Theory and Practice

by Snaproll

Subterfuge

Earlier, Back at the Center...

***⚡⚡⚡***

Snaproll soared high in the early evening sky over the Center, for a single moment lost in the pure joy of flight. The whistle of wind through his wings, the scent of sagebrush and hot earth from the ground far below filling his nostrils, the last light of day warming his skin and wings as he breathed in a breath of contentment. A quick glance behind and to his right confirmed that Whichaway was tucked in close formation next to him. I swear, that mare'd lose her own head if it wasn't attached to her shoulders. He shook his head and nodded back to himself. Right, back to work.

Off his left wing in the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun, was a trio of small thunderheads that were floating their way towards the center, graciously cast loose by the Appleoosa weather team. Granted, he had been pretty sure that the original request had been for four small thunderheads, but, well, beggars and choosers. Turning his head to his wingpony, he called out. "Heads up, Whichaway. Nine o'clock, low, mark three, track east."

He was pleased to see her move her gaze from him to where the clouds were, and she nodded. "I see them. How do you want to take care of them?" It was hard to tell, in the evening light, but he though she might have been blushing. No time to think about that now. Snaproll glanced back at from the mare to the oncoming clouds, running calculations in his head. "Looks like they're moving slow enough. We'll take the first two and let the last one drift. If we hustle, we can discharge them and cut 'em loose. After that, I can pick up the spare."

Whichaway nodded, her eyes slightly wide around the edges. "O-okay, got it."

He frowned for a second and then slowed his wingbeats for a minute, letting her draw level with him. "Hey, you're not goin' sideways on me now, are you?"

Whichaway licked her lips as she considered that for a moment. "No. No I've got your wing."

A sudden thought occurred to Snaproll. "How much weather management have you done, Which?"

She glanced down, ruefully. "Not a whole lot. I wasn't as good a hoof at it, and I just stuck to delivering stuff."

Snaproll nodded. "It's no sweat. Just follow my lead, do what I do, and if you run into any trouble, give me a holler. I'll be right there." He held up a hoof to one side, and bobbed it for her. "You ready?"

She glanced from his face to his proffered hoof and then back, a smile blossoming across her face as she blushed again. "I was born ready." She bumped his hoof with hers, and then, without warning, shot off ahead in a trio of powerful wingbeats, her merry laughter carried back to Snaproll on the evening breeze. "Come and have a go if you think you're fast enough!"

With a grin to match, Snaproll powered after the Trottingham pegasus mare. "You're on! Last one to discharge their cloud is a banana!!!"

***🌩***

Unnoticed by either pegasus, the fourth stormcloud meandered its way over the desert floor below, its gentle pace giving lie to the tempestuous fury denoted by its dark hue and the flashes of muted lightning from within. Atop the cloud's mountainous heights stood a single unicorn mare, clad in a form fitting body stocking in the same stormy hue as the cloud beneath her hooves, which covered her from nose to flank, save for her exposed goldenrod horn. She held a pair of binoculars to her eyes in her magic, watching the two pegasi below race to discharge the clouds into the facility capacitors far below before turning to race back towards the remaining stormcloud from their initial trio. Running some mental calculations, the unicorn nodded to herself as she tucked the binoculars away in one of the many pouches that hung off the harness she wore over the body stocking. The timing should be juuuust about....now!

Pegasi weather manipulation wasn't exactly complicated, even by the rules of simple thaumaturgy. An inexperienced weather pony could get even the whitest and fluffiest of clouds to come together to form a thunderhead, discharge a bolt of lightning, and return the cloud to its original state inside a few minutes. A seasoned weatherpony could do it in considerably less time. But all of them would tell you that getting the lightning to discharge was generally as simple as giving the cloud a good swift kick in the right direction, and making sure you weren't wearing anything conductive when you did.

The unicorn kicked downward, and the thunderhead below her trembled briefly before there was an earsplitting roar as the cloud discharged a bolt of lightning into a patch of dry sagebrush far below. The unfortunate bush exploded into burning flinders as what little water in its boughs superheated in an instant into steam. A half dozen neighboring bushes were ignited from the flash of heat, and in the space of ten seconds had spread the fire to their neighbors, developing into a medium sized brushfire. Nodding to herself, the unicorn teleported off the top of the cloud, vanishing in a pop of displaced air as she moved on to phase two of her plan.

Of course, this had been the easy part of this assignment.

