“Look-” Misty said, drawing a whine from Raindrop as she withdrew her lips. In some sense, I couldn’t help but comply. Raindrop and Misty were both beautiful mares, and the situation they were in was one any stallion might have spent a long time fantasizing, yet for me it represented the ruination of the future I’d dreamed Misty and I might share. “I can explain-” she blurted, scrambling off her wingmare - 3rd Flight-pair, 3rd Squadron, Janus Aviation Forces - in a flurry of feathers.

“Twelve Gods, Misty,” I said. “I caught you red-muzzled under your wingmare’s dock. I thought we were exclusive. I thought we’d carefully and clearly agreed on that point. After last time.”

“It’s not like I meant for it to happen!” Misty snapped, wings flaring as she turned her head shamefacedly away - but a small smile crossed her lips, as her eyes came to rest on Raindrop, draped backwards across the bed. “It was a perfectly normal preening between wingmares, and then things just…” she shifted, and I shuddered as her flight-muscles rippled beneath coat, “got a little out of hoof,” she smiled disarmingly at me. “Then they got a little further out of hoof. It’s not like you caught me with another stallion. Again.” She paused, stretched one wing, drawing my attention to the toned flank beneath, as its shadow swept over Raindrop’s sprawled form, and held it out in invitation. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Teenage colt fantasies.

“Misty!” Raindrop blurted, squirming upright as best she could with her wings pinned beneath her and her hooves in the air. “You know I’m not into colts!”

“Oh hush,” Misty replied, putting her hindhoof on Raindrop’s chest and gently-but-firmly pushing her spluttering wingmare back down onto the bed. “You’ve just never been with a real stallion before, an earthpony stallion. They’re so much more... “ she eyed my body like she was a griffon, like I was a piece of meat. “Mmmm~” She rubbed the frog of her hindhoof in little circles on Raindrop’s chest. “Trust your wingmare on this,” she said.

That was the effect Misty had, to make you want to do things you didn’t want to do, that you knew were bad ideas. To make you believe she would change, that she could change, that you could change her. That if you changed too, something could work between you. That her failures were your fault, for not changing enough, not meeting her halfway, for not trying hard enough to make her change. Because she had made you believe she could be changed, and that you were the one to change her.

“I don’t want it, Misty,” I said. “All I ever wanted was you. When did I ever try and bring another mare to our bed.”

“Never,” Misty snapped back, wings flaring, stomping her hoof - thankfully, not the one resting on Raindrop’s chest. “Not even for my birthday! I need this, Jet Stream. I need you to let me have this. To give me this,” her eyes flicked down, beneath my barrel, “and that,” she smirked, slowly. “It’s just… this and that, that’s all. It’s okay. It’ll all be alright. Trust me.”

Slowly, almost surprised at myself, I shook my head. “I can’t do this anymore, Misty.”

“So we’re through?” Misty asked. “You’re throwing it all away? Throwing me away? Just like that?” Her wingtip gestured to Raindrop. “Over this?”

“Yes,” I said, quietly, perhaps a little surprised that, in fact, I truly meant it.

“Fine!” Misty snapped, “be like that,” and she turned her back and stepping to straddle Raindrop.

It hurt, more than a little, to be dismissed like that.

In retrospect, it was just the buck up the backside I needed. Misty’s career as a naval aviator required her to go where the navy based her, and as a plumbing specialist, it was easy for me to follow her. It’s more complex than it sounds, when so many bases are half cloud-built. The work’s well-paid, if not prestigious, and the hours regular. If we’d ever had foals, then it was me who’d have to look after them, and a predictable schedule... but that life with Misty had always been a mirage, and so I applied for another position. More experimental, less flexible, pinned particular research facilities and resources - and because I’m very good at jet dynamics, the streams and flows of fluids, the mechanics and materials and magic required to pipe them, control them, direct them, I got that job.

It led me in a whole new direction.

---

I brace my hooves against the flight-deck, as the unicorn lowers his head and inserts his horn into the port-side jet engine of the flight-rig I wear, and sparks up his magic. There’s the usual colossal bang, magic flashes, and the engine sputters into life. Even with the throttle at idle it’s an effort for him to pull his horn out.

His job is almost as dangerous as mine.

Then he has to go around and repeat the exercise with the starboard engine, and it becomes really difficult to prevent their thrust propelling me forward into the wall of the hanger.

