Manics: Thunderball

-Chapter 1-

...Seven hours prior to Jordan in the snare...

He was at the helm, bored out of his mind. Finally, a voice came from the speaker by the door.

"Jast to Jordan," it said. Jordan walked to the panel and pushed a button. "Yes, Captain?" He asked.

"If everything is in order down there, then your shift is over. I'm sending Kit down to replace you for the evening."

Jordan breathed a sigh of relief, then pushed the button to speak again. "Thank you, sir. I'll be on my way."

"Goodnight, kid," the Captain said. The speaker fell silent, the idle cackle that emitted from it if someone was on dissipated. Jordan left it as it was and went out the automatic metal door. As if on cue, his replacement and best friend, Kit, came in. She was wearing her brown hair in a pony tail draped over her shoulder, as usual. She was had a purple tape over her upper left sleeve with a black X printed on it, also as usual, but the X was the symbol given to the ship; everyone had a X of some sort on them. It was rumored the Captain had one tattooed to his chest. That is, it WAS a rumor, until he proved it true to everyone by ripping it off when he spilled hot coffee on it one time.

"Hey, Jordy," she said with a smile. That cured him of his boredom.

"What's happening, Kit?" he asked her as she went to her post.

"Not much," she said as she looked over a scanner monitor. "I heard Malotov was waiting for you."

"Oh, right!" Jordan exclaimed after a pause. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a CD case. "He wanted this; It's MaQuasi's new album that he played at the last gig."

She looked back with a quizzical look. "If he likes the music, why doesn't he show up?" This brought a lot of rapid questions to mind. Firstly, MaQuasi just suddenly appeared one day, and no one knew who he was. He was dubbed "The Ghost of Thunderball", Thunderball being the name of the ship. His latest album was actually titled that. Secondly, why DOESN'T Malotov show up? Well, he IS kinda a hermit when it comes to the social scene… that WOULD explain it.

Before he could share his thoughts, the scanner started to make a beeping noise. They both went to look.

They couldn't believe what they were seeing.

---M~~A~~N~~I~~C~~S---

"So... what is it?"

"I have no idea! It just... Rainbow, it just appeared!"

"YOU don't KNOW?! Seriously, Twilight?! Your egghead...ed...ness... fails you?!"

The two friends backed away from the telescope in the window. Twilight Sparkle didn't even want to argue with Rainbow Dash's interesting choice of wording. She just kept a grim look on her face as she watched the sky; a specific part of the sky, where a bright, shining dot had appeared just minutes ago. They weren't alone in the shock, for a pink blur was darting around, planning a birthday party for a brand new star.

"...and there'll be a cake with its name on it in gold- no, wait- PINK and gold letters made in icing! ThentherewillbestreamersandfireworksandMUSICfromDJ-P0n3!" At the mention of Twilight’s new neighbor, Pinkie Pie finally stopped between her two friends, wrapping them in a tight squeeze with one arm each; the scholar to her right, and the athlete to her left as they faced the window. "So what's his name? Hubert? Peter? Zachary?" She kept belting out names as Twilight wrenched out of her death-like grip and peeked through the telescope lens again. Something had changed...

She gasped. "It's not a star! It's moving!"

"To where? Manehatten?" The party pony was oblivious to the look she got from RD.

"No, Pinkie," Twilight sighed. "It's just... moving."

Dash, having gotten out of Pinkie's vice, moved next to Twilight. "So... if it's moving... then it's not a star?"

"It's probably a meteor!" Pinkie said.

"No," Twilight said. "It's too bright to be a meteor, maybe it's a comet?"

Pinkie suddenly jumped. “Uh oh! Twitchy tail! Twitcha twitch!”

The point started to get brighter and duller, almost like how a star twinkles, except this had a pattern. The three friends were all thinking the same thing (or, at least Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle were, Pinkie being Pinkie and all): Something was definitely going on with it whatever it was up there. Suddenly, a streak of yellow light bolted across the night sky, heading in a direction that caused RD to start worrying: towards the Weather Factory.

