once she knew exactly where to find them, she immediately responded, “Copy that! I’m on my way!” She quickly threw off her headset and told her coworker, “Thunderlane! Keep an eye on things, here! I gotta answer a distress call!”
Thunderlane turned back just in time to see Rainbow Dash rush to and descend the fireman’s pole that she had personally built in the middle of the tower, which she used to quickly leave the building so she could answer that distress call. Once his coworker had left, he shook his head and sighed. “Why does she always have to be a hero?” he muttered as he turned his attention back to the console in front of him.
At the bottom of the tower, Rainbow Dash slammed the door open and snatched a skateboard she had left beside it. She tossed the skateboard to the ground and hopped on, allowing her to quickly cross the tarmac towards a nearby group of small buildings — specifically aircraft hangers.
As she arrived at one particular hanger, Rainbow hopped off the skateboard right in front of the door. She grasped the handle at the bottom and pulled up to open the door. The inside of this hanger, as she had personally requested, contained all kinds of various spare parts and pieces. Such an arrangement had proven quite useful for previous emergency repairs, though she had to admit that she had never done one while the plane was still flying.
“Let’s see…” she mumbled to herself. “Damaged engine, missing roof, unsecured wing, and some way to get all of these things up there.” She quickly scanned the many piles of pieces inside the hanger for any ideas. She then smiled as she remembered something she had made not too long ago. “I think it’s time to bring back an old favorite.”
Rainbow Dash leaped into building and quickly started gathering pieces. At the instant she began moving, unknown to her, her body quickly transformed into its half-pony form — pony ears, longer hair at the back, and feathered wings — from when she and her friends had stopped Sunset Shimmer from taking over the city.
As a result of this sudden transformation, Rainbow zoomed around far more quickly than normal, appearing as little more than a rainbow-colored motion blur as she tossed all kinds of Lego pieces out of the hanger. Once she had all of the pieces she needed, she started putting it all together, with her movements now appearing as a miniature rainbow-colored tornado around the pile of pieces.
It was only when Rainbow Dash was finished building, just seconds later, that her motion blur vanished, revealing Rainbow herself and her completed creation. She had built a close replica of that jetpack that she had built in a junkyard on the night of Sunset Shimmer’s defeat, but this one also had a pair of large storage containers built on either side of it, already filled with all of the spare parts she was going to need to fix the damage to that airplane.
When Rainbow decided to take a brief moment to admire her work, she realized something was different — not with her creation, but with herself. It was only now that she noticed she was in her half-pony form for only the second time in her life. “Whoa! How did that happen?” she asked in confusion as she turned back to look at her wings.
After looking at herself in confusion, Rainbow’s gaze fell on her recent creation. She had been so busy — and excited — building that thing that she hadn’t even noticed the transformation. Somehow, it seemed to have happened right at the moment she was inspired to build something. If this was true, then this could unlock many more possibilities.
Rainbow decided to worry about all of that later. Right now, she had to get these spare parts up to the damaged airplane. After glancing back and forth between the jetpack and her wings, she shrugged and decided to go with the jetpack.
Rainbow quickly strapped herself to the front of the jetpack, flipped the controls out to within easy reach, and ignited the overpowered engines. Since this jetpack was carrying some extra cargo, it couldn’t quite accelerate as quickly as the original model, but it was still good enough to get the job done. She manipulated the controls to turn towards the direction she would need to go to reach the distressed plane. Once she was satisfied that everything was ready, she leaned forward and hit the throttle.
In only a matter of minutes, Rainbow Dash and her loaded jetpack arrived at the general area of where that damaged plane had been located. She quickly scanned the surrounding skies, but when she finally spotted the plane she was looking for, she gasped in shock. The damage was even worse than she had imagined. The engine on the right wing was almost completely gone, the roof of nearly the entire fuselage was missing — forcing the passengers to stay firmly in their seats to avoid being flung out — and the left wing, which was vibrating quite visibly, was literally hanging on by just one piece!
