Original Story - Lightning Dust and the Black-ops

Lightning Dust and the Wonderbolts Black Ops

Now I have spent a lot of time thinking about this idea, starting as an offshoot of something else I was working on, to developing into a story with a lot of detail and world building. In fact, I have been having a debate with myself on whether or not to start with the beginning of the story, or provide the backstory of this world first. Ultimately, I decided to start with the story first, as I’d rather have the important details revealed as I envision them in the story.

So the story begins in Cloudsdale, a bit after “Wonderbolts Academy”, and we find Lightning Dust living in the slums. Turns out that being rejected by the Wonderbolts, due to events that were triggered by the rejection, had completely and utterly destroyed Lighting’s life. (While the exact details I will leave up to interpretation by others, as I am not good with angst, I envision something like being disowned by her family as they believed that the rejection was a sign of her weakness (her family following traditional Pegasi ideals, as such she should not stand with the rest of her proven family.) So after a hard day of work in order to scrounge up some bits, she heads to the bar to drink her sorrows away.

While at the bar, Lightning meets a pegasus stallion that goes by the name of Cold Feathers. They strike up a conversation, talking about casual things like the current news around Cloudsdale and the like. Eventually, the conversation turns over to the subject of the Wonderbolts. Lightning Dust, still sore on the topic, tells Cold that she believes that she was unjustly rejected as an attempt to appease Rainbow Dash, a hero of Equestria with lots of influential connections with respect to her friends, and to protect their reputation of being elite fliers from being called into question by the only pony capable of performing a sonic rainboom quitting. She concludes that had her wingpony been anyone else, she would have still made it into the academy. She does admit that she was very reckless during the tryouts, but she was under extreme pressure by all of her friends and family to get accepted into the Wonderbolts at any cost. Now, without that pressure and having plenty of time to think about it, Lightning understands that her actions were completely wrong and regrets them, but that does not justify the Wonderbolts actions by just rejecting her without warning.

So after her little venting critique, Cold asked if she had the opportunity to become a Wonderbolt, would she take it? After some careful consideration, she said she would take it. Cold then reveals that he is the Chairpony of Cloudsdale’s Armed Forces, the department that oversees the Wonderbolt program, and that he could easily get her into the program, if she is willing. Lightning, stunned by the revelation and offer, happily accepts. Cold mentions that it will take a week to get everything into place, and once it is all good to go, Lightning will receive a letter with instructions on what to do next. With that last bit of information given, Cold leaves the bar and Lightning goes home feeling the first time in a while, hopeful.

A week passes, and just like Cold said, a letter arrives for Lightning. It informs her that she has been summoned to Fort Cumulus (A play on of Fort Knox. Knox being a Scottish term for round hill, and round cloud is Cumulus. Hence, Fort Cumulus) for enrollment and medical examination. Now this was weird to Lightning for a couple of reasons, one is that she was unaware that the Wonderbolts had operations going on at that base in particular, and two was that the tryouts did not mention anything about medical examinations. But she writes the medical examinations off as something that is done after being accepted into the academy, and the lack of operations could be explained as being top secret. After all, Cumulus was well known for its security and secrecy, it would not be unheard of for the Wonderbolts to have operations not generally known to the public. So, she goes on to Fort Cumulus to enroll into the Wonderbolt program.

Arriving at her desired location, she meets Cold in the lobby with another pony holding paperwork. Cold explains that enrollment was easy, all Lightning needed to do was sign the paperwork and follow him down to the medical wing for the examination. So she did exactly that with the rather large pile of paperwork and followed Cold to the medical wing. Going to sub basement six, Lightning found the medical wing to be much more advanced than she expected, it looked like a hospital in one of those sci-fi comics she reads from time to time. Down there, Cold introduces her to the head scientist at the fort, Doctor Quantum Singularity. Quantum is a rather nice, but emotionally distant pegasus stallion that is an incredibly intelligent Biologist and very loyal to the grand pegasus counsel (The Governing Body of Cloudsdale). Quantum informs Lightning that he will be personally administering the tests and that they can get started at once.

