//------------------------------//
// 90.7 Row, Row, Row Our Boat 
// Story: Prey and a Lamb 
// by Lambs Prey 
//------------------------------//

In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, there comes those who rush to try to prevent it once it's already too late.

A pointless effort, but along with this wave of useless people who just get in the way, there are also those who actually try to meaningfully help, or to save as many as they can; the real first responders. Whether they be a trained medic, a professional anti-fire unicorn spellcaster, or simply a passer-by who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

A damaged ship.

An onrushing storm.

A rising water level.

A hungry shoreline of jagged rocks.

A lighthouse keeper sprinting across the slick docks bellowing out his warning.

A flight of Royal Guards racing to beat the storm to the ship.

Prey had been in many disasters, and most importantly, had survived them all. Whether they'd been disasters caused by miserable, unlucky chance, or by the deliberate cruelty of others, there were some things he'd found which were consistent across the aftermaths of every type.

Such as the slowly mounting panic in your heart. "They're not going to make it. They're not going to make it." The earth pony harbour master muttered over and over, wearing a divot into the planking of the docks with his ceaseless pacing, staring fixedly out at the ship sluggishly fighting through each and every wave.

Spectators, that was always another constant factor, provided there was anybody alive to bear witness, of course. The alarm had only just been sounded, but more and more ponies were pushing onto the docks with every moment, heedless of the cold and wet. They wanted to bear witness, they wanted to see.

Some of them were shouting, trying to coordinate, and attempting to get their moored boats untied and ready to sail out to try to help. But their boats were too small to do anything but maybe rescue one or two survivors each if the ship capsized. If even they could make it across the Boiling Bay in time without falling victim to the foul weather and rough sea themselves.

"You won't make it in time, don't make the problem worse!"
"They're going down, we have to help!"
"You can't help anypony if somepony has to rescue you instead!"
"We should try anyway! Those Guards are trying, so should we!"
"They've got weather magic, we don't. I want to help too, but this isn't the way!"

Seagulls were wheeling and cawing, aggravated by the hullabaloo. The cold, murky sea slapped against the docks, restless and uncaring. A cold exhale of wind came, the tidal breath blown before the storm and across the wave crests. Hooves stomped on the salt-worn planks, drowned under all the conflicting voices and suggestions.

Mainly though, the one feeling Prey would've used to identify all similarities across any disaster if he'd been forced to pick just the one was; helplessness.

The feeling of powerlessness, of being unable to do anything but stand there and watch helplessly. There was no exception found here in Haven Hay. Helplessness all around.

Because Prey couldn't fly, because he didn't have magic, because he wasn't strong or fast or swift. But those were just a part of the reason for the horrible feeling. Other people had those strengths, and yet they too suffered the same helplessness. Although it wasn't their fault, they still felt like it was, like they should've somehow done the impossible and stopped this from ever occurring.

Prey sat on the docks in the lee of some strapped-down crates, his backpack removed and propped beside him. Sitting there unmoving, it was cold, even with the crates as a buffer against the wind’s chill. It smelled strongly of salt and seagull droppings. His wool and fur were still damp from the rain.

He sat, nearly forgotten while the townsfolk rushed and panicked, and like them, helplessly watched the rough sea, the approaching storm, and the floundering ship inching its way closer.

Prey watched those things, and also the distant shapes of the winged figures swooping and circling the ship.

Those last were the most important to Prey. Not the flashes of white and gold dipping and diving, but the dull gleam of the two shapes sticking close to the side of the ship.

Because it's never a matter of 'if'. The next tragedy? It's never an if, only a when. The next tornado, the next plague, the next wave of fire pouring down the hill? It's already in the making, the only variable is the when.

Helplessness is not a good feeling, and it was one which just got stronger the longer you had to watch while stewing over all the ways you couldn't help. But caught up in the clamour, the fear, the panic, it was impossible to look away. Because what if you did, and you somehow missed whatever happened next? As if by watching with your whole attention fixed, you could prevent it getting any worse.

"The ship won't make it.", "It must make it in time.", "The storm will catch them.", "Those pegasi will hold the storm back, right?" All the ponies in their raincoats and worn jackets just kept saying and asking the same things over and over, as the storm bore down on the ship.

Prey wished they and the gulls both would all just shut up. He rubbed his forelegs together, shivering every now and then in the cold, but made no move to look away either.

The ship inched closer. The storm followed, rain and wind beneath its dark shadow whipping the already rough sea into a roiling fury.

One minute. Two minutes. "They're going to make it, see? See?", "No they won't, you're blind!", "It's too close, it's too bucking close."

Distant figures crawling like insects over the deck. The ship’s sails slapped as they weren't reefed properly in time. A massive groan went up around the whole docks at the mistake and the delay it caused the ship.

