I feel like an astronaut who just came back from a long mission during which all the crew but me and my cat died. Or at least, I have such an impression when I open the door to Aryanne’s mansion in the early morning and at the same moment I’m pinned to the ground by something fast, slender, and slightly smelly.

“Minuette!” Vinyl exclaims, planting a kiss on my cheek. “You’re back! I was so worried about you!” She hugs me again and helps me up. “I was so worried that my irritable bowel syndrome kicked in and I spent the whole night sitting on the toilet...”

Oh great. Vinyl and her irritable bowel strike back. Actually, life must kinda suck when you can’t even trust your own ass. Luckily, she leaves me alone and runs to Trixie who, seeing what happened to me, braced herself, stopping Vinyl from knocking her over.

“How was it? Did you make it?” Vinyl asks her. “Did you have a fun time?”

Trixie looks at her, stone-faced and levitates the sword of Cedric Lulamoon. “We fulfilled our duty towards the della Morte family,” she says grimly. “Lead us to Mr. della Morte.”

“Umm... Trixie?” I ask. “Are you sure your ancestor’s ghost didn’t possess you when you took this sword?”

“Trixie is pretty sure such thing didn’t happen,” Trixie replies, waving the sword and nearly cutting Vinyl’s head off. Few blue hair fall on the floor.

“You know... I’ll better take it...” I say. Apparently Trixie is as bad in handling melee weapons as she is in gun safety. Luckily, she gives the sword to me without protesting. I levitate it and immediately my mind is filled with the image of some battle. Go and fornicate thyself, Ceddy! I think. The image disappears immediately.

The Great and Powerful Cedric smells Minuet’s blood in thee, fair maiden, says some strange voice in my head. He always thought no mare would want to bear this son of a whore’s child.

Yeah, I’m surprised myself, I, umm... think back? Now, get the fuck out of my head, old fart. Go and haunt your descendant or something.

As thou wish, my fair lady.

I feel that I’m alone in my head again. It feels so good... All my dirty thoughts are mine and only mine.

“Minuette,” Trixie says, blushing suddenly. “Why does Trixie feel like her great, great, and fifty more greats-grandfather just shown her a list of your fetishes?”

That old, creepy, cunt-licking, cock-eating son of a spotty skunk-smelling harlot! I’m gonna find him and kill– Oh, wait. “Do you know, by any chance, where is he buried?” I ask as innocently as I can. “I feel like taking a dump on some grave...”

“And you’re always angry when I want to do it in the wilderness!” Vinyl exclaims. “I’ve heard it’s really healthy and–” She shuts up when I give her the coldest of my cold stares.

“Can we continue this conversation when we’ll be back in Equestria?” I ask, my voice as cold as liquid nitrogen. I trot upstairs, passing by Aryanne, who looks at us unsurely. Apparently, she heard at least some snippets from our conversation. I hope she didn’t understand much, just for the sake of her sanity.

“Herr della Morte is sleeping,” she says once she stops looking at the sword I’m levitating. On the other side of the corridor, the door opens.

“No, I’m not,” says Mr. della Morte, walking towards us. Indeed, he doesn’t look like he was sleeping: he’s wearing a suit and while he’s kinda similar to his cousin Bacio, he looks much more threatening. Luckily, soon our ways will part. “Do you have it?”

“As you can see,” I reply, levitating the sword towards him. He takes it and looks at the lettering on the hilt, impressed. “So...” I say, wondering if I should give them some alone time. “Can we go?”

He immediately stops smiling and looks at me. “Not yet,” he says. “If I recall correctly, you want to go back to Equestria, so why don’t you take it to my dear cousin?”

“That’s not what I agreed to...” I mutter, knowing well that it won’t help me much.

“The bay here is quite deep,” Mr. della Morte replies. “Nopony ever resurfaced. Do you want to check if you’re lucky?”

“Okay, we’ll take the sword to Equestria,” I say quickly. You know, I feel that my limit of luck for this year was greatly depleted by not being accidentally shot by Trixie, coming back from the clinical death back in Fillydelphia, and having an orgasm while climbing to the castle. I’m not gonna check if I can swim that well. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“Oh, it’s easy,” he says. “Ms. Aryanne is soon going to Canterlot with her private airship. Nopony’s gonna look for the sword there...”

Judging by Aryanne’s expression, she’s as happy to hear that as I am. Which means that if I were della Morte, I’d watch out for a three-legged pony with an eyepatch who’d put a suitcase under his table and quickly run away. When he walks back to his room, Aryanne turns to me.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Zey just came to me... I owe ‘em a lot, you know...”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” I reply. Some rusty gears are turning in my head as we’re walking downstairs. Flitter and Cloudchaser don’t know that we’re going to take the sword to Equestria. The easiest way would be to inform them somehow, but there’s one problem: those two secret agents wannabe pornstars didn’t tell us where to find them.

“Zey are not going to leave you,” Aryanne says. “Do you have any plan?”

“Well, it depends.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “If you, by any chance, know how to contact three pegasi in this town...”

“Do you know vhere zey live?” Aryanne asks. “I have my vays of finding ponies in zis tovn...”

“Yeah, I’ve read the history books...” I reply. “But the problem is, I don’t know.”

“Oh...” She nods and gives me a look of pity. “Zen you’re fucked...”

“I know.” I sigh. “I’m fucked longer than I remember. And about zen, I need to start meditating or I’ll end up invading some country or something...”

She frowns. “Is zat some allusion? Manewitz rubs you?”

It takes me a while before I understand what she meant. “It’s ‘rubs off on you’,” I say. “I don’t like to be rubbed by other mares, you know...” Suddenly my mind is assaulted by a picture of Trixie’s ass. Struggling to throw it out of my head, I add, “I’m sorry, I’m just stressed.”

“Don’t worry,” Aryanne says. “Mein zeppelin is rather comfy...”

“Smother me with Celestia’s tits...” Vinyl mutters. “That thing is huge...”

Indeed, it is. We enter the hangar to see a large, white, cigar-shaped balloon and its four gondolas – one for the pilots, one, bigger for the passengers, and two smaller, each housing an engine. I wonder what they run on – steam would be dangerous, since the balloon is filled with hydrogen, not to mention that coal would make this whole thing too heavy. Electricity? Maybe, though again, batteries would be heavy and not very practical. Magic engine with crystals and silver turbine? Expensive, but hell, you could buy a small country for that airship. Maybe they have money for that.

Unless, of course, there’s a really big hamster wheel inside.

There’s also internal combustion engine, but those I’ve seen so far are small, heavy, and not powerful enough. Maybe in a few years... Note to self: fit one into a carriage. Equestria will never be the same again.

