Chapter 1 - Tick, Tock, Boom
“No, no, no!” Terminal Velocity sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her dark sky blue frame shook with nerves. “The inspector is going to be here any second now, and the office is still a wreck!”
As Terminal mused on her current problem, there were several sharp knocks on her office’s door. “Hello?”
“Crap, crap, crap, craaaap....” She muttered to herself as she shoved several files into her desk’s drawer. Finally pleased with her work, she called out cheerily, “Come in!”
The door swung open, revealing a blue Pegasus with a large smile on his face that fell slightly as he took in the room around him. “Should I come back another day?”
“Yes-no! Today is fine!” Terminal smiled in a very forced manner. “I-I just, uh, had a stray tornado go through here!” Flipping her lightning streaked mane to her other shoulder, she tried to arrange herself in a position that looked non-conspicuous.
The new arrival laughed softly, stepping into the office. “If you say so.” He trotted forward, throwing a few more papers onto the already cluttered desk. “I’m Wind Stream!” He said cheerfully as he extended a hoof. “And you are…?”
“U-uh, Terminal Velocity.” She shook his hoof vigorously. “Hehe… So, should I give you a tour of the factory?”
Wind Stream nodded as his smile returned in full force once he regained possession of his hoof. “Sounds good to me! Shall we start with the snow factory?”
“Uh, I don’t control the snow factory. I control the wind branch. Do you want to see the wind that we have ready for winter?” Terminal questioned, wondering whether or not the inspector actually had an idea of what he was doing.
“Oh, sorry about that!” the Pegasus said as he chuckled nervously. “This is actually my first assignment, I’m pretty new to this.”
Terminal laughed. “Yeah, you seem pretty new at this.” She coughed when she noticed his glare. “I-I mean, uh, take this hat!” She yelled, practically throwing a hardhat at Wind.
He fumbled with the hard hat for a bit before finally managing to get a grip on it and plopping it on his head. “Lead the way!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“...and this is where the wind for next summer is being prepared. Obviously it’s not in high gear because of winter being so close, but we have a few winds ready.” Terminal waved her hoof around, showing Wind the Gentle Breezes.
Wind Stream checked a few gauges and tapped the wind container on several places, checking for weaknesses. “Everything seems in order here. Though you might want to lay off the snow a bit more, I heard the Princesses are coming next week.”
Terminal’s eye twitched. “What?”
“Terminal! Terminal Velocity!” A brown pegasus ran up to her, out of breath. “There’s a leak… winter winds section… Gale Winds.... thought you ought to know.” With those final words, he fell over, unconscious.
Terminal’s mouth opened in surprise, while Wind glanced at her, knowing that she knew what this could mean for her and her career. Not only is there a breakdown during inspection, but the leaders of Equestria were scheduled for a visit. “Come on,” Wind said, snapping the mare from shocked trance. “I’ll help you fix it, don’t want the leaked winds to turn into a hurricane or something.”
Terminal engaged in full-on manager mode, leading Wind to the leaking section. “I don’t know how in Equestria the thing could crack, considering it’s locked in a triple-glass shield where each sheet of glass is three inches thick. Luckily we should be able to turn off the pressure. It’s a temporary plan, but it will have to do until we can get some repairponies here.” She pulled aside a worker. “Get everypony out of that section. We don’t want anypony getting hurt from any stray winds.”
He watched her give orders for several more minutes despite the situation, acting much like a commander in a field of battle. “What do you need me to do?”
“Get a roll of duct tape.” Noticing his incredulous look, Terminal sighed. “Duct tape has been proven to be sticky and a great method to seal cracks. Now go get a roll of duct tape!”
Now believing that Terminal was truly a mad mare, Wind scrambled off in search of the requested item. “Pretty sure duct tape isn’t a safety sanctioned repair tool…” He mumbled once out of hearing range.
Rounding the corner, Wind finally saw the janitor’s closet. He flew inside and his eyes met tons of boxes, each unlabeled. Still grumbling, he opened each one up and looked inside. Each time something other than duct tape was seen. Suddenly a loud crash met his ears. Swiveling around, Wind had just enough time to see a shadowy figure slam the door to the janitor’s closet. He didn’t even need to check to know it was blocked from the other side.
“Hey!” The inspector shouted as he began beating on the door, “Open up!” His pounding went unnoticed in the empty corridor “Hello!?”
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Terminal could tell the leak was getting worse. The wind in the factory was past the danger zone, and the other containers were in danger of breaking if there were any faults in the glass. “Where is that pony?” She growled softly to herself. “Just wait a little bit longer. I’m sure he will be here then.”
Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. “That’s it. I gotta go find that duct tape on my own if he’s gonna chicken out!”
Walking towards the janitor’s closet, Terminal turned the corner and her eyes met the janitor’s closet door locked up tight. “What… in the world?” She said aloud.
