My Little Engineer

by Soren Mercer

Test Flight

“What do you want from me?” Twilight Sparkle demanded as she fought to free herself from her captors. She’d been bound upon her capture by the griffon mercenaries working for a small band of ponies hidden away in the Everfree Forest. She’d been ambushed a couple hours back when she wanted to run back to her castle to pick up more equipment and was now sitting in a filthy tent somewhere in the wilds of the Everfree.

“We want what you know, Princess.” the mercenary bird sneered before backhanding her across the muzzle. “We know you’ve been spending time at that crashed space ship. My employers want everything you know for getting off planet.”

“Well they’ll get nothing! I know nothing!” Twilight announced but winced at the action of moving her jaw where the bird had hit her. Obviously she’d tried to magic herself out of the situation but the birds had used some kind of Zebrican anti-magic concoction to block the movement of her magic, leaving her feeling empty within. “The pilot won’t let me learn anything from him! You should’ve grabbed Princess Luna, she’s been spending the most time around him!”

“Princess Luna, hmm?” the merc smirked and tapped a claw to his beak. “I’ll remember that, might be helpful to my employers. What else you got? How about weaknesses? How do we kill that alien and take his tech?”

“I’ll never tell you! You’ll never kill him, he’s got too much technology working against you that the moment you even see a glistening reflection from his helmet, you’re already dead.” Twilight hissed back with a smirk on her face. She knew that even though she’d just met the human, and ultimately was bluffing with her threats, he’d come to save her. Eventually.

Grinning back and drawing a massive broadsword from his back to hold it to the purple Princess’s neck, “There’s no creature more powerful than we are. We’ve taken down dragons because our employer wanted it’s testicles.”

This last comment confused Twilight for a minute before she asked, “Why did they want the dragon’s testicles?”

“I dunno, was talking about collecting them to make a wish or something. Wasn’t important so I didn’t ask.” the merc shrugged back, having been disarmed and put his weapon away to back away from Twilight. “I tell you what, I know you know more so I‘ll give you some initiative to talk. The more useful information you give, the more food you get in return.” the merc grinned back over his shoulder, the steel helmet he wore glinting in the lamplight and making his face become shrouded in shadows to add to the sinister aura around him.

“You can’t be serious?” Twilight gasped and did her best to sit up. “But I really don’t know anything! Honest!”

“Sorry, but if we had Applejack, I’d be more inclined to believe you. Element of Honesty and all that crap.” the griffon sighed and waved goodbye as he exited the tent, letting out minimal amounts of sunlight into the tent before the flaps closed up again.

“Somepony, please help me…” Twilight sighed and let herself collapse onto her side, helpless.

---

“There’s no way that’ll fly.” Luna smirked as she, her sister and Sunset all stood around the just finished smaller craft with the black suit in his Pilot-class suit and frame.

“I wouldn’t be so hesitant, Princess. If the suit built the thing to fly, then I believe it’ll fly.” Sunset remarked, turning to face her elder head on. “I don’t think he’d build something that didn’t work. I'm more curious about how you managed to build it."

"The welder I used has an internal memory of how each component go into a part and worked with the image to tell me how to build it. It was very intuitive." Luna explained as the suit approached the craft and began looking it over before connecting a wire from his arm to the control panel on the thing on the side of the craft that looked like the smaller version of the boxy-circular things on the main ship. The three weapons were actually used from parts from the larger things, now that the ponies thought about it. Luna gave a gentle shake of her head to get a bit of dust and remaining metal out of her mane. All three ponies remained standing where they were while the suit merely poked at his wrist in silence, not that anything he could say would be understood by the ponies in the first place.

A few minutes of bored silence and the suit removed the cord from the panel before using his jetpack to get himself up onto the hull of the ship and open the lower canopy by the forward hinge before sliding into the seat. Leaving the canopy open, the suit hit a few more buttons before the rear canopy opened on it’s rear hinge invitingly.

Pulling himself out of the craft and stepping down to the hangar floor, the suit pointed at all three ponies before moving towards the middle of the craft, under the wings, and offered a hand up into the belly of the beast to take a seat.

Both Celestia and Sunset obliged with Sunset and Luna rounding the ship to take the only other seats that hadn’t been torn out for additional cargo-space. With a bit of work and discomfort, all three ponies were sat on their backsides like a human and were securely buckled in. Two blank text panels sat on the opposite walls from the ponies in case the pilot had anything to say while in the cockpit.

