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// 23 - The Hurricane 
// Story: Predictions & Prophecies 
// by Kinrah 
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So many strange things happened on May 21st, in the 990th year of the Celestial Era. It was said in the aftermath that the magic of the world had anticipated its events, that the weird and wonderful had been drawn to Canterlot on that day specifically. Indeed, ponies that would never normally have come to Canterlot could be found everywhere in the city at the time of the explosions, explosions that changed so many lives. In fact, Princess Celestia had been heard to say afterwards, such was the variety of character in the city on the day that some ponies were practically invisible. While her odd choice of words left questions on her subjects’ minds, it was true that some of the stranger individuals were part of the crowd.

Of course, it’s very hard to be inconspicuous when your mane is a freaking rainbow.

Rainbow Dash had been half asleep when her mom had explained it, but the rainbow mane ran in their family since Dash’s great-great-great-great grandmother (or something to that effect, there might have been some more greats in there) whose own mane, which lacked purple, married a stallion whose mane was exclusively purple. The whole talk had been long and boring and Rainbow herself had been more surprised that nopony had yet taken advantage of the awesomeness of having a rainbow for a mane. Come on, a rainbow mane! How cool was that?!

In the past, though, it was somewhat of a double-edged sword. Sure, it was still awesome - but it was also very noticeable, especially since soon-ish the Rainbow Dash that was supposed to be there was going to be blowing everything up. Really, she would relish the chance to test her skills against little herself, but despite barely having a clue what Twilight was so worried about with time travel, even she knew doing that was a stupid idea. If she suddenly showed up and put herself off her game, there’d be no sonic rainboom at all! She’d never get her cutie mark! She’d never be as cool as she was now!

But those bullies… Tempting. Very tempting. Also silly.

That, and her number one priority had to be finding Fluttershy, who had disappeared.

She had to give credit to Twilight for her accuracy. Even though this whole thing had been accidental, she’d still landed smack-bang in the middle of the communications tower, which thankfully had been devoid of tourists to be shocked at her sudden appearance. Fluttershy hadn’t been so lucky, and had appeared suspended in the air over the edge. By the time Rainbow had gotten her bearings and realized that her friend had fallen, the yellow pegasus was nowhere to be found. Knowing Fluttershy as she did - and she’d known her a long time - it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that she’d panicked and shot off in search of something familiar.

Whether she was likely to find anything familiar in Canterlot ten years too early was another matter entirely.

Also, there was the matter of the rest of her friends. Twilight had said some things, but Rainbow hadn’t been able to hear her; all of that magic had been blowing a gale directly past her ears, and even now her hearing was still a little bit fuzzy. For the third time since landing, she lightly tapped the side of her head with her hoof, trying to clear it. Blech. If she remembered right, though, Twilight, Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie Pie were all in the city somewhere too, hopefully still together. All she’d need to do then would be find Fluttershy and just ride out the storm, with a front-row seat if possible. No way was she going to miss her own rainboom, her own impossible thing.

Well, it looked like there was no avoiding it. Rainbow Dash would have to think like Fluttershy. Moments like these cropped up surprisingly often, mostly when she had to drag her friend out of hiding spots when there was something serious needed doing. Like that time when they’d watched the dragon migration; Rainbow didn’t get why Fluttershy was so scared of dragons, but after the migration had passed, before Spike had decided to follow it, she’d had to track Fluttershy down. She was worried, okay? Eventually it turned out that she’d actually gone all the way to Zecora’s place in the Everfree Forest. Only Fluttershy would go into the crazy forest full of arguably nastier creatures than dragons to get away from dragons.

There probably wasn’t any place in Canterlot full of nasty critters, though, or if there was, Rainbow didn’t know about it and wanted to know about it pronto. The capital seemed like a bit too much of a snobbish place for some place like a dangerous bird of prey house or something like the one they had up in Cloudsdale. Fluttershy loved that place, and once she’d cottoned on to just how awesome they were, Rainbow had loved it too. Today, Fluttershy was very unlikely to have flown all the way back to Cloudsdale. She wasn’t that much of a scaredy-pony.

Rainbow racked her brain for what she knew about places in Canterlot where Fluttershy liked going. First guess would be the royal gardens, but then she remembered that the guards would never let her in. Joe’s? Nah, she wasn’t that enthusiastic about food. The park? Park was a good guess. Lots of open space, probably some critters, clear skies, she could see it from where she was now, yeah, park was sounding better and better.