"Uh oh..." Rainbow and Twilight said in unison.

A metallic pop burst through the night air, and clouds began to form, obscuring the telescope's view of the object. What the hay just happened?

“That didn’t look good… wonder if it hit anything,” Pinkie shrugged.

---M~A~N~I~C~S---

"A planet? No way!"

"Yes way, and it looks like it might be unstable, Captain."

The bearded Captain Jast had come down to the helm- in his wheelchair, no less- to verify what Jordan and Kit had reported. They had found a system that, after using the computer to predict how the bodies in the system moved, was actually GEOcentric; the planet was the central point of the system!

"Jordan, I wouldn't say it's unstable," the Captain stated. "The scanner is picking up a diverse set of habitats. Deserts, mountains, forests, massive plains, stuff like that." It was somewhat awkward hearing the Captain say something so casual.

Kit chimed in: "But, sir, how do we explain the whole... sun and moon, yin-yang, thing?" Jordan liked how she could think like that.

"Good question," he pondered for a moment, a finger scratching his beard. He took it away. "Try calibrating the field scanner to pick up anomalies coming from the planet."

She did so, and the scanner lit up with a massive purple field around the planet. "Woah..."

Jordan looked at what the monitor said about it. "It's definitely coming from the planet, but... hold on." He lifted his head to the ceiling. "Kat, am I reading this right?"

A voice cackled from above, a female voice with Earth British accent. "I'm coming down there at the moment..."

After a few seconds, the door opened. A floating robot with medical devices attached to it on both sides glided in. Kat, or MUNI-1 was the embodiment of Thunderball's computer, but she was also the ship's medic. "How are you today, Captain?" a voice rang from the bot.

"I'm fine, but please, answer Jordan's question," the Captain motioned towards the private.

"Jordan, can you specify?"

"This bit about the type of field, am I reading it correctly? You have NO idea what it is?"

"Correct. I can give you my theory, if you'd like."  Usually a robot wouldn't use a contraction, but Kat was programmed with emotions and such.

"Yes, we would," Kit said. Ah, Kit and Kat, Jordan thought with an inward chuckle.

"Assuming if the inhabitants were Manic, which they are definitely not, then this would be a very powerful acaligram." This made all three Manics in the room turn to look at her with quizzical expressions.

"Like... freaking MAGIC?" Jordan said.

"Yes, I suppose so."

Jast put a hand on his forehead and lean back in his wheelchair with a groan. "It's agreed then that this is something worth looking at?"

A new, monotone voice came from the door. "Yes."

Jordan saw who it was and strode towards the door, the CD he had in hand. "Hey, Malotov. Here you go, The Ghost of Thunderball." The Manic with the sunglasses and blank expression took it, saying his one word of thanks.

Jordan turned towards the others. "Well, this reminds me that I have to go and pass out in my room. Unless my shift has just restarted?" He directed the question towards the Captain, who nodded and waved his free hand for him to go. He did.

As he went to his room, he passed Gunny, Joni, and Walker. Gunny was, like her nickname denounced, the weapons maintenance chief. She was cute with her psyche-jewelry (which was a kind of jewelry that floated while being controlled by subconscious brain-waves), three stems with a tiny ball on the end floating near the back of her head. Her sister, Joni, had the same kind of psyche-jewelry, but hers had a bar under the ball part of it. Walker was Joni's "husband", though it never was declared official. He had psyche-jewelry, too, but it was more related to his acaligram of summoning fire. The jewelry was a set of three dark blue spikes that rotated in a very slow circle around his neck. Jordan waved to them, and they waved back. Walker, however, had something to say.

"Hey, man, how's your pod?" Jordan sighed in response. Walker knew how the pods creeped him out.

A while ago, they encountered a ghost ship drifting in an empty area of space. On board, they discovered these pods that had a Manic growing inside them. Since their discovery, they had grown from baby to child to teenager in a matter of weeks. They were now seemingly stuck at Jordan's age, roughly 18 or 19 (except for 0009, who grew to be a young child and stopped growing).

