The rest of the day was spent dealing with the shockwaves of activity generated by Cloudsdale’s arrival.
The camp ponies had begun celebrating wildly at the sight of the cloud city, cheering and stomping their hooves so loudly that it had been audible in Cloudsdale itself, much to the surprise of the pegasus delegation that brought down the first bundle of rainclouds. Landing in the middle of the camp, their surprise was magnified several times over when they got a good look at the conditions that everypony was living in, to say nothing of the state of Vanhoover itself. Upon asking everyone what had happened, they were left completely nonplussed at the wave of answers they received, leaving the rainclouds (floating nearby in a large net) completely forgotten.
Fortunately, that had been when Lex had arrived on the scene, his entourage – Sonata, Aria, River, and Ribbon – in tow. At his direction, River had stepped forward to meet the Cloudsdale delegation, making the camp ponies step back with a shouted command that managed to overcome their excitement. As glad as everypony was to see Cloudsdale, they still knew that River Bank was somepony not to cross.
Of course, that only went for the ponies that were still on the ground. By the time River had started making plans to store the relief supply of clouds in her mansion (an arrangement which was far from ideal, but nevertheless necessary, since rainclouds tended to drift off in random directions if left unsecured), nearly the entire pegasus population of the camp had taken flight, winging their way up to Cloudsdale. The mass exodus had worried Sonata, leading to her asking Lex if it was okay for so many ponies to just up and quit the camp like that, since he’d just come up with a big plan to turn the place around.
“They’re not prisoners here,” had been Lex’s reply. “If they want to leave, they have every right to do so. But it doesn’t matter. Most of them will be back by nightfall.”
That had earned him a disbelieving look from Sonata. “For realsies? You think they’re going to want to come back here?”
“They won’t have a choice,” answered Lex cryptically.
Sonata had been visibly skeptical, but it only took a few hours for Lex to be proven right. By the time the sun had started to sink towards the western horizon, the pegasus ponies that had fled the camp in favor of Cloudsdale began to slowly fly back down to it. At first the unicorns and earth ponies had watched in amazement, not understanding why their winged counterparts were leaving a prosperous city to come back to such squalid conditions.
But very shortly the answer was made clear: it wasn’t that they’d wanted to. They had to. While Cloudsdale wasn’t without hospitality services, there weren’t nearly enough to support such a large influx of ponies. Even the ones that had waived their room fees out of pity for the poor refugees could only afford to accommodate a few ponies, having to turn the rest away.
“Cloudsdale is a city that needs to maintain close proximity to ground-based municipalities at all times in order to survive,” Lex had explained to Sonata when she’d asked him how he’d known most of the pegasi would come back. “Unlike Las Pegasus, which maintains a fixed location so that its cloud-based activities can receive logistical support from the terrestrial facilities beneath it, Cloudsdale is a city that’s aerial in its entirety, allowing it to move from place to place. But because of that, it’s impossible for it to be self-sufficient. Other than small residential gardens, its ponies can’t grow anything, let alone enough food to feed their entire population. If they were ever cut off from the ground, the entire city would begin to starve within a week.”
Sonata’s brow had wrinkled at that, leaving her scratching her head as she tried to take all of that in. “Okay, I think I get all that,” she’d said after almost a full minute of contemplation. “But what’s it got to do with the city not having a lot of hotels?”
Somehow, Lex had managed to resist sighing. “It’s an issue of supply and demand, Sonata. Because Cloudsdale needs to remain so close to terrene cities, ponies from whatever locality it’s in proximity to don’t need to worry about lodgings. They can fly or take a balloon or employ some other mode of short-range transportation to go to Cloudsdale, and once they’ve finished their business they can turn around and return home just as easily. Because travel time is such a non-issue, there’s little need for accommodations. And given that food is more expensive due to the additional expense of shipping it there and the comparative scarcity, most tourists wouldn’t find a prolonged stay to be economically worthwhile anyway, let alone a group of ponies who are completely destitute the way everyone here is. It’s the same reason the city has so few restaurants or other eateries.”
Sonata had been quite obviously losing her grip on the conversation by that point, staring up at the cloud city with a dazed expression on her face. Finally, though she’d managed to collect her thoughts enough to ask another question. “So…why did you have Aria and those other ponies go and collect all of that money, then?”
“Because River’s going to need it.”
The money in question was an immense pile of bits that had been piled into several large trunks courtesy of River’s staff. It had been retrieved earlier that afternoon by Aria, leading a team of ponies to collect it from another one of the financial institutions that River’s family controlled. The sardonic Siren had complained about being sent to perform the errand, but Lex had made it clear in no uncertain terms that she had better get used to it, since he’d already told her she’d be in charge of maintaining everypony’s safety when the process of reclaiming Vanhoover got underway.
That had almost led to another fight, but Sonata had quickly taken advantage of the fact that his whisper-spell was still in effect and told him to “love her up a little.” Thankfully, after Lex made it clear that he had no idea what she was talking about, Sonata gone into more detail. The result had been that Lex had pulled Aria aside and, nuzzling her gently, told her how she was the only one he could count on to oversee this, since only she had the magic and the acumen to pull it off. When he’d finished, Aria had huffed and pouted and accused him of “not playing fair,” but hadn’t hesitated to go find several ponies brave enough to go into Vanhoover with her.
“Just do it like that if she gets cranky while I’m gone,” Sonata had said after her sister had trotted off, a notable spring in her step.
