//------------------------------//
// 2 - Threadfall 
// Story: Equestria Threadfall 
// by David Silver 
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Luna landed just in front of a police station, where sharply dressed ponies in uniform were moving about industriously. Several heads turned towards her as she came in and they began to salute.

"Princess Luna," barked one that seemed of superior station than the others, descending the short steps of the station. "What brings you to Manehattan so suddenly?"

Spike waved from atop her. "We're here to stop an attack."

"Verily." She turned slowly in place. "Things appear to be in order for the moment?"

The police captain nodded curtly. "Everything's fairly normal. What kind of attack?"

"Of this we were not informed, but it would come from that direction." She lifted a hoof towards Trottingham, as distant as it was, with water between them and the smaller town. "I would see that this city is prepared. Ponies should be seen to safe places as soon as possible."

He grunted, peering at Luna through bushy brows a moment, glancing up at Spike. "If it was much anypony else... I'll put out the word." He reached for a large radio receiver and began to speak into it, "we have word of incoming trouble. Get ponies off the street."

"Which ponies?" echoed from his radio.

"All of them!" he roared. "This is not a drill. I don't want a single pony in sight that isn't an officer."

An officer came up to the two of them. "Excuse me, uh, princess? You need to get in--"

Luna put a hoof to her face. "I do not count. But you can take him." She gestured with her head towards Spike, or where Spike was. But he wasn't there anymore.

He had dropped down her side, hiding behind her.

"I can feel you," cautioned Luna. "This game is at an end."

"It isn't a game." He scrambled back on top of her. "We're here to save ponies, so let's focus on that."

Luna snorted, but also began to walk away from the informed and alerted police station. "Let us see if we can spot the menace."

"Now we're talking!" Spike clapped his hands together before pumping a fist, looking ready for adventure.

A short flight across the city took them towards the docks. Below them, traffic was becoming more sparse as the police ponies of the cities did as they were asked, urging people to get inside until they were told it was safe. Being early in the morning, there weren't as many ponies out as there could have been to start, but it was creeping close to the time that ponies would begin marching to work.

"We do not envy them." Luna shook her head slowly. "There will be shouting and complaining." Even Luna, still catching up on things, could imagine a salary pony being quite irate at a random police pony telling them to not go to work on time.

"They're doing a good job. For such a big city, I barely see anypony down there." Spike turned his vision forward, squinting across the water. "So now we just have to face... whatever it is?" His cheeks puffed suddenly. With a ripe belch, a scroll popped free of him.

Luna's magic snatched the scroll away and unfurled it without delay. "It's from sister. She says to look skywards towards the source." They landed at the piers, both of them looking upwards in a North-eastern direction.

But there was nothing but a brightening sky.

All seemed normal. Spike scratched at a cheek idly. "So... When do we see something?"

"I know not..." She squinted against the distance as if she could force herself to see what needed to be seen.

"There! I think?" Both looked to where Spike was pointing. Rain. It was falling into the ocean in great unnatural sheets of something thicker than proper rain. It was more like snow in thick flurries of whatever it was that fell into the ocean in an approaching weather pattern.

It was so far away that the approach seemed glacial. "I... estimate half an hour before it arrives here." Luna flapped her wings once powerfully, bringing them back into the air. "That does not appear to be proper rain, or snow."

"It's hard to see from this far away... Should we get closer?" Spike shrugged softly from atop Luna. 

"Nay, I say not. If it is as dangerous as we are made to believe, I would not wish to entangle with it over the ocean itself."

"Point." Spike was smiling a little despite the theoretical danger. "At least, if it really is snow, I could melt that." He puffed a little flame, his wings flapping. "We'll take care of it."

Luna nodded faintly, her attention on the clouds, so soft and silvery that approached, becoming larger by the moment, looming ever wider at an alarming rate. "That is wide enough to... engulf the entire city," she breathed out, estimating its growth as it continued, the strange snow-like particulates raining to the sea beneath it. "We--I..." She turned in the air and fled.

"W-what? Aren't we?" He pointed back towards the incoming silver clouds. "We're here to fight, aren't we?"

"And we will, but first..." She landed beside an officer. "Nowhere in this city will be safe to be outside. Be sure they know that." Luna pointed to the still oncoming clouds. "A great and unnatural weather approaches."

The police mare tilted her head. "Why don't we send the weather pegasi out to shoo it away?"

"Huh, we shoulda thought of that." Spike rubbed behind his head. "Think they could do it?"

"I suppose it worth a try." She turned to face the silvery clouds. "Though we fear it will not be that easy. Advise caution."

The police mare willed her receiver up, being a unicorn. "We got some nasty weather headed this way. Alert the weather patrol to send it away, but be careful." An indistinct reply came. "I don't know, just give it their best shot. Luna says it isn't normal." Another faint reply came. "Roger that."

