August 15
Meghan was not ready for her alarm this morning. As soon as it went off she blinked her eyes open said that her head hurt and that she really, really had to pee and ran off to the bathroom. I went over to my desk and got out my bottle of aspirin for her 'cause I figured she'd want that, too, and then I went into the kitchen to get her a glass of water.
My head hurt a little bit as well, but I thought once I was up and flying I'd feel a lot better. I still drank some water then refilled the glass for her.
We both kinda had to rush, 'cause she still had to walk home, and so I was thinking of everything that I could do to help her out. I made her drink the water and take the aspirin and then pushed her back into the the bathroom so she could take a shower, and then I put some pancakes in the oven to heat up, and then went into the living room and went through her bag and got out the last of her clean clothes and put all the dirty clothes in the bag for her.
She got dressed and then sat on the floor to eat her pancakes while I brushed her hair and she said that she shouldn't have had so many Long Islands last night and she should have known better. I said that we just should have done it Saturday night so we'd have had Sunday to recover and that was the mistake we'd made.
And she told me I was lucky to not have a day job.
When we started to walk to her apartment, I sniffed at the air and said that it smelled like rain, and she said that she thought so, too. And she got her portable telephone out and looked at her weather report and said that they were calling for rain in the afternoon, but not thunderstorms which was nice. I didn't think that I had to patrol in rain, although when I got back to the apartment I was going to call Mel and find out.
We got to her house a little early 'cause we'd rushed and I asked her how she was feeling and she said a lot better; her headache was almost gone and her stomach felt mostly normal again.
She told me if I did have to go out in the storm to be careful, and I said that I would, and she rubbed my mane and I leaned up against her leg until her friend came to pick her up.
I flew low back home, and did a wing-roll when I crossed Main Street, just because I could. I was already feeling pretty good about today. Even though it was getting cloudy off in the distance, it felt like a really good flying day.
I got dressed and decided that I was going to go north today, and then I called up the airplane directors and told Dori where I wanted to fly and she said that it was okay, but reminded me to keep low until I got out of town, and I told her that I would.
Right before I flew off I noticed that my birdfeeder was getting pretty low and I ought to refill it. I bet Aric's needed some more seeds, too, and I could have filled it on my way out of town but then I thought that I would do it on the way back, since Dori would be expecting me to be flying.
I made a long, slow climb, checking my watch for my altitude. It was a little bit wrong, 'cause I'd forgotten to reset it this morning, so I reminded myself to assume I was a couple of hundred feet higher than I actually was, just to be safe.
There was one field off to my left that had sort of an island in it and I had never figured out why. Each time I saw it I thought about asking Aquamarine if she had any guesses about what it was, but I never remembered to. Some ponies kept a little piece of land that meant something to them fallow, so maybe humans did, too.
I didn't have any particular destination in mind today, and I decided I wanted to not fly too far, 'cause I was worried about tiring myself out in the morning and not being able to do storm patrol if I was needed, so I just flew along north, occasionally flying a little detour if something on the ground caught my eye.
I'd gone far enough away from Kalamazoo that I could climb higher if I wanted to, but I was kind of happy where I was.
The river was getting pretty close on my right, so I angled over that way, and I was looking down at it and thinking about maybe trying to catch a fish because while it was really convenient to have them in a can when I wanted them, they weren't as good as fresh. I know I was supposed to have my license with me, but there were lots of trees around the river and probably nobody would know if I just took one and besides the birds did and I bet they didn't have a license. I could see a blue heron down below me, soaring over the river and he was probably looking for lunch, too.
I made a big circle, just to stay over him and see if he found anything. But I guess the fishing wasn't good where we were, 'cause instead of diving down to the river, he picked up some altitude, and just went a little bit further upriver and I didn't have my heart so set on a fresh fish that I wanted to follow him.
Rather than keep turning in the same direction, I banked around the other way and just as I was straightening back out again I smelled a little bit of smoke. At first, I didn't think that much of it. Lots of people cooked food outside, so it wasn't that weird to be smelling it. But as I got a little bit closer to town, it didn't smell right to me. It didn't smell like a cooking fire; it was a little too sharp for that.
