It was a sunny morning throughout most of Equestria, courtesy of the current weather scheduled by the pegasi. There were far and few clouds throughout the sky, allowing for the light produced by Celestia’s sun to shine brightly and warmly all over the land. The wind was blowing, but not so strongly as to be cold or annoying, and the temperature was perfect for any outdoor activities to be performed. Overall, it looked to be a beautiful day, as could be expected when the weather was arranged to be so.
What wasn’t generally expected on a day like this was the large ship flying through the clear skies. It had startled a good portion of Manehattan to see one of the ships moored in the docks unexpectedly rise out of the water after a crew of around fifty ponies dressed in blue boarded it, and as it flew towards Canterlot, it continued to startle those who saw it. A flying ship wasn’t a common sight in Equestria, after all – the Fort, Equestria’s top prison and a flying ship, generally flew above cloud cover to dissuade any break-in attempts.
The various sightings were helped by the fact that the occupants of the ship wanted to be seen. A navy blue flag with a red, abstract cobra head flew from the mast, and the ship was flying low enough for most ponies to see it without having to crane their necks or scan the skies. Yes, the occupants of the ship wished to make their presence known, to let Equestria understand who would be ruling the country after they reached their destination, which they weren’t far from now.
“Look, Octavia!” called out Vinyl from the front of the ship. She was dressed in her COBRA Trooper uniform, but had taken off the mask for the moment. “I can see our house from here!”
“Vinyl! Stop playing around in the rigging, and get back up here before you fall and break your neck!” Octavia shouted angrily. She was standing on the bow of the ship, her mask still on as per Serpent Superior’s orders, and looking downwards. It appeared that Vinyl had tied some ropes to her legs and was hanging from the front of the ship, heedless of the height or the danger should the ropes break.
“Do you think that we could pick up some of our things from the storage facility whilst we’re in Canterlot?” Vinyl asked, ignoring Octavia. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the wind rushing all around the ship, which although not strong enough to blow a pony off, was certainly strong enough to make communication harder. “I put a container of pasta in there, and I’m thinking it’d make a great lunch! If it hasn’t gone off, I guess.”
“Oh, for – I suppose I’ll have to sort this out then, as per usual,” muttered Octavia. Lying down on her stomach, she cautiously crawled as close to the edge of the ship as she dared, and then grabbed the rope Vinyl was hanging from with both hooves. She winced as she did – lying on the deck made her all the more aware of how high they were in the air, and whilst Octavia wasn’t scared of heights, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t aware of how fatal a fall from here would be. If the ship suddenly shook or something happened to make it roll to one side, Octavia would have no time to brace herself, and would go flying off the side.
“And look! There’s that bar where you let me take you to get drunk!” Vinyl said, pointing a hoof. “I wonder what happened to the bartender there?” Vinyl seemed unaware that as she surveyed Canterlot, still some distance away, the rope she was hanging from was being drawn up to the deck inch by inch. She turned back to the ship. “Octavia? Are you listening to any of this?”
“Every – hnng – word, darling,” grunted Octavia, still pulling Vinyl up. “Something about a bar?”
“Yeah!” said Vinyl as she was hauled up onto the deck with one last pull. “It was a while ago – I took you there because we – hey, is everything alright?” She had just noticed how exhausted Octavia looked. Natural Earth pony strength or not, pulling an adult unicorn up whilst you’re lying on your stomach was still a struggle.
“Vinyl, you know I love you and care for you deeply,” Octavia began, “but I have to ask – why in Equestria were you hanging off the front of the ship like that?”
“Oh, well I was walking around on the bow, and I tripped over some ropes. One thing led to another, y’know?” Vinyl grinned. “It’s a good thing that they got tangled like that so I was just hanging there!”
Octavia shook her head disbelievingly. “You seem remarkably calm about it all,” she observed.
Vinyl shrugged. “It was just as Skipper Superior Serpent called us all inside, so I got most of my screaming out of the way at the start of it, when you were all out of earshot. Once I got used to it, the view was pretty nice, y’know?”
“Oh Vinyl, you really are the most silly mare a pony could date,” said Octavia, laughing and kissing Vinyl on the cheek. “Follow me – I came out here to see where you were since you were missing Serpent Superior’s briefing.”