Going through the tests, Lightning sees just a normal physical exam with more in-depth aspects. After taking a blood sample, Quantum informs her that she passed with flying colors, and that just leaves only one thing left to do. Before she can ask what that is, she feels a spell hit her from behind. Turning around, she sees the assistant from earlier next to Cold with her horn glowing. At this point, Lightning starts to feel dizzy and tired, making her realize that she has been tranquilized. Collapsing to the ground, she asks Cold what is happening, and he says that she is becoming a real Wonderbolt. Just before she fully loses consciousness, she hears Cold tell Quantum to prepare her for surgical and magical augmentation before her sight fades to black.

Waking up at some unspecified time later, Lightning was greeted by intense pain in her body. Looking at her body revealed a lot of scars. She also was restrained to the hospital bed, which did not ease her worries at all. Cold them appeared in her room, looking pretty pleased with himself. Lightning, of course, demanded to know what they did to her as well as wanting to leave. Cold asks her, in mock confusion, whether she read the contract before signing. When she says nothing, Cold goes on to state that the paperwork was indeed for enrollment into the Wonderbolts, but not the team she is aware of.

Cold says that there are officially two Wonderbolt programs in Cloudsdale, the first is the one the public is familiar with being called the blue team, which is basically a glorified stunt team that keeps the public at large happy. However, the blue team also doubles as a distraction to keep the public attention away from the second program, this program being a super soldier program called the black-ops team. Its purpose is to be a group of elite soldiers that serve only Cloudsdale and the counsel, completely out of the public eye and incredibly top secret.

Cold then goes on to explain that the surgery she just had was something brand new created by Quantum that all new initiates will be put through. The procedure is designed to push a pony’s body and mind beyond what it is naturally capable of, to make the perfect pony. Sadly the procedure is extremely experimental, as a result, all new initiates must meet certain criteria in order to be even considered for the program now, to insure that the pony has the best chance of success. Even though he is certain such limitations will be lifted once all the issues in the procedure have been dealt with.

As for leaving, the contract that she signed basically says that she gave herself up to the program and became the property of the state, losing all of her rights in the process. Lightning exclaims that they can’t do that as Equestria’s constitution makes removing those rights impossible. Cold agrees that Equestria made those rights inalienable, but during the writing of the constitution, the pegasi were concerned about the loss of autonomy of their nation. In order to satisfy them, the other tribes allowed Cloudsdale the ability to govern themselves. This allowed the pegasi nation to merge with Equestria, while allowing it to continue on with its age-old traditions. One of those traditions, due to pegasi society being so militaristic, was the ability to give oneself up to the state for service to the country, which at the time, was seen as a great honor. This allows Cloudsdale to strip the rights of citizens, but only if said citizen willingly agrees, which Lightning did by signing the paperwork.

Enraged by this revelation, Lightning says he won’t get away with this. In which Cold states that they have been getting away with it for around a thousand years, so he is not worried about that changing anytime soon. And besides, what is she going to do about it? After Lightning suggests leaving to tell the princess, Cold just laughs saying that she could try, but not only would that be impossible to do, there would be harsh consequences for her if she does. Fort Cumulus security is legendary for not only keeping ponies out, but also keeping recruits in. Getting through that, a tracking device installed during surgery would make sure that there is nowhere for her to hide. And if she leaves Cloudsdale while not on a mission, the device would incapacitate her until she is recovered. Cold then mentions that the punishment for attempting an escape was to be injected with a drug created to control them. This drug would remove a pony’s free will and make them completely obedient to the state. Cold then wraps up this discussion by saying she will need a couple of months to recover before they can begin her training. Just before he leaves the room, he tells Lightning that he thought that she wanted to join the Wonderbolts and that is exactly what he did, just not in the way she expected.