Anyway, we’re standing here with Trixie, Vinyl, Inkie, Grace, Coco, Photo Finish, and Octavia, watching as the crew tries to pull the airship out of the hangar. There’s a large picture of Aryanne’s cutie mark on the side, which would probably get us banned in most of the civilised countries and get us shot down in a few less civilised ones.

“Well, zat’s vhat I like...” Photo Finish says. Aryanne joins us, wearing aviator goggles and a leather jacket, complete with a white scarf. No, she’s not gonna fly us to Equestria herself. Celestia forbid. She has a crew, consisting mostly of griffons named Helmut, Sigurd, Berthold, Carsten, Fritz, and Manfred Albrecht von Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. Only a mechanic is a pony, a grey earth mare with orange mane, called Hexagon Nut.

“Welcome,” says the captain of the airship, Manfred Albrecht von Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. “We will have to wait a bit for Mr. della Morte, so I guess it’ll be the best to get on the deck and take the seats.”

“Woohoo!” Vinyl jumps up and down. “Dibs on the seat next to the window!”

“Trixie wants a place close to the toilet,” Trixie says. The rest of our group stares at her. “Motion sickness. How long are we gonna fly to Equestria?”

“About three or four days, depending of the winds,” one of the griffons, Carsten or Fritz, replies. “The cruise speed is about fifty knots.”

Nice. About five times shorter than the ship. The sooner I get rid of this freakshow, the better. Also, knots? I know there’s “ship” in “airship”, but you can’t just throw a line with knots out of the gondola and check the rate of knots. Miles per hour, or, since the crew is from the Griffon Empire, kilometres per hour would be more reasonable.

A quick calculation later I learn that fifty knots is almost ninety three kilometres per hour or fifty seven miles per hour. I’m kinda an engineer, I have to know my units. Eighty four hooves per second. Eighty six point eight verstas per hour, if you are from Hooviet Union. Zero point zero seven Mach. Rainbow Dash would eat us for breakfast.

“Do you think they’ll leave us alone?” Inkie asks, interrupting my mathturbation. She’s now carrying the sword in her saddlebags, since she’s apparently immune to the shit Cedric’s ghost says.

“I hope so,” I reply, trying not to think about all kinds of “accidents” that can happen to us on our way to Equestria. Aryanne is probably on our side, but the della Mortes... And we didn’t even have time to find Flitter and Cloudchaser.

The interior of the airship is furnished in style Aryanne apparently adores: white walls, pink couches – a giant vagina, full of champagne and exotic food. Grace stands next to me, staring at everything in a mix of awe and disgust. “Whoever built it was self-conscious about something...” she says.

“It belongs to Aryanne, after all,” I say, pointing at our host, who’s now talking to Helmut or maybe Sigurd. “You know, small moustache, small dic... tator.”

“Exactly,” Grace replies. We get on the deck. Vinyl is already lying on one of the pink couches, getting all touchy feely with Octavia. Inkie and Coco watch them curiously, while Trixie looks like she’s going to puke, even though we didn’t even left the ground. The sword of Cedric Lulamoon lies on the table next to a bottle of champagne and a tray of peanuts. I guess that old fart is turning in his grave.

Since I don’t feel like sitting with them at the moment and I also like to know many things, I walk to the back of the gondola, where, surrounded by pipes, levers, pumps, and gauges, is Hexagon Nut, the mechanic. She’s standing on her hind legs and banging a hammer against a copper pipe.

“It’s not gonna blow up, is it?” I ask.

She looks at me, shrugs, and goes back to prodding various pipes with her hammer. Reassuring.

“Umm... you know that we’re gonna fly this over the ocean, right? I have enough problems with mafia and I don’t wanna deal with some defect a thousand miles from the nearest shore...”

She turns to me, flips her orange, grease-stained mane, and says, “Kochana, chuja rozumiem z tego co mówisz, ale chyba wiem co na to poradzić...”

Oh. I wonder how did she survive on that racially pure airship? While I stand there, dumbfounded, she walks to a small, dirty cupboard and produces two glasses that look like they were mustard jars in their previous lives and a barrel with a tap, labelled “fuel”. She puts the barrel on the floor and pours some transparent liquid to the glasses. Then she gives one of the glasses to me and drinks hers in one go, without even flinching.

I look at my glass unsurely. I don’t normally drink stuff labelled “fuel”, even if it doesn’t smell like it. On the other hoof, she drank it and is still alive. I levitate a glass and, mimicking her moves, drink it.

O w pizdę jeża! I mean... Umm... By hedgehog’s cunt! Wait... Does such saying even exist in Equine or did I just translate something from a language I don’t even know... Anyway, the contents of the glass makes me feel like my guts were ripped out, thrown on the ground, and jumped on. Then somepony took a leak on them, and put them back in me.

Hexagon Nut looks at me curiously, waiting till I stop choking. “Can you understand me now?” she asks.

Somehow, I can. I’m not gonna question it. I guess I’d just get another glass of that rocket fuel. Sweet Celestia! I’m not sure, but I think this stuff is banned in Oatstralia for some reason. “Yes,” I reply. “What the hell was that?”

“We use it if we run out of kerosene,” she replies. “I also clean the rusty parts with it... What’s your name, by the way?”

“Minuette,” I reply, still blinking to get used to the world suddenly getting more colourful after a glass of the foul liquid.

“Nakrętka.” She offers me her hoof. “Changed it to Hexagon Nut because nopony remembers about the tail under ‘e’. But you can call me ‘Hexie’.”

“Cool. Listen, Hexie, I’m kinda interested in machines. What engines does this thing use?”

“Two turboprops with contra-rotating propellers. I can show them to you.”

We walk through the narrow passage leading from the passenger gondola to the left engine. It’s actually a rather small, aluminium room, mostly occupied by an engine – a massive turbine with a pipe running through the middle of the room to the fuel tank, and various other fixtures crammed nearby. In the back of the gondola there’s a gearbox and small, round window. Through it, I can see a part of the system of two coaxial propellers. I guess it gets pretty noisy when the engine is working.

When I get out from the narrow space on the engine’s side, I see something familiar. Something I haven’t seen from the outside, since it was obscured by a closed hatch.

“Umm, Hexie... Is that an autocannon?” I ask, pointing at something that clearly looks like a 20 mm caliber barrel on a mount, complete with a drum magazine.

“Yes, why are you asking?”

“Why the fuck do you need an autocannon on a cruise airship?” I ask, completely dumbfounded. Knowing ponies’ tendency to make stuff symmetrical, there’s another one in the second gondola. And maybe ten more hidden throughout the whole zeppelin, in case of an autocannon emergency, because why not? There’s always a good day to put a two-centimetres-wide hole in some motherfucker.