After spending more than a few seconds contemplating what she was telling him, Lex had finally zeroed in on what seemed like the biggest danger in her suggestion. “And if she figures out that I’m using affection to manipulate her into being more compliant?”
Sonata had given him an odd look then. “Huh? Whaddaya mean? She knows that’s what that was. Heck, I’m pretty sure she knew I was coaching you through it. She just didn’t care.”
After what had happened with Nosey, Lex hadn’t been able to bring himself to think about Sonata’s answer in any greater detail, instead turning his attention to other things.
One of those other things was preparing for River’s departure. As much as Lex wanted to keep her under observation for a few more days to make sure she hadn’t caught ghoul fever, he and River had both known from the moment Cloudsdale had arrived that it was the best bet for getting her to Las Pegasus in a timely manner. But even then, there were various factors that needed to be taken into consideration.
The major one was how Cloudsdale would facilitate her journey to Las Pegasus. In theory, that should have been as easy as finding an available airship to rent – hardly a difficult task in a town that needed to have everything air-mailed to it – but River had informed Lex in no uncertain terms that if she was to have any chance of making the proper impression on the ponies she needed to sway, she’d have to make her entrance into the city in a conveyance of exactingly particular style. But finding one that matched her exacting criteria would apparently take time, which was something they didn’t have: the delegation that had delivered the emergency rainclouds had made it clear that Cloudsdale had gone out of its way to deliver them, and needed to return to its usual route as soon as possible. So there had been no choice but for River to send Trotsworth up in a hot air balloon (something else that Cloudsdale had in abundance) to procure a reservation in one of the city’s few hotels for her and several members of her staff.
Said staff had been frantically retrieving all of the luggage that they’d spent the morning loading onto her yacht, a process that had almost failed before it had begun, since several of River’s servants had expressed severe reservations about going into the city where she, her son, and two of their colleagues had been attacked by a ghoul a few hours earlier. River’s answer to that had been to call up the two butlers that had abandoned her and Piggy when the ghoul had attacked, and in front of the rest of her staff had proceeded to excoriate them for their cowardice so viciously that the stallions – both of whom outweighed her by fifty pounds or more – both broke down in tears, at which point she formally fired them. After that, she’d assured everypony else that so long as they stayed in the sunlight, away from buildings, and were finished before sundown, everything would be fine. Nopony had dared to disagree with her, and the yacht had been unloaded in record time. Now the various pieces of luggage stood alongside the trunks full of bits, waiting to be loaded into more hot air balloons to carry them up to the Cloudsdale.
Those had been only a few of the issues that had occupied Lex’s afternoon. Others had involved managing the transfer of more sick and injured ponies to Cloudsdale’s hospital, going over the floating city’s records of how many clouds went to what villages in the area, purchasing several sundries that the camp desperately needed and which Cloudsdale was able to spare, and numerous other tasks. Fortunately, Ribbon Cutter had proven her worth there, stepping in and handling most of the needed activities at Lex’s direction. She had even made an impromptu speech to the camp ponies – seeing how many of them were disappointed that Cloudsdale wouldn’t be able to simply spirit them away from their ruined city – about the plan that Lex had come up with to breathe new life into Vanhoover, telling them all about how very soon there’d be food and workers and lumber all pouring in. It had served, Sonata had told him later, as a great follow-up to his speech earlier in the day, and by the time Ribbon had been done the mood in the camp had been jubilant.
By the time the sun was sinking below the horizon and Cloudsdale was getting ready to leave, there was a palpable sense of exhaustion throughout the camp, one that Lex shared. Between fending off Sonata and Aria’s idiotic coup that morning, appeasing the Night Mare and subsequently explaining himself to everypony, and then managing Cloudsdale’s sudden appearance, a lot had happened. Though this was far less taxing than fighting Celestia and Luna, he couldn’t help but note. At least now he was making some semblance of progress with restoring Vanhoover…
His thoughts were interrupted as Sonata moved up alongside him. “Hey,” she smiled as she pressed her side against his. “Been a crazy-busy day, huh?”
Seeing no need to confirm the obvious, Lex simply moved on to the next order of business. “I want you to leave for the farming communities north of here tomorrow morning. Find a group of ponies who can accompany you, primarily pegasi. That way you can take those clouds with you when you go, and accomplish two things at once.” He paused to give her a chance to react to all of that, and to his mild surprise she just nodded, looking up at Cloudsdale. “We’ll go over this again in the morning in greater detail,” he added, just to be safe.
“Sure thing,” she replied.
For a moment the two of them simply sat there, before Sonata broke the silence. “So, Ribbon’s already gone back to River’s mansion. She totes wanted to head back to Tall Tale tonight, but those ponies from C. Shells’ crew said it was safer to leave in the morning.”
“They’re right,” noted Lex.
But Sonata kept speaking as if he hadn’t said anything. “She had a whole bunch more questions about what happened with Celestia and Luna. I tried to answer them, but you might wanna talk to her before she goes. Aria’s back there too. I think she’s eager to have you all to herself for a little while. And River’s already gone up to Cloudsdale, even though the rest of her stuff is still being loaded.” She pointed to where a few hot air balloons were parked near the wreckage of the train station. “There are a couple of other ponies leaving too. Not many, but a few that managed to meet up with a friend or a relative who’re letting them crash on their couch or something.”
When Lex’s only response was a noncommittal grunt, Sonata took a deep breath, as though preparing herself for what came next.
“Nosey’s one of them.”