North Star expected a more brutal and loud wake up call, not Twilight giving him a quick nudge urging him to wake up. North Star felt wide awake when Twilight gave him a little nudge, he got out of bed and did his best cat stretch. He couldn’t help but smile as the yellow sun began to peak its head out from the opaque water.

“I didn’t hear a whistle” North Star complained, he glanced around and realized that everypony besides Twilight was gone.

“There was no whistle, come on we are going to miss breakfast” Twilight said, she quickly dashed towards the door and gestured for him to follow. North Star ran as fast as he could to catch up to her, almost running into the metal walls. Although the ship looked completely wooden from the outside (Besides some metal plating visible right by the water line) it was mainly metal on the inside.

Twilight began to briskly trot into a large room and North Star followed. This was the mess hall as it was called; it looked a lot like his old school cafeteria. There was a sailor standing right by the door, as if expecting North Star and Twilight to come inside at that very moment.

“What were you two doing?” The sailor said with a chuckle

“Nothing, I slept in” North Star said

“What is your group?” The sailor asked, looking down at a clipboard

“5C” The two said in unison

“5C is seated over there” The sailor said “Have fun you two”

Twilight and North Star trotted towards their table, the sailor on the other hand randomly headed outside.

“Asshole” Twilight said with a frown

“Thank god you’re here we thought you died or something” Braeburn said with a smile

“How late am I?” North Star asked, he looked down at his stomach, the last thing he wanted to do was miss breakfast before getting his work assignment.

“Not that late, but late enough to send Twilight to wake you up. Doctor Whooves said he’d get you lunch” Braeburn said, taking a big bite out of an apple.

“Thanks I appreciate it” North Star said, he was glad he had friends like Doctor Whooves and Braeburn, without them he’d be still asleep and still hungry.

“Hey who took my carrot?” Twilight asked, scanning the table for the offender, perfect time for Lyra to have a carrot in her mouth.

“Sorry” Lyra said with a giggle “Want it back?”

“No thank you” Twilight said

“There he is!” North Star turned around to see Doctor Whooves standing there, a lunch ready for North Star.

“Thanks” North Star said, before delving into his lunch. For being on a boat the food seemed surprisingly good, the lunch was one hay sandwich, an apple, some pinkiade (A kind of vitamin water) and some baby carrots.  North Star turned to see most of the other ponies in our group were finished with their meals, had they eaten that fast in 20 minutes? Either way North Star automatically grabbed his sandwich and began to eat it as fast as possible. He didn’t know how long lunch was, and wasn’t about to learn the hard way.  He was so concentrated on eating his lunch he almost didn’t hear Twilight Sparkle.

“North Star can I have your carrots?” She asked, North Star gave her a nod and readied her horn for magic. She levitated his tray over to hers and dumped the carrots into one of the compartments on her tray.

“Thank you” Twilight said

North Star took several more bites out of his sandwich before he heard a whistle from the door way.

“Groups 5C go to the main deck for work assignments” The officer said, he looked oddly out of place in the group of crude sailors. He was a white unicorn with black spiky hair and a black spiky tail. He seemed a lot more friendly then any of the other officers.

North Star got up quickly and dropped what remained of his sandwich and his apple into the trash can, placing the tray with the others on a cart. He had to jog a little bit to catch up with the rest of his group, almost making a wrong turn but fortunately finding his way.

“So what is our work assignment? Braeburn asked

“I don’t know” The officer said “These are just temporary groups. Your permanent group is your work assignment group.”

North Star cringed; he had already gotten so attached to his old group. North Star then let his mind wander a little bit; he wasn’t exactly sure what he could do. He didn’t have any special talents like the Doctor Whooves or the Princess’s apprentice Twilight Sparkle.

Group 5C was then marched onto the “Secondary deck”, which wasn’t really a deck but an underground open room for certain things like this. It was basically a smaller party hall meant for small meetings with individual groups.

“Okay everypony can take a seat” The officer said “Okay Doctor Whooves you are going into Group 8A, or the medical unit.”

“Figures” Doctor Whooves said, standing up to receive his sheet of paper

“Also you can all report to your assigned barracks after you get your work assignments; after your pick a bunk and everything head to your work station though.

“Braeburn” The officer called out

“Yes?” Braeburn asked in good cheer

“You are part of Group 17E, or coal flingers”

“Buck…” Braeburn muttered

The officer then continued to give most of North Star’s group their work assignments. North Star was dismayed to see that he, Doctor Whooves, and Braeburn were all split up, but he didn’t have any say in it.

