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Operation Wonderbit

by Prane

Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Reconnaissance

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The leaves rustled despite the absence of wind.

“Wind, this is no time for games! The guests will be here any minute now!”

“I know! That’s why I got up here!” the colt replied, concealed in the foliage ablaze with the colors of the fast-approaching autumn. He grunted as he navigated further up the tree. “If I’m closer to the sky I’ll see them first!”

Doctor Sunlit Hugs, a stallion of decent cognition nodded to such undeniable logic. “Ah, that explains it,” he murmured. He then shook his head violently, rebuking himself yet again for skipping his morning cup of invigorating tea. “That’s not how it works!” he called up. He stepped left, right, and around the tree, trying to guess where his unruly pupil would drop should he fall—which, if his recent misadventure was any indication, was likely. “You heard what Miss Redheart said! No straining that wing until it’s fully healed!” He rested his forehooves on the trunk and looked around. “By the way, have you seen Nutsie? I just told her to—gyah!”

A filly with a cobblestone coat and a two-tone brownish mane popped an inch from the stallion, hanging upside down from the tree. With her tail wrapped around one of the thicker branches she swung back and forth without a care in the world, and when her muzzle bumped the other pony’s waiting hoof, she revealed her tiny, pointy fangs in a juvenile grin.

“Hiya, Doc!” she cheered.

Doctor Hugs collected himself quickly. He could use a good shock to wash away his afternoon drowsiness, but over the years of work as the head of the Canterlot Orphanarium he had survived enough sudden shouts, surprises, squeaks, magic flares, and general silliness to get affected by Chestnut’s playfully feral assaults. He didn’t mind those—the filly was a thestral, so the need of the hunt was pretty much hardwired in her brain of a nine-year old. On the bright side, she wasn’t fulfilling her predatory quota at night like the rest of her race, and instead of hunting her peers or poor local critters she indulged herself in pursuing small eatables between the meals.

Socialization was a wonderful process indeed.

“Chestnut, just what are you doing? You were supposed to bring Wind Whisper back, not go hanging around with him! And how did he even get up there? Did you help him?”

“Hey, I think I’m almost there!” the colt’s excited voice was heard.

“Wind, get down here this instant!” Doctor Hugs shouted, then turned back to the filly with a frown. “I’m waiting. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Well, you told us to find Wind and make sure he doesn’t ouchie his wing, but when we got to him he wasn’t even using it,” Chestnut said, splaying out her forelegs as she rotated slowly on her tail. “I, uhm, kinda helped him get to here on the tree, and then he was climbing on his own, and he had his bandages all okay, and he told us he’d be careful. And now we’re waiting for him to come down to get him back to you like you asked.”

The stallion shook his head, his annoyance mingling with confusion. “Hold on, hold on. What do you mean, ‘we’? What ‘us’? What—oh no.” When the realization struck, colors ebbed from his face. “Please don’t tell me you’ve got Glavia up there as well.”

“No, of course not!”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

“I put her in the trunk!”

“What!”

Instead of a relieved sigh, Doctor Hugs earned a substitute of a shock when a miniscule beak shot at him from the tree hollow. This wasn’t an attack but an act of affection, as the griffon attached at the beak’s other end was easily the gentlest little thing he had ever sheltered in his foundation. Glavia was a fledgling, pretty much a soft ball composed of snow-white feathers and a contrasting graphite coat who still stumbled whenever she was dragging her talons and paws into the unknown—which more often than not meant going after Chestnut and Wind Whisper in their continuous quest for mayhem.

Doctor Hugs reached inside and caressed Glavia’s feathery fringe. When she silently nuzzled against his hoof, his irritation was all but gone. If he didn’t know any better he’d say it was magic, but instead he attributed the sudden sensation of serenity to the fragile bundle of innocence herself.

“You know, you should be more careful,” he said at a hushed tone. “She could get stuck inside, or fall out, and the splinters could have ouchied her. She’s very little, and although she seems to enjoy your company, she doesn’t know how to play your games yet. She doesn’t know what’s safe and what’s not.”

Chestnut crossed her forelegs in a sulky protest. “It’s not my fault she’s following me. Can’t she enjoy someone else’s company? I don’t like getting stuck with her when everybody else is playing. Every time we’re about to do something cool she comes by and catches my leg. Sometimes she even bites my wings! So I have to put her on the sofa, find her a toy, put her on the sofa again because she’s going after me just because, give her the toy, tell her to stay and then, when I’m finally done—everybody else is done playing too.”

