Luna landed just in front of a police station, where sharply dressed ponies in uniform were moving about industriously. Several heads turned towards her as she came in and they began to salute.
"Princess Luna," barked one that seemed of superior station than the others, descending the short steps of the station. "What brings you to Manehattan so suddenly?"
Spike waved from atop her. "We're here to stop an attack."
"Verily." She turned slowly in place. "Things appear to be in order for the moment?"
The police captain nodded curtly. "Everything's fairly normal. What kind of attack?"
"Of this we were not informed, but it would come from that direction." She lifted a hoof towards Trottingham, as distant as it was, with water between them and the smaller town. "I would see that this city is prepared. Ponies should be seen to safe places as soon as possible."
He grunted, peering at Luna through bushy brows a moment, glancing up at Spike. "If it was much anypony else... I'll put out the word." He reached for a large radio receiver and began to speak into it, "we have word of incoming trouble. Get ponies off the street."
"Which ponies?" echoed from his radio.
"All of them!" he roared. "This is not a drill. I don't want a single pony in sight that isn't an officer."
An officer came up to the two of them. "Excuse me, uh, princess? You need to get in--"
Luna put a hoof to her face. "I do not count. But you can take him." She gestured with her head towards Spike, or where Spike was. But he wasn't there anymore.
He had dropped down her side, hiding behind her.
"I can feel you," cautioned Luna. "This game is at an end."
"It isn't a game." He scrambled back on top of her. "We're here to save ponies, so let's focus on that."
Luna snorted, but also began to walk away from the informed and alerted police station. "Let us see if we can spot the menace."
"Now we're talking!" Spike clapped his hands together before pumping a fist, looking ready for adventure.
A short flight across the city took them towards the docks. Below them, traffic was becoming more sparse as the police ponies of the cities did as they were asked, urging people to get inside until they were told it was safe. Being early in the morning, there weren't as many ponies out as there could have been to start, but it was creeping close to the time that ponies would begin marching to work.
"We do not envy them." Luna shook her head slowly. "There will be shouting and complaining." Even Luna, still catching up on things, could imagine a salary pony being quite irate at a random police pony telling them to not go to work on time.
"They're doing a good job. For such a big city, I barely see anypony down there." Spike turned his vision forward, squinting across the water. "So now we just have to face... whatever it is?" His cheeks puffed suddenly. With a ripe belch, a scroll popped free of him.
Luna's magic snatched the scroll away and unfurled it without delay. "It's from sister. She says to look skywards towards the source." They landed at the piers, both of them looking upwards in a North-eastern direction.
But there was nothing but a brightening sky.
All seemed normal. Spike scratched at a cheek idly. "So... When do we see something?"
"I know not..." She squinted against the distance as if she could force herself to see what needed to be seen.
"There! I think?" Both looked to where Spike was pointing. Rain. It was falling into the ocean in great unnatural sheets of something thicker than proper rain. It was more like snow in thick flurries of whatever it was that fell into the ocean in an approaching weather pattern.
It was so far away that the approach seemed glacial. "I... estimate half an hour before it arrives here." Luna flapped her wings once powerfully, bringing them back into the air. "That does not appear to be proper rain, or snow."
"It's hard to see from this far away... Should we get closer?" Spike shrugged softly from atop Luna.
"Nay, I say not. If it is as dangerous as we are made to believe, I would not wish to entangle with it over the ocean itself."
"Point." Spike was smiling a little despite the theoretical danger. "At least, if it really is snow, I could melt that." He puffed a little flame, his wings flapping. "We'll take care of it."
Luna nodded faintly, her attention on the clouds, so soft and silvery that approached, becoming larger by the moment, looming ever wider at an alarming rate. "That is wide enough to... engulf the entire city," she breathed out, estimating its growth as it continued, the strange snow-like particulates raining to the sea beneath it. "We--I..." She turned in the air and fled.
"W-what? Aren't we?" He pointed back towards the incoming silver clouds. "We're here to fight, aren't we?"
"And we will, but first..." She landed beside an officer. "Nowhere in this city will be safe to be outside. Be sure they know that." Luna pointed to the still oncoming clouds. "A great and unnatural weather approaches."
The police mare tilted her head. "Why don't we send the weather pegasi out to shoo it away?"
"Huh, we shoulda thought of that." Spike rubbed behind his head. "Think they could do it?"
"I suppose it worth a try." She turned to face the silvery clouds. "Though we fear it will not be that easy. Advise caution."
The police mare willed her receiver up, being a unicorn. "We got some nasty weather headed this way. Alert the weather patrol to send it away, but be careful." An indistinct reply came. "I don't know, just give it their best shot. Luna says it isn't normal." Another faint reply came. "Roger that."
