Heart pounding, Stormdrift shot up from his pillow, surrounded on all sides by the dark of night. A second pounding came at the door downstairs, and a faint cry of his name; immediately the pegasus swept from his sheets, launched by wings down the curving stairs with cardinal in tow, throwing open the threshold for a soaked Scootaloo that shivered there in the night's downpour.
The light inside painted panic on her features, and she said but a few words: “Bowbolt never came back.”
Stormdrift searched the night from what light extending from the doorway allowed him, but the rain cut his vision like a hovering gray fog. “Come in,” he said, stepping to allow her space, but she was quick to shake her head.
“No time,” she stuttered through her shivers, extending a wing to hood her eyes from drops. “The others are out looking for him. We need your help – something... something's coming, I don't know what.”
His ears perked at the rolling of distant thunder, green eyes shooting for the sky. “A storm,” he murmured, voice no more than a whisper.
“How didn't we catch it?” Scootaloo hissed, mud bubbling as her hooves stomped in frustration. “I sensed only rain, Stormdrift. Why couldn't I tell it was a thunderstorm? I sent Bowbolt out there by himself!”
Ears flattening, he turned a sympathetic eye. “I-It's not your fault, Scootaloo. I wasn't sure what it was, either...”
“We can't waste time blabbing about it,” she said, though she seemed to scold only herself. “I have to go make sure everyone in the town's indoors. Stormdrift, take care of that storm – I don't want something that big getting to Ponyville. Got it?”
Scootaloo did not wait for his approval, turning immediately on her heels and disappearing into the fog by hoof. With Cinder safe inside, Stormdrift swept into the night, his wings carrying him into where the white flashed worst. In his eyes the lightning struck, time and time again, and in his ears the rolling thunders warned through deafening roars; even the beating of his wings was lost to that terrible sound, for it bounced around him as if he flew into the very mouth of a beast awaiting its meal.
Within each flash of white hid a vision: Morningdew dancing about the clouds, laughing as she twirled effortless circles around thunderbolts; Astro and Sunny Noon corralling Cloudsdale rainclouds like cattle on the plains; Rayweaver redirecting lightning with a buck of his hooves! Stormdrift found himself back with them, for just those seconds, soaring the Cloudsdale skies as a team, but still they gave him no orders. Still he was on his own, fitting in where he could, finding a stray cloud he could blow away or tailing Captain Seasky like the aimless subordinate he was. With each flash he blinked away the blinding light in his eyes, and thus blinked away their memory: their smirks, their jeers, their shaking heads.
Barreling thunder erupted at the tip of his wings, splaying the pegasus from the sky like a downed plane. Somewhere in his mind Sunny's giggles echoed and Spiritsoothe swept out of the way, and like a torpedo did Stormdrift crash into the mud of the earth. The rain dotting his face, he tried to lift himself from the muck – and only when he collapsed again on bent and twisted knees did he realize he had been alone there all along, that the Cloudsdale Stormspotters had long since left him behind, and that not even a storm would slow down for him now...
Suddenly, the pegasus knew only the weariness of his mind and the ache of his bones. He could not will his body to move, cushioned by the sweet, cool caress of the wet earth, and his eyelids weighed ever so...
Ever so...
Ever...
“Stormdrift!” His sister's voice rang in his ears, her hooves announcing her presence as they thumped down beside him. “Hey, get up! You okay? Stormdrift!”
“Rainbow,” he mumbled, lifting cheek from mud, “where did you...”
His ear stung as she seized it in her teeth and tugged. “Get up! This storm's getting too close to Ponyville, get up!”
Grimacing, the stallion put hooves to ground and pushed himself up with her aid; quick as her reflexes were, Dash caught him when shooting pains in one of his forelegs threatened his collapse yet again. “It's less than a mile out,” she said, picking up into the air only when he did, her multicolor mane painted brown from mud and sticking lifelessly to her neck and face. “What do we do?”
“It's too big a storm to take down, even with two of us,” he said, shaking the pouring raindrops from his eyes. Ugh, my neck...! “W-Without the other Stormspotters here, the best we can do is redirect the storm to another direction and hope it'll miss the town.”
The blue pony pointed a hoof westward. “Then we're sending it that way. Tell me what to do.”
“I'll try to flatten out some of the heavy stuff, then start turning it,” the stallion said, rubbing at his head. “When I give the signal, you use your speed and send it speeding to the west. The faster we get it pointed and moving elsewhere, the less likely any of it'll hit Ponyville.”
“Got it,” Dash smirked, a telling glint in her eye declaring her excitement for adventure. “Be careful.”
Stormdrift inhaled deep into his lungs, then once again darted into the ever-darkening clouds, weaving between bolts with gritted teeth. With clouds dark like smoke and rain in his eyes, his vision stretched no further than the tip of his nose, yet still the stallion flew in and out of the clouds, confusing their composition. They stretched as he swept from top to bottom, and when the thunder roared he dashed into its source and split the cloud with wings pounding against the sky.
He was not the pony Rayweaver was – he could never cut lightning with the buck of his hooves – but sweeping up its length he could thin it, reduce its strength, but one false detection, an inch too close, and—
The flash -- heat and flame licking the tips of his feathers, he yelped and lost control. Again spiraling from the sky, the earth and mud closed in with open arms, but he would not yield to it again. Beating his wings with all the strength he could muster, Stormdrift caught himself mid-air and returned to the clouds despite the horrible pain each flap caused him, sweeping the skies in curves, twisting the storm, rounding its corners. At his command Rainbow Dash bolted into the sky and whizzed past, relieving him as he settled slowly for the ground nursing his wing.
The stallion watched his dazzling sister corral the clouds much like his fellow Stormspotters knew so well to do, the rainbows that tailed her flashing like fellow bolts through black clouds in a magnificent display. Her technique rough and untrained, she drew far too close to the storm's center but spun the tempest away with her speed, drifting it westward with ease as it seemingly missed Ponyville's outskirts with little room to spare.
Those there at the town's edge gathered where she came to land, her chest puffed and head held high. They praised her courage, how she'd painted the sky in her rainbows and saved the town for sure; all the while Stormdrift stood aside with hanging wing whilst pitifully gasping for breath. They had not seen him – and who would see such a dark pony amidst clouds of such similar nightly colors? His sister's rainbows, though, they... they had been something to see, indeed...
Dash did not approach him, did not praise him or thank him. No, she laughed along with her adoring fans, a smile beaming as bright as the lightning that had struck him. Parties, they declared, would be held in her name, and the injured Bowbolt – whom she had unwittingly come across, while Stormdrift had turned the clouds – begged she teach the Ponyville Stormspotters her tricks.
Perhaps, as her brother turned and limped home beneath the clearing, starry sky, Dash could have turned back to see him. She might have called back for him. Might have asked him to join her!
...But, she didn't. She wouldn't.
Not Rainbow Dash.