Ponies Versus Starcraft

by ambion

Wonderbolts vs Phoenix vs Viking

Airspace was congested. This was not the congestion of a blaring and rage inducing roadway, nor the congestion of a mighty and terrible nostril...rather, it was almost like the worst of both brought together.

Fleets clashed under a red sky. The gray steel of bulky craft, painted with effigies of warfare, roared through the air and let rip salvos of screaming missiles. For their part, the sleek and shining recipients of these gifts swooped and swerved like birds of prey, strafing their enemies with bright streaks of blinding light that added ‘pew pew’ to the cacophony.

“Pew pew?” said a male voice said from the battle’s outskirts, upon a ledge overlooking the fight.

There was a feminine sigh full of disappointment and barely concealed disgust. “Yeah.”

Soarin face hoofed. “Right,” he said after a moment’s deep breathing, as if what came next was a tedious and painful hurdle. “What side do you want? Celestia knows both need a lot of work.”

“Vikings, definitely,” Spitfire said with a soft laugh.

“Ah come on, no fair. Phoenixes are like, girly.”

Spitfire smirked as she punched Soarin in the jaw. “Exactly. That’s why you get them. And for the love of flying, get them to stop that ‘pew pew’ noise.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Soarin grumbled.

Spitfire struck a sultry pose and smirked suggestively. Her trim body and trimmer flight suit stood against the sky, her wings held out triumphantly out. “Pew pew,” she said again, this time more slowly, though the written word entirely failed to illicit the sensuality of that auditory experience.

Soarin’s ears did not fail. His eyes did a fair bit of travel as well. He shivered and shook his head back into focus. “You are way too good at that.” Spitfire laughed as she shrugged.

“Get to it, flyboy,” she said and jumped into flight.

Soarin grumbled, but couldn’t wipe the silly grin from his face, nor did he want to. He followed at her side on the wing.

The battle they entered was a mess. This is true of most battles, but it was the wrong kind of mess.

“Alright, alright!” Soarin bellowed. “Who’s in charge here?” Screaming ships from both sides slowed to a halt and turned to face the pair of ponies, who know hovered between the two forces.

“What?” crackled across a shoddy speaker system. Vtol engines burned like forge-fires.

“Who’s in charge. You know: coordination, management, choreography.”

“Huh?” a reverberating voice came from one of the shinier craft, to which the dumbness of the statement did not do justice.

Soarin tugged at his cheeks and eyelids in frustration. “Amateurs.” he muttered.

“Alright then,” Spitfire began testily. “You guys with me, we’re going out a few clicks this way.”

Soarin nodded wearily. “The rest of you with me, we’re going out that way a few. On our honour as Wonderbolts we’re going to make something better of this air show than whatever it was you guys were trying. Have you ever even heard of arc? Dynamic pacing? Pyrotechnic support? Do you even have ground crews?”

The silence of the two fleets sounded guilty, somehow. Soarin groaned. “Didn’t think so. Come on!”

Spitfire held him up a moment. “Meet back here in an hour and we’ll take it from the top. Nothing fancy, just patch up their basics.”

“More like damage control,” he said, glaring at his nigh-useless new trainees.

“We can do it,” she said teasingly.

“If you say so Captain,” he conceded.

Whatever the power in her voice was, she cranked it up steadily as she spoke. “Buck up, Soarin. We get the amateurs to scrape through this air show and I’ll give you something nice. Something special.” Spitfire was one of those few who can look suggestive without needing to do anything.

Soarin coughed and tugged at his suit collar. “You’re terrible,” he managed to croak.

“Terribly good,” she winked. “Let’s do it.”

With his sloppy grin restored, Soarin led the contingent of phoenixes to the air above a likely plain, while Spitfire trail blazed at the forefront of the vikings in the opposite direction.

When they were little specks lost to the horizon, the Wonderbolt stallion halted.