Finally, satisfied that the ponies would be safe, the suit hopped down from the craft before climbing back up to the cockpit while a recognizable cyan pegasus appeared in a skin-tight black bodysuit.

“Rainbow Dash, what’re you doing here?” Celestia inquired from her seated position as she watched the clothed pony approach the nose of the craft.

“I get to learn how to fly this thing! Suit-guy’s going to let me be his navigator for this thing’s first flight!” Dash announced eagerly as she let her wings carry herself up towards the second cockpit with Celestia watching with a raised eyebrow.

With assistance from the suit, Dash was lowered into her seat like Celestia and the others were before being buckled in and a flight helmet placed over her head; the helmet was the least favourite part for the pony because it pinned her ears down against her head.

All passengers, prepare for engine start up. The text panels all warned once the pilot was in his cockpit and both canopies were lowered and secured. A few seconds later and a quick ticking sound began to sound before the jet engines -one of the pilot’s modifications was to replace the old atmo-engines for these smaller but more powerful jet engines- started up and roared to life.

“Good graces, listen to that!” Celestia shouted to her friends before applying a bit of magic to the doorways of the craft to bring a bit of noise control, never mind the excess heat she and her sister were feeling from the exhaust.

Taking off. The text panels all flashed before the roaring grew louder and the craft, surprisingly to the ponies, began to lift from the ground. The nose of the vessel spun towards the left in place before the rear engines pushed enough thrust to move the craft forward and out of the hangar.

“I can’t believe it! It’s actually flying!” Luna grinned as she watched the hangar walls and door pass by the crew seating. “When the pilot told me how much weight it could carry plus passengers, I had no hopes for it actually achieving lift!”

“It is extremely remarkable, I agree!” Celestia nodded back with a large smile on her face before turning her head to watch the landscape fly by, Sunset doing the same on the opposite side of the craft.

The craft, as soon as it ascended high enough to clear the treeline and wouldn’t bother anything, accelerated suddenly, pinning Celestia and Sunset to their seats while Luna fought to keep her head back.

Disabling inertia dampeners. You’ll begin to feel better in a second. The screen announced before the gravity of the situation changed and the vertical thrusters stopped providing downwards thrust. The craft, despite being so heavy, was now moving forward fast enough that the aircraft wings held the craft up -despite them being so small in the first place.

“Look at that! I can see Ponyville in the distance!” Sunset announced, pointing out her side at the landscape below. “Everything looks so small from up here!”

“I’m more impressed with how fast we’re moving!” Luna remarked as she too stared out the craft at what she could see being in the middle of the ship. “We’ve just passed Canterlot! It should’ve taken an hour to get there!”

“I wonder what our speed is right now!” Sunset agreed with a nod.

“We’re maxed out at 104 meters a second, according to the instruments before me.” Rainbow’s voice announced through the speakers in the cabin. All three ponies gawked at the number and shared glances through the cabin. “According to the pilot, this ship is also capable of going into space. We won’t since none of you have space suits on.”

“We can escape the planet in this thing? This craft just keeps getting better!” Luna grinned in accomplishment of what she’d unknowingly built mostly on her own. Beneath everyone, the Baltimare skyline ripped past the flight crew before the ship tilted northwards towards Manehattan.

“Pilot says that when he begins the space-dock, whatever that is, that he’ll be using one of these to get the materials into space and back.” Rainbow announced after a minute, likely of translating his texted words. “Wait,” from the tone it sounded like Rainbow was aiming the comment at the pilot. “A space-dock is what?” A minute of confused silence later, “You want to build what?” Rainbow shrieked in amazement as she was made privy to the suit’s plans.

“Rainbow Dash, what’s he planning?” Celestia demanded in worry, hoping to the high heavens that it wasn’t some kind of weapon.

“He’s going to build a massive space ship, much larger than the one he came in, out in space to take himself and probably most of us away from the planet!” Dash announced with a bit of cheering. “We’re getting off the planet!”

“He’s planning to build a colony ship!” Sunset concluded with wide eyes. “If he succeeds, he could carry a good portion of Equestria and whatever countries into space and settle us on another, safer planet!”

“This is going to be a massive undertaking…” Celestia remarked with a hoof to her chin, staring off into space as she thought. “Rainbow Dash, how sure is he that he can complete the colony ship?”

“Hang on, lemme ask.” Dash remarked before beginning to write out the question on her own keyboard set into her cockpit. “He says…” she took a second to work out the translation. “He says he’s sure he can do it but it’s going to require ridiculous amounts of raw resources to do it.”