With a quick check to make sure that the time travel hadn’t messed with her wings (not that it had last time), she took off and soared down the street, resisting the urge to call for her friend. Ponies would remember a rainbow-maned mare calling out for a pony named Fluttershy.

Canterlot park was bigger than Rainbow remembered it, though probably because she’d always been looking at it from a distance. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too hard to find Fluttershy, and the sooner she found Fluttershy, the sooner she could find a seat with a good vantage point for the race later. At least she had her priorities sorted.

Alighting on the gazebo in the middle of the lake island, Rainbow put a hoof above her eyes and did a 360, looking for any hint of her friend. A conglomeration of critters might be a good place to start, Fluttershy couldn’t resist that. Any little dogs, cats, bunnies? A couple of dogs, to be sure, but not in the volume that attracted the pegasus. Birds? There was a flock of some bird or another wheeling around above, but even as she watched they disappeared over the wall.

“Come on, Fluttershy,” she muttered under her breath. “Where are—” she interrupted herself with a gasp, which morphed into a grin. That over there was a pink tail sticking out of that tree, and a familiar pink tail at that. “Gotcha.”

Now, she had to be careful about this. While it was fun to prank Fluttershy, now wasn’t the best time for it. So instead of bombing into the tree from above, she landed beneath it, looked up, and cleared her throat loudly.

At least she didn’t fall out. “Oh, Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy looked immensely relieved, for a pegasus carefully propped in the branches of a tree. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m so sorry for running off like that.”

Rainbow flapped a hoof. “Eh, don’t worry about it. You okay up there?”

“Oh, yes. I was just having a conversation with Mr. Ringwood—” at this she motioned towards a squirrel sitting next to her, which chirruped “—about what a nice tree he’s got here.”

Small talk with squirrels. O-kay. “Okay good. You ready to come down?”

“Ah, um, I’d rather not.”

Sitting down, Rainbow sighed dramatically. “Fluttershy, it’s fine. Nothing’s gonna happen.” Apart from, you know, a sonic rainboom.

But Fluttershy shook her head. “Oh, I’m not worried about that.” She squinted out through the leaves, then looked down again and pointed. “I’m just hiding because—”

Fluttershy was pointing at a wooden structure up against the city wall. Rainbow blinked a few times. She didn’t remember— oh. Oh. “Oh, nuts.”

Nuts, because that was the weather station, which she’d read about collapsing in her first few days at the weather factory. Nuts, because that happened today. And nuts, because a pegasus stallion wearing a very official-looking weather forecast hat was trotting straight towards them. This couldn’t go wrong at all.

“Hoi!” the pegasus shouted, once he was within shouting range, which in Rainbow’s opinion was far too close to be shouting. “What are you two doing slacking over there, hmmm? Yeah, I’m talking to you in the tree, too!” With a yelp, Fluttershy fell out. “Come on, back to work, chop chop!”

It took Rainbow Dash a moment to work out that this guy actually thought they were weather patrol ponies. Well, one of them actually was, but that was besides the point. “Uh, we don’t work for you, dude,” she pointed out, helping Fluttershy back to her hooves. “We’re just visitors.”

“Likely story!” Something about this guy seemed familiar. Did Rainbow know him from— oh no. Not him. Anypony but him. “I know weatherponies when I see them!”

“Well then maybe you need glasses, Doc!”

Oh, horseapples. The name had just slipped out, and now it was too late. Doc Stratosphere, bane of all weatherponies everywhere who just wanted to get things done, squinted at her. Rainbow had never actually encountered him during her time in the weather factory, and then again working for Ponyville, but his reputation far preceded him, and the effects of his ‘research’, as he called it, always took forever to even out. And yes, he needed glasses, and no, he had never worn glasses in his life.

Why him? Why now?

“And just how do you know who I am, hmmm? Do I know you?” Stratosphere was the kind of guy who’d get very bewildered if anything unexpected happened, and immediately start looking for somepony else to blame, even if the thing happening was entirely his own fault, which it usually was. His official title was ‘Weather Researcher’ - and now that he was getting closer Rainbow could see it written in marker pen on his hat - and his role was basically to find ways to improve the performance of all of Equestria’s weatherponies. Normally that would be fine, except he tended to do his experiments without telling the appropriate weather teams first and then when things inevitably went pear-shaped he’d blame it on them and then run away.

Ponyville had thus far resisted his attempts to pay them a visit. This was mostly because of the Everfree Forest, which all weatherponies knew was a source of trouble, whether they actually acknowledged it or not. Stratosphere, in a rare move that had annoyed everypony in the Weather Forecast Centre, had gone on record saying that he didn’t believe the forest existed.

