The Bon Identity

by DashEight

Archive #1: From the Desk of Dr. Treble Clef

OFFICE OF CLANDESTINE SERVICE
INCIDENT REPORT

21 December 994 CE

OCS Division West
Las Pegasus Armed Containment Facility

Senior Researcher in Command
Dr. Scroll Piles

Intelligence & Reconnaissance Team Lambda-99 "Scoobies"
Involved Personnel
Special Agent Summer Beauty
Agent Weeping Willow
Agent Belt Sander
Trainee Agent Summer Dawn

Incident Description
MAGINT analysts stationed at Las Pegasus ACF alerted to possible dark magic presence while monitoring Guard communications between Canterlot and the watch station in Sunnysaddle. Several criminal incidents described as 'gang members drugged on salt' and an uptick in reported neck injuries at the local hospital suggested hemovore activity; Senior Researcher Piles deployed L-99 to investigate. L-99 discovered several townsponies enthralled by known hemovore leader Harvest Moon, the majority-threstal population brainwashed to obey him. SpA. Beauty and TrA. Dawn infiltrated hemovore nest under Sunnysaddle High School disguised as members of their threstal 'cult of personality.' (See "Children of the Night," Non-Anomalous Ponies of Interest.)

Intelligence gathered by the team indicated that the hemovore coven intended to perform a ritual sacrifice using several local townsponies. The intended purpose of the ritual remains uncertain, but the date and hemovores' known history suggests it relates to Nightmare Moon. (See 'Princess of the Night,' Known Threats, Priority Crimson.) Agents Beauty and Dawn located captive ponies, but their cover was blown before they were able to exfiltrate. L-99 engaged the cult, eliminating several hemovores and incapacitating threstal cultists. SpA. Beauty located Harvest Moon and the two fought hoof-to-hoof in a highly-visible and dramatic fashion. SpA. Beauty defeated Harvest Moon, but he withdrew with several followers moments before the Tactical Response Team arrived on-scene as backup. TRT eliminated remaining hemovores and took living cultists into custody for deprogramming. On-scene personnel gave medical attention to captives before turning them over to local guardsponies.

Cleanup and Media Relations crews worked with Sunnysaddle guard detachment and local news agency to report incident as turf war between salt dealers, playing down any supernatural aspects. OCS presence explained as guard reinforcements sent from Canterlot. Dr. Piles fowarded distraction request to Prince Blueblood. The Prince arranged for a social gaffe at Canterlot Castle's Longest Night celebration, bumping the story from national news outlets.

Team L-99 commended for reacting to blown cover and rapidly neutralizing threat with minimal casualties/exposure; SpA. Beauty's quick thinking and decisive action turned the compromised operation into a partial success. SpA. Beauty reprimanded once again for engaging demonic threats unarmed; due to hemovores' supernatural abilities and martial skills official Service guidelines recommend engagement from a distance using ballistic, magic, or flame projector armaments. Contributing factors to sucessful result are SpA. Beauty's exceptional strength and unarmed combat experience, well-timed distractions by A. Willow and A. Sander, and the arrival of TRT.

Casualties
13 hemovores eliminated, approx 5 escaped. 35 baseline ponies incapacitated with light-to-moderate injuries and severe mental conditioning. 1 civilian DOA, 10 rescued and treated for mild shock.

Note: SpA. Beauty contests assessment, claiming TRT's assistance was not necessary and that she "had it handled until the Legion of Doom showed up like a bunch of... well... guys in gas masks that spread... doominess."

OFFICE OF CLANDESTINE SERVICE
CANTER MOUNT RESEARCH AND STORAGE FACILITY
CONTAINMENT REPORT

Artifact V-945
Type: Artifact (Inanimate)
Era: Pre-Unification
Assigned Staff: Dr. T. Clef, Senior Researcher in Command, Canter Mount RSF

Timbucktu Munitions Mark III Thaumic Resonance Warhead

Safety and Containment
Instances V-945-1 through V-945-4 are to be stored in a secure locker in the Inert Artifacts wing of Canter Mount RSF. They are permitted to be removed and scanned for testing purposes only at the discretion of an OCS Senior Researcher. Any personnel conducting tests on V-945 instances 1-4 must follow handling instructions listed in Appendix B precisely, any deviation could lead to accidental arming or activation.

V-945-5 is to be placed in a watertight sarcophagus and stored at the bottom of Mining Shaft 3. Shaft 3 and all associated chambers are considered off-limits to all ponies without express permission of Dr. Treble Clef or acting director of research.

Description
V-945 is an explosive device utilizing a standing-wave phenomenon from two magic focal points to produce an uncontrolled thaumic chain reaction. The casing is conical in shape, 1.5m lengthwise with a .5m radius at its base, constructed of granite. Inscriptions are etched into the case in several locations, and are identical across all recovered instances of V-945. These inscriptions, when translated, identify V-945 as an explosive warhead, constructed in the former city of Timbucktu approximately 600 years before the founding of the Triarchy of Equestria. (Due to the futility of accurate timekeeping during the Discordian Era, exact age is impossible to determine.) The writing also describes proper handling, storage, safety procedures for each instance of V-945. (See Appendix B for translation.)

