//------------------------------//
// Prologue: Solid Facts and Liquid Ambitions 
// Story: The River Rising (Iota Force Issue #7) 
// by The Iguana Man 
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The filly stood perfectly still as she perched on the tree branch, watching what little she could of the ground and train tracks beneath her through the early morning mist.

This was, of course, by design – she had picked this spot to wait precisely because it would be where the fog was thickest, thus shielding her largely from view by anyone looking out of an oncoming train. It didn't leave her with much to look at, but this wasn't an issue, as the filly was absolutely confident and in tune with her surroundings.

Besides, she didn't need much to look at, as was proven when her eyes happened to fall on a small dent in the fence post next to the track, sending a flood of information into her brain:

The dent was a solid curve that stretched up along the post in a straight line until it abruptly ended at a right angle, meaning the post had been hit with the end of a cylinder, but the positioning of the dent was too low and at too steep an angle to have been made by somepony hitting the post, meaning the cylinder must have been free-falling and then ricocheted. Her eyes flicked around the post, quickly locating a long divot in the earth below, also shaped roughly like a cylinder, though this one didn't show either end, as the divot ran over a small dip in the ground, bringing the cylindrical gap to an abrupt end. However, by how much force the cylinder would have needed behind it to dent the wood and how that would have made it bounce, she could tell the exact length of the cylinder. Her eyes instinctively traced over the trajectory she now knew it to have taken and saw, indeed, a much shallower dent in the harder wood of the railway sleeper. However, the angle of that dent meant the cylinder must have also hit the rail, yet said rail was neither dented nor recently repaired or replaced. This, combined with how much the divot in the dirt had degraded due to the amount of moisture in it gave her the last piece of information to say that, approximately forty-three hours ago, a piece of copper piping exactly sixty centimetres long had fallen off the back of a train which, judging by how much the pipe's spinning had affected its movement, was going at seventy-nine miles per hour.

All this knowledge burst its way into her brain in a torrent that lasted less than a quarter of a second, and it only took that long because her eyes had to move to get the full picture. Not that she had actively tried to get said picture, nor did she especially want to – her brain just automatically saw the pattern in her surroundings and calculated every detail and variable in it without any conscious input from her.

She was used to it, of course, and barely noticed the increase in the headache she had been experiencing, without a break, for years or the tingling in her flank, where her namesake Cutie Mark of falling dominoes lay.

The sound of the train approaching brought Domino's head up, her eyes not bothering to try and peer through the fog but her ears pricking up sharply, instantly ascertaining the speed the train was travelling at. Of course, there was no guarantee it would stay at that speed due to the unfortunate fact that it had a driver and, therefore, was somewhat unpredictable, a fact that set Domino's teeth on edge.

She didn't blame ponies – or, indeed, other living creatures – for how much they disrupted the patterns in the world around them, but that didn't stop her from hating them for it. It wasn't their fault that they were, by nature, so fundamentally opposed to the nature of the world. It was just an unavoidable by-product of having a living will. A world without those with minds was entirely predictable – the rocks, trees and wind currents all dutifully followed the laws of nature and would never deviate from their preordained paths unless an outside force affected them, allowing Domino to totally understand everything that would happen without room for error.

Unfortunately, any being with any kind of consciousness was not only unpredictable themselves but made the world around them unpredictable by their very nature, since there was no way of knowing whether they would do something to affect the world and the forces in it. If there were living beings around, the world had infinite possibilities and no certainties, a fact that was like a corkscrew in Domino's mind, piercing it and twisting it around agonizingly.

Of course, none of this was consciously going through Domino's mind – the deluge of information that was constantly pouring into her head left little room for coherent thought and most of what she could manage was focused on her plan. However, the pain from a pony being involved with her surroundings was lessened by the fact that the pony was driving a train and, while ponies could do what they liked within the laws of nature, they couldn't break them. As such, the train could only speed up or slow down a certain amount as it approached, lessening the web of possibilities considerably.

Domino retreated into the tree's branches, pulling her rough cloak of sewn-together leaves closer around her to make sure that, no matter where the pony in the engine was standing, they would see nothing but an ordinary, if slightly more bountiful than usual for the time of year, tree.