“Uhh, nope!” It was far too late to backpedal, but Rainbow was gonna try and do it anyway. “I call everypony doc! Don’t I?” she added, nudging Fluttershy while trying not to let her face be too overcome with her lying-to-superiors face, and failing miserably. Fluttershy, ever helpful, only squeaked in response. “That’s totally a thing I do.”

She didn’t expect it to work, and it didn’t. “Unlikely, hmmm. I don’t know why you thought you could get away with it, but come on, hup! You’re busted.” He paused. “Whoever you are. Names?”

“Uh, I’m Rainbow Flash, and this is, uh, Flutterby.” It took all of Rainbow’s willpower not to wince at her own lame attempts at false names. Come on! Rainbow Flash? Flutterby?! Okay, it was official: She was never naming anything herself ever again. Ever. Applejack might have that weird compulsion to tell the truth, but Rainbow was just as bad at improvising. This guy would never remember them anyway. He never remembered anypony. One more try… “But seriously, doc, we don’t work here.” She pointed at the building. “Just ask literally anypony in there. We don’t know any of them.”

But Stratosphere was having none of it. “You kids’ll say anything to cover each other,” he said, waving a hoof, obliviously. “Come on then, hmmm, hop to it!” And then he started physically pushing them.

“Geez, okay, okay, I get it!” Rainbow so wanted to whip that hat off his head. There was no escaping this. They’d just have to do some quick thinking once they were in there. “Come on, Flutter— er, Flutterby.” Quickly, she looked around for a clock, but couldn’t see one. Half-past ten, that was about when she did her sonic rainboom. There couldn’t be that much time in it at all.

Then she stepped through the door, walked through the passage to the building on the other side of the wall, and her jaw just about hit the floor.

The source of her shock was twofold. One was the state of the building. Rainbow was no architect, but the last time she’d seen a building in this state Applejack had asked her to demolish it. Sure, she’d heard that it was badly built, but that didn’t convey just how rickety the whole thing seemed. Everywhere, there were signs where bits of the wooden walls had fallen off, and had just been patched over rather than actually being repaired. Cloud houses genuinely were repaired like that, but this was wood. Actually, Rainbow wouldn’t be surprised if she found out that Stratosphere was in charge of maintaining it.

Second was the sheer number of pegasi crammed into the building.

It was a veritable sea of ponies, scarce few of which were actually working. It looked like, and Rainbow got further confirmation from the scowls that were thrown in the direction of a completely oblivious Stratosphere, that he’d been going outside and assuming every single pegasus he saw was a weatherpony slacking off and herded them in here. Wow. He didn’t even seem to be aware that there was no way the building would even support half this number of ponies. Every now and then there was a very loud creak of stressed floorboards.

The clock on the stone wall, the outside of the city wall, told everything. Canterlot’s weather station was a disaster waiting to happen.

In fifteen minutes.

No casualties. That’s what Rainbow remembered about the collapse. It had been in the Cloudsdale papers the next day, and there were always a couple copies of that issue hanging about in the weather factory. In the wake of ‘unexplained magical phenomena’, which she never connected with her rainboom at the time, the Canterlot weather station had collapsed, but there were no casualties. On top of that, there’d been some cookie-cutter quote from Stratosphere about how he was shocked such a thing could happen. Yet the building was packed with pegasi, and Stratosphere was completely ignoring everypony when they tried to tell him they didn’t work there.

Okay, Rainbow decided. No casualties? She’d give ‘em no casualties. Fifteen minutes to clear a building of ponies. Bring it on.

Three-step plan. First step: Ditch the Doc. Stratosphere had to go or nopony’d be leaving. Second step: Non-working ponies, out. That’d take care of itself. Third step: Ponies that were supposed to be there. A little harder, but that would only look to be a few. Then she and Fluttershy could leave. Fluttershy probably wouldn’t want to get swamped in the crowd of step two, so she’d have to wait.

Absolutely foolproof. Said fool being Stratosphere.

Muttering a quick “I’ll be back” to Fluttershy, who nodded but otherwise remained silent, Rainbow ducked into the crowd. She’d need some things. It was time for some epic Dashingenuity.

“Hey, buddy, can I borrow your glasses real quick? I’m getting us out of here.”

“Listen, you want out? Can I borrow that hairband?”

“Sorry, I need your bowtie real quick.”

“Hey, got a spare stick of gum?”

