//------------------------------//
// Prologue, Friendship and War; part 3: Mann Brothers' Corporation 
// Story: Snipershy 
// by WarmenBright - SniperShy 
//------------------------------//

Prologue: Friendship and War, part 3: Mann Brothers Corporation.

Snowdrop was actually capable of a decent flight after all, despite she had been following me in a... insecure way, I'd say.
We arrived at my shed at the 3rd Lunar; after we knocked at the door Angel opened up with a look of apprehension directed at me; his anger immediately turned into surprise though, after he brought his eyes over the little filly next to me. He then made an interrogative squeek, tilting his head to the side and looking back at me.
"She is Snowdrop. I hope this won't bother you, but she needs me... sorry, she needs us to let her stay here for a bit. If that's okay with you, that is" The bunny made a tired whiff in response, and waved his paw listlessly back and forth as he opened the wooden door letting us in , before getting back to bed.
"Thank you, Angel; Really, thank you!" I thanked the bunny "Back to you, little filly, come inside, please, so I can show you where you'll be sleeping" I then said to Snowdrop, showing her the way in to the shed.
"Speaking of which, do you mind me asking you something? If you want to, that is" I gently asked her while we were heading to the stairs, through the entrance.
"What is it, Fluttershy?"
"Uhm, I've been noticing that your eyes are... I mean, they look a little bit of... unique, and pretty1. I hope not to sound mean asking you about them" I said.
"It could be because I am blind since birth, Fluttershy" my eyes suddenly widened, as my sight dashed to the filly next to me.
"WHAT?" I replied, really worried for her "How come that you could follow me so well during the flight here then?"
"I don't need eyes to see" she then said "My mum taught me to make my wings vibrate to 'feel' the environment around me" she explained in a relaxed tone, before her look darkened again "But then we went to visit Canterlot and..." big tears started falling from her azure eyes again, as she started sobbing.
"Oh, nonono, you poor thing..." I dashed to hug her again, folding my wings around her shoulders to warm her up a little "Shh, it's all okay now... I am here to help you" I whisphered to her ear to console her, eventually succeeding in my intent.
"Thank you, Fluttershy" she hugged me back, drying her wet cheeks on my fur.
"Now now" I changed topic all of a sudden "You need to rest, little filly. Your bed is up the stairs, where Angel sleeps as well. He is usually a heavy sleeper, but try to be careful when you wake up: he uses to sleep until the 4th Celestial, and he gets a little upset if he suddenly gets awoken, especially after a day like this" I warned her, while petting her back in the meantime "You go rest, I can sleep on the couch for now"
"Goodnight Fluttershy" she replied before heading upstairs, to my bedroom "Sleep well, Snowdrop" I said back at her. I stayed up until I could hear no sound coming from my room. Just then I laid myself on the couch, trying to figure out all the events that hit me that day.

First of all, there was that weird dream I had found myself into: it just couldn't be a coincidence to find in it both Princess Luna AND Discord, both well known for sneaking into ponies' dreams, for whatever reason it may had been. My dream just couldn't have been spontaneous, and it hadn't for a precise reason... a reason that I could not think about, at that time.
I thought that the fact that I couldn't hear the avalanche that occurred that morning was odd to me, at first; but I was tipsy and really tired that night, so I must had slept like a rock.
Another thing that came to my mind was the weird smoke exhaling from the slopes of mount Canterlot: the weird words that Pinkie said that morning suddenly bumped in my train of thoughts; yes, Pinkie doesn't always think about what she says, but not to let an Element of Harmony examine the danger closely must mean some sort of secret, or even danger, hidden by the Wonderbolts. Just the thought that the pegasi elitè could hide something so bad made me shiver in my worries, hoping that such things would have never came to touch me. Oh, Celestia witness me when I say that I had never been so wrong in my entire life...
