Preparation

“Ready?” asks the now-visible mare in full black power armor.

Aviator smiles at me.

I take a steady breath, then smile back. I can't believe I’m gonna meet the family. I squee. “I’m so totally ready.” I admit, I’m parched and a bit famished, but that’s what you feel after walking for hours.

Mom nods and flies up above me. Her strong forelegs come down around me and interlock with each other under mine. “You need to find Deadbolt, Hydrogen, Carbon, and Helium.” I nod. Mom’s wings begin to beat, raising us into the sky. The hot day is chilling now as we soar through the air, approaching the cloud cover. “Prepare your eyes,” cautions Mom as we enter the damp layered clouds, still rising.

The most beautiful sight. The white fluffy clouds light up like dancing gold feathers with the sun to be setting in an hour. Clear blue skies are up here. No wonder the pegasi like their cloud cities so much better.

We approach a cloud city that is separated from the cloud cover, on a large island made of clouds. Their cloud houses are amazing, and quite something for architecture, if you ask me. Coming closer to a large cloud-made building, Mom briefs me again. “Use your Pipbuck-” my Pipbuck… “to go over the names of each pony. You’re looking for a Deadbolt, Hydrogen, Carbon, and Helium.”

“I got it,” I say, nodding. Mom places me behind the building. My hooves sink a bit in the white fluff under me. “Meet you back here later.”

Mom nods and sits down close to the wall, trying her best not to be seen. “Save ‘em Oxygen.”

With another nod, I trot off.

Walking on clouds is like walking in loose sand at the beach, your hooves sink in with each step. Weird.

So many buildings… All cloud-buildings. I smile. Awesome. “Woo!” My ears twitch at the sound. I follow a crowd of everyday pegasi to the edge of the cloud island, our attention drawn by the whooping.

Mom had dived off the inhabited island, ten pegasi on her tail. She flies faster than them, though they keep up pretty nicely. “WOOOO!!!” cheers Mom, enjoying the wind in her mane.

I need to finish this quickly! SATS comes up. Everypony here does not have a name of Deadbolt, or anything chemical related. Time to move on. I trot through the city. Okay, okay. I need to ask for directions. A Lieutenant Cruise Control sits peacefully, bathing in the sunlight, eyes shut. “Excuse me? Sir?” His eyes open gently, revealing soft emerald green orbs.

“Yes ma’am?” He has a gentle voice that matchs his gentle appearance. His coat was a light grey and his mane and tail a dark grey.

“Are you part of the Enclave?”

Cruise Control’s eyes closed again. A smile covers his face. “Yeah. Why?”

“How exactly do the hours works?”

His left eye opens, eyeing me with suspicion. “Depends if you got day or night shifts.” His eye closes.

“Oh. Okay.” Not like I would know which shifts anypony I was looking for had. “Do you know where the suburban areas are?”

Smiling, he gives me the slightest nod. “Yeah. You new here?”

I giggle. “Yeah.”

His eyes open and he gets up, stretching. He flaps his wings. “I’m going on a stroll there. Join me?”

Was he hitting on me? No no no. Impossible. I nod. “I’d love to, but could we walk there?”

He shot a smirk my way. “You got it, filly.” A shiver runs down my spine. Boy, is it chilly up here. Cruise Control glides over to my side and wraps his right wing around me, giving me a squeeze before just holding me to him.

“Oh!” I squeak.

“Shall we go Mystery Mare?”

I smile, nodding.

Our hoofsteps are synced as we stroll slowly through the neighborhood. “Got a certain pony that you’re visiting? A coltfriend?” His way of asking if I was single. Smooth.

“I don’t have a coltfriend,” I reply snarkily. “I’m here to visit family. Problem is, I don’t know which house is theirs. You wouldn’t happen to know a family here with their names consisting of different elements...?” I was trying not to say their actual names.

“Oh! You mean like Hydrogen and Helium?” I nod. “Yeah I know them. Hydrogen’s my best friend. And Helium’s my little brother’s teacher. There’s Carbon too, right?”

“Yeah, yeah! That’s them! You know where they stay?”

He chuckles, “I’m supposed to be heading there now. I hang over there most every afternoon.”

The luck I must have.

“Hydro!” calls Cruise Control from the side of the “Chem” residence. “Hydrogen! Get the buck up!” Nothing. The stallion takes to the skies and peers into the window he had been yelling at. “H-H-Hydro!” he stammers.