Pausing to grab a sheaf of blank papers from a desk, Rainbow Dash, now decked out in glasses, bowtie, and with her hair tied back and chewing on some frankly horrible gum, weaved through the crowd towards the stupid hat. If she was right, and she had no reason to think she wasn’t, Stratosphere wouldn’t even recognize her. Good. This hinged on him being the absent-minded idiot that he was.

Reaching him, she tapped him on the shoulder to draw his attention, and drew one of the blank sheets of paper. “Doc?” she said, in an attempt at at a secretary-type nasal drawl. “Doctor Stratosphere?”

For a moment, Stratosphere seemed startled. “Oh! Hmmm? What’s this?”

“I’ve come down from Cloudsdale,” Rainbow plunged on, pretending to read the paper and at the same time not look particularly bothered. “The chief wants you back ASAP.”

“The chief?” Stratosphere was nonplussed for a moment, then his eyes widened. “The chief! Good grief, is that the time, hmmm? They’ll be expecting my report!”

“Yeah, probably.” Don’t roll your eyes.

“Sorry, everypony!” Stratosphere shouted out above the rumble of voices, which quickly dimmed. “I’m afraid I must fly. Keep up the good work!” With that, he saluted, knocked his hat off, picked it back up, and disappeared out of the building. Rainbow had to lift her hoof to keep the crowd from instantly rushing out. Give him time to fly away… Three, two, one…

And go. “Okay, go, go, go!”

The station didn’t empty as quickly as she’d imagined it would, but then again a lot of ponies were being very cautious where they were treading. As they went past, Rainbow made sure to return the articles she’d borrowed, to a very thankful series of pegasi. Just another day’s Dashingenuity. Pretty soon the non-weatherponies had cleared, and the building was left with her, Fluttershy, and four weatherponies who were also very thankful. Rainbow herself was also very thankful, because the lack of ponies occupying the room had cleared her line of sight to the trash can, and she could spit out that horrible gum. Blech. The things she did for other ponies.

But look at that. Room almost cleared, three minutes to spare, who’s the greatest? Rainbow Dash, that’s who.

“That was pretty good, Rainbow Dash,” said Fluttershy, once Rainbow had returned from the trash can. “How did you know that would work?”

“Eh, Doc’s an idiot. I figured he wouldn’t recognize me again even if I wasn’t disguised.” And she had ammunition to use against him if he ever decided to come to Ponyville in the future! Win-win!

Now that the building was almost empty, she could get a better look at what would pretty soon just be a pile of timbers. It was even worse than it had looked when it was full of ponies, and that took some achievement. Even without an imminent sonic rainboom, it probably wouldn’t last another year. There wasn’t really any modern tools in there, either, nothing that the Cloudsdale centre would have at this time. Arguably the most advanced things in the room were the clock and the pair of earthquake-measuring-thingies, one of which was still showing the aftermath of a ton of hooves trotting past it, and all of those were on the stone wall so they’d probably survive.

Rainbow frowned. Hadn’t one of Twilight’s future things included one of those?

Then she glanced up at the clock. Two minutes, ish— wait, the race! She’d almost forgotten about the race! With a gasp, she shot over to a pair of binoculars mounted at the window. She didn’t want to miss the race! Where was it? What angle? Wait, no, that was part of the course. Follow it back, and…

She grinned at the sight of a little rainbow-maned filly speeding away from the starting line, and grimaced a little at the sight of a little ball of yellow plummeting behind her. If she’d known that she’d knocked Fluttershy to her potential doom she would have diverted immediately, no matter the reaction of the bullies. But it was too late to change anything. It was on. It was so on. It was so on that she was hard pressed to keep up, especially since in some places there were spectators in the way, a—

No. Wait. Hold on. She looked around the binoculars, blinked, and looked through them again. “Uh…”

“What’s the matter, Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asked, coming up behind her. “What can you see?”

“I see… I see Twilight. And Spike.”

“But Spike didn’t come back in time with us…”

He didn’t. Twilight’s back was towards them, but there was no mistaking that tail, or that baby dragon atop her. What was she doing all the way out there? It looked like there was somepony she was talking to, but Rainbow couldn’t see who it was. Didn’t look like it was Rarity. Anyway, wouldn’t Twilight be throwing a fit about standing in the middle of a very important event? What were they doing out there?!

There was something else on Twilight’s back, too. Rainbow squinted. Was that…

BANG.

Oh.

The colors of the rainboom washed across the sky, and with it came the rush. Gale-force winds slammed into the building, forces it was never meant to withstand even in good condition. Even inside, it felt like a hurricane was smashing its way through. All around there were creaks followed by the sound of snapping wood as the abused timbers gave way.