“We’ll probably have to talk to the other countries about setting this up as a joint venture. I’m confident we don’t have all the raw resources he needs in Equestria.” Celestia sighed and rested her head against the back of the seat.

“What is the matter, Princess? Why’s that going to be a problem?” Sunset inquired while Rainbow went silent, doing whatever it was she was doing as a navigator. Whatever it was, it was apparently giving directions towards the Crystal Empire given that the craft was currently buzzing the tallest tower a few times before aiming back towards Ponyville.

“I’m just not looking forward to the conversations with the other delegates about this… I just know the griffons will want a ruling number of their race on board in return for their resources…” Celestia sighed again and this time hung her head before turning towards her sister and ex-student. “You’re sure there’s no way we can set up some kind of trade deal with your human world?” she asked, turning the question towards Sunset.

“No, sorry.” Sunset shook her head in reply. “After I got back and the mirror was destroyed, I have no way to get back. Twilight and I have tried.”

“I see. It’s nothing to worry about, I'm sure we’ll find a way to get you back to your world before Equestria destabilizes completely.” Luna announced in attempts to cheer the pony up. “Even if we have to fly you there ourselves.”

“Thanks, Princesses. I appreciate the thought, but when I left the human realm, I left knowing I may not be able to go back. I’d love to go back if I could, but it’s not a priority.” Sunset explained with a warm smile. “Besides, Starlight Glimmer did a pretty good job at destroying the gateway…”

“Yes, it seems she did…” Luna agreed as her own memory turned back to a few months ago. Coming back to reality, Luna noticed how much lower the ship was and how close it was to Ponyville. “It seems we’ve arrived at the human’s facility.”

“Hey, uhm… you all may want to hold onto something. One of the rear engines is giving the pilot a fuss so he’s had to turn it off till he can fix it.” Rainbow warned, sounding nervous herself. “He says it’ll be fine, the ship can survive on just two engines if need be but he says he wants to remain safe.”

“Alright, thank you Rainbow Dash.” Celestia remarked and everypony checked their harnesses. At the same time, the inertial dampeners came back on so that the vertical take off thrusters began to fire at maximum thrust. The ship rocked back, nose up to increase the braking thrust until the ship came to a nearly complete halt and leveled back out again. “It would seem we’ve arrived at our destination.”

“Wonder why he took the long way around, it would’ve only taken a minute or two to fly here from the hangar…” Luna remarked as the ship lowered gently and eventually touched down near to the new building in progress. A loud thunk of the landing pads locking had the ship completely still and allowed the ponies to unbuckle themselves and roll out of the ship once the engines had been turned off and no longer threatening to burn anything.

“Probably just wanted to test out your engineering skills.” Celestia remarked as Luna hopped down from the ship as the ship itself powered down completely, leaving only the cargo network alive and running.

Both canopies to the cockpits broke their seals and hissed open. Rainbow was the first out as she jumped up onto the side of the craft to glide down to the ground on her wings. The suit was the next to follow as he let himself fall from the ship feet first, creating a heavy thud upon landing.

“So, I’d say that was a successful test!” Rainbow announced and held her hoof up to the pilot. The suit looked at it in question for a moment before lifting his own hand and giving her hoof a firm smack in a high-five. “Awesome!”

Well done. The suit announced, his words coming up as scrolling text over his helmet’s glass; a trick he’d done with his HUD. Approaching Luna, he offered a hand out in a handshake with words appearing on his helmet again, Good job building this. Save for the engine, it works perfectly. Engine not your fault, faulty power lines overloaded thrust sensor cluster. Will fix when we get back to ship.

“A pleasure to be a part of your world.” Luna replied with a smile before realising that he hadn’t understood a word she’d said. Instead of repeating herself, she merely placed her hoof in his hand and gave a shake in return.

Comments

[Soren Mercer]

7595328 Maybe, just maybe, we can get this featured so other people can enjoy it... You know, wishful thinking...

[jadon5]

Wow, way to go with that DBZ joke. Too much funny with that one.

[Soren Mercer]

7595370 Yeah, I was kinda proud of that one...

[HB_DS2013]

Forgetting about Twilight here...

[Soren Mercer]

7595411 nope, if it was a mistake then Starlight's picture would be where Sunset's is.

[Radioactive Dragon]

7595427 true... Also look at the comment under yours.

[Soren Mercer]

7595478 What about it?