• Published 18th Sep 2012
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Flash Fog - Kwakerjak



Fluttershy must deal with an unusually thick fog as it approaches Ponyville.

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August 30 – 10:41 PM

Flywheel stifled a yawn as she stared at the myriad gauges in front of her. Hers was not the most glamorous job around, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t important (according to her supervisor, anyway). Like most blue-collar pegasi, she would have preferred to work in the Cloudsdale Weather Factory; everypony knew about the Weather Factory, even unicorns and earth ponies, and nopony who worked there doubted that their efforts would ultimately matter to Equestria as a whole. The jobs weren’t always easy, but the ponies who held them had a good deal of pride in their work—which was probably why there was so much competition for the few job openings available, much to Flywheel’s dismay.

On the other hoof, while the primary facility of Caligo Manufacturing, Inc. obviously wasn’t the most well-known factory in Cloudsdale, it was still one of the most profitable, which meant that the pay and benefits were acceptable enough for the company to avoid labor disputes most of the time. Similarly, Storage was hardly the most obnoxious part of the factory to work in, far away the churning and chugging of cams and cranks in Production and Secondary, which were muffled by thick cloud walls and replaced with the hissing of pneumatic pistons and the whirring of fan blades delivering the finished product to holding tanks until they could be sent on to Shipping. Just as notably, this room was almost always kept clean, almost to the point of sterility; Flywheel had gotten so used to the smell of pine-scented cleaner that by the end of her shifts, normal, fresh air seemed exotic by comparison.

However, the fact that the job wasn’t unpleasant didn’t mean that it was enjoyable. Quite the contrary, where other workers had to deal with the Quality Assurance department constantly watching them over their shoulders, Flywheel had often found herself spending hours on end with nopony else to talk to, since only one pony was needed to monitor the situation. This meant that her job was unspeakably dull, but that, as she’d recently discovered, was only a best-case scenario.

Staying alert while working at a boring, repetitive job is difficult under even the best circumstances, but she’d come to realize that doing so during the night shift when one was accompanied by little more than the steady drone of industrial machinery compounded that problem. At least the magically-enhanced fireflies kept the room brightly lit, though their flickering sometimes gave her a headache, and the lack of machinery meant that the room rarely became overheated. In fact, maintaining a constant temperature was part of her job, along with about a dozen other things.

“Long night?”

The technician looked up from her control panel and saw the all-too familiar sight of the night janitor’s smirk. “You’re as sharp as ever, Sweeps.” The beige pegasus hadn’t intended to come off as a snarky curmudgeon, but her allegedly temporary switch to the second shift (now in its third consecutive week) coupled with mandatory overtime was starting to fray her nerves a bit.

Fortunately, Clean Sweep had been working at Caligo long enough to know an overworked pony when he saw one, and he let it slide. “Management’s been putting you folks through your paces, then?”

“You have no idea,” the mare responded, carefully adjusting a series of knobs on her panel. “Las Pegasus just had to have another construction boom right after our Coltorado Springs facility was shut down for renovation, which means everything has to come from Cloudsdale.”

Clean Sweep nodded sympathetically as he trotted over to the nearest wastebasket. This hadn’t been the first time he’d heard the details of the company’s current situation, but he’d found that listening to ponies explain their problems usually helped them let off some steam. “Well, they’d be nuts to tell them no. You know, free-market competition and all that.” Caligo Manufacturing had been Equestria’s top producer of construction-grade cloud products for decades, but it seemed like there was always some upstart company waiting for them to slip up so they could pounce on their market share. The deep blue stallion emptied the basket’s contents into a trash bag and pulled a broom and dustpan from his cart. “Stuff like this happens all the time. Not much point in getting worked up over it.”

“There is in this case.” The mare idly gestured towards several large holding tanks as she explained: “This is a new formula. It’s a lot denser than normal.”

“Why’s that important?”

“Las Pegasus is over a desert. Denser construction material doesn’t lose its humidity as easily in an arid climate, which means they don’t have to replace it as often. Less time renovating means more time for tourists to gamble their hard-earned bits away.”

This bit of information was actually new to Clean Sweep; he hadn’t bothered to speculate why their bosses hadn’t just shipped out regular clouds from the company’s inventory. “Makes as much sense as anything, I guess,” he said as he swept up dust from the cloud floor.

“Yeah, well, it also makes my job more annoying, because the order is so large that Production is going pretty much non-stop, which means there aren’t any lulls where I move around and stretch outside of break times.” Flywheel punctuated this statement with a massive yawn.