Closer, and yet the storm and waves grow ever closer too. Blink dry the eyes. Hold the breath. Stare out across the Boiling Bay.

With the approaching storm, the already-overcast sky was steadily growing even darker. The docks began to descend into deeper shadow. Gusts of wind blew in the distant almost-screams of the Wailing Crag, howling and moaning for help. It was a bad omen.

Another minute. And another. Prey restlessly tugged at the end of his ribbon. It was going to be a close-run thing.

"What are they doing?", "That's costing them headway!", "Why aren't those ropes ready yet!?" The ship now was trying to beat out further from the shore, to have more leeway once the storm finally caught it.

Watch and wait. The ship was close now. Up above, the Border Rangers were trying to delay the stormclouds as best as Prey could tell, their white and gold figures often lost in the swirling rain and whipping cloudbanks. Prey started tapping his hoof against the crate.

And closer. The second of the ship's two masts was broken in half, you could clearly see that now. There was a massive tangle of ropes and rigging covering the deck. The missing part of the mast and sails were gone, cut away and thrown overboard.

Ponies started shouting out encouragement over the wind as the ship and storm both got even closer.

"Come on, come on!", "You can make it!", "Keep going, keep coming!"

The sea inside the harbour was rocking the moored boats more and more. Tap-tap-tap went Prey's hoof. The outer edge of the storm's rain was falling on the ship now. What had looked so slow from a distance was actually the ship ploughing forwards fast enough to drive a bow wave. Both were nearly at the harbour.

Prey saw Gloom for a moment, Crimson too near the top of the one remaining mast, and then-

And then the storm overtook the ship. A roar of rain on the waves, growing louder as it swept into the harbour. A curtain of rain passed the lighthouse and drove towards the docks.

Prey took a deep breath, seeing and hearing the pouring rain of the storm bearing down on all of them. There wasn't time for a second breath. It was something else to see the approaching deluge of water sweeping towards you. It was only rain, but you couldn't outrun it even if you tried.

Prey raised a hoof to shield his eyes, and the rain hammered down onto him, soaking him in an instant. Water and hooves drummed on the docks, all the ponies suddenly only blurry figures.

He tried to squint, still shielding his eyes. What was happening in the mouth of the harbour? What if the ship ran into the walls instead of clearing the mouth? What could and what had gone wrong?

"Get ready!" "Here they come!" People shouted, muffled. Or that's what Prey thought they were shouting, at any rate.

A white flash, and an instant roll of thunder reverberated in Prey's lungs, water streaming down his face and ears. He strained to see, there was a big dark shape in the harbour's mouth-

And the next flash of lightning lit up the harbour and showed Prey the ship wallowing in the water, but just inside the harbour's mouth! It had made it.

Ponies were jumping into their boats, pushing off, heedless of the hammering rain. They had lines trailing behind, making for the ship as it fought to get its flapping sails down.

Prey kept having to blink streaming water out of his eyes, since it was out into the bay he kept trying to anxiously peer, and it was from there that the storm was blowing in. Flash, a reverberating *Rumble*.

Hooves splashed. Lightning flashed, thunder beckoned.

Boats rowed frantically back towards the docks, heavy ropes weighing them down.

But the danger had passed. The ship was inside the sheltering walls of the harbour. Even if it were to sink right now, there were multiple people ready to set out and rescue anyone who fell in.

Almost immediately now that the mortal danger to pony life had passed, the attitude of the soaked townsfolk gathered on the docks changed, like a shift of the wind:

"Ponyfeathers, if that hulk sinks now it could block the mouth.", "What kind of fool captain lets himself get caught out on the water like that?", "Now we've got to find extra shelter for everypony on board. Bugger that."

Now that the reason for fear was passed, the worry came. The worst possible outcome hadn't happened, but that only meant there was plenty of other stuff about the situation left over to complain about.

Haven Hay was a port town that'd been experiencing these battering storms for the last fortnight, their livelihoods grinding to a halt- and with the other, much more massive storm still building up over the Breathless Sea, now all the stress and worry caused by all that had come right back to the forefront.

Hoof stamping. Snorts. Angry muttering.

"As if we didn't have enough to put up with already!", "What's the bet the ship gets written off instead of repaired?", "That there's more work slipping through our hooves. What good is a dry dock if no ships can even make it here for repairs?"

How fickle they were. If something awful had happened, they'd be struck silent in mute horror, but because it hadn't, they somehow felt they had a right to complain. 'How utterly, utterly typical. Don't they realise that-?'

