Equestria Threadfall

by David Silver


10 - Red Tape

Twilight peered at a floating scroll. It was far from alone, the room's walls covered in scrolls and pictures pinned up with thread going from one to the next in a maze of web-like connections. "Fish are unaffected... Why?" She turned away with a scowl. "If only I had a living specimen..." But not a single shred of living thread had been found anywhere.

She turned to a large picture, taken recently of a thread-scored patch of ground. The evidence of the thread was naked to see, pock marked and trenched as if burrowed into, but they had found not a single bit of thread to send to her. "This is hopeless..." Not her research, of course.

"I need to look up." She turned to the photo taken of the baleful red star, still visible in the night sky. It was moving, in a new place every night. "If we do the math..." She reached for a globe across the room and her magic yanked it over rapidly to land in front of her. "If it's... here." A glowing red ball appeared above the globe. "Then here...." It winked to the next place it was seen, her mouth moving as she did mental figures rapidly, a fresh notebook floating over with notes being rapidly applied to it. "That means..."

"No no no, that doesn't work at all." She ripped the page clean of her book and started from the top. "We must have the position wrong..."

Science was not a fast thing, but she resumed her calculations from scratch, an abacus clicking back and forth as she went.


"He's busy," she flatly denied, her eyes lowering back to her typewriter as she began using it as if he wasn't there. "Good day, Capper."

"Creatures are going to die. Do you not get that?" He threw a hand aside violently as he struck a pose. "This isn't even about me. I already know what to do, so I'll be fine."

"I'll be back in ten." Lefont was walking briskly past them both, great skunk tail swaying behind him.

"Sir!" Capper grabbed his arm, only for his world to be tossed upside down a moment. One of Lefont's guards instantly grabbed Capper and threw him to the ground. "Ow Ow... alright, not moving, c'mon!" His arm was pinned painfully against his back, held up far higher than strictly required. "Sir, please!"

Lefont reached up to adjust a monocle, looking down at the pinned Capper. "Capper... always a pleasure." His sarcasm was impossible to miss. "What is it this time? I have things to do and helping you with another 'get rich' scheme is not on the schedule."

"Great, because it's not that. Twilight, the Equestrian princess? She sent a big warning, biggest there is." He tried to adjust how he was pinned by the brute on top of him, but his arm was held right in place. "People are gonna die."

"Why didn't she send it to me?" Lefont asked, brow raising. "I would be the proper authority to accept missives from foreign dignitaries. Capper Capper Capper... Have you gotten it in your head that you are a diplomat now?" He laughed at the very notion, his guards following along as if they were paid to do so. His sectary snorted softly but kept working. "You know what we call people who speak to foreign governments discreetly, Capper?"

"Uh..."

"Spies, Capper." He held out a gloved hand, fingers waggling. "Surrender Miss Sparkle's missive."

"Oh, sure. That was the point. I'd reach for it but your boy's making sure that isn't going to, nnng, happen."

Lefont made a subtle gesture and the pressure abated, getting a sigh of relief from Capper. "Let's have it, and it better not be a fake, Capper. Falsifying official documents would be a terrible crime to add to the list, hmm..."

"Yeah, look, Lefont, I know we don't always get along, but I didn't come in here to go blowing smoke." He dug a hand into a pocket, fishing out the large scroll.

Almost as soon as it was peeking free, Lefont casually snatched it in his gloved hand. "So you say." His eyes darted over it. "The seal looks appropriate..." He unfurled it and began reading, ignoring the fact that Capper was still pinned, even if his arms were no longer being painfully wrenched. "You are on quite familiar terms with her... Did you reply?"

"Yeah?"

He waggled a few fingers. "I'll want that too."

"Can't do that."

Lefont looked past the scroll in his hands down at Capper's pinned form. "You refuse?"

"I already mailed it." Capper shrugged softly. "I told her about the great fishing day we had. You remember that, right?"

"It's the talk of the town," grumbled Lefont as he rolled up the scroll. "Princess Sparkle speaks in very dire tones, but we don't have the budget to build new shelters of the magnitude she describes."

"I mean, sure, plenty ah rooves got wood, but some of 'em already don't," countered Capper. "We just need people to be able to get under there, if that 'thread' stuff comes washing up over us like there won't be a tomorrow, which there might not be if we get caught in it."

"Very funny, Capper." Lefont turned in place, tail lashing. "For just a moment, I thought you might have been selfless, but how foolish I was. Your own house, I recall it. Quite a wooden roof, is it not? You're not here as a 'hero', you want to save your own fuzzy back end."

"So's yours," Capper spat. "Just somewhere to hide if them silvery clouds waft in. All we need."

"To survive a day, perhaps." Lefont lowered the scroll to lightly swat Capper's face with it. "But what of the day after that? The entire town, huddling in a place ill-suited to hold them? Even at our fastest, we couldn't get new housing up fast enough."

"Good thing you're here then."

