The plan to make the fog rain out had moved forward with relatively few hiccups in its first hour, and Rainbow Dash was feeling particularly optimistic about its chances for success—though part of that optimism might have stemmed from the fact that she was the pony who’d suggested it to Fluttershy in the first place. The weatherpony had just emerged from her seventh excursion inside the fog when she heard a familiar voice.
“Um, Rainbow Dash?”
The silver-clad pegasus wheeled around to see her temporary boss hovering behind her and rubbing her hooves together nervously. “Oh, hey, Fluttershy. Is there a problem?”
“Um, not really. I’d just like to know how the plan’s working out, that’s all.”
“Oh, okay. Well, things are going pretty good, all things considered.” Rainbow Dash waved a forehoof in the fog bank’s general direction as she continued, “As you can see, the section of the fog that we’re feeding is getting pretty dense, and it’s darkening up nicely. It shouldn’t be too much longer before it starts raining out.”
“I see,” Fluttershy said as she rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Do you have any idea how long it will take before we know if it’s working?”
Rainbow Dash chuckled apprehensively at this particular question. “To be honest, I’m pretty sure the rain would have started already if this was a normal cloud. It’s not really a problem, though. There’s still plenty of storm clouds left for seeding, and if it doesn’t start on its own, we can try a series of synchronized bucks to give it some encouragement. That sound good to you?”
“Well, uh, I can’t think of any reason not to try it,” Fluttershy said.
“Cool,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’ll start figuring out where its weak points might be.”
September 1 – 9:50 AM
As soon as Lyra and Bon Bon had explained the situation to Pinkie Pie (which had taken considerably longer than expected—they had interrupted each other constantly, as neither wanted to let the other have the advantage of molding Pinkie’s first impressions), the pink earth pony had wasted no time before rushing over to Bon Bon’s home. Well... she didn’t think she had wasted any time, but the other SPHERE members clearly believed that the hour she’d spent scouring her room for a briefcase full of strange chemicals and doodads had been largely unproductive.
“Uh, Pinkie?” Bon Bon asked as her friend started to spread white powder around her house.
“Yeah?” Pinkie said absentmindedly.
“What are you doing?”
“Dusting for prints.”
When no further information was forthcoming, Bon Bon asked the obvious question: “Why?”
“So I can find them. Prints are really hard to see if they haven’t been dusted, you see.”
Lyra scratched her head. “Uh, but nopony touched the apple before it came through the window.”
“I know. That’s why I haven’t bothered dusting it. Ooh! A hair! Hey, Lyra, can you get the tweezers from that briefcase?”
Thirty seconds later, Pinkie Pie was sealing a dark blue hair inside a clear plastic bag. “This is definitely a clue.”
“Actually, that hair is probably mine,” Bon Bon said. “I mean, it does match my mane perfectly.”
“We’ll let the lab techs decide that.”
“You have a lab?”
“Uh, no, but Twilight does, and she’s pretty good about analyzing clues. Have I told you about the time the Cakes asked me to guard their entry in a dessert contest?”
“Pinkie, you’ve told everypony that story,” Lyra said. “Multiple times.”
“Well, then you know Twilight’s just the pony to figure out whose hair this is.”
Bon Bon briefly considered protesting, but she decided that it would be futile. Instead, she let her friend continue to “investigate” her home.
“Oh, my gosh!” Pinkie suddenly gasped.
“What is it?” Bon Bon asked as she trotted into the room where the pink pony was crouched.
“When I turn on my fancy flashlight, there’s a glowy splotch right here on the floor. See?” And indeed, when the painfully bright bluish bulb was lit, there was a suspiciously irregular stain on Bon Bon’s floor that was otherwise invisible.
“What does that mean?” Lyra asked.
“Um... I’m not sure. I couldn’t find an instruction manual when I borrowed this stuff from Twilight. But in the detective stories I’ve read, glowy splotches are almost always clues!”
Bon Bon sighed. “Well, given that you’ve wandered into my kitchen, it’s probably residue from candy that I dropped onto the floor at some point.”
“Aw...” Pinkie Pie said. “Are you sure it isn’t blood? The best clues are the bloody ones, because that usually means something gruesome happened.”
“Uh, Pinkie?” Lyra asked. “What does this have to do with the apple?”
“Oh, nothing, really,” Pinkie Pie said nonchalantly. “I just wanted to try out this cool stuff.”
“Okay, so why not use it on the apple?” Lyra asked.
“Because I don’t need to use it on the apple to figure out where it came from.”
Bon Bon sighed. “Pinkie, we already know it came from the humans—”
“Don’t be silly. It came from a pony, or possibly a donkey, zebra, or griffon.”
Lyra didn’t seem convinced. “How do you figure that?”
“If the humans are hiding in the fog, they won’t have access to apples. It’s in rock farming country, remember?”
“Oh, yeah...”
“That said,” Pinkie continued, “it seems to me that whoever chucked this apple through your window...” Pinkie paused to pull a pair of sunglasses from the briefcase and put them on.
“...is rotten to the core.”
“YEEEEEAAAH!!!”
Pinkie, Lyra, and Bon Bon turned their heads towards the broken window, where a white pegasus stallion with bulging muscles and undersized wings hovered. “Thanks, Bulk!” Pinkie said cheerfully.
“Don’t mention it,” Bulk Biceps replied before flying off towards the fog bank.
