//------------------------------// // Prologue - 00 - The Tip of the Iceberg // Story: Harmony's Warriors: Captain Equestria // by Avenging-Hobbits //------------------------------// Prologue: "The Tip of the Iceberg" Agent Spike’s claw tapped in a slow, methodical sequence against the steel table bolted to the floor. His scaly eye ridges scrunched in concentration as he studied the files that Director Armor practically threw in his arms. Normally the veteran would be cool when handing Spike his assignments, like with the “Iron Mare”, but this one was an odd case, and he knew it just from his boss’s strange excitement from the relatively minimal amount of data. Sure he’s heard of the stories revolving around this particular pony, but he honestly saw no reason to get school filly giddy over a bunch of bones. If they even found bones. Spike grabbed his mug of hot chocolate and took a small sip, still reading the files, but when he swallowed his drink, he realized that his taste buds might never forgive him for allowing cold hot chocolate in his mouth. Spike frowned and quickly warmed up his mug with a short burst of fire. He took another sip and smiled. He had been forgiven, and could now resume his reading with more ease. Midway through the page on the subject’s psychological evaluation, there was a rather timid knock on the door to his office. Spike pushed a small red button on his desk like it was second nature, and the door slid open with barely a sound. But even with the door open, Spike was still preoccupied reading into the mind of the missing soldier they are searching for. “Um, excuse me, Agent Spike?” said a stallion, his voice shaky. The lanky purple dragon looked up from the files to face a rather thin pegasus standing in his doorway. The pegasus is bundled up, too, and trembling slightly from the nippy air of the hallway he’s in. “Yes, Agent Cloudcover, what is it?” asked Spike half heartedly, hoping to Celestia it wasn’t another one of those tattle-tale moments. “Um, well, Agent Spike, are you a hundred percent sure that we’ll find anything out here? Anything at all? I mean, look at it out there,” he motioned towards a large window, only to realize that the window was covered with thick curtains. He smiled sheepishly as Spike tried to contain his unimpressed look when he pulled open the curtains. After pulling aside the curtain, though, Spike had to wait for a gloomy cloud to drift by in order for them to see the seemingly endless expanse of white snow and ice almost as far as the eye could see. It was almost completely featureless, save for the occasional crevasse or crack that resembled infected scabs. The end of the wasteland was marked by dark mountains whose peaks were shrouded by a thick blanket of the grayish clouds looming over the forsaken land. “I’ve never seen such a hopelessly desolate wasteland in my entire life.” Cloudcover said, a worried look on his face. The view did make Spike sympathize with Cloudcover. The frozen north had always been a place that not too many ventured to due to its harsh climate and the many stories revolving around the supposed supernatural phenomena in the area. But ghost stories aside, any sane person would know that you had a better chance of finding half a needle in a ton of hay than anyone or anything in the cursed land that Shining Armor had sent them to. Especially if its been exposed in the harsh terrain for decades. Spike closed the curtain and put a hand on the pegasus’ shoulder, but mostly to calm a slight uneasiness in his own stomach. “Don’t worry Agent Cloudcover. It’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure that Director Armor has good reason for us to be out here right now. He obviously wouldn’t send us on a wild goose chase without any evidence now would he?” The pegasus ruffled his feathers in a pitiful attempt to warm himself up. “Well…I guess not. But what if the satellite photos were wrong? I mean, it could be anything that it saw. Could have just been a random outcropping of ice that made a funny shaped shadow, I mean it’s happened before.” Spike paused. He did have some doubts about the photo himself, it had been grainy and the satellite that had taken the photo was notorious for having bad cameras. But, apparently, the photo had been enough to convince Director Armor to send a small expedition to the Crystal Mountains on their last available zeppelin. A zeppelin that was in desperate need of repairs. During the trip up, Spike kept telling himself that if the evidence was good enough for Director Armor, then it was good enough for him. But, alas, the farther he got into the frozen north, the more his doubt sunk in. “You do have a point, but I still feel that this isn’t pointless,” Spike said, trying to keep his skepticism in check. He turned to look out the window again, slowly scanning the ground below, searching for anything that might look out of place. “If anything, we at least get some nice sight seeing out of it, am I right?” “Well…I guess…” Cloudcover said, turning away and trotting down the hall. Spike watched the scenery for a couple more seconds before bundling up with all the coats, socks, and gloves he could put on his body. And once his three layers of each were put on, he finished it off with ear muffs, a hat, and a scarf. Spike could barely move by the time he finished, but to him, it was totally worth it. He grabbed his files and trailed Cloudcover; along the way he nodding politely to the