During the next few years, Lightning goes through the grueling training. During that time, she gets a close group of friends that she picked up by chance. She was not really actively looking for friends, but she will be glad to have them when she starts going out on missions. Turns out the type of missions the black-ops team perform are the types that involve getting one’s hooves dirty, like assassinations, blackmailing, and other activities that no government wants to be connected to. As one could have expected, this puts a lot of physiological pressure on the soldiers, and can cause ponies to go over the edge. So for Lightning to have a group of friends would allow for them to act as an anchor for her mental state and keep her grounded in reality.

Going over the uniforms, they are of similar design to the flight suits used by the blue team. However there are many differences between the two of them. One is that instead of a blue coloring with a yellow underbelly, The black-ops flight suits are black with a dark gray underbelly. This makes the uniforms have a passive camouflage during the night and in the shadows. Another thing is that they are made up of a magically enhanced special material that is a mix of Kevlar and Nomex, ensuring that they are resilient to extreme flying and act as a very strong armor for the wearer. Also the uniforms have sleeves for the wings, in order to protect the appendages as well as the rest of the body. It also has a gas mask integrated into it as well as black tinted lenses for the eyes. This protects against chemicals and any other hazardous gasses as well as keeping the wearer’s identity a secret. The final two differences are the metal tipped hooves and a non-translucent mane/tail net. The first would enhance the already impressive strength of the wearers, packing quite a punch on their targets. While the second would contribute to the secrecy of the wearer by concealing any unique traits in their mane or tail.

During her time with the black-ops, Lightning rises through the ranks, as that is the only thing she can do now, to become the commander of the black-ops. Thanks to many encounters with Quantum, she eventually becomes good friends with him. Apparently, he is a really nice pony, just has a hard time showing it due to his disconnected nature. At some point in time, Lightning goes to the Cloudsdale archives to learn more about the program’s history. Using her black-ops rank, she is granted full access to the records. After some digging in the deepest corners of the archive, Lightning comes across what she was looking for.

The seeds for this program were planted many centuries before, during the unification period when the three tribes first came together. Now, unlike what the tale of Hearts Warming Eve says, the tribes did not come together in harmony in a day. Actually, there was a lot of distrust, suspicion and conflict between the tribes. Naturally, there was genuine concern about the viability of the newly formed state. This concern is what led the chancellor of the pegasi nation to demand for a self-governance clause for their territories, mainly Cloudsdale, in the Equestrian constitution. The reasoning was that not only would this allow for their traditions to continue unhindered from any Equestrian law, but would allow them to continue to operate their own military alongside Equestria’s military. So if the nation were to collapse, they would have the infrastructure needed to protect themselves from the fallout. To explain why the pegasi felt that Equestria would not succeed, one first has to explain the culture of the pegasi race before and during the unification period.

Now while it is true that all the tribes had their differences with each other, the Earth ponies and Unicorns were more similar both politically, economically, and culturally than the Pegasi were to either of them. While the first two had a monarch based system, the pegasi had a republic system where ponies voted for the seat that represented them and those ponies voted for the chancellery, which was supreme commander of the military. The others were farmers or scholars in magic, pegasi were economically tied to the military industrial complex. And most importantly, while the others were pacifist, the pegasi were militaristic. This resulted in two very different nations merging with each other, and that normally is a lot more tricky to integrate than two like-minded nations.

So, many years pass, and the tensions between the three tribes have calmed down significantly, but then Nightmare Moon happens. As a result of this event, there is genuine concern in the counsel about the stability of Equestria. After all, if one alicorn can go rogue, could the other as well? If so, who would run the country? The answer came from two childhood friends from Cloudsdale, Amber Abrams and Nightingale.

Their personalities could not have been more different, with Amber being an aggressive, strong leader type and Nightingale being a reclusive, smart genius, but they ultimately became friends in spite of their differences. Nightingale proposed that they make a new, secretive branch of the Cloudsdale military where the initiates are stripped of all weaknesses and are augmented to amplify their strengths, creating the perfect pony to fight against threats, in theory. While the current administration was less than enthused about the idea, Amber was deeply supportive of it. So Amber ran for office and eventually became the new chancellor. This allowed her to establish the black-ops program with Nightingale as the first lead scientist.