She clipped her receiver back on her chest. "They'll fly out and try to intercept that storm before it ruffles any feathers in the city. If they can turn it away, a lot of ponies will be happy they can get back to work."
"We thank you for the assistance." Her wings spread. "We will not allow them to fly alone. Come." She took to the air, Spike atop her. "We'll meet with them and fly out to see this threat. Perhaps we can end it before it even makes contact with the city proper."
"That'd be pretty nice." Spike bobbed his head. "I can't much help with moving weather around," he admitted with a shrug. "Still, wouldn't be a bad ending."
Other pegasi started to join them, forming a wing. They wore bright colors with 'Weather Patrol' sewn onto them in clashing other neon colors to make it clear what their job was. "Hey, Luna!" called one of them. "We never got to fly with a princess before." A rough cheer spread through the wing of pegasi. "Let's show her what we have!"
Luna's teeth set as the wing began to accelerate past her, eager to prove their worth in her eyes. "Wait!" But they were not waiting. They rushed ahead to close with the strange cloud. From up close, they could see that the rain, or snow, or whatever it was that the clouds were dropping was quite a bit larger than normal, making great splashes in the water beneath them.
The clouds were also coming quite rapidly, though they had seemed to be coming at a placid pace when viewed from afar. This didn't bother the pegasi as they swerved and turned to match velocity. One pegasus timed their turn a precious second off, veering right into the tip of the cloud. Their scream was a keen wail, and the pegasus did not emerge.
The rest of the wing was stunned. Everyone had heard the cry of agony. "Spring Shower?" asked one flying mare, peering into the silvery mass. Taking a moment, they could see that it wasn't really a cloud at all, but a roiling mass of... silvery thread that was bound up in tight coils and balls, hopelessly entangled. Whatever it was, it was caught in the wind, tumbling around as it fell. Much of it was falling, making the great splashes in the water, but more was still caught in the air currents, tossed around, making the cloud-like shape.
Luna closed with them, shaking her head and trembling. "Take flight!" Not that they weren't already flying. "That is no cloud." She was close enough to see that for herself. "Get to shelter, now!"
"But Spring Shower!" The same mare pointed where her friend had vanished into that... mess. "We have to help her!" The other weather pegasi were nodded in agreement as they flew along with the strange not-cloud. "We can't just--"
"Go!" boomed Luna with the royal voice, rippling even the cloud of strange things. "I will do my best for her, but leave, that is a command!"
With heavy hearts, the weather patrol began to break off. Save for one mare, the one that had called her name. "Give her back!" she screamed at the cloud that offered no reply save for a low hissing that seemed to come from within it. She beat her wings angrily, but she could not dissuade the cloud. She lashed her back legs as if to buck apart the cloud, sinking her hooves into a knotted mass of thick wind-blown tendrils.
Her scream joined the downpour. Angry hissing came from her hooves, burning with alarming speed even as she frantically flapped away. Luna dove for her, grabbing the pegasus as she started to writhe, coordination rapidly being lost. The acid was chewing its way up her leg with an awful speed, leaving the poor mare barely time to bleed.
With wide eyes, Spike pointed towards the cloud. "It's still coming!"
Luna veered away sharply, carrying both the mare and Spike away as she sped towards the city. "This is beyond what I had imagined. This mare needs immediate help."
"I'm... fine," she croaked out, teeth clenched as her legs fell away in little black clumps of nothing. "You... have to stop..."
"Shhh." Luna glanced at the horrific progression of the acid. "Save your strength." She dived for the city, coming in with a roar of wind and evening out just before striking the ground, rushing through the emptied streets. There were few ponies there, she thanks.
"Get inside!" shouted Spike from atop her, looking to the few police ponies they passed. "Get inside!" He was waving wildly, trying to encourage their motion. The police ponies were gaping at them. They could see the weather pony and what was left of her legs, and they began to know fear.
They fled inside just as the thread began to fall on the piers. The wooden piers stood not even a shadow of a chance. The thread slammed down onto them like cannon shells of knotted tendrils, just to immediately begin dissolving them with their corrosive fluids. The tendrils slipped free of one another, growing larger and larger by the moment as the piers vanished under their all-consuming hunger.
They gave way with a loud snap, and the thread fell once more into the water, bubbling fiercely on contact, but not emerging again save for wild thrashing that churned the waves with a frothy foam.
The boats suffered a similar fate, pelted by massive and dense clumps traveling as fast as any ship's cannon could produce. When they failed to sink by being so struck, many began to hiss and boil, being devoured by the same awful tendrils. Metal ships resisted being devoured, but were instead battered and beaten relentlessly, the rain unending.