Towards the stern of the ship was a door which led to the ship’s cabins. Wordlessly, the two ponies walked to it with their tails wrapped around one another. Neither of them needed to say anything, as each knew what the other was thinking: I love you.
“- and if we want to purge this country of its disease, we must start off by cutting off the source of the disease: its head!” Serpent Superior was still in the middle of his briefing when Vinyl and Octavia entered the cabin, Vinyl having put her mask back on. The cabin was large enough for all of the COBRA Troopers and Serpent Superior to fit in, but as there were several beds around, it did mean that everypony was somewhat cramped.
“Skipper Serpent Sir Superior, sir!” Vinyl said from the back of the crowd, putting a hoof up. “If you’ve got a disease, shouldn’t you see a doctor instead of trying to trying to cut it off? Also, I think that diseases don’t actually have heads.” Octavia nodded in agreement.
“Ah, Troopers Vinyl and Octavia, how nice of you to join us,” said Serpent Superior, his voice laced with as much venom as he could muster. “We were just going over the mission once more. Since the ship was enchanted with the anti-gravitational spell this morning, this has made transportation much simpler. As a result, your jobs will consist mostly of protecting the ship.” He paused, waiting for confirmation from the two Troopers, and upon not getting it, asked, “Did you get that?”
“Sorry, what?” asked Vinyl. “It’s kinda hard to hear you from the back.” There were murmurs and nods of agreement from the ponies beside her.
“Is there somewhere less cramped we could hold this briefing?” asked Octavia. “The hold of the ship, perhaps?”
“The hold of the ship is…unavailable at the moment,” said Serpent Superior. “We have very important cargo there, so that’s why we have to hold this meeting in the cabin.”
“Hang on a second, Octavia – I’ve got an idea,” said Vinyl, apparently not having heard Serpent Superior. Vinyl pushed a few ponies aside and started making her way to the front of the crowd, forcefully but gently where possible. After a second of hesitation, Octavia followed her. “Now, you were saying?” Vinyl asked as she and Octavia reached the front of the crowd, accompanied by dirty looks by the ponies they had just pushed past.
If Serpent Superior hadn’t been wearing a mask, everypony in the cabin would have seen him scowl. “I was saying that you’ll have to defend the ship during the mission, at least until the time when we’re at our destination. After that, you will mostly have to be concerned about your own survival, as I shall be able to carry out most of the rest of the mission myself.”
“Defend the ship from what?” Octavia asked.
“It must be the snakes!” Vinyl said excitedly. “But… wait, we’re in the air, and snakes are on the ground… unless…” She gasped loudly. “We have to defend the ship from flying space snakes, don’t we? Holy – that’s amazing! I didn’t even know that flying space snakes existed!” Through the eye holes in their masks, several ponies around her could be seen rolling their eyes.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Serpent Superior. “You’ll be defending the ship from CHIELD.”
“What’s a CHIELD?” asked Octavia, confused.
“Is it a specific breed of flying space snake?” Vinyl suggested.
“CHIELD stands for Celestia’s Highly Intelligent Equine Law-Enforcement Division,” Serpent Superior explained, sounding exasperated. He sighed loudly before continuing. “I’ve made sure that our ship will be seen from far away, so hopefully they’ll try and board us before we reach our destination – we can eliminate most of them before we reach it.”
“Wait, so they work for Celestia, just like us?” asked Vinyl, sounding confused. Serpent Superior ignored her. Around the cabin, most of the COBRA Troopers looked bored, as though they’d heard this part of Serpent Superior’s briefing before, which they likely had.
“What do we have to stop them?” questioned Octavia. “And why?”
“Use those crossbows you were training with, or failing that, your bare hooves,” said Serpent Superior. “And as for why, uh…they’re a rival extermination company?” Before Octavia, Vinyl, or any other Troopers could ask further questions, Serpent Superior added, “Now, I want you to all head to the cabin to the left of this one, and grab a crossbow. Head out to the deck, and be ready to defend it – we should be over Canterlot’s outer suburbs by now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were attacking us right this second.”
Everypony was silent, with some looking around the room awkwardly. A pony in the back somewhere coughed. A moment after he did, there was the sound of a small explosion from on the deck, and the ship shook slightly.
“Well, give or take a few seconds,” said Serpent Superior. “Now, COBRA! Retreeeeaaattt!!!!”
