With the defeat of the Storm King and dismantling of his military came a giant question of what to do with the leftovers. Airships were repurposed into cargo and civil uses, of course. Roads were always useful, and so were a number of wheeled transports, once they were repainted. Ships received much the same treatment with the cannon removed and certain alterations done to various carvings on board to make them look less like the previous administration’s leader.

The citizens of the kingdom were likewise repurposed to their previous lives, or new ones that they discovered, although the yeti simply returned to do… whatever it was that yeti did. Even the Kludges in their desert city turned watchtowers into clocktowers, although admittedly they never showed quite the correct time.

Skyswirler’s uncle wound up being the caretaker of a munitions dump, although why anygriff would dump any of the fantastic items was beyond her young mind. There were things that went whoosh, and things that went pop, and best of all, things that went whooooom. The explosives, bombs, and other weapons were sealed away in stone rooms with lots of locks and wax seals to keep curious little beaks out of them, but rocket motors and airship booster engines were kept in a large warehouse with an openable door, because certain Very Important Ponies visited every so often to look over the supply and make encouraging noises about how they might be useful for an Equestrian experimental project Sometime Soon But Not Now Due To Budget.

Swirl was fully aware of what a budget was. Every week, her parents gave her far too few bits to purchase what she really wanted from the bookstore and new gadget market. Even pooling her allowance with her new friends sometimes could not even buy them one copy of the latest thaumic fiction novel or the Genuine Changeling Space Program Rocket Launching Kit With Optional Parachute And Cargo.

They had all watched it go up, then flew over to where it landed to find the cricket they had given a ride was quite healthy and eager to escape in case they decided to give it another trip.

That was the end of their budget for the week.

But all of those rocket engines out in the warehouse were just sitting there.

It was completely unfair.

One of the groups of VIPs from distant Canterlot had constructed a rocket test stand outside of the dump, and it had been the most exciting demonstration Swirl had ever seen. All of her friends saw something different in the roar and plume of fire that resulted when the ponies in the bunker threw the switch.

Boom Boom saw the world’s largest music speaker. Swirl watched the billowing clouds of smoke and could see the future. Chance determined it was foolish to hide in the bunker when there was only a .004% chance of serious explosion, which would not even reach the fence where they were watching. Eclair was considering how quickly she could bake a cake with that kind of flame.

To be honest, Eclair was an earth pony who still was not quite used to being this close to the ocean, and most of her cooking experiments came out burnt anyway, but she was a friend, and they appreciated her.

After a brief meeting and a determination that none of their pony friends had gotten new cutie marks yet from watching the test firing of the rocket motor, Skyswirler made a proposal. She was, after all, the kinda-sorta leader of their bunch, or at least the first one to get into trouble for trying something new. Cloud-sculpting was old, something that had been a hippogriff tradition for centuries before they had descended into the sea to escape the Storm King. All of the colors were traditional, the shapes were traditional, the order in which clouds were selected was traditional, and Skyswirler’s expectations had plummeted when her classes started.

This was an opportunity to make a whole brand new tradition for every hippogriff in Mount Aris. One cool and dramatic, that all of Equestria could see.

Rocketwriting.

Swirl’s uncle had always told her it was easier to get forgiveness than permission, and although he probably did not expect that to be applied to his own warehouse, it was good advice. Swirl knew that if they asked, the answer would be no, and locks would appear around all the good pieces of junk that nogriff wanted and that was just sitting there and would be far more useful if it was used for something really cool and awesome.

It took several weeks of intensive exploration of the warehouse to get their plan organized.

Chance found some Honeybee-class one-yeti fighters that had been stripped of their engines and stacked haphazardly in a pile, which seemed terribly inefficient. So they borrowed one one of the better ones, and took some time to get it in operational shape by borrowing parts from some of the others, found some red paint in her uncle’s warehouse, and took out the lightning projector and the wheels because they were not really needed anyway.

At first, she wanted to just stick some of the leftover rocket motors that nogriff wanted on the back and light them off, but Chance proved that the craft’s center of gravity would be unstable, and the best that could happen from such a launch would be some really impressive pinwheeling across the sky and a crater somewhere. Thankfully, yeti were much larger than young griffons and ponies, so they had lots of space to install cool things like an oxygen system for the pilots and a huge smoke generator where the engine had once been. That still left it without a way of getting up in the air, so they continued to look through the warehouse.

