A Magical Storm

by StormQuill

The Filly with a Taste for Showponyship

Chapter 3

Storm stared at the fully loaded saddle bags that were lying on his bed. He had received a letter shortly after taking the test, congratulating him on passing, informing him on what supplies and books he would need to bring as well as announcing that classes would be starting in four months. Those four months came and went very quickly after he had received the letter, and now Storm had everything he would need to bring for the first day of classes. Well, almost everything.

Under the formal letter was a post script that was written in a different style. The note told him that on the first day of school he would need to bring his dragon and that a member of the school's staff would be asking him some questions about her.

Storm found it quite odd, but he also didn't need any more convincing than that to bring Skyfire with him. The two had become almost inseparable in the months following the test. Storm scoured his books until he found one that detailed a dragon's normal diet. Amongst the usual gruesome fare that came with being mostly carnivorous, although some were found to be omnivorous, Storm found that dragons were particularly fond of gemstones.

One of the benefits of living in a city carved out of the side of a mountain is that, with a particularly useful spell he managed to whip up, he could easily obtain gemstones for Skyfire to eat.

The real trick with raising Skyfire was, in fact, her fire. Storm had read that dragons usually can't breathe fire until a year or two after they hatch, and even then, they can only release small puffs of flame. Skyfire, however, was already releasing tiny jets the day she hatched, and now, she could maintain a small stream of fire for several seconds.

It became a real problem when one day, Skyfire got a case of the hiccups, and consequentially, almost burned the house down. Storm had to spend the last two months teaching Skyfire control her flame, which turned out to be pretty difficult when your student can barely speak.

But finally, after several weeks of hard work, determination, and more than a little luck, Skyfire had an impeccable grasp on her own flame and was no longer causing fire hazards every time she sneezed.

Storm levitated the saddle bags onto his back then made his way downstairs when halfway down, he heard a crash coming from the kitchen down the hall. Skyfire came running out, a metal pot pulled down over her head with Storm's mother chasing after her.

As soon as Storm got to the bottom of the stairs, his mother stopped and turned to him. "Storm, will you please get that pot off her head? She's going to hurt herself."

Storm chuckled, his horn glowed with a soft white light that enveloped Skyfire, lifted her off the ground, and levitated her over to Storm where he lifted the pot, revealing a rather exuberant Skyfire.

"Now Sky, how many times do I have to tell you?" he said, gently placing her on to his back, "You have to wait until after mother leaves before playing in the kitchen. " Skyfire giggled as Storm's mother face-hoofed.

Storm trotted over to the door and reached out just as it swung open, barely missing him.

Quick wit and Nova greeted Storm with bright faces. "Hey boss, you ready to learn ya some magic?" Quick asked, his face plastered with his trademark smile. Storm called out that he was leaving as he stepped out into the crisp, Canterlot, morning air and started heading down the road towards the school.

Nova trotted up next to Storm and brought her face up close to Skyfire. "And how's my favorite, little fire-breather doing today hmm?" Nova asked in a baby voice.

"I'm doing great, how are you?" Quick Wit answered, his smile betraying his faux-serious tone. Nova gave him a dead stare before rolling her eyes. "I was talking to Skyfire, featherbrain."

"Ohhhh, that makes much more sense." Quick retorted rather, well, quickly. They carried on back and forth; Quick Wit would say something dumb, Nova would chastise him, he would respond with something witty that would cause Storm to laugh and Nova to sigh in aggravation. The usual routine.

The trio could hear the large mass of ponies long before they made it through the large, ornate archway and onto the campus. The small courtyard in front of the administration building was positively packed with ponies.

Storm looked around and noticed a rather disturbing trend; not a single unicorn there had a dragon. There must of been well over a hundred ponies, and Storm couldn't see a single dragon with any of them .As soon as Storm started making his way through the mass and towards administration, almost the entire crowd fell silent, several having stopped their conversations mid sentence to stare at the odd creature.

Storm started to feel the threads of panic tug at the corners of his mind. Storm wasn't exactly shy, but he didn't handle large crowds very well, especially crowds that were studying his every move. Storm almost began to flirt with the idea of turning around and heading home, until he heard a very familiar voice call out from behind him.

"Storm Quill, is that you?"

Storm turned around to find a certain, purple filly galloping up to him, a purple scaled dragon on her back, holding on for dear life by her mane. She slowed down as she approached them then took a second to catch her breath.

"Oh hey, you're Twilight Sparkle right? Wow, how're doing?" Storm looked to the dragon on her back, "What's this little guy’s name?"

"Oh, yeah" Twilight said, having finally gotten some air in her considerably strained lungs. She turned slightly to give them a better look. "This is Spike" she said, she moved towards Storm and started to pet the pink dragon sitting on his back. "And this must be your dragon, what's her name?"

Skyfire responded to the enjoyable scratching by closing her eyes and releasing tiny puffs of smoke from her nose.

"Her name's Skyfire. Skyfire, this is Twilight Sparkle and her dragon, Spike." Skyfire looked over towards Spike and smiled, causing Spike to pull Twilight's mane up in front of his face to hide. "Aww, I think a certain dragon is getting embarrassed." Twilight remarked.

"So Storm, you gonna introduce us to your new fillyfriend?" Quick Wit remarked, jabbing Storm in the side with his hoof.

"She's not my fillyfriend, idiot." Storm shot back, a slight redness appearing under his eyes, "Quick Wit, Nova, this is Twilight Sparkle. Her test was right before mine, and she's the personal protégé of Princess Celestia herself."

Twilight shifted her gaze down to her hooves as Quick and Nova starred, slack-jawed. "Twilight," Storm continued, "These are my friends, Quick Wit and Nova"

The two, wide-eyed unicorns quickly closed their mouths then each raised a hoof to greet her. "It's nice to meet you both." Twilight said, shaking each of their hooves.