Soon enough, the train reached the tree and Domino immediately leapt into action: she sat there, unmoving, and did absolutely nothing. At least, physically.

Instead, she opened her mind and her senses as much as she could, consciously increasing the observations, extrapolations and calculations that were normally involuntary, taking in every detail in the train below her – the exact distances, angles and movement of everything she could see and, from that, working out the exact positions of everything she couldn't.

After a few seconds, the train passed by and Domino nodded, knowing exactly what she needed to do.

Flapping her wings, she launched into the air, clutching the stone she'd picked up earlier and turning towards the area she'd arranged – the small tree she'd mostly dug up the roots of, the large plank she'd wedged under a boulder and the small rock she'd placed on the hillside.

Flying up a little, she sped into a loop, spinning around a couple of times before hurling the stone toward the tree's roots. She didn't see what happened to it afterwards, but she didn't need to – she'd already predicted exactly what would happen: the stone would knock away the exact part of the dirt that was key to stopping the tree's roots from losing their grip, making it fall onto the plank, which would lever the boulder up and send it tumbling down the hill.

The reason that she wasn't able to see that was that she was busy using the momentum from her loops to ram into the top of the tree she had just been perched in, bending it backwards a little. Once she impacted, she swung herself around, hanging off the tree's top and flapping her wings forward, doing everything in her power to keep it bent back as far as she could.

The sound of rumbling stone told her that her predictions had been one hundred percent correct – not that she'd doubted it, as there were no animals in the vicinity to introduce uncertainty. As she hung from the upper branch of the tree, she heard the boulder roll over the small stone embedded in the ground and launch off the hillside.

As she looked up, she saw the boulder falling towards her, but she didn't so much as flinch as it landed on the tree top she was holding down, impacting millimetres from her hoof.

Had the boulder been half a centimetre off centre from the tree, it would have simply rolled or bounced off it to no effect. However, Domino had arranged things so that instead, it brought the tree top down hard for a second, bending it back like a catapult until, after a moment, the angle of the wood got steep enough that the boulder rolled off, removing the weight and sending the tree rocketing back into a straight position.

This, of course, also had the effect of launching Domino forward along the tracks at fantastic speeds. It wasn't strictly necessary to have done so, as she was a perfectly competent flyer on her own, but this would save her a full ten seconds over following the train entirely on her own power – a clear gain well worth the half-hour's work setting it up.

She twisted herself around from the tumble she'd been thrown into, quickly levelling off into a glide as she followed the tracks. She soon saw, through the thinning fog, the back end of the train, now motionless. This, she hadn't been entirely certain of, much to her irritation, but it was by far the most likely outcome of her disrupting the station's signal box.

Of course, the actual sabotage was a simple affair with a definite outcome – the more complex or precise a machine or setup, the less work was needed to incapacitate or destroy it. However, while she was almost certain it would take the engineers at the station at least twenty minutes to fix, making sure that the train would be delayed here and giving her enough time to do everything she needed, there was always the outside possibility that either the engineers would find some bizarre and illogically effective fix or patch or that the train driver would simply ignore the signal failure and drive on through.

Mind you, doing so would not only be illegal and cost the driver his job, but also incredibly dangerous, risking massive destruction and even death for very little gain, so it wasn't as if the driver ever would do so. But he could and that was the maddening thing about it.

Still, the train had stopped, allowing Domino to glide over to the third car from the back and drop down into a dive. Her eyes flicked to the side, making sure no ponies on the platform were either in a position to see between the carriages or could get to one in time to stop her. Seeing none, she dropped into the space between the cars, positioning her dive so that the pillar of boxes in the fourth car from the back would block the guard inside from seeing her.

It was, of course, possible he'd abandoned his post for no reason and walked over to the door enough to see her, so she was prepared to pull out of the dive and abandon the whole operation if so, but as she fell into a position to see through the window, it was clear he was in almost exactly the same place he had been.

Still, she wasn't going to risk that changing, so she dived down below the window and landed silently on the platform next to the door, keeping her head below the window's sightline.