Lastly, there was Princess Celestia: her paralysis was sure to bring huge changes to Equestria in the near future. Surely Twilight Sparkle was going to be her first heiress in the Royal Chain since her metamorphosis form unicorn to alicorn, but she was morally in pieces after she had found her teacher and knowing of her brother's likely death.

I fell asleep thinking about Snowdrop, the sleeping filly upstairs. A lot of work was going to be needed, in the next days...

Twilight's Call came the next week: All the five of us met in front of Twilight's treehouse, roughly at the 2nd Celestial: the backwash from the avalanche ended just a couple of days before, and the roads of the city were drenched in mud and tiny glass fragments, which would keenly scratch our hoofs.
After a moment Twilight opened the door. Horny Royals Sisters... the lavender-coloured mare was in a frightening state, to say the least: her disheveled mane fell in part over her tired purple eyes, her tightened eyelids looking as if she hadn't been sleeping for half a week at least.
Her coat was faded, crumpled and dirty in sweat and tiny bloodstains, not to mention untidily covered in a short lab coat, which was severely mucky as well. Her big wings weren't folded on her hips, but limp, dragging themselves on the ground behind her, and her Cutiemark was hidden under a plumber harness full of tools, tubes, syringes... and a sandwich, stuck somehow just before her tail, which was tied up in order to occupy as little space as possible.
I got scared by such a sudden and scary view, and backed up for a few hoofs, eeping as a tiny tear spilled out of my eyes; my friends, though, weren't as surprised as I was, and rushed through the door and around her, filling the air with their questions all at once.
"Please guys, calm down; quick, come inside and I'll care to answer to every question of yours" she stopped them in a tired tone, showing us the way in.
If Twilight Sparkle looked wasted, her home sure kept up with her in that meaning: the big opening on the north side of the tree, created by the falling rubbish from the week before, was patched up seemingly without a criteria, musty axes and rusty nails nailed all over it.
The  inside wasn't much better: there was a strong, festering smell, and the corners were full of half-decomposed leaves. The bookshelves were half empty, their content opened all over the floor; they looked like books about medicine, botanics, mechanics and electronics, as astrophisics and geophisics pages, nailed on the wooden walls.
We sat down around a table full of opened magic books, and started asking our questions.
"Tell us, Twilight darling, how are you?" firstly said Rarity.
"Oh, I am really, really feeling fine, guys. There's so much to keep you up to date with" The Element of Magic slowly answered.
"But speak'up Twilight, how's ya brother? Ya look'd so worried when ya ran outta the ospital that it look'd like the princess had her horn stuck in ya flank" Applejack asked.
"Oh right, him... Well, when we found him his abdomen was completely flattened by a concrete block, which fell over him, not to mention a severe cranic concussion and cracked-off horn2. Both his kidneys were turned into mush, and his lower back bones from his diaphragm to his hoofs into flour; I could just stay there and watch my brother bleed to death, and breathing for the last time" she calmly told with an empty and sad look on her face. I reached next to her, and crossed my hoofs around her shoulders; I was almost crying more than her. She just had lost too much at once...
"Oh, but there are really good news as well!" her eyes suddenly brightened "Remember when I told you that I'd 'figure out a solution for Princess Celestia'?"
"'I'll call you back when these damned waters will soothe down'" aped Pinkie Pie "Why? Did you make it?" she asked in a confused tone.
"Words just can't describe how well I've succeded! I have to show you!" she exclaimed. She then trotted to one of her bookshelves, and levitated a huge khaki-colored tome out of it, which she threw at one of the dead branches of her home. The branch emitted a high-pitched whiz, before she grabbed from the floor another book, in a teak wood hardcover. Among it's pages there was a big red button; when she pressed it, the whole bookshelf lifted itself up with a loud buzz, revealing a small elevator which looked like it could barely fit all the six of us in it.
"Uh, lissen Sugarcube, Ah'm in for a thing like that with all of ya, but Ah don't think this' the time for that sorta fun y'know" Applejack said, puzzled but amused at the same time. I wonder what she was thinking.