September 1 – 10:41 AM
Pencil Pusher hadn’t really had a chance to get a good look at the fog bank during the previous night’s flight, but during his third flight to Ponyville, things at least looked like they were starting to improve, though something told him that the executives at Caligo would probably bust a gasket if they heard anypony suggest such a thing. It seemed to be taking longer to actually reach the fog bank, and fog itself looked at least a little bit thinner, so there was definitely a chance that things were working out despite the worries of Jasmine Breeze. That said, Pencil was in no mood to take any chances, and he continued to fly south at a brisk, steady pace.
This turned out to be a wise decision, because it wasn’t long at all before the fog was as thick as ever, and possibly even more menacing since it now appeared to be covering most of the Unicorn Range, which, now that he thought of it, looked considerably larger in the light of day. His mind started to drift as the greyish-white mass zipped along underneath him; he still had quite a way to go before he needed to start his ascent over the mountains. At least this mess would all be over soon. If the current plan didn’t work, then surely Fluttershy would come up with the right one once she had all the relevant information at her hooves. Then he would never have to make this three-hour flight again... no, wait, that wasn’t right. After all, if Fluttershy actually agreed to go out with him, he’d need to make at least one more trip. And what if things clicked, and something more serious happened? Was he really willing to commute such a long distance just to be with a cute mare? No, but Fluttershy was so much more than a cute mare. The real question was whether he was physically capable of pulling it off. But then again—
Pencil’s train of thought abruptly derailed as one of his forehooves was snagged by the fog’s uneven surface, pitching him forward and nearly causing him to lose control. “What the heck?” he said aloud even though he knew perfectly well that there was nopony around to hear him. “How did I drop so much altitude without noticing?” It didn’t make sense; at the height he’d been flying at, he should have noticed an increase in the temperature, especially since today was scheduled to be quite warm, but right now, despite the lack of air movement from his transition to flying to hovering, he still felt somewhat chilly—
Pencil Pusher leapt skywards once again as the fog bumped into his hooves again. One minute previously, he’d been at least one trot higher than the fog’s surface, and this time, he was certain that he’d been maintaining his altitude, so how could the fog possibly have bumped into him a second time?
His puzzlement continued for some time before he glanced back at the Unicorn Range. Now that he thought of it, not only did the mountains look taller, they seemed to be significantly closer to Cloudsdale than they were supposed to. Suddenly, it hit him: he wasn’t looking at fog-shrouded mountains; he was looking at mountains made of industrial-strength clouds. In other words, the fog wasn’t dissipating; it was starting to pile up.
“I... I need to get moving.” Without further delay, Pencil Pusher resecured his saddlebags and began his ascent over the fog, moving as fast as his wings could carry him.
September 1 – 11:11 AM
Rainbow Dash’s decision to start looking for bucking points had turned out to be far more prudent than she’d ever expected. “This is ridiculous!” she said to herself in between barking orders to members of her team. “We’ve been seeding that thing all morning! It ought to be dense enough to be a solid blob of water,” she continued with only a small amount of hyperbole. “It should have been ready to burst a long time ago.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Thunderlane replied flatly. The black pegasus stallion had been waiting for his boss to give him orders for several minutes now. “That’s why you were going to tell me where to buck the darned thing, remember?”
“Huh? Oh, right. Um, why don’t you head over to that pass?” she said, gesturing westward. Rainbow Dash had decided to have her regulars do the bucking while the reservists continued feeding clouds into the fog bank. “There’s definitely some concentration about twenty trots from ground level. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Roger that. So, what’s the signal?”
Rainbow Dash groaned. “Ugh, I knew I forgot something. No way everypony will be able to hear my whistle with the way they’re going to be spread out. Okay, change of plan: you head into town and find a bullhorn for me to use. I’m pretty sure that Pinkie Pie...” Her voice trailed off as she noticed something high in the air, near the top of the fog bank. “What the hay is that?”
“That little grey blur?” Thunderlane replied as he craned his neck to get a better view. “I don’t know. Think a piece of the fog broke off?”
“I guess it could be... but it’s moving awfully fast for a stray cloud. Er, hang on,” Rainbow Dash said. “Change of change of plan: you tell Fluttershy about this, and I’ll go investigate.”
Rainbow Dash took off, flying along the surface of the fog bank as she tried to get a better view of the unknown object, but whatever it was, it was descending far too quickly to be falling. As she got closer, she was able to make out the familiar motion of flapping wings, which made it obvious that this was a pegasus who was apparently flying as fast as possible over the fog. But why? Was this a thrillseeker of some sort? Rainbow Dash could understand that kind of mindset, of course, but this hardly seemed seemed like the time for that sort of thing.... Hold on. Isn’t that that bureaucrat who’s been helping Flutter—
Rainbow Dash didn’t get a chance to finish her thought before Pencil Pusher plowed into her, knocking her for a loop and causing her to fall down through the fog. Rainbow Dash began to flap her wings rapidly to regain her altitude, but the fog was so thick, and the collision was so jarring, that the normally exemplary flyer couldn’t tell which way was up.
Fortunately, this problem fixed itself when she slammed into the ground. “Ouch...” she moaned as she slowly got to her hooves. Once she determined that her legs and wings were still functioning properly, she looked around to determine the fate of the other pony. Of course, since she was in the middle of an abnormally thick fog, this didn’t really work. “Hey! Pencil Pusher! Can you hear me?” When no response came, Rainbow Dash briefly considered which ponies she could spare for a search party, but she soon thought better of it. Pencil Pusher hadn’t been wearing a fog suit, and at the speed he’d been flying, he probably would have bounced off of the surface of the fog, rather than sinking into it.
“Ugh... looks like somepony needs to hear a lecture about the dangers of reckless flying.” Luckily for Pencil Pusher, Rainbow Dash had heard several dozen over the years.