A Rather Large Adventure

by BradyBunch

Chapter Four: Ups And Downs

Twilight, Noble Blade, and Firestorm all stood panting in the elevator. That was a close one, Twilight thought. But we had to leave Freedom Fighter...

As they waited in the compressed elevator, Twilight noticed that Firestorm's arm was shaking hard and he was looking around anxiously, like the light grey walls were about to compress him like a garbage compactor. In a deceptively calm voice, he asked, "How many floors are there again?"

"This tower is about a mile tall, and I think we were on the top level. So we have to go down about, ah... five hundred twenty-eight floors," Noble explained calmly, checking the buttons to confirm his statement.

"FIVE HUN-" Firestorm started to exclaim, flapping in the air. He then regained his composure with extreme effort, and settled down again."This is going to be a long ride, isn't it?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"Not necessarily. See?" Noble pointed at the floor indicator. It was at 505, then 504 in only a second. "The higher the tower, the faster the elevator."

"Yeah, I guess..." Firestorm swished his fiery tail uneasily, looking about him all the faster.

Twilight was observing him shrewdly. She had recently read a book on phobias, and Firestorm was displaying signs similar to that of a specific phobia she knew about. She coughed and said out of the corner of her mouth, "Claustrophobia."

Firestorm's head whipped to face her. "What did you say?" he asked of her.

"You have claustrophobia," she declared. "Or at least, I think you do."

"How did you know? I didn't tell you I had claustrophobia." Then he bulged his eyes and looked around nervously. "I mean, uh, I don't know what you're talking about... What makes you think that?"

"Come on, I've read you like an open book." Twilight felt a small twinge of satisfaction at finally using that phrase. "A rather short book, too."

Noble gave a sharp intake of breath. "One for her side," he muttered.

"Were we keeping track?" Twilight asked him, turning her head to look at him.

"Well, I am. It makes conversations more interesting if you think of it like a game." He stretched and flexed his metal gauntlet covering his hoof. "Continue, Princess."

Twilight did. "Well, I noticed earlier that he was vehement in not crawling through a tight space and he suggested a more open way of moving. I also noticed that his arm was shaking and that he's looking around like he's going to be crushed. I've studied several animals a friend of mine had with that kind of fear, and they all displayed some of the signs he has. I think I even know why you have that fear in the first place."

"Which is?" Firestorm inquired, his curiosity piqued.

She pointed at Firestorm's wings. "You're a pegasus. Pegasi like large, wide-open areas where they can stretch their wings and be free to fly anywhere they want. So it makes sense that you're not comfortable in confined areas. Maybe when we get back we can run a full diagnostics test!" She started to get giddy thinking about the scientific method.

"Hey, uh, good job on noticing that about me." Firestorm sounded eager to move on from the uncomfortable topic, and so switched to another, equally uncomfortable topic. "But I want to know what else you've noticed about me." He dropped his voice into a husky voice and he flipped his wild fiery mane ridiculously. "Specifically my...physical aspects." He winked at her.

Twilight was shocked not only at the forwardness of Firestorm, but that he had thought she was admiring him, which was just going way too far. In a flustering tone she said, "Well, I've noticed that your sheer audacity borders on the line of stupidity at times, and that you probably couldn't tell the difference between a paperback and a hard copy book if they both sat you down and gave you a two-hour lecture!" It was the most insulting analogy she could come up with.

Firestorm only laughed. "Darling, darling, that's standard fare. I've gotten that response before--just not as interestingly worded as you. Physical aspects, though. Remember? List the hot aspects about me. Come on."

"Every time I look at you I think your head's on fire, and when you first lifted your arms over your head I nearly gagged at the stench," Twilight snarled.

That time, Firestorm winced and looked at the ground. "Anything else?" he asked resignedly after a moment.

"You've got a bit of green stuck in your front teeth."

Firestorm picked out the offending piece with his tongue and sighed. "You know, you're surprisingly perceptive--for a mare."

"And you're rather intelligent--for a stallion," she retorted.

"Another one for her side," Noble Blade muttered. Firestorm glared at him, and Noble pretended not to notice.

They were only at the fifteenth floor when the elevator suddenly screeched to a halt, jostling the passengers. Firestorm looked up in annoyance. "Oh come ON!" he yelled. "What now?!"

"Judging by the lack of motion, I conclude that we must have stopped," Noble said dryly. "But we're not on the ground level, so somepony must have pressed the stop button. Did you press the stop button, Princess?"

"No, did you, Noble?"

"No, did you, Firestorm?"

"No, did you, Princess?"

"No, did you?"

"No, did you?"

"No, did you?"

