//------------------------------//
// Why Sisters Can't Have Nice Things 
// Story: The Campaign for Extra Trixie, and other unlikely experiments 
// by Impossible Numbers 
//------------------------------//

"Flitter? FLITTER!"

The pegasus dropped her comic at once and slipped off the bed in shock. From somewhere below, through the cloud-tiled floor of the Cloudsdale apartment, a voice deeper than hers called out again.

"Flitter, where are you? Come here a minute!"

Flitter felt the dread creeping upon her. She was found out, and she knew it. Cloudchaser's voice didn't just have an edge; it had an Edge.

Flitter righted herself and adjusted the bow on her lank hair. The incriminating comic lay scattered on the floor beside her, its loose and ageing pages showing off miniature pictures of Daring Do and a sabre-toothed cat. Gently, she picked it up between her teeth and lifted up a corner of the blanket around her bed. It was a lousy hiding place, but then Flitter did live in a bed chamber with little furniture, and in any case she'd think of somewhere else to hide it later.

She dropped the blanket and peered over the corner of the bed. Everything in the room was blue. Light blue, dark blue, aquamarine, cerulean, or blue so pale it was near-white: the quilt and the pillow, floor, chest of drawers, and the archway with its shimmering veil were all of the same hue. Even Flitter's own fur seemed to be blending in with the quilt as she placed her hooves over the folds.

One of her ears strained to hear. Downstairs, Cloudchaser was knocking over ornaments and making them rattle against each other. Sometimes, an exasperated "tsk" or a groan would signal that whatever Cloudchaser was looking for, it was still eluding her. It even suggested that the lost thing was doing it deliberately to wind her up. Another crash was followed by something heavy-sounding falling over, probably a cupboard.

She's definitely in a bad mood, Flitter thought nervously. For a few reckless moments, Flitter hovered between speaking and keeping quiet. Maybe, if she pretended she wasn't here, Cloudchaser would assume she'd flown out. Flitter peered around at the flapping curtains either side of the porthole. Nopony would know if she slipped out, would they?

Today was not her lucky day. Cloudchaser shouted her name again, and Flitter folded her wings. She steeled herself. It was not going to help to look defiant or annoyed, so she quickly practised her remorseful face against the bedside mirror. A little simpering, she said critically, but it'll have to do. There was barely a rustle as she pushed the veil aside.

When the cloud platform drifted up the chute of its own accord, she hopped from the bed chamber's archway onto it, and of its own accord the platform drifted down. She loved these things. They went up and down continuously, and if you could get several in a row, you could practice hopping from one to the other at the right time, wings folded. It wasn't practice for anything, as she'd patiently explained to her sister. Just practice generally. The cloud went past another veiled archway, and she jumped off before the cloud sunk down to another level. 

Cloudchaser was at the far end of the room. She had her back to Flitter and was now lifting plants out of their plant pots to peer inside. Nearly every cupboard and drawer in the circular room was open, and various objects were strewn all over the floor.

"No wonder you lose stuff," said Flitter. "This place is a dump. Anything could be lost under all this mess."

"Ah, there you are, sis. Took your time." Cloudchaser turned around to face her. She had the expression most ponies reserved for news of international crises. "You haven't seen a yellow lightning ball around, have you?"

"Lightning ball?" Flitter cocked her head. Just like we rehearsed, ponies.

"Yeah. It's the size of a bowling ball" - Cloudchaser drew a circle in midair with her hooves, as though Flitter didn't know what size a bowling ball was - "and it glows like its on fire, but you don't burn if you touch it. I seriously need it right now."

"Uh oh," Flitter whispered. Aloud she said, "Is it... important?"

"Important? It was a Class II Solar Yellowsphere! You don't get those just anywhere, you know! Look! This is what I'm talking about." She bit a magazine from the rubble and threw it over to her sister, who stepped back to let it hit the ground. The page showed what looked like lightning that had been curled into a sphere. Arcs and tendrils rose off of it.

While Cloudchaser turned back to uprooting the plant, Flitter fought to hide any twinge on her own face that would betray her. Keep that poker face, she thought.