***🔥***

Snaproll grinned as he raced back toward the remaining thunderhead, throwing himself into one of his namesake rolls just for the sheer joy of it. Sure, he had gotten out to fly every morning at daybreak to keep himself fit, but there was something...primal about having another pegasus to race against. Granted, Whichaway had managed to get a good head start on him, but he had managed to get a half a length on her when she'd fumbled her cloud's discharge. He could hear her cursing under her breath as she beat her wings to catch up with him. Granted, with her smaller frame, she could change direction faster than he could, but this was a sprint to the last cloud. Snaproll was under no illusions about being the fastest flier in Equestria, but he was fairly confident he could take the Trottingham mare in a straight race. He glanced behind him to check her position, but the mare wasn't there. Frowning, he scanned the skies below. The last thing he wanted was for Whichaway to have fallen out of the sky, but she wasn't to be seen anywhere below, either.

Growing increasingly concerned, he pulled up into a hover just above the cloud. "Whichaway?" He started scanning above him, his head on a swivel. "Where in blazes are-"

He found Whichaway, though he had almost no time to react as she was reaching the nadir of her power dive. He had a bare instant to take in the lines of her face, her outstretched hooves, and her tail lashing madly in her slipstream before she plowed into him.

After what felt like minutes later, Snaproll shook his head to find Whichaway lying on top of him, her face inches away from his own. She gave him a wink as a satisfied smile spread across her face. "You holding up alright there, love? I thought I'd knocked you for a loop there."

Snaproll found himself quite unable to speak, only partially from getting a faceful of high velocity mare. Maybe it was his imagination, but he'd never quite noticed the depths of her blue gray eyes, or how her mane smelled like a mixture of clean wind and wildflowers. Too, he found her weight on his body pleasantly distracting, and Whichaway's expression was transitioning from Gloating Triumph to something Anticipatory and...Apprehensive?

Unknown to Snaproll and unnoticed by Whichaway, a few pink hearts formed over the stallion's head and began to float into the skies above them. Say something you idiot! She's beautiful, she's not running away in terror from you, and, really, could you do any better? Gah! Focus! Say something!

"Uhh...You think so?" Yeah! Nailed it!

Whichaway giggled, which didn't help Snaproll at all ¹. "I do. But I'd be willing to share a victory, if you're willing..."
She leaned in and buried her nose in his mane, inhaling deeply². "Mmm...you smell nice...and..." she frowned and withdrew, frowning in concern. "Is...is someone having a barbecue?"
_{1: Well, not with his thinking at any rate.
2: This did not, either.}

Something in her words tugged hard at Snaproll's subconscious, which, desperately, tried to wrest control of the stallion's brain away from his various glands. Meanwhile, his thought process yammered onto themselves. Barbecue? Does she want a barbecue? I can organize one...I think we have some eggplant and mushrooms somewhere, I can get some sagebrush going and...wait, smells like someone has one going already! Oh that's what she's...

Snaproll came to his hooves in a flash, upending Whichaway, who yelped in surprise. Snaproll noted, idly, the long furrow the two of them had driven into the cloud as he made his way to its edge and peered down. Though the sun had set minutes ago, there was still plenty of pale evening light. It was, however, rendered largely unnecessary by the ambient glow of the spreading brushfire far below. "Sisters of Day and Night, preserve us..." He muttered under his breath as Whichaway gained her hooves and came to stand beside him before muttering something distinctly unladylike herself. "I may not be from around here...but that looks bad."

"It is. Brushfire like that has to be put down, and fast. Otherwise it'll burn faster than most ponies can run." Calculating, he spent a precious few seconds in thought before he nodded to himself. "First thing's first, gotta keep the fire from spreading toward the Center. You take this cloud here, get as much water out of it as you can between here and the fireline." He pointed a hoof over towards the wayward thunderhead. "I'm going to see if I can corral that one and see if I can keep it from spreading that way. Tribal lands to the south of here and the town's not to far either." He glanced over at Whichaway. "Can you handle this cloud here?"

Whichaway's eyes were wide and near panic, but she swallowed and nodded, fretting her lip. "What if...What if we get separated?"

"If you can't find me, make for Appleoosa and raise the alarm. I'll meet you there." And, screwing up his courage, Snaproll kissed Whichaway full on the mouth, admittedly wasting several seconds. Before they became minutes, he broke for air and gave the pegasus mare a grin that was projecting approximately ten times more confidence than he actually felt. "I'm not leaving you for anything though." And with that, he flung himself off the cloud, dropping for a trio of seconds to gain speed before he flared his wings and called back to her "Get going! We've got no time to waste!"

***⛅***

From under a culvert at the edge of the Center's property, the unicorn watched as the two pegasi set about extinguishing the brushfire she had set and breathed a small sigh of satsifaction. The two flyers should have the ability to shut down the fire between them, despite the limited experience one of them had, at least according to the dossier her employer had assembled for her.

