//------------------------------// // Cloudy Investigation // Story: Wonderful Mechanical: Keen Eye and the Wonderbolt Saboteur. // by Monocrome_Monogatari //------------------------------// FSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSH Like a Daring Do temple trap, the ceiling descended, as the hissing, malfunctioning machine pumped out its entire cache of cloud. Within moments, the entire dome was enveloped in a thick miasma of poorly packed clouds. Despite the battle dome being a highly trafficked area. Despite no one unexpected approaching the machines. Despite dozens of eyes seated here regularly Despite all this, an accident still happened. Perfect! I grasped the ponies on each side of me and huddled them in, whispering in their ears. “Alright, our window of time is small, so listen up.” “Window of time for what?” Swift asked. “Investigating!” The crowd was starting to move, leaving their seats, searching for the exit, looking for the machine, or wordlessly volunteering to contain the mess of cloud. “Listen, the audience is moving about so now’s our chance! Hide near the ceiling before Silver blows his whistle!” Rivet opened his mouth “Wha—“ “There’s no time!” I grabbed him with both hooves and flung him upwards, sending his unsurprisingly yet unnervingly light body bouncing between tufts of cloud. “Rivet!” Swift reflexively jumped to follow him, making sure to clock my face with his back hoof on the way up. “Owww…” I rubbed my nose as I followed them, straining my wings as I pushed through the viscous mass of clouds. FWEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEE! Below, Silver emptied his lungs into his whistle, bringing the motion of the crowd, the noise of their chattering, and seemingly the air itself, to a harsh standstill. “Everypony clear out!” He yelled. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but on the off chance that being hit with a cloud knocked what little good sense you have left out of your brains, sparring’s over! That means you Squall!” “Hggg… Fine!” Squall yelled back. “Again? Seriously?” Rainbow Dash groaned. Paying no heed to the grumbling of the recruits, Silver continued. “If you can’t find your way out, first, your special awareness is shameful! Second, follow the sound of my whistle! Once every pony is out, line up to volunteer for cleanup!” He then blew short, sharp notes into his whistle, acting as a beacon in the mist. I reached the top layer of the dome just in time to see Rivet’s entire front half stuck in a particularly dense patch of cloud, his back legs kicking about uselessly. I was able to capture this moment seconds before Swift pulled him out. Maybe the world isn’t so cruel… I bit down on my front hoof in a futile attempt to silence my laughter, earning a glare from both Rivet and Swift as they dislodged. “Wha—“ “Shhhhhh!” I hushed Swift, putting my hoof up against his lips. He slapped my hoof away. “Like I was saying,” he whispered harshly, “What the hell are you doing? How did you know Silver was going to blow his whistle? Why are we hiding here? What’s going on?” “Oh Swift Justice…” I pat his head, earning another slap to my hoof. “The Silver question is easy. He needed a way to get everypony’s attention and lead them out of the room, without using sight. His whistle was the closest thing that could outshine his voice, ergo…” I shook my head. “As for why we’re here… tell me Swift, what do you see?” Swift Justice stared at me blankly. “Clouds.” He said. “And an idiot.” “Really?” I said. “Because from here, I see clouds, an engineer on probation, a guest with no real authority, and an idiot. In other words, three ponies who probably won’t be able to get a close look once cleanup starts. If we want to see if it was sabotage, now’s our time to do it.” Rivet huffed. “That doesn’t explain why you had to throw me…” “Well, for one, throwing you got all three of us up here quickly.” I said. “I didn’t have to do any convincing.” “And two?” Rivet asked. “For two, it was funny.” “…” Rivet stares at me for a moment before sighing. “Do you want me to throw him for you?” Swift said. “No…knowing him, he’d just laugh it off.” “What can I say? I’m a masochist. Crashin’ is a mare after my own heart.” I shrug, sending a wave of shudders through my two companions. “Too much information…” Rivet said, reflexively hiding his face out of embarrassment again. “Keen do…do you actually have a plan here?” He sighed "I don't want to get in more trouble right now." “Well, the machine stopped hissing, so it probably finished dumping it’s load—“ Rivet coughed “Could you please describe it some other way?” “It finished spurting out its white—“ “Nevermind!” “Anyways, I couldn’t see any wires running across the walls or on the floor, so