A small, placating smile rose on her lips. "Well, uh..." she said, pausing only to swallow, "it's not like you need it right now, is it?"

Cloudchaser looked at her as though her sister's head had spun on its neck. "Flitter, get your hooves back on the clouds! Rainbow Dash is waiting outside with hers, and she's challenged me right now to a duel! I can't go back out there and say 'Oops, sorry, I don't seem to have it on me right now, but I have it, I promise', now can I?"

"A duel?"

"Yeah! Don't tell me you've never heard of Lightning Balls? I have to show you sometime."

"Is it like conkers?" said Flitter, who spent more time on the ground than her sister.

"Yeah, except the conkers are specially condensed spheres of electrostatic cloud matter that explode when you hit them."

As if on cue, a monstrous arc of light sliced through the window and scorched a black mark on the ceiling. Flitter nearly jumped back onto the cloud platform in shock.

Cloudchaser surveyed her charred ceiling with disinterest. Then she hurried over to a window and peered out. Curious, Flitter went to look too.

On the clouds outside, two pegasi were facing each other, both with small glowing orbs of their own. A bystander blew a whistle. At once, both pegasi spun round and bucked their spheres. The light exploded. When the flash vanished, one of the orbs scattered and blew into tiny arcs of lightning, which themselves flashed out of existence. The loser stared at the remains in disbelief.

The winner looked up at the window. "Hey, Cloudchaser! Got your Solar Yellowsphere yet?"

"Be right with you, Rainbow Dash!" Cloudchaser shouted back. She was rather good at feigning nonchalance even when shouting. "You just keep that Red Supergiant ticking over."

When both sisters turned back into the room, however, Cloudchaser groaned. "She is not going to let me forget this if I don't find that thing. It was bad enough when she took out my Protostar 360, but at least I was just starting out. And now everypony's talking about it. They'll know about this before sunset."

A twinge of guilt fluttered in Flitter's belly. She looked around her sister's room. "But what are you going to do if you can't find it?" she asked. "Hypothetically."

She's giving me a funny look! She knows what I did! Flitter strained to keep her face as blank as possible. This was no time to break cover.

Cloudchaser gave a helpless shrug with her wings, and merely growled in exasperation. "Guess I'll just have to face the music. If the stupid thing doesn't turn up."

"Maybe I can help you find it?" She glanced around what was left of the room. "In case you overlooked it?"

"Overlooked it? It's a shining, humming orb of electricity nearly as big as my head. Tell me how I could overlook that."

She's on to me!

"Well, suppose hypothetically," said Flitter in a rush, "you just didn't notice it, and we couldn't find it because it wasn't in here, and it was somewhere else. And supposing somepony else found it, and took it back to the weather factory, only they didn't know what it was because it looked so weird, and maybe they didn't realize it was a lightning ball, and just thought it was some part of a lightning cloud that somepony left lying around, and suppose that pony gave it back, and then came home, and only later wondered why her sister was still looking for it, and supposing she went out of the way while her sister looked for it, and then when her sister asked her where it was and told her what it was, and she realized her mistake... supposing that was true, hypothetically?"

Uh oh, she thought, blushing and smiling weakly. Cloudchaser was staring at her. I don't think that accidental confession worked. At least I was honest, though. Right?

Cloudchaser sighed into her hoof. "Tell me you didn't -"

"I did," Flitter said helplessly. "But I thought I was helping! Honest! You know Mister Tuba gets upset if he finds weather stuff missing."

"Oh, Flitter, what am I going to do with you?" Cloudchaser knocked a white helmet off one of the piles of junk.

"I don't know. Take me to the Weather Committee this morning?"

"You don't need me to take you. You're old enough to go yourself."

"But I prefer going with you. Anyway, I'm younger than you."

"By about four minutes. That hardly counts."

"Doesn't it?" Flitter raised an eyebrow. "But whenever we argue about something, you always say -"

"That's different. Four extra minutes of experience counts for a lot when you're the older sister." Cloudchaser ambled over to the archway. "Come on, before Mister Tuba -"

There was a brief burst of static, and somewhere in a distance, a gruff voice spoke through a megaphone.

