As usual, Pencil Pusher immediately forgot whatever he’d been dreaming about the instant that he opened his eyes. This particular quirk of his subconscious had ceased to bother him long ago, mostly because the few dreams he could remember tended to be profoundly unsatisfying, consisting of him spending what seemed like hours almost (but not quite) achieving whatever goal he had at any given time. He much preferred being awake; reality, unlike the world of his dreams, at least offered him the possibility of avoiding disappointment and malaise. Well, in theory, it did.
Pencil Pusher blinked his eyes several times as he tried to figure out where he was, why the answer to the previous question was not ‘at home in his own bed,’ and why he’d woken up before sunrise. Within seconds, though, the sound of raised voices broke through that mental fog, and the explanations came rushing back to him: he was in the Ponyville library because he’d been too exhausted to fly back to Cloudsdale, and it was night outside because he’d gone to sleep in mid-afternoon. None of that was very important at the moment, though, because the shouting on the other side of the door came from rather familiar voices. He rose from the bed and, after narrowly avoiding tripping over a sleeping baby dragon, stumbled his way through the partially-lit library, suppressing the urge to let assorted curses fly from his lips as his shins banged into various items of furniture as he followed the voices, which eventually led him to the glow of Twilight Sparkle’s kitchen.
When he swung the door open, the first thing Pencil Pusher noticed was Rainbow Dash. She was flying all around the room, close to the ceiling, wearing what he assumed was the fog suit that had been mentioned in the previous meeting, although the section covering her head had obviously been removed, exposing her shaggy, multicolored mane. The five other Element-Bearers were present as well, though the Mayor had apparently returned to her day job (or more likely her bed). Fluttershy was sitting at the kitchen table with her forelegs crossed over her chest and an oddly stern expression on her face, while the rest were apparently trying to talk Rainbow Dash back into her chair.
“C’mon, Dash,” Twilight said with a note of desperation in her voice. “You can’t just start sulking again.”
“I am not sulking,” Rainbow Dash replied testily. “If I was going to do that, I’d be off on a cloud somewhere so I could avoid talking to Fluttershy, but I haven’t even left the room yet.”
“You have left your chair, though,” Pinkie Pie pointed out.
“Sugarcube, is this really the time to be arguin’ over word choices?” Applejack asked.
Rainbow Dash groaned in frustration. “Look, all I’m saying is that it isn’t fair to all the ponies who worked their flanks off tonight for her to call everything they accomplished a ‘failure.’” She hovered over Fluttershy as if she was subconsciously trying to look more authoritative and intimidating by forcing her friend to crane her neck upwards.
Fluttershy’s response, meanwhile, was calm and measured: “Rainbow, I’m not saying that they failed. It was the plan that was a failure, not them.” Even though Fluttershy’s voice didn’t even come close to the volume of Rainbow Dash’s, her unusually blunt demeanor made her words feel just as forceful, if not more so.
“Okay, fine,” Rainbow Dash said huffily as she retreated back to the other side of the table, though she continued hovering near the ceiling over her chair, refusing to land. “But you can’t call the plan a total failure, either. We may not have gotten rid of the fog, but we stopped it, didn’t we? Ponyville’s going to be safe until we think up a better way to get rid of it.”
“My job isn’t just to make sure that Ponyville is safe,” Fluttershy responded. “It’s to make sure that Equestria is safe, and right now, there are a lot of rock farmers who are stuck in a fog that’s so thick and so cold that they can’t leave their homes safely. Just because there aren’t as many of them, that doesn’t mean that they’re less important.”
“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie suddenly chimed in. “My family is important!”
Rainbow Dash looked distinctly uncomfortable as she landed back in her chair. “I... I know... I mean, I never meant to say that....”
“Um, is this a bad time?” Pencil Pusher asked, awkwardly inserting himself into the conversation.
Twilight Sparkle sighed and looked at him. “No, not really. In fact, we were about to see if you were awake. We’re discussing what happened this evening, and you’re likely to know what forms and reports need to be filled out.”
“Right... I take it from that little exchange that things didn’t go the way you expected?”
Fluttershy let out a sigh as all of her assertiveness suddenly drained away, leaving a pained expression on her face. “Not only did it not go the way I hoped it would, it didn’t even fail the way I hoped it would.”
“Hang on, Sugarcube,” Applejack said with concern evident in her voice. “Are ya sayin’ you wanted it to fail?”
“Um, no,” Fluttershy responded meekly. “But if the plan was going to fail, it wasn’t supposed to fail that way.”
“Could somepony please bring me up to speed here?” Pencil Pusher asked.
“Well, Mr. Pusher,” Rarity said diplomatically, “instead of causing the fog to dissipate, the bonfires ended up stopping its advance entirely, which, as Fluttershy just said, is unacceptable because it still poses a danger to ponies living north of the Unicorn Range.”
“It’s worse than that,” Fluttershy said as her voice grew more worried. “It means that I know even less about the fog than I thought I did.”
“How in tarnation did ya work that’n out?” Applejack asked, clearly confused.