And just after that I saw smoke coming up from behind a house, and my first instinct was to go up and grab a cloud. There were plenty of them around, and they were good clouds, heavy with moisture, and low, too. This wasn't a time to be neat, so I just tore a big piece loose and started pushing it down towards the ground.
Then when I was flying down I remembered that we had been told if we saw something that was an emergency we were supposed to call 911 and let the professionals deal with it, but I couldn't use my portable telephone when I was flying and anyways I had the cloud already so it wouldn't slow me down too much to bring it down with me.
As I got closer, I could see flames through the smoke. It was coming from the back of the house, and when I got my cloud around back I could see that there were flames coming out of a window.
The cloud started to come apart as soon as I dragged it through the trees, and I shoved it really fast through the window before it broke up all the way, and a whole bunch of white smoke billowed out which meant that I'd at least gotten some of it, but it was pretty unlikely that I'd gotten all of it, and it would be really dangerous to try and go inside and see.
So I galloped around front 'cause that was where houses had their numbers and then I got out my pocket telephone and called 911 and they wanted to know where the house was (which I should have thought of) and I said I didn't know the street yet but I could fly to the end where there was a sign and tell them.
I had to put the telephone in my pocket before I could fly, but the nice lady waited until I got to the sign and read it for her. Then she asked me if anyone was in the house and I told her that I didn't know; I'd only shoved a cloud through the broken window but I hadn't checked, which I ought to have. So I galloped back and started banging on the front door hard enough to chip the paint off of it and nobody came out so either there was nobody in there or they had already been overcome by smoke.
I kind of danced around on my hooves while I tried to think what I ought to do next. If there was someone inside and they couldn't get down on their own, I could carry them to the ground, but if there wasn't anyone in there I was wasting time I could be using getting another cloud to help fight the fire.
Human streets are strangely deserted in the day sometimes. I think it's because they build their houses far away from where they work, so they're all gone during the day.
Even though it might have been smarter to knock on doors and see if I could find someone to help, there might not have been anybody at all in any of the houses, so I took off again to get another cloud down.
I was on my way back down with another bit of cloud when I heard the fire engines off in the distance, but they hadn't arrived yet by the time I got down in the backyard and pushed this cloud through the window. I could see more flames inside, through the smoke, but I'd got them back far enough that they weren't coming through the window anymore. Plus, the cloud that hadn't gotten in the house had dampened down the grass in the backyard and the side of the house too which meant it was less likely the fire would spread, which was important.
I flew over the top of the house and landed on the sidewalk just as the fire engines started to arrive, and I told the first man who got out that the fire was in the back and I'd put a couple of clouds on it already and I could get some more if they needed them.
Well, he was a little confused about what I meant, and so I just pointed up to the sky, and held out my wings and I'm not sure he understood even after that, but he asked me if I could wait off to the side and let them do their work.
So I stood out of their way while they got out hoses and hooked them up to hydrants and while that was happening a couple of them went around back to see what they could, and another one of them started knocking on the door, but nobody answered.
Another man came over and asked me if I knew if anyone was home, and I told him that nobody had come when I'd knocked on the door, and he asked me to wait, as well.
And while I was waiting, I called Dori and told her that I was on the ground in Plainwell because there was a fire and I might be flying up to help get more clouds but probably not because it looked like they had lots of water.
Well, pretty soon a couple of police cars showed up too and one of the police officers wanted to see my identification card and get a statement from me, so I told him how I'd smelled the fire first and then put a couple of clouds on it and called 911 like I was supposed to and he didn't believe me about the clouds, either. So I said that I could go up and get one, but he said that I should stay on the ground, and then he started asking me about all of my equipment. Why I had a radio and why I had a watch and I didn't like him too much.
He asked if I could sit in his car while he talked to his supervisor and I was feeling a bit uneasy about him but I was supposed to do what police officers told me to, so I got in the back of his car and I thought that maybe he was going to ask me some more questions but he didn't; he just walked off which was really rude of him.
So I watched out the window as the firefighters worked, and they had ladders up and someone on the roof chopping holes to let the smoke out, and there were hoses in through the front door which they'd smashed down, but I didn't see any flames coming out of the front of it so I guess that they were doing a good job.
