“Uhmmm…” Rainbow Dash blinked into the high winds of a morning sky. “Uhhhh…”
Roarke tilted her helmet aside, gazing at her wingpony as they both hovered over a thick bed of clouds. “Anyday now.”
“Uhhhhh…” Rainbow Dash gulped. “That’s… uh… that’s a big ship.”
Roarke returned to gazing at the hulking body of the Lightning Bearer as it lifted up from the marshlands below and rumbled its way east. The ship’s twin dirigibles blotted out the sun as it coasted towards the horizon. “Eh… I’ve seen bigger.”
“Well, no wonder you and Khao’s other lackeys got totally, righteously owned,” Rainbow remarked, glancing down at the stallion in her grasp. “That friggin’ hunk of bolts could blast a hole through a mountain!”
“Actually… uhm…” Zaid’s eyes narrowed as he continued dangling perilously dangling from the pegasus’ grip. “That ain’t the ship that smoked us.”
“No?”
“Nah. It’s totally different. It’s way bigger, not to mention it has two dirigibles instead of one.”
“Maybe it ate the ship that took Kera,” Roarke muttered.
“Hey! Yeah!” Zaid smirked. “Maybe you’re right! It’s got a big enough metal belly for it!”
Roarke sighed, her voice taking a grumbling tone. “Rainbow, you certain the lavender light is situated inside that thing?”
Rainbow gulped. “I wish it wasn’t,” she said. “But it’s in there, alright, and it’s moving from the top deck to some place deep in the center of the thing.”
“I see,” Roarke muttered. “Well, attacking a Top Class Ledomaritan State of the Art Flying Fortress is a viable option. I very much doubt we’d live through it, but bucket lists certainly don’t kick themselves.”
“Look, let’s not freak out too much, okay?”
“Who said I was freaking out?”
“I can tell, alright? I’m already seeing the perspiration on your… erm… helmet.”
“Meh.”
“Let’s just rest a moment and think this through.” Rainbow Dash hovered to a cloud bed. She placed Zaid down and perched on the mist’s wispy edge. “If they’re not armed to the teeth, they’ll at least have a crapton of guards waiting to tear us apart--”
“Uhm…” Roarke fidgeted in mid-hover.
Rainbow looked up at her. “Yes? Does Roarke most Rare already have an idea?”
“No.” Roarke pointed. “Why’d you just drop the breeder?”
“Huh?!” Rainbow Dash looked down at the fresh, gaping hole in the cloud beside her. “Luna Poop!” She dove in a sapphiric blur.
Roarke watched, craning her neck patiently.
After a few seconds, Rainbow Dash hovered back up through the hole, grunting as she once again sported the weight of a frazzled stallion in her grasp. “Nnngh! My bad. Been ages since I sat on a cloud. My head’s in other places.”
“At least y-you g-got a head…” Zaid wheezed. He swallowed down a bubble of bile while his nostril lost a trickle of blood. “Wake me when the universe stops spinning.”
“If he dies, can I have his kidneys?” Roarke asked.
“No!” Rainbow Dash frowned. “Can we please talk about the situation at hoof?!”
“What’s to talk about?” Roarke gestured towards the hulking dreadnaught in the distance. “We’re obviously outnumbered. The only fortuitous thing to do is wait for the thing to engage another ship in combat and attempt boarding it while they’re distracted.”
“And wait for all sorts of horribad crap to happen to Kera in the meantime?!” Rainbow Dash frowned. “No way, Roarke! We owe it to her to act immediately!” She gazed up at the bright blue morning sky. “You know this place more than I do. What’s the weather like?”
“Uhm, muggy?” Roarke pointed at thin wisps of air drifting over the marshlands below. “Humid, hot, lots of moisture.”
“So I’m guessing convection is a big thing here?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Hot air collecting into tall, vertical clouds that breed thunderstorms in the late day?”
“If that’s how feathered ponies describe it, then sure.”
“I think it’s time I put my cloud kicking talents into work.” Rainbow Dash drifted over. “Here, hold the ‘breeder.’”
Roarke merely stared at Rainbow. “Do I have to?”
“Do you know how to shove clouds around and form an early afternoon thunderstorm?”
“I’m a metal mare, not a meteorologist.”
