Rainbow the Boss Lady (Part Deux)
Rainbow was in an unusually good mood for a Friday morning. She had gotten a fantastic night of sleep, there had been no line at the bagel shop she stopped at for breakfast on her way to work, and the flight to her office had been essentially perfect.
She should have known something was about to go wrong.
She had barely started reading the weekend weather schedule when Headwind, Dewdrop, and Flash Cloud piled into her office. Headwind and Flash Cloud were bickering over some issue that Rainbow knew would probably be her problem in the immediate future, while Dewdrop trailed close behind them with a look of abject boredom plastered on her face.
‘Dad warned me about days like this,’ Rainbow lamented as she suppressed a sigh and tried to focus on what the two stallions were arguing about
“If it’s just bodies you’re concerned about,” Flash Cloud started, “then you can always hire more Pegasi. It’s not like cloud pushing is hard to teach.”
“That’s not the point,” Headwind retorted. “The point is that you’ve shanghaied half of my crew managers for your training program!”
“Not my fault they were born with lightning resistance.” Feeling confident his point had been made, Flash gave Headwind a smug grin.
“How in the hay am I supposed to replace twenty-two crew managers and forty-eight cloud pushers in any sort of timely manner? We had our hooves full enough, and that was before most of our clouds got wrecked Wednesday night,” Headwind countered, his hoof running though his chestnut-colored mane.
Rainbow bit her tongue and did her best to keep a neutral expression. Yesterday had been nothing but awkward after she had gotten to work and realized that her rainboom had thrown all of Wednesday’s work over a good portion of the city. She was very glad that either nopony on the weather team had realized the rainboom had caused the problems, or that they all had the good sense not to ask her about it.
“My rain teams will cover for you when they can,” Dewdrop said softly.
“In fairness, Dewdrop,” Flash interjected, “your rain ponies are spread pretty thin already.”
“I know, but they can still help if Headwind’s got a team in their sectors,” she answered.
“Or Headwind could just work harder,” Flash teased.
“Alright, alright, let’s settle down and go over today’s plan,” Rainbow cut in, deciding to move things along before the argument could get heated. She waited for all three of them to be seated before she began. “Okay, so first thing’s first: Flash, have you got all the lightning wranglers assembled?”
“Yeah. All sixty candidates will be waiting for us on the east side of town where we receive all the weather shipments. I’ve broken them into teams of four with one of my current lightning wranglers acting as a team supervisor for the duration of their training.”
“Awesome.” Rainbow allowed herself a small smile. “You and I will head over there next.”
“Sounds good, boss lady.” Flash replied with a salute.
“Cool.” Rainbow quickly glanced down at the schedule on her desk. There was a lot to get done before quitting time, and Rainbow had no intention of being late to meet Spitfire after work.
“Alright,” Rainbow started, looking at Headwind and Dewdrop, “Dewdrop, the farms north of the city are scheduled for three hours of rain. We also need to get a light shower over the midtown parks sometime this afternoon. Then I need you to start planning for next month’s storm.”
“I’ll make sure it’s ready,” the saffron-colored mare answered with a polite smile.
“Good.” She turned her attention to the light-green stallion. “Headwind, how many clouds are we missing since Wednesday night’s… um…” she paused, catching herself before she said ‘rainboom’, “…thingy?”
“We’re down roughly twenty-three percent,” he answered plainly. “If you add clouds that were damaged and need to be reshaped and replaced, then the number gets closer to thirty percent.”
“Okay.” Rainbow frowned. She had never really given much thought to quite how much her rainboom was capable of affecting her surroundings. “Well, there isn’t much we can do about that right now.” She frowned and rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
“Coulda been worse,” Flash offered. “Coulda been raining.”
Dewdrop rolled her eyes. “You could use the shower, Flash,” she lightly chided him.
“Hey, I can’t help it. It’s not easy to keep a hundred pounds of rippling stallion contained!”
Dewdrop smacked herself in the face with her hoof and groaned loudly. Headwind stifled a giggle and hoofbumped Flash Cloud.
“How in the world are you married?” Dewdrop asked despondently.
“Okay, moving on!” Rainbow interjected quickly. She gave the three managers a moment to refocus on her before she looked to Headwind. “Headwind, I need you to do what you can with the clouds we’ve got left. We’re scheduled for about fifty percent coverage all day.”
“No promises on keeping to that plan with a quarter of my team transferred to the lightning team,” Headwind complained.