I'd been sitting there for a while and I was beginning to think that maybe the police officer had forgotten I was in his car. He could have been busy with other things, after all, so I tried to open the door and neither of the doors would open and there was a plastic wall between the front and the back that I couldn't get through. The window was open a little bit but I couldn't open it any further, because that switch didn't work, either.
I was trapped, at least until he came back to let me out, and I didn't like that at all. But I didn't know what I should do about it. I think I could have bucked out a window and gotten out that way, except then he'd be mad that I'd broken his car, even though it was obviously already broken since the doors didn't open and the windows didn't go down.
And I didn't want to distract him, because he must have been doing something important and that's why he forgot about me. There was a house on fire, after all, and that was more important a thing to worry about.
My watch said that I sat inside the back of the police car for almost a quarter hour before a black Suburban with flashing lights inside its window showed up and Mister Salvatore got out only instead of wearing his nice jacket like he usually did he had on a bulky black vest that said FBI in big letters on it. And he was already shouty when he went past the police car that I was in, so I looked out the window to see where he was going and I lost sight of him around the fire truck.
So I didn't see that Miss Cherilyn was there, too, until she opened the door and let me out and asked me if the police officer had taken any of my things. And I said that he hadn't; he'd just told me to sit in his car until he got back but his car was broken and I couldn't get out even when it was obvious he'd forgotten I was there.
She told me I could get in the Suburban if I wanted or I could wait out here and I was happy being outside again so I told her that I thought I'd wait out here. And even over the sound of all the fire trucks and the firemen shouting things to each other, I could hear Mister Salvatore's voice and he didn't sound happy at all.
He came storming back around the front of the fire truck and went back to the Suburban and opened the back door of it and came back with a big stack of papers and then he disappeared again and a minute later he came back without them and he had a big smile on his face and he asked me if I wanted to get ice cream.
Mister Salvatore got a lot happier when he got to yell at people.
We drove across the river to a place called Plainwell Ice Cream, and he bought us all ice cream sundaes. He told me that the police officer had detained me because I was a suspicious person and he thought that I'd started the fire.
Well, that was a stupid thing to think—why would I have done that?
And then he got a really big smile on his face and he said that he'd helpfully given the police officer state and federal arrest forms, plus a pony incident report and he'd told him that he wanted all of them faxed back to his office before he got there so that he could read them and ask followup questions and Miss Cherilyn said he was being mean and he said maybe he was but that the police officer hadn't followed protocol at all and maybe next time he'd think a little bit before he acted.
She told him not to be too antagonistic, and he said that he was calm because you couldn't be angry when you had a tin roof sundae in front of you but he was still going to let him twist in the wind a little bit and if she wanted some fun he could arrange a conference call and they could flip a coin to see who got to be good cop and who got to be bad cop.
He wanted me to tell him everything that had happened, so I told him, and he asked if the police officer had patted me down or checked my pockets or confiscated any of my things and I said that he hadn't. And he asked if I'd been put in handcuffs (which were what humans called hobbles) and I said that he hadn't done that either; he'd just asked me to sit in his car and forgotten about me there.
Mister Salvatore said that was good; and he told me that I'd done the right things. He said that maybe pushing a cloud into the house hadn't been all that smart, but it hadn't hurt anything and maybe it had made the firefighter's job easier. And he said next time to call 911 first of all, even if it meant that I had to land, and he told me that he'd have to check with the FAA but he was pretty sure I could report an on-ground emergency over my radio without breaking any rules.
I thanked him for the ice cream and thanked him and Miss Cherilyn for coming to get me out of the police car, and I said that I'd rather fly home if he didn't mind because being back in the sky would make me feel better.
So he said that was okay, and I nuzzled him and Miss Cherilyn then told Dori I was flying again, and took off.
I couldn't help but fly back over the house again, and all the fire trucks were gone so I guess they must have gotten the fire put out, which was good. It didn't look like it was too badly damaged, besides the holes they'd cut in the roof.
Being in the open sky was a relief after I'd been in the police car, and I took my time flying back home.
I ate a late lunch of leftover pancakes, and then I called Mel and asked him what he thought about the storms—it had already started to rain just a little bit, but I wasn't hearing any thunder yet, and I hadn't seen any bad clouds on my way home.