The original goal of the program was to act as an elite squadron of super soldiers capable of taking on and defeating Princess Celestia if she went rogue, as with a secondary objective of protecting Cloudsdale from threats that sought to undermine it. It would do this by recruiting the top soldiers from the service and offer them a place in the program. Once in, they would be enhanced with the first generation procedure, which included a cocktail of drugs to strengthen both mind and body to push them to their limit.

500 years later, Cloudsdale would start shrinking the military and transferring assets to the Equestrian military in order to cut down on their budget. This culminated in the dissolution of the army, navy, and a majority of the air force. Significantly cutting down on the amount of potential recruits that the program could use, and in a desperate bid to keep the number of recruits stable, the program began to resort to other measures of recruitment. Like kidnapping and indoctrinating ponies of a lower station that no pony would miss. Of course, with most recruits being unwillingly recruited, a way to control the more rebellious ponies was needed.

Such control was created by the great grand foal of Nightingale, Scopolamine. As the head scientist of his time, he created a drug that would destroy the free will in a pony and make them completely obedient (the same drug that Cold threatened to use on Lightning). This solved the rebellious problem, but had the unfortunate side effect of reducing their effectiveness. So it was only used when absolutely needed. Another problem was that the public was starting to become aware of the program. In order to keep the details from coming out, the counsel created a new, very public program with the same name. This was the blue team, and it did its job perfectly. The public became so enthralled with the blue team that any threat to the black-ops team was completely wiped away.

Skip to Season 1 and the counsel, encouraged by the many years of peace, had been downsizing the program as they thought it was no longer necessary to keep it running. There was even some talk about disbanding it completely, but then Nightmare Moon returned. While she was defeated and reformed, this was a wake up call to the counsel. If the takeover of Equestria was only able to be averted thanks to six ponies, that just led to the question of what happened to the royal guard or the army. After looking through the reports of that night, they were stunned to see just how complacent Equestrian forces had become over the years.

With this in mind, they began to revive the program by having the scientists completely overhaul the process to make the recruits even more effective in all aspects of combat. In comes Quantum, another direct descendant of the Nightingale family, and he made the process so invasive and intense that the counsel is debating whether or not the subjects were still considered ponies. The results however spoke for themselves, with the first subject, Lightning Dust, being able to perform a double sonic rainboom with the augmentations, an unprecedented feat that was not thought possible until then. As such, it became the main procedure for all future recruits.

The other thing the counsel does is to mandate a massive increase in recruits, as Cloudsdale’s original military was downsized many centuries ago, they decided to focus all of their resources on the remaining military unit they had that was up to their insane standards. These two changes led to the recruitment process being changed slightly, with the program now focusing more on the ponies rejected during the Wonderbolt tryouts. This made sense as the ponies there would likely have trained extensively to be the best fliers, and as such would be in top shape. Thanks to the new procedure, whatever they were disqualified for could be fixed either through mental alterations, or physical augmentations, depending on the reason for disqualification. And with the massive amount of ponies trying to get into the academy, it would ensure a steady supply of potential new recruits.

Once finished reading these records, Lightning finds herself conflicted. On one hoof, the original reason for the Wonderbolts was completely understandable. Had Princess Celestia gone rogue as well, Equestria would have either fallen or collapsed. And with the way the program operated back then, there would have been nothing objectionable to it. On the other hoof, the program has been warped so badly over the years, that it was hardly even recognizable.

So a conflicted Lightning goes to a bar one night to try and take her mind off of her job for a while, when she has a run in with her old friend Rainbow Dash. After a bit of talking, Rainbow notices that Lightning is not acting like herself. Inquiring about this, Lightning just tells Rainbow that her job has been putting a lot of pressure on her and she just is not feeling too well at the moment. She also apologizes to Rainbow for being so reckless back at the academy. After this reconciliation moment, Lightning and Rainbow have a good time talking with each other. This goes on for a while, with regular meetings at the bar when they have openings in their schedules. Until one day, when things changed.