There were eleven pods, all numbered 0001-0011. Only four could fit in storage, so each of the crew had to keep one in their quarters (except for Cop, his room was too small). Jordan's was 0001, a boy with white hair like MaQuasi. Not that you could tell it was white, the liquid surrounding him was a slimy green color. That's not what creeped him out, though. It was the fact that they were kept alive by being plugged into the computer, and no one knew how it happened.

"I think he's fine," Jordan said with his eyes closed.

"You gonna name him?"

"Did you? What's 0007's name?"

Walker chuckled: a miracle, since he was usually doom and gloom. "Get going, you look like you're gonna pass out."

"Wait a second," that was Gunny. "What's going on? I heard Kat say something about something being 'impossible'." Damn, she was using that cute voice of hers again. Jordan had to oblige.

"New system, but it's geocentric. Can you believe that?"

"Bullshit," Joni stated bluntly. Jordan just shrugged and walked off.

He entered his quarters and collapsed on his bed, looking up at the pod before him. 0001 was smiling this time.

He must be liking whatever the computer was showi- wait... he was frowning again, but it looked serious this time. Jordan swore if this could have been a look of shock and fear. A nightmare?

A beeping sound came from the wall near the door. Before he could investigate it, the sound suddenly got louder and longer, like a dog whistle. Then... it happened.

BOOM! BOOM! Jordan was lurched off of his bed as the entire ship shook, landing hard on his shoulder. The lights turned blood red and a siren was heard, making him ignore the pain his shoulder was emitting. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?

"JORDAN! This is Jast! Report!"

He got up and pushed a button of his table. "Sir, what just happened?"

A ruffling sound. "This is Kit. Jordan, there was an explosion outside your ro-"

Rrrrrumble… The ship was rocked again. Another explosion.

"-OH CRAP! That came from engineering! I have to get down there!"

"Kit," Kat's voice said. "I'm detecting a large amount of radiation. Engineering has been contained to prevent ship-wide contamination." Somehow, the way Kat managed to stay… well, Kat… in a situation like this was both uplifting and terrifying.

More ruffling from the com, the Captain's voice again: "Jordan, can you get up here?!"

Jordan moved to the door, but it didn't open. He tried to force it, and a message came up of the monitor near it. "THERE IS AN OBJECT JAMMING THIS DOOR. REMAIN CALM, AND AN ENGINEER WILL BE HERE SHORTLY."

Crapcrapcrap! "Sir, my door's jammed!"

"Figures." Malotov's voice. "First blast was outside your room." Malotov had the same effect on Jordan’s spirits that Kat had, but at least he sounded more focused.

"Jordan, we're gonna have to crash the ship!” Oh, shit… “You're the only one who may be able to get out afterwards! We need you to get the PRE-C Data if we're gonna be able to make first conta-" The Captain's voice was cut out by another explosion.

BaBURMM!!!

Jordan was lurched backwards, his head making contact with the wall. The throbbing pain grew more intense as the siren and screeching sound outside the ship got louder, and the lights seemed to flash brighter. He glimpsed at 0001, who seemed to have a look of panic on his face, gas bubbles pouring out his mouth in a silent, liquidy scream…

Not even sleeping can help this guy… sleep… ah, crap, I’m losing it...

He could feel himself slipping out of reality as he looked out the window. A piece of debris was rocketing toward the planet (which was much closer now). Then everything went black.

---M~A~N~I~C~S---

A knock came from the library door, fast and panicky. Not a surprise, since it was suddenly stormy outside. Rainbow Dash flew over and opened it, and there was a certain grey pegasus with a blonde mane and wall eyes, accompanied by a filly unicorn resembling her.

"Ditzy..." Rainbow said.

"Hi, Rainbow Dash! Can we come in? It's raining and stuff and we're wet and..."

Rainbow Dash moved aside. "Get in..." she said with sigh. She probably did something to the weather factory...

