12 - Free Fallin'
The pooka was silent for a moment, a spectre of shadow and death looming in the doorway and pinning Velvet, Night Light, and Sunset Shimmer in their cabin.
Then Breathless started laughing, a hacking, sickly sound like somepony on their deathbed struggling to fill their lungs.
“I walked into your trap?” It asked. “That is the sort of bluff I would expect from the Sun Pony, and you are a poor substitute for her.”
“Who says it’s a bluff?” Sunset asked. “I already told you I expected you to attack.”
“It’s easy to claim you had a plan after the fact,” the pooka said, taking another step into the room. “Show me. I want to see your… trap.”
Sunset smirked and pulled Velvet’s saddlebags across the room, spilling their contents out and grabbing a wrapped bundle.
“There was one room in the museum that wasn’t filled with smoke and I bet you couldn’t follow us in. You didn’t know we brought this with us!”
Sunset tore the wrapping free, revealing the Sun’s Heart, bright white light filling the room like noon on a summer day.
Breathless cried out in alarm and fear, throwing herself back, slamming into the wall and leaving a trail of black ash behind her as she tried to get away from the light.
“Get it away from me!” she hissed. “I won’t go back! I won’t spend centuries staring at that rock!” She stumbled, the deck shaking, the pooka suddenly solid, gaining mass and weight by the moment as the sunlight shone on it.
“Next time you won’t ever get out,” Sunset said, holding the gem high.
Breathless bolted for the door, limping in obvious pain.
“Don’t let her get away!” Sunset yelled, jumping out of Night Light’s shield without thinking. The lingering gas and smoke in the room immediately blinded her with tears and sneezing, and she lost her grip on the Sun’s Heart, the gem rolling under the remaining bed.
Breathless’s steps became lighter the moment the light wasn’t on her, and she vanished into the smoke in the corridor, each hoof fall coming more quietly than the last.
“Buck!” Sunset yelled.
“Don’t use language like that,” Velvet said, almost automatically.
“Really? You’re going to yell at me for language?” The filly coughed a few more times, trying to clear her lungs. “Grab the Sun’s Heart. We need to get her before she does something like, like eating everypony on board!”
Sunset ran into the corridor after the pooka.
Night Light dropped his shield, and Velvet grabbed her bag and the stone, wrapping it up again to keep it safe.
“We need to stay with her,” Velvet said, grabbing Night Light’s hoof and running into the impenetrable gloom. “She’s only a filly. She’s going to end up getting lost!”
“We’re going to end up getting lost,” Night Light said. He lit up his horn, but all that did was throw glare into his eyes from the smoke around them. “I can’t see anything!”
“I thought you’d have the map of the ship memorized,” Velvet joked, as she pulled him along, taking a turn into a side passage Night Light hadn’t even been able to see until they trotted into it.
“I didn’t have enough to buy a book in the gift store,” Night Light muttered, as they carefully stepped over a uniformed steward collapsed in the middle of the carpet. “Velvet…”
“I know. We can’t drag all of them out of here. We’d just collapse trying and we wouldn’t even save ourselves.” Velvet pulled him into an almost invisible door, the smoke clearing slightly as they entered a stairway, spreading out more in the space and making it easier to breathe.
They pushed up the stairs, the poor quality of the air making it like struggling up a mountain. The climb seemed endless until they pushed through a curtain of smog and the wind hit them with soothing cold, both of them taking deep breaths of the night air on the open upper deck, bodies demanding they fill their lungs.
“Oh thank Celestia,” Night Light gasped, between big breaths, pulling the cloth mask away from his snout and spitting. “All I can taste is ashes!”
Velvet leaned against him, rubbing her temples. “Between Sunset’s practice sessions and finding my way through the lower decks, I think I’ve used my horn enough today that it’s trying to twist its way back into my brain.”
“It could also be all the wine--”
“Yes, it could also be all the wine!” Velvet snapped. “Sorry. Headache.”
“How did you two get here so quickly?” Sunset asked, as she walked out of the smoke on wobbling hooves.
“We went the right way the first time,” Velvet said. “You’re lucky you didn’t get lost.”
“Ugh. We don’t have time for all this arguing,” Sunset grumbled. “I was trying to stay on her heels but she went into a vent or something and I had to find another way up.”