Lightning was trotting back to base, when she heard a commotion in an alleyway. Going into said alleyway, she discovers a criminal attempting to rob Rainbow. It seems that his attempted robbery had gone wrong and Rainbow had been grievously injured in the process. Lightning sprang into action, ruthlessly incapacitating him and beginning to apply first aid to Rainbow. During this event, she used the radio implanted in her ear to call her team for some backup to apprehend the aggressor. Once they arrived and securely restrained the criminal, it became clear that Rainbow was too badly injured to be saved by normal medical means.

This left Lightning with a major choice to make, she could follow the rules and bring Rainbow to a hospital where she would most likely succumb to her wounds, or she could bring Rainbow with her back to base and hope Quantum could do the impossible once again and save Rainbow. Of course the second option would involve her breaking so many rules, that a court martial would be considered the least of her worries. But, from her own experience with her friends in the black ops and Rainbow, she has come to realize that friendship is worth going above and beyond for, even if she risks everything to save her.

With her mind made up, Lightning had her teammates take the criminal to the nearest police station while she took Rainbow back to Fort Cumulus. Getting back to the fort, Lightning realized that she picked a very good time to do this, as Cold Feathers was out doing something important, leaving Quantum in charge of the fort.

When she gets down to the medical wing and asks Quantum for his help, Quantum agrees to help as much as he can, with the catch that Lightning keeps Rainbow a secret while she recovers but, if she was discovered, to not mention him at all. Agreeing to this, Quantum began his work on saving Rainbow. It took a while, with many close calls, but Quantum was able to save Rainbow.

Lightning asked Quantum if she could tell Rainbow about the black-ops, as she would have to spend some time there in order to recover. Quantum replies that while he is legally obligated to say no to such a request, he would not report her for doing so. With his unofficial blessing, Lightning takes Rainbow to her room, as that is the only room she is certain that is not monitored. After a few days, Rainbow wakes up and Lightning explains everything to her. Surprisingly, Rainbow is not mad that Lightning hid this information from her, instead she is angry at the ponies in charge for putting her into such a position in the first place. After some convincing, Lightning is able to get Rainbow to swear to not to tell any other pony about this.

So after some months of recovery, Rainbow is well enough to leave the fort. After that, their routine goes back to normal, with them both meeting at the bar to help deal with the responsibility of their jobs. This continues on until season 8, when one night everything would change forever.

It started off as a normal night for the two, at the bar catching up on everything they had been doing, when Quantum came into the bar looking quite disheveled. Now this was very unusual, as Quantum normally does not leave the fort unless he has something important to do. So when Quantum finds them and asks if he could join them, Lightning knew immediately that something was very wrong. Quantum tells them both that an order has come down from the chancellor herself for a “special military operation” that went out to all operatives. However, Quantum was so disturbed by the details of the order that he tried to prevent it from reaching any members, but was only able to block a small number of them, as many had already gone through. Inquiring about the order itself, Quantum reveals that it gave the order to assassinate four certain alicorn princesses.

Now it was no secret that the chancellor, Spiteful Seafire, absolutely despised alicorns, she made those views very clear. She believed that they were abominations against the natural order of pony society. Considering she was raised in the traditional pegasus ideals, when she means natural order, she means pegasi as superior to the others and the other tribes serve them. But no pony ever thought that she would actually try to do something about it.

Lightning and Rainbow were, of course, shocked by this revelation. Quantum tells them that Spiteful has truly overstepped her authority and informs them that he has a special mission for Lightning and her squad, they are to get into the government offices and apprehend Spiteful for attempted treason. Lightning agrees and is about to head back to base to get suited up when Rainbow demands to come along. Not only is this pony the same one that allowed the black-ops program to become so corrupt, but she is now attempting to kill her very close friends.