“Out, out out!” Rainbow found herself shouting, even as she flew up to the ceiling to stop a beam coming down on top of the fleeing weather ponies. One, two, three, four, that’s it! Dropping the beam, she too fled, following them back through the corridor and out into the park. The rest of the pegasi had dispersed, although some of them remained, staring in awe at the now-fading rainboom.

No casualties. Not a single—

Behind her, a familiar scream.

Her head whipped round. “Fluttershy!” How could she forget Fluttershy?! She’d counted the weatherponies out but forgot about her best friend!

A normal pony might have shouted back in, or called for help. Sod that. Rainbow Dash never leaves her friends hanging, and for that reason, she dove straight back in to the collapsing building.

Weaving left and right to avoid falling timbers, she quickly located her friend, who she guessed had acted on instinct and had dived beneath a desk—

FLASH.

The visual effect of the second explosion was somewhat muted by all the obstacles between the weather station and the epicenter, but stars still popped in Rainbow’s vision even as she dived to sweep Fluttershy away from being a pony pancake. She remembered what it had been like the last time Twilight had dragged her back in time, to that place in the castle, and when this thing had happened that time around, but being in a collapsing building just made it worse.

“Come on!” she shouted, almost dragging Fluttershy behind her, but it was too late. The exit was blocked. Spinning round, her eyes locked on the earthquake recorders - no, one of them was a magic recorder, she now realized. One of the needles had jumped the track, and the other was recording a solid black bar. This was how powerful Twilight was as a filly?! More loud snaps and crunches announced the failure of the floor beneath them. Nope. No other choice. With a wordless yell, and with Fluttershy clinging tightly to her, Rainbow shot out of what remained of the nearest window.





On the whole, it could have been much worse. But hey, considering the building they’d just been in was now just a pile of wood and settling dust - no casualties. Just, you know, the destruction of private property. If anypony asked - and nopony was going to ask, but if anypony asked - it was Twilight’s fault. And Doc Stratosphere’s, but it was always his fault.

“You… okay?” she asked Fluttershy, out of breath, once the two of them had landed on a mountain ledge, out of sight of the wreckage. Neither of them wanted to look at it. Rainbow would probably get over it faster, but wow. Too close for comfort. Time travel was cool and all, but getting caught up in major events most definitely was not. Unless they were cool events. Just the sonic rainboom would have been cool.

“I… I think so.”

Too many things were running through Rainbow’s head. One of them was trying to remember what she’d done immediately after actually doing the sonic rainboom today. Actually, if she remembered right, she crashed into Ponyville library because she’d been too caught up over her cutie mark to pay attention to anything else. Then she fainted— er, passed out in an awesome fashion, and had to be airlifted back to Cloudsdale. Mrs Flight Camp Counselor had been alternating between worry for some missing foals and rage that her, ahem, problem student had gone and done something rash again.

Meanwhile, Fluttershy had been off in her own little world surrounded by all the animals in the forest, or at least those startled by the rainboom, and probably would have been content enough to just stay there forever until a couple of other pegasi who’d actually noticed her fall came down to find her. When Rainbow had reunited with her back at camp, they’d both congratulated each other on their cutie marks, completely oblivious to the fact that Rainbow was responsible for both of them.

Another of Rainbow’s thought processes was occupied with what she’d seen immediately before the rainboom. Twilight Sparkle, and Spike, standing on a cloud at the edge of Cloudsdale. What had she been doing over there? On her back… eh, not much worth worrying about that. They were probably saddlebag straps. But, here was a thing: Rainbow was pretty sure that Twilight had said something about needing to do something at the castle. Rainbow could make the distance from here to there in a matter of a minute, but, well, Twilight had a bad record when it came to teleporting long distances onto clouds.

She’d asked her once to set up some clouds above Ponyville lake so she could practice. Rainbow had never seen another pony get so drenched, and she was a weatherpony.

Point being, Twilight shouldn’t have been there. Spike shouldn’t have been there either, and he counted double, since he’d never come back in time with them. Right now, if she remembered the story, newborn Spike was in the castle under supervision by Princess Celestia, and didn’t look like he did in the present.

Great, it was going to be more time travel, wasn’t it? Dibs on not being part of that again, ever.

Rainbow slumped over backwards and stared up into the sky. More parts of her brain, specifically the parts that were going ‘that was dangerous!’ and ‘that was awesome!’ were having an argument. One part, the part that tended to take control and freeze up whenever she was afraid of underperforming, was quietly going ‘I want to go home’, and every now and then the arguing parts would stop, agree with her, and then start fighting again. And she did want to go home. But she needed to hold herself together to do that. More importantly, she needed to find Twilight to do that.