Reacting to their battle cry, the COBRA Troopers all repeated it, roaring it valiantly as they rushed into the cabin to grab weapons. At least, they tried to – in theory, everypony was going to sprint in, grab a crossbow, and then run out to begin shooting at CHIELD Agents. In reality, what happened was there was a bottleneck around the entrance to the cabin, and everypony had to slow down, wait their turn, and walk in at a normal pace in order to avoid being crushed by the crowd. But on the plus side, at least they were all enthusiastic.
“Should we really be doing this?” Vinyl asked Octavia as they waited for their turn to go into the cabin. “I mean, sure, they’re a rival agency, but it seems kinda vicious to attack ponies simply for doing the same job that we do.”
“Hmm, true,” agreed Octavia as she entered the cabin. On hastily installed weapon racks around the cabin walls were rows and rows of crossbows, the same time that they had been training with since they joined COBRA. She grabbed the nearest one and put it in the strap on her leg. “But at the same time, they are boarding us, which means that it’s just us reacting to them, isn’t it?” She adjusted the crossbow slightly and moved her leg around to test to see how comfortable it was. Satisfied, she put her hoof back to the ground and walked out of the cabin alongside Vinyl, who was levitating her crossbow in the air beside her. “And besides, as you pointed out, these crossbows can barely be classified as dangerous weapons. Hay, they can barely be classified as weapons.”
“…Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point,” said Vinyl. “But it does feel kinda – hay! What the heck?!” As she and Octavia exited the cabin which they had had their briefing in and came onto the deck of the ship, they found that it was covered in CHIELD Agents - all dressed in blue and white uniforms- just as Serpent Superior had predicted. All of the COBRA Troopers that had come out onto the deck so far were fighting them. What Serpent Superior hadn’t predicted was how the CHIELD Agents had boarded the flying ship.
“They get jetpacks?!” Vinyl roared, furious. “We get a dumb flying ship, and they get jetpacks?!” Leaping from the entrance of the door and more into the fray, she levitated her crossbow before her mask so that she was looking down the scope. Moving as swiftly as her rage would allow, Vinyl aimed it at no less than five CHIELD Agents – all of them wearing jetpacks - and shot at them with a laser each. For her effort, she was rewarded with something along the lines of “Huh? Did something just hit me?” from each CHIELD Agent she had shot at.
“Vinyl – wait…” Octavia started, but it was already too late. Vinyl’s rage at not owning a jetpack had led to a berserker fury in the unicorn, and she was putting it to good use. Vinyl shot at every CHIELD Agent within her sights, she leapt at them and beat them down with her hooves, and she used her innate magic to rip each jetpack apart where she could. The white unicorn was unstoppable, and every CHIELD Agent soon knew it. There were other separate skirmishes going on across the deck, but Octavia only had eyes for what Vinyl was doing.
“Well, at least she’s putting all of that excess energy to good use,” sighed Octavia before jumping in to join her marefriend. Vinyl had already taken off her mask to aid in her visibility – or perhaps it had been ripped to shreds within moments of her beginning her furious assault. Octavia privately thought that it was a good idea, and so she quickly removed hers as well.
Octavia soon realised that she had joined Vinyl at perhaps the best moment. Vinyl and Octavia were surrounded by a large group of CHIELD Agents, with some floating in the air on their jetpacks, whilst others were standing on the deck. Unlike COBRA Troopers, CHIELD Agents had a variety of weapons beyond just crossbows – some wielded what looked like stunning batons, some had crossbows of their own to fire from the air, and others still relied on their magic. In spite of Vinyl’s fury, the CHIELD Agents had the upper hoof in this situation.
“Just give up, guys,” said one Agent coolly as both sides eyed each other, looking for a moment of weakness in which to attack. “Surrender, and when we take out your leader we’ll go easy on you grunts. We all know that the princesses will be able to shrug off whatever you’ve got planned, so why not quit while you’re ahead?”
“I’m sorry, what?” asked Octavia. “I think you’re mistaken. We’re an extermination – argh!”
As she was talking, the CHIELD Agent fired a laser from his crossbow, which struck Octavia squarely on the cheek. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing!” Octavia growled. “You could hurt someone…eventually.”