Twilight Sparkle smirked at the words of her friend "What were you thinking, silly filly? That isn't the surprise, it is just NEEDED in order to reach the surprise!" she said, trotting inside of the weird metal box and inviting us in as well. As soon as we all got into the elevator the bookshelf slided back down behind us, as well as a glass pane to seal the big container closed. Right after that, the floor below our hoofs flickered rapidly in a soft red light, scaring off me and rarity, while Pinkie simply snickered. Rainbow and Applejack looked vaguely intrigued, but Twilight seemed just used to it; a loud, synthetic voice suddenly erupted in the cabin.
HOOF IMPRINTING COMPLETE. FIVE LEVEL 3 PASSES SPOTTED. ACCESS GRANTED. ONE LEVEL 3-PLUS PASS SPOTTED. WELCOME, ELEMENT OF MAGIC.
"Oh, that's right! Whenever you'll have to come down here and I couldn't be here for some reason you have to bring your Elements with you and put it in front of..." a small panel on one of the four walls slided down, revealing a tiny display and a number pad "...This display. There it is" using her hoof she pressed on the number zero four times, her action being followed by a repetitive, weird sounding cooing. After a while a deep yet smart and... intriguing male voice took over the ugly sound.
"Mann Brothers' Corporation Operative Call Center; Hitponies when you ask for them, hats and little cutey costume jewellery and much much more. To know our full list of services-"
"Cut it out, Moonlight Morning" The purple alicorn interrupted the announcer with the sweet voice, rolling her eyes.
"Good morning to you too, Princess Twilight. What can I do for you?"
"Level two, please"
"Level two aye aye! Full power ahead, Miss-Captain!" the stallion replied in a pompous tone. I soon felt a weight decrease, as the elevator started quietly and quickly sliding down, way below the ground level. The stallion's voice got took over by an old ballad (Oh-we have to-get-this-right, yes we-have-to-make-them-see...)
"Damn Moonlight Morning. I hate this song. It feels like wasted effort" Twilight complained.
"But as I was saying, I'm going to tell you about The Princess' solution: When the hydrogem gem's exchange day arrived, I stol- er, I borrowed the Princess' corpse from the comunal hospital of ponyville and brought her to my basement, where I casted a freeze spell on her to slow down her metabolism. The day after that I brought myself to the town hall to have a peek at the archives, since the library of Canterlot is destroyed, to find an inspiration; what I found there was much, much better: I've heard a slice of conversation where a certain pony was about to buy a certain terrain among the Canterlot ruins for a certain corporation. Terrain which, weirdly enough, is precisely the one containing the portal to the human world, deep underground"
"That somewhere where you went to to get back the Element of Magic's Tiara right? Right?" Pinkie Pie  interrupted her friend.
"That's right Pinkie. Anyway, I've had a little chat with her, asking her why she wanted that slice of soil. Luckily for me she recognized me, and made me part of the plans of the corporation she is working for, the Mann Co.. Corporation which, willing to distribute 'humanitarian' helps in Equestria to give itself publicity, was in need of building it's headquarters the closest possible to the portal, so the mare managed to make me enter the Corporation's ranks on the sly" she said, in a tone that almost suggested that she was bragging about it.
"Well this is great and all Twilight, but how does that relate to the Princess?" asked Rainbow Dash, puzzled.
"Oh, that's easily explained by this: as a representative of the Corporation I can make use of all of its technology at will. Which, be the case, is very progressed in medicine and medical science! So I had the chance to be working on some 'improvements' on Celestia Herself" Twilight sighed slightly.
"S-sorry if I interrupt you, Twilight; does that mean that The Princess is... back on Her hoofs again?" I asked, a little worried.
"Sadly, not exactly. But you'll see, my friends. You'll see in about a minute, when we'll get to Level Two" replicated the Alicorn. After a little while, the elevator popped through a glass tube in a massive cave, clearly dug with machines, half space of which was stacked with wooden crates, locked in heavy chains.