“Right then,” he said to the waiting group. “I want you to break off into groups of three, practice a bit of simple delta formation. Remember, don’t jarr the turns suddenly, pull them steadily. You guys got the agility, but without some kind of formation you all look useless and confused.”

Ships broke off into groups with all the orderliness of children on a playground. The odd one out looked dejected, if stoic and inanimate metals can even do that.

“You,” Soarin began again, and with this the lonely ship’s non existent expression became bewildered and scared. “You’re gonna open up and let me get a look at your sound system.”

Haphazard formations flew around as Soarin waited for the floating phoenix to pop open. After a hesitant moment it did and the pony took no time in flying inside. Holographic projections of real time depicted the other vessels flitting about. Their haphazard, jerky motions were not inspiring to the seasoned flyer.

“I’m going to break this to you gently. You guys haven’t the slightest clue how to put on an air show, and there isn’t a hope we can make this work in an hour.”

The faces of the crew that looked to him were long. They were long by natural design, but also long by the saddening revelation. It always hurt to be told off by an iconic figure. Soarin trotted promptly past one disheartened being and poked his head under the panel of a likely looking bit of tech.

“What’s this?”

“Er, shield core?” the nearest one answered by way of a question, aware of the jeopardy of the situation.

“Great!” Reverse the polarity when the show’s on.”

“What?”

Soarin turned on the incredulous voice. “Haven’t you ever seen Star Trot? Fourth Generation? Deep Space Six? Crusader?” his voice grew frantic, their gazes remained empty.

“You know, for space aliens with such stuff, I’d have thought you’d have some kind of education in these things. Sheesh. Reversing the polarity makes everything better.” The pony blinked for a moment in thought. “At least, more exciting. And exciting is better. Yeah.” Satisfied with his logic, Soarin poked his head under another bit of crystalline technology.

He recoiled as if a bomb ticked there. His words were stiff, as was his entire body. He had to be careful with this moment, it might break away and run for it if he didn’t make it stay real. “You have Vinyl Scratch approved speaker systems?”

A few hesitant nods met his look of shock.

His voice grew like a tidal wave approaching from the distance. “You have Vinyl Scratch approved speaker systems and you’re letting your guns make the ‘pew pew’ noise?! Every one of your ships got these?”

There were a few more nods, hesitant but hopeful. Soarin’s chest swelled as his grin sharpened.

“Alright then,” he said happily. “Open a channel to the rest of the fleet. We don’t have much time, and there’s a lot of sound effects to rip.” To himself he muttered “Might just pull this off, captain.”

-=-=-=

At her end of things Spitfire had encountered her own problem. Viking pilots treated flying much like their namesakes treated everything: with enough forwards motion and yelling problems seemed to just resolve themselves, one way or another.

It meant they were terrible flyers. In her frustration the Wonderbolt captain flew a lazy circuit around a basic formation. They weren’t making anything useful of it.

“You don’t have to fly in straight lines, you know. It gets boring for everbody, and fast. Except, you know, these ships aren’t.”

A gruff voice otherwise wracked with nervousness crackled across the announcer. “Er...do we have to? Turn and stuff, that is?”

“That’s kind of an important part of flying, so yes.”

“We’ve uh, always been happier with, uh...burn and pillage.” The last words were nary a whisper, a frightful peep.

“Burn and pillage?” she said in a flat tone, giving the cockpit of the ship she circled a piercing stare.

“Yes?” came the shrill reply.

Spitfire sighed as she turned over in the air, hoping the flow of air across her body might work out some of the tension and frustration. It didn’t.

“Show me what you can do, than.”

“Yeah!” the pilots cried out enthusiastically. In utter betrayal to that notion, the Vikings came to a slow and complete stop. After a ponderous moment, a couple of speedy little rockets were fired into the distance.

Spitfire rolled her eyes. “Uhuh.”

