Mission Control

by Samey90


Issue 1: The Mysterious Masked Marvels!

Not far away from the Ponyville hydroelectric dam, there was a tower. Nopony was sure who built it and why; some were saying that the workers building the dam built it in their free time after ingesting way more booze than they should. Others were claiming that it’d actually served some purpose, but was abandoned since then and never used again. For some time, the manufacturers of Wood Chips cereal had their headquarters there, before they moved to their shiny new offices in Manehattan.

Now, in the middle of the night, mysterious noises were filling the tower. Scratching and hoofsteps could be heard as three silhouettes climbed up the stairs...

“Hey! I found a box of cereal! Eww... It expired ten years ago.”

“Button, for Luna’s sake...” the other voice said with a slight lisp. An off-white hoof smacked the forehead of a hooded pony as she looked at the pony called Button.

“What? Sorry, Twist, but I was hungry...” Button muttered.

“We agreed not to use our names!” Twist exclaimed.

“You started it...”

“Nevermind,” the third pony said, seeing that Twist was about to kick Button down the flight of stairs. “We need to start the meeting soon.”

The trio rushed upstairs. On the top of the tower, there was a large room. It seemed that it had been redecorated recently – there was a desk standing by the window, allowing the pony sitting at it to watch the whole town from the distance. There was also a map of Equestria hanging on the wall, with red flags put in various places. Metal lockers were standing by the opposite wall, filled with various weapons and gadgets. Something that looked like a disemboweled mech was lying next to them, surrounded by screwdrivers and wrenches.

Twist took off her cloak, revealing that she was, in fact, an ordinary redhead with glasses, and sat at the desk. Button also got rid of his disguise. His appearance was screaming “nerd!” even more than Twist’s.

The third pony looked almost exactly like Twist, which creeped Button out. Only after a moment he noticed that her mane was in fact darker and that she wasn’t wearing glasses. He thought that he’d seen her before and remembered that she was helping the nurses in Ponyville Hospital.

“Meet my twin sister, Nursery Rhyme,” Twist said.

“Cool,” Button muttered. “Which of you is the evil twin?”

“That’ll be our sister, Bon Bon,” Nursery Rhyme said. Unlike her sister, she had no lisp, but it didn’t make her voice any more pleasant. “She keeps making strange experiments in our basement. It’s kinda annoying when I want to work on my stuff in the middle of the night and she comes to me to borrow sulphuric acid.”

“Also, Button, we’re not evil,” Twist added. “We came here to form a group of masked vigilantes, remember?”

“Sure,” Button said, taking a look at the mech in the corner. Despite his best attempts, he still couldn’t make it work.

“Okay,” Twist muttered, straightening in her seat and looking at Button and Nursery. “As you are aware, there have been a few cases of masked ponies appearing around Ponyville. We need...”

“Excuse me,” Nursery Rhyme said. “If you mean that Mare-Do-Well thing, it was Twilight and her friends being idiots. And the only report about a lunatic flying in a giant spoon comes from Berry Punch who had recently been transported to the hospital with her BAC exceeding–”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, sister,” said Twist dryly. “Who here knows the most about superheroes?”

“We do,” Button replied. “We’ve read all the Power Ponies issues. Including the ones that were around before we were born. And the ones written during the Griffonian War when Power Ponies were fighting the evil griffons and their zebra servants...”

“Those were hard to get, for some reason...” Twist nodded. “Anyway, since we’re the experts, nothing superheroic should be happening in this town without our knowledge.”

“Excuse me,” Nursery Rhyme said. “But I don’t quite get the logic behind it. Maybe because I don’t speak nerdy...”

“You don’t? You’re the youngest nurse I know!” Button exclaimed.

“Okay, but my nerdiness is actually useful,” Nursery replied with a small sigh.

Twist cleared her throat and looked at her sister. “I mean that, to fight crime, superheroes need a few things. Place where they can meet...” She pointed at the room. “Technical support, medical help...”

“So, I’m here to watch you get hurt and prevent you from getting hurt too much?” Nursery asked.

“Not us,” Twist said. “Button and I are technical support. We’ll get some superheroes here later. You, my dear, will have a unique chance to research their skills and maybe some freaky genetic mutations that allow them to be who they are...”

Nursery’s eyes lit up. “You had me at ‘research’ and ‘freaky genetic mutations’,” she said, barely containing excitement. Nursery was a young scientist – which meant that she still didn’t fear to admit that gratuitous dissecting could be fun. She could even spell ‘gratuitous’ correctly.

Twist clapped her hooves and rubbed them together. “Just what I thought...” she muttered. “Button! How are the costumes?”

“I built a powered suit of armour for myself,” Button replied. “But it doesn’t really work. An armoured carriage, however, should be ready soon, if I get those death rays you talked about...”

“You’ll get them once I get the rubber bands.” Twist turned back to Nursery. “What do you think about our base?”

“I have a feeling that we sit here illegally,” Nursery replied.

“Don’t worry,” Twist said. “Soon we’ll have sentry guns here. Nopony will question our right to this place.”

“Now I’m worried,” Nursery deadpanned. “So, you have a base... I guess there’s also some sick bay here?”

“Yes,” Twist replied. “Complete with a lab. We’re funded by the government with this one.”

“How?” Nursery raised her eyebrows. “I mean, I could always use a new lab for my experiments...”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Twist said. “It’s a perfect system. They don’t know what they’re funding and even if they do, they’ll never get to us.”

“Okay,” Nursery muttered. “Can I see the lab?”

“Later.” Twist turned to Button. “The thing is, we have perfect conditions to have our own group of superheroes. But now, we have to find some superheroes who’d want to work with us...”

Button scratched his head. “Hmm... How about an ad in some newspapers? Also, if we’re supported by the government, shouldn’t they help us?”

Twist and Nursery gave Button a weird look. He couldn’t help but wonder how their expressions looked nearly identical, although Twist’s seemed a bit more condescending. Button couldn’t quite put his hoof on it, but what he saw in Nursery’s face worried him even more than Twist thinking he was an idiot.

“Is he serious?” Nursery asked. “You know I only started to research sarcasm and I get many false positive results…”

“You know, it’s actually something between ‘it’s a bad idea’ and ‘it’s the only idea’,” Twist said. “But how can we do that without blowing our cover?”

“Pretend that you need ponies for a freakshow.” Nursery turned to Button. “With his look, everypony will believe that.”

“But still, what’s with us and the government?” Button asked, scratching his head.

“The less you know, the better,” Twist replied. “This is, in fact, just a… branch, I’d say.”

“Branch of what?” Button asked.

Twist smacked Button in the back of his head. “Don’t think about it. Write that ad.”


The sun rose above Ponyville. Tootsie Flute ran out of her little house in the city centre and jumped on the grass. She saw a pony delivering newspapers and rushed to him.

Every day since she’d learned to read, she was buying newspapers. Mostly, she was reading things such as articles about flowers, weather team reports, and obituaries. She was also a fan of crosswords and sudoku, even though she had trouble with the former due to being hopelessly dyslectic.

Today, however, the first thing that attracted her attention was a large advertisement right in the middle of the newspaper.

Do you have a rare skill or talent you think you could utilise to make other ponies’ lives better? Do doctors wonder about strange conditions you have? Have you ever considered getting money for having fun? Seek no longer! We offer professional advice as well as help in starting up! We’re waiting for you in our office in Horseshoe Ring 85, everyday from 8 AM to 3 PM!

PS. We’re totally not a group of superheroes.

Tootsie raised her head from the newspaper. “Bloody hell...” she whispered.