“Um, well, up until now, all I really knew about the fog is that it’s made of cloud that’s been modified to last a long time in the desert, so I sort of assumed that that meant that it was heat-resistant. But if that was the case, then the bonfires would have either succeeded by raising the fog’s temperature past that resistance point, or they wouldn’t have done anything at all.”
“I can see why that would be frustrating,” Twilight Sparkle said, “but it doesn’t sound like something to lose heart over. That sort of thing happens all the time in the course of scientific inquiry.”
“Uh, Twilight?” Pinkie Pie said cautiously, “I don’t think Fluttershy has the time to do your science thing.”
Fluttershy nodded glumly. “I won’t make any progress with trial and error. At least, not fast enough to help the ponies who are still stuck in the fog.”
Rainbow Dash’s ears drooped pathetically as she spoke up again, this time in a much softer and more vulnerable tone of voice. “I guess I can see where you’re coming from when you put it that way. Sorry for exploding like that, Fluttershy. I was just worried that if you kept that attitude going, it might affect the volunteers’ morale if we need them again.”
“I understand,” Fluttershy said. “But none of the volunteers are here. Well, except for the ones I don’t have to worry about offending, that is. Still, right now I need to figure out some way to learn what’s actually been done to that fog.”
Pencil Pusher tentatively raised one of his hooves, feeling a bit like a colt in grade school. “Uh, if I may, I might be able to help you with that. There’s a relatively simple way to deal with the bureaucratic maze that’s preventing Caligo from sharing as much information with you as they might like.”
“Really?” Fluttershy asked as a trace of optimism flashed across her face.
Pencil Pusher nodded. “I was actually going to mention it in the last meeting, but for whatever reason, the conversation never reached a suitable point for me to bring it up. Basically, their insurance company is insisting that they can only reveal the formula to employees or their policy will be voided and the entire company will be in danger of going under. But if they were to hire you temporarily as a consultant, the insurance company has no grounds to back out of their contract just because Caligo tells you what they’ve actually done to those clouds.”
There was a brief pause as this information sank in. Twilight Sparkle was the one who broke the silence: “That’s actually quite clever.”
“Thanks,” Pencil Pusher said sheepishly. “I was the one who suggested it to them,” he added, hoping to Celestia that that didn’t make him sound like a self-important twit.
“I dunno,” Applejack said skeptically. “Sounds a little sketchy ta me.”
“I’m sure it seems that way,” Pencil Pusher said matter-of-factly, “but it’s no more sketchy than what the insurance company is doing. After all, the only reason they’re getting in the way in the first place is because they’re worried that they might actually have to pay out the policy if one of Caligo’s competitors gets their hooves on the formula.”
“Are you seriously saying that these ruffians at the insurance company are trying to keep Fluttershy from doing her job so that they won’t have to do their job?” Rarity asked indignantly.
“I suppose you could say that,” Pencil Pusher replied.
“I’m not sure about this,” Fluttershy said as she stared at a blank spot on the wall. “Couldn’t this get us into trouble?”
Pencil Pusher chuckled softly. “There’s nothing to worry about. Sure, it might make more idealistic ponies squirm a bit, but it isn’t as though I’m suggesting that you lie about anything—because that would be a serious problem. Um, are you feeling okay?” Over the course of his previous sentence, Fluttershy had somehow turned an even paler shade of yellow.
“Um, yes, I’m fine,” she answered, though she still looked rather ill. “Um, I suppose you have a point. I mean, I do sort of need that information, and as long as it’s legal...”
“Oh, it is,” Pencil Pusher said. “Caligo had a team of lawyers draft everything up in advance before I left Cloudsdale this morning. I’ve got everything in my saddlebag, and all you need to do is sign a few forms.”
“Oh. Er, okay, then. Why don’t you get them?”
Several minutes later, Pencil Pusher was shoving a folder of signed and dated paperwork back into his bag when Rainbow Dash spoke up. “Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I guess we’d better figure out what to do next, right?” It seemed that her previous apology had been enough to brighten her mood back to normal—assuming, that is, that she had been behaving “normally” around Pencil Pusher before. In fact, she had a decidedly eager glint in her eye.
“I take it you’ve already thought of an idea to propose, darling?” Rarity asked—apparently, Rainbow Dash’s friends had previous experience with that particular glint.
“Rain,” the weatherpony replied with a confident smirk.
After several seconds passed without further explanation, Applejack said, “Mind goin’ into some more detail for the rest of us?”
Rainbow Dash sighed. “Great, how do I explain this in laypony’s terms? Okay, you know how clouds are basically big ol’ blobs of water vapor? Well, rain is what happens when there’s so much water in the blob that the droplets of vapor start smacking into each other and growing until they’re full-blown raindrops. Once they’re big enough, they fall to the ground until the cloud isn’t thick enough to create more drops. You following me so far?”
Upon receiving a round of nods from the earth ponies and unicorns, Rainbow Dash continued: “Well, I’m thinking that if we saturate the fog to the point where it starts raining, it’ll drop a lot of its moisture. Even if it doesn’t go away completely, that ought to increase visibility and make it easier for pegasi to move through it without getting hurt. I mean, it’s not perfect, but it should make the fog safer, and that’s what’s important right now, you know?”
