//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: Falling Right Out of the Sky // Story: True Story // by Eyeswirl the Weirded //------------------------------// Wind howled and explosions rattled as the runaway airship, the E.S. Collateral Damage, roared out of control through the skies. On its bow stood Blueblood in a white tuxedo, faintly marred by smoke and a few burns as he looked down at Rarity, whose black, shiny catsuit was similarly damaged, in addition to a few rips in places that might make concerned parents raise an eyebrow. "So," spat Rarity as she glared at her former partner, "this is how it ends, after all we've been through?! After all the criminals we've stopped together?!" Blueblood shrugged. "Nothing personal, my dear, but the agency and I just don't see eye-to-eye anymore. We've been in the Special Operative Unicorn Patrol together for years, but now?" He levitated the stolen intel from his jacket pocket, smirking as he floated it where Rarity could see. "Let's just say I got a better offer." Rarity's eyes widened as she writhed in almost provocative poses on the floor of the airship. Because of her injuries, of course. "It was you! You sabotaged the operation! You rigged the ship to explode, starting with the least vital components and working its way up to ensure that the ship as a whole actually remains quite stable until it crashes into something in climactic and suspenseful fashion! You betrayed S.O.U.P. to work for those fiends at S.A.L.A.D. instead!" He threw his head back in a manner that would make his mane billow around his handsome face, a move that was most certainly not just going to be used to sell more posters to fangirls, and laughed evilly. "Yes, and it is I who will now escape this burning, insurvivable-and-about-to-crash airship in this jetpack!" He then activated a jetpack that burst out of his tuxedo-jacket, taking off into the skies as Rarity cursed the betrayer's name by dramatically shouting it to the heavens. Agent Rarity would recover from the crash, but she was unable to return to service and had to retire early, running a fashion boutique as a cover for doing agency deskwork during the day. Years of working for Celestia's secret service left her rich enough to not need to worry about making any actual money with her shop, but she never forgot, nor forgave, the stallion that ended the most successful partnership in the history of S.O.U.P.! --- Snips and Snails concluded their tale in unison. "And that's how it happened." "No," deadpanned Rumble, who remembered what he'd told Dinky, but just couldn't stop himself, "no to all of that. They are not secret agents, Rarity was not maimed in an explosion that she somehow survived, Blueblood would not live in the same town as her if he'd betrayed her and left her for dead, and what you just described was the exact plot of the newest spy flick they're running in the cinema." He paused, brushing a hoof against his chin. "Though, I guess Blueblood and Rarity do look a lot like the actors that play Patrician and Scarcity, respectively." There may have been further discussion of this exercise in plagiarism, but recess came to an end with the ringing of the school bell. "Back inside, everypony," called Cheerilee, standing by the door. In addition to the usual plaintive noises made by foals that had to go to class, she determined the sounds coming from the basement to mean Pinkie Pie was down there again. Giving somepony free reign of the presses was nothing to take lightly, but neither was saying 'no' to that face. That Cheerilee was occasionally thanked with gifts of free pastry didn't hurt, either. Well, other than my B.M.I., but it's not like I have a stallion in my life anyway, right? ...Did that actually make it better, or worse? She did a pretty good job of staying in shape, but- "Um, Miss Cheerilee? You're doing that grown-up staring into space thing again." Snapping to attention, she refrained from looking Sweetie Belle in the eye. "Yes, yes I am, thank you." "No problem, my sister was doing that this morning!" --- Down in the basement, Pinkie had just finished up the flyers, which she carried in a stack on her back. Pinkie was no slow-poke, but she knew there were faster ways of passing things out to a whole town than going around and giving one to everypony one by one. She'd gotten a lot of mass-invitations sent out by asking a pegasus for help before, so off to the weather office she went! --- Huh, thought Pinkie when she arrived to a quiet office, where is everypony? She glanced around in search of any of her usual flying friends that helped her pass things out, but only saw one pony dozily slouching on a desk with a pile of neatly-stacked papers on it, not even noticing that Pinkie had come in. She beamed. "Hi!" Lightning Dust jumped with a start, but managed to restrain her reaction enough to not flap her wings and send the forms she'd filled out all over the office. She looked up at the party pony with a knack for catching her off-guard, most of all with that surprise Sorry It Took So Long To Throw You This Welcome Party party last week. "Pinkie Pie," she muttered, "you need something?" "Yes, actually! I've been trying to get everypony to forget all about the thing that happened between Bluie and Rarity a long time ago, but it's been super-super hard! That's why I came up with-" she hopped her hind legs to flip the flyers from her back to the desk in a perfect arc like a stack of cards, "-these to help! Do you think you could spread these around town for me, please? I usually ask Raindrops or Rainbow because they have 'Rain' right there in their names, but I really just need somepony with wings to fly the flyers around. I'd do it, but I don't have wings, but wouldn't it be a surprise if I did?" She giggle-snorted. "Ooh, you know what else is a surprise? Flies! Flies fly in the skies when fliers fly flyers through the air, so if you flew with your mouth open, you might catch a few and be a fly-ing flier flying flyers!" It was for the best that all Lightning really heard was what she'd been hearing for the last couple days; 'BluieBlueblood and Rarity.' She didn't care about their little spat, and she didn't care what happened between them. Not one tiny bit. That was actually why she was alone in the office now; everypony else had been standing around gossiping like housewives when she arrived, and since she was the only one not interested in all that, she somehow got fast-talked into doing the day's paperwork while the rest took shifts working the clouds together. It's all your fault, Thunderlane! Somehow! With how often she ended up helping him around here, it really might have been his fault. She wasn't even supposed to be an office pony, and more annoying was the fact