“You right, babe?” asked Vinyl, still not taking her eyes off the three CHIELD Agents facing her. Every now and then one would make a move to attack, only for Vinyl to growl or jump slightly towards them, causing them to flinch and retreat to their previous position.
“Perfectly so,” said Octavia. “I think that these agents must be buying their crossbows from Destroyer’s arms dealing company.”
“Ha! So their crossbows are as ineffectual as ours?” Vinyl asked. “They should call you Celestia’s Highly Ineffectual…uh…” She faltered. “What did the rest stand for again?”
“So what if our weapons are no more effective than yours?” asked a CHIELD Agent. “We have the horsepower to back ours up, and we’ll eventually hurt you with them! Probably.”
Vinyl grinned. “Yeah, but you guys don’t have a little trick that Octavia and I have.” To Octavia, she said, “Remember what we did on the Fort the night we escaped?”
“Ye- NO! No no no no no no no!” Octavia protested as Vinyl’s magic lifted her into the air. “No Epic Octavia Maneuver!”
“Bah, you’re no fun,” said Vinyl, gently letting go of Octavia. “I guess we’ll just have to kick ass the traditional way then.”
At that, Vinyl and Octavia leaped forwards to take out their opponents. Before Vinyl were three CHIELD Agents – one hovering in the air with a jetpack, the other two on the deck with batons ready to attack Vinyl with. One of them raised his baton as Vinyl approached, which only gave Vinyl the opportunity to levitate it over and smack his friend in the face with it. With the second baton-wielder stunned from surprise and pain, she jumped upwards and used his head as a springboard to reach the floating CHIELD Agent and punch him in the jaw.
As she closed the gap between them, the CHIELD Agent fired several lasers at Vinyl, but they did nothing before her momentum. The CHIELD Agent dropped to the deck a second after Vinyl did, as she spun around in a circle on her front hooves, knocking all three ponies around her off their hooves. As a follow-up move, she stomped on the face of the first baton-wielder, finishing him off for good.
Meanwhile, Octavia had found herself up against two flying CHIELD Agents and one on the deck. As she leapt towards the trio, the one on the deck used his telekinesis to increase her momentum so that she would fly over the three of them, hopefully knocking herself unconscious when she landed. At least, that’s what he hoped would happen. Thinking quickly in the heat of the moment, Octavia instead stuck out both of her legs so that she kicked both flying CHIELD Agents in their faces and pushed them to the deck with her. The impact took them out instantly.
Turning around, Octavia once again leapt towards the sole CHIELD Agent of her personal fight. He had seen her fall and anticipated what she was going to do, and so he repeated his previous spell, attempting to levitate Octavia over his head and far away from him.
Unfortunately for him, Octavia had anticipated this, and her leap had intentionally been less farther than she would have needed to reach him. Instead, his spell added to her movement the additional speed she would need to hit him before hitting the deck, which she did before he realised how far she was leaping. With the CHIELD Agent on the deck below her, Octavia punched him in the face, taking him out.
The skirmish had taken less than ten seconds between Vinyl and Octavia. Octavia got up from the body of the CHIELD Agent, panting slightly, to find Vinyl watching her, having finished off her opponents mere moments before.
“Have I ever told you how hot you look when you’re in the middle of a fight?” Vinyl asked, grinning.
“Oh, come here and kiss me!” Octavia said, taking steps towards Vinyl. Vinyl’s grin turned into a more sincere smile, and she stretched out her hooves to hold Octavia.
The problem with this was that a nearby CHIELD Agent- a mint-green unicorn- who was floating in the air with a jetpack, having seen Vinyl and Octavia take out the group of agents, had been waiting for the two ponies to drop their guards. With Vinyl’s hooves outstretched, he saw his opportunity and dive-bombed her, hitting her into the deck before she knew what was happening.
An unanticipated side-effect of this for the CHIELD Agent was how fast he actually hit Vinyl. The force of his whole body, accelerated by the jetpack and the natural force of gravity, not only knocked Vinyl to the deck, but it broke up the wood below her and knocked her down into the hold of the ship, closely followed by the CHIELD Agent himself.
“Vinyl!” cried Octavia. She ran over to the hole in the deck, and after a split second hesitation, leapt in after her lover and her attacker.