She looked up at the door to the third-from-last car, thankful that she'd seen that the train had guards only every two carriages and that this was not one of them. A quick, silent poke to the door confirmed that it was locked, but that was no problem.

She pulled a thin pick from her saddlebag and rammed it through the keyhole. She wasn't about to pick the lock, as she didn't need to. She simply registered the tactile feedback as the pick ran along the lock's tumblers, instantly gauging the positions and resistances of each. That done, she withdrew the pick and pulled out one of the many generic keys in her bag. She knew exactly which key she needed and exactly where it had fallen in her bags, so she soon inserted it in the lock and gave it a gentle whack with her hoof, knocking all the tumblers into position and allowing her to turn the key and open the lock.

That done, she turned away from the door – she couldn't open it at the moment without giving herself away to the guard and couldn’t escape with what she needed even if she could, so she simply left it at unlocking the door. However, that still left the door at the other end of the carriage and she couldn't fly around the sides of the carriage – anypony on the platforms would be able to see her if she did. Furthermore, she couldn't fly up at a steep enough angle to keep herself hidden from the guard, so that left only one option.

She jumped down between the cars and fell below the train's wheels. After taking a moment to make sure there were no ponies standing on the train tracks for no reason, she started crawling forward beneath the car. It was nerve-wracking, the infinitesimal possibility that the train would start moving and kill her weighing on her mind the entire journey. However, this did not occur and she soon jumped up again on the other side of the carriage.

One more lock jostling later, everything was in position for her to finally perform the theft she'd been preparing for.

Everything, that is, except for the train and her, but the latter was easily fixed and the former almost certainly would be without her.

She was in luck, too. Or, at least, she would have been if she believed in luck – when other living beings weren't involved, she knew for a fact that the world operated on strict rules with no room for the involvement of a concept like luck. And when others were involved, that meant she had no luck at all.

However, there was an aspect to the situation that was useful – the many stacked boxes at the end of the next car completely blocked any view of that car's entire right corner. It didn't stop anyone inside from seeing the entirety of that car's interior and all but a tiny sliver of the adjoining car's, but it did give her enough room to flap her wings and climb into the air without being spotted, whereupon she quickly rose over the car and out of sight.

Once at a good height, she turned herself lazily in the air and flew out over the tracks until she reached the large bend in the tracks where her operation would begin in earnest.

However, until then, she found a small cloud to sit on and wait. While she sat, she spent the time going over the movements and variables in her head – how she'd need to move depending on the speed the train was moving, how much it might speed up or slow down in the time she was acting and what she could do if, for whatever reason, either guard was away from their post. She dearly hoped the latter wouldn't happen and didn't see why it would, but once again, the fact that it could was like a lemon-soaked cut in her senses, painfully poking her with its possibility.

Still, she shook her head as she heard the train approaching. Swallowing, she flapped off the cloud and swooped down along the train's path, too high to be seen as anything more than a bird, a fact she was thankful to her childhood body for.

Of course, she was nowhere near as fast as the train, so it soon caught up with her. However, that had been largely what she'd been counting on, along with her ability to go fast enough that she could land on the train without injury.

As such, she dived down towards the door she'd first unlocked just as it was going into the bend in the tracks, making sure to fall into the same area as she had before to remain unspotted.

However, once she landed, she paused for three-tenths of a second, both to stabilize herself and to wait for the cars to turn so that that same blocked area of sight would cover the door in front of her.

As soon as it did, she dashed forward, ramming the door open with her muzzle before catching it with one of her forehooves as it stepped to thrust her forward and then pushing it shut as her rear hoof kicked off the ground just in front of it. All told, the door was open for less than a second and she didn't even slow down as she went through it.

Of course, this was largely because she couldn't afford to – the car she was in and the next one back were turning onto the bend and would only remain on it for another six-and-a-half seconds. This was close to the upper limit of what she could work with, meaning that the driver was going as fast as they could, presumably to make up for lost time, but it was enough.