He said that the weather radar was saying that it was going to get heavy in an hour or so, and that he'd been ready to call me, so I filled my camelback up again and got a can of anchovies in case I needed a quick snack and waited for him to arrive.
We drove out to our usual spot and I flew around to get a look at the clouds and make sure that our radios were working, and then since it was still pretty light, I landed back at the truck.
It turned into a long night for both of us. Heavy rain started to come down at dinnertime, so I flew up to get a feel for the clouds and they weren't thundery at all and the winds up high weren't too strong, but the clouds were just dumping out water, but that didn't last all that long and then it went back to light rain.
We started a system where I'd fly up every hour and report on what I was seeing and feeling, and then come back down, and he showed me the radar on his computer and it was just a big blotch over the whole region with red spots and yellow spots here and there.
The winds picked up a couple of times, and sometimes the rain came down hard for a while. When it got dark and there wasn't any sign of it letting up, I napped in his truck and sometimes he did, too. He went to the Speedway and got us some food and it wasn't very good but it was better than nothing. And the storm just kept on.
A 'pony incident form'?
That sounds a) complicated b)delicate c)like something that officer has never seen before. Having it delivered by someone really angry, really shouty, who's wearing an FBI vest and obviously enjoying himself probably doesn't help.
Mr. Salvatore: how I stopped worrying and love being the handler of a pony.
As it happens, when Mister Salvatore gets to yell at people it makes me happier, too.
Pegasus is the new black, as far as racist police officers are concerned.
You know this could be a news worthy story. I wonder if the tv station that had her do the weather will be in touch.
It's my theory that being a liaison to visiting Equestrians is a punishment two steps below being suspended.
I wonder what Mr. Salvatore did to tick off his superiors.
7648828 It's either punishment or reward, if it's punishment it's because of his willingness to push the privileges of his badge too far. But not far enough for official punishments.
Let's face it, babysitting ponies has got to be a cakewalk. No real investigations, the only work he does is when she wants to go somewhere special or calls him and in both of these cases he gets to have fun and take expense paid trips.
He's very well suited to being a protector but needs Miss Cherilyn to counter a lot of his rough edges.
Also now we finally know what badge he's been flipping people.
7648828 if it's a punishment, I don't think it's working.
[Insert Starfox 64 reference]
I'm no firefigthing expert, but I do think that in some case, putting a lot of cold water on a burning structure can cause collapse. Regardless of the validity of my memories, it would've been in extreme case. This house did not sound like one.
Amusingly enough, dropping the cloud one the house would've been helpful. By dropping the building's temperature, you can slow down the fire progression. And it would've been safer then entering the house.
I think that it is Silver Glow answering mister Salvatore question here, but I suppose he could've answered his own question...
Mr Salvatore must have a desk like the Enterprise. Silvers GPS tracker, with automatic FBI tap into law enforcement for following notification of Pegasus involvement etc.
Also with Mr Cop, did Silver still have her flight GoPro running?
Fortunately there wasnt anyone needing rescuing, otherwise Mr Salvatore would be pulling a RapiTwi.
7648783 It IS a valid stress relief.
Aaand we finally know. o_o
Man, was Mister Salvatore happy. Idiot cop made his day. :3
FBI! Now we know.
I've been in an apartment building that had a fire. Some fun facts
They had exposed wires, so the electricity was off all day for the whole block
So was the gas
The fire department used a big old axe for a pass key
The fire was about 6 AM & the last truck didn't leave until noon. Could be because the fire got into the roof & they had to be sure it hadn't spread.
7648778
Incident types include collapsed roof, mind control sorcery, and spontaneous cake vanishing.
I was seriously worried by the title, but it's okay, now.
7648864
One word: Cayenne.
7649228 she's an exception to the general rule I think. Even then, she's just a bit of a whorse.
Silver Glow got a fishing lisence on July 5th. Did it already expire?
In a way this chapter takes me out of this actually being a journey, it's a very fun read but I do find it a bit hard to swallow that despite knowing about the fire when she was writing Silver would still go into her whole morning routine as well.
Apart from that, this chapter was very interesting.
From the title I sort of though Silver's experiment in cooking might have gone wrong, particularly as she mentions putting the pancakes in to warm up but not eating them.