“Anything I can do to help? Want me to get you some coffee?” Clean Sweep asked.

“Nah. I’ve always been really fussy about how I take it. It’s easier to just wait until break to refill my cup. Although...”

“Yeah?”

“There is something you can do for me.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well, quite frankly, I really have to go to the little fillies’ room—”

“Whoa! Hold up there. I don’t know anything about how these contraptions work; I just clean ’em.”

The mare sighed. “Look, I’m not asking you to take over for the rest of my shift. I just need somepony to watch this to make sure nothing crazy happens, that’s all. It’s really simple: if this meter reaches the red zone,” she said, gesturing to a large gauge at the top of the console, “you hit the big, blue shutdown button, and let me deal with whatever happens next.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Anything else can wait until I get back.”

“Well... okay. Don’t take too long, though. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

August 30 – 10:50 PM

At first, everything seemed to be working alright. A few lights on the console turned on and started glowing, but as the needle in the gauge was nowhere near the dreaded red zone, Clean Sweep ignored them. It was only when the lights started flashing and being accompanied by buzzing noises that he started to think something was wrong, but according to the big, super-important gauge, there was no reason to panic just yet.

Nevertheless, the janitor began to get extremely nervous as the buzzes grew into a cacophony of noise. He glanced at a clock on the wall. It had been five minutes since Flywheel had left. He may not have had any idea how the console in front of him worked, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that something was wrong. He considered just hitting the blue button just to be safe, but the mare had said she’d be able to fix things, hadn’t she?

By the time the pipes overhead started rumbling and shuddering, however, Clean Sweep was positive that he was in over his head, no matter what the needle in the gauge said. Really, the only question was whether to hit the big button, or gallop as fast as he could to the mare’s room and get Flywheel. He had just committed himself to the latter option when the door to the storage room swung open. “What the hay’s going on here?” The technician, having returned from her unscheduled break, cantered over to the console and pressed the blue button, which did nothing to stop the incessant buzzing. “You were supposed to hit the shutdown button if the gauge reached the red zone.”

“It didn’t! In fact, it still hasn’t!”

“What?” Flywheel looked at the gauge, and sure enough, the needle was still hovering in allegedly safe territory. “Crap! I completely forgot! The denser formula means that the holding tanks fill up faster, which means the ceiling on the intake rate is lower than normal!”

“What?!”

“The tanks are filling up too fast!”

“Huh? But you shut it down.”

“I shut down production, but there’s still finished product being transferred here!” Flywheel shouted as she desperately twiddled knobs and flicked switches.

“So what do we do?”

The janitor was answered by a series of ominous creaks from the tanks. Flywheel’s eyes widened. “Hit the alarm. And run!”

They had almost made it through the door when a tremendous blast sounded behind them, and when Clean Sweep turned his head to see what had happened, everything went white.

August 31 – 3:07 AM

Pencil Pusher was sweating as he landed a short distance from the darkened cottage. This sort of task hadn’t been in the job description when he was hired: normally, he spent most of his time sitting at a desk and processing stacks of forms (which, in turn, explained why so few ponies believed him when he claimed the thin, crimson rectangle he had for a cutie mark wasn’t supposed to represent a piece of red tape). He was unaccustomed to significant physical exertion, particularly at a time of night when he was usually fast asleep. Indeed, the only reason he was here at all was that he’d had the rotten luck to pick tonight to stay late and get through his rather substantial backlog of work. As a result, once the higher-ups at the Department of Weather decided that the best way to deal with the mess in Cloudsdale was to get outside help, he’d been the most convenient underling in the office.

The grey stallion couldn’t remember the last time his wings ached so much. In an effort to clear his head, he inhaled deeply through his nose. Almost immediately, he realized he’d made the mistake of landing downwind from a large animal pen. He shook his head repeatedly, attempting to banish the noxious odors from his olfactory system. When this failed, Pencil Pusher decided that the best course of action was to get this task finished as soon as possible. After checking his saddlebags (which, thank Celestia, still held all their contents), he cantered up the path to the front door of the cottage and knocked on the wooden door as loudly as he could.

When nothing seemed to happen, the stallion looked around to see if there was some sort of doorbell or buzzer he could use to get the occupant’s attention, but if one existed, it was impossible to find in the dark. He knocked again, this time calling out, “Hello? Is anypony home?” He certainly hoped somepony was in, as he was way too tired to fly all over Equestria in search of a wayward animal custodian.