A huge flash of lightning, brighter than all the others so far, a blinding bolt of white connecting the raging sea and broken sky for an instant. The rest of the lightning and thunder so far had been confined to the stormfront, but this one had struck as an actual bolt inside of the harbour.

Prey's ears rang with the aftershock of the boom.

Suddenly, the danger was back in full force. Ponies stomped and neighed, turning, pushing to get off the docks and out of the pouring rain.

Prey blinked lingering white stars and water from his eyes, trying to get the lightning bolt to un-sear itself from the underside of his eyelids. Even as it plastered his fur down, the rain also made it so hard to see precisely what was going on, the constant noise being caused by the storm further denying him a clear picture.

"..'e.." He didn't catch what it was someone had shouted.

"...'el.." There it was again.

White, gold, and feathers dived out of the storm, striking the dock’s thick planks hard. Raindrops flew everywhere as Nimbus and Bravo beat their wings.

"Help!" Nimbus shouted, twisting his head around, "Pony hit, help!"

Bravo separated, stepping out from behind Nimbus and Prey saw then that they had a limp pegasus held between them.

"Get a medic, the doctor! You there, who knows where a doctor is?" Bravo whirled on one of the surprised ponies, singling them out. He didn't let go of the comrade he was supporting.

Slack, orange wings trailed in the wet planks of the docks, not the white of the Guard armour colour-changing enchantment. Rain pattered and pinged off the soot-stained golden chestplate. There didn't seem to be enough feathers or fur on the unmoving orange pony, even through the obscuring rain.

Inky swooped out of the sky and landed awkwardly on the docks in a spray of water and feathers, nearly skidding and going over the side into the harbour.

"Trail Blazer was hit by that lightning! We need medical assistance. Now!"

Prey shoved himself away from the shelter of the crates, the wind immediately hurling rain into his eyes, "What about Crimson and Gloom-?"

"Find a medic!", "Who has any first aid supplies?" "Get Doctor Doodle!", "Where is-?", "Why isn't-?", "Why didn't-?"

Prey took a step back. No one was listening, no one noticed him. The dock was a mess of moving and shouting voices, and the cacophony of swirling thoughts was just as bad, battering at Prey's ears and mind as he sought to find the two people he was looking for.

He turned his eyes skywards to the rolling storm above, trying to see any flying shapes against the hammering rain.

" 'rey?" 'rey." Prey!"

"Over here!" Prey shouted.

No one heard him over the noise. No one saw him below everyone else's head-height.

He pulled himself up onto the stack of slick crates, only narrowly missing a rusty nail in the rain. He wobbled for balance, the shouting still ongoing all around, trying to spot Gloom or Crimson.

"Over here. Up here!" His shout was lost in the mix of others, the thunder, and the rain.

"Lightning struck. Where's the-?", "I don't know first aid!", "Who knows first aid?", "I'm not sticking around here!"

Prey ignored the expanding chaos centred on the unmoving Trail Blazer, swinging his head around to try to spot his two companions. Rain half drove his eyes shut and trickled in streams from the ends of his ears and ribbon.

"Crimson, Gloom! Gloom? Crimson? Up here!"

"Here, Prey. We're here." Came Gloom's answering shout. Prey turned to the right on his rather precarious stack of crates in the sound’s direction.

Gloom emerged from the curtain of rain, pushing through the crowd with Crimson right behind him, townsfolk not needing much encouragement once they realised who was trying to get past.

Just like everyone and everything, they were both soaked, longer warrior’s manes dripping out from under their close-fitting helmets. Crimson was breathing less heavily than Gloom, Prey's electrite gift strengthening him.

"Prey, Trail Blazer was hit by lightning. Can you help?" Gloom shouted, not wasting any time as the two of them pushed closer to the crate pile.

Prey halted in trying to climb down, "What?"

"I said, Trail Blazer's been hit by lightning, can you help?"

Prey hesitated, rain running down his face, "Not really, no. "

"Why not?" Crimson asked, closer now.

"Because it's lightning. It burns organs and muscles from the inside out. If he's still alive, then get him into shelter, treat any exterior burns, and keep him warm. That's all you can really do." Prey explained, raising his voice to make sure he could be heard, cautiously beginning to climb down the crates, making sure to watch out for any more nails.

At hearing Prey's words, Gloom spun back around, "Staff Sargent Nimbus! Get Trail Blazer inside! Keep him dry and warm."

Somehow over everyone else shouting and panicking, the other stallion heard Gloom, "If we move him we further risk-!"

Gloom pushed closer, "No time, move him now. If he stays in this rain he's going to die of shock and exposure."

The three Royal Guards hesitated, but another blinking flash and then crack of lightning made up their minds sharpish. "Bravo, carry him. Inky, support his head, keep his wings in. Make way, make way!"