“The word for today is ‘responsibility’. Sometimes being responsible feels boring, but it’s important to take care for others.”

“Others should take care of themselves,” Chestnut muttered, adding a cocoon of wings to her already closed posture.

“Hey, that’s not what you’re really thinking, is it, so why the long face?” he replied. “For lack of a better example, look at me. I’m doing my best to take care of you and the others and I would never-ever give up on doing that, but I need the help of everyone who can help. You may be young, but Glavia and Wind Whisper are both younger than you, which is why I need you to guard one and inspire the other.” He caught Chestnut’s eye. “Unless, of course, there’s something else that’s worrying you?”

“No,” she quickly replied. “There is nothing else that is worrying me, why?”

The filly was lying, Doctor Hugs knew that in an instant. Her answer was too hasty. Her surprise at his inquire lasted too long to be considered natural. She had repeated his own words while formulating her answer. There was a topic she was afraid to talk about, and he was yet to crack what it was. For the good of them all—Wind Whisper included, as Chestnut had a good influence on him—Doctor Hugs hoped to get to the bottom of the issue soon.

They heard the rebellious colt over their heads.

“Here they come! Lookie-look, they’re coming! The Wonderbolts are coming!”

Chestnut loosened the grip of her tail, pushed herself off the trunk, and dashed a few paces away from the tree.

“He’s right!” she said. She put her forehooves to the sides of her muzzle and yelled, “You were right, Wind! You really saw them first by getting higher than me!”

“Thanks to you, so thanks! That was a great idea!”

She spun towards the stallion. “Come on, Doc, or you’ll miss the landing!”

With his leg still blocking Glavia’s way out of the hollow, Doctor Hugs leaned like a graceless ballet school dropout to see a slightly bigger snip of the sky.

Like a fireball cast by the wizards of old, an ember-maned pegasus blazed from the firmament. She was followed closely by five streaks of blue, four of which flew in a ring directly behind her while the last one completed the formation at the rear. Unlike them, the mare in lead wasn’t suited up and was wearing a blue jacket contrasting with her warm yellow coat instead. The fliers avoided every cloud on their way down, more than once making a sharp turn after the mare decided to change her course. Such dangerous maneuvers would send an average pegasus into a crazed spin, but this team of elite sky acrobats had their ways to utilize the fickle wind streams and avoid ending up splattered on the Orphanarium’s courtyard below.

The children gathered there cheered as the Wonderbolts and their captain touched the ground.

“Three o’clock to the minute! Gotta love the military,” Doctor Hugs said.

Amid the crowd, he spotted a filly-turning-mare clothed in a black hoodie, the long sleeves of which looked like they were cross-stitched to the rest of the garment with thick drawstrings. Silvered studs guarded the pockets and protruded alongside the stylish zipper—the actual, for there were several fakes ones serving no other purpose than contributing to the questionable aesthetics. The hoodie had been left halfway open to give a sneak peek of the shirt underneath which presented one of those aggressively loud rock bands the youth were so fond of. If the clothing wasn’t giving away the wearer’s nature, then her makeup certainly was. Bold and fierce, achieved through wine lipstick and heavy, albeit smudged eyeliner, it was a suitable accentuation of her shaggy cerulean mane that had its tips dipped in varying shades of purple and blue.

Such were the looks of Doctor Hugs’s trusted part-time volunteer Fizzy, or Bubble Effervescence as she was actually called, a reluctant future heiress to her parents’ bottled soda empire. She trotted to the captain and greeted her on the side, away from the kids bombarding the suited pegasi with questions. They talked over some papers for a while, then the captain seemingly disagreed. Fizzy rubbed the back of her head. She replied, pointed to the lonesome tree, and when the captain turned away, she nervously beckoned at the stallion.

“Wind, they’re already here! Come down, quick!” Chestnut shouted. She landed on the stallion’s back, prepping on his neck and burdening his head with her own weight. “The others are already talking to them! Oh, and next time, maybe you should climb the other tree! It’s closer to the house!”

“I’m coming, yeah! And next time I will go to the roof!”

Doctor Hugs frowned. He looked up and saw Chestnut squinting down at him with a stupid grin.

“Oh, by all means, please. It’s been some time since I was getting one of you off the windowsills,” he said, but his words were drowned out by the rustling leaves.