“I see her!” Night Light yelled, pointing.
Breathless was making its way up the rigging towards the semirigid gasbag above, sliding along the ropes connecting it to the hull of the ship.
“She can’t fly,” Velvet noted. “She’s climbing along it like she’s anchoring herself.”
“I got her,” Night Light said, grabbing a spool of rope with his magic. “I read a book on knots.”
He quickly tied a lasso and threw it, the rope passing through the pooka and only serving to alert her that they were still there.
“That worked better in my head,” he admitted. “I thought the Sun’s Heart made her turn solid!”
“It must have worn off already,” Velvet said. She started to pull it out, and Sunset stopped her, kicking her ankle.
“Don’t. We’re right over the ocean! If it falls, we’ll never get it back!” The filly looked up at the monster. “It can’t use its poison gas out here because of the wind. We’ve got the advantage.”
“Why is it going up there, though?” Night Light asked. “There’s nothing there!”
“Idiot, that’s where all the gas is!” Sunset snapped. “It’s going to crash the airship!”
“But it’s on the airship too! It’ll crash with us!”
“It’s made of smoke! Do you really think it’ll die just from hitting the water?”
“It would be nice,” Night Light sighed.
“I’ll cut it off and get ahead of it. You two get ready to… to do something.” Sunset frowned. “Figure something out while I blast it!”
The filly vanished in a flash of light. Her plan had been to teleport past Breathless to the top of the gas envelope, trapping the monster between her and the deck. Instead, she felt her teleport cut short, the magic path derailing and throwing her free, her lungs instantly filling with noxious smoke.
“What?!” Sunset gasped, the last of her breath escaping.
“You fool,” Breathless sighed. “Your magic is tainted with harmony. Of course it failed when you tried to use it to go right through me! It’s like mixing fire and water!”
Sunset tried to say something, but she was quickly turning blue and couldn’t quite manage whatever insult she had prepared. Breathless held her lightly, watching the filly struggle and start to pass out.
A rope circle closed around Sunset’s hoof and yanked, tugging her free, falling into the clean air below.
Twilight Velvet jumped, surrounding herself in her aura to lighten her body, catching Sunset high above the deck and rolling as she landed, protecting the filly until they came to a stop against the railing.
“You ponies,” the pooka exhaled. “Always forced to make up for each other’s weaknesses. It’s so sad in its own way.” It crawled the rest of the way up before the ponies could respond.
Sunset groaned in Velvet’s grasp. “That hurt,” she mumbled.
“We need to get up there,” Night Light said. “This would be easier if we had a pegasus with us.”
“Shut up!” Sunset snapped, anger giving her the energy to stand. “We don’t need some featherbrained idiot like- like-- anyway, just shut up and find a ladder!”
“You know, I think once we’re done with this, I’m going to need therapy before I step hoof on an airship again,” Night Light said, as they got to the top of the tall ladder, the deck below just far away enough that the fall would kill you painfully, and the ocean so distant that while death would be instant, he’d have a long time to think about the mistakes he’d made on the way down.
“We’ll take a regular boat back home,” Velvet assured him.
“Don’t worry,” Sunset said, pulling herself onto the service platform at the front of the envelope, too narrow and thin to feel safe. “This ship is practically unsinkable. It uses individual gas cells so no one leak will be fatal.”
The whole airship shook.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Night Light muttered.
“You shouldn’t have called it unsinkable,” Velvet groaned. “It’s like asking ‘what else could go wrong?’”
“It’s not my fault!” Sunset yelled, pulling open a hatch and running inside. The gas cells were vast horseshoe-shaped balloons, like ribs supporting the shape of the smooth, protective envelope that covered the whole array. The inspection gantry was along the rigid bottom of the airship’s gas envelope in the open space that ran through the middle of the stack.
Breathless was already there, tearing part of the railing free like a spear.
“Such a fragile thing,” the pooka said. “It’s almost a pity to destroy something so delicate.”
“Good thing you’re not delicate because I’m gonna destroy you,” Sunset said. Her horn lit up, a spark of fire at the tip.
“Sunset, no!” Night Light gasped. “We’ll explode!”
“What?” Sunset looked back at him.