Octavia landed on all four hooves, having braced herself for the landing. The fall took her all the way to the bottom of the ship, around twenty metres deep. It wasn’t hard to find Vinyl and her attacker in spite of the darkness– Vinyl was lying on top of the CHIELD Agent and punching him repeatedly in the face, creating a lot of noise.
“Whoever you are, you’re going down!” said the CHIELD Agent as threw Vinyl off him. His horn glowed red and he fired several small bolts of energy at Vinyl.
Vinyl coolly sidestepped the bolts. The CHIELD Agent and her were both circling each other, looking for a weak spot. “Whoever I am…” Vinyl began. She frowned, looking confused for a second. “No I’m not!” she finally said.
“Ha!” laughed the CHIELD Agent. “A mere foot soldier like you, defeating me? I am an elite Agent of CHIELD! I’ve fought ponies like you for all of my life, and my skills are renowned throughout all the levels of CHIELD! All I need is to hit you with a single bolt of energy, and –”
“You know, I may not be an elite Agent of CHIELD,” interrupted Vinyl, “but even I know not to turn my back to an enemy.”
“You -?” started the CHIELD Agent, turning around to find Octavia there. In circling Vinyl, he had ended up with his back to where he had entered into the hold – and where Octavia had just come through. The agent just barely had enough time to speak before Octavia’s hoof met his face, knocking him to the ground and taking him out of the fight.
“Huzzah!” cried Vinyl, punching the air with a hoof. “Way to kick his ass, Octavia!”
Tick…tick…
“Hey, you did most of the work,” said Octavia, trotting over to Vinyl and embracing her for good this time. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
Tick…tick…
“No need to be so modest – that guy was tough!” said Vinyl. She smiled at Octavia as she cuddled into her a bit more. “Now, what say we take off that uniform and get down and dirty?” she asked.
Tick…tick…
“Never any time that’s not appropriate for it, is that right?” asked Octavia, grinning. “Maybe after today’s work shift. For now, how about we head back up to the deck and keep fighting those CHIELD Agents?”
Tick…tick…
“Bah, you never want to have sex at an inappropriate time,” said Vinyl, grinning. “C’mon, the stairs are over there.” Squinting in the darkness of the hold, the two ponies trotted over to the stairs, passing by something large and metallic as they did so.
“Oh hey, is that your bomb?” asked Vinyl as they passed it. A moment later she realised what she had said, and shook her head with disbelief. “Oh my god! Octavia! A bomb!”
“A bomb!” Octavia repeated. “How did it get here? How dangerous is it?” She frowned. “Is there a reason why we didn’t hear all of that ticking? Seriously, it’s quite loud.”
“CHIELD must have gotten it down here somehow!” Vinyl theorised. “There’s no way that Serpent Superior would use something like this!”
===============================
Meanwhile, in the cabin which he had made his office, Serpent Superior was pouring himself another mug of tea. He was confident that his COBRA Troopers could hold off the CHIELD Agents long enough for the ship to reach its destination – which should be any minute now.
“Man, I sure can’t wait to use that bomb I put in the hold,” he said to himself before sipping from his mug of tea.
===============================
“Of course he wouldn’t use something like this – Serpent Superior is far too kind to even consider a weapon such as this,” said Octavia. She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that we have to get this bomb off the ship!”
“And where? Down to Canterlot, to explode and hurt whoever is caught in the explosion?” asked Vinyl. “Or do we somehow throw it high enough in the air to not harm anypony?”
Octavia thought it over as fast as she could. The bomb didn’t have any visible timers or means to show off when it was going to detonate – it was just a large metallic box, with multiple coils and wires coming out of it. It was ticking every few seconds, but other than that, there was nothing else interesting about it.
“There’s only one thing to do – we have to disarm it,” said Vinyl, completely seriously. “There’s not enough time to evacuate everyone from the ship, and we have no other options.”
“Disarm it? How?!” asked Octavia. Standing near a ticking time-bomb was stressful enough, but knowing that she was one of two mares who had to deal with the problem? Octavia’s instincts were screaming at her to run up the stairs, out of the hold, and if possible, off the ship. Still, she knew what a ridiculous idea that would be to do, so instead she stayed where she was and used the greatest weapon she possessed – her brain.
Then, Octavia had it. “Vinyl!” she exclaimed. “Your Red Herring! You can use it to- Vinyl?”
