A tall dark purple woman with wild dark rose colored hair, and a scar over her right eye stand on the deck of the ship. Her long coat flows with a breeze as it protects her from the cold.
“Hey, Tempest!” comes the voice of her assistant. A short, stubby, grey skinned man with white spiked hair, carrying a tray piled with sweets approaches her. “Or should I say, Director Shadow,” he salutes. “Thought you might be hungry.”
“It’s Acting Director, Grubber,” Tempest sighs. “Director King is not gone. He’s just missing.”
The short man walks up to her as he starts eating. “I know that Storm meant a lot to you. He did take you in when no one else would. But look at the facts. Director King left on a secret mission on his own, no one’s seen him since, and now you’ve been promoted.”
“I still question the council’s sanity of making me head of operations,” the Acting Director picks up a donut and considers eating it but just examines it. “This is a position for a scientist. Not a soldier.”
“Perhaps they wanted someone with a different take on everything we do here?” the man continues to stuff his face.
At this, the woman shrugs. “Maybe you’re right,” she goes to eat the donut. But stops letting the sweet slip out of her hand and into the water as she stares into the distance.
Grubber looks over the railing. “Well, that was a waste,” he goes for a cupcake only to drop the entire tray as a hand is thrown into his face. “Aw! I was going to eat that.”
“Give me the binoculars!”
“Huh? Oh!” the man was quick to deliver the item to his boss. “Here you go.”
The woman snatches the binoculars and looks through them.
Grubber looks up at her and then into the same direction she is. “Whatcha looking at?”
“There’s a jagged formation in the distance.”
“That’s what I lost my lunch for? It’s not so strange to see an island out her.”
“Except I’ve looked over the charts myself,” Tempest hand the binoculars back to her assistant and takes out a radio. “There are no islands out here. Acting Director Shadow to Bridge.”
“Bridge here, Director Shadow,” comes the response from the radio. “What do you need, Ma’am?”
“Acting Director,” the woman corrects. “And I need you to turn this ship around.”
“Ma’am?”
“Did I stutter!” she shouts. “Get us out of here, now!”
“Aye, aye!”
The ship starts making its turn.
During this, Grubber looks through the binoculars. Curious as to what his boss had seen. “What’s wrong?” he spots the jagged formation and takes notice that it’s sinking into the water.
“The formation matches descriptions from the journal.”
Hearing this, the grey man gasps as he looks back at her. “That journal?” he points to where the formation was. “You mean that’s…”
She confirms. “Yes. And if I’m right, on a ship in the middle of the ocean, without a single Maser on board is the last place we want to me.”
The ship is then violently rocked as something rises out of the water and Grubber was quick to hop into the arms of Tempest. Above them is a serpentine dragon. It matches tales of sea dragons from Japanese and Chinese mythology.
“Th-that isn’t him,” Grubber notes.
“No,” Tempest responds as she drops the short man. Just as the water dragon’s head nears them, a blue beam of light hits it from below it and the creature is dragged back into the water. “But that is,” she looks down at her assistant only to find him missing. “Grubber!?”
“Director!” his voice comes from over the railing of the boat. Looking over it, Tempest finds the grey man lying in one of the lifeboats. “Look!” he holds up a donut. “I still had one in my pocket!” he shouts before eating the dessert.
The woman sighs as she reaches out for her assistant’s hand. “I swear, if you weren’t Director King’s Nephew, I’d…” whatever she was about to say was stopped as Tempest spots a blue light growing brighter, and brighter. She takes out her radio. “Get us out of here!”
“Already on it, Ma’am!” the boat picks up speed.
“And radio the council! Tell them that Monarch has visual on Alpha! I repeat! Monarch has visual on Alpha!”
The boat rocks again as something bursts out of the ocean.
SKREEEEOOOOONNK!!!
A prismatic haired girl is the first off the bus. “Woohoo! Finally! Manhattan, meet Rainbow Dash!” she looks at the tall buildings around her before taking off. Only having a firm grip on her shoulders kept her from speeding away.
“Hold your horses, Rainbow!” a girl in a Stetson with a southern accent tells her. “We ain’t here to fool around.”
“She’s right,” a lavender girl with glasses walks up to them. “This is supposed to be an academic trip,” she searches through a notepad. “Today, we’ll spend most of it settling at our hotel after everyone is assigned their roommate. After that, there will be two hours of free time before we have to be back for dinner. Then, curfew’s at…” she his stopped by a pale hand softly being placed on her shoulder.