Then she gets to be a hero by trying to put out the fire and then no one believes her about the cloud thing then she gets locked up for her troubles and with her claustrophobia as well. Luckily its Mister Salvatore to the rescue and it does it via the proper application of paperwork and only a little bit of yelling.
I would have though that Silver would have called in the fire via her radio though.
Now that Silver has met a prime example of what my parents called "pigs," someone should give her a copy of the cookbook.
And considering what's going down in London around the Ecuadorean Embassy, we may be facing the dawn of a new era of police state fascism, even before the US election starts.
lawfulrebellion.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/keep-calm-and-habeas-corpus.png
Of course he is.
7649267
And somehow, Cayenne being a whorse doesn't bother me.
7649122
And in Cayenne's case, public intoxication and public lewdity.
Mmmm, tin roof sundae.
Huh, well whaddaya know, Mr. Salvator is part of the FBI. I never would have thought the FBI would been the liaisons for the Equestrian visitors...interesting.
7650530 Who else would it be? My guess is that the liaisons are national level law enforcement for whatever country the pony is visiting.
7649057
When I was still in high school, the house next to us caught fire ,I was the one who called it in when I saw flames licking out of the eaves. Fire department came in and apparently put out the fire, until I saw more smoke coming from the back. Re-called fire department who then put the place out again, apparently they'd missed a few embers which rekindled. The place was old and in very poor repair, but was torn down afterwards, cause was exposed wiring from squirrels in the rafters gnawing the insulation off them.
And speaking of fires, will Silver Glow get to experience the joy of changing a smoke detector battery? That incessant chirping, interrupting a peaceful night's sleep?
(Why yes, Admiral, look at the time of this comment. And yes, Admiral, I'm in the same time zone as you.)
Getting drunk on a Sunday night... you like to live dangerously indeed, Meghan.
Miss Silver Glow met bad police. I know about bad cops:
Around here, bored cops harrass people at busstops. They like to hold people until the bus comes, and just as the bus leaves, and then release the people. When the people complain that the next bus will be an hour, the cops always say "¡Not my problem!". They are also never around when you need them. Last year, the 2 coincided for me in the same week:
Early in the week, the cops harrassed me at the busstop, along with everyone else. Because the cops made me, along with everyone else, miss the bus, I was 50 minutes late for work instead of 10 minutes early. Later that week, a crazy woman entered our work and started trashing the place and scaring away customers. We called the cops because she might have been dangerous. After 5 minutes, the cops did not show and she was causing expensive damage, so we had to risk life-and-limb and physically throw her out by manhandling her ourselves. ¿Exactly how long did it take the cops to show?; ¡The cops never showed up at all! Both of these incidents happed in the same week.
I hear that if a thief steals your phone, but forgets to turn it off and you give the police the address of the phone, rather than going in guns blazing, capturing a gang of phonethieves, recovering stolen property, and being big heroes, the police tell you to go recover your phone yourself, dsince you know where it is. Evidently, the policepolice would rather coerce money and sex from prostitutes —— ¡that is grand theft and rape! —— than do their jobs —— ¡decriminalize prostitution now!
That sounds like DopplerRadar. Apollo 12 was the 1st ApolloMission to use DopplerRadar. Apollo 12 landed within 100 meters of its target.
Did the local precinct not get filled in on the resident pegasus? Or was the cop just assuming blatant hooliganism? Because it seems like the people handling ponies, as careful as they are with everything else, would have alerted the local authorities in the beginning, even if it was just a quick conference.
"So we've got a pegasus moving in. You'll probably see her flying around town."
Actually...
Did the cop call Mister Salvatore's office? "Hey, we found a wayward blue pegasus..."
I got a Chevy Impala that was formly a Port Authority of Houston patrol car. Unfortunately for me it had the defective ignition switch. Swapped out the body control module, only to find out it was police issue. Not exactly cheap.
7648778
And even better, since it's a government form, you know damn well it's got repeated instructions to fill out and attach other forms which the officer has also never seen nor heard of.
7648783
It's his biggest joy in life. He's kind of like a mama bear.
7648786
See, that's one thing that I assume would happen after first contact. We, as a society, often enough are prejudiced against other humans, so why wouldn't we be prejudiced against a literal alien species?