“My what now?” asked Vinyl, staring blankly.
“You know, your Red Herring sub-woofer?” Octavia said. “You bought it just the other day, and- and…” Being met with only a blank stare, Octavia rolled her eyes. “Okay, whatever. Look, what do you know about disarming bombs?”
“Uhh…that it should be done by professionals?” Vinyl said.
“Vinyl!”
“Sorry, it’s just – I don’t want to do this, y’know?” Vinyl said nervously.
Octavia sighed. “I know, I know – neither do I. Still, let’s work through this logically. The bomb is ticking, which means that it has some sort of mechanical timer, right? A-and when it stops ticking, that means that the gears have stopped moving, which is when it will explode? So…if we can stop the timer, the bomb won’t explode!”
“What makes you so sure that the timer stopping is when the bomb will explode?” Vinyl asked.
Octavia winced. She hadn’t considered that. “Well, I don’t know that, but do you have any other ideas?”
“There’s a red wire there,” said Vinyl, pointing. “You know what they always say – cut the red wire.”
“I’d rather not base my assumptions on disarming a bloody bomb on what fiction tells us,” said Octavia, scowling. “I say we try and stop the timer. It’s more likely to disarm the bomb than anything else that I can think of.”
Vinyl was about to protest, but she closed her mouth a moment later. There wasn’t enough time to argue, and Octavia’s argument was still solid. “Alright,” said Vinyl, “let’s see what I can do about opening this baby up.” Carefully rotating the bomb so that it was lying on its side, Vinyl found an opening sealed by screws, which she hasty removed using her magic.
The inside of the bomb wasn’t much different to the outside- there were lots of wires connected to pieces of plastic. There were several tubes of mysterious liquid inside which glowed bright neon colours, and some arcane symbols here and there which looked to be enchantments to enhance the power of the bomb. With the bomb only opened from one end, it was difficult to see the entire contents, but Vinyl slowly, cautiously used her magic to pull some wires out as much as she could in order to clear out the inside.
“Can you see the timer?” asked Octavia. She was standing a few steps back from the bomb, and alternatively leaning in closer to see how she could help and leaning back in case the bomb exploded without warning.
“I can see some gears,” said Vinyl, lighting her horn and sticking her head into the bomb case as far as it could go. “I think they’re the source of the ticking.”
“Okay,” said Octavia, taking a deep breath. “That’s the hard part over. Now we just need to jam the gears with something to stop them, and then the bomb will be disarmed. I think.”
“I still think we should just cut the red wire,” muttered Vinyl.
“What was that, Vinyl?”
“I said, ‘What do you see around here that we can use to jam the gears?’” Vinyl replied innocently. Octavia looked around the darkened hold for something small enough to fit into the bomb, but tough enough to hold the gears in place.
“Got it,” she said, grabbing Vinyl’s crossbow.
“What are you – argh! Not Shooty!” exclaimed Vinyl as Octavia broke the shaft in half. She broke that half once more, leaving her with a thick piece of wood which was nevertheless small enough to fit within the bomb.
“Now, let’s hurry this up. Who knows when the bomb will explode?” she said.
Taking the piece of wood in her magical field, Vinyl cautiously levitated it into the bomb, making sure that it touched as little of the internal mechanisms as possible. “There,” she said. “It’s in.”
“Good job, Vinyl. I think that we-” Octavia frowned. “Vinyl, is there a reason why the bomb is still ticking?”
“What? Oh, shit,” Vinyl swore. “It- it mustn’t have been the timer!”
“Oh crap,” breathed Octavia. “Um, we’ll have to, uh – wait, what are you doing?”
“Cutting the red wire! It’s the only option!” said Vinyl, raising the splintered remains of the crossbow.
“Vinyl! You can’t even cut with that!” protested Octavia. But she was a second too late, and somehow the splinters sticking out of the crossbow were sharp enough to cut the red wire. Octavia closed her eyes, expecting an explosion, or at the very least something crippling. Several seconds passed before she realised that neither of these had happened. In fact, the only thing that had happened was the bomb had stopped ticking.
“How-how did you know that would work?” asked Octavia. “It is disarmed, isn’t it?” she asked, poking the bomb tentatively.