After the semi-awkward exchange, Storm suddenly had a question he hoped Twilight would have an answer to. "Twilight, do you know if any other ponies were given a dragon egg test?"

Twilight brought a hoof to her chin as she tried to think back. "I asked the princess that question a few weeks ago, and she said only a small group of ponies were even given the test, and of those few, only a total of four passed."

Storm's brain kicked into gear again as a barrage of questions assaulted him. He was in disbelief. Only a small group had the test and of those, only four passed? I wonder who the other two are.

Suddenly, as if in answer to his self-imposed question, Storm heard a filly's voice shouting from the other end of the courtyard.

"Gather around fillies and gentlecolts, and witness the impressive intellect of Jade, the emerald dragon!"

As soon as Storm heard "dragon", he began making his way through the crowd to the source of the boastful voice. When he final made it to the front of the gathering, he was greeted with a rather impressive, make-shift stage being supported by one of the benches. On the stage was a filly with a light-blue coat and a hat that looked to be a few sizes too big for her, causing it to look fairly ridiculous. As interestingly odd as the filly was, it was the tiny green dragon that caught Storm's attention; for the most part, she looked like Skyfire, only with green scales and light-green spines.

If Storm was surprised to see the small, emerald dragon, what he heard next would have stopped his heart.

"Trixie, can you please stop? This is getting embarrassing."

Storm almost couldn't believe what his eyes and ears were telling him, that baby dragon just TALKED. Being able to say a word or two this young was one thing, Skyfire herself was already able to say "Storm" and "food", but this hatchling was able to string an entire sentence together.

Twilight finally managed to break through the wall of ponies and moved up next to Storm. "Oh cool, a green dragon, I wonder what her name is?"

The baby dragon must have heard her, as she turned to look over at Twilight and responded, "My name is Jade, and this one," she said pointing to the filly, "is Trixie."

The look of shock on Twilight's face was bordering on comical. Storm figured that Spike's grasp on speaking was also severely lacking.

Trixie, having heard her name, looked over to find Jade talking to two ponies, "Jade, who are you talking to? Come on, I need you front and center."

"Trixie, these two also have dragons."

Trixie raised an eyebrow at the two, "oh really?"

Twilight smiled and offered her a hoof, "Hi, I'm Twilight Sparkle, and this little guy is Spike. It's nice to meet you Trixie"

A sudden redness appeared on Trixie's face. She angled her hat to hide it as quickly as possible and gave Twilight's hoof a quick shake.

Storm decided to nip this potentially awkward moment in the bud and cut in between to the two fillies. "My name's Storm Quill, and this one is Skyfire." Trixie turned toward Storm, a disinterested look on her face. She turned back to her stage and started putting the odds and ends of the makeshift stage into a large bag.

"Well, it was . . . nice, to meet you both, but if you'll excuse me, Jade, let' s go." Jade gave the two a slight nod then turned to follow Trixie. As the duo started off towards administration, Twilight began to head in the same direction, "I'm going to go too. I still need to get my class schedule." leaving Storm alone with his thoughts and his dragon.

Storm took a seat on the bench, Skyfire hopping down to the spot next to him, and rested his head on his hoof. Wow, so Jade can talk, that's kind of crazy; well, that's the third dragon keeper. I wonder who the last is? Just then, a cacophony of filly screams rang out from the entryway. Storm looked over and saw a group of fillies crowded around something.

Storm chuckled "Skyfire, I think I might be psychic." Skyfire looked up at him and tilted her head to the side, "ah never mind, here, let's go." He got up to his hooves, and after Skyfire was securely in place, the two headed off towards the group.

The group of fillies was considerably smaller than the previous gathering of ponies, so Storm was able to see the object of their attention as he approached. They appeared to be watching a grey-coated colt who looked to be about Storm's age; while the ponies all looked at him, his gaze was turned upward, and when Storm followed his gaze, he was almost floored.

A small, black-scaled dragon was flying around above them, performing some basic aerobatic maneuvers that the colt was calling out.

After a particularly impressive looking midair spin, the dragon flew down and landed on the pony's back, and the two started heading towards the administration building. Storm tried to cut in through the crowd to speak to the colt, but the tightly packed fillies weren't giving an inch, he tried calling out to him, but the group surrounding the colt was already assaulting him with questions and compliments.

This isn't getting me anywhere; I'll just talk to him after class. Storm decided, and galloped toward the administration building to get his schedule. The main area of the administration building was rather large, but with all the ponies either waiting around for friends or for their first class to start, moving through to the schedule pick-up line was incredibly frustrating.

There were two lines, one for ponies whose names began with A through L, and one for ponies whose names began with M through Z. Storm got into the second marked M through Z, and waited as the line in front of him slowly grew smaller and smaller.

As he made his way closer to the front, he discovered the source of the delay; the students had to browse through the pile of schedule's to find their own. When he finally reached the table, he began rummaging through the pile of papers till he found his name. He took a quick glance at the rest of the schedules, and something quite curious caught his eye, neither Twilight nor Trixie, had gotten their schedules yet.

Storm walked out of the line, his class schedule encased in a white field of energy next to his head. Why didn't those two pick up their schedules yet? They came in like 10 minutes before me.

Storm was so lost in thought that he almost didn't see the elderly looking stallion standing in front of him. He came to an abrupt halt and looked up at the rather imposing pony.

"Storm Quill? I need you and your dragon to come with me."

Comments

[the_sane_maniac]

Dun dun DUUUUN?

[Arron_Starchanger]

Good Chapter cant wait for the next one.