Just because Rainbow's living alone for the first time...
Just because it's her first real job...
Just because she's never really dealt with ground and all that comes with it...
...that doesn't mean anything is going to go wrong.
Seriously. She's totally got this.
A standalone, no prior reading required part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome.
Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.
Page generated in 0.183 seconds
Total duration
1,102 users online
2,076,079 hits today, 1,872,792 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I just had a thought. Cloud homes (presumably) keep the rain out. Could you paradoxically keep the rain off of something with clouds, or use it as a less than secure roof?
Ah, the daftest version of Rainbow Dash to ever Rainboom herself to sleep rides again!
That was quite an insightful look into Rainbow’s origins.
8451124
actually that might be a easy to explain one in equestrian. Id assume that cloud homes are built on one set of altitude and all other clouds in use for weather are set at another with enough distance between so that they cant merge either way. I mean who would want their little colt or filly jumping on the clouds and either accidently jolting lightning out and hitting somebody below or themselves.
Two words got glued together.
It's not so bad.
Wow. A fire alarm is really sensitive if that can set it off. How frustrating. And embarrassing, if it also wakes the neighbors...
I've missed this. Welcome back, Estee. Thanks for the story.
8451142
The daftest? The daftest?
Behold a man who has never read Spring Is Dumb.
Incredible. Your work with the young Bearers is, in my opinion, some of your best. You dig down to formative experiences that make the characters who they are even in the series premiere, and thus shine light on layers of them that have since been covered by further experience and growth.
In Dash's case, it's more a matter of getting scuffed by all the failed tricks since then, but the point stands. She's impulsive, single-minded, arrogant, proud, and yes, ostentatious. But she's also an instinctive hero, utterly devoted to those close to her, a magical talent on par with a certain lavender unicorn, and does six impossible things before breakfast by accident. Even at this point in her life, she is awesome in every sense of the word, and you captured her magnificently.
And that's saying nothing of the details you've added to the world. Wonders are aptly named indeed; applied magic is often involved in the Continuum's most beautiful moments, and Dash teaching copper to dance is no exception. (And I can't help but wonder what artifacts (power tools?) earth ponies would make were it not for the Secret.) The expansion of the Harshwhinny family tree is a stroke of genius, the Sphere is a fascinating concept, and I'm not sure if Mayor Mare's husband has ever been mentioned before now.
It's good to have you back in the proverbial saddle. Thank you very much for this.
She never predicted that someday, a chaos spirit would do it temporarily...
well, in "Tryptich", Applejack says that Earth ponies "sing" to the Earth to manipulate rocks...
Well, a day late but not a dollar short.
Excellent work, well worth the wait.
Let's see. The pilot covers Twilight's first days. You've covered Rarity, Fluttershy & Pinkie are touched on in Triptych. Apple Jack is a native & presumably stayed in Ponyville since her return from Manehatten. (Cutie Mark Chronicles.) She has since been in Manehatten at least a few times since then but made no effort to contact the Oranges. This seems to hint that their parting was more acrimonious than implied in the Chronicles.
The Crusaders had a cameo in the pilot. It is my understanding that Hasbro has said that is a continuity error & they met in Call of the Cutie. If so, they must have been entering first grade, Ponyville school is bigger than it looks (& has more than one class at each grade level), or one or more of them must have moved to town over the Summer. Also, IMO, school in Ponyville is early August to early May. (This answers "Why wasn't Apple Bloom helping during Apple Buck Season?" Because she was in school.)
And now I need to see RD teaching Scootaloo the finer points of cloud house construction, with Twi. interrupting every few minutes with tricky questions regarding pegasus magic.
I had thought that this was, really, just a fairly ordinary "fish out of water" piece until I found myself actually laughing out loud at Rainbow's thoroughly logical assumption that the pony on the ground couldn't get the apples.
I'm still snickering.
If I was delivering the lecture it would have gone something like this
"Kid, there are millions of Ponies in the world (?). Not one of them does one darn thing I say and not one of them charges Celestia one bit for their lack of service. Here, you get paid to do things my way. Now maybe you think that my ways are good ways and maybe you think that they are bad ways, but they are MY ways and you will follow them or you will look elsewhere for money."
"You say you want a chance to show what you can do? Since you got here you've done nothing BUT show me what you can do -and what you CAN'T do.
1 You've shown me that you don't know squat about the way the world works because if you did you wouldn't have had to be told this -you'd already know it.