"The weekly Weather Committee will be meeting up within five minutes to discuss the important issues of the day. We expect all weather ponies to be present for the meeting, and DON'T BE LATE LIKE LAST TIME, YER HEAR ME!? ANY PEGASUS WHO TURNS UP ONE SECOND AFTER THE START WILL BE COURT MARTIALLED AND UP AGAINST THE WALL BEFORE BREAKFAST COOLS! Remember, every employee helps. Chow for now."

A click cut off the megaphone. Both sisters turned for the archway.

"Looks like Mister Tuba's in a good mood," said Flitter cheerfully.

"That pony's got delusions of grandeur," said Cloudchaser. "He thinks he's still in the Royal Guard."

"Well, he has been in the war. He's just brought up like that. Anyway, I think he deserves a little slack if he's just been promoted." The cloud platform rose up. Both of them hopped onto it and waited for it to rise up to the top before jumping off and through the veil.

"He hasn't been in a war. That was a food fight between the Royal Guard and the Griffonstone Regiment."

"He's still got the black eye from the satsuma," Flitter said in a hushed voice.

"Yeah. Not a grenade, Flitter. A satsuma."

"It wasn't so funny when he took the pin out."

Flitter scowled and wandered over to the bookshelf. She pretended not to see Cloudchaser roll her eyes, and she flexed the comic's pages with her dexterous wings.

"You're not seriously reading that Do-Gooder stuff again?" said Cloudchaser. She smoothed back her spiked fringe to stop the locks poking into her pupils. "You know it's just a cheap Daring Do spin-off?"

"So what if I am? And it is not 'just' a spin-off!" Flitter pushed the second veil aside to let her sister through first. Cloudchaser barely broke stride, as though she knew it was going to happen on time. Flitter growled at this; even if it was a cloth they could have just barged through anyway, some gratitude wouldn't go amiss.

"By definition, a spin-off is 'just' a spin-off. It can't be as good as the original. That's like saying a chunk of lightning cloud strikes as well as the whole one. Trust me, you won't get anything worthwhile out of those."

"Oh, that shows how much you know. You don't read them; you don't have a clue what you're talking about."

Flitter breathed a sigh of relief. The distractions had worked. Cloudchaser wasn't mad at her!

"And you still owe me a lightning ball." Cloudchaser shook her head as they descended to the lower foyer. "Heaven knows what you were thinking when you took my Solar Yellowsphere to the factory."

"Oh, fine then!"

Flitter threw down the comic, spun around, and launched herself through the veil, catching Cloudchaser by surprise. The muttering vanished, followed by some crashing and thudding below. After a minute, wing beats came back and Flitter flapped through the veil, dangling a bag of bits from her teeth. She dumped it at Cloudchaser's hooves.

"That should get you a new one." She glared out from under her lank forelock. "Satisfied?"

"No! Rainbow's still outside! What good does it do me to get a new ball after work when I need it tout de suite?"

Flitter threw her hooves up to the ceiling. "GAH! There's just no pleasing you, is there? OK, fine."

"Flitter, where're you going?"

The wings shot back through the two veils and punched through the rising cloud platform, which burst into wisps and faded away. More muttering muffled by the layers of clouds, more crashing and thudding below, and more wing beats passed before Flitter burst into the cloudy room.

Cloudchaser yelled in shock and covered her eyes against the blast of darkness sucking at her retinas. Something like a one-ton dumbbell crashed into the ground, making her jump like a penny on a see-saw.

"Fine!" said Flitter as she strolled past. "Here's my Hypermassive Galactic Centre Black Hole. Go knock Rainbow's tiny red dot into oblivion already! I wanna get to work, and I'm not going until you do! Satisfied now?"

Cloudchaser didn't move until Flitter turned around from the entrance and yelled at her. She almost jumped out of her own skin.

"But... But..." Cloudchaser gestured to the mass of black at her hooves. "Where the hay did you even get this? There are only three in the whole of Equestria!"

Flitter's face turned to stone, and she replied; "I won it in one of those 'worthless' spin-off comics. They had a short story competition last month, and that was the top prize. Now, can we go?"