“Did you see those whatsit-graphs?” she asked out loud, in an effort to at least engage Fluttershy in smalltalk. “They were going insane! I knew Twi was good at magic, but wow!”

“I did. It certainly was exciting. And, well, pretty scary too,” Fluttershy murmured, staring out across Equestria. “Um, Rainbow Dash?”

“Yeah, Fluttershy?”

“I, um… I wasn’t hiding up in that tree from that stallion.”

“Wait, you weren’t?” Rainbow sat back up to look at her. “I mean, I wouldn’t blame you for doing it. Doc Stratosphere’s a bit of a cuckoo.”

Fluttershy continued. “I was hiding because I thought I saw my uncle.”

Oh. Yeah, that would’ve been bad. Rainbow had met Fluttershy’s uncle, and while he was genuinely a fun guy to talk to, and had done his fair share of awesome stuff, his line of work was so opposite to everything she thought she knew about her friend’s family. (And it was weird to think that Fluttershy had the option of being so incredibly awesome but didn’t take it. If she were in that position, she’d flaunt it.) He would absolutely recognize what his niece would look like in ten years’ time. “Oh, right. Do you think he saw you?”

Her friend shook her head. “I don’t think so. I saw him, went up in the tree and then got distracted talking to Mr. Ringwood.”

Right, the squirrel. “Anyway,” Rainbow said, standing up, and offering a hoof to Fluttershy. “We should probably try and find Twilight and the others.”

“I don’t even know where we’d begin.”

But Rainbow Dash did. “If you want to stay here, I kinda want to fly out to the clouds over there where I saw her,” she explained, pointing. “I’m only going to be a few minutes. Unless you want to look for them somewhere else,” she added.

“Oh, no. I’m fine with waiting here for you if you promise to come straight back.”

“Pinkie promise.”

They both paused, possibly expecting to hear Pinkie’s voice from somewhere re-iterating how important it was not to break Pinkie promises. They didn’t, which was a little disappointing.

As Rainbow had guessed, it only took her about a minute at not-quite-sonic-rainboom-speed to reach the clouds where the race had taken place from where she and Fluttershy had taken shelter. (If she hadn’t been trying to avoid it, she could have easily done another sonic rainboom right then and there, and who knew what kind of things that would mess up?) Annoyingly, there was no sign of purple smart, so she’d have to do something risky: ask a local.

Quickly she picked out some prime candidates: a couple of fillies who were jabbering away about the bright rainbow lights. Witnesses, check. Did she remember them? Would they have known her? They might have seen little her in the race, but come on, they were foals. As long as she didn’t do anything to suggest otherwise, they’d probably think she was her own big sister or something. Hopefully they’d seen Twilight, and more importantly, seen where she went.

“Hey guys!” she announced, alighting on their cloud. “Got a minute?” It was very easy talking to foals, she found, and she had lots of practice with the Crusaders.

Both of the fillies turned to eye her critically, and for a moment she found herself wishing very hard that she hadn’t randomly picked ponies with built-in Applejack-level lie detectors. “What?” asked one of them. By Celestia, she was adorable.

“Mom says I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” said the other, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, cool. I just want to ask a quick question.” Another key part was not giving them too long to think about it. “Did you guys see a unicorn up here, just before the s— the cool lightshow?” Rainbow had to be very careful not to mention the name of the sonic rainboom. Nopony had told her what it was; she’d stumbled across the term in a book during an otherwise extremely boring school trip to the Canterlot Public Library, realized that was what she did, and then went about telling everypony that that was what it was. Of course, nopony but Fluttershy believed her until she did it at the Young Flyers Competition, but so what? It was still awesome.

The foals took a moment to consider the question. “I saw a unicorn,” the first filly eventually responded. “They were talking to a pony with wings.”

Number two smacked number one upside the head with a wing. “Don’t be silly, unicorns can’t stand on clouds!”

“Yeah, they can!” Number one retorted, before Rainbow could interject. “Magic!”

“Oh. Magic’s stupid.”

Brightly, number one turned back to Rainbow Dash. “So you saw the lights too? Weren’t they amazing?!”

“I know, right?!” Okay, Rainbow allowed herself to become giddy for that one. So, Twilight was up here talking to a pegasus. Duh. Funny they didn’t mention Spike, but she wasn’t going to push that. “Uh, you didn’t see where that unicorn went, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Nuh-uh,” added number two, now deciding to be helpful. “We were too busy looking at the lights. Looked back and there was nopony there.”