2 You've shown me that you're not willing to put forth one ounce more effort than the bare minimum that you reckon will keep you from getting fired.
3 You've shown me that you can't obey orders without a lot of arguing, backtalk, and sass mouth.
That's a lot to show in under 5 minutes, but you managed."
"Every job you will ever have, the Newby gets the crappy parts, the bits that nopony wants to do but that have to be done. When you've shown that you can handle that, then you will be given a chance to show that you can do more. So, let's just say 'not for the foreseeable future'"
Once, I was an assistant manager. Once. I've been told that my people skills suck. (My response to that was "What people skills?"). All I can say is, I learned from my father. (Of course, he was civil service & they can't easily be fired or transferred. They usually wound up promoting him in return for taking a transfer. He worked for the IRS & was often responsible for training new workers. Explains a lot, really)
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lyrics+car+wash&&view=detail&mid=5E66632BF1FB97A3FBE15E66632BF1FB97A3FBE1&FORM=VRDGAR
I'm waiting for an Estee story where Big Mac buys a new cider press and gets it to work perfectly through the dark sorcery of reading the instructions and following directions.
Also wondering if the chariots are wonders, not devices, for this and also what principles they run on.
8451401
And it's gonna be a looong time before Rainbow knows that.
I'll go with "connect"
I'd say Dash's problems with this device are that she over powered it. IMO, her magic is more than most Pegasi & she put too much in. It probably needs to be recharged every now and again.
IMO, a cloud house is most like a house trailer. Yours seem to get part of their water from the air, but I'd bet that you still need a cistern for some things. Also, if the water is recycled by the cloud, it is IMPERATIVE to keep some parts (cleaned out?), (replaced?) (whatever). Like a kitty litter box but more so.
Also, the stove. Magic, or gas tanks (propane, butane, whatever)?
You know, for being a young idiot Rainbow does have a good number of tricks up her
sleeveskin? Yeah, we'll go with that.". . . the battle-scarred fix-it shop . . . managed by a slow-moving unicorn named Mr. Tinker"
Silly author, that's not how you spell Ratchette !!
Excellent world building !!
Possibly the best global set of head-canons.
I'm definitely looking up your Patreon when I get more cash to burn
If Rainbow Dash had a car, it would be one of those extensively blinged-out, lowered, tuned-up Japanese sports cars with a stereo system more powerful than some small vehicles. So yeah, ostentatious rainbow fountains fit her perfectly.
8451782
Well, it's not that Rainbow's stupid. Overconfident, reckless, terminally optimistic, completely out of her depth, nearly broke, and about to fail a fire safety inspection, sure. But not stupid!
Young Dash still has that heroic instinct, I see!
Mayor Mare, frustrated though she often is, is truly an exemplar of Rational Authority Ponies.
This is a really stunning perspective. I haven't really seen many takes on pegasi that aren't yet used to the ground, and this perfectly captures how alien everything must seem to them.
I wonder if Dash still has those little hang-ups sometimes, even today. It would certainly add a cool new dimension to her character. :D
This was amazing! Probably my favourite take on Pegasus Magic I have ever seen. So creative and dynamic!
Now I really want today's Rainbow Dash to use this power in front of her friends. It must look very strange and fascinating to an outsider. Twilight would probably get a nerdgasm or something. xD
I am very depressed that this story is over. I was really getting into it, too! :'D
As I said, I love your take on Pagasus Magic, and I hope to see more of it when I go through your other stories (that, or see it in future stories). ;)
Very cool. :)
Now I wonder how they produce things like the fire-suppression system for sale. Do they need ponies with wonder-making marks to hoofcraft them all one at a time? Or have they got as far as constructing wonders that enchant other wonders when pegasi channel magic into them, like assembly line machines... Probably something in between, where a master artisan creates an enchantment, and other workers create duplicates without needing to fully understand it, like Rainbow tried to do.
You're doing a great job showing how Rainbow Dash never learned the concept of teamwork or the idea of we instead of me that she had to learn in later seasons good job. Also loved the introduction of Applejack. Very believable.
Another Estee masterpiece in the making. And nary a grammatical error in sight! I'm looking forward to reading the rest.
Teenaged Rainbow Dash...I wonder how much of a shock she'll be receiving to her invariably inflated ego.
A very entettaining and interesting read, I enjoyed it muchly.
A Young Rainbow Dash story! So cool!
And all that Ponyville worldbuilding!
Mayor Mare is awesome!
...
Might they be the most racial diverse family in Equestria?