Its other half was occupied by wall-hang screens lit up in green letters and data from many undistinguishable sources, all seemingly connected to a big glass tank filled with a glowing green liquid.
In front of the keyboards below the screens there was a light blue unicorn with an azure and white mane, who was tapping here and there among the dark buttons. Oddly enough, she had two weird bulges around her hips, under her lab coat. 'Could it be that... no, that's impossible' I said to myself.
Just as soon as our little metal and glass box landed on the cave's floor, and Moonlight Morning's voice greeted us by saying "Plin Plon, level two, thank you for shopping with us, We hope you'll be back soon", that weird looking mare turned toward us, and Twilight calmly trotted towards her "hold on a second" she just whispered to us before she started saying things in her hear in a low tone, as she just kept darting her mistrustful eyes among us while listening to the Alicorn; She had shiny golden eyes, and her cutiemark was a lyre.
Twilight levitated to her lips a mug full of corn coffee from a table next to them, and took a long sip from it... just before spitting all of the cold coffee on the floor.
"Maybe we'll warm this up later?" she just said to her, before trotting back to us, along with her colleague.
"My friends, the Mann Brothers' Corporation is proud to present you Lyra HeartStrings, the official courier between the Earth and Equestria, not to mention the first Artificial Unicorn or -NeoAlicorn- ever!" the announcement of our friend flew out of her mouth weirdly loudly, as Lyra took off her lab coat in a teatral move, revealing a beautiful pair of white wings and... it looked like my friends weren't as weirded out and worried as I was.
"YAAAAAY, another Alicorn! I'm so nervoucited, I want to be an Alicorn too!" shouted Pinkie pie as she started bouncing around the... thing.
"I could go WAAAY faster if I used magic" thought Rainbow Dash using her voice "Where do I have to sign up for this?" she was clearly interested as well.
"Calm down ladies. Being an Alicorn isn't an thing for anypony. For instance, an earth pony could have both his mind and body teared apart in many, many ways by the new condition. A pegasus or a unicorn might have an easier journey, yet it would still have to face a painful and long-lasting rehabilitation from the surgery" she warned us, squeezing her eyes, making sure that her words were articulated and clear for all of us to hear well; in fact, Pinkie's face soon turned cloudy as she was thinking deeply, and Rainbow Dash started hovering, steady in the air. The NeoAlicorn's frowny look suddenly turned happier, though.
"Good, now that we got that out of the way, we can move on! As you should already know, our dear Princess Twilight Sparkle got among the representative ranks of Mann Co. through a little... 'bump' by me. But you should also know that we are suffering from a severe lack of slaughter mea- er, personnel to get to work on... extremely important tasks. The two of us plus Moonlight Morning and another couple of stallions can't handle the amount of work that it's to be done here by ourselves, and you'd surely understand that we can't put secret documents and such in the hoofs of whoever isn't more than trustworthy. So I've talked about this with the Princess" she received a confused look from Twilight towards her "and I got her permission to sort you Elements of Harmony to your future tasks"
"Uuuh, sorry sugarcube, but what d'ya mean by 'future tasks'?" Applejack asked. Lyra trotted back to the screens, showing us to follow her.
"Oh well, that's soon explained: who's more reliable than the Elements of Harmony to keep dangerous corporation secrets safe? And your jobs will be sorted through the most unbiased way of 'em all: pieces of paper in the hat! I just gotta gotta find one... In the meantime, Twilight, didn't you have to show your little friends our little project? I'll look for a hat in a crate of the series... let's say #35? Pretty please with cherries on top?" She asked to twilight with a cordial tone that looked kind of forced, but also proud of their 'little project'.
"Oh, of course! You guys, follow me: I'm going to show you Princess Celestia!" she announced while she made us approach that weird glass chamber; the green fluid it was filled with was run through its whole height by tiny air bubbles, and the colour itself of it couldn't let us see through, whatever there was inside of it. Even though we all made our guesses about it.