“Because of the taxes,” Hexagon Nut replies. “It was registered in the Griffon Empire. It’s much cheaper to register an airship there as a military vehicle, since the government can always use them in case of war. But, of course, it has to be armed.”

“But why autocannons?” I ask. Of course I know that law is like a tall pole – one cannot jump over it, but it’s easy to walk around it, but this seems like an overkill. “Couldn’t you, like, put a few BB guns here?”

“No, it had to be at least a heavy machine gun. Also, the crew is armed with magical energy guns, and we also have a bomb bay.”

“And what do you have in the bomb bay? A tactical nuke?”

“No,” she replies. “A hundred or so barrels of beer.”

That’s much better. Still, there’s something that bugs me. “Why is the crew armed in those crystal toys?”

You know, most of magical energy guns contain two crystals which, upon being struck with electricity, fire a beam – killing or stunning the target. Still, one battery lasts for about ten shots, not to mention that the beam is slower and more visible than a bullet, so you can dodge it easily. Also, it’s not as cool as firing magic yourself, especially when you can, like me, aim precisely at the opponent’s balls.

“Stray rounds don’t destroy the equipment.”

Yeah... I wonder how often the crew shoots at their passengers? I’ll definitely have to warn the rest of my... friends? Okay, all those strange ponies that consider me their friend. A sound of a siren stops my ponderings about semantics. Hexie shows me the way back to the passenger compartment, so I trot there to take my place. At least Vinyl and Octavia keep their hooves off themselves. Trixie drinks whisky – is she scared of heights or what? Needs further investigation. Coco is sleeping in Inkie’s arms while Grace reads a newspaper and watches Aryanne, who now talks with our old friend, Mr. della Morte. The conversation probably doesn’t go well – she yells at him in Pferdisch. Too bad, the “fuel” Hexie gave me doesn’t make understanding it any easier. I sit next to Grace and soon we’re joined by Aryanne. Della Morte walks away to another compartment.

“I don’t like it,” Aryanne whispers to us. “Mein crew listens to zis fokker’s orders.”

“Just great,” Grace mutters. “Are they gonna make us walk the plank?”

“I talked to the mechanic.” I decide to add my ten bits. “Those guys are armed. Aryanne, I don’t know if you heard that you have autocannons on this junk...”

“Ja, I know zat,” Aryanne replies. “And eine Haubitze on ze front...”

“Eine what?” I ask. Really, is there some Pferdisch fuel? That’d revolutionise the whole language teaching process.

“Howitzer,” Grace says. “But it’s safe as long as it can’t be used to shoot us while we’re inside.”

“Yeah, unless they shoot it at something important and run away, leaving us to be shot down...” My voice drowns in the sound of two engines being turned on. Even though we’re in another gondola, the noise is deafening. I hear the hissing of the hydrogen and we slowly start to move upwards, above the green field. We also gain some speed, leaving the hangar behind.

I actually like airships. They don’t shake as much as normal ships and are more resistant to wind than Cherry Berry’s helicopter. I try to remember exactly how those engines look like. Cherry would probably be able to reverse engineer them and I’m already thinking that if I ever get to the money hidden in the old mine next to the rock farm, I’ll donate it on research on flying machines.

Even though it’s awesome, it’s not very fast. Grace and I start to solve crosswords – her newspapers is in Prench, so we kinda suck at it, but at least we kill some time. After a few hours, we leave Prance and, the seashore still below us, fly above Northern Zebrica. Desert below us, we’re moving swiftly through cloudless sky. Sun shines through the windows, its light reflecting in the blade of the sword. I take it from the table. It won’t help much against magical guns, but they won’t take me alive.

Trixie still doesn’t vomit. Maybe she’ll even start to like flying? Who knows. Vinyl is humming some tune, staring at the window. Suddenly, she turns to us, asking, “Do you know any rhymes to ‘blunt?’”

“Apart from the most obvious one?” I ask. “Hmm... ‘The wondrous land of Punt.’ It’s some country from Daring Do novels...”

Vinyl nods. “Hmm, if it was a Daring Do novel, this airship wouldn’t survive...”

“Hey!” Aryanne exclaims. “No Daring doing on mein Zeppelin!”

“Okay, don’t worry,” Grace says. “I really hope this journey will be uneventful...”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind some beautiful stallion rescuing us from danger.” Octavia looks through the window and sighs.

“Am I not enough?” Vinyl asks. “Also, if any stallion tried to rescue us, Minuette would surely cut his balls off with that sword and then Trixie would fry them with her magic. You two, girls, are cuntblocks...”

Trixie looks at her coldly. “If it wasn’t for us, you would be dead. Trixie doesn’t remember you doing anything except breaking your hooves and defecating in the bushes...”

Vinyl clears her throat. “What? And do I have to remind you who got drunk because a gay cowpony in Appleloosa didn’t want to screw her?”

“Do I want to know?” Grace asks me. I shake my head.

“Also, I saved Minuette’s life!” Vinyl exclaims.

“Gay cowpony?” Aryanne asks. “I like gay cowponies...”

“Only in Appleloosa,” I say. “But the town is kinda boring. Mostly desert and apples.”

“I need to visit it,” Aryanne mutters, nodding her head.

“I’ll give you an address to a mare who has a helicopter,” I say. “It’s slightly blood-stained, but she probably managed to rebuild it...”

Aryanne nods. Behind the window, the sun slowly sets. We’re now above the ocean. The roaring of the engines got quieter, or maybe we just tuned it out. Aryanne yawns.

I feel a headache incoming. Maybe it’s some side effect of the fuel I drank. Seeing that everypony is dozing off, I get up, take the sword and walk to the back. I want to find the bomb bay and all the beer hidden there. Not the best way of curing hangover, but definitely the funniest.

Levitating the sword, I push myself through the maze of pipes and wires near the passages to the engines. I wonder where’s that bomb bay. If I get lost, I’ll simply go and find Hexagon Nut.

Suddenly, I hear somepony moving. I raise the sword and look into the darkness. My magic casts eerie shadows on the walls of the airship. Between the pipes, I see something that looks like a shadow of the wing.

“Blossomforth? Is that you?” I ask.

“How did you know?” Blossomforth’s voice sounds slightly disappointed.

“Flitter or Cloudchaser wouldn’t fit their flanks into that arsehole and I hoped you’d be wise enough to get that something is wrong even without me noticing you,” I reply. “What are you doing here, apart from pretending to be a Tetris block?”

“Before you took off, this important motherfucker put something in the balloon,” Blossomforth replies. “He also mentioned something about reaching Equestria and parachuting away.”