Agreeing to this, the three ponies rush out of the bar to the fort. Getting back to the fort, Lightning finds the rest of her team waiting for her. Quantum explains that since Spiteful has overstepped her authority as chancellor, her team has a new mission authorized by him, they are to go and apprehend the chancellor, preferably alive, but must be stopped at any cost. He will stay at the fort to try and recall all other units, but it may take some time.

So Lightning and her group go to get suited up for the mission. Even though Rainbow is not part of the program, she is given one in order to protect her identity on the mission. With all the preparations done, they take off to Cloudsdale’s administration complex. Skipping all the minor details, the team arrives at the chancellor's office where they see Spiteful and Cold at the table having a casual conversation together. After confronting Spiteful about her military order she not only confirms that this is true, but this is something she had been planning for a long time in collaboration with Cold. After some failed attempts to get her to stand down, the black-ops team proceed to fight her and Cold.

Sometime during this battle, Rainbow was not keeping an eye on her surroundings and Cold was sneaking up on her with a syringe. By the time Lightning noticed what was happening, Cold was just about to tackle Rainbow. With no time to send a warning, Lightning runs over and pushes her out of the way. While this saves Rainbow from Cold, Lightning herself gets tackled by Cold, resulting in her getting injected with the syringe. Cold explains that the drug in the syringe is the one made by Scopolamine all those years ago, and that it takes some time to take effect.

At the end of the fight, Cold has been knocked out and Spiteful too tired to continue on fighting. Lightning starts to feel the effect of the drug. Rainbow, noticing this, asks what is happening to her. Spiteful, sounding rather smug, explains the drug in detail to Rainbow. Enraged by this revelation, Rainbow grabs Spiteful and severely beats her, unaware of the steel tipped hooves on her uniform. By the time she realizes what she is doing, Spiteful has been fatally wounded and dies soon after.

Rainbow is extremely shaken by this and has to be escorted out by Lightning. Lightning has a heart warming conversation with Rainbow by telling her that she is not a bad pony for killing Spiteful, the fact that she dearly regrets her actions is proof enough of that. During the conversation, the drug effects continue to progress, ending with Lightning telling Rainbow that she would have taken that needle regardless if she knew what would happen to her, that is what friends are for after all. With that said, the drug finally overtook her and Lightning became a mindless drone. Unfortunately, Rainbow did not have time to grieve as the battle was devastating enough that it woke up many ponies and many were beginning to converge on the administration building. As a result, the group grabbed Lightning and Rainbow, and ran back to base before the public got there.

Timeskip a few weeks later, and much has happened since that night. While all black-ops members had been recalled before any major deaths could be caused, there was enough commotion and carnage that the counsel had no choice but to declassify the program. This led to much outrage and investigations. When everything was said and done, most of the higher ups on the program were either arrested or fired. The program itself was merged into the blue team to help and reintegrate these ponies into normal society, while also putting their talents to more moral uses. Quantum was hard at work attempting to develop a cure to Scopolamine’s drug with Twilight Sparkle at Fort Cumulus. With a mindless Lightning currently living with Rainbow in Ponyville until such time a cure could be found for her condition.

This leads to the end of the story, with a possibility of a sequel using plot points resulting from these events. Like if Lightning ever gets cured, how do the Wonderbolt teams adjust to this unification between the two of them (for instance, they could replace the wingpony system and have two pony teams, one blue and black teammate respectively) and what about ownership, remember that they became property of the state as part of recruitment, how does that get settled? One concept that I find promising, is a trial for the murder of the chancellor with Rainbow as the defendant. After all, regardless of the reasons, she did kill a high ranking official. So one could do a story arc about the trial with it being a challenge to overcome with the help of her friends, new and old. Another thing of interest is what exactly Quantum did to save Rainbow’s life, if he used a similar procedure like Lightning’s augmentation, then she could be considered a half augmented pony. This could add an extra incentive for Rainbow to not get caught during her recovery, as Cold probably would have forced her into the program and isolated her from the rest of her friends. The potential possibilities to build on this story are endless.