//------------------------------// // September 1 – 1:33 PM // Story: Flash Fog // by Kwakerjak //------------------------------// It didn’t take very long for Pinkie Pie’s badgering to completely demolish any resistance Bon-Bon could muster, and she soon led Pinkie, Lyra, and Applejack to the back of her candy shop’s storage room. What first appeared to be a large, brushed-metal wall turned out to be a massive hatch resembling the door of a bank vault, complete with a large, brass, circular handle that had eight polished rods radiating out from the center. On the left side of the hatch were a pair of sturdy-looking hinges, each one nearly as tall as a pony in its own right, and on the right was a non-descript black pad of some oddly resistant foam. “What is this?” Lyra asked as she gently prodded the pad with her hoof. She’d never really taken an interest in the machinations of Bon-Bon’s misplaced paranoia, which apparently had somewhat better funding than she would have expected from a candymaker’s income. Bon-Bon looked very proud as she answered: “It’s a hoofprint recognition system—magically based, of course,” she added hastily. “If it was all technology, the humans probably wouldn’t have much trouble cracking it.” Applejack pushed her hat back and scratched her head. “So, what, only ponies can open this thing?” “No,” Bon-Bon replied, “only I can open it—from the outside, that is. That said, anypony can open it mechanically from the inside, as long as they’re tall enough to reach the handle.” She walked over to the pad and pressed a hoof against it, causing it to emit a series of chimes as several metallic clanks resounded from the door. Bon-Bon then reared up on her hind legs and pulled one of the handle’s spokes. Seconds later, the vault door swung open with a hiss of escaping air. “Okay, you’re going to have to explain this one to me,” Lyra said. “Why on earth would you bother pressurizing your bunker? It’s not going to make a difference to a visiting human.” “Well, it’s certainly true that pressurizing the bunker probably won’t be much of a deterrence to an invading human, but it does deter fluctuations in humidity and temperature, which is why I can use some of the space as additional climate-controlled storage in the meantime until the inevitable assault. And as a bonus, I got to partially write-off the construction of my bunker as a business expense,” Bon-Bon answered as she led her guests through a chamber with shelves full of sugary delights. “If’’n y’all do throw a party here, I reckon you’ll have to cover these up,” Applejack remarked with a sideways glance at Pinkie Pie, who had started to drool at the sight of all the tooth-rotting goodness before her. “Don’t want the foals goin’ crazy over peanut brittle, do we?” “Technically, that shelf is holding almond brittle with some hazelnuts for extra flavor. In any case, you haven’t even seen the actual living space yet,” Bon-Bon said as she began to descend a wide staircase in one corner of the storage room. “Follow me, please.” At the bottom of the stairs was a small, rather boring-looking room with several hooks on the wall and a single door. “This is the living space?” Lyra asked incredulously as she and the others looked around the at the underwhelming space. Bon-Bon rolled her eyes as she walked over to the door and set her hoof on the knob. “No, this is the coat room.” She opened the door and flicked a light switch, adding, “This is the living space.” A long row of incandescent light bulbs hanging from the ceiling flickered for a second or two before illuminating a large, sparsely furnished room with beige walls, a high-angled ceiling crossed by several metal rafters painted in a matte brown, and a floor covered in large squares of low pile carpeting in various shades of green, giving it the appearance of cultivated farmland. Including the entrance, there were a total of eight doors, each made of a dark, reddish-brown wood. On the whole, the room felt a bit like a windowless hotel lobby. However, with the exception of a pair of overstuffed armchairs and a side table in one corner, and several large, unopened wooden crates labeled “survival gear” in another, the expanse was otherwise empty, which only served to underscore the room’s spaciousness. Pinkie Pie gasped at the sight before her. “It’s bigger on the inside!” she exclaimed. To her mild surprise, she didn’t hear her voice echo—but then