“GET OUT!”

The stallion drops from the air and falls beside me in the cloud. He looks completely stunned, jaw open and everything.

A white pegasus with a jet black and rose red mane takes off from the window. A white mare comes out a second later, this time through the front door of the house. And she looks sooo pissed. “Seriously Cruise!?” She looks like Mom and I. Her coat is white like ours, and her mane and tail wavy like ours, except with a different coloring scheme. Her whole mane was a pale blue and her eyes were a light blue. “You are such a-”

Her anger disappears dramatically as she sees me. “Hey… Hydrogen?” Did she know me?

“Who… who are you?” She notices the resemblance too.

I smile gently. “I’m Oxygen.”

Her heart breaks. “No. No no no no.” She backpedals quickly before turning and running into the house. “Auntie! Helium! Carbon!” she yells, panicking terribly. “Dad! DAD!!!”

Three pegasi gather around the mare and I stand looking in from the door. “What is it, dear?” asks a sweet white mare with Mom, Hydro, and my wavy mane made up of a light gray and pale blue. She shares the same piercing light blue eyes as Mom, but somehow hers hold more of a caring nature. Two stallions are there too. A large dark grey stallion with a spiked electric blue mane and tail. He has black goggles around his neck that would serve to cover his piercing blue eyes as he flew. The second stallion wasn’t as huge. He’s brown with a dark brown, almost black, mane and tail. His eyes a dark grey-green.

“You alright Hydro?” asks the smaller stallion.

Hydrogen raises a hoof and points at me. “Her!”

Their collective gaze leaves my sister and glues themselves onto me. They each freeze. When Mom had run away with me, Deadbolt, Carbon, and Helium and all been old enough to memorize my face. They know who I am.

The smaller stallion rushes up to me, and drowns me in a hug. “Oxygen!” he yells in joy. “It’s me. Your dad...” Deadbolt. Dad. I smile.

That leaves the other stallion to be Carbon, and the other mare besides Hydrogen, to be Helium. Easy. Fuck you, SATS.

Helium rushes me too, toppling Dad and I over. “I can't believe it’s actually you!”

I look past the family members ontop of me from my place in the soft cloud. Other pegasi are poking their heads out of their windows to see what all the fuss is about. “Shhh!” I lower my voice to the smallest whisper, making it unable for further ponies to hear me, including neighbors, Carbon, and Hydrogen. “We need to talk. Privately. Now.” Deadbolt rolls off of me and gets up, trotting into the house. Helium clings to me. I make an attempt to get up. Surprisingly, it takes little to no effort than usual to get up. She’s as light as helium, possibly even making me lighter than usual. She’s on my back as I enter the house. Cruise Control comes in too, shutting the door behind him.

Carbon know what’s up. “Cruise Control. This is important. Wait outside will you?” His voice is deeper than most, though nonthreatening the way he gently speaks.

Cruise Control sighs. “Whatever,” he says, trotting back out and closing the cloud-door behind him.

Each family member stares expectantly at me, so I start. “I’m busting you all out of here.”

They were against the whole thing at first, but once they heard Mom came up with the plan, they were packing furiously to see her again. A husband who anxiously awaited his wife’s unlikely return, a daughter who desperately wanted a mother, her mother, to hold her, a sister who dreamt of playing in the clouds with her older sister once more, and a big brother who wanted to care for his lost little sister and make sure she was safe- All panicked to retrieve cherished belongings as to not lose their Nitrogen again.

A knocking comes from the door in the form of the light rumble of thunder. “Carbon? Deadbolt?” My body goes rigid as does the whole family’s. “You alright in there?”

Helium composes herself and trots to the door. Expectantly, she looks at us, telling us to hide. We’re as silent as the night, creeping up the stairs. I follow Hydrogen into her room, splitting from Carbon and Deadbolt who go through a different door across the hall. Through the cloud-constructed walls, the conversation was clear as a pre-apocalyptic day. I hope Cruise Control didn’t hear everything we were saying earlier. “Mr. Crescent?” Cheer gleams in her voice, happy despite the circumstances. “How are you doing today? Enjoying your day off?”

A hearty chuckle from the stallion lights a comforting mood, again, despite the circumstances. “I wish. Enclave’s orders to check your home. May I come in Ma’am?”

She keeps up her sweet tone. “Why, of course! Would you like some coffee while you’re here, sir?”

“I’d love that Ma’am.” Because steps are silent in the cloud floors, only by dialog could I track their location.

