“I don’t see it,”
“Keep looking, and don’t stop looking”
It was a sunny bright afternoon in Canterlot, the bustle and hustle of the ponies walking along the streets, enjoying the Canterlot atmosphere, but there was a lot going on behind the scenes.
“Wait, I’m getting something, oh this is good!”
“What, what is it?”
“Our resources were wrong, he isn’t hiding in Canterlot, he’s hiding in Cloudsdale,”
“Oh no, there’s a wonderbolts game happening there right now,"
“How many ponies are in that stadium?”
“Fifteen-thousand…”
“Can you shut down the game?”
“I’ll… See… If…” The communicator turned to static.
“Celestia? Celestia!” no response came.
“If you can hear me, I’m going to the stadium, find a way to shut down that game!”
It was not unfamiliar to Sweetie Drops, Changelings also harbored technology, although most of it was directly inspired from anything Celestia’s agency made.
Sweetie needed an extremely fast way to get to the Changeling before it was going to execute the plan. A plan that, while Celestia couldn’t find out what exactly the intricacies of this plan were, she knew the name of it, Cloudsfall.
Sweetie looked at her watch, and examined the location of her getaway driver.
“Ah, the alleyway, always the alleyways,” said Sweetie as she neared a dark alleyway in between two small buildings.
The darkness was lit up by two headlights, which immediately gave Sweetie a green light that she was in the right place.
The car in question was a PMW, calling it state-of-the-art would be an understatement. The car was blue, slick, polished, and on top of all that, super-fast.
“Look at you Penji! Always the one to drive the cars, you know I wish they made cars for non-unicorns as well,” said Sweetie to her Canterlot-born agent who had a knack for technology, Penji.
“Well, you never know when Celestia might make one of those artificial horns, one can dream,” said the colt, whose accent was high-pitched, yet still confident.
Sweetie shared a playful laugh and got in the passenger’s seat of the car.
Then she felt her watch vibrate, apparently it was a call from Celestia, which sent a wave of relief to Sweetie, what with all the static from the last call.
“Hey, Celestia, it’s good to see you’re alright,”
“I wouldn’t say that, my naïve young filly, I wouldn’t say that…” said a voice that Sweetie recognized immediately.
“Chrysalis…”
“Bingo! Anyways, your little pal Celestia is inside her little agency, oblivious to any plans I may have… so here’s the deal, either you go for her, or you go for the stadium… so I’m actually making you a pretty respectable offer, save everypony, or save nopony, your choice, ciao…”
Penji heard the whole conversation, and gave Sweetie a worried look.
“What do we do?”
“I have an idea, you drop me off in the stadium, and then you go for Celestia, got it?”
“Got it, let’s go!” The PMW is normally a vehicle driven at night, because it’s not really something the agency can just show to Equestria, but in desperate measures like these, it’s necessary.
The PMW drove out of the alleyway, and into the carriage filled road, where ponies stared at the car like it was an alien.
Sweetie felt another vibration from her watch, again saying it came from Celestia.
“What do you want Chrysalis, to taunt me again?”
“What? No, I just came to tell you that your watch comes with a GPS, have fun!”
“Uh oh, this isn’t good…”
Sweetie looked on the rear view mirror of the car to see Changelings, also in PMWs, chasing after them.
“Turn right! Turn right!” screamed Sweetie Drops.
The car made a hard turn to the right, knocking over a carriage, and almost hitting a few pedestrians.
“Well! We have weapons! Use them!” said Sweetie Drops, motioning towards the label on the screen that said ‘Defense Mechanisms’
Penji used his horn to navigate through the menus, only to stumble upon a setting that said ‘Nebula’.
“I don’t know what this means, but I’m pushing it because it’s got a fancy name and these PMWs behind us aren’t letting up!”
Penji was ducked as the PMWs behind them fired relentlessly, and broke the windows.
Now Penji couldn’t drive because if he got up, he would get shot, so he prayed that the car wasn’t going to hit anything.
Sweetie noticed the changelings had to reload, so she used that time to quickly glance out of the broken front window of the car, only to see that they were about to hit head first into a building.
She ducked back under the car and closed her eyes, waiting for impact, but it never came.
“What the… What’s happening?” said Penji, who Sweetie saw wasn’t ducking under the seat anymore.
“Penji! Get your head down! You’ll get shot!”