“Yeah, good thing you’re not both or else you’d have a lot more rust.”
“Bite your tongue!” Roarke snapped. “I do not have any rust!”
“Prove it.” Rainbow Dash shoved Zaid into Roarke’s metal grip. “Do some exercise. I gotta go make us some cover.”
“For what?”
“For awesomeness!” Rainbow Dash said with a devilish smirk. She shot eastward, bursting through a wave of mist and collecting the moisture with her wings. “And try to keep up with the ship! But don’t go too low or else they’ll see us before they need to!”
Roarke hovered, alone with Zaid in her grip.
“Uhhhh…” Zaid fidgeted. “Why would I be an accessory to exercise? Do I weigh a lot?”
“Ohhhh how I would love to test that,” Roarke droned.
“I’m not sure how to break this to you, but I think I could do with a bathroom break.”
“What’s stopping you?” Roarke drifted forward, her helmeted eyes on Rainbow Dash. “We could use some hailstones to knock sense into her.”
“Heh! Yaaay!” A trickling noise in the wind. “I’m being useful!”
“Hmmm? Oh for Searo’s sake!"
Oh my god Zaid, really?
That's Zaid!
*cue laugh track*
3375439 Really.
Meanwhile on the Lightning Bearer, a wayward enforcer suddenly noticed an anomalous stream of water pouring from the midst of the clouds.
I'm pretty sure "rust" has some negative connotations in Searonese culture, but I can't remember what they were right now.
Just .
That...
Happened.
Okay. Comedy chapter.
Loved the cloud joke.
3375439 hey, you hired him.
Welp, no need to invent the wind sock now.
Ok, Ill make the energy cannon, you keep the tracker pointed in the right direction, and you, you lose some weight.
Too late.
Oh well, at least thatll save the problem occuring next.
3375482
...weirdo. XD
3375582 You just can't deal with my kind of awesome.
Okay, this is hilarious.
My zaides.
Well, I hope Dash's plan is well thought out.
…who am I kidding.
~Basso Fthe
Oh Zaid you silly colt. ^-^
Whelp, when ya' gotta go, ya' gotta go...
I lol'd when RD tried to put Zaid down on the cloud. Almost rolled past me for a second, when I realized "Heeey...there's only one pegasus around here, and it ain't him. Oops."
Also, kinda didn't expect them to run into the Lightning Bearer so soon, but eh.
That Zaid character tho
How they don't manage to drop this guy during the ensuing fight will be beyond me.
Calling it: suddenly cultists show up to steal the book from the mayhem.
3375748 Heeey...
None of the other cultist's head exploded, so that means they're still around.
Could this become threeway between the Lightning Bearer, the cultists, and Raibow Dash, Roarke, and Zaid?
Fourway if the Steel Wing shows up.
3375722
Me too. I was like. "Did she place him down or hold him under an armpit?" and then there was a hole in the cloud and I cracked up.
If I wasn't at home a lot of ppl would be looking at me funny.
3375526
31.media.tumblr.com/db50207f11a4c030f29db57f0bb08809/tumblr_msfqmcZYF31snhqsko1_250.gif
It's been a long journey, but I finally caught up with Imploding, Rainbow Dash, and you guys.
I read Austreaoh long before making this account, when it was featured just after its completion, and only recently decided to read the rest and catch up. Now that I have finally reached this point, I feel lucky to have read this story. Any praise for the author that I have, which is a lot, has already been said better by you guys. I'll just say that this story leaves me wondering "What's going to happen next?' more than any other.
Now I can finally hop on the speculation train.
On a side note, Imploding seems to have an addiction to cacophonies and furrowing brows.
3376090 *falls down laughing* OMG That's hilarious! You are aware I am Imre, right? That makes the gif have such an awesome double meaning
Thunderclouds to mask an attack on the Lightning Bearer? If I were the captain of a ship that would fall out of the sky after damage to the dirigibles holding it up, I'd want to avoid those anyway.
Oh wait
GODDAMMIT, ZAID!!