Boom Boom found a thaumic-powered speaker that he said could be converted to provide awesome thrust, and it weighed enough to balance the airframe, so they bolted it in place and let Boom Boom tinker with the magic batteries and thruster crystals.

Still, they did not have enough thrust to get it off the ground with all four of them in it, or high enough to skywrite. It needed more.

More turned out to be part of an airship frame that Eclair dragged over to their assembly area. It looked far larger than the tiny ship, but they could always trim away the parts they didn’t need until just the important parts were left. Most needed were the two rocket engine sockets on the bottom for emergency takeoff fit, but Chance ran the numbers again, and just two rocket boosters would not be enough to get very high.

Welding on four would be better.

Eight was just a hair shy of optimal.

The warehouse was full of rocket boosters. Sixteen would barely be noticed if anygriff looked. Or maybe twenty, just to be sure.

Theory having been taken care of, that only left more practical measures, in particular how to get from the ground to the air. With no wheels large enough to support the whole structure and no runway long enough for them to get up to speed anyway, it seemed a vertical launch was their only option.

Chance ran the numbers. They were not good numbers, no matter how many solid rocket boosters they burned. Balance was the problem. As each booster was exhausted, they would be ejected out of their storage tube. That lowered parasitic weight, but threw the center of gravity around further than the small attitude thrusters could compensate, and with near-zero speed at launch, they could not use the rudder and elevators of the converted fighter to stabilize things until they got moving.

It was time for a thinking meeting with ice cream sundaes out on the floating dock where Skyswirler’s uncle kept his speedboat. Various plans were drawn on the dock’s picnic table, then wiped away while the boat was out in the bay, pulling a water skier.

Inspiration ensued.

It took most of a day to drag their ship to the dock and bolt it down. They explained the activity to Skyswirler’s uncle. Some of the explanation was even true. She had told him that the Honeybee fighter was a kick-tail parade float, and it would be so cool if he were to tow them around the island so everygriff could see his speedboat and their creation. After all, they wanted to show the ship off to the hippogriffs on Mount Aris, it was just that he believed they were going to do that at sea level.

Construction resumed. Calculations were made. Chance said there was no way they could get the dock airborne and still have enough power to reach altitude, even with Boom Boom’s Wub engine.

There were two usable airship engines in the scrap pile, or at least the outer shells were intact. Boom Boom and Chance went after them with a vengeance, ripped out the rusty mechanisms, covered the interiors with unicorn runes, and bolted fuel tanks in the leftover empty space in the airship hull. Boom Boom called them ‘Whamjets’ but they would only work once the ship was up to speed and atmospheric air could be compressed into the fuel flow. That meant there was no way to test them on the ground, and once they fired up in the air, there was no way to turn them off without blowing out the outlet cones. Since they were going to burn out and be dumped into the ocean anyway, that was a design flaw they were all willing to live with.

Getting the whole contraption moving fast enough was one problem.

Fueling the Whamjets was another.

Chance said the only way to get it all up to speed would be to weld rocket engines along the entire back edge of the raft.

Everygriff agreed it was a genius idea, and Eclair had a solution to the fuel problem.

There was a tree in the South Jungle that the natives called boom fruit, because it developed a volatile chemical compound as it ripened, and when it fell, the resulting explosion scattered the seeds. The juice from the tree was delicious, and an expensive delicacy before the Storm King came along. He decided it made the perfect fuel additive for his airships, particularly since it left a huge black cloud as concealment.

There were a lot of barrels filled with volatiles including more-or-less-stabilized boom fruit juice stored at the far, far end of the munitions dump, labelled “CAUTION”

They were very careful.

As much as they searched—quite cautiously so they would not be discovered—they could not find any airship fuel in the dump, but since airships ran on just about anything, the Whamjets should have no problem running on a combination of boom fruit juice and some of the other volatile hydrocarbons found in barrels around the warehouse. And using them all up would reduce the fire hazard, which Swirls’ uncle would appreciate. Eventually.