The filly sprinted down the carriage's central passageway, conscious of exactly how fast she was going – seventy miles an hour for the train in one direction and ten for her in the other, meaning she was moving backwards at sixty miles an hour. She didn't have any particular feelings about these statistics, they simply were.

This was all in the back of her mind, of course, as she was largely focused on the huge crate that was coming up on her right, allowing her to flare her wing out enough to grab the string around it and yank it off its perch and onto her back. The crate, easily bigger than she was, looked like it would immobilize her with its weight, if not out-and-out crush her. And yet it was even lighter than the wood it was built of, let alone what was inside it.

Of course, this didn't affect Domino's movements or her confidence – all it did was confirm exactly how many items were inside it, a number she was already ninety-nine-point-five percent sure of. The only thing the extra weight did was cause her to speed up so she could use the additional wind resistance and a slightly protruding corner she ran past to straighten the box on her back.

Soon enough, she was up to the second door of the carriage. Unfortunately, while the weight of the box on her back wasn't a consideration, its size was, as it meant she had to open the door far wider than previously to fit it through. As such, she waited for another half a second – she was cutting it fine, but it meant the rocking of the two cars would make for a maximized blind spot from the next car.

Once that was done, she burst through the door, throwing it open and almost wide. However, just before it could move to the point where it would be completely open, she leapt up, twisted around and rammed a rear hoof into it. This had the effect of both slamming it shut and allowing her to kick off the door and towards the wall, gaining height as she did. She twisted again in midair, having to put all her strength into the movement to make up for the extra wind resistance of the box on her back.

However, she managed to get her hooves out in front of her just in time to spring off the wall, planting her hooves at the ideal possible angle to gain maximum height and distance, as well as enough of a curve that she could turn again before she hit the wall. After one more wall-kick, she was on top of the carriage, getting her hooves underneath her before landing and sprinting along its surface.

She ran along the cars, leaping over the gaps between them as they came and monitoring her speed carefully. Because of this, she reached the end of the last car just as it was coming to the top of a small incline, turning downwards so the rear window was facing up at a shallow angle.

She threw the box into the air before dashing to the side and leaping up, grabbing the string around it with her hooves before extending her wings into a glide, the box beneath her. She immediately angled herself to the left so she'd be blocked from the view out of the rear window for the single second it took for the train to move down the slope enough and for her to move close enough to the ground that she was out of sight.

That done, she angled her wings up to slow herself down, gradually coming to a halt before dropping the crate gently on the ground and landing on top of it, panting heavily.

She didn't feel proud at having accomplished so much in under thirty seconds and, while she did feel somewhat exhilarated, it was purely a physical sensation from the activity. She didn't even feel especially fulfilled, as the presence of other ponies in the equation meant there was an unpredictable factor in it that she could not entirely account for, meaning she couldn't have been blamed for the operation's failure and, by the same token, couldn't entirely take credit for its success.

However, she did smile, as now she had the tools she needed for her main goal. She peered through a small hole in the wood of the crate to see her prize – weather rockets. Each one was packed with enough Pegasus magic to make them lighter than air, such that, were there just a few more, the crate would need to be strapped down to avoid floating away. And, despite how out of vogue they were among weatherponies due to how tricky they were to use, they were extremely powerful even if one didn't have Domino's awareness. To her, they were, quite literally, lightning in a bottle, along with windstorms, blizzards, flash fogs and, most pertinently for her plan, rain.

She looked up at the town nearby, wincing as she did. She'd picked it simply because it was closest to the perfect spot to take the train, so she didn't particularly care for its name or details. However, her ever-'helpful' memory soon supplied the name 'Ponyville', even through the discomfort of looking at an entire community of living minds. Every angle of every structure, building and path should have made for clean and distinct webs of interaction, cause and effect. Instead, so many living ponies in close proximity made it impossible to predict even the slightest breeze, their unrestrained choices turning nice, simple 'will's, 'would's and 'has's into a jumbled, muddy mess of 'might's, 'could's and 'may have's.

Still, her eyes were drawn to the river running through it and winding into the untamed forest beyond.

A small smile poked its way onto her face as, for the first time in minutes, a coherent thought flicked through her mind.

Town full of ponies? Soon fix that.