Ponies that had thought they could flee onto the safety of their little boats were sorely mistaken, their homes dissolving around them, and that rot sweeping up onto them, their cries joining the bedlam around them. Manehattan was under attack, and Equestria would never be quite the same again.
F
F
Well here it comes:
Drummer, beat, and piper, blow
Harper, strike, and soldier, go
Free the flame and sear the grasses
Til the dawning Red Star passes
F
F
F
Mere tinplate wont protect against Thread, merely give at best a reroll on glancing strike.
Good thing Anne McCafferey didnt know about Organosilicates in detail, or did and realised that Thread that could Quartz, could destroy a planet, not just life on its surface?
F
9594762
According to the novels, thread dies with fire, can't survive for long in a regular atmosphere, and pretty much drowns immediately in water. So dragons, as well as every spell caster that can produce or manipulate fire and/or water in some form, are quickly going to become the Big Damn Heroes of the world, once they catch onto those facts. And while any thread that reached land will propagate and spread for a few ours, the infestation is pretty much already dying (albeit slowly) and had been almost as soon as it reached the upper atmosphere. Even a heavy enough rain was shown to greatly reduce the threat of at least part of a threadfall, and would stop thread from propagating once it reached the ground, but Pern was at the mercy of a complexly natural weather system and couldn't depend on it raining heavily on demand.
The sad sad truth about the thread is that is isn't even really attacking on any sort of conscious level.
bit
F
Hoo boy. This does not look good. If a Deus Ex Machina is forthcoming, it best come right quick!
9594762
In such a case, I don't imagine that most buildings will fare much better.
9594762
Wait what? Could you please explain that?
9594929
Sigh, missed an Eat in the Eat Quartz thing.. its Silicones, a silicon oxide backbone, pure qurtz or sand, wrapped with methyl groups. Its been too many decades since I did the course at university, just that some stuff you get these days generate acetic acid, extremely concentrated vinegar, and not dificult to consider other acids etc such as organic acids which can be quite horrific in their corrosive abilities.
9594949
I think I'm even more confused now. Thread is a carbon-based lifeform, a fungus, that eats organic matter, via chemical conversion yes, but how could it eat quartz?
9595057
Apparently grass is so high in silica content that theres at least one type of termite thats evolved to digest it? Something about them eating the silicon e sealant used in Biosphere 2 experimental dome project or something many years ago?
Just thinking it was a good thing Thread was organic only, not organic rock etc to eat more things.
9594836
I thought they had to burn it out on the ground with flamethrowers? Or was that just something they thought they had to do until they rediscovered the southern continent and it wasn't a blasted wasteland.
9595107
They did have to burn it out with flamethrowers and nitric acid, because once the thread burrowed, it ate all the plants from the roots up (and everything else organic underground), leaving the area around the burrow sterile. But after discovering the thread-eating grubs protecting the land in the southern continent, they brought some north and starting seeding the farms with them. It will still take a long while to seed the whole north with grubs, but they do help.
9595107
It's still dying when it burrows, just slow, and they're basically killing the soil around them when they do this. These people were primitive, so even a LITTLE good land going bad was an atrocious loss to them, thus they needed ground teams to handle every single Thread that got past the dragonriders.
Thread isn't individually dangerous. Indeed, a single incident can be more or less weathered alright. But it comes in waves. In sheer volume the land and everything on it would be a blasted mess of dissolved biomass.
At this point you start calling it thread, without so much as describing it as threadlike or looking like silver threads. The best description before that is
While anyone who has read the Pern novels knows already what is going on, and won't blink twice at the name, you've now got anyone who hasn't read them thoroughly confused.
Just figured I ought to point out a minor continuity quibble.
9595219
Not really dying. Not fast enough to matter, anyway? A thread burrow can spread until it runs out of biomass to reproduce...running into a body of water or solid rock (or presumably a barren sandy desert, etc) will end the spread, but otherwise it needs to burn, freeze, or drown.
Hence the Pernese obssession with building everything out of stone or in rock caves/tunnels, and with removing any and all greenery from around habitations--to the point where the riders from Benden Weyr have to order a holder to get it done or the dragons will do it with FIRE because it's been neglected during the Long Interval since the last threadfall. That was in Dragonflight, I think?
And thread can infest individuals it scores...the dragons teleporting between kills it with cold before it can spread. Whether that happens every time, or is just a possible result, I don't recall. It's been a few years since I last read that series.
9595467
It was. :)
Between always kills thread with cold--if they stay in it long enough. I just read a bit in Moreta where a rider didn't stay Between long enough with his dragon to get all of the thread off his wing, and the dragon's wing was badly shredded.
As for thread infesting people it scores, that seems to depend on if the thread hit at a glancing blow, or if it has enough time to attach to them and burrow into their flesh.
9595461
Fixed!