“For the last time,” Rainbow started, doing her best to keep her voice neutral, “there needed to be a big increase in the number of lightning wranglers. The rain teams can’t do it for safety reasons; you can train new cloud pushers much faster than we can train new lightning wranglers. It was the best solution.”
“Whatever you say,” Headwind replied sarcastically.
Rainbow bit back a growl and forced herself to take a calming breath. “As I was saying,” she continued after a moment, “fifty percent coverage for today. I’ll be busy training the new lightning wranglers, so when you’re done with that, I need you to place the order for next month’s storm. If you send the order to the weather factory today, then we should get the shipment in the next two or three weeks.”
“That’s no fun,” Headwind groaned, kicking his hoof at the floor.
“That’s why it’s called work,” Flash said with a smirk as he nudged Headwind in the ribs.
“Go suck a rock.” Headwind rolled his eyes.
“Hm,” Flash Cloud put a hoof to his chin, feigning a look of deep contemplation, “well, they are very high in minerals.”
“The orders need to be signed by a senior manager,” Rainbow reminded Headwind while ignoring Flash. “Flash and I won’t have the time, and there’s almost no way Dewdrop will be finished with her work early enough to do it either. Sorry but you’re the only one who’s gonna have the time to get the paperwork in by the end of the day.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Headwind relented with a sigh.
“Great, thanks!” Rainbow smiled happily. In truth, she probably could have done it on her own, but then she definitely wouldn’t be on time for her date, and that simply wasn’t an option.
“Do we know how many cloud batches we’ll need?” Headwind asked.
Rainbow shuffled through the papers on her desk for a moment.“Well, according to the notes Downburst left me, for a citywide storm, he usually ordered five containers of thunderheads, and thirty five containers rain clouds,” Rainbow answered as she read the normal manager’s notes. “I’m assuming that’s enough to cover the whole city.”
“It depends,” Dewdrop interrupted. “Our coverage tends to be a bit thin on the outskirts of the city, and if it’s not a great batch of clouds, things might get a bit spotty.”
“Five full shipments of thunderheads is more than enough to power the storm engine though,” Flash added. “We usually have a few leftover after that too.”
“Okay, then we’ll stick to the five shipments of thunderheads, and order an extra dozen rain clouds. That should leave the rain team with enough clouds to cover the whole city and have a few to spare.”
“Sounds good to me!” Dewdrop said with a grin.
“Great!” Rainbow smiled happily. “Any questions before we all get to work?”
“Nope!” Dewdrop answered.
“I’m good,” Headwind said.
“Nah,” Flash answered with a shrug.
“Good.” Rainbow stood and started for the door. “Dewdrop, Headwind, I’ll see you two Monday. Flash, let’s go teach some lightning wrangling!”
“Aww yeah!” The light grey stallion cheered.
The four Pegasi quickly made their way out of the office. Dewdrop and Headwind each flew off in opposite directions, while Flash Cloud led Rainbow Dash to the weather receiving area.
All the cities and towns in Equestria that had a weather team also allotted space on the periphery where Pegasi from the weather factory could safely store clouds for upcoming weather events and sort the shipments for distribution. Much of the organizational process had been adapted from the Royal Mail Service, which also relied heavily on Pegasi to run at peak efficiency.
Even the comparatively tiny weather team in Ponyville had a staging area where all the clouds were kept until they were needed. When Rainbow had been promoted to Weather Manager, one of her first tasks had been to relocate the entire area to a position closer to Sweet Apple Acres. Her reasoning had been that it was more efficient to keep the rain clouds closer to the farms where they were needed most often. So far, it had worked out very well for everypony.
Dash didn’t have the experience with the Manehattan teams to know if their staging area was set up as efficiently as is could be. Even if it wasn’t, about all she could do was leave a note for Downburst that recommended changes, and possibly get Dewdrop, Headwind, and Flash Cloud to put some pressure on him as well.
Rainbow put those thoughts out of her mind once the staging area came into view. Flash Cloud’s current lightning wranglers had taken some of the stored clouds and put them together to form a large platform cloud that all the recruited cloud pushers could stand on while they waited. They had also, per his instructions, left a live thunderhead at one edge of the platform where several lightning wranglers were keeping curious Pegasi well away from it.
Rainbow grinned excitedly as she flew past Flash Cloud, doing an aileron roll into a loop over the assembled crowd before she landed between them and the thunderhead.
“Alright everypony,” she shouted loud enough to draw their attention, “gather ‘round and listen up!”
She grinned as the crowd slowly assembled around her, the senior lightning wranglers hovering above them and wearing the yellow vests of their team. Rainbow hopped back into the sky and hovered ten feet above the cloud platform so everypony could see her.
