//------------------------------// // Overstorm IV // Story: Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego // by MagicS //------------------------------// The earth pony mare led Rainbow Dash down the tunnel, it seemed Rainbow had lucked out and met some pretty welcoming ponies this time. Good. She noticed the Cutie Mark on the mare’s flank while she followed her, a wastebasket. After seeing her sweeping up Rainbow Dash could guess what her special talent was. And speaking of earth ponies when was the last time Rainbow had actually seen one? It had been nothing but other pegasi for a while, that Daylight Gleam pony was a unicorn and she was the last non-pegasi pony Rainbow Dash had seen until now, so she probably hadn’t seen an earth pony since leaving the Crystal Empire or even before that. That wasn’t so important right now though. There were a lot of questions Rainbow Dash still had about her and this place too and right now seemed like a good time to ask them. “So what’s your name?” Rainbow Dash asked the brown pony. “I don’t think I got it.” “Oh, sorry!” The mare gave her an apologetic smile. “Dust Bunny’s the name, I’m the head custodian here. It’s nice to meet you, Rainbow Dash.” “You too,” Dash smiled back. “I guess you’re just as curious about this place as I am about you,” Dust Bunny said with a contemplative look on her face. “Well, if you have any questions then feel free to ask, we’ll need to go a bit deeper into the tunnels before we get to my boss and the others living here. They can probably help you out a lot better than me. If you need help that is, don’t know why you’d really come here in the first place.” “Your boss?” Dust Bunny nodded. “Mhm. Pile’s his name. He’s in charge of this whole place, we don’t really like to call him a mayor cause this aint exactly a city or anything so boss was our choice. The real city is long gone thanks to the storm.” “Huh? There used to be a city here? What happened?” Rainbow Dash frowned. Dust Bunny stayed silent for a second before she sighed and answered Dash’s question. “When the storm came we didn’t think anything of it at first. We thought it was just a normal storm. But it just never stopped, instead it kept getting worse and worse and there was nothing we could do about it. Our farms were torn to pieces, everything was lifted up by the roots and taken away, our buildings fell apart, our homes blown away at their very foundations… we had to convert the underground sewer system and old mining tunnels into this as quickly as possible.” She gestured at the tunnel around them. “And now we live here.” “Geez, I’m sorry.” “We’re making the best of it,” Dust Bunny shrugged. “So that storm really did just start up out of nowhere?” Dash asked. “Yep. We still have no idea why even after all this time. We’ve been busier trying to deal with it than figuring that out for the most part,” Dust Bunny told her. The two of them walked in silence with just the dull thump of their hooves on the metal floor making any sound for the next minute until they reached the tunnel’s end. A lift sat there waiting for the two of them, with a sliding door to open and close on the front. Rainbow and Dust stepped inside and Dust closed the door, locking it in place. The floor of the lift was a metal grating and Rainbow Dash looked down through it but could see nothing but darkness. “How deep do these tunnels go?” Dash asked her. “Hmm… deep? A few hundred feet at the deepest but there are miles and miles of tunnel in total. Some of it is very old and leftover from before we refurbished them so we’re still mapping it out. But it goes all throughout and under the mountains in this area of the range and we’re always digging more to make room. I’m not on the mining or maintenance teams so I don’t really know for sure. I mean, I may be the “Chief” custodian but that just means keeping a schedule and telling everyone else on my team where to clean. I’m not really that important.” “Hey, you don’t need to knock yourself down like that,” Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow at Dust’s self-deprecating words. “And thanks for helping me out and everything. That’s way important enough for me.” “Thanks,” Dust Bunny smiled. “Sorry, it’s just ponies don’t often seem to appreciate my work. Cleaning’s important you know!” Rainbow Dash thought of how insistent Twilight and Spike were on keeping their castle clean. “Yeah, I know.” Dust Bunny pulled a lever on the side of the lift and it started to slowly drop deeper into the tunnels. It made quite the noise, Rainbow Dash looked to the sides of the shaft and saw two heavy chain pulleys on the outside of the lift. If there were any ponies on the level where this lift stopped they could probably hear it coming. It looked like it would take a while for them to get to their next destination but the rattling of the chains was so loud Rainbow Dash didn’t want to have to yell over it just to make small talk again. In another minute the lift reached the tunnel at the bottom of this shaft, the floor of the lift passing the opening and letting