“I guess we’re not invited?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” Blossomforth says. “Flitter and Cloudchaser are on it. You’re safe...”

“Since they’re on it, I nearly got killed a few times, died once, had to break into a castle, and travel through half of the world with a bunch of friggin’ nutjobs... I don’t really feel safe...”

“Well, shit happens,” Blossomforth mutters.

“That’s my middle name.”

“No, it’s ‘Romana’.” Blossomforth gives me an odd look. “Don’t think we didn’t check it in our database.”

Shit. Princess Celestia is watching you forever. “What else is in that database? Not that I’m interested...”

Blossomforth gives me a smirk. “Princess Celestia is slightly over ten thousand years old. When you were in Maneaus, you had a problem with some bat pony. Soylent Green is made of–”

“I don’t wanna know that,” I say quickly. “Also, you’re just guessing, like Trixie when she tries to predict a pony’s future. I’ve never been to Maneaus. I don’t even know where it is...”

Blossomforth only smiles mysteriously. “Okay... That’s something I shouldn’t have told you. But maybe you’ll be interested in the fact that the father of Berry Punch’s child is also the father of little Dinky Hooves.”

“Bullshit,” I say. “They were both born on the same day, but Ruby was conceived in Canterlot, while Derpy lived in Vanhoover when–”

“He had a bike.”

I give her a weird look, or rather try to, since she disappears between the pipes. I don’t believe a word she says, but still, I’m not gonna buy Soylent Green in the nearby future. I shrug and turn around to go and find something to drink, since my head is killing me. After walking only a few steps, I face one of the griffons from the crew.

“Hello, Berthold,” I say. “I totally wasn’t talking to anypony here...” I laugh nervously. “Do you know where can I find some beer?”

“My name is Sigurd,” the griffon replies and shoots his magic raygun at me. Motherfu–

Wait. He shot me. The ray was red, so technically, I should lie there, dead, with a large wound in my chest, my innards cooked. Sigurd probably thinks the same, judging by the panicked look he’s giving his gun. He fires again, this time aiming at my head.

The bolt disintegrates a millimetre from my horn. Sigurd’s eyes widen in fear. I guess I’d look pretty badass, taking shots without flinching, if it wasn’t for my “too surprised to shit herself” expression. I decide to counterattack and levitate the sword.

Oh yeah. That old piece of junk protects its wielder against magic. Suck it up, Sigurd, or whatever your name is. Soon, you’ll be a chicken soup...

He probably realised that his gun can’t do shit to me because my first swing is blocked by a piece of pipe he picked up from the floor. Same with the second and the third. I jump, avoiding the pipe, and smack him with my hoof. Ouch! He blocked it and tried to hit me, but the pipe meets my sword.

May I tell you something? The voice of Cedric Lulamoon says in my head.

I’m kinda busy here, old fart, I reply, swinging the sword at the griffon. He blocks it effortlessly.

You spend too much time watching plays in the theatre, Cedric says, watching me swinging my sword furiously at my opponent, pushing him in the engine gondola’s direction.

What do you mean? I ask, narrowly avoiding the pipe.

Sword fighting is not about hitting the opponent’s sword to make the loudest ‘ding!’ possible. You’re clearly aiming at his pipe, imbecile.

Oh... Really? I levitate the sword as high as possible, making the griffon give it all his attention. He raises his pipe to block it and at the same time I dart forward, headbutting him. He backpedals, staggering, and drops the pipe. I swing my sword and hit his beak with its pommel. Twice, for a good measure. He falls to the floor, revealing two other griffons standing in the passage leading to the engine and aiming their guns at me.

“Come at me, motherfuckers!” I yell, raising my sword and running towards them. Few bolts fly at me, disappearing just before hitting me. I’d really feel better if the shield was a bit bigger. Those are a bit close for comfort.

The griffons realise that something is wrong when I’m close to them. I swing the sword at one of them, cutting his gun in half. I jump on the fuel pipe and try to hit the other.

“Fritz!” the first griffon shouts, tackling me. Luckily, the sword is still in my magic field. I kick the griffon off of myself. My head is pounding and my ribs burn as if they were filled with liquid fire. I take a moment to stop and catch my breath, leaning against the gondola wall and shielding myself with the sword. Not gonna go into melee with griffons again. The first one, Carsten or Helmut, tries to outflank me, while Fritz grabs the autocannon. Silly Fritz. Autocannons are for firing at the stuff outside. One doesn’t build an autocannon mount in a way it can be fired at the engine. A mole among the crewmen would destroy the whole airship... Building cannon mounts that flexible wouldn’t be reasonable, right?

Right?

FUCK!

I dive under the engine case, chased by the stream of bullets. The engine roaring changes its tone when the turbine is hit. Several holes appear in the floor and the fuel pipe. A blue tracer flies centimetres from my head...

Wait, if they had tracers, do they also have...

Fwoosh!

Incendiary rounds! Fuck me sideways!

A wall of fire rises between me and the griffons. At least the shooting stops – Fritz probably realised how dumb he was. I drop the sword and fire a water spell. It doesn’t help much against the burning fuel, but at least the griffons have extinguishers on their side. The fire is still burning, but at least I’m not gonna become a pony-flavoured toast anytime soon. The griffons, now armed with firepony’s axes, flee through the autocannon hatch. Come back here, cowards! Finish quenching the fire and face my wrath, cunts!

Thud!

Oh... You can as well cut the ropes connecting the engine gondola with the balloon. The airship can fly with one engine. Unlike it, I can only fly in one direction. Down.

My head hurts, I’m half-deaf from the engine roaring, and soon I’ll land in the ocean. Considering the height, I could as well fall on the concrete. Yet another fucked up day.

I grab the sword with my teeth and focus on the picture of the airship. I’m moving; the airship is moving; there are so many factors I have to take into consideration...

Fuck it. I teleport. The vortex of time and space swallows, chews, and shits me. I open my eyes. Well, I’m not in the gondola anymore. I’m a few dozen metres higher, but I’m still falling. Wind ruffles my mane and tail, but when I turn, I see a loose rope hanging from the place where the gondola used to be.

I focus on the rope and teleport. Aargh! Blood flows from my ears and nose, I’m gonna throw up, but at least I’m holding that fucking rope with all my hooves. I levitate the sword out of my teeth and try my best at not puking.

I look around. The griffons are circling here like two vultures, axes in their claws. Fritz flies at me and tries to hit me with an axe. I block it with my sword and rock on the rope, kicking him. The axe misses me, but at least my second kick hits the jackpot. Fritz flies away, holding his balls.