“For those of you who don’t know,” she began, “I’m Rainbow Dash, and I’m the manager around here for the next six weeks. You’re all here because of your natural lightning resistance and Manehattan’s severe lack of professional lightning wranglers. I have no idea how this situation managed to happen, but I do know this. It. Is. NOT. Okay,” she stated firmly, clopping her hooves together.
She pointed to the thunderhead behind her. “That is an active thunderhead,” she began. “Notice the dark grey color that differentiates it from normal rain clouds? You should also be able tofeel the static in your feathers and smell the ozone in the air.” Rainbow Dash waited for a brief moment to make sure there weren’t any questions from the untested ponies. Since none of them said anything, she continued. “Thunderheads are dangerous. All of you have may have a natural resistance to lightning, but it can still cause you some pretty serious injury if you aren’t careful, so pay attention to what you are doing. And above all…” Rainbow flew over to the thunderhead, nodding to the lightning wranglers that had been acting as guards for the cloud before she motioned for them to move away.
Once they had moved to a safe distance she turned back towards the curious Pegasi that were watching her. She took a breath before she delivered a powerful buck to the cloud. There was a deafening crack behind her as a bolt of lightning exploded forth from the cloud, arcing harmlessly into the open skies. Her feathers tingled, her mane stood in stood in all directions, and she could feel the residual static making every hair on her body stand on end. She couldn’t help a manic grin; only a rainboom was more exhilarating than handling lightning.
“Respect the power of these clouds like an angry dragon,” she finished, giving the former cloud pushers time to absorb the demonstration. After a few moments she flew closer to them again and continued her presentation.
“Now, individually, each thunderhead can produce multiple lightning strikes of the scale I just demonstrated. This is important, so I’m going to say it again. Each strike carries enough voltage to kill or seriously injure anypony, even those of us who have a natural resistance to it. When networked together, they form the storm engines that power the large weather events we need to run from time to time.
“All of you have been broken into teams of four and assigned to a senior lightning wrangler who will supervise your training. These team leaders are the ones responsible for your safety, so if they tell you to do something, then you do it. If they say jump, you say how high. If they say fly, you ask which direction. And, most importantly if they say stop, you stop! Immediately!” Rainbow declared firmly.
“Lastly,” she continued, “there are a couple of rules all of you need to follow. First: Nopony should land on a primed thunderhead; there’s the very real chance that you could accidentally discharge the cloud and get yourself fried. Second: Nopony should handle a thunderhead alone. If I hear about any of you trying to be some kinda hot-shot, I will personally bust your flanks from here to Appleloosa. Am I clear?”
Rainbow paused for a breath as the assembled ponies responded. A chorus of “yes ma’am’s” could be heard rippling through the crowd.
“Good. Now everypony get into your teams. Your captains will start teaching you the basics of lightning wrangling with battery clouds. By the end of the day you will all be able to charge, discharge, and direct the energy in those clouds at will. After that, you’ll each take a battery cloud home for the weekend to practice, and on Monday we’ll start working on small lightning clouds. In the next three weeks you’ll all be ready to work with a full scale storm engine,” she finished, waving her hoof to the crowd.
For the remainder of the day, Rainbow bounced from group to group, usually keeping quiet and observing how the older lightning wranglers were handling the education of their new teammates. Occasionally, she stepped in to answer bigger questions and on a few occasions she had to shift some of the groups around to deal with personality clashes, but overall, she couldn’t help but feel optimistic with how things were looking.
‘I guess all of Twilight’s yapping about lists and plans is rubbing off on me. Never thought that was going to happen.’ She snickered to herself.
Near five o’clock, when things were just winding down, Dash spotted Headwind and Dewdrop flying over to her. She smiled to them as they landed.
“Having fun over here?” Dewdrop asked, looking nervously at the parked thunderheads not too far away.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” Rainbow answered with a smile. “You two all done for the weekend?”
“Yup, we got all the weather set up and the weekend team should have everything under control,” Headwind answered.
“Awesome,” Rainbow said. “Did you send the weather order out to Cloudsdale?”
“Erm…no,” Headwind admitted with a faint blush.
“Do that before you head home, please,” Rainbow stated, earning an irritated look from the stallion.
“Fine.” He sighed before taking off in the direction of the main office where the necessary paperwork was located.
Rainbow let out a weary sigh. ‘It’ll all be done soon, then I can hang out with Spitfire,’ she reminded herself.