After a while of Twilight tapping quickly on the black keyboards next to the tank, she catched up with us. We could hear wood cracking in the distance.
"Sorry, I had to lower the density of BONK in the water, so you could really see Her" she announced, almost whispering. Soon enough, the green started to fade away, leaving just an almost clear yellow area around the... corpse.
She was floating freely in the medical water, countless little tubes stitched to her body as she was floating in a fetal position; her horn was glowing in her typical yellow glow.
"Fascinating, isn't She? She litterally can't move of a single hoof, she'd die if she gets out of that tank. Even if Her muscles are slowly descending to atrophy, Her mind has never been more active: being an Alicorn, and not having to deal with ambulating She can manage Her own nutriment income to just Her mind and magic, which is at least ten times more powerful now, controlling the sun like never before" she said, in a dreamy tone.
"Think about the practical uses: she can solve any mathematics problem that we ask her like a supercomputer; plus, She'll now allow us to control the sun movement at our will from here; that can mean warmer summers and winters, more fertile fields and generous harvests, half an hour-lasting Winter Wrap Ups... just thinking about it makes me shiver in anticipation"
"That is outstanding darling! You really saved Princess Celestia!" Rarity was almost jumping from joy. Honestly, that looked more like half of a murder, but I made myself sure to keep my mouth shut about my opinion.
"did you have any doubts about that?" The purple Alicorn smiled.
"Absolutely none!" Rarity replied.
"BOOORING!" Pinkie Pie suddenly jumped to Twilight "Tell us about those winghorns transplants already!" she ordered.
"I, uhm..." Twilight didn't look very comfortable with Pinkie's question; luckily for her, Lyra interrupted our conversation.
"Yo I'm back! I found a hat for the count! Damn, so many crates yet so few keys to open them am I right3?" she commented while throwing a metal bucket among the five of us. It had some weird looking round holes, and a thin red line of fluid was coagulated flowing out of its side. Rarity backed off a few hoofs, disgusted by the un-fashionable piece of wardrobe.
"What are you, kidding? How dare you call it a 'hat'? That pack of rust and dirt is going to get me a disease!" she whined loudly. Lyra looked deeply into the bucket, while her horn glew to teleport into it a few post-its.
"I'm absolu- ...rather- ...almos- ... I'm rather sure that there's no issue at all in putting your hoofs in hour count-hat for a spare second. Now, each one of you will take a ticket, which has a job written on its front, and tell say it out loud. On the back of it there's written what you'll have to do instead, and you'll have not to tell to anyone what you'll be doing" so she put the hat-bucket among us, and after we took one post-it each, we started reading them.
"Salesmare" said Applejack.
"(Yuck) Public relations" spat Rarity.
"Announcer and radio operator *squee*" hummed Pinkie Pie.
"Ohh yeah, fooling around!" glanced Rainbow Dash.
"Oh right, that one is to bring aid to a member of the corporation, if he is in need" Lyra explained "Come on Kindness, it's your turn now" she then turned to me. I slowly opened my ticket, very worried about my future, I'll be honest.
"C-contract executo- executioner?" I asked in a low voice. I probably wasn't heard by anyone, because everyone read her post-it, no answer to my timorouse question. All of them returned to the elevator along with Twilight. All of them but me: 'talk to Lyra' was written on my piece of paper.
She trotted to me; she got really, REALLY close to my face, and started wisphering to me.
"I almost hoped that you'd have picked that one, Fluttershy" said the NeoAlicorn in a soft and warm, almost sensual tone. To sum it up, she was scaring me. But to be completely honest... I was more scared to take a hoof back from the whole thing. I never liked responsibility problems, I guess that I was wrong when I said it.
"Now come with me. There will be a lot to do with our 'jobs'" she whispered to my ear, before nibbing it. *squee*