The other griffon (I’m pretty sure it’s Helmut), dives at me. In five seconds, he’ll kick me off the rope.

Four seconds. An idea appears in my head. Or rather, it starts in my stomach, where a revolution takes place.

Three seconds. I remind myself everything what I know about levitating liquid and runny substances.

Two seconds. My stomach can’t stand it anymore and I throw up, catching the sorry remains of my lunch and supper with my magic.

One second. The griffon’s eyes widen in fear when he sees a strange, slightly green and chunky projectile just in front of his face.

Zero seconds. The griffon misses me and rams into the gondola of the second engine, leaving a griffon-shaped dent in the aluminium wall. He falls off and goes down. Luckily for him, he regains consciousness somewhere halfway to the ground and instead of crashing into the water, he lands in it. See you never, motherfucker.

I’m just thinking about the way of getting to the passenger gondola that doesn’t involve teleportation (just the thought about it makes me want to vomit again), when I see Fritz flying behind the airship and aiming his raygun at me. The bolts misses and hits the balloon, leaving a scorched place.

Silly, silly Fritz. I have the magical sword. Didn’t you see that your puny guns don’t even tickle me?

The next bolt flies just past the rope I’m holding. You know what, Fritz? Fuck you. That’s totally unfair!

Fritz smirks and aims exactly at the rope. He’s about to pull the trigger, when suddenly something cream-coloured tackles him, causing him to drop the gun.

“Blossomforth!” I shout. Finally, cavalry arrives.

Okay, I was wrong. Without the element of surprise, Blossomforth really sucks at being cavalry. Soon, Fritz hands her ass to her, scratching her with her claws and pushing her at the propeller. She barely misses it (I’m pretty sure she somehow managed to fly through it without getting cut to stew, but I couldn’t see it exactly due to having another attack of nausea). Fritz tackles and punches her while I can’t do anything to help her...

The sword. I levitate it as far as I can and throw it to Blossomforth. Fuck. She’s as bad at catching as she is in fighting. The sword misses her and breaks one of the windows of the right engine gondola. Blossomforth dodges another punch and Fritz hits the wall behind her. He grabs her throat and tries to punch her again when something appears in the broken window.

A harpoon hits Fritz’s wing. He looks at it, dumbfounded and releases Blossomforth. Our saviour pulls the rope, causing the griffon to hit the wall. Fritz’s body goes limp and hangs from the rope like a bait for piranhas. Hexagon waves at me from the gondola and smiles.

“Blossomforth, you okay?” I ask. She’s barely flying – a meeting with the griffon left her with a couple of deep cuts, black eyes, and at least one missing tooth. And I let her immobilise me? Shame on me.

“Yeah,” Blossomforth replies, smiling. It looks kinda scary with blood on her face, but I guess she’ll play toughest than she really is.

“You won’t leave me hanging, will you?” I ask, looking down at the ocean. The very sight of it causes the world to spin around me. Good thing I have nothing to throw up with. Or maybe it’s bad – who knows how many more griffons are here.

“Don’t worry,” Blossomforth says. “I’ll only gather some strength...” She flies to me and gets me off the line. Almost instantly we drop a few metres down, but she flaps her wings harder and flies with me to the right engine gondola. We drop on the floor next to Hexie, panting heavily.

“We need to go,” Hexagon says, pulling the unconscious griffon and putting him on the floor next to us. “We have to check what’s with the rest.”

“We’re here!” I hear Trixie’s voice coming from the other side of the passage. I get up immediately – I don’t want her to see me as weak.

Trixie walks into the engine gondola. She has a long scratch on her cheek. Next to her walks Inkie with a black eye, Coco, whose mane is ruffled and whose collar is torn, limping Grace, and Aryanne, also with a black eye, waving a magical raygun. Visibly pissed Octavia, several scratches on her side, walks with Photo Finish, her glasses missing, dress torn and covered in griffon feathers.

“The griffons ran away,” Trixie explains. “They took della Morte...”

“Coco managed to get him before we ran away,” Inkie says. “I don’t think his eye will ever get better.”

“Ze griffons look even worse zan us,” Aryanne adds. “I shot one in ze Arsch...”

“Nice.” Blossomforth tries to get up. “Flitter and Cloudchaser will catch them...” She coughs. “For piracy...”

“Yeah, but what about Bacio?” I ask. “We still need to catch him...”

“It’s simple,” Blossomforth says, pointing at the sword in Hexie’s hooves. “We’ll bring it to him...”

“Trixie thinks it’s suicide,” Trixie says. “Those guys wanted to kill us...”

“They still may.” Blossomforth coughs again. Inkie walks to her and checks her wounds. What about me? “They left something in the balloon...”

Suddenly, the whole airship shakes when we take a sharp turn. I’m thrown at the wall and Blossomforth lands on me, groaning. After a few more shakes, she ends up being sandwiched in a four-way between me, Aryanne, and Octavia. Good thing nopony sees us – ponies would start to talk.

“Wait...” I mutter when we untangle ourselves and get on our hooves. “If the crew ran away... Then who is steering the airship?”

Nopony answers. The way they look at each other, however, tells me more than a thousand of words.

“Which of you, cunts, thought it was a good idea?!” I yell, running through the whole airship, leading the charge to the cockpit. My head hurts and I feel that I’m gonna kill somepony, but it doesn’t matter. The danger is really serious. I bust the door to the cockpit open.

“Wooow, shiny!” Vinyl cooes, looking at a red light next to the rudder wheel. Dubstep blasts from the speakers, the howitzer, judging from the lights, is ready to fire, and, judging by some gauges we may somehow explode and lose hydrogen at the same time. “Wonder what that stuff says...”

“It says that our left engine is disabled,” I reply, pointing at the large pictogram just next to the light.

“That’s bad, isn’t it?” Vinyl mutters, looking at the light and simultaneously turning the rudder wheel. The airship turns slightly, almost making me fall again. “How can I turn it on?”

“You can’t. We lost it,” I reply.

“How do you know?”

“I was there...”

“Really?” Vinyl looks at me and pulls the column with the rudder towards herself. The airship starts to climb. “I haven’t noticed...”

“You haven’t noticed many things,” I reply, sitting on the second pilot’s seat. “Can I?” Before Vinyl can protest, I turn the safety of the howitzer on, reduce the throttle by half, and do something that I hope will change the pressure of air in the ballonets so we won’t explode. The hands of the gauges slowly go down, out of the red zone. I switch the radio so instead of dubstep I can hear the crews of the ships below us.

We’re still a bit tilted to the right. I guess it has something to do with our missing gondola and I’d pump the fuel from the right tank to the left one to compensate that, but I have no idea how. Those controls totally don’t look like the ones of a helicopter.