that she'd finished up so soon, leaving her to sit in the office. Bored. This was the only reason she looked at Pinkie's flyers. "And, you want me to... what?" "Scatter 'em around Ponyville, silly, just like with the big race a while ago! I know you'd be good at it because you did a super-good job in the race even with all the rain and lightning and CRACK-BOOOM!! and the part where you and Dashie actually stopped to look for Thunderlane, which kind of messed up the whole 'race' thing, but it was still really fun to watch!" "Um. Why?" "Because it was tense and exciting and served as a great piece in the narrative for a turning point in a stallion's life, along with friends old and new!" "No, I meant the-" Blink. "Wait, what?" "Scatter 'em around Ponyville, silly, just like with the big-" Lightning's eye twitched. "No, dammit, w-why, I'm going back to 'why' in regard to spreading the flyers around town!" "Because it'll help get everypony to forget all about the events of another piece in the narrative for a turning point in another stallion's life, along with friends old and new!" The two held each others' gazes, Pinkie doing so with a big, bright, oblivious smile. Lightning Dust started to sweat, because she couldn't tell if Pinkie was talking in circles, genuinely unhinged, or just messing with her, or even being completely sincere! She was disappointed at herself for wishing she'd been talking to Cloud Kicker, who was so much easier to read. Speaking of reading, she used the flyers as an excuse to break the stare. Looking them over, she wasn't sure how much they would help. "Uhh... You sure you want to spread these all over town? I mean, I guess it might work if-" "Great," chirped Pinkie as she turned toward the door, "thanks so much for the help, Dusty! I just knew I could count on you, gotta go now, seeya later, byeeeee!" Rather than calling out to clear up that she hadn't necessarily agreed and thought changes to the flyers might be in order, Lightning reacted out of habit. Accursed, drilled-into-her-head habit. "Don't call me that!!" Pinkie was gone. The office was quiet again, and now Lightning Dust was left with the stack of flyers and the awareness that Pinkie was expecting her to scatter them through town for her, exactly as they were. It was an easy thing to fix, she figured, just cross out the bottom line (on each and every sheet...) and it might actually work, or at least take a lot of ponies' minds off the big topic of the moment. Maybe. Of course, altering the flyers would kind of be going behind Pinkie's back, wouldn't it? Lightning Doesn't Need A Stupid Middle Nickname Dust feared very few ponies, but Pinkie Pie? She was unsettling. It was her that organized the big race, sponsored by registered charity organizations with representatives and merchant stalls and everything, what, overnight? How would she feel if Lightning made changes to her plan without telling her? If nothing else, Pinkie had to be some kind of smart to pull off the kind of networking she did, so maybe it would actually work just as she set it? That was the goal here, right? End the rumors, which Lightning did not care about at all, just by tossing some flyers around town like she was asked? And, if the effort were to not work anyway, it'd be no fault of hers, she'd have no risk of Pinkie being angry with her, and the rumors would probably just keep up for a while, then burn up on their own time, right? She picked up the flyers. --- Going over highlighted sections of a Magical Theory textbook, Prince noticed his friend and bodyguard out of the corner of his eye; staring out the window with a little smile on his face. He got up to look through the same window. "...Why is it raining paper?" Shining chuckled. "I have no idea, but it reminds me of the first time my little sister drank coffee at the library. Did I ever tell you that sto-" He glanced over his shoulder to find that, much like Fire Strike, Blueblood had not been interested in tales of Twilight as he walked outside to look at one of the papers. Hear ye, hear ye! I've always wanted to say that! Anyway, some months ago, we in our humble town of Ponyville got a visit from Princess Celestia herself on the day of the Summer Sun Celebration. How neat is that?! A lot of stuff happened that day, and some of it was really super interesting! Worth talking about, even! First, the Apple Family had one of their Apple Family Reunions right over at Sweet Apple Acres! There were Apples, apples, and Apples eating apples! But no apples eating Apples or Apples eating Apples, though I'm kinda wondering about apples eating apples if they're baked into the same pie. You could talk about that for HOURS! Next, the Wonderbolts dropped by! They're pretty cool, right? One of them even got turned to stone, but more on that later! Then, our very own Rainbow Dash cleared the sky in one sixth of a minute! That's a really short time, so if you weren't looking at the sky when it happened, it might be like one of those trippy before-after pictures at a circus where you're not sure if what you're looking at now is the same as what it was just a second ago but you could swear something's different now that you're all focused on it, but you just can't be sure because you weren't really paying attention until it changed so the details are fuzzy in your brain and trying to remember just makes it blurrier and blurrier AND THEN THE CLOWN WITH THE CHAINSAW POPS UP BEHIND YOU!! It's way cool! Then there was the scary part with Nightmare Moon turning ponies to stone and going all "Hahahahahahaha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA" like turning ponies to stone was a really funny joke or something! Meanie. But that totally happened! Right here in our own town! Speaking of Ponyville, this is the town where Annual Pie Day originated! It hasn't been a year since then yet, but it'll totally be a thing! Every year! Forever! FOR-EV-URRRR...! And we got a Love Guru who used to be a Wonderbolt, which is totally interesting! And hey, remember that big race a while ago, where Thunderlane turned all thundery, but Lightning Dust didn't go all lightningy? I guess that kinda could have worked the same way backwards, but not like with their names, because Thunderlane turning into a lane and Lightning Dust turning into dust would be really weird and really morbid, respectively, super dark for a foals' charity event! Rainbow Dash was rainbowy, but she doesn't really dash all that much, because she usually just flies places! Good thing she didn't turn into a dash, because then she'd be disappear the second she stopped, or worse, be used as punctuation! That's WAY more interesting than something happening between Prince Blueblood and Rarity Belle, right?! Blueblood facehoofed.