The Janus Navy Aethervessel Solidarite is vast, six hoofball fields long and one wide, as sleek as an airshark and, in the event of war between the Nation of Janus and anypony who might choose to fight her, potentially just as predatory. Designed to cut smoothly through the brutal currents and crosswinds of the aether. The hanger deck stretches about a third of the way back from the bows, roughly to where an airshark’s dorsal fin would erupt, but instead the aethership is scalloped so the hanger opens aft, directly out onto the exposed flight-deck, all on the same level - just behind where I now stand. Far aft, I can just see the two giant jet-turbines that drive the aethership herself. It’s far from the optimal place to site a flight-deck, but the navy had the ships it had, modified, as JAV Solidarite had been, to meet the needs of modern warfare.

If war should break out. As looks increasingly likely. Each passing year bringing the distant thunder closer as the storm nears.

Another earthpony stallion in the green uniform of deck-crew approaches, a thick cable upon his back, connected to a powerful winch. “Good luck sir!” I hear him cry, over the low whine of the jets and the roar of the aetherwinds beyond the hanger. He fastens it to my flight-rig, right over my breastbone. Even just the short length stretching between me and the winch is a burden. “Hooked on!” He shouts, hoof-up, and I nod my reply. The breath-mask I wear entirely prevents speaking. In the potentially-toxic atmosphere of the aether beyond the hanger, I’ll be depending on the purified air pumping through it.

I back up, no easy task with the weight of the cable dangling from my chest, the flight-rig’s cumbersome wing and twinned jets strapped to my back, the control-vanes stretching down to my forehooves and the stiff fabric of my tailfin stretching between my hindlegs hindering my movement.

Backing out of the hangar and onto the flightdeck changes my world. The aetherwinds touch the wing, lifting it, and through it the flight-rig effortlessly takes up the weight of the cable. I stretch my forehooves forward, and the jets respond to their control, pushing against the aetherwind in a controlled takeoff that changes me from something being transported by JAV Solidarite to somepony flying alongside her.

This. This was what life was meant to be like. Each time I take to the aethersky, I feel understand Misty Might both more and less than ever. What experience, what partner, could compare to this? No wonder she lived forever in the chase - and yet, why waste time chasing tail, when you could be logging flight hours?

Except, of course, so few pegasi could have this. Aetherwinds easily gust strong enough to tear the magic from their feathers, could contain clouds toxic enough to choke their lungs with blood. The cable that was my lifeline back to the Solidarite weighed more than most pegasi wings could load. Even just a few shiplengths from the aethervessel, I can barely make out her shape, a dark shadow against the crimson clouds. I’m one of her whiskers, the view from my eyes displayed piped down my tether to be displayed on screens upon her bridge.

Gently, I bank starboard, drawing cable out behind me, and began my part of the search for the Solidarite’s lost sister - the Janus Aethervessel Egalite.

Twelve gods, the aethersky is beautiful. I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Hours later, I’m regretting the thought. The engine-pumped air is dry and bitter, the choppy aethercurrents pound me mercilessly, shaking and bruising my body against the flight-rig. I’m out at the far extension of the cable, the point where to draw any more from the drum aboard Solidarite would be for its weight to exceed my wing’s lift, dragging me down to dangle like a plumb-bob beneath the vast aethership. With limited extension available, each time Solidarite zigs when I zag, the cable snaps taut and whipcracks me like a foal playing conkers. Flying closer is worse. The freed coils could wrap around me, or cut me clean in two if I hit the thin wire fast enough. All eminently possible under these conditions.

Throughout, my focus remains, has to remain, not on my own conditions but on my eyes ceaseless search-pattern across the swirling clouds of the aethersky.

Then I see it. A little purple-orange scrap against the aether shot with crimson clouds. I turn and dive towards it, and it’s only as I draw closer that I realise it’s both smaller and nearer than I’d thought - not an aethervessel, nor even a distress buoy or liferaft, but an individual pegasus. A mare, and not an experienced one, barely more than a filly. She’s falling more than flying, wings spread but wind-tossed, turning this way and that, utterly at the mercy of the breeze.

Intercepting her won’t be easy. One mistake that sees me overshoot could drag my cable across her course and bisect her as easily as a chef chopping carrots. Slow and easy is the trick of it. Approach close, grab her, and reel in, letting the cable winch us back aboard JAV Solidarite.

Not more than a hundred meters away, a drifting cloud of toxins elongates, funnels like a tornado, like a whirlpool, and vanishes as if sucked down a plughole.