Now here’s a question: Pegasi make wonders. Presumably, this means that there are ponies who have the mark and talent for making wonders. So, what is the difference between that presumably-normal-for-a-Pegasus talent, and Rachette’s talent for devices?
Furthermore, if Rachette could make or repair wonders, surely she would. Which means that she can work with items designed to channel unicorn magic, but not with items designed to channel pegasus magic. Very interesting...
8452048
Would love to see a story in which Marigold, Filthy Rich, and Cranky meet at Berry Punch's bar every other Tuesday in order to spend some time with the other responsible, actually-a-grownup residents of this madhouse of a town.
Meanwhile, Spike has latched on to Cranky as a pseudo-grandkid. The elderly donkey (secretly retired from decades of doing covert work for the Crown) has taken a shine to the kid and takes him out for pizza every so often to let Spike vent about the crazy mares and give the kid a few tips about how to survive the adventuring life when everyone around you insists on doing incredibly stupid things.
8452353
Probably. Twilight mentioned over in Triptych that most devices are like that, that a unicorn with a good field dexterity score can build one with training, even without the mark.
Good job, Dash. You apparently got sent to an exclusive weather management posting based on talent alone, and didn't even know about it.
Okay, I have to ask. This is a pegasus house, meaning it is made (as far as I'm aware) almost entirely of clouds. So a structure made of water vapor and magic is in danger of burning down. How?
Always glad to see new stuff from Estee! Looking forward to fun!
Just amazing.
What a fantastic story. I enjoyed it so much.
It's very layered. The little things like how the sky is a different color on the ground and how her homesickness feeds into her feelings of alienation in her new town.
Maybe it's my rusty memory, but I can't remember a fic that describes Fluttershy and Rainbow's pre-Elements relationship as negatively as this one. That's so interesting and adds some rich history to their friendship.
8453191
The somewhat airtight house filling with unbreathable smoke from the cooking element catching fire, possibly any storage built watertight. Anything that would be easier to make cloud-resistant than out of clouds.
Now I'm curious, though. Could you make a wonder oven? If they can be made temperature sensitive, could some copper wiring in a jacket work as a heating or cooling element? I'd assume highly localised weather conditions are available on demand, so does air conditioning consist of getting a local weather teamer to pull all the hot from your house and magicpatch over the windows?
8453191
), so it seems reasonable that not everything in a Pegasus house is made out of clouds, although the first casualty of a fire would probably be the surrounding clouds, letting the object on fire fall out of the house, but that might destabilize the structure as well, causing it to fall apart.
I do remember seeing some nom-cloud items in the few scenes of Rainbows house (a couple of pieces of furniture, and some clothing) and at Fluttershys parents home. I'm sure she has a regular bookcase for her Daring Do collection (can't have paper next to clouds without leaving watermarks
You missed a word there.
Oh, goody. A family of humourless bureaucrats. I should think that one of them will eventually have words with somepony grey, embittered and into self-defeating behaviour.
That explains why she's always airborne. The ground gives her the wicked jeebies.
I wonder if Applejack will ever realize that Rainbow's going through a similar thing to what Pinkie went through. She's trying to adjust to a new world.
Hmn. I wasn't really expecting this plan to fly, but that didn't really read like a failure to make the wonder. It still has to actually work though, and pass inspection, and both of those remain to be seen.
It's always awkward to make replies on a multi-chapter story because if I'm not viewing the same chapter (and messing up the count) as the person who made the comment, they don't get a notification. Truthfully, it's one of the reasons I often put mid-range works up as a single piece.
Regardless, here we go.
8451990
If Rainbow had a car, she would be on the Autobahn, trying to break the speed limit.
Yes, I know what I just said.
8453191
8453754
It's not so much burning down as burning up. Not only are there always going to be flammable items in a pegasus home -- food, by its very nature, is combustible, and if all else fails, there's always the resident -- but fire has more hazards than the flame. It's very easy to die from smoke inhalation, or simply being in a superheated environment for too long. And with a cloud home, there's one additional danger, which Grey Bard worked out: get things hot enough and the walls are going to start evaporating -- at a temperature well below that where wood would alight. You may not have the same chance of fire as you would on the ground: the odds are arguably lower. But if one gets started and the resident is asleep or unable to respond, the results could easily be fatal. Heat management in a cloud house, especially in the kitchen, is not a casual exercise.
And a poorly-planned restaurant just might leave Cloudsdale through having the entire preparation area drop out.