“Oh... um...alright then... Check this out!” The sound of twisting gears and sight of twisting metal piqued the slightest shred of the Wonderbolt captain’s interest. A viking dropped to the ground, where it now stood on stubby robotic legs. “Tada!” the pilot shouted happily. The other pilots roared out cheers for the feet.

Spitfire landed next to the landed craft. She made an emphasised point of walking towards it. “Tada,” she mimed with impatience and disdain heavy in her voice.

“I...I...” the sounds of sobbing met Spitfire’s ears, and by the whimpers of the other pilots, it could be a chain reaction if she didn’t stop it here.

She tried to be comforting as she stood next to the hulking machine which she, entirely for reasons of sentiment and none of effectuality, patted it compassionately.

“There there, I’m sorry. You’re trying your best, and that’s what counts.”

After a few moments the worst of the sobbing passed, but it continued like soft rain after a typhoon. “Can we...can we go back to the base for repairs? My tears shorted out some of the wiring,” the Viking pilot whispered sadly.

I don’t believe this, the captain thought, though being for the most part a nice pony it wasn’t what she said. “Yeah. Let’s all take a few.”

The base wasn’t far off, but it was a solemn flight there. Well, at least Soarin can’t be doing any worse off than me.

-=-=-=

That is the kind of written prompt that says, with a nod and a wink, that indeed things are worse in some unlikely and hilarious manner. The truth of the matter was that despite the firm entrenchment of this prompt, Soarin wasn't worse off. From the small bridge of the phoenix he’d managed to hassle some-toss into getting him a connection to skype, from which he nagged a friend of his into finding the youtube videos he was looking for, as she was much better at finding stuff than himself.

With a few words writ in the meantime to let the video load on another tab, he flicked back to it.

“Here, feed these into those crystals you use, tell them to improvise with the sound effects when the ship is doing something that matches. Good sound effects will make everything more awesome. Anything but ‘pew pew.’ I mean, really for guys that practically breath...well, something sci-fi, with the single greatest line of speaker systems ever, you really don’t know much of anything.”

“There’s no need to be insulting,” an indignant voice put forwards from a corner.

Soarin groaned. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But hey, cut out that audio. Yeah, just turn it right off, cause here’s the real score.This is what you play, synched through every phoenix during the show..”

“This what?”

“This,” he insisted, pointing at the immaterial screen. The pegasus beamed a wide grin while the others around him looked on with mixtures of apprehension and wonderment. The first few bars rolled through him ominously...

Then it jumped into the fore with power and beat. He started bobbing his head in time to the music. “Isn’t that just glorious?” A few heads started bobbing with his; it was all the proof he’d ever need of his rightness. “An air show without the right tunes is missing something dearly. Even Spitfire’s gonna be surprised by this one,” he said, and his grin only grew wider.

-=-=-=

Soarin’s grin was almost as wide as Spitfire’s eyes. The vikings and her had arrived at their little base, and while the now landed robotic craft ambled about and sulked in general, Spitfire had taken a minute to wander and clear her head and she’d found her way into the nearest supply depot. There were things. So many things. Military grade things, all polished and shining.

It should be no surprise that fiery Spitfire, the colour of fire and leaving fire in her wake...kinda liked fiery things. A lot. And oh boy, there was a lot of it here.“Get me some SCV’s in here, right now!” the captain yelled out. “My little vikings are getting some last minute refits. We’ll make a good show of this yet!” The pegasus espied some pressure canisters of paint in a corner. “And get them a new coat of paint. Make them uniform. Cool. Awesome. Figure something out.”

With the rush and hustle and bustle of proper last minute prep panic, Spitfire felt pretty good, hoping only that Soarin was keeping up.

-=-=-=

“You can’t be serious,” he said to her after the rendezvous.

Spitfire laughed. “Hey, it wasn’t my idea. I only told them to whip up something like team colours.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said again, caught on the one track. He stared out into the ready and waiting fleet of vikings and two dozen immaculately painted, extremely suggestive Spitfires winked back at him. Soarin’s jaw hung appropriately low.