Lefont inclined his head faintly. "Mmm?"

"This is your job, right? To figure out how to get around this."

Lefont raised a finger, but it slowly fell. "An excellent point. Allow him up. I will do what I can with this information, Capper. Keep that kitty nose of yours as clean as you can, mmm?"

"Yeah, yer welcome." He waved it off and started to storm off. He had done his part at least.

Lefont watched him go before setting the scroll down on his secretary's desk. "Get that to the chairman of zoning and see what he has for answers. I expect ideas by the end of the day."

"Of course, Sir." She casually made the scroll vanished, scooped off the floor. "He should be back from lunch in..." She glanced up at a clock. "Eight minutes. Should I presume yours begins now?"

"Ugh, Capper has delayed mine. Yes, begin it now. Come along." He waved forward and was flanked by his guard as he went off to get a quick bite to eat.


"This is the last time," roared the fearsome beast, his hand-equipped tail lifting an angrily glowing staff high. "Never again will you steal what does not belong to you."

Caballeron waved wildly to the left. "Go go go!" He and his ponies fled away from Ahuizotl in a blind panic.

Things darkened, clouds moving over the the treetops. "How appropriate," crooned Ahuizotl with a wicked smirk. "Now, be erased!" He grabbed the staff in both hands, tail still attached as a great and terrible beam of purple and black magic shot out in a great column that punched through the underbrush as if it wasn't there, leaving smoldering leaves behind as it bit rapidly towards the fleeing ponies he was aiming for.

Cabballeron dove off the path, his goons just behind him, one getting the fuzzy end of his tail eradicated with a yelp as they all tumbled down the steep hill, rolling over themselves wildly. Ahuizotl rushed towards them, but came up short as the trees around him seemed to drawback on themselves. Rain. Rain had begun, but there was no water. "What manner of trickery..." He looked up in time for a wisp of thread to land on him.

All became pain. His howls echoed through the jungle as the thread burrowed and converted, digging right through his brain. On the positive, his suffering was short lived, body collapsing lifelessly where he had stood full of rage just moments before.

"Didja hear that, Boss?"

"Yeah, what was that?" asked his second in command. "That weren't no 'I'm gonna get you' shout."

"No... No it was not." Cabbelleron fought his way up to his haunches, then stood up. They were at the bottom of the incline. Up above, they could see it was raining all over the temple they had just been in. "Huh... That's... I don't trust that."

"Don't trust what, Boss?" asked the other goon, looking up where he was looking. "What's wrong wit' the trees up there?"

"This I do not know, nor do I want to find out." He jumped forward onto a thin path. "I vote we get out of here, and since only my vote counts, get moving!"

All three fled away from the temple as the cloud cover chased them. The thread began to fall just behind them and they could see everything it touched begin to wither immediately. "It's that thread stuff," hollered his second in command. "I read 'bout it in the paper!"

"You read?! Well then, mister smartity pants, what do we do?!" Cabbelleron leaped over a log, galloping as swiftly as his legs could carry him, heaving for breath at the destruction that was catching up with them all too quickly.

"There!" His second thrust a hoof at a cave and veered, almost tumbling over himself to head towards it. "Get in there!"

"You heard him." Caballeron shoved his larger henchpony, which turned rapidly into a tumble with both of them rolling into the dark of the cave in an ungainly pile.

The second arrived an instant later, huffing wildly for breath. "We... should... be safe... Get in farther... No... chances."

"Yes, yes, no chances." Caballeron scrambled to his hooves and hurried deeper into the darkness. "You." He pointed at his larger henchpony that was still getting up. "Make sure there are no beasts hiding in here with us."

"Yeah, sure thing boss." He saluted before drawing out a touch in his mouth. He ran it across the wall and it lit like a match, shedding light that bounced and shook as he trotted into the cave.

"You." He pointed at his second then. "You... Thank you."

His second rubbed one hoof along a leg. "Aw... ain't no thing, Boss... Glad I remembered that. I don't want to be eaten by no threads none."

"Nor I," he quickly agreed, turning towards the entrance where the thread was coming down in sheets of death for anything living it touched. "Do you think that was... the guardian being in the wrong place? I will not miss him, but that was... an unfortunate end."

"Yeah... Hey, that staff thingie. It was made of crystal, right? It'll still be there!"

Caballeron's expression brightened like the rising of the sun. "So there is a positive side to this miserable day. We will wait for this to pass, then go claim what is ours!"

"Bats!" shouted the larger henchpony, galloping with a swarm of bats chasing him.

"Nuh uh, ain't moving." The second fell to his belly and covered his head with his hooves. "Ain't movin'!"

Caballeron jumped for the other pony, tackling him to the ground to allow the bats to swarm largely past them.

It would prove to be a fatal mistake as the bats emerged into the threadfall and the thread found a new source of food. Their pitiful little squeaks the last anyone would hear of those bats that fled outside. The few that had been distracted by the ponies there would be the only ones left to return to their roosts.