An eddy-current. She’s caught in the nimbus of an eddy current, a place where this skein of aether drains down into a lower one. Some such transitions are gentle, navigable in either direction. Some are like water-slides. Some are rapids. This one, I fear, is the latter. A death-trap, and she’s circling it like a bubble in a bathtub with the plug pulled.

There’s not much time, not if I’m to stop her from getting ‘popped’.

I go max-power, drawing everything the twin jet engines have to give, and lunge towards her, chasing her through the aetherstream that’s carrying her away from me, racing faster than the wind. I have her, I almost have her, curling my own controlled slingshot tightly around the eddy to meet her slow infall… then my tether yanks me sideways as turbulent winds buffet the distant JAV Solidarite.

The tip of the mare’s purple tail slips through my hooves.

For the merest moment, my eyes follow her instead of watching where I’m going, and when I look back, there’s a solid clump of debris, toxic crud frozen in solidified aether, the kind of crap that swirls around these drains, curving directly towards me. I dodge, hard, to generate the miss, but it puts my tether right in the debris’s path. The cable tears right through the mass with a sound like a dropped crystal goblet, and the force of it yanks me brutally backwards. I flip, I think, or at least the aethersky spins about me, then there’s a tortured shriek of metal and the entire portside portion of the wing is gone, it and its engine slide clean away by a cablestrike.

I twist my hindquarters, turning the tailfin between them to offset the sudden sideways push from my sole remaining engine and regain some semblance of control. The weight of the cable immediately begins to pull me down. I’ve less than half the thrust I need to fly towing such a weight.

I’m getting dragged down below the eddy, safely away from it but eliminating any chance of coming to the mare’s rescue.

Unless.

I give the starboard jet everything, pushing to the redline and beyond, almost touching the never-exceed value. It’s enough to shunt me sideways, into the stream of aether circling around the eddy towards me, like a ball skipping from one side of a roulette wheel to the other - and like that ball, I’m smashed in the face by a gale of headwind and kicked upwards like somepony bucked me. The headwind generates all the lift in the world, more than enough to lift the cable - and the swirling current is bringing the pegasus mare around the eddy towards me, though none of the Twelve Gods know how I’m going to be able to make the intercept. It would’ve been an ask even with a fully-functioning flight-rig. This precision stuff was pegasi work.

Stunningly, now that we’re approaching head-to-head, I can see that one of the mare’s eyes is just the tiniest bit open, a softer shade of lavender, one of her orange-feathered wings shifts slightly, tilting her towards me, then suddenly she’s right in front of me and too fast too fast and-

I catch her hoof-to-hoof, and the bend of our knees takes some of the impact. Then we slam together with enough force to break bone, and there’s only clinging onto her, as the tortured half-wing lets go and snaps away, and JAV Solidarite begins to reel us in, pulling us away from the eddy and towards safety.

---

I knew I’d died and gone to hell, because Misty Might was leaning over me when I woke.

Also, the pain.

“I could’ve told you you’d have to trawl the aether to find a mare who’d come anywhere close to matching up to me,” she smirked. “Or is life so barren in my absence that you’ve developed a death wish?”

“W-”hat the hell are you doing here? Is what I meant to say. “W-water,” I croaked out instead.

She passed me a glass, so quickly that if she spat in it, she’d have had to done it earlier.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, after I’d drunk. “When did the 3rd Squadron come aboard? How long have I been out?” I paused. “Did she make it?”

No need to ask who. The mare I’d rescued.

“She’s recovering,” Misty said, “you took the worst of the impact - your damned chivalry again. You’ve been out,” she glanced at the medical bay’s clock, “forty-seven hours and change - but she’s suffering from extended aether exposure. Her name’s Scootaloo, and she’s barely said a word more than that. “She’s not one of ours,” Misty sighs, “according to the records on board. Assuming she’s not classified, civilian, or missing due to clerical error. Could be with the Empire, could be with the Metahive - she’s not a changeling though - or with some third party.”

“As to the other.” She paused. “I’m… not with 3rd Squadron anymore. That thing with Raindrop came and went. I thought if anyone could keep up, would know not to try and tie me down, it’d be my wingmare, but-” she sighed. “I shouldn’t have slept with someone in the squadron. After, it became clear we couldn’t both stay. Since the election, I’ve been with the Policy Corps. I’m JAV Solidarite’s new Political Officer,” she chuckled, “been dodging you since we sailed.”