One of the functions of the helpers is to make little misunderstandings like this not make the news whenever possible. The last thing that they want is for rumors of pegasus arsonists getting around, because once the rumor starts it's really hard to dispel them.
7648828
See, why you got to think that? It's an exciting career opportunity which allows him to work on his skills liasoning with multiple other government departments, learn new kinds of paperwork, and occasionally get to intimidate people. Also he gets to use whatever pool car he wants, even the Mustang if he can convince Cayenne's helpers to let it go. Plus he gets paid vacations to exciting destinations like Stratford, ON and free admission to all the Shakespeare plays he cares to watch.
7648864
It might be a combination of both. Certainly, you'd want to make sure that your agents weren't going to do anything stupid directed at the ponies.
But he also has to deal with the FAA, the FCC, and every other alphabet agency to get things done.
MIss Cherilyn is the more dangerous one. Never trust the quiet agent. And yes, he's got a FBI badge.
And it's got a pony in the center instead of an eagle.7648871
If it were a punishment, then he's one of those people who can make the absolute best of it.
7648887
The only way I could think of that would happen is if the weight of the water caused weakened structural members to fail, and I would think that the house would have to be in pretty bad shape already for that to happen. I've seen a video where they collapse the upper floor of a house by flooding it and it takes more water than you'd think before it happens.
As long as she doesn't go inside but just shoves it through a broken window, it's probably reasonably safe. And that drops the temperature where you really want to get it down.
Nope, it's a typo. Correction made, thank you!
7648892
Oh yeah, there are some keywords that get him notified basically instantly. And if need be, he can also get a helicopter right quick.
She did. The whole incident was caught by her GoPro.
7648900
I know that swearing at cars helps me get through my day. Also throwing wrenches at coworkers, but I don't do that any more.
7648920
Best day ever for Mister Salvatore. He got to take the pool Suburban, drive it like an idiot, and then rip a local cop a new one. And then eat ice cream.
7648921
Mister Salvatore is FBI.
7649057
Firefighters love their axes. I bought a truck that had had a minor underdash fire, which had been put out with an ABC dry-chemical fire extinguisher. And also the dash had gotten whacked with an axe, just to make sure that there were no more flames.
I also was near a warehouse fire and when the front wall came down, it took out the power lines, and I happened to be near the circuit breakers for that line--when those things blow, you know about it.
In terms of a fire response, the best one I ever saw was a dorm fire at Western Michigan University. They sent everyone. That is, of course, a perfectly logical thing to do--it's a dorm, you don't know what you're going to find, so you send everything and then when you've assessed the scene, you recall what you don't actually need. So in Kalamazoo, the cops were also the firefighters, and up in the dorm parking lot was probably twenty fire trucks, ten ambulances, and about a hundred police cars.
7649122
Can you just imagine if some poor bastard had to babysit Pinkie Pie?
I'm just imagining some of the check boxes on the forms.
--Was magic involved in the incident?
--Was it a deliberate spell?
--Was it a deliberate effect?
--Is there a duration, i.e., will the victims turn back into humans at some later date?
--If not, can the spell be undone by the spellcaster or another, more powerful unicorn?
Heck, the form might even give examples based on popular movies--Harry Potter could be used as a reference on a federal form.
7649165
7649228
Those poor bastards. You can bet when they're bidding on the next pony they're going to watch, they're looking for the earth pony equivalent of a nun.
7649267
. . . she's just a little whorse.
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(I'll show myself out)
7649332
No; I forgot that she had.
7649404
From a technical standpoint, I did consider that--not just here, but in other places. But I think it would be harder to read if she put the most exciting events first. "Me and Aric had sex today! [Details of the evening] Also in the morning I had corn flakes for breakfast and then went to class and learned about nimbus clouds. . . ."
Proper application of paperwork is a skill that all the good Federal Agents know. "Oh, no, you're not in trouble. All you need to do is fill out this incident form, and this one, and this contact form, and this incident report, and I'll also need a complete witness list and when you're done with all of those I'll start getting together the forms that the first forms will call for."
Technically, it's not aviation related, so she shouldn't. I believe that's kind of a grey area, though, and she probably wouldn't get in trouble if she did.
7649428
I have a copy of that somewhere. Downloaded it back in the BBS days, and printed it out just in case I ever should happen to need it.