Pencil Pusher briefly entertained the idea of bucking the door off of its hinges when a light flared in the upstairs window. Encouraged, he knocked yet again, and was answered this time by a high-pitched voice, albeit one that was too muffled by the walls to communicate effectively. However, the windows on the ground floor were soon filled with light, and the front door swung open, revealing a pale yellow pegasus wearing a lavender bathrobe. Her pink mane and tail would have no doubt flowed elegantly to the ground if she hadn’t been sleeping on them minutes earlier. “Um... can I help you?” the mare asked quietly.

“Uh, yes,” Pencil Pusher replied, suddenly remembering that ogling ponies was not part of his job description, even when their files indicated that they were former supermodels. “You wouldn’t be Fluttershy, by any chance?”

“Yes,” the pegasus answered suspiciously. “And you are...?”

“Huh? Oh, right. My name is Pencil Pusher, and I work for the Department of—”

The bureaucrat’s response was interrupted by a small white blur which darted out from underneath Fluttershy’s legs, hopped onto his back, and immediately latched onto his right wing. Pencil Pusher turned his head and saw a rabbit grunting with effort as it tugged at his carpal joint. “Er... friend of yours?”

“Oh, um, yes. That’s Angel.”

“I see. And what exactly is he trying to do?”

“Well, I’m not certain, but I think he, uh, might be trying to put you in a submission hold. You sort of spooked a lot of my friends, so I think he thought you might be a burglar.”

“What sort of burglar knocks before entering a house?”

“Um, a very polite one?”

“Okay....” The stallion trailed off, electing to ignore the mammal on his back for the time being and finish answering Fluttershy’s question. “Anyway, as I was saying, my name is Pencil Pusher. I’m a clerk at the Department of Weather, and we’re in need of your services.”

“Oh, of course,” the mare said, despite the fact that this didn’t make much sense to her. “Why don’t you come inside?” she asked, to which her guest nodded silently. “You can let him go, Angel,” she added as the two walked into her living room. The rabbit, though clearly reluctant to leave the intruder to his own devices, grudgingly obeyed his caretaker’s command, sliding off of Pencil Pusher’s back. Angel refused to return to bed however, opting instead to stand next to Fluttershy and glower as threateningly as he could at the messenger.

In all honesty, however, Fluttershy was inclined to agree with her friend’s sentiment. It was, after all, only three o’clock in the morning. “Um, okay, I understand that you want my help,” she said, “but why couldn’t it wait until sunrise? I’m not even on Ponyville’s weather team. Perhaps you should meet with Rainbow Dash—”

“Oh, I’m going to be heading to her place as soon as I’m done here. After all, she needs to know that she’ll be taking orders from you.”

“Huh? But I’m just an animal caretaker.”

“Actually, you aren’t just a caretaker; according to our files, you’re also a fully certified fog specialist.”

A wave of apprehension came over Fluttershy as the bureaucrat finished his sentence, but she somehow managed to keep her composure. “Oh, um, right. But, well, you’ll have to excuse me, but most fog-related incidents aren’t exactly worth losing sleep over. I mean, sure, they’re annoying, but it’s not normally worth making a fuss over.”

“That is undoubtedly true, but this situation isn’t exactly normal.”

Concern merged with confusion as Fluttershy raised an eyebrow in response. “What happened?”

Pencil Pusher reached into one of his saddlebags, pulled out a large, bulging envelope, and gave it to his hostess. “Everything we know at the moment is in there,” he said as she set it down on a nearby table, “but I can give you the short version. Basically, there was some sort of accident at a factory in Cloudsdale. A storage tank holding some sort of experimental cloud formula exploded, or something like that. Like I said, we’re not too sure about exactly what happened, but that’s a problem for their insurance company to deal with, not the DOW.”

“Oh, dear! Was anypony hurt?”

“Two ponies had to be taken to the hospital with serious injuries, but nopony else was hurt. Apparently, the whole factory was engineered so that the floor would be the first thing to go, so that everything would fall to the ground, instead of spreading into Cloudsdale.”

“But isn’t that, well, kind of dangerous for ponies who are actually on the ground?”

“No, because zoning laws require companies to own the ground beneath their airborne factories, so anypony walking in that area without adequate head protection is more than likely trespassing in the first place.”

“Oh. So, a whole tank’s worth of cloud is on the ground now?”

