//------------------------------// // To Southern Equestria, Part 3 // Story: A new chapter // by Ponelover //------------------------------// It’s mooorning agaaaaaiiiin!! I woke up once more, the bed creaking yet again! And yet I don’t care, cause I'm just that type of Hippogriff! Yeeeeaaaaaaah Silverstream. But seriously, I need to buy a new bed. Don’t know how to dispose of this one though, hmm, maybe my friends might know a thing or two about how to dispose of them. I flew downstairs, me being fortunate enough to have a house with 2 floors, weird design though, lots of empty spaces that I will probably just fill in with more of my stuff. What’s up with ponies and their rather airy houses anyway? Opening the fridge, and cringing the moment I saw barely anything inside it. I realized that there’s this rather newfangled bagel shop in the block. Hmmmm bagels, maybe with vegetarian cheese and some veggies with that…... I trotted out of the house, walked to the nearest bagel shop and bought it right away. And oh my Celestia it is D-I-V-I-N-E! The creamy cheese, the fresh vegetables, everything tasted great! It… reminds me of Gallus. I remember those days when Gallus and I was busy chatting it up during our School of Friendship years, he mentioned about how he makes some crazy good bagels, and after a couple of kitchen disasters later, some of them requiring the intervention of a certain Pinkie Pie, heheh, we finally made a bagel with a creamy spinach topping and some mushrooms. I wish I could get to meet them again. My old friends….. I love my life, don’t get me wrong, but… I don’t feel like my colleagues in that space assembly yard are really into Friendship. They care more about connections and ‘career building’ rather than making lifelong friendships. I sighed, reminiscing the old days is certainly fun. And yet, I must go. I finished my bagel, returned to my house, grabbed the car keys and left. There are some life support facilities that I need to be attending to. And Poindexter ain’t gonna finish all of that by herself. “Heeeeyyy there, Poindexter!” I exclaimed, bursting through the door like some crazy mad mare. “How’s your day going? I hope it’s been going well. I know work has been rather craaazy lately.” There was a silent mare, her horn charged with a faded white glow, her hooves busy writing notes as she stared at a screen, and her eyeglasses thickly rimmed with jet black colouring. “Me? Oh, oh yeah. I’m fine Silverstream, the reports on the latest tests are on your desk by the way.” “Aww, thanks Pointy.” I replied, unfurling my wings before I flew into my table (flying’s more convenient for me, with how large this whole office is). Just as Poindexter said, there is a pile of paperwork standing right in front of me. Boring titles such as ‘Y Axis’ Proposal For Oxygen Creation, An Analysis’, ‘Testing Logs From Proposal 5’s Water Filtration System’, and ‘Proposal For Refrigeration In Space’. I looked at them and My Eyes Glazed Over everything. I would read them all, of course. (Though Celestia knows how I would stay awake through it all.) I mean, I am the lead scientist that needs to worry about all this. The hours went by though, and I was plowing steadily through the mountain of reports, making notes, asking Poindexter to send some of the paperwork back to the scientists, and keeping some of it for myself, when I stumbled upon something, something rather weird. ‘Incident Report, Last Night’s Incident Concerning Two Guards That Fell Asleep.’ Huh? “Hey uhh, Poindexter? Are you seeing this?” “Huh? What is it?” She asked, walking towards my desk. “A security problem?” “Seems that way.” I said, reading the papers for myself. “Hey uhh, you think there might be something up? There are reports of unusual activity at the… rocket storage site. Huh.” I hand it over to Poindexter, hoping she could get something out of it. “I will be honest Silverstream. I don’t know either. This seems like a rather odd bunch of events to be happening at night. But then again, this is southern Equestria, there’s a lot of creatures here that could get past the defenses. Maybe it’s just some weird animal or something. I have some friends here that speak of a bird that could put ponies to sleep if they felt threatened.” I pondered on Poindexter’s statement, and she might be right, there’s a ton of weird creatures out here in the jungles of Southern Equestria. Then again. “Hey uhh, Poindexter. Could you run a small investigation for me?” I asked. “I know that this is weird, but I think there might be somepony breaking and entering