Rainbow Dash peak out into this new area before it came to a complete stop. This was a much wider room down here than the tunnels above and Rainbow Dash could see multiple other doors and passages branching off to other places. Most notably though were the other ponies down here, one or two were sweeping up with brooms like Dust Bunny had been while others pushed carts full of random junk or tools and others just stood around chatting. The room was well illuminated like everywhere else had been, making Rainbow Dash wonder for the first time where they got all of their power from. As the lift finally came to a rest, Dust Bunny unlocked the gate and slid it open so she and Rainbow Dash could walk out. One of the ponies holding a broom, a stallion, looked up in surprise when he saw Dust Bunny. “Chief? Are you already done cleaning up there?” He asked. Dust Bunny shook her head. “Nope. Funny story but, well, we have a visitor from outside.” She stood to the side so that everyone could see Rainbow Dash. When Dust Bunny made that announcement everyone paused what they were doing and looked over at her. “Uh, hi.” Rainbow Dash waved to them all. “Try not to gawk all at once everyone,” Dust Bunny said as she rolled her eyes at the other ponies down here. Which was kind of hypocritical of her considering her first deer-in-the-headlights reaction to seeing Rainbow Dash. “We’re just… surprised,” the broom holding stallion said as some of the other ponies in the room walked over to them. “She came here through the storm? From where?” “Yeah I did, name’s Rainbow Dash by the way,” she said to everyone. “How many of you are there down in these tunnels anyways?” "Hold on-” Dust Bunny said before Rainbow Dash could get mobbed by a bunch of questions. “I know everyone’s curious about each other but I really wanted to take Rainbow Dash to meet the boss first. And she’s hungry so give her some space for now. I’m sure you’ll all hear about her soon so let’s be polite and not bother her.” It didn’t really bother the attention-loving Rainbow Dash but she was pretty hungry so she let Dust Bunny have her way. And it sounded like she was gonna have to have a long talk with Pile, better to get that over with as quickly as possible. “Sorry,” Dash shrugged to the others. “I’ll talk to you all later.” Dust Bunny pushed through the other ponies with Rainbow following her, the others let out some disgruntled muttering but got back to their work. The chief custodian led Dash to a door at the back and center of the room, unlike the ones up top this one didn’t have a big wheel on it and didn’t look as thick. It was just a regular door with a pull handle that Dust Bunny opened up into a hallway. As they walked down it Rainbow Dash looked at the numerous doors on the sides of the hallway. Seeing her look, Dust Bunny answered the unspoken question. “These doors all lead to maintenance areas or workshops. If we went down a different tunnel from that room out there we could’ve gone to the gardens, the housing pods and cafeterias, recreational areas, all kinds of different places. But right now we’re going to Pile’s office, it’s kind of a mess but he’s always got a lot of ponies working with him on something or another.” “Is he not going to be too busy to talk to me?” Dash asked. “Well it’s not like we’re doing anything major,” she looked around for a second as if checking to make sure no one else was around to hear. “I think he just likes to keeps us busy with menial tasks and random projects sometimes to make sure we don’t go crazy. And you’re the first outsider we’ve ever seen since moving down into these tunnels, it just wouldn’t be right not to show you as much hospitality as possible,” Dust Bunny told her. “Really I think everyone is just going to be happy to see you. It’s kind of a break from the normal monotony.” Rainbow Dash could appreciate that. And she could appreciate being appreciated so that was even better. “If they ask I definitely have some cool stories to tell and stuff,” Rainbow Dash puffed out her chest. Dust Bunny giggled. “I can imagine, it must’ve been really difficult getting here through the storm, I don’t know any pony here who can deal with the weather out there, aside from our scientists technically, so you must be something special.” “Thanks,” Rainbow Dash said. And then blinked. “Wait, what scientists are you talking about?” “The boss can tell you about them,” Dust Bunny said and came to a stop, gesturing to the door in front of them. Rainbow Dash stopped too and looked at it. Unlike the others this was a double door with a lever on the wall beside it. Dust Bunny pulled the lever and the doors separated right down the middle with a clunk and slid into pockets in the wall instead of opening out or inwards. The two mares stepped inside and Rainbow Dash got a good first look at Pile’s office. It was actually really big, more like a command center than an office, with a multitude of metal tables all bolted into the floor and filing cabinets strewn about all over. The lighting was actually kind of low and everything was cast in