Even though Rainbow had brought a lot of spare pieces with her, she didn’t quite have enough to fix all of this. She began to consider prioritizing which repairs would have to be made, but then she noticed her longer-than-normal hair flapping around in the wind. She realized that she was still in her half-pony form, and this gave her an idea.
“Time to put these wings to good use,” stated Rainbow Dash before doing what, to anyone else, would be considered unthinkable: she switched her jetpack to auto-pilot, released the straps holding her to it, and then dropped away. She then spread her wings wide out and quickly started flapping them. Remarkably, she was able to keep up with the airplane in mid-flight. Now that she could move around more freely than she previously could have imagined, she immediately went to work.
As Rainbow Dash once again zoomed around with the appearance of a rainbow motion blur, the first thing she did was re-secure the loose wing with some pieces out of the left container. She quickly followed that up by rebuilding much of the missing engine with some pieces out of the right container, and then used the remaining contents of both containers to seal up the tail half of the opened fuselage. Although the damaged aircraft was now flying much more safely, the repairs were still incomplete by the time the containers were quickly emptied.
This was not a setback for Rainbow Dash, for she knew she still had a supply of Lego pieces. Still moving around within that rainbow motion blur, she began to disassemble the jetpack itself. She used the straps to finish securing the wing of the plane, finished building the engine with the controls and the power brick, and finally used the remaining pieces to patch up all of the remaining holes in the fuselage. She held the last piece over her head, flew over to the final hole, and dropped down through that hole, sealing it up with that last piece as she landed inside the plane.
Now that she was safely inside the fully repaired airplane, Rainbow Dash excitedly bragged, “No plan? No problem! That’s how I improvise, Rainbow Dash style!” As soon as she finished saying that, all of the pony alterations to her body suddenly vanished, returning her to a regular minifig.
Rainbow glanced back in shock at where her wings used to be and muttered, “Whoa! Good thing I decided to hitch a ride.” With those wings gone, she would have just dropped out of the sky upon completing those repairs, had she not decided to hop inside the plane. It was definitely something she would have to keep in mind, next time.
Now that the danger had been resolved, Rainbow decided to head forward through the plane to speak with the pilot. Once she arrived in the cockpit, the pilot turned back to her and smiled. “Thank you so much for helping us!” he praised.
“Just doing my job,” responded Rainbow Dash. She grinned and pointed proudly to herself as she added, “The awesome way!” As much as she enjoyed basking in the glory of being a hero, there was still a serious issue she had to deal with. She relaxed her stance and asked, “So, uh, what caused all of that damage?”
The pilot paled noticeably at the inquiry. He grinned nervously as he looked up at Rainbow and weakly replied, “Uh… would you believe a flock of pterosaurs?”
Rainbow glared at the pilot. She quietly asked, “You were flying over Dinosaur Island, weren’t you?”
The pilot failed to relax his nervousness as he replied, “It, uh, seemed like a good way to save time and fuel.”
Rainbow Dash sighed and facepalmed. At least he’s being honest, she thought. She then snatched the headset off of the pilot and put them on herself. “Canterlot, this is Rainbow Dash on flight 105 from Lego City,” she spoke into the radio. “I’ve successfully completed all repairs, and we should be due to land safely at any moment.”
On the other side of the radio, she heard Thunderlane respond, “Copy that. That’s good to hear. Any word on what caused that damage?”
Rainbow glared at the pilot again as she responded, “Let’s just say there’s a reason why Dinosaur Island is designated a no-fly zone.”
The pilot could only give a guilty smile in response.
Rainbow listened to Thunderlane’s response. Once he was finished, she nodded and replied, “Copy that.” She removed the headset as she turned her attention to the pilot and stated, “As soon as we land, you’re grounded until further notice.”
“Am I going to lose my license over this?” asked the pilot with a slight whimper.
Rainbow Dash always had a bit of a daredevil attitude. Although it had allowed her to make such a risky repair job in mid-flight, it was also the reason she worked in flight control instead of being a pilot, herself. In response to the pilot’s question, she scoffed and tossed the headset back to him before muttering, “Welcome to my world.”