whatever connects the machines and the panel should be underground. Is that correct?” Rivet nodded at this. “It looks like it would be painfully difficult to get underneath the floor…” “You don’t know the half of it.” Rivet said. “Last year, a leak caused some wires to short out. It took hours to get under there…” “Good.” I nodded “…It’s good that we had to waste hours working?” “Yes, but it’s good for another reason. IF this is deliberate, then the work was done above ground, either at the machine or the controls. Are the panel’s control’s intuitive?” Rivet nods. “Alright. Rivet, Have Swift fly you through the clouds to the machine and take a quick glance, see if you can tell what went wrong. Swift, after that, help Rivet exit the battle dome unnoticed. If you are noticed, tell them that Rivet got stuck and you were pulling him out. It’s not exactly a lie, after all…” They both growled at that. “…After that, volunteer yourself for the cleanup crew and keep an eye out for anything suspicious.” “Wait what?” at the last order, Swift did a double take toward me. “Why do I have to volunteer? We were going to lift after this. Can’t you do it?” “Excuse me, Swift? Lifting?” I grabbed Rivet held him like a plush toy. “Do you honestly have so little care for Rivet?” “Please let go of me.” I gripped onto him harder. “Here he is, in his time of need, desperate for assistance, and you’re willing to leave it all up to an incompetent weirdo like me? while you go gallivanting off with your comrades to lift, something you can do any day?” “Please let go of me.” I pulled him up and pushed his cheek against my cheek. “Can you honestly look at this face and tell me that lifting is more important that saving his job? And incidentally, the Wonderbolts?” “Please let go of me!” “Ugh, fine” Swift said, as he pulled my chew toy out of my grip. “It’s not like I’m not already in peak condition.” He said, flexing his bicep. “Yeah…Peek condition” I said, running my eyes across the muscle. “Peak with an A, weirdo.” He said, flicking my forehead. “No fair, how did you even know?” I said, rubbing my head. “You’re not exactly subtle…” Rivet said, hiding his face in embarrassment yet again. I shrugged it off “Besides, they probably won’t let the nameless guest and the forced vacationer volunteer. You’re kind of my only option.” “Um… that’s is all well and good, but…” Rivet rotated, trying to look through the mess “I’m not sure where the machine is anymore.” His gaze hardened a bit when it returned to me “I kind of lost track of it when I was spinning.” “Oh, that won’t be a problem” I said, patting Rivet on the head. “I can keep my bearings in a tornado.” “Then where is it?” “It’s…” my hoof moved from his head to his shoulder “right…” my grip on his leg tightened, “over…” Rivet’s eyes widened with my smile, as he realized what was happening. I turned my body for the wind-up… “There!” And there’s the pitch! Rivet went flying! “Ah--!” Biting his lip to silence his cry, Swift immediately turned kicked off of my gut to launch himself after Rivet. Twump! “Oof…” Even caught by cloud, I had to take a moment to find my bearing, and let my lungs refill with air. C’mon Keen, shake it off. Silver’s whistle stopped blowing, meaning he thinks the place has been cleared out. You only have a couple of minutes left before cleanup starts. Get moving. I pushed, ducked, weaved, and dug through the clouds toward the back of the room, in the direction of the control panel. Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, my plans to investigate the controls were derailed. Against all expectation, the area wasn’t completely buried in clouds, and the panel had not been abandoned in Silver’s evacuation. Instead, it was surrounded by a solidified dome of cloud. When I poked my head through the top, I saw why. The loose mass had been haphazardly pushed out of the way, accidentally compressing it into a shell. In the center of that shell was a purple unicorn stallion with a black spiral quaffed mane, who held himself shaking like a wound up spring. …which, incidentally, was his cutie mark. His eyes were twitching, his teeth were clattering, his ears were spinning and his body was shaking, as he leaned over the controls, alternating between rapidly pressing what seemed to be an on/off switch and repeatedly sending sliders, which seem to control the strength of the machines, up and down the bottom and top of the console. “Oh Celestia, oh Luna, oh Cadenza, oh Sparkle, oh Nightmare, oh Chrysalis, oh Sombra, oh Discord, oh no, oh man, oh gods, oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit….” He was clearly completely out of it, caught up in a maelstrom of anxiety. He must be. If he wasn’t, he would have known better than to mention