“Uh, no... you see, that tank wasn’t the only one in the room. When the floor gave out, all of them fell to the ground, and they all ruptured on impact. The long and the short of it is that there’s a massive blanket of fog on the other side of the Unicorn Range, and the prevailing north winds are pushing it in this direction. Because it’s composed of heavy-duty construction materials, it poses a serious risk to pegasi living at low altitudes. It has to be dispersed as soon as possible, and we’re putting you in charge of the effort.”

Even though her early awakening had left her thought processes somewhat fuzzy, Fluttershy was still coherent enough to be shocked when she learned of her newly-imposed responsibilities. She strained her memory as she attempted to recall all the technical details she had managed to cram into her head just prior to taking her certification exam: “Hold on... north winds mostly bring cold, dry air from the Crystal Mountains, and it’s still summer, so the ground temperature should be relatively warm, even at night. Fog doesn’t normally fare well under those conditions.”

“Like I said, this situation isn’t normal. That’s why we decided to bring in a fog specialist.”

“Oh.” That did make sense, actually. “But when I was certified, the test only covered naturally-occurring fogs and mists. This sounds like something else entirely.”

“Be that as it may, according to Department of Weather guidelines, all ground-level clouds fall under the category of ‘fog,’ regardless of their origin. As far as we’re concerned, you’re the most qualified pony for the job.”

Fluttershy’s eyes widened in mild panic. “Oh, but that can’t possibly be true. There must be somepony else with more experience available. Um, what about Dew Point?”

“She’s visiting relatives in Vanhoover.”

“Purple Haze?”

“He injured his wing, and can’t fly for long distances at the moment. Doctor’s orders.”

“Gloomy Doom and Doomy Gloom?”

“Pony pox.”

That last one, however, sounded suspiciously familiar. “Did you try throwing some cold water on them?”

Pencil Pusher sighed; the long night had nearly drained him of his usual supply of patience. “Ms. Fluttershy, it doesn’t matter if you think there are other ponies who could do this job better than you can. The Department of Weather wants you to do it, and that’s that.”

“Oh... I see.”

“Besides, according to your tax returns, you’ve been using your status as a fog specialist as justification to write off the utility bills and maintenance costs on your home for the last two years, despite the fact that your services haven’t really been required.”

Fluttershy swallowed hard. “My tax returns?”

“Yeah, we had a look at them to make sure you were still active. Wouldn’t want to fly out here only to learn that you were out of the fog business, right?”

“Um... no... of course not.” The mare tried to force out a confidently lackadaisical chuckle, but she ended up sounding like somepony who was unsuccessfully trying to hide her nervousness.

Apparently, Pencil Pusher sensed Fluttershy’s agitation. “Ah, you’ll be fine. The DOW’s giving you all the resources you’ll need to take care of this, not to mention blanket authority over just about everypony on our payroll. In fact, I bet you’re just itching to showcase the skills and knowledge you’ve learned—otherwise, the agents of the Equestrian Revenue Service might get curious, eh?” The stallion ended with what sounded like a good-natured laugh; it certainly seemed like his comment was meant to be a joke, rather than a veiled threat, but still...

“Oh, um, yeah, wouldn’t want to get them upset,” Fluttershy replied, doing her best to appear nonchalant.

“Yeah, especially now that they’re fully armed again.”

“What?!”

“Oh, didn’t you know? The ERS’s collection department consists of members of the Lunar Guard. You know, the pegasi with the bat wings? That’s where they were shuttled off to after Nightmare Moon was banished. Really aggressive types—and now that they’re also charged with protecting Luna again, a lot of them carry weapons on the job.”

“Really?” Fluttershy squeaked.

“But that’s all a moot point. After all, it’s not like the Element of Honesty would cheat on her taxes, right?”

“Um, no. No, she wouldn’t.” Fluttershy abruptly ceased talking, afraid to correct the bureaucrat by pointing out that she wielded the Element of Kindness.

“Well, in any case, I’d better get going. I still have to get in touch with that weatherpony you mentioned. Like I said, everything else you need to know should be in that packet I gave you. We’ll have representatives returning to Ponyville for your preliminary evaluation of the situation in about twelve hours. Good luck, Ms. Fluttershy.”

“Oh, uh, thank you...” Fluttershy’s reply trailed off as Pencil Pusher took flight. After spending a minute or two staring at the manila envelope on her end table and biting her lower lip, the caretaker turned to her faithful bunny rabbit and said: “Um, I think I might be in trouble, Angel.”

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