a sort of yellow-orange glow. She saw a few ponies running about and looking at dials and meters built into the walls while others hunched over the tables and scribbled on parchment. “Welcome to the nerve center I guess,” Dust Bunny shrugged and led her deeper. The other ponies around didn’t take any notice of them even though Rainbow Dash had to be pretty vibrant and unusual. The two mares walked right to a table in the center of the room where a single unicorn sat at, a large binder in front of him. “Boss?” Dust Bunny said, causing the unicorn to look up. He was younger than Rainbow Dash would’ve expected, with an angular face and sharp black eyebrows. He was frowning at the two of them but Dash couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose or if his face just naturally set that way. His red eyes flickered to Rainbow Dash for a second before settling on Dust Bunny, if he knew she was from outside (which he almost certainly did) he didn’t give any indication. “Dust Bunny. What is it?” He asked with a slightly scratchy voice. “We have a visitor,” she smiled at her boss and pointed at Rainbow Dash. “I can see that,” he raised an appraising eyebrow at Rainbow Dash. “You must be from outside then? How did you get through the storm and find this place? Why did you go through the storm?” “Uhhh, do you want the long version or the short version?” Rainbow Dash gave him a lopsided grin. Unfortunately, Pile didn’t seem to possess much of a sense of humor. “The good version.” “Boss...” Dust Bunny frowned. “Look, she’s hungry and she’s obviously come a long ways, let’s give her a good first impression, right?” Pile sat back and his silver face loosened up a smidgen. “Yes, sorry. I suppose I’m not being very welcoming. My name is Pile, as I’m sure Dust Bunny has already told you, and you are?” How many times had she had to give her name in the past hour? “My name’s Rainbow Dash.” “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Rainbow Dash. And quite the surprise. My brusqueness was only because I never thought we’d have another pony come in out of the storm. Dust Bunny says you’re hungry? I can have one of my assistants bring you some food, and please, grab yourself a chair if you’d like to sit.” His horn lit up with a dark blue glow and two chairs were pulled from other tables for Rainbow Dash and Dust Bunny. “Thanks dude,” Dash said and happily sat down, Dust Bunny doing the same. Pile craned his neck over to another unicorn glancing at dials on the wall and jotting down notes of some sort in a notebook. “Illumise? Would you go grab a spinach salad from the back kitchen?” The unicorn did a quick double-take, jostled out of the work he was doing by the sudden request before nodding. “Oh, y-yes sir!” He tucked the notebook into a pocket on the vest he was wearing and gripped the pencil in his teeth before trotting off to the back of the command center. “So-” Pile said as he looked back at Rainbow Dash. “Pray tell just what is your story? How did you make it here?” Rainbow Dash chuckled and leaned back in her chair. “Well… I hope you have a few minutes but the first thing to say I guess is that I’m on an adventure.” And then she got to talking from the very beginning, unlike the pegasi of the Empire these ponies were completely oblivious to Equestria so they just listened with rapt attention as Rainbow Dash explained things. During her retelling of her journey so far, Rainbow Dash made sure to talk herself and her accomplishments up as much as possible. It was only natural. Maybe a slight embellishment or two to make her look better were used and perhaps one or two small details were left out but the important stuff all got relayed. When she finally got to the point where she was telling them about what she had done in this hurricane so far they were simply amazed. As expected of any ponies meeting Rainbow Dash for the first time, how could they not be taken in by her awesomeness? “I’m more than impressed that you managed to make it that deeply into the storm,” Pile blinked as Rainbow Dash finished up. “Thanks but I was still trying to get through the whole thing. That didn’t really work out,” Rainbow admitted. She then dug into the bowl of spinach that Illumise had brought over for her while she was in the middle of regaling Pile and Dust Bunny. It tasted a lot better than she would’ve thought, how’d they grow this down here? “You did a better job fighting that insane weather than any of us have done,” Pile told her. “Right now the only ones still trying to do anything about that storm are our leftover scientists and some volunteers.” Rainbow Dash perked up. “Right, scientists. Dust Bunny mentioned those guys. So what are they doing?” Pile gave her a slight smirk before it settled back into his normal frowning expression. “I’m assuming you saw that huge chain out there before coming here?” “Yeah,” Rainbow nodded. “That’s a tether. That chain tethers the lab all of our scientists work in to the ground so it doesn’t get blown away by the storm. Right now the lab is flying like a kite hundreds of feet up in