“And lastly, Twilight Sparkle, Lyra, and North Star you are in group 15D, or the signaling corps.” The officer said

“Wait so what do we do?” North Star asked

“Basically you control lines of communication throughout the ship and make sure everything works dandy” The officer said, handing the information sheets to Lyra, then to Twilight and finally to North Star.

“So what do we exactly do?” Lyra asked

“Well pretty much nothing unless there is a problem.” The officer said “Enjoy yourself, you got lucky.”

North Star was relieved he didn’t have to do a lot, the one thing he really wanted to do was explore this new landform he had heard so much about; but he could settle as a signaler until they actually landed.

It turns out North Star’s barracks was right in the smack middle of the ship, on the 2nd floor of the ship. It turns out there was an elevator right outside of their barracks which led to what the officer in charge of the signaling bay called “The nest”. After North Star deposited his few belongings in a bunk and locker he got to go up with Twilight and Lyra and see this “Nest”. What the officer was talking about made sense, the signaling bay was in a bunker right above the deck. There was a long window that stretched from one side of the wall to the other and served to provide light for the entire room; the only other place light could come from was from a window on top of the door. Surrounding the elevator (Which was positioned in the middle of the room) were 6 or so little desks with radio equipment. The commanding officer told North Star that the signaling bay was sort of like the blood stream for the weather ponies. Spotters would find cloud formations then mark them with a marker gun (A unknown invention to North Star), and then send the information to the signalers, who then sent the information to the weather station which dispatched fliers to destroy the cloud.

North Star took an unoccupied desk and sat down, he didn’t know the first thing about what he was doing but hoped for the best. In front of him on his desk was the marker gun, it was a small joystick that was used to aim a cannon like tool that fired coloring that stuck to clouds.

“North Star before you get shooting you are red” A mysterious voice said. North Star turned around to see the head signaling officer looking at him from the officer’s position at the back of the room. North Star didn’t know a lot about this pony, he hadn’t seen him before and the pony didn’t say much about himself when he gave instructions on how to use the equipment.  

North Star did as he was trained and pressed the red button on the side of the throttle that prepared the marker for launch. From there he eyed a small mass of clouds to his right; he gently moved the joystick to the right and saw the red laser follow. He stopped the red beam of light right in the center of the cloud mass. He then gently pushed the black trigger and the cloud instantly was hit with a red marker.

North Star then grabbed his head phones “Do you see the red marker?”

North Star waited several moments for a response, just when he was about to give up he heard his response

“Yup I see it, sending a pony in right now” The voice responded. From behind North Star’s line of sight 2 pegasus ponies flew by and began working on the cloud mass, a couple kicks and punches in several key locations later caused the cloud mass to drift apart.

“That was easy” North Star said with a chuckle, hoping to gain another response from his friend over the line.

“Yea, apparently the colts have been telling me signalers and weather control have it easy most of the time” The pony began “The weather ponies are already killing each other over who gets to kick clouds.”

“I thought you ponies hated work!” North Star said with a chuckle

“Yea we also don’t like having to sit here all day with our hooves up our asses” The pony said giving a laugh to North Star. “Yea only problem I’ve heard is when there are storms we are up until the code red is done.”

“That must suck” North Star said “Then again all I am doing is shooting clouds and telling you to go kick them”

“I don’t actually kick the clouds” The stallion said “I just run it down to the weather bay and then they send a pony or two to get it done. My name is Spade by the way, I am sure you remember me from the orientation.”

“Wait a hoof…” North Star said, up to that point his voice had sounded eerily “Were you the retard that got court marshaled?”

Spade chuckled “Almost court marshaled, the Admiral gave me a warning.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t throw you overboard” North Star said with a smile.

“Yea only problem is I’m not becoming admiral any time soon” Spade said

“Good to hear you aren’t that stupid” North Star said

“Believe me, I am stupid, just not at this moment” Spade said.

“Good to hear, hang on Spade I’ll be right back” North Star said, putting down his headphones. He had taken down his first cloud, but most of the other clouds hovering nearby the ship were already getting dismantled by the other 5 signalers.

“Hey ummmm Mr.” North Star said, embarrassed that he couldn’t remember the head signalers name

“Warrant Officer Ziggy” The pony said, this pony wasn’t exactly out of place, just out of order. He seemed more like your run of the mill care free sailor then an officer.