They had to borrow another welder and a few other tools. They left a note.

As the end of their project grew close, Chance drew up the final plans on what got welded where and how to run the wires. Boom Boom did most of the welding with his magic while Swirl held pieces in place, but everygriff checked to make sure there were no mistakes. After all, they all planned on going, so they paid close attention to the details until every rivet was gleaming and each switch clicked perfectly.

Then came the dangerous part. Eclair mixed up their Whamjet fuel while the rest of them held fire extinguishers around her.

Thankfully, it turned out better than any of her cooking, and in less time than they expected, the ship was ready for their first flight.

Of course, their creation needed a name.

Eclair suggested Junkpile, and although it was quite descriptive, it was not quite what a real spacecraft should have painted across the nose. Boom Boom suggested the Radical, although he agreed with the rest of them when Chance said that was more of a description, and who would want to call it a radical Radical? He wanted to call it Long Shot, because he had calculated their probability of making it into low orbit as a whole lot of zeroes before any real numbers.

Skyswirler said it should be called Harmony, because it was made up of a bunch of different things that would all work together far better than expected, like Twilight Sparkle and her friends. They had talked a lot about it while putting together the pieces and adding on when Chance calculated new numbers. Eclair and Boom Boom happily bubbled about using their cutie marks in new ways, and even though the two hippogriffs did not have cutie marks, they were just as excited at the amazing adventure they were about to embark on with their pony friends.

A certain amount of creative descriptions among family members were needed to cover their activities, since the adults would not understand how awesome it was going to be when the four of them descended from their first flight to the cheering crowds of Mount Aris.

Skyswirler’s uncle would understand, provided the exhaust from the first stage of Harmony did not char his boat’s glossy red paint. It was such a bright shade of red that it went faster than any other speedboat. He loved that boat, almost as much as he loved Skyswirler.

The day of their flight arrived bright and clear, so each of them prepared for launch and put on their spacesuits. The bright outfits had been stitched up by Eclair’s mother under the excuse of being protective gear when her daughter was cooking, which was at least partially true. Boom Boom’s unicorn father had crafted the helmets without a single comment, and included extra hearing protection for the intercom system without even being asked.

After going through communications checks, Skyswirler stood up in her seat so she could wave to her uncle out of the open cockpit. They had gotten his speedboat hooked up to their launch platform earlier so he would not notice the extra wiring in the ropes, and checked the newspaper to make sure there would not be anything scheduled in the sky they might have to dodge around.

“I see you, Swirl,” came across her communication earpiece. “Better get strapped in if we’re going to show off your float.”

She dropped down into her seat next to Chance and put on her helmet, but left the faceplate open. “Almost ready, Unk. Let me go through our checklist.”

“Fuel state green,” said Eclair from her seat down below where the yeti’s right leg would have been in the Harmony’s previous life as a yeti fighter. All Skyswirler could see of her friend was the top of her helmet and all the gages of her engineer's position. “Whamjet rainbow injectors, check.”

“Wub engine set to jet,” said Boom Boom from the left leg position where he controlled the thrusters. “Got some radical tunes loaded and we’re gonna break some sky.”

“Launch path clear,” said Chance from beside her where he held the secondary control stick. “Nothing visible in the air and no ships other than your uncle’s hot rod.”

“Thanks,” said Skyswirler before giving one last glance at their cobbled-together craft.

The flat expanse of red-painted dock concealed the two floats beneath, which would support Harmony for less than the first minute, if everything went well. Above the row of stubby cylinders bolted to the back of the dock was a similar but smaller row welded in place against the truncated tail of the salvaged airship. That second stage of propulsion should accelerate Harmony until they reached a high enough speed to ignite the two Whamjets strapped to either side. Then there was the black bulk of the Wub Engine directly behind the stubby fighter’s tail, and the glowing blue magical thrusters of the reaction control system for when they optimistically approached space.

She looked back up. That was her goal.