The pair walked in, and the filly was tackled by Pinkie almost immediately upon entering. They both laughed in a puddle that had come off of the little one. Twilight looked over from the telescope. "Pinkie! You got the floor wet!"

In response to this, Pinkie grabbed Ditzy and brought her over to Twilight. She then went and whispered something to Rainbow Dash, who smirked and flew outside, bringing back a tuft of storm cloud. After shaking herself off, she flew the cloud over to Ditzy and Twilight, who were now deep in what seemed to be a serious conversation (on Twilight's part, since Ditzy just kept a smile on her face the entire time). She then jumped on the cloud, causing a lightning bolt to shoot out. The explosion scared the water off of Ditzy... and onto Twilight.

"PFFT!!!!" Pinkie and Dash burst into a laugh that could be heard by the neighbors. Dinky's was a little weaker, due to her being young. Even Ditzy chuckled. Only Twilight was not amused.

"Good one, Rainbow Dash!" Ditzy yelled up to the hysterical, cyan pegasus.

"Yeah, good one, Dash," Twilight mumbled, half to herself. "Anyway, Ditzy was just telling me that the weather factory has been damaged-"

"Guess who?" Rainbow Dash said sarcastically.

"-... by some kind of debris..."

"...oh," Rainbow said glumly. "Sorry, Ditz, I thought you crashed into it. Again."

Ditzy kept smiling. "That was funny though, when I crashed into it and I caused a blizzard?"

Everyone just looked at her. Her daughter, on the other hand, started laughing again. "It was!" This killed everyone; all of them giggled furiously. Another knock interrupted the mirth. This time, Twilight trotted over and opened it. Her newer neighbors stood in the opening: a white mare with a messy blue mane wearing purple sunglasses (at night…?) and a grey mare with properly groomed hair and a pink bowtie. The two seemed like complete opposites that wouldn’t get along, but there they were, living next door to the library. Twilight invited them in with no hesitation.

“Sorry if we’re intru-“ the grey one started, only to be interrupted by her companion.

“WOAH! There’s a party and DJ-P0n3 wasn’t invited!?” Sure enough, she was also glomped by a pink blur when she walked inside.

Twilight didn’t bother staring; Rainbow did. Pinkie just TACKLED a CELEBRITY. One I’m a FAN of! Needless to say, she became involved, getting the Dubtrot artist away from ponification of ADHD and striking up a conversation.

“Like I was saying…” the DJ’s housemate started again. “Sorry to intrude, but our house seems to be… flood prone.” She facehoofed at the memory of seeing Vinyl splashing in the water, like it was all fun and games. I’m living with a mare with the mind of a filly. Someone kill me.

“It’s alright, Octavia,” Twilight said with a smile, but with some visible concern. “What about… your cello?”

Boom. On the floor. Out cold. The sound her friend collapsing got Vinyl over there quickly. “Wha-what happened?”

“I reminded her of her cello,” Twilight put simply. “What about your stuff?”

Vinyl shrugged. “Meh, I’ll dry it off and work from there.”

“And your records?”

“All my records are copied twice and stored upstairs in a waterproof safe ‘n stuff.”

She’s either organized or really, really careful, Twilight thought with an amazed look. “So… you two will be staying here for the night? You’re not alone if you are, Ditzy and Dinky are here.”

Vinyl lifted her fallen comrade with her magic and slowly, and carefully, lowered her onto the nearby couch. Afterwards, she replied: “Yeah, looks like it. But, if Ditz and her little kid are here, where’s Sparkler?”

Ditzy, who was apparently above them the entire time, suddenly dove down… face first onto the wooden floor. Everyone looked over and cringed (except Pinkie, who just giggled saying “That looks super-duper- or super-derper, no offense, Ditzy- FUN!”), but the mailmare sprung up with no visible injury or look that indicated any pain on her part, amazingly.

“Sparkler is with Lyra and Bon-bon tonight! Something about it being important to Lyra’s future…” even with her wall eyes, she managed to get a wondering look on her face.

“Probably about…” Rainbow Dash began to chuckle. “Humans?”