again, perhaps that was what the carpeting was there for. Bon-Bon turned towards the pink pony with her face twisted in confusion. “Uh, no, it isn’t. We’re just underground.” Pinkie Pie gasped again. “It’s bigger on the underside!” “That sorta brings up a good point,” Applejack said as she walked out into the middle of the space turned back towards the candymaker. “I mean, this room alone is almost as large as a decent-sized barn! Ain’t some of this bunker beneath your neighbors’ property?” Bon-Bon bobbed her head in a noncommittal shrug. “Actually, most of my neighbors are leasing their homes from me in the first place. My family was part of the first generation of settlers in Ponyville, and they were granted a rather large homestead.” After briefly pausing to let Pinkie Pie take advantage of the relatively high ceiling and perform about a half-dozen backflips, the tour continued. Behind one door was a large kitchen filled with gleaming metal appliances and cupboards that opened to reveal a cornucopia of dehydrated fruits and vegetables, as well as myriad herbs and spices to make sure there would be plenty of variety in the menu. The sinks had hot and cold running water, which Bon-Bon explained came from the bunker’s well, which, like the generator that provided all of the electricity for both her bunker and her house, was on an even lower floor than the living area. A second door revealed a dining area with a large wooden table and two long benches on a floor made of rough-hewn oak timbers, and behind the next was a small library, mostly containing books on long-term survival and human theories, though Bon-Bon had thought to acquire several dozen novels for entertainment purposes, including every Daring Do volume that had been published to date. A fourth room, nearly half the size of the spacious main area, was completely empty, with only bare concrete for a floor. “This is where I was planning to set up a hydroponic garden to make the bunker more self-sufficient, but I had to make sure it was ready for a short-term survival situation first,” Bon-Bon explained. “If we manage to survive this initial assault, I’m definitely going to get right on that.” The remaining doors all led to bedroom suites, all of which had two separate sleeping areas and a full bathroom. Of course, this raised a very obvious question, and Lyra was quick to voice it: “Okay, Bon-Bon, what’s with all the bedrooms? Don’t you live by yourself?” “Well, yes,” Bon-Bon replied, “but I’m not the only pony who’s going to need shelter once those deranged gorillas overrun the country. Besides, a pony could go stir-crazy down here with nopony else to talk to, so I wanted to make sure there was enough space for several families. That’s actually the main reason the great room is so large; that way, there’s plenty of space for latecomers to sleep on cots if we run out of beds too quickly.” Pinkie Pie nodded her head enthusiastically. “That makes sense. Also, it reminds me: I need to figure out if that space is going to work for this party.” As Bon-Bon took the other two ponies further downstairs to view the bunker’s utilities, Pinkie began to pace out the dimensions of the great room, mentally arranging the space to determine if it could contain enough fun to keep the foals from giving in to their curiosity and leaving the safety of the area. As it turned out, Applejack’s initial comparison of the space to one of her barns wasn’t too far off the mark. The room had about two-thirds the floor area of the pavilion in the center of town, though the ceiling was much lower. There wasn’t much furniture, true, but in Pinkie’s experience, that was a plus when throwing a party for foals, since that meant that there were fewer obstacles to run into, which meant there were fewer injuries, and injuries tended to suck the fun out of a party. By the time Bon-Bon, Applejack, and Lyra returned, there was a huge smile on her face. Bon-Bon opened her mouth as if to say something, but Pinkie Pie rushed over to her and broke the silence herself. “This is great! There’s just enough room in here for everything that I really want for this party. Okay, I admit that it’ll be a little bit cramped, and we’ll have to use your unfurnished room to provide a separate space for really young foals, but the fact that we can keep the fog out makes this a no-brainer, especially since we can use your kitchen to make snacks for everypony, and we can use the bedrooms for naptimes if the whole thing takes longer than expected. And the best part is, there’s still going to be space for—oh, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise!” Pinkie reached out and clasped the still-stunned candymaker’s hoof in her own and shook it vigorously. “Anyway, thanks for letting us throw the party in your bunker. You’re providing a real service to the community. Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I need to get on those plans!” With that, she bounded out of the room and up the stairs. Bon-Bon stared at the spot where Pinkie Pie had been standing moments before for a few seconds before turning to Applejack and Lyra. “What the hay just happened?” September 1 – 1:49 PM Back at the clubhouse, Apple Bloom had procured a second roll of bubble wrap and had been vigilantly guarding it against Scootaloo’s itchy hooves when Sweetie Belle returned and told them of her setback. Not surprisingly, they were quite sympathetic to her plight. “She seriously just kicked you out like that?” Scootaloo asked. “Talk about rude!” “I s’pose I can understand why Rarity doesn’t wanna talk about it,” Apple Bloom admitted, “but it ain’t like she was the only pony actin’ like an idiot when Discord was around. Y’all shoulda heard some of the whoppers Applejack tried to pass off.” Sweetie Belle sighed. “Thanks, but that doesn’t change the fact that we still don’t know where to find Tom.” “Hang on, let’s just think this through a bit,” suggested Apple Bloom. “It can’t be easy to just get rid of a boulder that big, so maybe it’s still around Ponyville somewhere.” “Well, it’s definitely not anywhere near the Carousel Boutique,” Sweetie Belle said. “There’s no way she’d ever put Tom somewhere where she might see him and be reminded of their ‘fling.’” “Sure, but she doesn’t seem like the kind of pony who’d just leave a huge rock at somepony else’s home without permission, either,” Scootaloo said as she idly rubbed her chin. “Yeah, and it ain’t like she could just ask any old pony to take Tom off her hooves, either,” Apple Bloom pointed out. “After all, if she doesn’t want anypony else to know about it, she ain’t likely to risk gettin’ asked those kinda questions, is she?” “So, Tom’s probably with one of her friends, then,” Sweetie Belle said. “I guess the question is: who?” “I think we can cross Pinkie Pie off the list right away,” Scootaloo said. “After all, she rents an apartment, and I don’t think the Cakes are just going to let something like Tom sit around their place.” “I don’t think Rarity would want Tom sitting around in somewhere in the middle of town anyway,” Sweetie Belle said. “Somepony might ask something. I guess that means it’s probably not at Twilight’s place, either.” “Especially since Twilight don’t actually own the library,” Apple Bloom said, “so it’s pretty much the same thing as with Pinkie. What about Rainbow Dash? She lives near the edge of town, doesn’t she?” “Yeah... in a cloud house,” Scootaloo replied. “She doesn’t have anyplace to put a boulder other than the ground directly beneath it, and somepony would definitely have seen it, since it’s just grass.” “Maybe Tom’s somewhere on Sweet Apple Acres, then,” Sweetie Belle suggested. “It’s on the outskirts of Ponyville, and there’s plenty of room and lots of trees to keep it from being seen out in the open.” “I doubt it,” Apple Bloom said. “I’m pretty sure I’d’ve seen a rock that size during the last harvest. And besides, the three of us are runnin’ all over the orchard all the time. One of you probably would have spotted it, even if I didn’t.” “Okay, so Tom probably isn’t here,” Scootaloo said. “So, that leaves... Fluttershy.” There was silence for several seconds in the clubhouse as the three fillies mulled over this possibility. “She does live on the edge of town,” Sweetie Belle said. “And we know she’s got plenty of space for all those animals,” Apple Bloom added. “Yeah, but she’s gonna be way too busy with the fog to answer questions about Tom, won’t she?” Scootaloo asked. Apple Bloom had a somewhat mischievous look on her face as she answered, “Maybe, but she’s not the only one who lives there.” Scootaloo scratched her head. “What do you mean by that?” “Not it,” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom said in unison as Scootaloo realized what Apple Bloom had been implying. “Aww... but I don’t wanna talk to that rabbit again....”