“We are clear to launch. I mean clear for you to start towing, Unk.” She slid the cockpit canopy forward until it latched and tightened up her seat belt, as well as the ‘yank strap’ for Eclair. In the event they had to eject, she would be responsible for carrying the young earth pony safely to the ground, while Chance landed Boom Boom. Not that they’d need the emergency devices, but they carried them anyway, just like Skyswirler had practiced for hours in the primitive Honeybee simulator with all kinds of emergencies thrown at her. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

“Here goes, Swirl. Hold on.” Her uncle put power to his speedboat and the tow line grew taut, yanking the launch stack for Harmony out into the ocean at a fairly good clip, but not fast enough for the next stage.

“Status,” she managed over the intercom while the awkward craft bounded along the low waves.

“Engineering green,” said Eclair. “All gages within ranges.”

“Propulsion yellow,” said Boom Boom. “We need more speed.”

“Faster, Unk!” shouted Skyswirler into the radio. “Open it all the way up and show everygriff how fast it will go.”

That did it. Even inside the cockpit and with her helmet on, Skyswirler could hear the bellow of her uncle’s speedboat, which corresponded with an abrupt increase in acceleration.

“That’s better,” said Boom Boom. “Almost there. And we have Vee-One.”

“Activate first stage booster sequence,” she said, getting a good grip on the control stick. There was a subdued bellow of fury from the back of their aquatic craft as the first set of six solid rocket boosters ignited, then it got really noisy when the second set added their volume.

“Hydroplaning,” said Chance. “Plus five degrees elevation.”

“Roger.” As much as Skyswirler wanted to look outside or respond to her uncle’s startled squawking over the intercom, she glued her concentration to the black-and-blue ball of the attitude indicator while the bright flash of the explosive tow rope separator illuminated the cockpit and the rumbling of water contact suddenly ceased.

“Twenty seconds to burnout of first boosters, third boosters activated,” said Eclair over the rising roar. “Ready second stage.”

“Don’t get ahead of the checklist,” said Chance. “We don’t want to drop the first stage on the tow boat.”

“Climb rate is sluggish,” said Skyswirler. “Hope we didn’t clip it when we went by.”

“Ignition on both Whamjets,” said Boom Boom. “Thrust is rising slowly. Time to first stage booster burnout?”

“First boosters have ejected. Second booster burnout in three. Two. One.”

“Ready to jettison first stage while we still have some thrust from it,” said Skyswirler as the acceleration began to drop. “Activate Wub drive on transition.”

“Affirmative,” said Eclair, keeping a sharp eye on the instruments. “Detach first stage in three. Two. One.”

“Dumping the junk and hitting play,” said Boom Boom. There was a sharp jerk and Harmony became much more controllable from Skyswirler’s perspective, even if it was still on a straight line course. There was not going to be any real maneuvering until the second stage dropped, but Harmony’s nose was pointed to the sky and she leapt forward like a hippogriff with his tail on fire. Boom Boom may have followed his action with another announcement, but the Wub drive’s musical blast overrode his voice like an iron-shod hoof descending on a snail shell.

“This is not a magic carpet ride,” shouted Eclair into the intercom, barely able to be heard over the lyrics.

“It’s the best song for this part,” shouted Boom Boom. “Sit back and enjoy the ride!”

Ascending into the sky on a pillar of flame and sound, Skyswirler could not have been happier. All the instruments kept to their needles and the acceleration kept growing in a long thread of absolute joy. There was little she could do while the rams were firing other than to keep the nose up enough to keep their velocity subsonic, but she was grinning so much her cheeks hurt. That joy only wavered slightly when Chance called out something that was nearly lost in the noise and pointed to the airspeed indicator.

“Throttle back the Wub,” shouted Skyswirler. “We’re at near maximum pitch and we don’t want to break the sound barrier while we’re burning off fuel. The rams will take us up from here.”

“Need to change songs anyway,” responded Boom Boom once the volume on the Wub faded to nothing. “We’re going into the solo and the amp is starting to overheat. It’ll melt if we run it for too long.”

The continuous rumbling of the rams as they continued to ascend shook Skyswirler to her core, and in that moment the only regret she had was that hippogriffs did not get cutie marks, because this was most certainly the best thing ever!

“Cloud!” said Chance nearly under his breath and staring straight ahead. “Cloud!”