“Magic!” repeated number one. Magic, the easy solution to everything. Internally, Rainbow sighed. So Twilight teleported away. Fat load of good that did, then.

Thanking them for their time, she booked it back towards Canterlot. Fluttershy was waiting for her, and then they could go and find Twilight for real. When they did find her, Rainbow would ask her about Cloudsdale. Maybe there was another answer besides more fricking time travel, like she went to the mirror pool or something. Could Twilight teleport from Canterlot to Ponyville and back? If she could blow up with that much magic, probably!

(By the time she would eventually meet up with Twilight, her appearance in Cloudsdale would have completely skipped her mind. She would only remember after it became apparent what the things on her friend’s back really were.)

Sensibly, Fluttershy had stayed put while Rainbow had been gone, though she didn’t expect anything different. She did however report something unexpected; Applejack and Pinkie Pie. In the few minutes where Rainbow had been chatting to the fillies, they’d come over the city wall in a hot air balloon.

“I wanted to call out to them,” Fluttershy explained, “but then I saw something else.” The pony she’d saved from Skyview Lake, she continued, had been brought up and loaded into the balloon, after which the balloon had departed at speed along with some weird noises from Pinkie Pie. She hadn’t wanted to come out of hiding in front of the pegasi who’d done the lifting, as they’d remember her from the bottom of the mountain. Oh yeah; Rainbow had totally forgotten about the little adventure she’d had with the Crusaders, which Applejack had told her about. That would be a bad thing.

It’d also ruin Rainbow’s reputation for being one of the fastest flyers in Equestria. Those stallions would probably remember a pegasus who was completely out of breath at the bottom of a mountain but still beat them to the top, and seemed perfectly fine to boot. Not that she had that reputation yet. But she was working on it.

At the very least, they had a direction. Applejack and Pinkie would be somewhere along a straight line from where they were to the hospital, unless Pinkie did a Pinkie and got distracted. “I don’t think she will,” Fluttershy pointed out when Rainbow brought up the possibility. “Applejack’s with her.” Eh, true. Applejack rarely got distracted. Rainbow knew that from bitter experience when trying to sneak into the line during cider season. “Anyway, they’d know that poor pegasus needs to get the hospital.”

Still, it came as a huge relief to Rainbow that when they crested over the wall, the hot air balloon was still visible over the city - and, in fact, coming back towards them.

“Do you think they saw you?” she asked Fluttershy, as the two of them landed again in the park, trying not to look at what remained of the entrance to the weather station. Rainbow’s wings hurt a little now; served her right for doing a sprint out to the edge of Cloudsdale without warming up first. “Why else would they come back?”

“I don’t know.”

It was only when the balloon landed next to a very relieved stallion did they see that the balloon only had one occupant. One occupant who clambered out of the balloon, shook the hoof of the stallion, turned around, saw them, opened her mouth and went “Rai—”

Before Pinkie Pie could even complete the next syllable, Rainbow shot across to her and rammed her hoof into the party pony’s mouth, forcing the latter to mumble the rest of their names around it. Whew, that was a close one. After all that, they really didn’t need Pinkie yelling out their names at the top of her lungs. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Fluttershy hurrying to catch up.

“Shh!” she whispered hurriedly, then gave the stallion a weak grin. “Sorry about that. She’s loud.”

“Loud?” the stallion parroted, looking between the two of them and the balloon. “Miss, she is the best behaved customer I’ve ever had!”

Best behaved? Pinkie Pie?! Rainbow was about to retort when the stallion continued, this time directed towards Pinkie. “Miss, I’d be more than happy to let you fly her any time. Say…” he looked back at the balloon again “…have you ever considered owning a hot-air balloon?”

Pinkie pulled Rainbow’s hoof out of her mouth and smiled the smuggest smile Rainbow had ever seen her smile. Ouch. Pinkie Pie had no right to be that smug. That was the sort of smugness reserved for the payoff of a monumental prank. No, not even that; it was I-know-something-you-don’t-there’s-nothing-you-can-do-to-stop-me-and-I-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together advanced smug.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, and even her voice was smug. Darn, this girl was good. “I’m not gonna be in the city for a while. I’ll think about it.”

Again, the stallion shook her hoof. “Well, if you reach a decision, come find me at the Aeronautical Society in Sunstone Street. I don’t think I could have kept a balloon intact through all… that.” Now he waved his hoof towards the sky. “Don’t think I’ll be forgetting that for the rest of my life.”