No one laughed. Not even Pinkie, amazingly. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

“She hasn’t mentioned humans in two months, Rainbow,” Twilight stated. “Someone even asked her why… and…” she started to look desperate, her eyes darting around and usually landing on Pinkie Pie.

“She pulled a Pinkie and said ‘Humans? Why would I mention something so silly?’”

Everyone gasped, once again excluding Pinkie who said “I don’t say stuff like that!”

“You said that there are creatures called ‘brownies’ watching us, and that you saw them through the ‘fourth wall’.” Twilight said.

“I never said anything about bronies, Twilight! And I most certainly did not mention ‘Allegrezza’, Scratch!” Vinyl just looked confused. The buck is “Allegrezza”?

“I also didn’t mention that story where Rainbow Dash kills Scootaloo and-“

“PINKIE!” Dash yelled. “STOP CREEPING ME OUT!”

“I agree with Rainbow,” Twilight said.

“Yeah, I agree,” Vinyl said.

“Muuuuffins,” Ditzy sing-songed.

“I’m a filly, what is this?” Dinky asked.

“I wasn’t creeping you out! What was I saying?” Pinkie raised a hoof to her face and stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth in deep thought. After five seconds of this…

RrrRrrrRRRRrrrRRR… A rumbling came from outside and the tree began to shake. Lightning flashed outside and thunder crashed shortly after. Ditzy went to her daughter’s side, comforting the now scared filly.

“T-t-twilight, w-w-what is…” Rainbow stuttered, no longer maintaining her tough girl attitude.

Pinkie was standing straight, bouncing with the shaking. “T-T-T-TH-H-H-I-I-I-S I-I-I-I-S-S-S-S F-F-F-F-U-U-U-U-N-N-N!”

Octavia woke with a start as she was unwillingly rolled out of bed, landing on Vinyl, who had gotten down on the floor. “S-s-since wh-e-en d-d-oes P-o-o-ony-v-v-ille have er-er-er-earth-q-q-quakes?”

“Never! T-th-is is n-n-ew! C-c-ould it b-be t-the we-eather fac-ctory?” Twilight got down like Vinyl, and aimed the question at Rainbow.

“W-what? W-w-we don’t do er-earthquakes! W-we’re pe-egasi, for Ce-ce-lestia’s s-s-sake!”

        The rumbling stopped, an explosion punctuating the end of this event. Booooooooom!

        Everyone stood staring at each other, the floor, the ceiling, and nothing in particular. Rainbow broke the silence: “Um… Ditzy?” She made motions with her hooves that Ditzy squinted at.

What about Dinky? Oh… OH! The mailmare put her hooves over her daughter’s ears, allowing Rainbow to safely say what she was dying to say next.

        “What the buck was that?!”

---M~A~N~I~C~S---

“Do you sense that, my sister?”

“Yes, I do, Luna.”

“It is somewhere near Ponyville.”

“The Weather Factory there was damaged not half an hour ago. The pegasi are repairing it, but we cannot investigate this presence tonight.”

“I am unable to leave in the morning.”

“I will go.”

“But sister-“

“If you cannot go, then you cannot go. After all, I understand you favor the night.”

“…yes, I do.”

“I will rest tonight and leave after I have risen the sun in the morning.”

“I will leave the night after, then?”

“I’m counting on that, Luna. Some of them may favor the night.”

“They? This presence is…”

“Yes.”

“…”

“Something troubling you?”

“No… nothing at all. You should rest, Celestia.”

“Yes, good night, little sister.”

“It will be, big sister.”

“Heh, I wonder when you thought of that?”

“’It will be?’ Why, I just thought of it now.”

“Not what your personal guard said.”

“Scoundrel… Um… fine, a month ago.”

“Hm.”

“…he didn’t say anything, did he?”

“Nope!”

“…good night, Celestia.”

“Good night, Luna.”

“…why does she do that? No idea!”

“Uh… Princess Luna, did you say something?”

“No, we did not!”