V-945's explosive mechanism consists of two balefire stones seperated by a thaumically-inert plate and connected to a power gem. The gem is activated through runes inscribed on the casing and will energize the stones once an arming ritual is performed. Each instance is equipped with three detonation triggers, a timer, a pressure-sensitive gem, and an impact plate. When the selected trigger or sequence of triggers is tripped, the shield plate retracts and the active stones radiate dragon-fire magic on identical frequencies. The resulting resonance effect cracks both stones, causing them to explosively release all stored thaumic energy. Initial hypotheses place the yield as equivalent to between one and fifteen thousand tons of TNT.

V-945-5 was located on board the IGS Red Sorena by OCS field agents conducting an unrelated operation and subsequently recovered from the wreckage. V-945-5 is armed and appears to be set to detonate on a 30 minute countdown after reaching an as-of-yet unknown depth below sea level. V-945-1 through 4 were discovered in a nearby warehouse in Trot Harbor, West Luna Sea. All five devices recovered are equipped with tamper magic preventing safe disassembly or invasive magical probes. At present time, OCS Research Department possesses insufficent understanding of V-945 operating rituals to safely disarm instance V-945-5.

Note: This document is strictly for Service eyes only; under no circumstances should it be released to EUP officials no matter what their clearance. General Ripper is already inquiring if the technology behind these warheads is reproducible. May need to have a word with Stalwart about him, damn fool is obsessed with closing the 'doomsday gap' with Yakyakistan. On the other hoof, I suppose we could simply inform him that balefire stones must be harvested from a live dragon and simply wait for one to eat him after he attempts to do so.
-Dr. Treble Clef, Senior Researcher in Command, Canter Mount RSF

Note: If we make any breakthroughs on the trigger system, instance five could be a viable keystone for the Deadhoof project. Until then, bury it as deep as you can. Last thing we need is [DATA EXPUNGED] straight to Tartarus.
- Fancypants, Director of Clandestine Operations

Author's Note:

Hit a bit of a wall with the next chapter, I'm about six thousand words in but it's dragging along and I'm considering canning a lot of it and picking up the pace. I didn't realize how frigging long it would take to have Sweetie meet Octavia's school friends and establish her 'Bon-Bon' identity. I think it's safe to say that most people will probably figure out that Octavia and Vinyl are very close and I can probably just infer to that and move on to demon-killing and helicopter crashes.

So, while you wait, here are some highly classified files from Dr. Treble Clef's unsecured private email server (how irresponsible of him); SCP Foundation style.

Any thoughts or suggestions, hit me up. I'm open to ideas.

EDIT: Okay, seriously guys, how the actual F did this make it into the Featured box?

Comments

[badninja]

Well that is not good news about those bombs. So I take it that General Ripper is a reference to General "Thunderbolt" Ross?

[DashEight]

7569098

I took the name from General Jack D. Ripper of Dr. Strangelove, thought it would work well as a pony name. He could be any crazy "nuke-em-all" military man stereotype, though.

[reader238]

I love how the armed explosive that is set to explode at some point "below" sea level is to be put in a sealed sarcophagus at the bottom of a mineshaft which is "below" sea level.

I understand that there is a pressure difference between below water and below earth so all some pony would have to do is hook it up to a compressor and let the the pressure build until boom

[DashEight]

7569948

Yeah it's not the best solution in the world, but they're used to burying things underground and when all you have is a hammer...

They didn't dump it in a bottomless pit because that's the best way to keep it from exploding, they did it because if it does explode, that's the place it'll do the least damage. Canterlot will be fine, it's deep enough so it'll barely rattle the chandeliers in the palace. Even Starswirl's old stallion-cave will be relatively undamaged. The base, not so much.

I thought about it and came up with a few workarounds, (It's not actually 'buried,' it's sitting at the bottom of a very deep open air shaft, so it's essentially surrounded by one atmosphere of air pressure... until a pipe bursts. The box is magically sealed blah blah blah...) But you're right, it really isn't the best solution, more just a temporary setup while they try to figure it out. Of course, they've also failed to see the logic that storing supernatural catastrophes waiting to happen directly underneath the capital city of Equestria maybe isn't the smartest thing to do, so it's possible that the Director just has a firm hoofgrip on the Idiot Ball. Would explain why they let their kids run around a monster prison unchecked.

[Uncle Mike]

Liked the General Ripper reference (though maybe Buck Turgidson playing with a Big Freakin' Firecracker would have worked, too).

Loved the nod to BtVS... Now, we just need to get Tony, Sarah, Allison, Nick, and Michelle to sign on as VAs

[DashEight]

7570603

Half the fun of this whole writing thing is coming up with punny pony names for cameos.