She clipped her receiver back on her chest. "They'll fly out and try to intercept that storm before it ruffles any feathers in the city. If they can turn it away, a lot of ponies will be happy they can get back to work."

"We thank you for the assistance." Her wings spread. "We will not allow them to fly alone. Come." She took to the air, Spike atop her. "We'll meet with them and fly out to see this threat. Perhaps we can end it before it even makes contact with the city proper."

"That'd be pretty nice." Spike bobbed his head. "I can't much help with moving weather around," he admitted with a shrug. "Still, wouldn't be a bad ending."

Other pegasi started to join them, forming a wing. They wore bright colors with 'Weather Patrol' sewn onto them in clashing other neon colors to make it clear what their job was. "Hey, Luna!" called one of them. "We never got to fly with a princess before." A rough cheer spread through the wing of pegasi. "Let's show her what we have!"

Luna's teeth set as the wing began to accelerate past her, eager to prove their worth in her eyes. "Wait!" But they were not waiting. They rushed ahead to close with the strange cloud. From up close, they could see that the rain, or snow, or whatever it was that the clouds were dropping was quite a bit larger than normal, making great splashes in the water beneath them.

The clouds were also coming quite rapidly, though they had seemed to be coming at a placid pace when viewed from afar. This didn't bother the pegasi as they swerved and turned to match velocity. One pegasus timed their turn a precious second off, veering right into the tip of the cloud. Their scream was a keen wail, and the pegasus did not emerge.

The rest of the wing was stunned. Everyone had heard the cry of agony. "Spring Shower?" asked one flying mare, peering into the silvery mass. Taking a moment, they could see that it wasn't really a cloud at all, but a roiling mass of... silvery thread that was bound up in tight coils and balls, hopelessly entangled. Whatever it was, it was caught in the wind, tumbling around as it fell. Much of it was falling, making the great splashes in the water, but more was still caught in the air currents, tossed around, making the cloud-like shape.

Luna closed with them, shaking her head and trembling. "Take flight!" Not that they weren't already flying. "That is no cloud." She was close enough to see that for herself. "Get to shelter, now!"

"But Spring Shower!" The same mare pointed where her friend had vanished into that... mess. "We have to help her!" The other weather pegasi were nodded in agreement as they flew along with the strange not-cloud. "We can't just--"

"Go!" boomed Luna with the royal voice, rippling even the cloud of strange things. "I will do my best for her, but leave, that is a command!"

With heavy hearts, the weather patrol began to break off. Save for one mare, the one that had called her name. "Give her back!" she screamed at the cloud that offered no reply save for a low hissing that seemed to come from within it. She beat her wings angrily, but she could not dissuade the cloud. She lashed her back legs as if to buck apart the cloud, sinking her hooves into a knotted mass of thick wind-blown tendrils.

Her scream joined the downpour. Angry hissing came from her hooves, burning  with alarming speed even as she frantically flapped away. Luna dove for her, grabbing the pegasus as she started to writhe, coordination rapidly being lost. The acid was chewing its way up her leg with an awful speed, leaving the poor mare barely time to bleed.

With wide eyes, Spike pointed towards the cloud. "It's still coming!"

Luna veered away sharply, carrying both the mare and Spike away as she sped towards the city. "This is beyond what I had imagined. This mare needs immediate help."

"I'm... fine," she croaked out, teeth clenched as her legs fell away in little black clumps of nothing. "You... have to stop..."

"Shhh." Luna glanced at the horrific progression of the acid. "Save your strength." She dived for the city, coming in with a roar of wind and evening out just before striking the ground, rushing through the emptied streets. There were few ponies there, she thanks.

"Get inside!" shouted Spike from atop her, looking to the few police ponies they passed. "Get inside!" He was waving wildly, trying to encourage their motion. The police ponies were gaping at them. They could see the weather pony and what was left of her legs, and they began to know fear.

They fled inside just as the thread began to fall on the piers. The wooden piers stood not even a shadow of a chance. The thread slammed down onto them like cannon shells of knotted tendrils, just to immediately begin dissolving them with their corrosive fluids. The tendrils slipped free of one another, growing larger and larger by the moment as the piers vanished under their all-consuming hunger.

They gave way with a loud snap, and the thread fell once more into the water, bubbling fiercely on contact, but not emerging again save for wild thrashing that churned the waves with a frothy foam.

The boats suffered a similar fate, pelted by massive and dense clumps traveling as fast as any ship's cannon could produce. When they failed to sink by being so struck, many began to hiss and boil, being devoured by the same awful tendrils. Metal ships resisted being devoured, but were instead battered and beaten relentlessly, the rain unending.

Ponies that had thought they could flee onto the safety of their little boats were sorely mistaken, their homes dissolving around them, and that rot sweeping up onto them, their cries joining the bedlam around them. Manehattan was under attack, and Equestria would never be quite the same again.