mechanics who were working tirelessly on the constantly malfunctioning heating systems and other passing agents who were trying to keep warm. Spike heard one of the agents muttering about how he was lucky for having his special office, but he really didn’t care about the complaining. Besides, he knew all of his agents’ faces and voices so he knew who to give disciplinary actions to. After reaching the bridge with Cloudcover, they were able to remove their thick bundle of clothing without worry since it was one of the few places in the zeppelin where the heating system was actually working properly. Cloudcover set his jacket over his chair and went straight to work while Spike set his clothing down on a nearby table and proceeded to observe the deck. Everyone was working as they should, interpreting the collected data, guiding the zeppelin through the harsh weather, and keeping Director Armor personally updated on their status. However, since everyone was doing their job, and their job was basically staring at screens and ice, Spike felt an odd mix of content and boredom. So he did the next reasonable thing. Look outside to see what’s there. Spike’s eyes hurt from the brightness of the light reflecting off of the ice, but he retained his bearing and kept watch with his claws placed coolly behind his back. As he scanned the ice, he hoped that there’d be a seal or a polar bear or something to entertain his eyes instead of just an endless sea of featureless white. His prayers were answered, sort of, when a small black seal popped out a hole the ice and lay across the ice, apparently trying to get a tan. At the sight of the seal, Spike’s mind began to wander, with most of his thoughts concerning what he would do if this expedition were successful. They never really done anything like this before. Sure NEIGHS had protocol regarding search and rescue operations, which is what Shining Armor had classified the mission as, strangely enough, but Spike had no idea what to do if they found her. Taking her corpse home and giving her a proper funeral would seem the most logical. But Spike knew that the world was anything but logical, contrary to Twilight’s opinion, and Shining Armor was really being illogical about the whole mission. The chances of finding a body based on flimsy evidence is always a slim chance, and even if they did find her body, the laws of decay dictated that she would be too old and damaged by the elements to survive the trip home. And that was granting that there would even be body to find and not just some pile of cloth and bone picked clean by predators. Spike looked at the profile of their missing mare once again, and started reading about her exploits in a Equestria’s bloodiest war. Her record was really impressive, and she did deserve the best ceremony under the sun. But just the fact that she had been a soldier lost in combat over seventy years ago would turn away most, if not all, who even thought of searching for the fabled soldier. But Shining Armor was the black sheep. Whenever there was a shred of flimsy evidence, he would practically send an army to where it pointed. And time after time they came back empty-hooved and mad. And when Spike pointed out that fact, Shining Armor became very hostile, and spoke to him in a low, deadly tone as he explained how he had been searching for this particular mare ever since she became MIA. He refused to list her as KIA and, because of his position, he has managed to keep her labeled as missing and told Spike that he refused to let any opportunity of finding her slip away because of a few “faithless skeptics”. Spike shuddered at the thought of having to tell Shining Armor that the body of his dead friend was not found. Not that Shining Armor was a cruel boss, not by any means, but getting on his bad side certainly wasn’t conducive to one’s overall health. They could probably spend an eternity scanning this Celestia-forsaken icebox and find nothing but more seals and polar bears. At most they’d probably find some old beat up dog tag, take that home and put it in a glass case and that’d be all. But Spike knew that a dog tag or a piece of cloth wouldn’t be enough. Shining Armor wanted a body, but unlike how he nearly chewed off Spike’s head for pointing out the obviously low chances of finding nothing, he got a big grin and told Spike that if they did find the tags they would find the girl. No longer wanting to think about the strangely bipolar conversation in Director Armor’s office, Spike sighed and turned his eyes towards one of the dozens of monitors that were scanning for anything out of the ordinary. It was a sonar display, and showed mostly chucks of ice, rock and the occasional whale or sea serpent. He could have sworn that an abnormally large squid passed across the monitor when a voice shouted from behind him, snapping him out of his daydream. “Excuse me, Agent Spike I think you should come and see this!” Spike turned away from the monitor and walked over to where Cloudcover and a unicorn sat, staring at the screen in front of them. This particular screen was for a machine designed especially to seek out life signs, with each life form showing up as a colored blip on the screen. On the screen were several blips of various sizes and colors. The bigger and brighter the blip, the bigger the life form. Spike felt his weak confidence disappear and become replaced by the ever growing skepticism. “What is it?” he asked, observing the various blips move about. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary…” “It’s that one sir,” the unicorn said, pointing towards the smallest, faintest blip on the screen, which was a cool blue color. “That’s the only life form that isn’t moving. It’s like it’s a tree or something…” “The only thing is, there’s absolutely no trees this far north…so we know it’s something abnormal.” Cloudcover said with an excited grin. A faint smile tugged at the corner of Spike’s mouth. They had found something. It wasn’t much, but it was certainly better than nothing. Maybe, JUST maybe, it was exactly what they were looking for. He turned towards the unicorn sitting next to him. “Hal, can you calibrate your horn to send out that find-it spell for that life sign?” The unicorn thought for a moment, rubbing his chin in thought. “I guess I could. It’s really faint though. If anything the spell will probably be off by a couple hundred feet. But I suppose it’s possible.” “Do it, and make it snappy.” Spike turned to look out in the direction indicated by the scanner. He grabbed a nearby pair of tinted binoculars and gazed through them, scanning the ice for anything that seemed out of place. A moment later, Hal’s horn flared and small, pulsing beam of light shot out the window in the direction Spike was looking. Spike followed the beam of light with his binoculars. The beam of light darted around, low over the ice, sometimes pausing over a outcropping of ice or a hole, before moving onward. Each time it did so, Spike would feel a jump of excitement, but, each time, the excitement would fade as the beam moved away, continuing its search. After what seemed like an eternity, the tiny blip finally settled in a single position, hovering over a small outcrop in the ice. Spike felt his heart sink once more, the suspicion that it had all been simply a mechanical malfunction becoming all the more apparent. He sighed and set his binoculars down, then grasped the railing and looked down, dreading Shining Armor’s reaction to the apparent bad news. He lifted his head up and wiped his snout, deciding that he might as well go out there and have a look at the hunk of ice, knowing that Shining Armor would have his hide if he figured out he didn’t investigate the find-it spell’s results. He turned towards the pegasi piloting the zeppelin and pointed towards the glowing dot on the horizon. “Get us as close to that dot as you can. I think we found something.” The pilot nodded and turned the zeppelin slowly towards the dot. The dot slowly and steadily grew in size as the zeppelin neared it. “Okay, that’s good. Bring her down.” Spike said, holding up his claw. The pegasus nodded and the zeppelin began its descent, kicking up a cloud of sleet, snow and ice beneath it as it came in for a landing near the crag of ice. “What now Agent Spike?” Cloudcover asked, walking up next to Spike, who was gazing at the crag of ice. “We go out there and investigate it up close. Make sure it’s worth it.” Spike replied, poorly masking his disdain. Spike mustered up some agents, one of which was Cloudcover, and bundled up again, this time with a scarf and hoof warmers. Once they left the control room, Cloudcover trotted up next to Spike. “Do you think it is a false alarm?” Cloudcover asked, sensing Spike’s skepticism. Spike shrugged. “Whatever it is, at least we’ll be getting a nice breath of fresh air.” Then he scowled and tightened the scarf around his face. “Frozen cold air, but fresh air nonetheless.” ////////////////////////// Spike, Cloudcover and several other ponies strode across the snow towards the crag of ice. The first thing Spike noticed was that the crag had no signs of damage around it. Most crags of ice would usually show signs of their formation, usually cracks and rifts in the ice surrounding them. This one was strangely absent of those. A better description for it would be a giant rectangular ice cube that someone had decided to stick into the ice at random. “Well…” Cloudcover said, letting out a disappointed sigh. “That was underwhelming. Looks like a big ice cube.” He looked around the cube. “I was kinda hoping for something a little neater…” “Like what? The Abominable Snowpony or something?” one of the other ponies asked, sparking a few chuckles. Spike ignored them, instead carefully scanning the ice cube. A vaguely pony-shaped form inside the cube caught his attention. A smile spread across Spike’s face, and he used every ounce of willpower to keep himself from laughing for joy, and the possibility of getting a promotion for his finding. “Gentlecolts,” Spike said, now beaming, “I believe we’ve found something worthwhile!” Cloudcover raised an eyebrow. “Really? What?” “We’ve found…” Spike walked up the ice cube and after removing just enough of his scarf, he gently blew a small plume of fire on it, melting away some of the ice. Once the ice thawed slightly, everybody except Spike let out a gasp. “Is that…who I think it is?” one of the ponies whispered in a hushed tone. Spike smiled. “Yes…yes it is.” In front of them, was a shield inscribed with a ring-like structure with star capped spire pointing up, and surrounding the ring was two pairs of wings. It was a symbol that hasn’t been used in nearly seventy years. A symbol not seen since the Equestrian Civil War. Spike blew out another lick of flame to thaw out more ice that revealed the perfectly preserved orange pony’s battle scarred, lightly freckled face. “Nice to finally meet you, Cap.”