the facility here.” The white coated mare only stared at me with confusion, almost as if what I just said is something utterly incomprehensible for her. “What? How did you-” “I know I know, but… pleeeaase? Can you? I’ll promise I will finish your work in the meantime, notes and everything too!” She still seems unconvinced by my offer. Scratching her chin at the thought of my offer. I do keep trying my best though, making offers for dinners, even trips together, and fortunately enough, she relented. “Okay, okay fine. I’ll investigate it, just for you, okay?” I beamed as she replied. My grin and my giddy face were more than enough of a response for her to start floating the paperwork from her desk to mine. “I’ll be back to collect those dinner ‘dates’ and plan for our trip to Griffonstone, alright?” And at that point my grin drooped down once more. Ah buck, what did I promise to her again? I only stared at the still mountainous sheets of paper in front of me, now included was Poindexter’s work concerning magic in space. Oh no… What have I done? I have a feeling that this will be a long day for me. It’s already lasted a week and it isn’t even lunchtime yet. Uuugh, why am I doing this? I certainly didn’t graduate from Manehattan Technical just to do some investigative work, and I certainly didn’t get accepted to work at one of Equestria’s most prized projects just to see myself be subordinated to some hyperactive hippogriff. I love Silverstream, I really do, but I’d love her better if she had volume control and a ‘pause’ button. A part of me seriously wonders how in Equestria she got the job. I still remember the day I first got appointed to my office. That Flying Pink Monster flies over, like some bat towards fruit, introduces me to the rest of my work group, and starts chatting it up like I’ve just been rescued from a desert island and needed some socializing. It’s honestly a bad impression, and I have no idea why the rest of Silverstream’s group are all so… happy around her. I really, really don’t like her. There’s something about her bubbly personality that just pisses me off, she seems unprofessional, not worthy of her job, and yet now she has the gall to order me to ‘investigate’ something that is clearly beyond her jurisdiction? Just what kind of Hippogriff is she?!? Hah. Hah. Alright Poindexter, you need to calm down. We just need to make sure this investigation is professional, no need for unnecessary flare ups like that. You have your issues with Silverstream, but it shouldn’t impede your work right now. No distractions, all investigation! Silverstream doing my work out also helps… I walked right into one of the guards. These should be the two that suddenly fell asleep that night. Conveniently enough, they were both about to finish their shifts. Graveyard shifts by my guess. “Umm, excuse me, but are you Silver Shield and Forest Grace?” “Uhh, yeah, what’s up?” One of them, an Earth Pony with a Green Coat answered. “Forest Grace at your service ma’am, this here is Silver Shield.” “Ah, thank you. I’m Poindexter, are you two the ones that fell asleep last night?” “Oh, yeah. That’s definitely a weird thing to happen.” The Grey Pony besides Forest Grace, presumably Silver Shield responded. “We were just playing some card games, and then suddenly things went really, really dark for some reason. No idea why at all, a rather good night’s sleep though, that’s for sure.” “Did you feel anything weird at all right before you fell asleep? Anything?” “Well, there was this rather weird prickly feeling in my neck when it all happened. I started feeling drowsy for some reason.. When I woke up, I checked my neck, and there were no wounds, no nothing, not even a scar. We checked around for needles, and yet nothing. We kinda thought that there was an infiltrator or something, but it seems that there wasn’t any. Still reported it to my superiors though” That’s probably because the infiltrator pulled out the darts while you’re asleep. “Anyway, is that it? Also, you work here right?” “Umm, yeah? I’m just taking a short break right now. I just wondered what happened, that’s all. Anyway, good day to you Sir and Ma’am.” I finished, walking past them, now left with my own thoughts on the situation. Okay, first off, so someone is interested enough to bother infiltrating a freaking rocket research and testing facility, interested enough to fire dart rounds filled with anesthesia into the two guards that were busy not doing their jobs. So they were probably guarding the way towards… somewhere I guess, not sure where. No alarms