“I just spotted this,” said Vinyl, pointing to the cover she had removed to gain access to the interior of the bomb. On it was written quite clearly: TO DISARM BOMB, CUT RED WIRE.
“Well, that was convenient,” muttered Octavia. “Good job regardless, Vinyl!” Octavia wiped some sweat from her brow, idly noticing as she did that she was smiling in relief.
“Yes, good job indeed!” said a new voice, causing Vinyl and Octavia to jump. “I see that you’ve found the bomb,” said Serpent Superior as he descended down the stairs and into the hold. “Do me a favour – carry it up to the deck for me?”
“Sure!” said Vinyl, levitating it into the air. “This is awesome!” she said to Octavia. “He must be getting us to take it onto the deck so that he can praise us in front of everypony for disarming it!”
It took the two ponies several minutes to reach the deck – after all, it was quite a way down to the hold from it, and Vinyl was carrying a dismantled bomb. Soon enough, they arrived there. The CHIELD Agents appeared to have been driven off, and all of COBRA was standing on the deck in a rectangular formation. Looking over the side of the ship, Octavia saw that they were above Canterlot Castle, where Princess Celestia and Luna lived.
“COBRA Troopers! You have all fought valiantly today, somehow driving off CHIELD Agents in spite of our pitiful crossbows!” began Serpent Superior. “I don’t believe that we’ve lost a single pony today! I am sure that many of you questioned, when we set out this morning, what exactly we were doing in Canterlot, and why exactly we needed to be here. But rejoice, for we are now at our destination! We are now ready to execute my master plan!”
“This bomb here,” he said, putting a hoof on top of the dismantled bomb, “will create a magical feedback loop, amplifying the innate magical powers of all ponies who are caught in its field. This will cause the ponies’ magical powers to overload, harming them, with the ponies with greater magical powers receiving more harm than that of ponies with lesser magical powers.
“Now…” Serpent Superior continued, somehow managing to look more sinister whilst wearing a helmet which obscured his features, “of course, this means that if the princesses were to be caught in the blast, their magical potential would cause enough harm to them to kill them! And now that we are here, above their castle, that means that we shall-”
“Well, it’s a good thing that we disarmed the bomb then,” interrupted Octavia. Serpent Superior stopped mid-speech, stunned.
“What?” he asked flatly.
“We disarmed it,” said Octavia.
“Yeah! We found it, and we were worried about it killing ponies, so we disarmed it!” said Vinyl enthusiastically. “Don’t worry about throwing it over the edge – it won’t explode if it hits the ground! As a matter of fact, you don’t have to throw it over the edge, since it won’t explode either way!”
“Good job to us, Vinyl!” said Octavia. She held out a hoof and Vinyl hit it with one of hers.
Serpent Superior had been silent throughout this display, but at this, he exploded. “You disarmed the bomb? You disarmed the bomb?!! Do you know how long I’ve been working on this? Do you know how much research was put in to finding a spell which would amplify magical powers in an infinite loop until the pony whose powers were being amplified dies?!
“You know what? Screw you two! You two are by far the worst troopers COBRA has ever had! I have no idea how you two ended up being chosen by Tomax and Xamot as worthy to join COBRA, but they were clearly wrong!
“Vinyl, you are the dumbest mare I have ever met! You play with weapons as though they’re toys, you do whatever you want with no regards to the consequences, and you act as if everypony around you has nothing better to do than to serve you or to clean up your messes! I’d call you selfish, but I’m not sure if that sums up how absolutely, idiotically egotistical you are!
“And Octavia! You know, your posh personality blinded me at first to your true nature, but now I can see who you are! You’re nothing more than a stuck-up pony who can never take any responsibility for what happens, always blaming somepony else! You think you’re so smart, and so skilled, and so courageous, but you know what? You’re none of those things! You’re just as dumb as Vinyl – probably even more so!
“I hate you two so much!”
With that, Serpent Superior started breathing heavily, having been shouting at full volume during his speech. The absence of his voice left all of COBRA stunned, not sure what to say next. In a final bout of anger, he kicked the bomb hard enough for it to go flying off the ship.
It wasn’t until nearly a minute later that someone dared to break the silence – Vinyl, as it turned out.
“So, uh…” she began, before clearing her throat. “See you Monday at nine?”
THE END