“I think it’s kind of flattering.” The male’s jaw was too far down to respond with anything legible beyond a sort of murmuring grunt. By a mighty force of will the pegasus shook his head and got his head back in charge.

“Is that all?” he asked, doing a terrible job of pretending that twenty four and one very real Spitfire very close to him weren’t impressive in and of themselves.

The mare gestured coyly. “Oh, there’s this and that on them too. This and that.”

At some subtle signal from her gouts of roaring fire and streaming flares burst from the ready fleet like a challenge to the stars. Whatever rally Soarin had managed in pulling back his slack jaw before came undone now.

“Wa...wa...Right! Reverse the polarity! Do it now! Soarin roared to his gathered phoenixes. Nobody had the slightest clue what it even meant, let alone what it’d do.

The translucent fields of energy that made up their shields darkened and seethed with arcs of lightning as if each ship were the heart of a nebulous storm. Soarin hoof pumped the air wildly. “I told you it’d work!” To Spitfire he turned and beamed madly, than shouted as loud as he could. “Start the tune!”

“You ready for this?” Du du duuu

She met his manic grin with one of her own. “Let’s do it.” Du du duuu

The sky darkened with ominous portent as the lines were drawn. Du du duuu

Through the music and madness the roars of the pilots called to glory as the ships rushed on to face one another. Du du duuu

...they started flying awkward, enthusiastic little formations around one another, rather pleased with themselves for the attention and the hyper abundance of awesome effects. Well, these were what the Wonderbolts had been driving into them for the last hour...

“What?” Soarin managed to croak as his eye followed along the painfully jarring turn of a squadron of vikings, all the while happily spewing flames before them.

Spitfire face-hoofed. “A for effort,” she intoned.

“What?”

“Alright, E for effort, but still. Oh yeah. Soarin, remember what I said?”

“That we could totally pull this off?” he snarked.

She laughed lightly, “Alright, alright. This was crazy. But the other thing.”

Memory dawned on Soarin slowly, but when it did there was no mistaking the wide glint of shock to his eyes. She’d said about giving him something nice. Something special. Soarin’s wings stiffened in flight and his throat went raspy. This was Spitfire after all, did she...

He was having a bit of trouble thinking straight. All that teasing from her...did this finally mean it was...?

Then she was there, hovering so close to him and staring him in the eye, a flirtatious smile lighting up her colours. “Soarin,” she whispered. He was a professional stunt flyer, but the way that tongue wrapped around his name sapped all semblance of skill and grace from his flight. He barely managed to keep aloft.

“Soarin,” she said again, and his panting grew heavy and audible, even amidst the incredible music and sound effects of the ships. She leaned in closer, so close he could feel the breeze from her wings and the heat from her breath. “I know you’ve wanted this for so long now...” Soarin’s brain sizzled like the reversed polarity of the shields. She knew! She knew!! he screamed mentally, euphoric with the epiphany. His heart thundered in his chest.

Something soft and warm was pressed into his hooves. Soarin’s soaring heart skipped a beat. She is! She is!!

“It’s apple-rhubarb,” Spitfire said kindly. “I managed to sneak it out of their base. Freshly baked.”

It was the most magnificent pie he had every seen, and he wept freely his glistening tears.

He stumbled over the words of gratitude as tears choked his vision with sparkling droplets. “It’s just...you just...know me...so beautiful...thank you...”

The captain of the Wonderbolts patted her wingman on the shoulder while all around them haphazard ships flew painstaking formations, politely steering well clear of one another. She sighed and smiled. “Anything for a friend.”

Comments

[KillerSteel]

Awwww. I figure Spitfire and Soarin' are a bit closer than just friends, but it's always good to see a happy ending.

The Wonderbolts are good at their jobs, after all. They could turn a naval battle into water ballet with a couple hours and a few engine refits.

[Midnight Loki]

3209994 And mabye a little bit of luck.