“We’re up above the—” started Skyswirler before spotting the growing shape her co-pilot was seeing. “Oh, anchovies. Cloudsdale isn’t supposed to be here until next week.”

“We’re going to hit it,” said Chance rapidly. “We can’t make major course changes with the second stage still attached, but we can barely avoid a collision if we ditch it right now.”

“Prepare for emergency jettison of second stage,” snapped Skyswirler while pulling back gently on the control stick as far as she safely could.

“We still have half the fuel in the second stage,” said Eclair. “It will explode.”

“Ninety-eight percent positive,” said Chance. “Good. That will keep it from hitting Cloudsdale.”

“Charge the Wub drive and brace for maneuvering at absolute maximum thrust on jettison,” said Skyswirler while trying to keep the control stick movements minimal. “No suborbital flight this time. Activate Wub drive when the explosive bolts fire. Melt it down if you have to. We need to get a good distance away from that leftover fuel before it unstabilizes.”

“Ready,” said Eclair with a rapid flipping of switches.

“Set, and loaded,” said Boom Boom. “Terminating Whamjet thrust and hit it!”

A crackle of explosive bolts and the double-whump from behind made Harmony lurch, but since Skyswirler was already applying upward force, it stabilized at the same time the Wub drive kicked in at full volume and slammed them against the seat padding. Behind them, the unpowered second stage went into a tumble, dropping speed rapidly and spraying rainbow-colored fuel in all directions as it plunged below her line of sight in the rear view mirror.

“Need. Brakes. In. Next. Ship,” grunted Skyswirler.

“Five degrees more elevation,” snapped Chance in one quick burst as the billowing structures of Cloudsdale grew rapidly in the windshield. “Two points to starboard. Two more. ROLL NINETY DEGREES!”

A blaze of rainbow light filled the sky as Skyswirler threw the stick over, then threw it back once the cloud structure was behind them.

“Did we hit something?” called up Eclair, who did not seem to be troubled by the crushing acceleration or maneuvering due to her earth pony stamina.

“Second stage blew up at a safe distance,” said Chance, looking in the rear view mirror. “I bet every pony in Cloudsdale saw that. Oh, and we might have clipped one of the structures.”

“Thrust is down to fifty percent,” said Skyswirler. “Controls are sluggish.”

“Make that we definitely hit one of the structures,” said Chance. “We’re missing our left wingtip.”

“It’s controllable.” Skyswirler moved the stick cautiously. “We’re losing more power than fifty percent. Starting to level out. What happened to our power?”

Several clicks sounded from Boom Boom’s station. “Amp meltdown, dude. Two subwoofers blown. Tweeter is just gone, no response. We’re a glider from here on. Want Eclair to turn on the smoke so we can start rocketwriting?”

“Affirmative.” Chance took the controls and began to turn Harmony in a long, slow curve in the thin air of their altitude. “Better hurry. I’m not sure we’ll have time for more than a few symbols.”

Below them, in the small dot that was all they could see of Cloudsdale and a number of panicked pegasi, were two ascending figures, one bright as the sun and one dark as the night sky.

“You hit Cloudsdale.” Princess Celestia looked down at the four cringing youth, who had carefully filed out of their spacecraft after it had been lowered safely to the ground.

“It didn’t move out of the way,” said Skyswirler. “Besides, it wasn’t supposed to be there, and we only clipped it a little.”

“Are we in much trouble?” asked Chance.

“Did you see how awesome we looked?” asked Eclair.

“Say it was radical,” said Boom Boom. “Please?”

Celestia buried her face into her hooves, but Princess Luna stepped forward while she was indisposed. “Yes, indeed. It was quite radical, and I don’t think I have ever seen such a dramatic explosion in my life.”

“Did anypony get pictures? We used liquid rainbow as a catalyst for the second-stage Whamjets,” said Eclair. “It’s non-toxic and only makes your tongue a little numb if you inhale it.”

“That’s… interesting,” said Luna. She took a deep breath, looked them over, and asked, “Would the four of you be interested in starting a new career, perhaps as some sort of youth apprenticeship? You see, there is this rather famous astromare by the name of Cherry Berry, and she is looking for young talent just like yours…”