Vinyl, however, sees nothing wrong. “Coco was pretty badass,” she says. “She, like, beat the crap out of that guy and then I went to the cockpit and the second pilot, like, saw me. So he, like, turned to the first pilot and yelled ‘Manfred Albrecht von Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg!’, to which Manfred Albrecht von Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg replied ‘what?’. And then, the second pilot was like, ‘behind you!’, and then I hit him with a bottle...”

“Vinyl, could you, please, shut up?” I ask. “My head hurts and I’m, like... Umm, I mean, I’m the only pony who, while not knowing how to steer that, at least knows how not to crash it...”

“Hey!” Vinyl exclaims, her voice piercing my ears like a drill. “I did something badass for once, let me boast about it for a while!”

“Can you boast somewhere else?” I ask, looking at a gauge that I think shows the temperature of the engine. It’s still going up, even though I put the thrust lever on half the maximal power.

“If you say so...” Vinyl mutters. “I’m gonna have a cigarette and–”

“No cigarettes,” I say. “There’s a large balloon full of hydrogen above us.” Suddenly, I get an idea. “Go and find Hexagon Nut. She’ll know what to do.”

Vinyl salutes mockingly and walks away, leaving me with the board full of colourful, blinking lights. Is that stuff supposed to be modern? For me it’s confusing, but maybe it’s because of my headache. I need a freaking drink, not a crash course in piloting the airships, celestiadammit!

“Co jest grane?” Hexagon Nut asks, entering the cockpit.

“What?”

She looks at me unsurely. Then she nods her head and walks out of the cockpit. She comes back after a few minutes with the barrel labelled “Fuel” on her back.

“What’s going on?” she asks once I’m able to understand her. Or maybe she’s able to understand me? Who knows. This stuff is magic they don’t teach in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.

“Something is fucked up with the temperature here,” I say, pointing at the gauge. “Also, all those lights are blinking and I have no idea what they try to tell me...”

Hexagon looks at the controls and pulls one of the levers. “Additional cooling for the engine,” she says. Then she pushes a few buttons and switches. About half of the lights stops shining. The temperature drops, so I push the thrust lever a bit. The engine gets louder and we accelerate... to 30 knots. A quick calculations show that if we continue to fly with that speed, we’ll reach Equestria in five days. Unless, of course, the engine dies earlier.

The sun slowly rises behind us. The gauges look as normal as they can, taking the missing engine into account. The clock and the compass work, which means that we can navigate... Or at least we could navigate if any of us knew how to do that. Since we can’t, we can only go to the west and hope for the best.

Grace knocks at the door of the cockpit. “How are you?” she asks. “Coco and Inkie are taking care of Blossomforth and Fritz. Blossomforth wants to use the radio to call Flitter and Cloudchaser.”

“Tell her to tell us the frequency and what to say. She shouldn’t overexert herself,” I say.

Grace looks at me, or rather my wounds and shakes her head. “Inkie should see you.”

“I’ll manage,” I reply. “Now we have to catch that bastard...”

Grace leaves the cockpit and soon goes back. “Blossomforth says that you can catch Flitter on 4721, 2791, or 11175 kHz,” she says. “The message is ‘DM ran away, going NW, piracy, SNAFU here.’ Start the message with ‘delta, india, charlie, kilo’, then use Morse code.”

“Morse code? I have no idea how to–” My gaze lands on a large Morse code table pinned to the ceiling of the cockpit. “Oh... okay.” I turn on the radio and tune it to the first of the frequencies. Silence. The second frequency is apparently taken. The only thing it does is repeating ‘4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42’ in monotone. It doesn’t react to my attempts to talk, so I switch to the third one. Bingo! Through the layers of static, Flitter’s sweet voice can be heard.

“Get the fuck out of my frequency, punk! I’m in the military! If you don’t leave this frequency, we’ll nuke your town and pieces of your brain will be found on the fucking moon!”

“Calm your tits, Flitter,” I say, pushing the PTT button and cutting her off. “Let’s assume that I just said ‘dick’ in the International Phonetic Alphabet and I’m going to transmit the message, okay? Over.” I release the button.

Flitter probably followed my advice. “Send.”

I push the button and start to click on another switch to pass the message. D --. M --

After a few minutes I’m done with the combination of longer and shorter beeps. Wonder if Flitter can decipher them? Probably she’s trained to do so. After another few minutes I receive an answer.

“Copy. Flitter out.”

I turn the radio back to the frequency used by sailors. Apparently they’re waking up, judging from the amount of swears. “Will you need my help?” I ask Hexie.

“Not now,” she replies. “Go to your friends and let them patch you up.”

I rise from my seat and limp to the passenger gondola. I drop on one of the pink sofas unceremoniously and fall asleep to the view of Coco pretending to be a nurse. Too bad she doesn’t have an outfit. No wonder Inkie fell in love with her...

I wake up and feel that my muscles are awfully stiff. The sky behind the window is dark, so I slept for at least twelve hours. Though, who knows – we’re also crossing several time zones on our way to Equestria, so it’s hard to guess. I turn on the sofa to see Blossomforth, wrapped in bandages, sleeping next to me. It’s Vinyl’s revenge, I’m sure.

My muscles hurt when I get out of my makeshift bed and try to stretch my limbs. I’m sure I forgot about something. Maybe it was connected with Blossomforth?

Wait. How long was Hexie steering the airship? I rush to the cockpit as quickly as it’s possible in my current state. I swear, one day I’ll cross the ocean without getting injured along the way. I open the door to the cockpit...

“The Great and Powerful Trixie didn’t think it’s so easy!” Trixie exclaims. Hexie sits next to her with a cup of tea, watching her pushing various switches and knobs with her magic. The speedometer currently says forty knots. I guess it’s because we don’t have to worry about pegasi flying at night.

“She’s a quick learner,” Hexie says, noticing me.

“We got a message from Flitter and Cloudchaser,” Trixie adds. “Della Morte is currently getting back to Prance, together with the griffons. The girls will soon catch up with us.”

“I wonder if they manage,” I say, pointing at the speedometer. “How fast we’d go if we had both engines?”

“Seventy five knots or one hundred and forty kilometres per hour,” Hexie replies. “One of the fastest in the world.”

“Well, there are, like, ten of those...” I mutter. “Aren’t we going a bit too fast? It won’t fall apart, will it?”

“The engine is okay,” Hexie replies. “Also, the wind is on our side.”

“Good.” I nod. “How about the rest?”

“Aryanne and Vinyl are watching the griffon, Grace and Octavia sleep, Photo Finish should soon change Vinyl, and whatever Inkie and Coco are doing, Trixie’s not going to check on them. They’re noisy.”