Headwind made good time back to the office. What was normally a twenty minute flight he managed to do in just over fifteen. Quickly, he retrieved the necessary orders from the manager’s desk and set to work filling them out. It wasn’t that he had a problem with actually doing the work himself, it was just that he had plans for the night with his own family that he didn’t want to miss.
“Stupid lightning wranglers,” he grumbled quietly as he blitzed through the forms. “Stupid storm engine.”
With all the haste he could manage, he checked the boxes for thunderheads and rainclouds and scribbled down the number they needed. After he signed the form he folded it and slipped it into a prepaid envelope. “At least the envelopes are all prepaid and have the address printed on them,” Headwind mumbled, mashing the package shut.. He tucked the envelope into his saddlebag and took flight again. There was a post office on his way home where he could send off the order with minimal inconvenience.
He never noticed the mistake he had made.
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So cute... another unoriginal romantic fafnfic !
How sweet, that scheme is in use again !
I missed ol' good unoriginal fanfics !
1731809
If you don't have any genuine constructive criticism to offer, just shut the fuck up.
Dun dun duuunnn!
Going to guess that he ordered too many thunderheads.
1731809
U jelly of his feature box.
I see a cliffhanger in the upcoming chapter. And I like it!
1731809
It's weird that you pick this one to comment on. Did you even read the chapter? Even though it is a romance fic, this chapter was, if anything, a careful and logical exploration of how Pegasi Weather Services might work. In point of fact, if you took out the reference or two to the upcoming date, this could be mistaken for a non-romance fic, perhaps an adventure, at least for this chapter.
Admittedly earlier chapters clearly show it to be one, but it's hard to see how, reading this chapter, one could come to that conclusion. Unless, of course, you didn't read this or any of the chapters.
But you couldn't have POSSIBLY done, right? that
Rainbow's an awesome boss. I wish my superiors were more like her, but sadly I get stuck with a manager I can never get ahold of in a crisis and I'm left holding the bag.
Great chapter.
1731809 *Sniff, sniff* I think I smell butthurt. I can't imagine that you read the entire thing and posted a comment like that. Sure, the shipping isn't exactly new, but the author is doing an excellent job of exploring it.
1731809 I smell... I smell something... wait a moment... oh that's right. It's Jealousy. Also, speaking of originality. you wrote a my little dashie story. You are in no position to talk about originality.
I can dig it, what's this mistake???
'Never noticed his mistake...'
i.imgur.com/DQ8HA.gif
But I hope Dash 'n Spitfire go with no hindrances...
Nice work man now Im trying to think of what is going to go wrong
Other than that loving it so far
I have a feeling that this storm will be... problematic.
ahhh how could you do that to us, what mistake has been made?
1731809 Says someone who wrote a My Little Dashie spinoff. Maybe instead of judging other authors without cause you could try to write something that had some actual creativity or depth to it.
Well, these comments were interesting to observe from my phone's crappy browser the last couple hours! Now that I'm back home (and before I take a long nap cause I was up all night working) I'll just do a batch reply:
1731809
Thank you for not thumbing the story down at least. I hope you give it a read someday and (hopefully) you won't find it as unoriginal as you think.
1731849
Guesses are fun
1731923
Not gonna lie, it took me days to work out how to do that scene, including multiple times were entire paragraphs were deleted and started over from scratch. I'm glad you think it turned out well!
1731976
I feel your pain
1732065
What indeed? I'd do an evil laugh, but I'm too tired
1732189
Thanks man, stay tuned to find out
1732253
...I read your comment in the voice of Dr. Mordin Solus...
1732355
I see her as bisexual, possibly with a slight preference for other females. For the sake of this story I simplified it to lesbian.
1732388
That is the best gif ever!
Okay, that's all for now. Must sleep. Love you all!
Oh and when will you update your other fic with Octavia and vinyl ?
Great story so far, I love it when people go into details of how they think parts of Equestria work. Your take on weather working in Equestria is being added to my head canon
Personally, I found this chapter very enjoyable. I was impressed with Rainbow's leadership abilities as well as the training guidelines she set forth for the lightning wranglers. Its the sort of thing you don't expect from the the actual series (at least not yet).
As for Headwind, the mistake he made could very well clash with Rainbow's plans in the future; not to mention serious problems for the city itself. Hopefully its something trivial that can be fixed in due time.
On a side note, I understand Headwind's frustration with wanting to see his family on time, but work is work. And that's something to accomplish correctly the first time.
Looks like Manehattan is getting three shipments of rain clouds, and fifteen shipments of thunderheads.
Welp, someone's getting fired. I can't see thunderheads being cheap either. Congratulations, you just bankrupted the Manehattan weather department.