Firestorm took a second before slowly saying, "No."

There then came a lurch as the car now inexplicably seemed to go up instead of down. Firestorm's face was now frantic as he screamed, "OKAY, THAT IS IT!" He drew both of his twin blades and stuck both of the tips in the ceiling.

Twilight flinched at the sudden appearance of the blades. "What are you doing, Firestorm?" Twilight asked nervously.

Firestorm stopped his cutting and stared incredulously at her. "I'm baking muffins, Princess. What does it look like I'm doing?" He proceeded to further cut a hole in the ceiling. "An outside force is interfering with our ride, and I'm going to get rid of it. Besides," he said as the cut circle fell to the ground, "I'd do anything to get out of this blasted elevator." He looked through the hole he had made, sheathing his swords across his back.

Noble suddenly rushed forward and pushed him out of the way, just as a small weight dropped off of the roof of the car and slammed on the back of Noble's armored head, knocking him unconscious. Firestorm, on his flank, stared at the inert body of his friend, calculating that his unprotected head was where the weight was going to land. Had Noble not pushed him out of the way, he would have been killed or permanently crippled.

Twilight rushed to Noble's side, checking desperately for a sign of life. She was frantic, and had an urgent and fearful look on her face. However, when she felt for a pulse under his armor, she sighed in relief.

"He's got a pulse," she announced, then felt his nose and mouth with her hoof. "And his breathing's strong and regular. This is a concussion; no more."

"I'm a little surprised. I knew he was hard-headed before, but not that hard-headed," Firestorm mused. His eyes were drawn to what had hit him. It was a hunk of metal the size of a loaf of bread, probably dislodged from the wall long before. Firestorm stood directly under the hole he had cut. "Princess, the elevator's no longer safe. We can fly our way down the shaft, but first I need to take care of an inconvenience. I need you to get Noble on the elevator top. Be careful, he weighs a lot with that armor on."

And without waiting for a reply, he jumped up to the hole and grabbed the edges with his forehooves. He then flipped upside down, pushed himself onto the elevator's top with his arm strength, landed on his hind legs, and drew his swords.

The dark elevator shaft was only seven yards square, with the elevator taking up six of them. In the center of the elevator car roof were six steel cables the width of Firestorm's arm, pulling the elevator inexplicably up. Firestorm spun, looking for enemies, but there were none to be seen. Steeling himself, he peeked over the edge of the elevator car, but again, there was nothing there. The car wobbled uneasily as his weight shifted, and he quickly moved away from the edge before it could spill him over. He then looked at the elevator cables, pulling them up and up, and he followed its direction until he was looking straight up the shaft on his hind legs, locked in place by his leg stiffeners.

Far above him, sliding down the cables and crawling down the walls, were dozens of wingless Noxxa, hissing angrily and growling and hooting war cries. He could barely see them in the dark shaft, but the glint of their yellow eyes and sheen on the blades in their claws could easily be distinguishable. They moved as a collective dark shadow, advancing down the cables on their hardened claws, and as soon as they saw Firestorm standing with his blades out, their hissing grew and they moved faster, closing the distance between Firestorm and his doom.

His only response was to subtly shift his blades up and out.

"Oh goody," he smiled. "Bad guys."

The first Nox to hit the elevator car was promptly skewered by a katana. Two more hit the car and moved towards the hole in the roof, but Firestorm was already there, and shish-kabobed both of them on the thin blade, dissolving both of them into black powder.

Four more hit the four corners of the car, wobbling it precariously. Firestorm swept through the head of the closest one, then ran to the corner to his left, blocked the Noxxa's thrust, and bludgeoned him with the butt of his sword, spinning to the ground before dissolving. The one to his right corner fired a heavy crossbow built into his forearm, and Firestorm narrowly dodged the bolt as it sung its murderous song past him. He ran straight at the Nox, ducked the blow the Nox aimed at his head, and kicked the Nox straight off of the edge, slamming him into the shaft wall before he fell.

Before Firestorm could attack the last one, however, six more fell to the car. Three went for the hole in the roof while the rest advanced towards Firestorm.

In response, Firestorm threw one of his blades, making it spin. The spinning sword beheaded two, hit the shaft wall, bounced the hilt off the shaft, and hit the last one in the back. It happened so fast they had virtually no time to respond. Firestorm tried to get his other sword, buried in a pile of ash, but the three other Noxxa had positioned themselves between him and the sword, along with the elevator's hole. Dumb choice, Firestorm thought before rushing them on his hind legs.

The closest one raised his front two claws to skewer him, but Firestorm ducked as the claw swept over him, then rose up, lifting his sword, and impaled him through his armored body. He kicked him off the blade into another enemy before he could dissolve, knocking them back, only to get smacked in the head with the flat of the blade the Nox he couldn't finish before had.

He tumbled to the ground, his other katana skittering out of reach. The three on the car screeched in triumph, and four more landed on the car's roof.

Firestorm then lept to his hind legs by pushing off the ground with his forehooves and flapping out his metal-tipped wings. They slashed across the faces of two who got too close, and he folded them back in as he landed. He then gave a heavy roundhouse kick to an uninjured Nox and threw him into another one, where they accidentally impaled each other with their sharp blades and disintegrated.

Firestorm then jumped to the hole in the car, wobbling the elevator, and picked up his katanas just in time for him to run them through another that rushed at him. Then he heard the screams in the elevator.

His blood chilled. The Princess. He jumped down the hole he had cut and landed flat on a Noxxa's back. The metal-covered spines on him penetrated parts of his armor and punctured his flesh--until he slammed the tip of his sword through the Noxxa's head so hard it went through the floor of the elevator beneath him. He got off the disintegrating body and looked at Twilight. She was in a corner, her body covering Noble's, as three Noxxa held knives to her throat.

Right about then, rage boiled in Firestorm, making his blood hotter and more ferocious than a dragon. He didn't know exactly why, but seeing them threaten the princess like that set off something powerful in him. Righteous fury, perhaps? Indignation, maybe? Or barbarism?

Whatever it was, it made Firestorm rush forward and spin about like a blender with his blades wide out, and in the time it took to blink Firestorm had sliced through all three of them before they could even turn around. He then extended a hoof to the now-terrified Twilight. "Are you harmed, Princess?" he asked sincerely. The sincerity surprised Firestorm, as he almost never spoke that way.

Twilight rubbed her neck uncomfortably, where three small nicks had a few beads of blood. She gulped and said, "I'm fine... but I-I'm confused. I-if they wanted us dead, they'd just cut the elevator cables, not try to extract us."

Much as Firestorm hated to admit it, Twilight had a point. Which led to another question... "Why do they want us alive?" Firestorm asked. Before either of them could answer, more thumps came from above and another Nox dropped into the elevator car. He raised his axe, but Firestorm had rushed forward, cut through the axe's shaft, and practically slammed his swords through his head. Firestorm faced Twilight. "I'll clear the car top. Then I'll take care of the source of our trouble in the shaft. I need you to get Noble to the top. Understand me?"

Twilight pawed at the layer of black sand now covering the floor of the elevator and nodded without looking at the pegasus.

Firestorm then crouched and flipped through the hole in the top, and as he came up, he kicked another Nox in the face. As his hind legs came down, he angled his blade into his chest and he blew into dark sand. There were eight more on the top trying to create more holes by prying into the electrical components of the elevator. All looked up and hissed as Firestorm appeared.

Blinking at the change in lighting from the brightly-lit elevator to the darkness of the elevator shaft, Firestorm tried to flick a special part of the sword to turn on the enchantments.

Nothing happened.

Firestorm tried it again. No result. As he tried over and over, it made sputtering noises like a lighter failing to ignite. His face grimaced in desperation, then he sheathed his swords embarrassingly, gave them a winning smile, and twisted his hooves in just the right way to activate the emergency flamethrowers attached to them.

A spray of flame blossomed out of his forearms, and he took to the air, spinning as everything around him was torched. The Noxxa on the car instantly vaporized as he spun, then he flew upward to try and reach the top of the shaft. Because the cloud of Noxxa was still thick, he kept spinning and burning enemies to ash on the metal cables and walls. And the elevator had already gone up so high it didn't take long for him to reach the top of the elevator shaft's top. Once he flew near the top, he was able to see the problem.

Four Noxxa were hanging from the ceiling and were rewiring the pulley system so it was pulling the elevator car up instead of down. They were focused on their work so intently they almost didn't notice Firestorm until he was almost directly under them.

Looking back on it later on, Firestorm decided that what he did in that moment was incredibly stupid.

What he did was take out a few explosives from inside his surcoat, twisted the tops to arm them, and threw them at the mechanical pulleys. As they impacted, they erupted in a massive explosion, tearing apart the pulley system and destroying the Noxxa hacking it.

Along with five of the six cables holding the elevator up.

And because he was on the fringe of the blast radius, it threw Firestorm down hard straight to the elevator car's edge, bruising his wing. It just so happened that Twilight had climbed out of the car while carrying Noble on her back and was stumbling blindly through the dust and black Noxxa powder in the air. And when Firestorm had hurtled to the elevator car like a meteorite, he upset Twilight's balance, and they both fell and slid and rolled to the edge of the elevator car. But before they could fall off completely, both of them had scrabbled the edges of the elevator car and were holding on for dear life.

As they held on desperately to the edge of the car, Firestorm's energy felt drained and he felt like he wanted nothing better than to surrender his energy. But he held fast to the edge, adjusting his grip. He tried to pull himself up onto the car, but only succeeded in tipping the car even more and dumping a lot of Noxxa dust into his eyes and mouth. He coughed and sputtered it out in disgust, and tried to wipe his mouth, but he slipped and lost his grip at the same time Twilight did.

And that was what kick-started his adrenaline as he flailed around wildly in the air for something to hold on to. The only thing available to grab, however, was the princess's hind legs, which he latched onto for dear life as they fell down the impossibly tall shaft.

Neither of them could use their wings on account of the injuries they had sustained. So they both free-fell, screaming like little fillies, until Twilight outstretched her arms and had managed to grab, with impossible strength, the edge of a doorway in the shaft, stopping their fall abruptly and making something bang hard into the side of the elevator shaft with a loud moan and a stifled curse. Noble Blade almost fell off her back, and Twilight almost let go at the amount of weight hanging on to her as she noticed that something grabbed on to her legs--

She looked down.

It was Firestorm.

There was a clanking sound below them, and Firestorm looked down as well to see his bandoleer of explosives fall away, fading in the blackness to infinity. Right about then, he was almost glad Noble was unconscious. He would never hear the end of it. He sighed as his explosives disappeared in the dim light of the shaft.

Well, that's just perfect, he thought miserably.

They hung there, trying to catch their breaths and calm their pounding hearts. Twilight's hooves hurt. Badly. Not to mention her back, her arms, her wing, her head, and her now-useless horn. After resting her front hooves in a somewhat-comfortable position, she adjusted Noble around her shoulders, still somewhat surprised that he still hadn't woken up.

"Princess!" Firestorm called from below."Can you fly?"

"No," she gritted through her teeth. "Not with this many ponies holding on to me."

"I can't either. My wing got hurt when I crashed. I can't fly us out of here," he said.

Looking around, all Twilight could see was a hopeless situation. Two hurt ponies with wings hanging for dear life in an elevator shaft, with another incapacitated pony on her back. Oh, and an elevator car above them that could snap its one remaining cable and fall on them at any second. In fact, this almost sounded suspiciously like...

Twilight sighed. "Don't say it," she groaned.

Firestorm looked up, a look of puzzlement on his dark orange face. "Don't say what?" he innocently asked.

"Don't say what I think you're going to say."

"You think you know what I'm going to say?"

"I know what you're going to say. Now don't say it."

Firestorm grew a wide, wicked grin as he realized what Twilight was talking about. "I'm going to say it."

"Don't you dare say it."

"I'm going to say it."

"Don't you dare say it!"

"I'm going to say it!" Firestorm sang.

"DON'T YOU DARE SAY IT!"

Silence hung for a moment in the dark shaft. Then Firestorm hurriedly rushed out loud, "This seems like a really good cliffhanger, don't you think?"

"GAAAAAHHHHH!" Twilight groaned in exasperation.

Comments

[Crescent Glaive]

Cliffhanger.... sure

[Artist]

Wow

[Super Ponyman]

Holy crap, these Noxxa are about as freaky as Xenomorphs!

Twilight, once you get your magic back, kill it. Kill it with Fire!

[Jade Dawn]

Is anyone else getting some serious Obi-Wan/Anakin vibes with Noble Blade/Firestorm?

[BradyBunch]

9412693
That was the idea. Sorta.

[Sarah Dino Runnerhoof]

That was amazing!

[DmitriTheWriter]

What he did was he took out a few explosives from inside his surcoat, twisted the tops to arm them, and threw them at the mechanical pulleys. As it impacted, it erupted in a massive explosion, tearing apart the pulley system and destroying the Noxxa hacking it.

Along with five of the six cables holding the elevator up.

Why do I get the feeling that Firestorm would get along really well with Star-Lord?

---

Not that many quotes I felt I could comment on this chapter. Nice cliffhanger, though, even if Twilight's hooves would most likely have snapped from the force of grabbing onto that ledge in the elevator shaft with the weight of two extra ponies on her. But hey, I'm not here to ruin fictional works by bringing in real science. Who do I look like, Neil deGrasse Tyson?

[BradyBunch]

9975475
Science doesn't matter in fiction! (*hurriedly pushes away the science fiction genre*) Fiction is lies, after all. But out of the sum of your fictional lies, truth will come forth.

I was also sixteen when I began writing this story, so hey, what did I know, either?