“Just look up for a second! You won’t believe what just happened,” said Penji, who saw Sweetie was still ducking under her seat, not even glancing out of the window.
She got up and saw that there was no road. In fact, there was nothing, there were just clouds and a blue sky, and it didn’t take long for her to look to her right, peek her head out of the broken window, and see the car’s wings, which were around a two-meter wing span.
“I guess that’s what Nebula does…” said Sweetie Drops.
Sweetie and Penji didn’t talk for a while, they were too awe-struck, and so were the pegasi who flew by them.
“Well, this is perfect, now you can drop me off at Cloudsdale, and then you can go to Celestia,” said Sweetie Drops.
“Ok… Hey Sweetie… What do you think Cloudsfall even means?” asked Penji.
“Probably something to do with destroying Cloudsdale? I’m not sure, but I have heard rumors that Cloudsfall isn’t a plan, it’s the name of a device,” said Sweetie.
“A device… What kind of device?” questioned Penji.
“I have no clue, but think about it… Cloudsfall… what would be the point of destroying Cloudsdale if Pegasi live there, if the plan is to make Cloudsdale fall, that doesn’t sound like there will be any casualties,” Sweetie Drops had thought about this for a while now.
“Yeah, that’s what makes this plan all the more scary,” said Penji.
Their conversation was interrupted by the sight of Cloudsdale, filled to the brim with contestants, all watching the game unfold.
“Okay, I can stand on the runway, so drop me off there,” said Sweetie.
The car slowly descended and landed on the runway, where Sweetie saw that instead of the car being treated like an alien, it was greeted with worried looks.
Spitfire came to the window of the car with a forced smile, but Penji could see the worry on her face.
“What… uh… seems to be the problem Penji?”
“Listen to me Spitfire, you need to shut down this game, Equestria is under attack,”
“What? Seriously? You just want me to evacuate fifteen thousand Pegasi?” Spitfire let out a tired sigh, “I’ll see what I can do, but this is going to be the second evacuation this year,”
“Thank you,” said Penji, giving a genuine smile.
Sweetie looked back at Penji with a confused expression.
“Second evacuation?”
“Yeah, a couple months ago I prevented another attack from… get this… Sombra! Weird right?”
Sweetie’s confused expression turned to one of a bit of anger.
“So that means you knew what Nebula meant!”
“What! Pft, I wouldn’t want to have ruined the surprise for you, now would I?”
Sweetie got out of the car and stormed off.
“Come on! Your reaction was funny!” Penji saw that Sweetie wasn’t having it, “Ugh, some ponies just can’t take a joke,”
Instead of being disappointed that Sweetie didn’t laugh at the rather immature prank Penji pulled off, he smiled with a snarky look, thinking how that in a couple of days they would have a glass of cider and laugh it off.
He began to start up his car again and fly off to the headquarters, where Penji also got a call from his watch, again from Celestia, but he knew it was Chrysalis.
“Hey, Penji, are you all right?” said a voice that wasn’t Chrysalis, but rather Celestia, which surprised Penji.
“Oh thank Starswirl, its actually you!”
“Yes, um, I need you to come to this location I marked on your watch, see you there!”
Penji felt his watch ping, and he saw the location of where she wanted him to be, which was in the same dark alleyway he was parked in before.
“Okay, I’m coming!” said Penji, who hung up the watch call.
“Ha! That little weasel doesn’t even know how to tell the difference between a real voice and a voice modulator, he won’t know what hit him!” said Chrysalis.
As they waited in the alleyway to ambush him, Chrysalis took out a device she has been caressing for the past day.
“Oh yes, more than clouds will fall…”
As Penji flew, he began to let out a huge smile.
“Little weasel… huh… won’t know what hit him… huh… well we’ll see who is the stupid one when you think I won’t recognize the difference between a real voice and a modulator, and that I won’t be examining all the hidden cameras in the city when Equestria is under attack… you little weasel… just wait till Sweetie hears this…”
Back in Cloudsdale, Sweetie got a call from Penji on her watch.
“Hey Penji, what is it?”
“Chrysalis is trying to ambush me, but I know her plan, and I also heard her say something about ‘more than clouds will fall’, sounds pretty menacing,”
“Alright, we’re evacuating the game, we’ve got at least two-thousand of them out of there, but this is taking a while,”
“Okay, I’ll see you soon, are we still friends over the prank?” asked Penji jokingly.