“Okay,” I say. “Blossomforth was sleeping last time I saw them. I think I’ll go to help Photo guard the prisoner.”

I walk to the bomb bay, where we keep Fritz. He sits, bound, on a barrel of beer, with his wing bandaged. Aryanne and Vinyl are sitting on the floor, drinking beer.

“I hate sea,” Vinyl says. Aryanne, looks at me like I was a saviour coming from the sky. “I really, really hate sea. It’s not normal... So many creatures there, and we don’t know anything about them. Krakens, Cthulhu, seaponies, sirens...”

“Cthulhu doesn’t exist,” I interrupt her. “And the sirens are just a legend.”

“How do you know?” Vinyl asks. “I’ve read that Starswirl the Bearded banished them... So they must be real!”

“Not everything Starswirl did must be real,” I reply, trying not to laugh at Aryanne’s pained expression. “They are a legend. Do you know why? Everything in this world goes in friggin’ circles. If Starswirl the Bearded really banished the sirens a thousand years ago, those three cunts would now be back and Twilight Sparkle would have to deal with them. Get it? Nightmare Moon – a thousand years. Discord – a thousand years. Tirek – a thousand years too. Friggin’ circles.”

“Oh... If you say so...” Vinyl mutters. “But seaponies are real!”

“I’ve seen a seapony vhen I vas a little filly,” Aryanne says. “She vas beautiful...”

I hear hoofsteps on the stairs and turn to see Photo Finish walking to us. “Guten Abend,” she says. “Are you gonna guard ze prisoner vith me?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Vinyl, Aryanne... You may go. Check on Blossomforth before going to sleep. And if any of you has to go to Coco’s bedroom, knock first.”

“Okay,” Vinyl says and finishes her beer. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Photo Finish sits next to me, pours herself a beer and produces a deck of cards. “Poker?” she asks.

“Sure,” I reply and turn to the griffon. “Hey, mate, wanna play with us?”

“I’m kinda tied here...” he mutters.

“I’ll hold the cards for you,” I say levitating the deck. “Do you have any money with you, Carsten?”

“It’s ‘Fritz.’ That stinky one stole everything when Fraulein Aryanne went to the toilet,” Fritz replies.

“I sink you don’t beat her enough,” Photo Finish says. “She’s completely demoralised... Ordnung muss sein...”

“Ask her parents for that,” I reply. “Also, unlike some griffons, I don’t beat mares... Unprovoked.”

“You’re not gonna forgive me that, huh?” Fritz asks.

“Maybe. But Blossomforth certainly won’t.”

“Like I care. Soon, we’ll all–” He shuts his beak.

Photo Finish jumps to him and pushes him off the barrel. “We’ll all what?” she asks, pinning him to the floor. “Tell us or we will drop you to ze water!”

“Photo, dear, your approach is bad,” I say, charging my horn. “I know some spell... Some say it’s my signature spell...” I aim my horn at the griffon.

“Meh,” Fritz says. “I’ve been trained to endure pain. Your magic can’t do shit to me...”

“How about second-degree burns on your balls, mate?”

“There’s a bomb in the balloon,” Fritz replies quickly.

“Where is it?” I ask.

“Inside of the balloon!” He screams, panicked. “There are four more, but I don’t know where! Don’t shoot me!”

Five bombs? We’re fucked.

“I’d shoot,” Photo Finish says. “He knows.”

“I don’t think so,” I reply. “No one ever lied with a battery on his balls...”

“I’m not lying!” Fritz exclaims. “Really, Carsten and Helmut planted the rest of the bombs! I have no idea where! They’re gonna blow up in two days, when we were supposed to get to Equestria!”

“See, Photo?” I say. “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. Or a gun alone for that matter. I’m going to the cockpit. Flitter and Cloudchaser have to talk with Carsten and Helmut.”

“Helmut is the one you shot down,” Fritz says. “I don’t think they got him.”

Shot down? Nice word for being knocked down by a ball made of vomit. On the other hoof, this guy wanted to slice me to kebab with a firepony’s axe, so he definitely deserved it.

“We’ll think about it later. Now I’ll have to find Trixie...”

Hexie and Trixie (to think about it, with those names they could be main characters in some cartoon) are still sitting in the cockpit when I get there. Hexie is sleeping on her seat, while Trixie curses under her breath trying to see anything in the darkness. The radio is on; the radio operators on the ships somewhere below us are probably really bored, judging by the fact that they’re telling jokes and riddles to each other.

“Hello,” I say. “May I talk to you without raising panic?”

“Trixie already feels a bit panicked,” Trixie replies. “When you say such things it usually means bad news.”

“Calm down, Trixie,” I say, trying to be delicate. “We have two days...”

“Two days to what?” Trixie asks, looking at me unsurely.

“There’s, umm... a bomb on the airship.” I see Trixie’s face getting pale. “But I know where it is! Don’t panic! You know where your towel is, don’t you?”

Trixie nods.

“The bomb is in the balloon and it’s going to blow up in two days,” I say slowly and clearly.

“Meh,” Trixie mutters. “In books, the hero stops the bomb seconds before blowing up.”

“Somehow that doesn’t bother me,” I reply. “At the moment I’m more worried about the four other bombs... I don’t know where they are.”

“WHAT?!” Trixie freezes in her seat. Hexie wakes up and looks at us groggily, muttering something about ponies who don’t let her sleep.

“We’ll worry about them later,” I say. “Now you have to help us disarm the one we know about. Who else can we wake up without changing this place into a brothel on fire?”

“Grace,” Trixie replies. “Aryanne, maybe Octavia... Definitely not Vinyl.”

“Okay,” I say before turning to Hexie. “How can we get to the balloon?”

“There’s an airlock in the back,” Hexie replies.

“Screw it,” Trixie mutters. “Trixie’s a unicorn...”

Before I can stop her, she teleports. A few seconds later, she teleports back, knocking Hexie down and dropping on the floor panting heavily.

“Don’t breathe on anything flammable!” I shout as she regains consciousness. Good thing she was able to get back here and not miss the airship by a mile. She blinks and looks at me with her bloodshot eyes – probably a side effect of rapid teleportation.

“You forgot about the hydrogen, didn’t you?” Hexie asks, facehoofing.

“Yeah,” Trixie replies, blushing. “Do you have any diving tanks here?”

“There’s one in the back,” Hexie says. “In case I had to repair the balloon mid-flight.”

“Okay,” I say. “Trixie, are you going to try again?”

“No, thanks,” Trixie replies, panting. “Trixie will stay here, watching the controls...”