Prey watched them, Crimson unsure whether to go after Gloom or stay with Prey. Prey watched Inky trying not to let Trail Blazer's limp orange wings drag as he was pulled over Bravo's broad shoulders.

'The lightning must've burned out the colour changing enchantment. Gold’s a good conductor, however it's only gold-plated over steel. Even so, if he survives this, it'll likely only be thanks to the minor protection enchantments on that armour.' Prey's mind emotionlessly analysed the facts.

Prey asked himself whether he should be upset by this tragedy, or if he should be more affected by Trail Blazer's plight.

'No. Not really.' Was the conclusion he reached. It wasn't any sort of grudge Prey was carrying against the pegasus, being annoying wasn't a good reason for anyone's death, but nor did he really care about Trail Blazer's unhappy fate.

It was an accident, a freak disaster. It wasn't anyone's fault. Trail Blazer had been a first responder, one of those who'd tried to rush out and help. And this was what could happen to those who selflessly tried to help. A fire burns whoever gets to close, heedless of their motivation.

'And the smoke. Smoke is the real killer. All it takes is one or two breaths.' Prey shook his head, rain drumming atop his head and back.

"What?" Crimson asked, casting around them.

"Nothing, just... nothing." Prey answered, then winced at another deafening crack and blinding flash. In the stark moment of white illumination, Prey spotted more victims of this disaster arriving and being hauled up onto the docks out of the waterlogged boats which had put out. The first batch of exhausted sailors from the ship.

The ponies on the bobbing boats pushed the sailors up from beneath, while hasty offered hooves from above pulled them up to flop onto the docks like stranded fish. They barely had enough strength left to move, it seemed. How long had they been trying to outrun this storm? And what had originally caused the damage to their ship?

One of the rescued sailors was trying to tell the ponies on boats to go back for the rest of the crew, another was weakly raging against the storm, swearing up and down there had been devils flying with the storm, chasing them down.

"Devils! Demons, devil and demons! Winged devil-", "You're okay, we've got you.", "The bosun, the ship's bosun. Did you bring back the bosun?", "We'll get them, don't worry. Calm down, you're safe now."

"What happened out there?" Prey asked.

"We tried to help. They tried to delay the storm. The ship tried to sail faster. No one succeeded." Crimson answered. Prey saw he was looking out to the blurred shape of the ship in the harbour.

A boom of thunder stole Crimson's next words.

"What?" Prey repeated, wincing.

Prey thought he heard Crimson sigh through the pouring rain soaking them all to the bone, "They said they'd lost two ponies overboard when their mast broke. Hours ago, I mean. Our help was always going to be too late."

Prey said nothing. He looked out at what little he could see of the raging sea. He couldn't imagine surviving in that water for even minutes, let alone hours.

Crimson mourned for the two further lost lives, Prey could tell. But at most you could only mourn for the loss of a stranger, not someone you'd known. This is what happened in any disaster. People died. Here one minute, snatched away by the cruel whims of fate the next.

Above, the storm rolled onwards across the bay. Below, down here, more sailors were being hauled out of boats as the rain continued to lance down and the waves crashed against the harbour walls.

Prey had done nothing. He had contributed nothing. This time, he had just been one of the helpless spectators.

"Let's go Prey." Crimson said, meaning; let's go after Gloom and the Border Rangers to find out what was to be done next.

Prey turned back to grab his backpack, still right where he'd left it beside the crates. He shrugged into the wet straps, pulling it on tight. His wool was plastered flat to his skin, but he felt like he'd gained five pounds of mass in water, even if he'd lost body volume. But his pack was still done up tight and waterproof, and there was plenty of shelter in Haven Hay to seek.

Prey spared a glance towards the blocky outline of the lighthouse at the end of the harbour's wall, where Gloom and Crimson's own saddlebags had been dropped inside the lighthouse when they took off to reach the ship, just excess weight.

The white tops of waves were crashing over the top of the wall, which was also the only walkway out to reach the lighthouse.

Retrieving their saddlebags would have to wait until the storm passed.

"Let's go."

Crimson stepped in close to Prey, as close as Prey would allow, putting himself between Prey and the direction of the howling wind. Heads down, they pushed through the rain and back up the slope into Haven Hay.


------


What a beginning. The overnight train had barely deposited them on the station platform this morning. That had been little more than three hours ago.

And in only three hours, one of their number was already down. A storm, a shipwreck, and a disaster all in that short space of time. Prey wished he could say he was surprised, but it had always been apparent something was immediately going to go wrong.

Because they were the ISND. Of course this had happened. Why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't fate get in its kicks with its favourite bucking bag?

Helpless frustration. Resigned anger. