Storming Out

by Mocha Star

I'm Patient

Twilight waited nearly fifteen minutes before she teleported beside the coffin with her apple and pears, with a few flowers that tagged along stuck to her back. She giggled quietly and spent a moment to chew her food carefully, making sure to pulp it very well before swallowing. She ate the last stems she’d saved from the fruits and flowers for a final chomp and grind between her flat teeth.

She took the time while chewing to think of a new plan that didn’t involve her being caught and having to risk capture, just to pretend to be dead. While it was still funny, she was starting to grow annoyed with her inability to simply walk out the main door and… Twilight groaned. “Why do the best ideas happen when I’m eating, showering, or using the toilet?”

She stood and teleported back into the wall, then made her way to the kitchen and looked through the grate, it was empty so she teleported in and moved to the door. She listened closely and didn’t hear anything, just before she opened the door she saw a plaque shadowed against the other side of the doorway. She moved to it and looked at it. “Huh, a map, kind of,” she tilted her head right, then left. It was a top-down map, but nothing was labeled and there were only stairs indicated in the legend.

She scoffed and used her magic to open the door, she opened it a sliver and peeked and listened. “Huh, what’re the odds?” she asked herself and opened the door all the way. She stepped into the hallway and turned right. She trotted carefully, pressing her body to a wall and casting a perception spell to hide when she thought she heard something, anything.

That is until she cast the spell and six of the bipedal guards walked two by two and down the hall behind her, their large bodies brushing the walls and tilting pictures as they went. She was about to be found and wasn’t okay with that. She moved ahead of them and turned a corner. A-ha! What luck, she thought as a stack of wooden crates were stacked against the wall. She flew up to one, tore the lid off, hid inside, and resealed the cover as the group walked down the other hallway.

“Do you hear, ghosts on ship?”

“Yeah, no like ghost. Take good dreams, make bad.”

“Yes, what she say true. Family see once and not sleep for two nights.”

They continued to talk in rough Ponish as they left her hearing and she smirked, knowing she’d sewn the seeds of fear amongst them.

She snickered to herself and teleported outside the crates and just behind a guard with a very sharp looking spear. He straightened at the sound of her teleport and just as he began to turn, she bolted around him, staying in his blind spot as he turned fully to look behind himself. She ran into the first door she could and closed the door, pressing her back to it as she looked at the restroom she was in.

Her snout scrunched at the myriad of smells, most obvious and some she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Footsteps approached and she chose a stall to fly into, she locked the door and looked behind her at the oddly raised toilet. Something to research later, right now I have to get out of this mess.

A voice grumbled from the stall beside her and she froze in place. “N-no?” Twilight whimpered.

It sighed. “Pony speak, fine. Neep paper, all out.”

“Ohhh, here, have some,” she used her magic to unroll some and pass it to the creature, who’s hand was as large as Twilight’s head.

“Hrmph. Magic? Color same as Tempest Commander; meanie boss.”

A shuffling and sounds I can’t describe in this story filled Twilight's existence for a couple minutes. The time of unpleasant noises passed and Twilight coughed to clear the sudden silence. “So, uh, what do you do on this ship?”

“Bring food to others. Bring towels and clean, too.”

“Oh, so you’re a janitor?”

“Hrmph. No, I am provider and maintainer of Storm King standard of cleanliness and health maintenance.”

“Ri~ght, so, a janitor?”

The creature grumbled and huffed, “Well, technically. But, want pee a cook. Tempest commander say no shift change,” the creature growled in the right way to send Twilight’s insides shuddering with fear. She was, luckily, sitting on the raised toilet as she relieved herself. Not out of fear, but because she just had to go at that exact moment.

“Wwwwell, ahem, why not tell her you want to be a cook instead of a janitor?”

A silence befell them. “You mean, not do only what is teld? No, Blarg no do that.”

“Uh, well, Blarg, you can do whatever you want. In Equestria, there’s a lot of compromise and not everypony wins, but they don’t lose either.”

“Com-puter-ize?”

Twilight pressed a forehoof to her forehead, just under her horn. “Okay, compromise is…”

The toilet flushed and Blarg took its leave with a final farewell that it didn’t translate into a phrase that should be repeated, but it did bring a bright blush to Twilight’s face and once she’d made sure to flush as well, she teleported directly to the coffin and lay on the flowers, holding the one single flower in her hooves.

Her mind went over the awkward farewell she was given and the proposition it entailed, and how it could have been taught to Blarg so well. Possibly a prank, maybe a real translation issue, or maybe she just read into it too much… She began to wonder what gender Blarg was and if it was quickly getting out of hoof, her attempts to get out and the shenanigans she was getting into, then shrugged. “Meh, whatever. They’re bad guys, what’s the worst I could do having a lecture?”

She thought it over and sighed with a shake of her head. “Whatever, the coast should be clear so I’ll just,” she opened the door to the stall and then left the restroom and searched for a while longer taking halls and corridors before running into a dead end. “...Where are the exits?!” she shouted at the ceiling and teleported back to her coffin room and kicked the bottom of a curtain in frustration.

The door clunked and she gasped, teleporting back into the coffin and making sure she was holding the flower. It was that moment she passed gas that smelled faintly of pears and despair as she breathed slowly to maintain the ruse. Tempest ran in and slammed the door with her forehooves behind her.

“What’s happening on this ship?!” she shouted as chanting resonated through the walls. “Every creature’s going crazy,” she glared over her shoulder at the mare in the coffin. “This is your doing, isn’t it?! You’re haunting me from the meadows beyond! I said I was sorry, what do I have to do to stop this craziness?!”

She looked down at the floor and fall to all her hooved. “You’re lucky you’re dead, otherwise you’d have to hear me at my weakest in years. I can’t even quell rumors of unionizing under orders of your ghost, what’ll I tell the Storm King?

“This is all your fault!” she turned to the glass coffin. “You and your stupid friends had to escape and start all this! You and your big fat flank are nothing but trouble!”

Twilight’s eyes opened and she teleported out of the coffin, coughing and inhaling a deep breath of fresh air while glaring at Tempest. “What’d you say about my flank?!”

Tempest stared at the princess and quietly gasped, placed a forehoof to her chest, and her eyes rolled back and closed as she fell to the side with a thunk as her armor impacted the floor.

Twilight’s expression turned from anger to concern, to worry, to shock, then terror. “Oh no, I killed her! Oh no, no, no, no, no! What… why… what’ll… I have to hide the body!” she looked around and didn’t see anywhere to hide her. The walls were undignified, the jail room wasn’t being watched so she might not be found until it was unpleasant.

The kitchen was a terrible idea, no pony would be able to eat after finding her in that room. Bathroom? She couldn’t imagine using a toilet after seeing that…

She found the coffin in her periphery and sighed. “It’s an honor to have known you,” she said and teleported the mare into the coffin and used her magic to lay her on her back, then put a red rose in her crossed forehooves. She looked at Tempest and hoped the mare would be complete in the next world, just as the door rumbled with the shouts of ‘union, union, equal treatment, union!’.

“Uh, oh. Tempest, I’ve gotta go, but I’ll tell them of your sacrifice,” she lit her horn and teleported it into the bathroom from before and furrowed her eyebrows. “Wait, what sacrifice? She’s evil!”

Comments

[TheDriderPony]

Just another note, Twilight seems to teleport back and forth between the coffin and the bathroom several times.