I nod and we walk to the back, to Hexie’s workshop. On our way, we wake Grace up. Unlike Trixie, she doesn’t do anything weird when we tell her about the bomb. I guess that, just like me, she suspected some dirty trick.

Finally, we’re in the back of the passenger gondola. The airlock is in the ceiling, complete with a ladder. I put on the oxygen tank. My ribs start to hurt, but I hope it won’t take long.

“Remember, no magic,” Hexie says. “There shouldn’t be any oxygen in the balloon, but there’s still some in the air you’re exhaling. Not to mention that there may be some hole in the envelope.”

Just great. I forget about that and the remains of my body will be found everywhere. It’ll be raining me...

“Take care,” Grace says.

I smile under the mask and climb up the ladder. The airlock closes behind me and a second later the other hatch opens. I crawl into the balloon, feeling my eardrums protesting against such treatment. They were already a bit damaged after I had to teleport to the rope, but I hope they won’t give up now.

The inside of the balloon looks like guts of an enormous whale. The envelope is white so at least I can see something in the moonlight. I hoped that it won’t be claustrophobic, but I was mistaken; I have to push myself under the ballonet first and then wander between the elements of the framework. Crap. Not to mention that I have no light – a small spark would send me to Tartarus.

Since my vision is hardly any use here, I decide to focus on other senses. I can only smell the air from the tank, but at least I can hear something. There isn’t much of it – the wind outside, hissing of the gas, creaking and cracking of the framework... I walk on the timbers, hoping that those guys didn’t want to take long walks in that place and simply dumped the bomb somewhere near the airlock.

After a few minutes of trotting aimlessly, I start to feel cold. This thing is huge and I only have air to sit here for an hour. What if I don’t find it? I sigh and look at the ceiling. Then I curse under my breath.

A few metres above me, attached to the timber, there’s a small package. I hold my breath and I can hear silent ticking coming from it. Eureka! But how to get to it?

I sigh and climb on the framework. Almost instantly I feel another wave of headache and vertigo incoming. The balloon is cigar-shaped, so I’m climbing on something like a large circle. My labyrinth definitely doesn’t like that. I grit my teeth and continue climbing towards the package. My hooves don’t want to listen to me and I almost slip when the oxygen tank starts to rub my back. I feel that my fur is drenched in sweat, but I don’t stop climbing.

Finally, I’m next to the package. It’s not very elaborate: a few cylinders of dynamite taped together, a couple of wires and an old alarm clock. I want to levitate it, then I remember about the hydrogen, and reach it with my hoof.

A second later, I’m at the bottom of the balloon. Luckily, I didn’t smash my head on any of the parts of the framework, but I landed on the soft envelope. My head and ribs protest. My lungs soon join them when I realise that I lost the mask. Fortunately, the tank is still on my back so I grab the mask and inhale, trying to steady my breath. I look around and see that at least the bomb fell with me. I grab it with my shaky hoof, put it on my back, and walk quickly back to the airlock.

“You okay?” Grace asks as soon as I get out of the balloon. I take off the mask and pant for some time, before I regain the ability to speak. Then I point at the bomb.

“Let’s see...” I mutter. “It’s usually like, a green wire and a red wire, huh?”

“Yeah,” Grace says. “Though it varies between movies which one you have to cut...”

Hexie turns on the light and I look at the bomb. “That bastard!” I exclaim. “There are seven wires here... And all of them are pink!”

“Ku Fartzer...” Grace mutters. “So, which of the pink wires we have to cut?”

I pause to look at Grace. “Cunt eater?” I ask. “You spend too much time with me...”

“It’s you who spend too much time with me, if you can understand it...” Grace replies.

“You should meet my mother...” I mutter. “Though she’s kinda pissed at me because I didn’t become a dentist...”

“Oh yeah...” Grace chuckles. “She lost an occasion to tell her friends, ‘my daughter, the dentist...’ And I guess she wanted you to marry a nice colt with an apartment in Manehattan...”

“Kinda. She didn’t want me to move out, ever,” I say. “Though it was the only time dad started to argue with her. He thinks the children should be given a knife at the age of three and left in the bush to kill crocodiles with it. He taught me a few tricks, you know.”

“That explains many things.” Grace looks around. “I think we should really do something about that bomb. I know we have almost two days, but we still have to find the other four...”

“Well, I think that since there was one in the balloon, there’s also one in each gondola,” I say. “That’d mean that we already got rid of the one in the left engine...” I look at the bomb. Or rather the place where I put it. “Where is it? We need to cut those wires!”

“I threw it out of the airship,” Hexie explains, blushing. “You were so busy talking and I thought one doesn’t have to cut the wires to get rid of it...”

“Oh...” I nod my head. “Yeah... We could also do that...”

“Nevermind,” Grace says. “As you said, we need to find the other four. Or three, if your theory is correct.”

“Yeah... I wonder where they could be...”

“We can start with the right engine gondola,” Hexie says. “It’s not that big... The worse will be the one in the passenger compartment...”

“Hell, they can even be on the outside of the fuselage,” I say. “How do you think, will Blossomforth be able to look for them, or will we have to wait for Flitter and Cloudchaser?”

“We can ask.” Hexie trots to the passage leading to the engine.

Suddenly, we hear somepony walking to us. We raise our heads, waiting for the pony to push themselves through the maze of pipes between the passengers’ bedrooms and Hexie’s kingdom.

“Here you are,” Vinyl says, standing in front of us. Despite the darkness, she has her sunglasses on and she’s levitating something. “I heard some noise. As if a vulture took a shit on the balloon...”

“A vulture? Above the ocean?” I ask. “That was probably me falling from the framework...”

“Why did you climb on the framework?” Vinyl asks. “Anyway, it woke me up so I thought that since I’m not sleeping, I can as well wake up Octavia and play with her a bit, because I don’t know if you know...” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “...that Inkie and Coco were having–”

“We know that,” says Grace dryly. “And if you’re going to tell us how you fucked Octavia, then we’re not interested...”

“No, it’s not about that,” Vinyl replies, levitating something to us. Something really familiar. “I looked under the bed, because I thought I left a banana there and I wanted to surprise Octy with it, and I found this cool alarm clock...”

“Three or two left...” I mutter.

Author's Notes:

The frequencies, if I recall correctly, belong to Ramstein Air Base.
Translations:
Kochana, chuja rozumiem z tego co mówisz, ale chyba wiem co na to poradzić... – (Polish) Honey, I don't understand shit from what you're saying, but I think I know what to do about that...

"Nakrętka" refers to any kind of nut, but I guess Hexagon Nut researched all of them to find something that sounded well before translating her name. Though I briefly considered naming her Sex Bolt.