“Okay Warrant Officer Ziggy…” North Star said

“You can just abbreviate it WO” Warrant Officer Ziggy said

“Okay… WO Ziggy what do you do when most of the clouds are gone?” North Star asked

“Colt we are just getting started” WO Ziggy said, now trotting over to North Star’s station “You got to mark all of the clouds in radius to the ship, here use this” Ziggy motioned to a small control board. “This is for the drone, use it to hit clouds you can’t see or hit.”

North Star turned on the power button, out from above the roof almost a small metallic object appeared right in front of him. It had the circumference of a basketball and it’s outer shell was marred with discoloration and some scratches.

“Here use this throttle to move old Bertha around” WO Ziggy said, North Star realized it was the same controls for the marker gun but with the drone. In front of him on his desk was a small camera that served as the drone’s line of sight. It took him only 30 seconds to ram the drone into one of the masts.

“The up and down are inverted” Ziggy said with a chuckle “No one gets that at first; it means up is down and down is up.”

“Wait… what?” North Star asked, confused.

“Don’t worry about it, use this button here to send the drone higher” WO Ziggy motioned to a button attached to the side of the joystick “And the button under it to send the drone lower”

North Star began to maneuver the drone now, swerving past the mast the drone had just hit and into the sky. North Star eyed a large cloud formation to his left. Like the first target he gently moved the drone towards the cloud mass and pressed the red button. The laser popped out of nowhere and was half aligned with the cloud. For several minutes the frustrated North Star tediously tried to angle the drone’s laser with the clouds center. It would have been easier if the drone had a 2nd joystick that served for the laser only, but he wasn’t the inventor of it and was still astounded that such a thing existed.

“Okay Spade got a target for you” North Star said, shooting the cloud through its heart (If clouds had hearts) with the marker.

“I see the red marker, cool flying thing” Spade said

“Thanks” North Star said with a smile “Technology these days”

“Beats having to go swim out there” Spade said

“Amen” North Star said. North Star was about to say more before he saw something in the far, far, far background, jetting out of the sea. North Star began to move his drone towards the unknown object, from the drone’s line of sight it looked like a mountain. But they had just been sailing for not even 2 days, was there land this near Equestria all this time?

“O my god” North Star said, finding a disturbing discovery

“What is it?” The inquisitive Spade asked

“It is a storm…” North Star said mouth ajar. What he had mistaken for a mountain was really just a giant mass of weather. The clouds were dark grey and mean looking, some almost twice the size of the clouds North Star had just vanquished.

“Hey Ziggy can you come over here?” North Star asked, he didn’t know much about storms at sea.

“Yea what is it SA North Star?” Ziggy asked

“What’s a SA?” North Star asked

“It is short for Sailor Apprentice” WO Ziggy said “wait what do you have to show me?”

North Star scooted out of his chair so his commanding officer could see his discovery.

“Is that a mountain?” WO Ziggy said excitedly

“No it is a storm” North Star said full of dread

“O” WO Ziggy said “O…o…o…Ooooo… now I see it” for his commanding officer, Ziggy seemed like a funny colt.

“What do we do?” North Star asked nervously, unaffected by Ziggy’s joke.

“I got to tell the brass” WO Ziggy said, half running and half galloping to his desk.

“Twilight you’re in charge when I’m gone” Ziggy said, throwing on his coat

North Star frowned; of course the Princess’s apprentice would be his superior.

The second Ziggy slammed the door behind him, was the second the entire room became abuzz.

“Wait what did you find?” Lyra asked anxiously

“Is it land already?” One of the others asked

“Calm down everypony and please come go back to work” Twilight said, getting up from her desk “I am in charge until Warrant Officer Ziggy comes back and I expect-“

“What is that?” Lyra asked, somehow she had galloped from one end of the room to the other without getting caught by Twilight.

“It is a storm” North Star said dreadfully “One big storm”

The second North Star said “Storm” all of Twilight’s power couldn’t do anything, the other 3 ponies bolted towards North Star’s desk and gazed at the storm.

“That doesn’t look very good” One of them said

“Let me see, let me see” Twilight begged, trying to move past Lyra and one of the others. North Star being the good stallion he is, moved out of his desk to give Twilight and the others a clearer view.

“Wow” Twilight said awestruck “That looks dangerous”

All the other ponies surrounding North Star gave their own nods and approvals. Just in time for WO Ziggy to waltz into the room.

“SN Twilight Sparkle, SA North Star; the Admiral wants to see you” Warrant Officer Ziggy said, his face ghastly pale.

Next Chapter: Omens Estimated time remaining: 25 Minutes