Helium knows it too, and keeps him talking. “Well I could have sworn Saturday was your day off.”

“Heh. Nice to know you remember. Yeah- for every week I’ve been in the Enclave, they’ve let me have Saturdays, but now that I’m rising ranks, they’re moving it to Sundays.”

“At least it’s in the weekend.”

“Yep.” They’re under us, in the kitchen. “Where’s Carbon? Rare I ever see you without him.”

“Oh- well I believe he’s upstairs with Deadbolt, staring their eyes out at some damn terminal. Like a couple of fouls, I swear.” The sound of liquid pouring- Helium serving coffee to the stallion.

He chuckles again. “Makes sense. Deadbolt’s always been that way. How about Helium?”

Helium giggles. Her tone is low and teasingly, she explains. “Helium’s got a friend over~”

I couldn’t help but blush. Hydro freaks out. She knows I’m into mares too now. I facehoof.

“Oh really?” The stallion seems amused. “She finally get with Cruise Control?” He sips his coffee.

Hydro’s jaw drops. She. Is. Pissed.

“Nope,” replies Helium as she giggles. “She’s got a mare over.”

My sister is about to explode, either from anger or embarrassment. Now it was a race between which will push her over the edge. I bet a cap on embarrassment.

“Wow. Never knew her barn door swung that way.” He takes another sip. “I need to check upstairs to fulfill my duties here. I apologize for the intrusion, Ma’am.”

“Oh! Nonsense! You’re just doing your job, sweetie.” Helium spurs another question into the air. “So how are you liking your new wing? They got assigned this week, correct?” They’re at the bottom of the stairs.

Wing?

“Oh they’re great. Cruise is in it.” Starting up the stairs.

“Really? That’s so nice. He’s a good colt.” At the top of the staircase.

“Yep, a sloppy flier though. I’m trying to teach him what flying really is. Can barely maneuver through the clear blue sky.” Outside the door.

“I’m glad he’s got you as his superior. The colt needs a bit more supervision than the rest.” They pass our door.

“Yep.” A pause. “Hello gentlecolts.”

“Crescent! How’re you doing, pal?” asks Dad. The interfering stallion is with Dad and Carbon in whatever room they hid in.

“Doing great, Deadbolt. I’m just checking in. Enclave’s orders.”

“Hey! No reason to hide your antagonizing love for me behind the damn Enclave! I understand Moon- I’m madly in love with myself too.”

The two friends warmly laugh together. “Yeah-yeah. Sure buddy- Keep dreaming!” Their chuckles softly die. “Well I’ll be getting out of your mane now.”

“See ya Sergeant.”

“See ya, repair ponies.”

“See you Crescent,” adds Carbon.

They’re all great friends. My heart hurts, knowing that they would never see each other again- or at least not on good terms.

“I’ve gotta check on the filly,” states Crescent. “Unfortunately.”

Hydrogen suddenly dashes over and grabs me, tossing me onto her super comfortable bed. A second later she’s right up against me. Oh dear Luna! Laying ontop of me, her face slowly nears.

Ah! No!

“Oh jeez.” My head turns to the door. Crescent, the intruding sergeant stands awkward in the doorframe. He’s a light orange stallion with soft red-orange eyes and a white-blue mane and tail.

Hydro’s head violently jerked up. “Crescent! Seriously!?”

“Sorrysorrysorry,” he stammers, backing out of the door and into the hallway, shutting it soundly.

I could hear Helium giggling like crazy outside.

“Oh-uh-um- I’ll be going now,” states the stallion now feeling even more awkward in his unwelcome interruption.

Heliums laughter only dies down slightly. “O-haha-okay Cres-ha-Crescent.”

His wings flapped, growing increasingly distant as he left the house until he was finally out of earshot.

“HELIUM! YOU ARE SUCH A DICK!” yells Hydrogen, super embarrassed.

Helium’s giggles only become louder and she comes into the room, walking all funny. “I-m so-so-s-s-sorry!” She collapses in laughter.

I giggle a bit too. I really thought Hydro was actually gonna kiss me. My heart warms with the realization; this is family.

Deadbolt chuckles his way into the room, Carbon by his side with an amused, small smile on his lips.

Carbon’s smile disappears. “Sorry to interrupt, but we should get going. Nitrogen’s waiting.”

“Nitrogen” makes everypony stop laughing to dash away, continuing their packing.