“What did Doctor say? I can’t hear you, I’m climbing down!”

“He says you have the right idea!” Chestnut exclaimed.

“No, that’s not what I—”

“Whoa!”

First came the crack. Then, from a broken branch overhead, an anvil fell on the stallion’s back—or so he felt when a sudden impact pinned him to the ground. With his legs splayed to the sides and face buried deep in a colorful pile of dry leaves, he varied groans and moans when the two ponies got off him with an impromptu back rub of negative finesse.

“You okay?” Chestnut asked.

“I’m alright!” Wind Whisper replied. “Because I fell on you it didn’t hurt that much, so thanks for taking this one for me. The straps are okay, too,” he said, inspecting the bandages wrapped around his steel blue wing. He straightened up and helped the filly drag the branch aside to uncover the stallion beneath it. “I could swear it’d hold. It did before, right?”

“Yeah, silly. But it also cracked on your way up. I thought you knew,” she said. “Oh, and Doc, uhm, thanks for catching us.”

Hearing that, Doctor Hugs gasped and rolled to his back to see Glavia dropping from the hollow. Without a hoof blocking her way, she climbed on the edge and flapped her wings to take flight, but they were yet too weak to keep her in the air. The stallion captured the falling bundle none too soon and placed her safely on his belly. He exhaled deeply, glad that his sleepiness was gone. He chuckled. Even with all those recent surprises, the day was still a typical slice of the life’s cake served at the Orphanarium.

“Alright, little one, I think that’s enough adventures for one day,” he said. Though Glavia didn’t seem aware she had just avoided an unpleasant introduction to the ground, she cocked her head as if she was listening all the same. “At this rate you’ll be flying by the end of the year, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that. If you were only as eager to flap this hook of yours”—he touched the slightly curved tip of her beak—“as you are with your wings, we’d all be much happier, you know what I’m saying?”

Judging by the unfocused gaze, she had no idea. Then again, she was just a fledgling.

Chestnut poked the stallion. “Doc? Does this count as me bringing Wind Whisper back? Because he kinda fell on me before I fell on you.”

“I think it counts,” Wind Whisper said. “It’s like that one time we threw a ball with a magnet on a string glued to it, remember? We decided it counted as throwing the magnet too.”

“Hey, you’re right! That’s almost exactly like back then, but also not.” Chestnut furrowed her brow. “Does the branch counts as a string?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. What do you think, Doctor?”

Doctor Hugs straightened up with a soft ball nestled in his foreleg. There was time for participating in the shenanigans, and there was time for being serious. Even though he loved his orphans from the bottom of his soul, having no children of his own, he had to admonish them from time to time, or else the Orphanarium would go boom before anyone could spell ‘adoption’.

“I think you both deserve a time out, and if it weren’t for our guests today I’d send you on one. But it seems the official part is about to start, so you better join the rest. Wait!” he said firmly as the ponies turned their tails and paced a few steps away. “Not so fast. Wind, we talked about what you’re allowed and what you’re not allowed to do with your bandages on, and I believe climbing was on the second list. Chestnut, you knew Wind wasn’t allowed that, but you encouraged him instead of talking him out of it. And you put Glavia in danger!” he said over the disheartened children. “I’ll have a talk with you later. For now, you’re both going to the back of the line.”

“Back of the line?” Chestnut cried out. “But I was third already!”

“I was third too!” Wind Whisper moaned.

“You were not! I was third, and you were like third plus hundred!”

“But you can’t read though. You’re always asking me to read for you, so it’s like I was third with you!”

Flustered, Chestnut pushed her muzzle against the colt’s. “I can read! I know some words! And it’s your fault that I’m at the back of the line now!”

“Is not!” Wind Whisper pressed back.

“Is too!”

“Is not, infinity!”

“Is too, infinity plus one!”

“Enough!” Doctor Hugs thundered. “One more word and you’re out from today’s trip! It seems to me that you both need a lesson in responsibility, which is why you’ll be taking care of Glavia for the rest of the day,” he decreed, to which Chestnut and Wind Whisper joined in a unified sigh of disappointment. “Ah-ah, I don’t want to hear that. You’ll be taking turns. Chestnut goes first, Wind Whisper second. If you prove that you can think about others and not just yourselves, I may put you back on your spots on the list, how does it sound to you? I will ask your Wonderbolt to keep an eye on you, so I’ll know if you don’t do well.” He seated Glavia between the filly’s leathery wings. “Now off you go, and think about your behavior.”