“Terminal?” A voice called from within. “Open up! Somepony locked me in here after I got the duct tape!”
“W-Wind?” Terminal gasped. Quickly pulling apart the barricade, she threw the door open, revealing a scared pegasus. “What happened? Other than somepony locking you in the closet.” Another alarm blared through the building. “You know what? Let’s fix the leak and then talk about what happened.”
“Wait!” He shouted as she rounded a corner, “Somepony is trying to sabotage you…” He said, though the other pegasus was well out of earshot. With no other choice, he grabbed a few rolls of duct tape and ran after her.
Running into the problem room, Wind stopped in his tracks as he beheld what held Terminal in place. A hole the size of a wrecking ball was in the middle of the glass, making it nearly impossible to fix, and certainly not with duct tape. The strangest thing was the hole in the glass wasn’t jagged. It was a perfect circle all the way around.
Terminal’s mouth opened. “I-I just… What?” Wind smacked her muzzle to get her to get in gear again. Shaking her head, Terminal flew over to the pressure meter and found it pushed way past the safety level. “I think I may have been sabato-”
An explosion rang out, interrupting whatever the mare had to say and sending her tumbling through the air. Her unplanned flight was ended by a wall on the other side of the room. “Terminal!” Wind shouted, knowing what such violent impacts could do to a pony.
She groaned, holding her sides in pain. “I-I think… I think my ribs…” She winced. “...I think they’re broken…” Using clearly a massive amount of will, she grit her teeth and stood up. “We need to leave…. The factory’s done for. Hit-” She coughed, dropping two drops of red on the white cloud floor. “-hit the… evac button.... It’s on the platform above you…”
Having gone through the building’s layout before the inspection, Wind took to the air and hit the emergency evacuation button. A red light flashed while a siren, loud enough to be heard even over the malfunctioning machinery, blared throughout the building. With the task done, he dove back to Terminal. Even though she was standing now, he could see that she was not going to make it very far. “Can you fly?”
She attempted a grin, and failed horribly. “Sure... I’ve had worse knocks before... anyhow.” She started flying as fast as she could towards the exit, which admittedly was not very fast. Wind flew next to her, pushing Terminal along and sometimes carrying her weight. Egressing into the hallway adjoining, nopony was seen. Every worker had left in a quick orderly manner. They seemed to be the last two in the building. That said, it was far from peaceful. Wind containers had spider-thin cracks blossoming through all of them, and some of them had already shattered, making the factory a deadly whirlwind of glass shards.
It was only a matter of time before the reinforced containers gave in catastrophically. They both knew this as they tried to flee the factory.
Terminal wouldn’t say anything, but Wind knew she was in enormous pain. He hissed through his teeth as a glass shard cut his face and chest. Many such cuts covered both of them, making flying hard and walking nearly impossible in Terminal’s case. Wind glanced up, winced as another piece of glass cut him right under the eye, and was delighted to see the exit straight ahead.
Author's Note
Okay that finishes it for the first chapter! I can't say if there will be a scheduled uploading time since this is made by about one paragraph a day, maybe two.
Thoughts and criticisms are appreciated!
Terminal woke up as many different foul-smelling cleaning chemicals that generally pervade hospitals invaded her nostrils. Coughing, she sat up, wincing as her ribs screamed in protest. It was quiet, eerily so. She called out a hello, but quickly realized she couldn’t hear herself! She began to panic, worried that her hearing had completely gone. Raising her hoof up, she felt her ear and calmed back down when she felt thick bandages covering them.
She heard a muffled voice calling out from somewhere nearby, followed by nearly inaudible hoof taps on the hospital’s tiled floors.
“Hey!” She yelled, not knowing just how loud her voice was. “I’m awake! Is anybody around!?” A tired Wind Stream poked his head in the room, a cup of coffee held in his wing. “Oh hey Wind Stream!” She shouted. He rubbed his hoof to his ear and told her something. “What?!” He told her this something again, a little louder this time. “What?!” This time he yelled it, and she heard. She was so happy at having heard something that she didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying.
Wind looked at her, clearly expecting a reply of some sort. Terminal stared right back, a big happy grin plastered on her face. The stallion face-hooved when he realised that she could still not hear him. Fortunately, there was a simple solution. Wind held up one hoof flat in front of him, while making scribbling patterns with his other.
She cocked her head, wondering why he was face-hooving. Maybe she looked a little strange with bandages on her ears. Yup, that’s it! The thought gave her giggles. A random part of her brain told her that she was completely jacked-up on pain pills right then, which is probably why she was acting like a dunce. I should probably tell Wind. “Wind! I’m on pills!” She shouted, causing the pony who had to room with her mutter something about crazies.