Waiting for a beat, the unicorn slowly crept out of the culvert and approached the main building. Thankfully, the pegasi had left the front doors unlocked, though that probably had more to do with the main building housing the cafeteria and lounge in addition to the labs and archives than it did any lapse in security.

Silently, she crept through the empty lounge, past the kitchen and cold storage, and finally halted at an otherwise unremarkable door marked "General Storage". Concentrating, her magic aura flowed into the key hole and, after a few second's fiddling, the lock opened for her. Smiling to herself, she browsed though the stacks of crates, lockers, storage cubbies, and, in one case, giving the spiked iron box twice as tall as she was and humming ominously a wide berth. Using her aura to cast light around her, she kept looking until...Aha!

The crate read simply "Project Dunderhead" in unassuming black letters, and was kept shut by virtue of a single padlock. Using her aura again, she bypassed this and gingerly flung open the crate. However, she immediately frowned. Hmm...where's the rest of it? Shaking her head, she stuffed the contents of the crate into one of her empty saddlebags before replacing the lid and sliding the padlock shut again with a satisfying click. Almost done...now for the final touch.

She left the room, not bothering to lock the door behind her, and made her way up to the second floor and the administration wing to what she knew to be Braeburn's office. This time, she didn't bother with bypassing the lock, instead using her magic to tear the door off its hinges and into the hallway. Smiling to herself, she reveled in a few minutes unprofessional glee as she flung books off shelves, left filing cabinets sprawled drunkenly against each other, upended the table lamp, and generally introduced Entropy and Chaos to a shocked Order and Control.
That said, she did try and maintain some manner of control over the general sacking. The files she left out were all classified as "Experimental Inventions", and one in particular she managed to leave front and center on the desk, making sure she magically duplicated it and slipped the copy into her now bulging saddlebags.

Satisfied with her work, she glanced out the wide windows that afforded an excellent view of the valley nearby. The fire seemed to be largely under control, with only a small blaze that had been corralled off into a convenient firebreak. With that, she flipped the lights on in the office, and then waited.

***🌧***

Snaproll stood on the now-expended stormcloud, panting hard and his coat lathered with sweat. Managing to choke the fire off into a small area hadn't been complicated work, but that didn't mean that it had been exactly easy. Even Whichaway had managed her cloud with relative ease, though his thoughts concerning the mare were still a tangle of confusion, not accounting for the fog of fatigue clouding his brain. Once he'd managed to get his breath back, he called out to the night sky. "Whichaway! You out there?"

"Right behind you, love." Snaproll didn't start at the mare's voice, but that was only because he was too tired to do so. He turned and nuzzled her neck. "Hey. You did great out there."

Whichaway blushed as she nuzzled him back. "Oh, that was nothing..." Something smoldered in her eyes as she pulled back and leaned in. "You should see me...now, that's peculiar..."

Wishing that he'd had the good sense to fall in love with a mare with an attention span, Snaproll followed her gaze. "Hey Which...did you leave the lights on at the center?"

"Not likely."

"Me either..." Another thought crashed into Snaproll's head. "That's...hey, that's Braeburn's office! C'mon!"
With that, Snaproll flung himself off the cloud and flew with all speed back to the center, exhaustion forgotten, Whichaway a few wingbeats behind him.

***🎲🎲***

Counting to herself, the unicorn made her way down from the office and back to the hallway to general storage, her ears perked for any noise. Any second now...There we go. She could hear the sounds of wingbeats growing, followed by hooves on the front door. She bolted out of the hallway as the two pegasi burst into the lounge, the larger stallion giving a strangled shout³ as he charged her. The unicorn waited until the pegasus was only a few body lengths away, then she flung her body forward, spun, and launched a roundhouse kick that connected with the stallion's jaw. He fell, stunned to the floor as the second pegasus flicked on the lights. The unicorn mare paused long enough for the remaining pegasus to get a good look at her, then flared her magic and vanished with another pop of displaced air.

Seconds later, she pulled the hood of her body suit off her head and trotted out of a darkened Canterlot alley, making her way to the rendezvous with her client. She smiled to herself as she shook out her red-gold mane, taking in the familiar sights of her hometown and wishing she had time further to stay. Maybe next time. Advanced Integral Calculus Finals don't take themselves.

And with that, she vanished into the night.
_{3: This Hoofnote left intentionally blank}

Author's Note:

Welp, we're all stuck in our own homes for the forseeable future. Unfortunately, this means that my main business has basically withered up and died. So, until job applications come through, I'm planning on writing more here and, hopefully, finishing my book.

Stay safe out there, y'all.