He got no response.
“Sweetie? Come on you can’t be that mad!”
Just then, Penji got a call from Celestia, obviously Chrysalis, and answered it, still pretending he had no idea it was Chrysalis.
“Oh hey, Celestia, what seems to be the problem?”
“Ha! Wow, look at you, thinking I wouldn’t hack your car, thinking I didn’t hear everything you just said, yeah… anyways, I just wanted to let you know that I hacked your car a long time ago, remember Sombra? Yeah, you weren’t driving, or flying, you were actually being controlled by me, and Nebula doesn’t fly, it self-destructs, but I wouldn’t do that to you, my little weasel, now would I? So now I’m going to make you come to that alleyway unarmed, because if you try anything stupid, I can blow you up, see you soon…”
“Wait! At least tell me what’s going on with Sweetie!”
“Oh right, did I forget to mention I used the device, then let me mention it, I used the device,”
“What?!”
“Yeah, I don’t really want Sweetie to die by the way, so I’m giving you permission to go and try and save her, then you can come back here and we can have a nice little chat… and don’t think about leaving that car, because I put a micro bomb in your stomach when you ate that last taco, so try anything stupid and your flank isn’t going to be the only thing on fire…”
Penji flew back and saw Cloudsdale was completely intact, nothing was falling, and everything seemed to be ok, all he could do was wonder why.
“Please move in a single file, single file!” said Spitfire as she escorted the civilians out of the stadium.
Sweetie was roaming around Cloudsdale, until she saw a hidden black box hidden inside the locker room of the wonderbolts, where the signal to Penji couldn’t be received, because there was no reception there, but that gave Penji the impression she was in danger.
The box had a sophisticated locking mechanism, but Sweetie had enough expertise to know how to unlock it.
She saw around a dozen different small black objects hidden inside, with the name ‘Cloudsfall’ written crudely in red.
She took out her suitcase she always brought with her for emergencies and found a way to shut down all the devices.
Then she got a call from Penji, which she eagerly answered and couldn’t wait to tell the good news to.
“Hey Penji, I disabled all the devices,”
“That’s why Cloudsdale is intact, you must have done it before Chrysalis pushed the button,”
“Well then, we got lucky, huh?”
“Yes we did… actually… not really… Chrysalis implanted a bomb in me and the car, so we have to go to her, or I go kaboom,”
Sweetie was worried, but decided to go along with it anyway.
“Alright, pick me up,”
Sweetie waited in the runway where ponies were still being evacuated, and she saw the car land.
“Okay, get in,” said Penji.
Sweetie and Penji began to fly to the alleyway, but when they landed, they saw Celestia holding down Chrysalis.
“Hey agents, you all did a good job today, I applaud you for it, don’t worry Penji, we’ll get that bomb out of you,”
Chrysalis had a muzzle over her mouth and horn, and so did the rest of the Changelings.
Penji looked at a turquoise figure next to Celestia.
“Who is that? New agent?” asked Penji.
“Wait a minute… I think… I know her… Is that…”
The figure turned around and what Sweetie saw gave her the best feeling she had ever felt in years.
“Oh my Celestia, Bon Bon! It’s been so long… I can’t believe you’re here too!” said Lyra.
“Lyra! What are you doing here! It’s great to see you and all… but I thought you hated the agency!” said Sweetie Drops.
“Yeah, but I mean… saving the world and also hanging out with my best friend everyday! Why not, right?”
“Best friends…” said Sweetie as they began to hold hooves.
“Um… sorry to ruin the moment but can you fill me in on who this is?” asked Penji, cutting in between this intimate meetup.
“Oh right… Penji this is Lyra… Lyra this is Penji,” said Sweetie Drops.
Celestia came and interrupted their conversation.
“So, I realized that agents work best when they’re in a good group, so I’ve decided to put you into a team of four, you three and somepony else,”
“Who exactly might be this forth pony?” asked Penji.
“Daring Do of course, she’ll be in touch with you when there is another mission, but for now you can all take a good rest,” said Celestia.
“Quick question, what’s the name of our group?”
“I was thinking the IMF, but we couldn’t due to copyright reasons, so we’re calling you the PMF, the Pony Mission Force,”