Fluttershy nodded slowly as she mulled over the proposal. She turned towards Pencil Pusher and asked him, “Do you know if this idea would, um, create problems?”
“Probably not,” he replied. “Extra cloud requests typically get expedited in emergency situations, though if you want to make sure, I can help move the process along when I head back to Cloudsdale to drop all these forms off at Caligo.”
“Oh, alright then. Um, Rainbow, when could we start this plan?”
Rainbow Dash thoughtfully rubbed her chin for a bit before she answered. “Well, this wouldn’t require anypony who isn’t on the normal weather team, though the reserves would probably help, but I told them all to meet me here at sunrise after we left the hospital.”
“Hospital?” Pencil Pusher asked.
“Oh, right,” Rainbow Dash said as she flew over to a folder lying on the kitchen counter and pulled out several forms. “Workplace injury. Fluttershy and I already filled out the paperwork. You, uh, wouldn’t mind dropping this off at the DOW, would you? It’s kind of important that it get taken care of quickly.”
A quick glance at the summary of Flitter’s injury (which included a helpfully vomit-inducing picture of one of her hooves) was enough to convince Pencil Pusher that this wasn’t just an attempt to pass off monotonous work to somepony else, like, say, every interaction he had with Greg while he was at work. “I might as well make sure that the plan to use the nonprofit isn’t causing problems while I’m at it.” While he was normally loath to suggest additions to his workload, that one was different, since it had actually been his idea to use the crazy human interest group in the first place. “Uh, that is, assuming you’re going through with this rainfall plan.”
Fluttershy let out a deep breath and nodded, which was Pencil’s cue to find his saddlebag and start extracting assorted blank forms for her to fill out to create an official record of her plan. He returned with a massive pile of paperwork and a smile on his face. He set the forms in front of Fluttershy and gave her a quill. “Okay, this should be pretty straightforward. Just sign here, here, here, initial here, sign and date here, sign here, here, here, and hoofprint here.”
“Wow...” Pinkie Pie said. “That’s a lot of forms to sign.”
“Actually, that’s just the first form. There’s about a dozen more, two of which need to be filled out in triplicate. Oh, and some of them need the signatures of witnesses, so I’ll need the rest of you to stick around until we’re done.”
Thirty minutes later, Fluttershy’s hoof was severely cramped from repeatedly signing her name, her friends (particularly Rainbow Dash) were bored out of their skulls, and Pencil Pusher was getting ready to fly north to Cloudsdale.
September 1 – 12:23 AM
When Hard Hitter entered the Dive Bomber bar located on Cloudsdale’s main thoroughfare, it didn’t take him very long to spot Greg; the pudgy, balding government employee was quite possibly the only pony in the establishment who looked like he was in a bad mood. Then again, there was a good chance that he’d been preparing to go to bed when the telegram had arrived at his door, and Hard Hitter had known Greg long enough to have learned how much he disliked being even mildly inconvenienced.
“You’re late,” Greg said gruffly as he set down his cider mug.
Hard Hitter sat beside the bureaucrat at the bar and ordered a Manehattan for himself and a second round of cider for Greg. “Sorry,” he replied. “That fog’s causing some odd shifts in wind patterns, and I got caught in a downdraft or two.”
Greg wasn’t really in the mood for small talk. “Was going to bed. What couldn’t wait?”
“It’s about the fog specialist. She refused to answer questions about her qualifications at her press conference, and I want to know why.”
Greg scratched his head. “Who is it? Haven’t paid attention.”
Hard Hitter rolled his eyes; Greg never seemed to pay much attention to anything that didn’t directly affect him. “Fluttershy,” he said.
“Oh, right. Element of Harmony. What do you want to know?”
“How did she get to be a fog specialist?”
“Filled out a form. Somepony rubber-stamped it. I don’t know. Not my job. Underlings’ work. I just make sure they aren’t slacking off.”
Hard Hitter took a swig from his cocktail before continuing the conversation. “I don’t suppose you can direct me to an underling who can actually tell me more about what’s going on, can you?”
“Depends,” Greg replied as he knocked back his cider. “What’s in it for me?”
Hard Hitter’s eyes narrowed into slits. “You know, for an overweight, middle-aged stallion, you pull off an evening gown quite well.”
Greg’s eyes widened with alarm. “You said you would keep that quiet as a favor!” he said in an agitated whisper.
“It was a favor. Now I’m calling it in.”
Greg glowered at the journalist for a second or two before he caved in. “Actually, one of the ponies under me is volunteering his time as the specialist’s liason. Pickle Barrel, or something like that. Not sure on the name, though. Basically a nopony. Total pushover. Should be returning to Cloudsdale soon. Something about working things out with Caligo. If you’ve got contacts there, they can let you know when he’s back.”
Hard Hitter smiled as he finished his Manehattan and rose from his chair. “Well, it looks like ‘Drag Racer’ was just an unfounded rumor. Sorry for troubling you, Greg.”