I'm glad to see Rainbow being Rainbow (we haven't seen any weather-work from her yet, have we?), but I only hope the ship's name isn't too literal. I actually got my username from Pegasus, who, in Greek mythology, bore Zeus' lightning bolts into battle.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/11/4/142502__safe_twilight+sparkle_facehoof.jpg
3375666 3375777 3376224 3376628
Regardless of the parties fighting in the upcoming battle, Rainbow's going to kick a thunderhead into making the Lightning Bearer its namesake (god if that isn't a gun hanging on the wall). There hasn't been a rainboom in quite some time, but we've yet to see RD use some pegasus magic to blast someone with lightning.
Or does the ship have some ruby-flame powered weapon (Lighning) or propulsion system(Lightning quick)...?
If only we had some crazy awesome intervention on behalf of props' uncle, riding in on a magic powered golden super machine.
What exactly is it trickling against? The only thing around is Roarke's... armor...
Hah.
Roarke channeling her inner Dr. McCoy.
Gonna take a moment to appreciate that the weather pony can actually talk weather.
3377184 Well, if she wasn't worried about rust before, she will now!
Did a double take here :D
3377008
Dash used a tornado to help the Windthrow caravan cross a river. And once when duelling with Roarke, I think. Also, she hid in a cloud in Darkstine.
Oh hey, what's going on in this fanf-
stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/1259791/shocked-o.gif
It's clever thinking though. No one, except for the cultists perhaps, knows that pegasi are capable of weather manipulation. They won't see that one coming.
I counted up (i.e. searched the internet) the total words in the Harry Potter books - it comes to 1,090,739 words.
With the latest chapter of Odrsjot (using the fimfiction word-counts) the Flying East series racks up at about 851,343 so far. I'm guessing this will top 3 million words by the time we meet the end of the twelfth book.
For comparison, Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" comes in at an estimated 1.5 million words.
3378990 And remember, this guy keeps writing other fics at the same time.
3378990, 3379289
Aaand writes a chapter per day.
Thanks for your dedication, Mr. Colon
3375607 Yeah just be careful to not get any or Roarke's armor XD
A Message from MASH-
It is Halloween. And as such, I am taking the chapter off.
Edit: One more day. I promise I have a REALLY good excuse for this.
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time,
That crash definitely knocked some screws loose from old Zaid. We still love him though...so is Dash planning to throw the ship into a storm and then sneak aboard amidst the chaos? Sounds like it'll work. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
P.S. Alright, here's what happened - first, it was Halloween and I just took the day off. The next day, I went over my friend's house. I got to bed around 1:00, so I was dead on my feet. The next day, I went to the Zelda Symphony Orchestra. It was the best of all. Just the best of all the things. So that night I got home late. The whole thing was just a freak coincidence. However, a Get-Backing Adventure is on it's way. Seriously. I promise it'll happen soon.
Zaid. My new favorite character.
I'm sure Roarke could find a few positions in which you could be useful for some exercise.
3378990 Have you read Diaries Of A Madman?
Yes! Finally we get some weather manipulation up in this fic! Rainbow should just whip up a couple dozen tornadoes and let them do their work. I'm sure the powers of the plot device would keep Kera safe until Rainbow or Rorake could snatch her from the flying debris in the nick of time.
But, you know, thunderstorms are cool, too, I guess.
Zaid. Wow. That was absolutely hilarious. Anywho, I wonder what Dash is going to do with this thunderstorm?
Speaking of that, yay for weather manipulation!
That's an extremely convenient face.
-Spirit
fuckin' zaid pissin into the wind
I don't think words describe Zaid right now. Just . . . wow.
Holy shit Roarke, you clever!
Anyway, Zaid's antics seem to have taken up everyone's attention, but I'd like to point out that we're finally having a very vital part of Rainbow Dash's heritage being addressed: her weather altering skills! I do recall some of it being used in Austraeoh, but that's about it.
5873537 It's also nice to see roarke Actually interacting again. She's been too quiet through the first chunk of the story, and while I get that the "Brooding" is her personality type, I Started to miss her antics.
Once again Rainbow shows she has intelligence.
Pee doesn't really make much sound unless it hits something. There's only one other solid object up there, and she ain't gonna be happy about it hitting her...
...I can totally picture Roarke taking a line from Ironhide right now.
"That's gonna rust.. "
Also, it's about time Rainbow used her freaky winged-horse powers.