“The gas! If there’s a spark--”
“That’s hydrogen!” Sunset snapped. “The Merriweather Post Pavilion uses--” her voice suddenly raised several octaves to a squeak. “Helium.”
Gas hissed out of ruptured fabric, Breathless using the sharp-edged shard to cut through the thick material. “I wonder how many of these I’ll need to break?” The pooka threw it through a second gas cell, the ship shuddering again as helium escaped into the air.
“Stop her!” Sunset yelled. She threw a bolt of fire that burned itself out in midair before it even reached the pooka.
“I will not be imprisoned again,” the pooka hissed, its own voice unaffected by the helium.
“The gas is escaping the cells,” Velvet muttered, an idea sparking.
“Yes, that’s the current problem,” Sunset growled, her voice so high pitched she squeaked every vowel.
“I have a plan. Just follow my lead!” Velvet grabbed the Sun’s Heart out of her saddlebag, holding the glowing crystal high in the air.
Breathless backed up, shielding its eyes and recoiling in fear and pain.
“Grab the fabric from the balloon and wrap it up!” Velvet yelled, trying to keep the monster pinned in place.
“Right!” Sunset tore a sheet free of one of the deflating cells.
“A blanket won’t hold me!” Breathless roared. It tried to run, one of its legs giving out as it was forced to support a steadily increasing weight.
Sunset swept the fabric under it and twisted it into a tight bundle, Night Light finding a rope somewhere to tie the whole thing securely with a decorative bow as a final flourish.
“A blanket won’t hold it, but that treated fabric will,” Velvet said. “It’s designed to hold helium gas. There’s no way smoke can escape, and it needed a tool to rip through it before.”
“Good thinking,” Sunset said, her voice slowly returning to normal. “You’re not awful at monster hunting.” She kicked the struggling bundle. “This should hold until we can figure out a more permanent solution.”
“That was really close,” Night Light sighed. “I was worried… that…” he trailed off as everything started to list to one side.
All three of them looked up.
“I think when it threw that thing like a spear it might have actually made holes in a bunch of these balloons,” Sunset said. “It should be fine, though!”
One of the cells tore apart, and the outer skin of the gas envelope ruptured.
“We’re gonna die!” Night Light yelled.
“You, come with me!” Sunset shouted at Velvet, running for the bow.
“What about the pooka?” Velvet asked, shoving the Heart back into her saddlebag.
“We’ll deal with it later!” Sunset snapped. “Just because I’m a genius doesn’t mean I can solve every problem at the same time!”
“Right, fine,” Velvet looked down. The ocean already looked a lot closer. The wind was starting to pick up as they lost lift.
“The lower hull is basically a boat,” Sunset said. “All we have to do is make a soft enough landing on the water that it doesn’t shatter the wood frame!”
“How are we going to do that?!”
“We’re gonna guide it down with telekinesis!” Sunset grinned. “Hang on to your flanks!”
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Oh hey, the Sun’s Heart, that is a pretty good plan.
Same for using the balloon fabric.
I love how clearly you can see Twilight in both of her parents here.
Very nice touch with Breathless's body not being able to support much weight. Being gaseous has its drawbacks. Really, this whole chapter is full of brilliant ideas... though Sunset's plan at the end smacks more of desperation, or at least a filly with a big hammer hoping this particular problem is a nail.
Balloon fabric, good call!
Was that actually a trap, or Sunset improvising? We’ll never know.
Lots of cool stuff, continuing to love this.
I'm guessing it won't stay trapped by the balloon. Would be hilarious though:
Sunset was an interesting twist. ...Yeah, being a filly-aged genius monster hunter has its drawbacks. I can see how she became so bitter, if ponies kept disrespecting her and never took her seriously even after she saved their lives.
She might get along with boy-genius Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres from "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality".
...Actually, Velvet must've wondered what happened to Sunset when Celestia accepted Twilight as her personal student.
I wonder if knowing Twilight's mom ever came up in Sunset's journal-exchanges with Twilight.
Despite her arrogance Sunset does have good ideas and isn't above complimenting others if they think of something. The plan at the end seems more like the only option they have to survive. It seems that Mudhoney was the easiest to kill probably because it had fed on less magic when the confrontation happened.