“Thank you, Twilight Sparkle,” the woman tells her. “But perhaps you should leave the school scheduling to the actual teachers,” she looks back at the bus where her sister Luna and the math teacher Cranky are helping students unload their luggage.
Twilight gets a slight blush. “Sorry, Principal Celestia.” The girl’s bag then struggles before a purple and green dog.
“Man, Twilight. It’s getting stuffy in here,” the dog speaks. The lavender girl’s blush deepens as she looks back at the Principal with a nervous smile.
The woman glares at her student. “You were supposed to leave Spike at home, Twilight,” she reaches over to pet the dog. “Luckily, I chose a hotel that allows pets. Though, that was mostly due to Fluttershy’s habits.” Celestia glances back over at the bus as Cranky was about hand over a decently sized bag to a buttercream skinned girl, only to have the zipper seemingly undo itself as a rabbit, a couple squirrels, and a few birds come out. The math teacher gives an accusatory glare at the timid girl smiles as she picks up the now mostly empty bag and backs away.
A dark blue skinned woman walks up to pale skinned teen with purple who is manicuring her nails.
“Rarity,” the woman calls out. “Where I am a supporter of being prepared for the unexpected. I do believe you have overpacked for a school sanctioned trip. We will only be here for three days.”
The pale girl is sitting on a stack of several suitcases. “Vice-Principal Luna. When you visit a city as grand as this, you must not only dress. You must be the envy of everyone in your presence.”
Luna blinks at the fashion girl, still not understanding what she means before walking off. She does have other students to attend to.
A fiery haired girl hefts one of the bags. “This one must be Applejack’s. It weighs a tone,” the back is then snatched from her arms.
A cotton candy haired girl is testing the weight of the bag. “It only feels like six poundcakes, Sunset,” she then opens the bag to see its contents. “It is six poundcakes!”
Sunset shakes her head in amusement. “It’s your bag, isn’t it, Pinkie Pie?”
“Of course, it is,” Pinkie has the largest grin while hugging the bag. “Never said it wasn’t,” then walks away.
.oOo.
A Couple Hours Later
The Rainbooms exit the hotel as they finally have free time.
Twilight takes out a notepad. “Now what should we do? Oh! There’s a museum nearby. We could—”
“Boring!” Rainbow interrupts her. “This is a vacation. Why would we want to spend it doing egghead stuff?”
“Uh, Rainbow,” Sunset walks up to their athletic friend. “This is not a vacation. It’s a school fieldtrip.”
“Tomato, Tomahto. Same difference.”
A puff of smoke appears between them, and a white-haired girl is suddenly standing there in cape and hat. “I Trixie suggest that we go to the park so that people can shine in the glory that is I, Trixie, the Great and Powerful!”
The girls cough as they shoe away the smoke. Sunset looks at her, “Why are you with us again?”
Rainbow leans close to the fiery haired girl. “She’s your roommate. She was there when we came to get you.”
The former unicorn slumps. “Oh, yeah.”
“You should be grateful to be sharing a room with Trrrixie,” the performer boasts. “Now, prepare to be astounded!” another puff of smoke appears, and Trixie vanishes.
“She’s gone!” Pinkie exclaims but her and everyone’s attention is brought to the sound of clattering metal. “Oh, there she is.”
The Great and Powerful Trixie had tripped over a nearby trashcan before getting back up and running off.
The group then continued walking down the street, discussing exactly what they should do when Fluttershy spoke up.
“Something’s wrong,” the timid girl looks around. “Where are all the animals?”
Sunset turns to her. “Well, this is a city. Not many animals live here.”
“That’s not true,” the tambourine player shakes her head. “Animals are everywhere. Even when you can’t see them. But here? There are no birds, no rats, not even a dog going for a walk. Nothing.”
The girls look around themselves and are suddenly unease at the revelation.
“What does this mean, exactly?” Rainbow turns to her childhood friend.
“Not sure but that’s not all. The animals I brought with me refused to leave the hotel room. Not even Angel? When I asked what was wrong none of them were sure. They just felt that something wasn’t right.”
Twilight thought for a moment. “When we first got here, Spike was excited to go visit a new park. He suddenly felt down,” she looks up at all her friends. “I thought he was just tired from the long ride. But now I wonder.”
Suddenly, military trucks pass them, one after the other.
Rainbow speaks up. “This is either really awesome, or really bad.”
Everyone turned to glare at their prim-haired friend as trucks continued to pass by.
