Chapter 1: Fracking is fun
All was fairly normal over in the Shetland Islands, nothing seemed out of the ordinary today. Bonnie Chancer was a bonnie lil’ mare, 30 years of age and not much taller than a labrador. She enjoyed her life on the islands, the air was fresh, the ponies were friendly and she was as faraway from England as she could possibly be. She had been into town early to pick up some supplies for breakfast and was on her way back home. Bonnie was particularly cheery today as she had recently been chosen as the official mascot of an upcoming event, happening right in her hometown. The Shetland Pony Convention.
As she approached her home Bonnie checked her mailbox which had several letters inside. The mailmare must have came early for once. Mostly a few bills, Dominos Pizza coupons despite there not being a Dominos within delivery distance and a letter stamped with the official seal of BronyScot. Bonnie ran inside, almost dropping her basket of waffles and bacon all over the floor. Knowing it was going to be fantastic news, likely an invitation to film a promo for the upcoming event, she ripped open the letter with excitement.
Dear Bonnie,
It is with my deepest regret that we must inform you that we cannot continue with the plans for Shetland Pony Con and as such are cancelling the project. Nessie required a swimming pool of Irn Bru and we spent the entire budget on providing that. We’re sure you understand that we made the best decision here.
Hope the Shetland Bronies aren’t disappointed.
Kindest Regards,
Cobbler Command
BronyScot Team.
She was almost in disbelief, how could she be reading this. Was it some kind of April Fools joke? She looked on the calendar, surely it mustn't have been. Tears almost running down her face, Bonnie slumped down into one of the dining room chairs. She really had been looking forward to being the mascot for the upcoming convention. Damn that her younger cousin had all the attention, she thought to herself. She really needed the money as well. She was lucky that she owned her own house and didn't have to pay any landlord or the bank, it had been passed down to her from her Scandinavian grandparents who were ancestors of an old viking king that once ruled the Shetland Islands.
Utterly devastated Bonnie flicked on the television to try and distract herself from her crushing depression. If things couldn’t get any worse the news was currently airing. There was a piece about the upcoming election all the way in England, school dinners making fillies fat and the Chinese Government hacking PSN. All the usual upsetting rubbish. Suddenly the news pony mentioned the Shetland Islands, this perked Bonnie up a little. It was a live feed from the town over, some executive suit was being interviewed about upcoming plans to do fracking in the area. He was really selling the point and the local ponies were all cheering loudly at the thought of a raise in the local economy.
Bonnie as always was one step ahead and could tell there was something a miss with this. The badge on the pony’s suit was certainly familiar. She stood up for a closer look and she was right, she had seen it before. The badge read Redstone Inc. the huge multibillion-bit technology company that her uncle, Nessie’s father, worked for in London.
“What! They can’t possibility be wanting to do anything nice for anypony here! All they want is people to buy their new overpriced watch”. Bonnie was visibly fuming. She had always despised Redstone Inc. after the incident where she had wondered into one of their stores to buy a new computer and she couldn't get the attention of any of their so called genius' as they all simply refused to look down. Because of her short height they couldn't see her and she couldn't see any of their computers as the display tables were not accessible for a Shetland pony. When she wrote a letter of complaint they replied saying she could use their online store and that they were extremely sorry that she had such an experience and included a 10 bit gift card for their music store, which had made Bonnie even more annoyed. How dare they try and be nice to her!
Bonnie angrily went onto Tumblr to vent about her awful morning. She knew her followers would agree on every word.
Meanwhile in the smoggy metropolis of Central London on the top floor of Redstone Inc. HQ a board meeting of the company directors was taking place. They had also been watching the news broadcast of the interview, making sure their suit was ensuring proper marketing was taking place, as one mistake would ruin their evil plan.
“Excellent work. As usual he put on a perfect show. Look at that crowd there they’re eating up very word!” one of the directors said with a smirk.
"They actually think we’ll be fracking in the Shetland Islands! We’d never do something so kind” another proclaimed followed with a sinister throaty chuckle.
The chairman of the board, who had been silently listening to what the others had to say suddenly spoke.
“Yes, he did do a good job. Lets hope he continues to make sure the locals stay away. We don’t want them to find out that we’re actually digging for the viking gold to make even more gold watches now do we!" He said with a stern and powerful manner.
"Step one, we convince the local populace we are helping them by fracking. Step two, we send in the automatic digging drones. Step three we acquire all the damn viking gold we can get our hooves on. Step four, sell our solid gold watches to the masses."
"Such an ingenious plan sir, we've taken over two hundred million pre-orders and the public don't even know we haven't actually manufactured any yet!" said one of his yes stallions.
"Excellent. Now as long as nothing gets in our way. We'll be rich! Rich I say! Wait, I mean even richer than we already are!" As he said that he stood up and went to look out of the window onto the streets of the city below, contemplating evilly.
