Scootaloo and Mochi heard a door click open to the left but they hardly had time to do anything about it before they heard a loud—

"BOO!" boomed a masculine voice.

Scootaloo and Mochi shrieked, their voices reverberating down the hallway.

"Ahahaha!" the voice cackled. "Did you hear that noise you just made, Trust Fall? I've been waiting down here three damn days just to scare ya!" When there was no response, Scootaloo and Mochi could hear the door squeak further open. "Buddy? That is you, right? I ain't gonna get fired over this prank?"

Scootaloo flinched as she heard a feminine grunt and the sound of a hoof making contact with soft flesh. There was a loud thud and then the sound of the side door slamming shut.

"C'mon, Scootaloo, no time to waste," Mochi said, and the filly could hear her running up ahead. "We gotta get to the elevator before the lights come on!" Scootaloo quickened her pace and, soon enough, she was sure that they were near the end. "Turn!" Mochi called, and Scootaloo did, swerving left.

The elevator was sitting open at the end of the hallway, and the little light in its ceiling was still on, its orange-yellow hues warm and welcoming the two ponies from the darkness of the hall. And, as Scootaloo noticed, it was an indicator that the elevator, unlike that hallway they were coming from, still had power. She barely had time to register what was going on before she and Mochi were in the elevator. Unfortunately, she realised too late that she needed to stop and, since she was still tied to the laws of physics, Scootaloo rammed muzzle-first into the wall.

"Owie..." she mumbled, pulling away from the wall. By the time Scootaloo had turned around, she could see that Mochi had already pressed on a button labelled with two digits, ones that she couldn't quite decipher but that she presumed were for the thirtieth floor. Everything looked just a little blurry, too; she still hadn't quite shaken off the impact.

The room—elevator, as Scootaloo remembered—started to groan as it slid upwards. Scootaloo still found the sensation odd and foreign; even though she had been on airships plenty of times, those had felt more natural compared to this motion of a room inside the building, almost like a piston moving through the inner workings of a machine. Scootaloo watched, like she did before, as the buttons lit up and then flickered out one by one.

She was so focused on the buttons that she nearly didn't look out the window behind them; however, upon remembering it, Scootaloo glanced out and saw that it was no different than before. A few ponies were milling about, walking to and fro, generally minding their own business. As far as she could tell, none of them knew that there were currently two escaped prisoners in this elevator rising above them.

Then, suddenly, the elevator shook violently, nearly knocking Mochi and Scootaloo off their hooves. As soon as it had shaken, it stopped mid-rise. From the buttons, it looked like they were on the twenty-second or twenty-third floor.

"What's going on?" Scootaloo asked. "Why have we stopped?"

"Um... I'm not sure," Mochi replied. The mare was already across the elevator and she pressed several buttons with a hoof, trying to figure out if they did anything. The open button—nothing. The thirtieth floor button—nothing. The close door button—nothing. Then, finally, she pressed the button on the very bottom, the one marked with the black outline of a bell. It dinged.

"What's that button do?" Scootaloo asked. Mochi turned around.

"Aw, crud, I didn't mean to press that one!" Mochi exclaimed. "That's the help button, but now they'll know we're—"

She was interrupted by a smooth, familiar voice from above. It took Scootaloo a moment to place where she had heard it but, once she did, she scowled. "Good morning, escaped convicts 63285 and 114336. We trust that your leaving your cells was an accident, an honest mistake, and we expect that you will fully co-operate with the guards we are now sending to the Main South Elevator." Scootaloo looked up to try and see where Velvet's voice was coming from, but all there was above her was the ceiling, a grey plastic sheet dotted with hundreds of tiny holes. "Now, if you would please standby as we move the elev—" The voice was cut off with a crackle, and at the same time Scootaloo heard a loud clanging and crunching.

She looked back down from the ceiling to see Mochi, eyes closed, bucking the elevator control console over and over, back hooves smashing into the plastic and metal. Surprisingly, Mochi's hooves were making significant dents and then holes in the hard material. After several hits, the panel was smoking and fizzling, with tiny zaps of electricity dancing around the ends of frayed wires. The mare looked up at Scootaloo, smiling bashfully.

"Eheh... that shut that doofus up at least, right?"

"Well, I guess, but—wait, what?" Scootaloo exclaimed as she felt the elevator around them start to descend. It wasn't that fast at first—about the normal speed they had been ascending—but it quickly grew faster and faster as the seconds flew by them. "Gaaaaah!" the filly yelled. "I don't wanna die this young!'

"Uhhh... ummm..." Mochi's head was turning all about in different directions, searching for something she could do to slow them down or get off. "Dammit! I'm sorry, Scootaloo—I didn't know that would happen, honest! There I go, not thinking before acting again..." The mare frowned and stepped back against the wall. "Well, before we go, I just want to say... it was nice meeting ya, kid. And I'm really glad ya saved me and all, but—"

"We can talk later!" Scootaloo was running across the elevator, hooves clanging on the floor, and she stopped in front of the near-ruined control panel. "Right now, we gotta figure out—oh, hey, the open door button is still there." Scootaloo pressed it. It beeped back at her. "Crap! Not more beeping!"

"Scootaloo, I think we just have to give up..."

"No!" Scootaloo exclaimed, turning around to face Mochi. The mare was in a worse state than she had thought; somewhere in between the mess of her cream mane that shrouded her face, Scootaloo could make out tears streaming down Mochi's reddened cheeks. "Gah... I'm sorry, Mochi. But we can't give up. C'mon, help me pry the door open. We can still get out of this."

"But what are we gonna do once we get them open?!" Mochi sobbed.

"That doesn't matter! A really awesome pony I used to know taught me that sometimes, when you gotta be awesome, you just gotta take stuff one thing at a time. Then you can let your brain work out what to do next when you're working on that thing. C'mon!" Scootaloo reached out to touch Mochi on the shoulder, and the mare stood up at the contact.

"O-okay," she managed. "Let's do this."

Together, Scootaloo and Mochi dug their hooves into the gap between the doors in the front of the room and pushed with all their might. Slowly but surely, the ponies cracked the doors open and then, centimetre by centimetre, forced them into their slots. The eerie silence of the elevator was replaced by the loud whooshing as they passed by floor after floor. Scootaloo stared out the door and her gaze was met by ponies on the floors they went by, gawking at the sight of the elevator in free fall. There those ponies stood, just a metre away from Scootaloo and Mochi when they passed, yet they were safe and on solid ground.

"Mochi, do you have any idea where we are?" Scootaloo asked, trembling. "If we could just jump out..."

"At this speed?" Mochi goggled at the pegasus. "The chances of us making it—we might as well just stay here 'n' get crushed at the bottom. Might hurt less."

Scootaloo sighed. "But there's still a chance... right?"

"I don't know, Scootaloo..."

"Well, the longer we stand there the less of a chance we have. It's just getting faster... now or never, right?"

Mochi looked down. "I-I..."

Scootaloo looked at her with a sombre expression. "Mochi, I'm going to jump in about three seconds. If you don't want to come with me, that's fine, but I would really love to have your help, even if it's in the afterlife or some jazz like that."

Mochi took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll do it. Let's go."

The two ponies stood side by side at the mouth of the elevator. Lights flashed by as they descended; it was already hard to tell what was a floor and what wasn't at that point.

"On the count of three," Scootaloo murmured. "One... two... three... go!"

And, at Scootaloo's final word, the two ponies jumped forward. The elevator whistled by, below and behind them.