Of all the ponies I’d would’ve picked not to have oversight access to my personel jacket, Misty Might would’ve headed the list. That said, of all the problems between us, the fact that our politics differed wildly hadn’t even broken into the top ten.

It made sense though. As a rich-but-small democratic nation pinned between two much larger neighbours with opposing philosophies, the nation of Janus’s politics veer wildly from election to election. Mostly depending on whether the individualistic, libertarian, authoritarian Empire or the liberal, socialist, communitarian Metahive is making the sweetest overtures or getting caught bloodiest-hoofed amidst an atrocity. Yet our military has bases on a dozen worlds and aethervessels scattered across the aether, often weeks from the civilian government’s oversight.

Hence, the ever-changing cast of political officers. At least we’ve stopped renaming the aethervessels every four years.

“I need you to try and talk to her,” Misty continued. “Maybe a familiar face would help, and you’re the closest thing we’ve got. Plus-” Misty paused, “she’s asking for you. Well, for the one who saved her. To know if you’re alright, if nothing else.”

“You didn’t tell her?” I said, just a little shocked. I mean, I knew the Political Corps sometimes played their cards close to the chest, and Misty certainly knew how to keep secrets, but still…

“Until recently, it wasn’t obvious you’d pull through,” Misty said, her voice bleak. “Very recently.”

Oh.

Scootaloo’s bed was only in the next compartment over, but JAV Solidarite wasn’t exactly wheelchair accessible. We managed, with Misty’s wing tucked beneath my barrel, and most of my weight resting on her back.

Scootaloo was asleep, but that didn’t last past my collapsing down onto the end of her bed.

“Hi,” I said, waving weakly. “I hear you’ve been wanting to meet me.”

“Nice try,” she told Misty, rolling over. “He isn’t even a pegasus.”

“Flight-rig,” I replied. Incomprehension. “Wing-suit? Allows wingless ponies to fly? Very suitable for rough aether work.” I pause. “It really was me out there, though I’m not sure it’s fair to say I rescued you. You had as much to do with generating that interception as I did.”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “I never told her that,” she said, then her gaze fell shamefacedly. “Buck. Sorry. I…” she shifted beneath the medbay blankets. “Thank you. Where am I?”

“Medbay, aboard the JAV Solidarity, somewhere in the lower south-western section of the Aralthian aethersky.” She shook her head, minutely, and there was fear hiding in her eyes. “If you’re lost, we might be able to help get you back where you came from. If you’re running from something, the Nation of Janus has a broad policy on asylum.”

Or at least, it did, under the last government. I glanced at Misty.

“Sure,” she agreed. “I can swing that. Especially if you can help us.”

“I’m not sure how much I can help,” Scootaloo said, rolling over. “I’ve never heard of the Nation of Janus, nor of anything called the aethersky. I’m just useless…”

“Well, telling us where you’re from would be a start,” Misty said.

Slowly, Scootaloo nodded. “Ponyville. I’m from Ponyville, in Equestria.”

The likeliest, easiest explanation, that she’d fallen off one aethervessel or another, was diminishing in likelyhood with every passing moment.

“Home of the world-famed Wonderbolts?” Lightning Dust continued. “Ruled by Princess Celestia? She who moves the sun? The Daystar Undimmed?”

“You’re a long way from home,” Misty said. “I’m truly sorry.”

“What does that mean?” Scootaloo asked.

“Look,” I said. “I can explain. The aethersky extends everywhere. But it’s suppressed by populations, the kind you find on whole planets. It exists, primarily, as the medium between worlds. Now entering the aethersky from an aethervessel like Solidarite is easy. Just open a door and step out, although it’d be pretty unhealthy. But to get into the aethersky from a planet, you’d need to cheat.” Lightning Dust bristled. “Or to have a pretty serious kick behind you. Were you performing a magical experiment, unearthing an ancient artifact-”

“I was,” Scootaloo sighed, “performing a Sonic Rainboom. Or trying to, anyway. It’s a trick - an aerobatic maneuver - of extreme difficulty that results in a nimbus wave of colour. Rainbow Dash is the only pony ever to have pulled one off. I wanted to show her I was her equal.” Scootaloo shifted uncomfortably beneath her blanket. “Worthy of her. It’s her special talent, and I thought there was no matching that. But then I saw a Rainboom, over the Everfree, when I knew Dash was in Canterlot, and-” tears beaded in her eyes. “How could she and I, if somepony else could- were better for her,” Scootaloo finished. “That it were possible, and I hadn’t cared enough to try. So I tried. I tried and tried, but nothing. Then I thought - lightning. Lightning, harnessing lightning, is my cutiemark. My special talent. So I went up over the Everfree. Flew through the wildest weather I’ve ever seen. Let the lightning strike me. Channelled it through my wings. Then all I remember is flying, until you caught me.” She shivered. “Thank you.”

