***Thursday, Day 13, afternoon***
“We’re coming in too fast! This thing is falling apart!”
“It’ll hold.”
“We’re not gonna make it!”
“We’ll make it.”
“Pull up! Pull up!”
*CRASH*
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Blue asks sardonically.
The rest of the group groans as we pick ourselves up from the landing made by our rainbow-maned pilot. The inside of the cabin where we took shelter looking like a tornado hit it and us feeling like it.
While the rest of us are recovering, the female pegasus in question lowers the gangplank down to the grassy landing area below us and calls over her shoulder, “Hey, I got us here and in the right spot didn’t I?”
In one piece would have been a nice bonus…
Once the group and I get to the stability of the ground, I turn and take a look at the ship to see the damage. The ship itself seems mostly intact, well the top half anyway. The bottom half was mostly scraped but the four hoof deep trench it was sitting in was probably the most pressing issue. The others notice this and we have one of those moments where we are all thinking the same thing as we look over at her simultaneously raising our eyebrows at the grounded vehicle.
Rainbow puts her hooves up defensively, “Hey, you guys were trusted with the ship same as I was, you’re just as responsible for this as I am.”
Oh really?
I put on stereotypical Canterlot voice and say with a completely straight face, “Miss Dash, I’m afraid you are mistaken. Fluttershy and I are simply bystanders who happened to stumble across your… less than graceful touchdown. The consequences of this landing rest completely upon your shoulders.”
Everypony simply stares at me as I stare into the space behind Rainbow until I can’t take it anymore and let a smirk cross my face. I quickly lose my serious face and start chuckling to myself with the others who are laughing more at Rainbow’s astonished face than my performance. We laugh for a short time, then go grab all of our personal items.
As we head out for the castle a short walk away from our “parking” spot, we notice the local upper class ponies giving us some odd looks, or rather, an odd lack of looks.
Blue notices the latest pony to glance at us, hold his nose up then walk away and asks, “How come they’re avoiding looking at us?”
I take a moment to think about it and answer, “Judging from when I lived here, I’d say they are disgusted by the fact that we stroll around town daring to not care that we look like we just came back from a fight and carrying luggage like we can’t afford a taxi. The very upper class that we are walking through now tends to be very… biased, against those who do not meet their standards. I find it best to take a page out of their book, and ignore them.”
Volt gets a thoughtful look on his face before sticking his nose up so far in the air that he can’t see where he is going, then saying, “Well then, let us be off down the street, or avenue, if you will. Also if one of you ruffians would be so kind as to tell me before I run into something as I am clearly too important to need to look for myself.”
That gets a much better round of chuckles than my performance did.
Gotta love mocking nobles, most are too stuck up to even acknowledge that you’re doing it.
We continue on our way to meet Princess Celestia, Volt continuing to mock the nobles on the way with more “if you will” statements. While funny at first these get old fairly quickly, which we try to stress to him yet he continues nonetheless.
As we arrive at the main wall of the castle Volt takes one last jibe at the populace, “Well then here we are at the giant stone building, or castle, if you will.” He ducks the punch Hydro throws his way. “Hah! You mis-“
*Pow*
I look over at Volt who is now rubbing his now sore cheek, “Volt, you have to learn to be on the lookout for follow-ups, both physical and verbal.” Hydro smirks as he removes a piece of cloth that came off Volt when he smacked him.
We let Twilight, as the one with most prior castle experiences, do the talking with the guards. Soon enough we find ourselves passing through the golden doors to the throne room. Inside, Princess Celestia sits on her throne and the other, which I assume to be Princess Luna’s, is unoccupied. The girls all calmly walk toward the Princess as the guys and I make our way more slowly, the slight hesitance in our steps showing our nervousness at meeting one of our rulers.
As the girls finish greeting the princess and the guys and I are still bowing, we here her speak, “Rise my little ponies.” We do so. “So, tell me what happened.”
We each end up narrating a part of the tale to her highness as we give her the more abridged version of the story we had told Blue’s parents. As we reach the end of the tale, a side of her mouth twitches in amusement when we recount how the final master plan was to simply blow Fluffers up, followed by a full smile showing how pleased she was.
She straightens up from the more relaxed posture she had during the story and beams down at us as she speaks again, “Well done everypony, without all of you, Fluffers would have only grown in strength. Your actions have saved many ponies their homes and possibly their lives.” She clears her throat softly. “*Ahem* Now, given the short notice of both the mission and its conclusion, I hope you all understand why we can’t have a full ceremony to celebrate.” We all nod our heads in agreement.
To be perfectly honest I prefer the small gathering.
Princess Celestia turns to one of her guards near the door, “Atom, please go retrieve the reward for these ponies.” The guard, Atom, leaves the room and comes back in about a minute carrying some bags on his back. As he approaches us I start to hear the sound of clinking coming from the bags in question. Atom sets them on the floor to Celestia’s right, salutes, and goes back to his post.
The Princess starts talking in what sounds like her official voice, “I, Princess Celestia, hereby grant the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, as well as the ponies Rhino, Hydro Pump, Voltage Surge, and Blue Breeze, a reward of 1,500 bits each, plus expenses, for aiding Equestria by defeating the threat known as Fluffers.” She levitates a bag onto each of our backs.
We all bow our heads again as she continues in a more playful tone, “Oh and one more thing, in each of your bags there are train tickets back to Ponyville, the train leaves in approximately… 15 minutes. My apologies for the slight rush but you arrived sooner than I expected so we got you the earliest train.”
What!? That’s barely enough time to get there if we run!
The others have similar looks of shock on their faces as our next move sinks in.
***
Fifteen minutes and an entire city later we find ourselves catching our breath in our seats as the train pulls out of the station. We had barely made it after saying our hasty goodbyes to a chuckling Princess of the Day and running across town carrying our things. Luckily, it seems not many ponies have to go to Ponyville on Thursday afternoons so we had the car to ourselves.
As we sit around in the seats near each other, Blue poses a question, “So, what’s Ponyville like anyway? I really only decided to live there for the closeness to the Everfree.”
Blue had unknowingly unleashed the pink one, “Oh, oh, it’s my favorite town! I mean sure Canterlot has the castle and all those fancy ponies, but Ponyville has lots of things like Sweet Apple Acres, Quills and Sofa, the library…” Pinkie lists off a list of places that would have humbled a tour guide. “… and then there’s Sugarcube Corner where-GASP! You’re going to be new in town!”
Blue, who had slowly edged away from Pinkie like the rest of us though to a further degree, asks, “What about it?”
Pinkie just stares at him, “You’ll see…” She then grabs her bag and bounces a few seats down and starts digging into it for Celestia knows what, but I could have sworn I heard a trombone at one point.
Everypony except Blue shrugs off Pinkie’s behavior, he then leans towards us and asks, “Ok, so can you guys tell me what Ponyville is like?”
I summarize, “Basically: nice small town full of nice ponies with enough surprises to keep life interesting.”
Hydro and Volt nod in agreement.
We sit there and chat a bit until Rarity pops her head over the seat at us, “Oh by the way darlings, I meant to ask, did you have any plans for your reward money?”
All us guys look at each other before turning to her and saying simultaneously, “Rent.”
Our unintentionally coordinated response gains another group chuckle as we zip off towards home.
It'll be good to finally be back.