“It sure was something,” said Fluttershy from behind Rainbow. “I know I won’t forget it.” Now Fluttershy was getting in on it?! What was happening to Equestria today?! Smug Pinkie, sassy Fluttershy, what next, was Applejack going to start using sarcasm?!

“Undeniably, unequivocally awesome,” was Rainbow’s own contribution, even if the sudden sass from behind her was putting her off her game. “Hey, uh, can we go?”

“Sure!” Now Pinkie was back to her bouncy bubbly self. “We’ve got some friends we need to meet! I won’t forget that offer,” she added, instantly switching back into Smug Pie, and just as instantly switching out of it. “But we’ve gotta go!”

They bid the stallion farewell, and Rainbow waited until they were out of his earshot before asking the obvious question. “Okay, Pinkie. What gives?”

“Huh?”

“What was all… that about?” Rainbow waved her hoof back in the direction of the balloon. “What…” she blinked. “What did you do?”

“Oh, nothing.” There it was again! “Just, you know, setting things up so I can buy the balloon from him in seven years. The usual.”

“Wow, Pinkie,” said Fluttershy. “I had no idea.”

“Me neither! Applejack and I were just walking through the park, and then bam! Random coincidence, right between the eyes! That sure was a mystery that nopony thought was a mystery and didn’t even really need solving, but we just solved the hay out of it anyway!”

“Heh. Okay, that is pretty cool.” Twilight was so going to throw a fit when she found out, and that was going to be a pretty epic freak out. Rainbow almost wanted to divert for popcorn. That was pretty much wiped off the cards as soon as she saw the state of the streets. Which were covered in broken glass. Right. Twilight did that too. Phew, she was worried there for a second. She’d been worried enough as it was having found out that her sonic rainboom this day had put a pony in hospital; it would be much worse if she’d broken every window in Canterlot as well. She did that enough with the Ponyville library windows.

All around them as they walked, ponies, mostly earth ponies, were sweeping up the glass into the gutters. It’d be much easier if they had unicorns do it, but as it was unicorns were few and far between; most of them had gone to the hospital with headaches. Twilight’s fault again. That said, right now little Rainbow Dash was unconscious, so she wasn’t much better. At least they didn’t have to do the broken glass dance. Well, Rainbow and Fluttershy didn’t have to, anyway; Pinkie didn’t need to but she was doing it anyway, drawing various stares as she tip-hooved across the cobblestones which had already been cleared.

Applejack had stayed at the hospital, Pinkie said, and they were going to meet her there. As long as she didn’t have to go inside, Rainbow was fine. A couple of months had passed since then, but that whole time when she’d been stuck in Ponyville hospital going up the wall in boredom was still on the edge of her mind. Sure, Daring Do had alleviated that - and gone far beyond the call of duty in the meantime - but being stuck with a damaged wing in a bed for three days wasn’t the sort of thing she could just take lightly.

Hospitals were so boring. The charity drive had been okay, but that was outside. Inside it was boredom city.

At this point the only thing that was going to liven things up would be Twilight’s reaction when Applejack inevitably told her about Pinkie’s balloon.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry about going inside; the street outside the main entrance was clogged with groaning unicorns queuing to get inside themselves. Then after that, it turned out they didn’t have to worry about finding Applejack at all, as pretty soon a familiar orange head exited through the doors, followed by two more familiar purple and white heads.

“Pinkie!” called Applejack, shouldering her way through the throng. “Y’found them!”

“Absotootley!” Pinkie beamed. “Well, they kinda found me, but it works the same! We’re all together again, yippee!”

Rarity looked tired, but determined. Twilight looked like she did when Rainbow woke her up in the mornings. That was some serious stress mane she had going on. By contrast, Applejack looked perfectly fine, like today was just a walk in the park for her. Well, actually… if you thought about it, those times they’d faced Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis and Sombra were all way more stressful than today had been. Swooping out of a collapsing building took less effort than it had taken to fight all those Changelings.

So really it wasn’t the most epic adventure they’d ever had. It just ranked up there somewhere.

“Let’s get somewhere private,” Twilight was saying. “I can cancel the time travel any time I want now, but I’d rather do it where nopony can see us. I know somewhere that’ll be empty.”

“And when we get there, I can tell you all about how I completed a stable time loop!” said Pinkie, grinning from ear to ear. Fluttershy put a hoof over her mouth, Applejack put one of hers over her face, and Rainbow got ready to plug her ears. Here it comes…

Twilight looked at Rarity, looked back at Pinkie Pie, and smiled sweetly.

“You did what?!”