Also unoriginal.... It's been awhile since I've seen a decent Spit-Dash fic, it plays with the concept of weather control in a very interesting way and for once it's not Dash who ends up injured... Yep, so unoriginal it hurts
Keep up the good work
1732558
Thanks very much, glad you enjoyed it!
1732599
If there's one thing I like about the show, it's that the ponies are generally flawed and capable of the same errors we are. What Headwind's mistake is and the consequences will be...well, you'll just have to wait and see
1732679
Fixed, thanks for the catch!
1733476
I suggest you find a hat, and hold on to it.
1733600
As usual, should be next Monday (barring unforeseeable interruptions)
As for the title....yeah...
too many thunderheads. big storm/hurricane. city gets totaled, RD and spit have to work together to save themselves. i haven't seen many disaster fics i think that would be a good way to increase so action into this but i am liking the spitxdash
1731821
Oooh, sooory, that I point out scheme that is copied time after time.
Details may be diffrent - like here - but rest stasys the same.
1732015
Maybe, someday I'll give it a read.
1731873
No, I'm not jealous. I just point out unorigianlity of this story.
1733641 I understand. I'm happy to say that this story has grabbed my attention and am eagerly (and patiently) awaiting the next installment.
1733823
the only real concept copied here is the rainbowxspitfire ship, which doesn't really make in unoriginal, its just a ship that happens to make sense.and if multiple ships of the same characters are unoriginal, i expect that the romance tag would be dead already, and if i say so myself, this is one of the better rainfire ships.
Cliff hanger, hanging from a cliff... And that's why they call him Cliff Hanger!
A good chapter even if it didn't have any of the shippy stuff we got to see more of how weather teams work, which I find very entertaining.
Thanks for the update!
Cliff hanger, hanging from a cliff... And that's why they call him Cliff Hanger!
A good chapter even if it didn't have any of the shippy stuff we got to see more of how weather teams work, which I find very entertaining.
Thanks for the update!
1731809 I'm all for people posting what they think, but unless you say something useful and not be a bitch then don't post
I love the detail you put into the weather management system.
1733823 It is almost impossible to come up with a story idea that is completely original now that is not borrowed from something else. So get off your highchair and go complain about a story that is written like garbage instead of a certain prose.
1732513
Don't worry, In An Instant is still being written, the next chapter for that will be out in the next couple weeks after my finals are done. That story is...difficult to write.
1735206
take your time your sens for detail is good take your time please
1739767
Thanks for the comments, glad you're enjoying it!
1739907
You'd be right
1731809 not sure if this is serious or not but if you dont like it then dont read it.
1733823
It wasn't a question.
images.t-nation.com/forum_images/a/8/a80cc_ORIG-its_a_tarp.jpg
Wow.
I was just troling you all
This story is nice. Not awesome, but nice.
Characters, plot, main thread... Good, but not mindblowing.
Thumbs up, author for good story, though.
t.qkme.me/356xzn.jpg
Mistakes are never, ever good. Unless they invent penicillin. Then they change the course of human history.
But my guess is this one's not inventing penicillin.
1732453
I love your username. That is all.
And as for a legitimate comment on the story, I'm loving this do far
I love how you take the time to develop the relationship and I actually really love the chapters that show Dash and her expertise in weather management. Most of your systems for how the weather is maintained in Equestria have now entered my head cannon.
And... I foresee a rather annoying annoyance in the forthcoming future.
1731809
cdn.derpiboo.ru/thumbs/1200/1100/2012/06/25/15_32_26_320_20249__safe_princess_celestia_reaction_image_computer_trollestia_butthurt
1731821 agreed, and CODE GEASS FTW.
I love this Story Like A diabetic Loves Their Insulin.
I took a meteorology class last semester, And I think I'll need to talk to my teacher about some missed items. But any ways, Great work.
You're missing a quote mark at the end of this paragraph, since the next one starts with a different speaker.
The mistake he had made?
Here it comes.
So, I waited a long time to fave this, (Well, a couple hours, but whatev) and I think it is well worth the fave. You've got a good story here. I can't wait to get caught up. Even if it is half past midnight. The couple is good and the pacing is nice, and I love that they haven't like, kissed kissed yet. I'm hoping we get to see Dash come out to the other EoH thought.
And mistakes cost lives; never forget that kiddies. Headwind might be lucky enough just to lose his seniority or even lose the job. If he's unlucky, me might be looking at a Criminal Negligence charge.
Oh boy...that can't be good. Quick! Go to the next chapter!