were sounded, so that’s pretty unique. Either this infiltrator knows their way with magic spells or is able to fly, and a spell with that type of skill will lead to some magical residue somewhere, most likely within the path trod by the infiltrator. it’s faint, but I think a Unicorn with my skills should be able to detect some faint magical residue. Unfortunately, 15 minutes in and with a rather sore horn, I decided that this infiltrator is not an active magic user, so definitely neither a Kirin nor a Unicorn. He/she must have flown into the facility, I'm pretty sure of it. So where was the infiltrator headed? I walked past various buildings, trying my best to answer that very question. Something tells me that this question better be answered and answered soon. Much to my misfortune, there are multiple buildings that are present within the facility, so searching for that answer is going to be rather troublesome. Well, I do have all the time needed to find it out, so maybe I could try all of the buildings for some magical residue. It’s probably the least I could do at this point. Alright Poindexter, you may not like Silverstream, but you might as well impress her with this weird side-job you’re doing. Let’s go! “I have to say, this is quite an honour Princess Twilight.” The purple pony who was busy reading a newspaper only responded with her typical ‘uh uh’, at this point, I'm rather used to the initial nonchalant attitude of the Princess, it makes her more charming when she realized she had not paid attention. And she’s about to realize that in 3… 2… 1. “Oh, crap!” She said, folding her newspaper and then immediately turning her eyes on me. “Sorry! Sorry! I was rather busy reading the news lately and whatever. Anyway, do you know why I summoned you here?” “Heheh, I thought you’d never ask.” I responded, grabbing something from my shirtpocket and handing it to her. “I’ve been tracking the activities of this mysterious group for a while now, and although I still don’t know much about them. I do know that now they are doing some rather extensive operations in Equestria. For what purpose I don’t know, but from what I've seen in Zebrica, it’s not good.” Twilight looked at the sets of pictures now laying in front of the crystal table, pictures of griffons, ponies, zebras even. Some hauling weapons, some of them chatting with each other, and some of them looking like several characters from the last years of the Griffonian Empire’s existence. All this seems wrong, and I can visibly see it in the Friendship Princesses eyes. “Alright. So apparently this society has struck a blow in Manehattan. And I want you to investigate matters further, but firstly I would like you to protect the safety and security of these 4 ponies.” She floated another set of pictures, and I looked at them, a set of 3 ponies and 1 seapony. All of them seemingly just getting to know each other, but nonetheless possessing some sort of chemistry that I can already sense from the picture alone. “Are these the group that you told me were attacked in Manehattan?” “Mmhm.” “And where are they now?” “Oh, Yucca Island, Southern Equestria.” I raised my eyebrow right after Twilight said that. Yucca Island? The rocket launch site? Pretty weird place to find an Element Bearer, but hey, who am I to judge. “Alright. I’ll try to write regular reports for you Princess, though I make no promises.” “That’s all I need to hear. Oh, and Daring?” “Yeah?” “Try to wear some sort of disguise, I know you’re a S.M.I.L.E agent now, but you’re still rather famous in the novel business, try to think of another alibi than A.K Yearling, okay?” “Sure, I’ll think of something.” That was roughly 5 hours ago. I had some more discussions with the Princess after that, it turns out that their names were Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, Sonata Dusk, and Tempest Shadow. She also told me that they were all quite occupied with a secret mission, and ‘you should try your best to protect them at all costs’, and unfortunately that’s it. Not a lot to go on by the looks of it. Still, I have my mission, and I intend to follow it to the letter. The plane landed on the nearby airport, a small propeller plane with an Earth Pony pilot more eager to taste flight for the first time rather than delivering his passengers to their destination. A quick trot out of the small Portland City Airport, and I'm in. Alright, Daring. Maybe I should start at the facility itself, get myself acquainted with this ‘space-program’ Princess Celestia constantly gushes about whenever I mention it.