a name like that at a time like this… “Clockwise!” I would say ‘Speak of the demon’, but wrong monster Silver’s voice pierced through the clouds like water through tissue. “Clockwise!” “Hiiiiiiii!” His gasping shriek reaching an impressive falsetto, he began messing with the controls even faster, his dilated repeatedly pupils pacing back and forth between the switches and the direction of Silver’s voice. As Silver Lining finally found his way near Clockwise’s line of sight, I patched up most of the hole I poked my head through and peeked in on the unfolding drama. Silver’s entry can’t be described with any words as brutal as “breaking through”. He didn’t push the clouds aside and force open an entrance with his hooves. He simply walked through, sliding across the boundary as if it wasn’t there, as if, in the face of his unflappable composure, the clouds pushed themselves out of his path making way for his unblinking glare. Clockwise was so wound up, spinning in the gears of his panic attack, that he looked up from the control panel several times before his conscious mind was aware of Silver’s presence. “Ah!” like the spring on his rump, he bounced backwards, landing on all fours. “Uh…uh…” His eyes rapidly ran from corner to corner, like cornered prey looking for an exit, before stiffening his posture like lightning had run through him “SIR!” He yelled, saluting so overenthusiastically that his hoof hit his forehead with an audible thump. Foregoing the formal verbal dressing down, Silver simply stared at the falling apart stallion. “Er…um…” His posture remained unchanged as he struggled to maintain eye contact, his voice breaking on the vowels like a cold mid-puberty. “N-n-nice weather we’re having, Sir?” Silver’s eyebrows dropped to a straight line as he looked from the field of white to the splotch of shaking purple. “Uh…Uh…Iiit’s not as bad as it looks sir? I can explain?” Silver’s right eyebrow rose… “I…Uh…I mean it IS as bad as it looks? But… I mean…it…isn’t my fault?” …and immediately fell with the left into an angry downward arrow, causing clockwise to flinch. “Ah! I mean it is my fault! It is my fault! I-I-I-I just don’t know what happened?” He winced with the end of his line. Finally with room to get a word in edgewise, Silver opened and closed his mouth a couple times before settling on a single stern syllable. “…What?” My thoughts exactly. Clockwise’s shivering was his only response. “You were.” He steps forward. “Right here.” Steps forward “In front of the controls.” Steps forward “And you don’t know what happened?” They’re nose to nose now. “Care to explain?” As if he’s staring down a cockatrice, Clockwise refuses to open his eyes. “Th-The thing is, I k-kinda, sorta, accidentally fell asleep?” With that answer, all sense was blown away, and a deafening silence flooded the blast radius. Asleep? He was asleep?! The reason that the operator looked so bored back then was because he was dozing off?! Judging from the expression on Silver’s face, similar thoughts were bubbling in his head. In the time it took for Silver’s mind to make sense of the situation, Clockwise had completely crumpled to the floor. Reality came crashing back in as Silver slowly inhaled, readying his lungs to unleash a ballast of berating… “Meep!” …Only to slowly exhale at the sight of his target, who had been browbeat, literally beaten down by his brows, moments ago. “Just…” He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose “Just get to the exit. Find you way somehow. I’ll deal with you later.” “Yes si--“ He rushed out so quickly we couldn’t fully hear his two syllable sentence. “Every single time…” Silver muttered, as he went to inspect the control panel himself. I think I’ve seen enough…that stallion already ruined any chances of seeing the state of the panel at the moment of the accident. It appeared he was awoken by the machine malfunctioning, and in a panic desperately tried to undo it, not knowing it already let go of its whole payload, probably accidentally making it worse. Still… Is that what really happened? Was he connected to the cause? Did he purposefully do it, then acted that way to make it look like an accident? Did he actually sleep, and unconsciously leaned on a slider on the panel? Did he sleep, and some pony nearby used that chance to quickly mess with the sliders? Was he connected at all, or was he just the next patsy for the saboteur now that Rivet’s out of the way? I need more information. I hope Rivet and Swift are done with their half of the search… Lost in thought, I quietly drifted toward the exit-- Fwoosh! …Only for Silver to burst through the shell of clouds and stop right in front of me. “Now that he’s out of the way…” Silver said. “What exactly were you doing there?”