the air in the strongest part of this storm so they can study it to their best ability. Our meteorologists, climatologists, and any particularly gifted pegasi and unicorns that can help out are all working in the laboratory. Honestly I’m not even sure how it maintains its position up there but they found a way to make it work.” Pile shrugged. “Something about propellers, balloons, and magical spells. Either way they’re doing their best to help out with this storm.” Rainbow Dash furrowed her brow, deep in thought. She was totally unable to get through the storm on her own power, she knew that now as much as it pained her to admit it, but maybe those scientist dudes could help her out? A laboratory was big right and somehow they got the whole thing to fly up there without a problem? They must know something about how this weather worked. “Hey, can I meet those scientists?” Rainbow Dash asked him. “Well...” Pile’s eyes wandered for a second. “There’s nothing wrong with that but you’d have to wait a couple weeks.” “A couple weeks?” “Yes, you see, the chain is on a large crank that can be rotated to withdraw the chain fully back into the ground and bring the laboratory back with it. We do that every few weeks so we can get an update from the scientists on their work and give them fresh supplies of food. Unfortunately as much as I would like to help you we simply can’t withdraw the chain whenever, we could be interrupting important work by them if we did that. The next scheduled rendezvous and exchange is in a little over two weeks.” “Ugh,” Rainbow Dash sat back and frowned. Two weeks? She didn’t want to be stuck in this place doing nothing for two weeks. She didn’t want to be stuck in this storm at all for that long, she never thought it would be such a time drain to get through it. “Well thanks I guess, I’ll figure something out.” “Of course. And please, think of this place as your home for as long as you’re here. Before our city was torn apart by the storm we prided ourselves on our friendliness to all,” Pile said. “Thanks,” Rainbow Dash smiled. That was at least a really nice change of pace. “Was there anything else you wanted to know? I thought you had some other questions?” Dust Bunny said. “I dunno, I was kind of curious about some things here. Like how many ponies live in these tunnels anyways? And how do you have electricity?” Rainbow Dash asked. “There are a couple hundred that live down here,” Pile answered. “As for electricity that’s actually quite easy. We have a series of turbines built on the outer western side of the canyon. The wind power from the storm is more than enough to give us all the energy we need. One small blessing from it.” “The first few turbines we built got blown away but these ones were reinforced,” Dust Bunny said. “Oh. I guess I couldn’t see them since I was flying in the canyon,” Rainbow Dash scratched her head. “So like, that hatch up there that I came through? Is that the only one?” “No, there are some others throughout this area,” Dust Bunny shook her head. “I guess you could call that the central one though since it’s pretty much right on top of us, and it’s used to get to the laboratory when it’s brought down to the ground.” Rainbow Dash chomped on the last of her spinach and swallowed it down. “Cool.” “We grow that spinach and other stuff in our gardens here too. There’s still fertile soil if you dig, and we pump up groundwater from our wells to feed it,” Pile explained. “Tastes decent,” Rainbow Dash said. “If you want I can show you all of this stuff tomorrow?” Dust Bunny suggested. “Sure,” Rainbow shrugged. “I mean it sounds like I’m not gonna be doing anything else. And I guess this is the first time you guys have the chance to show your place off to anyone else. Why not?” A yawn then escaped from her lips. “Er, how late has it gotten?” “Pretty late. I suppose you’ve lost track of time after coming into the storm?” Pile said. “Yeah, normally I’d just tell by looking at the sun or moon you know but...” Rainbow Dash trailed off, not needing to finish the sentence. “Well I’ll have Dust Bunny show you to sleeping quarters of some kind,” Pile turned to look at the chief custodian. “Do you have extra room in your janitorial pod?” Dust Bunny nodded enthusiastically. “Yep! We’ve got plenty of extra beds and everything.” She looked at Rainbow Dash with a smile. “If you don’t mind sleeping with the cleaning crew we’d be happy to have you!” “Fine by me,” Rainbow Dash smiled back. The two mares then excused themselves from the table and Dash said goodbye to Pile for now. Rainbow hoped it wasn’t a long walk through the tunnels to the janitorial pod or whatever, she kind of wanted to get some sleep. At least she didn’t have to worry about food now. But two weeks? Two weeks just to have maybe even a hope or a chance of getting through this storm? She wasn’t very happy about that. At least all the ponies here were nice. Dust Bunny shut the door to the command center behind them when they left, and they walked through the metal tunnels to Rainbow Dash’s next temporary home on her adventure.