Deciding he was getting nowhere fast, Wind left the room in seek of a nurse to provide him with some writing material. That, and he might become deaf as well if he remained in that room. He returned a minute later with some paper and writing utensils. The pegasus scribbled something on the note before handing it to Terminal.
‘Will you shut the buck up?’ Wind’s loopy hoofwriting stated. Terminal nodded, waiting for his reply. Happy that his ears were no longer in danger, Wind wrote another question on the paper after yanking it away from Terminal, who was trying to lick the paper.
A doctor came in, staring at the strange sight of Wind attempting to keep the paper away from her. The doctor shook his head and addressed the two. “Goodmorning Terminal, Wind.”
“Morning, Doc.” Wind greeted the medical pony, taking his eyes off of Terminal who took the opportunity to snatch the paper from him and began munching on it. Wind could only face hoof. “How long is she gonna be like this?”
“It should wear off in about an hour.” He walked over to Terminal. “How are you feeling, my dear?”
“Why does the paper taste like pineapples?”
“Yup.” The doctor smiled. “About an hour.”
“Great,” Wind groaned. “so I’m stuck with her like this for the next hour? Can’t I just give my statement to the Guard now?”
“No, sir.” a white coated Unicorn said as he poked his head into the room. “We already have your solo statement, we need her to be coherent when you give your combined statement.”
“If that’s all, I have other patients to attend to.” With that, the doctor left the room after yanking his tail out of Terminal’s grip.
“Can I have more paperapples?” Terminal practically begged, staring at Wind with the biggest puppy eyes she could muster.
An hour later, Terminal leaned over a bucket, puking up the twenty sheets of paper she had consumed. “Why did you-” She heaved again. “Why did you give me the paper?!”
“You’re like a drunken puppy. I couldn’t say no!” Wind grumbled as he gave her another bucket.
“I’d find that flattering bu-” A pause for retching. “-but I’m currently vomiting my insides out.”
A guard came in. “Terminal, we need your state- okay I’m leaving.”
“Oh no you don’t!” The blue stallion shouted as he bolted outside to push the guard back in. “I am not suffering through this alone! Besides, you’re the one that brought me most of the paper!”
The guard gulped as he stared at the irate pegasus. Terminal turned around. “Fair’s fair, you know.” She leaned back against the wall. “I think I’m good for now. Just ask me your questions quickly.”
The unicorn’s eyes briefly darted to the door, but that thought died when Wind spread his wings, blocking his escape. “Ok,” he began before levitating a notepad from his pockets, which was missing several pages. “When did all of this begin?”
“Things started going wrong after Wind Stream and I began the tour of the breezes section of the factory. I sent him off to the storage closet to get some duct tape. He was taking forever, so I decided to go get some myself. Turns out he got locked in by a ‘shadowy figure’.” Terminal explained.
The guard nodded, scribbling a few things on the uneaten paper. “Did any of you recognize the assailant? Or see which tribe the pony was?”
Her eyebrow went up. “What part of ‘shadowy figure’ do you not understand? Although…” Her eyes turned upward, in a show of confusion. “When the giant hole appeared in the main chamber, it wasn’t jagged, like somebody smashed something through it. It was completely smooth, all the way around.”
“That sounds like unicorn magic to me. You’re sure it was only the one?”
Wind Stream nodded. “I only saw the one.”
“I second that.”
The guard rubbed his muzzle and yawned. “Sorry, but I had to stay up all night trying to solve this mystery.”
“Perhaps we should continue this tomorrow, then?” Wind suggested, covering up his own yawn with a wing. “Doing this while fatigued won’t do anypony good.”
Terminal stood up, feeling much better. “I’m not tired. A little sick, but not tired.” She flew over to Wind. “You know what we should do?” She leaned in close. “We should go adventuring. Find the mother-bucking bastard who destroyed my factory and bring him to justice!”
“Ooooh no.” A new doctor surprised the trio when he walked in. “Terminal, you should be in bed. What are you even doing up! And don’t me even get started on you, Wind.” He pointed an accusing hoof towards the mentioned pegasus. “You may not have tons of broken bones like Ms. Velocity does, but you still have a few deep cuts we need to look at.” The doctor showed immense strength, even for an earth pony and picked both of them up by the scruff of their necks. “Ms. Velocity, put back on those bandages for your ears, and Mr. Stream, if you don’t get back in bed right now, I cannot be held accountable for what I will do.”
“Y-Yes sir!” Wind stammered, now thoroughly terrified by the doctor who’s strong enough to pick him and the guard up with all of his armor at the same time.
Terminal giggles slightly, stopping immediately when the doctor threw her an accusing glance. “Ms. Velocity. I will not ask again. Get. Back. In. Bed.” She squeaked with all the dignity of a squished mouse, and hopped back into her bed.