“The ‘Rainboom’ effect is a bit of defocus around the edges of an uncontrolled penetration of the aethersky within a planetary suppression field,” I summarised. “Probably. You’re lucky to be alive. Thrice over. Fried by the lightning strike. Spattered by the transition to the aethersky. Poisoned by its toxins if we hadn’t found you.” I shook my head. “This Dash probably knocked a tiny hole - a pinprick - into the aether and bounced off the wall. You punched all the way through.” The sheer audacity of it drew a chuckle from me. “Nice going.”

“Will I ever see her again?”

“Oh mare, you’ve got it bad,” Misty said, drawing a chart case from beneath her wing. Her lips hooked over the cap as she sucked it off and spat it out, tipping the map across the bed and unrolling it with her wingtips. Beneath the blanket and Misty’s touch, Scootaloo shivered. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you back to your ladylove,” Misty said. The charts were much more detailed than the ones I’d studied two days ago, before taking off from the Solidarite. “We’ve been running scout-flights non-stop since we reeled you in,” Misty said. “Cable depth-soundings too. The eddy where we rescued you is one portion of a larger system draining this this area of the aethersky into a lower-pressure region below.”

“This is all too turbulent and rough-edged,” I said. “The surveys haven’t been interpolated properly.”

“Unless it’s a recent feature. The result of an aethercrystal explosion, for example.” Misty smirked. “I can read an aetherichart too,” she said. “Now, that could be a coincidence - aethercrystal clusters can become unstable for all kinds of reasons - or it could be-”

“My fault?” Scootaloo asked.

“I doubt it,” Misty soothed her, patting her flank. “More likely, the explosion energized the aethersky beneath your Equestria, lowering the potential energy barrier required for you to punch through. But whether the Egalite or one of her scouts hit something, or if she were simply sucked in, if there’s anything or anyone to be found of her,” she tapped the blank, unscouted, unreachable portion of the drainage system at the bottom of the map, “that’s where we’ll find it.

“This section, here,” Misty’s wingtip trailed down Scootaloo’s flank to rest atop her cutie-mark, “has a fast-but-broad flow with a gentle gradient. Ish. Captain Waltz believes it might even be navigable. Potentially. But we’re going to need light-lined pegasi to fly ahead of the Solidarite and find the route, if we’re to shoot these rapids. None of these heavy-cable flight-rigs,” she smirked at me, and paused, fluffing her wings, and turned the intensity of her gaze to Scootaloo. “So. Just how good of a flyer are you?”

---

“What the hell are you trying to pull, Misty,” I rounded on her, almost as soon as the hatch had swung shut behind her.”

“Careful, airstallion,” she licked her lips. “I outrank you now, remember?”

I swallowed my retort. Respect the rank, not the mare.

“Permission to speak freely, Ma’am,” I ground out.

“I’ve always liked the things you could do with your tongue before,” Misty replied, and I rolled my eyes.

“You’re making that filly promises you won’t keep, in order to get under her dock.” I snapped. “Twelve Gods, Misty, even if she hadn’t been through hell, she’s barely a mare.”

“You’re right,” Misty replied. “She is a mare - and if her Rainbow Dash is anything like you, they’ll both have cause to be grateful I’ve shown Scootaloo around the bed before she gets her idol in the sack.”

I couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d slapped me. “You mean to risk Solidarite, all our lives, for a mare you’ve just met?” I said.

“I don’t expect you to agree with the decisions of an Individualist government,” Misty replied, “but you do have to recognise that one was elected, and you’re bound to implement its directives,” she paused, dumping me back into my sickbed, “and those of its representatives. Rest up, stud,” she told me, “if I’m going to risk my neck flying point for Solidarite, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have in a flight-rig, watching my back.”

“Horseapples,” I snapped, catching her tail as she turned to go. “I know you too well for that to fly. What’s really going on?”

In her eyes, I could see that she really, really wanted to tell me, that the burden of whatever it was was crushing her with the weight of responsibility, for Solidarite, for her crew, for whatever it was she wasn’t saying.

“Look,” she licked her lips, “I can explain-”