Rainbow Dash tumbled through a tree to the grassy ground below in a multicolored ball of blue feathers, rainbow mane, and green leaves. She caught her breath and scrambled to her hooves, checking herself over for injuries. No, she was fine, just a bit ruffled. She glanced back and forth across the field on the edge of Ponyville; luckily nopony had seen her embarrassing fall. Scowling, she picked twigs and bits of cloudstuff out of her wings and glared up at the cloud that had knocked her out of the sky. Since when were clouds that hard? At least she had been trying a fairly simple stunt, and not something like the Sonic Rainboom where a crash like that could have seriously hurt her. Still, it shouldn't have happened. That cloud shouldn't have been there. Dash shook the remaining debris from her feathers and flew up to investigate.
She prodded the offending cloud with a hoof; it felt solid, like her house back in Cloudsdale. Not a typical weather cloud at all. What dumb featherbrain let this drift away? she thought, puzzled. Nopony else was in sight; nopony else to take responsibility for the stray cloud. Rainbow Dash sighed, and, deciding she wasn't likely to get an answer, began to push the cloud back up to the Pegasi hometown. There goes my practice time, she thought with an annoyed toss of her mane. Hope I get something outta this.
Halfway to Cloudsdale, she was interrupted by a familiar grey-and-yellow shape fluttering towards her from the airborne city.
“Rainbow Dash! My house blew away!”
Dash rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I've noticed.” She punched the chunk of cloud. Of course it was Derpy Hooves. Who else would but the scatterbrained pegasus would forget to secure her house? She was lucky it hadn't drifted away before.
“You found some of it!” Derpy's unfocused gold eyes went wide, and she smiled, “Thank you!”
“Yeah, whatever. You think you can get this back home?” Dash shoved the cloud towards Derpy. The pegasus might be clumsy, but she wasn't weak; she easily measured 10 wingpower...when she could fly straight . She had to be pretty strong to carry heavy packages all over Ponyville every day, and pretty fast to get them delivered in time. Anyway, Rainbow Dash didn't want to bother with that cloud any longer than she had to; she had stunts to practice!
“I don't know...” Dash moved aside, and Derpy slammed herself into the cloud. The springy surface gave in, rebounding with equal force and sending her flying backwards. The pegasus quickly recovered and fluttered back.
“Nah, that won't work,” Dash said, “Clouds don't like that. You've got to be steady.” She demonstrated, and the cloud moved easily.
“Ooh! Can you do it fast?” Derpy asked, one eye on Dash and the other on the cloud.
Rainbow Dash rose to the challenge. “Fast” didn't normally mix well with construction clouds, but if anypony could do it... She laughed.
“You're lookin' at fast, girl. Of course I can!” Dash stretched out her legs one by one, tossed her mane, and rushed at the cloud. Predictably, she rebounded from the surface just as Derpy had. She growled as she beat her wings and stabilized her tumbling body. She was Rainbow Dash, she could clear the sky in ten seconds flat! A dumb cloud wasn't going to defeat her! She tried a second time, and again bounced off the stubbornly unmoving cloud. This wasn’t going to work.
“You okay?” Derpy asked, tilting her head and looking at Dash.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s just get this back as soon as we can,” Rainbow Dash positioned her hooves on the cloud. “You take that side and I’ll take this side.”
“Okay!” Derpy said, flying in to grab her side of the cloud. Together, the two pegasi pushed the chunk of cloud towards Cloudsdale.
“So what’re you doing up in Cloudsdale, Derpy? I don’t see you around often.”
“My house in Ponyville's getting fixed! Dinky said she wanted to see the city, so we're staying here for a while!” Derpy answered, excitedly, “So I got Twilight Sparkle to show her a cloud-walking spell, and we moved up there last week!”
Rainbow Dash recalled that Derpy's home had indeed been overrun in a recent bunny stampede—the second stampede that year, in fact.
“That’s cool. Have you made any new friends? There are some really great ponies up there,” Dash told her, happy to be having a conversation that didn’t revolve around muffins or problems Derpy had caused.
“Well,” the grey pegasus screwed up her eyes and thought, “not really. Ponies don’t seem to want to talk to me,” Derpy finished sadly.
Rainbow Dash was silent for a moment. Suddenly, she felt guilty. Many ponies, including herself, did try to avoid Derpy. The accident-prone pegasus tended to make others uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just because of her clumsy flying or unusual eyes. It wasn’t easy to talk to Derpy: she’d sometimes get confused at sarcasm, and if you got her on one of her favorite topics, it was very hard to get her to be quiet again. Of course, there were some ponies, like Pinkie Pie, who would happily listen with seemingly endless patience, but those were few and far between. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to Dash that Derpy might feel lonely or left out.
“They probably just...were busy,” Rainbow Dash lied. “Maybe I can introduce you to some rockin’ ponies.”
“Yeah! That's great!” Derpy smiled, enthusiastic; she seemed to have forgotten the earlier part of the conversation.
Ahead of the ponies, the white horizon of the cloud city came into view.
Up on the disk of the city, racers chased each other along the outside edge, tails and manes streaming behind them. The weather factory's tower churned out a steady stream of rainclouds, each quickly collected by teams of pegasi. Rainbow Dash was glad this was her day off; it looked like they were preparing for a large storm, one that would need the weather teams' attention all afternoon.
Dash and Derpy rose above the highest level of cloud surface. Dash maneuvered their cloud block around a rainbowfall; she avoided the colorful cascade, but Derpy flew through it, splashing her flank and tail with multicolored liquid. She cheerfully shook this off, unbothered.
“Over there, Rainbow Dash! My house is over there!” Derpy announced, pointing a hoof towards the rim of the city. Pointing where Dash could see two beds and a few shelves standing incongruously amid cloud walls that had drifted far from their appropriate positions.
Not the best part of town...Dash thought as they approached. Derpy's house—or what was left of it— was on the edge of a cloudbank, out of the way of other ponies. Odd, because back in Ponyville Derpy hadn't lived too far for the town center. Here, it seemed, either she hadn't tried to get a place in the city proper, or she hadn't been able to.
The pegasi moved the cloud block over the remains of Derpy's house and flew down.
“I tied it down! I know I did!” Derpy said, looking around.
“Are all your things still here?” Dash asked. Derpy counted, nodding her head at each number as she did so.
“Yup!” she confirmed.
“Well, that's good.” Dash rubbed her head. “I don't see what could have happened.”
The sound of snickering came from behind a cloudbank. Rainbow Dash bristled and turned to look as Cloudchaser and Flitter gave each other a high-five and attempted to fly away.
“Hey! Get back here!” Dash yelled, her eyes narrowing, “Did you do this?” She hovered over to the pegasi twins and stared them down, waiting for the answer to her question.
Cloudchaser fluffed her elaborate white mane with a hoof, looking off into the distance haughtily. “So what if we did? She doesn't belong here anyway.” She bounced into the air and started to fly away.
“You get over here and say that to my face!”
Derpy started to back away at Dash's angry tones. “Rainbow Dash, what are you doing?” she squeaked.
“You just stay there and let me take care of these brats,” Dash called back.
“We're leaving, sheesh. Didn't think you'd get so worked up over a prank,” Flitter said, and the two flew off before Dash could stop them. She pounded the ground with a hoof, raising puffs of cloud into the air. She looked back at Derpy, who was staring after the twins, tilting her head.
“If they come back, I'll pummel them,” Dash growled. She flew up to the floating bit of cloud wall and kicked it down to the surface, following it with the other pieces. Once the small house was reconstructed,she landed on the edge of the cloudbank.
“C'mon. We're going to see Twilight.”