TCB - Zero Hour

Chapter 1

It was another beautiful day in Equestria and Twilight Sparkle and her friend Rarity were watching another amazing demonstration of flying daredevilry from Rainbow Dash. As Twilight watched the cyan Pegasus was swooping, diving and barrel rolling. Her new routine to impress the wonder bolts was truly spectacular.

“Wow! This is amazing” Twilight exclaimed as Rainbow Dash pulled out of a spectacular nose dive mere inches away from the ground; and went swooping away into the sky once more.

“I have to agree darling she truly is dazzling”, Rarity agreed as her eyes followed Rainbow across the sky.

“She’s Dazeltacular!” Pinkie Pie yelled popping out of a hole in a tree nearby in a very Pinkie Pie-ish way.

“Pinkie, what are you doing in a tree?” Twilight asked

In response the pink mare popped herself out of the tree and walked up to Twilight and said, “the better question Twilight is why you’re not in a tree”.

Twilight didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so instead turned her attention back to Rainbows performance. Now entering its final stage she had only one more manoeuvre to perform, a six cloud spin. Rainbow Dash cleared her mind and focussed on the six clouds that she had lined up in anticipation, she flew round the first cloud fast enough to get it spinning, then she moved on to the second cloud and set that spinning. She soon had five of the six clouds spinning like tops, but once she moved onto the sixth cloud her right hind leg caught in the fabric of the cloud sending her reeling towards the ground; and into the hole in the tree that Pinkie Pie had randomly popped out of only moments ago.

“See Twilight” Pinkie Pie said “Rainbow Dash is in a tree”.

At Sugar Cube corner

Twilight was sat with her friends at sugar cube corner; they were discussing the build up to Hearths warming eve and what they planned to do with the holidays. Applejack was going to visit her cousin Braeburn who had moved to Earth a few months before, Rarity was going to Manehatten to show off her latest fashion collection, Fluttershy was staying home to look after her animals, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were also staying in Ponyville. Twilight was glad that she would have at least some company this holiday. She had planned to go up and visit her parents and brother in Canterlot but OHR had blocked access to Canterlot for non OHR employees for the ‘Christmas’ holiday season, something about large congregations of ponies posing a riot risk.

Twilight snorted at the thought causing her friends to look at her in a concerned manner.

“You ok sugar cube?” Applejack asked

“I’m just frustrated that OHR think that they can just deny us access to our capital because of their ill-conceived suspicions” Twilight said a bit louder than they intended.

“shhhh, I wouldn’t say that too loud if I were you sugar cube” Applejack said motioning to a man wearing the grey suit and black shirt and tie of the OHR, as she watched the man sipped his coffee but had seemed not to notice her comment.

“They have every reason to be cautious Twilight, after all we did try to destroy their home” Applejack reasoned.

“I agree with Twilight” butted in Rainbow Dash loudly, “what right have they got to....”

She was cut off by applejack hissing, “do you want to get arrested”. To which Rainbow shook her head, and with that the group returned to their hushed conversations about the holidays.

OHR Main Office Canterlot

Joshua Exley sat behind his desk and yawned loudly, it was 12:05pm and he was bored. Working for the Office of Human Relations was not as glamorous as people believed; the higher ups had a privileged working life, they lived and worked in Canterlot Castle itself and often had dinner with the Royal family. His job was to monitor the Town of Ponyville for any signs of rebellion, not that there ever was any. So his job was basically staring at a computer screen, bored out of his mind, from nine in the morning till five in the evening. Josh in fact even lived in Ponyville and was friends with the element bearers. He sighed and cupped his hands over his face resting his head on the keyboard.

“Bored?”

The question caused him to start; as he looked up he could see a mint green pony stood before him. Her name was Lyra Heartstrings; she also worked for OHR and in fact worked on the desk next to his and was the most human pony that he had ever met.

“Yep, bored and wanting sooo badly to go home” he answered smiling at her. It was Friday after all and all of the office staff were looking forward to the weekend, but as a Friday it was dragging and every minute felt like an hour.

“Well don’t forget you’re giving me a lift back to Ponyville” She said before sitting back down behind her own desk and began clacking away on her keyboard

“I won’t” he replied chuckling slightly. Josh looked back through the many emails he’d received from his agents in Ponyville, most of them were the activities of various ponies and about a meeting in the town hall.

He was about to give up on trying to do work and switch his internet browser on to Youtube; when a brown file was slammed down on his desk. He looked up to see a tall grey haired man wearing the same grey suit, black shirt and tie that he was. George Van-zantan was the deputy operations director of OHR – and he looked a lot like the Architect from the Matrix films – he spoke in a very low, precise tone and never ever broke direct eye contact with the person he was talking to.

“I want you to take this case Mr Exley and investigate the pony that it concerns,” he said motioning to the file that he had placed on the desk. Carefully Josh reached out and opened the brown paper file and – under the watchful eye of his superior – read the white paper documents inside. Once he had read the brief he looked up at his boss and asked.

“Do I have a choice in this sir?” to which Van-zantan replied that he didn’t before turning and walking out of the office.

Lyra trotted over from the photocopier and said in a concerned tone, “what’s up? What did Mr Van-zantan want?”

“Nothing..erm..I’ll explain in the car” Josh said quickly, stuffing the file into his desk draw. Lyra nodded and returned to the copier.

In truth Josh wasn’t fine, he’d been dreading this day ever since he’d joined OHR and seeing what was in that file made him feel sick. He’d known what it was even before he’d opened the file and he’d also known why Van-zantan had brought it to him and no one else.

This was the day when he’d have to bring down one of his closest friends.