The two ponies trotted obediently towards the commotion, leaving their caretaker with the broken branch clenched in his teeth—and to some extent, a broken heart reminding him how much he didn’t like that part of his job.

In the bursting and bubbling sea of hyperactive earth ponies, unicorns, pegasi, and one or two zebras, Doctor Hugs saw Fizzy waving for his attention again. Seeing a tense look on her face he nodded stiffly, the branch agreeing in unison, and gestured back to let her know they could go on. If Chestnut, Wind Whisper, and Glavia were already present, then everyone had to be as well. Fizzy peeled the children off the Wonderbolts and rounded them up, or tried to do so with a sadly laughable success rate, while the fliers commenced a quick repositioning and landed in line behind their leader, proudly presenting the badges pinned to their chests.

“Atteeen-tion!” their leader yelled, reducing the scattered crowd’s cheer into a curious murmur. She marched along her pegasi, paying more attention to whether they were standing straight than she was to the children. “My name is Spitfire, the current captain of the Wonderbolts,” she said at a strict tone. “As you probably know, the Wonderbolts are tasked with protecting Equestria from threats impossible to contain by the Royal Guard. We employ our air superiority for the good of the land, but we don’t stray from occasional friendly competition, which is why you can sometimes see us during the Wonderbolts Derby or other events of athletic importance. Now hear this!”

Spitfire’s sudden turn elicited surprised, perhaps slightly worried gasps left and right. She didn’t look kind to begin with, but what truly sealed her inalienable glower was a pair of sunglasses she put on.

“Whether we’re fighting for Equestria or for the sweet taste of victory, we act swiftly. We act with dedication. We do not tolerate laziness, tardiness, shabbiness, any-ness that’s not getting us to becoming the best these skies have to offer,” she said. “I heard some of you want to enlist, is that true? Then know that a Wonderbolt has to have respect for the chain of command, and so far I’ve seen none here. So if your Miss Effervescence tells you to step in line, you comply without question, recruits!”

Hardly any of the kids understood the mare’s strange wording, but the tone and the glare were enough to get them moving.

Spitfire gave a quick nod, then resumed her walk. “Commendable! I will now go over the details regarding today’s joint operation between the Wonderbolts and the Canterlot Orphanarium,” she said. “Objective number one: you and the Wonderbolts will create a special task force for the occasion, one with multiple squads within it, with one Wonderbolt and a number of you each. Objective number two: you will move and secure a number of locations in the city. Your ultimate destination is the Red Cuckoo Café on Ruby Street. Objective number three: you get to eat ice cream! Does this sound like a plan to you?”

“Yes!” the orphans shouted back.

“That’s a ‘yes, ma’am’, recruits!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Do you want to hear your code name for this operation?”

“Yes, ma’am!” they eagerly responded, neither knowing nor caring what a code name actually was.

Spitfire stopped in her tracks and faced the crowd.

“You are the Wonderbits! Do you like it?” she asked, and was answered by a cheerful roar. “That’s what I thought. Operation Wonderbit is a chance to meet these fine Wonderbolts, ask them questions, and get to know them better. From left to right, I give you: Soarin, Fleetfoot, Rapidfire, Lightning Streak, and Cloudchaser!” she introduced the pegasi, then turned back to the children. “Report to Miss Effervescence to find out which Wonderbolt will be your squad leader. Oh, and don’t worry if you’re not a pegasus or if you’re otherwise flightless. This operation will be conducted strictly on the ground level,” she said. “You have been briefed. Dismissed!”

Nopony moved. They all stood still in the awkward silence.

Spitfire, noticing the clueless faces in her audience, for once gave up her militaristic demeanor.

“Uh, that means you can go find your Wonderbolts,” she clarified.

After the initial wave of ‘ahas’ and ‘alrights’, the orphans ran to their respective Wonderbolts. Many of them realized they had no idea who they were running towards, so they hurried back to Fizzy and her clipboard of all knowledge. They galloped across the courtyard. A few apparently forgot that the name itself wasn’t much use to them, so they yet again dashed back to ask Fizzy if Soarin was that or the other stallion, or if Cloudchaser was the one with the super mane. Those more timid ones asked to be precisely pointed at, or straight walked to the right pony, and Fizzy did her best to get every orphan under the right set of wings.

She only had trouble in three little cases.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 – Situation Normal, All Fired Up Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
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