It's going to be an interesting few years.
7649527
7649668
Honestly, I'm not sure that it bothers anyone.
And probably a whole slew of other minor felonies/misdemeanors.
7649708
Been a while since I've had one. Maybe I ought to remedy that. There's a really good ice cream shop in Jackson.
7650530
Based on what readers have suggested and my own thoughts, a joint team between the FBI and the Diplomatic Security Service would be the most logical. The DSS is geared towards protecting foreign dignitaries, among other things, while the FBI has a much larger ground presence and interacts more with local law enforcement, and also has a larger pool of agents to draw from. [DSS has 2,000 agents, the FBI has 35,000]
7650757
It would probably depend on the country. I could imagine that some might use their military, and others might use local police. Probably some wouldn't let the pony go out of the city without an escort, as well.
7650850
There was a house a little ways from mine that burned down once due to bad wiring, and then a couple of months later what was left of it caught fire again (probably arson the second time), and after that the locals made the owner demolish it. Interestingly, the basement is still there as an open pit and nobody seems too worried about that.
7651050
Probably not. The ones in the dorm are hard-wired with battery backup, and there probably are none in her apartment. (Maybe it's changed now, but when I lived in Kalamazoo, rental houses and duplexes were not required to have smoke alarms.)
I've got one in my kitchen that goes off whenever I cook. And I ought to change the batteries in them, and replace the one in the kitchen, since it's at least eight years old now.
7652067
There's nothing more fun than going to work Monday morning with a hangover, right?
7652471
I'm lucky; the local cops around here are pretty good and, in my experience at least, don't harass people. Some of the county cops are dicks, though, but I mostly stay away from them.
7652914
Plainwell probably didn't get the memo. One of the differences between Silver Glow and other ponies is that she can go much further afield on her own, which is something that they probably didn't think about beforehand. You can bet that's added to the memo now, especially since they now know that Silver Glow can fly off nearly a hundred miles in any direction with nothing more than her flight gear and some food stuffed in her pockets.
He probably didn't, but his dispatcher would have. Any incident involving a pony would require that the helpers be notified, since they're the ones who can get the appropriate resources.
7655069
I've also got an Impala, although luckily not ex-police. It needs the ignition switch--passlock sensor is failing--but right now fixing the windshield wipers is a higher priority.
I would put that police officer's conduct down to ignorance and over-abundance of caution... There is always someone who doesn't get the word not to resist the pony invasion!
And as maddening as it must be to be assigned to Cayenne, she is still a Good Pony, if rather wild. She is not even building an army of mind-controlled humans in an attempt to conquer Equestria! So I think that pony duty is an assignment for a reward, rather than a punishment.
9332695
On the one hand, he probably should have known better (assuming that nearby departments get briefed on the pony, which I’d think they would). On the other hand, I would imagine that cops are often trained to go with their gut when things seem weird, and a pegasus loaded with electronic gear claiming she put clouds on the fire does merit additional investigation.
Yeah, I don’t think that it’s a punishment, since people who were serving pony duty as a punishment wouldn’t do a very good job of it. Although I think that sometimes they pretend it is, just to keep sane (especially people like Cayenne’s helpers). And yeah, she’s a good pony overall, but very much a nympho and party pony, thus ensuring plenty of work for her team.
Have I mentioned how much I love this guy?
7718603
Useless Facts
At 35,000 people, the FBI has more people than several state capitols & about as many as the Yukon Territory in Canada
Offered as a homage to Spielberg's "Animaniacs"
11220913
He's the best helper Silver could have had. They're both good for each other.
11304508
And they're usually very competent. Unlike the people in several state capitols, sigh.
Someone's gonna make Mr. Sal very happy for several hours in an interrogation room.
You misunderstand Silver; this is the part of the job that Mr. Sal lives for.
Seeeeeeeeeeeeee?
11336339
Oh you know it. Or let him twist in the wind as long as he can with paperwork, then an interview, then followup questions . . . he could drag it out for months, call the guy in whenever he's having a bad day--it's a gift that keeps on giving.
Oh yeah, it very much is. Twisting other agencies' arms to let Silver fly or fly in tornadoes or whatever else is fun, but being able to do it direct is even better. You know the day he took that creep down at Meijer was a good day for him.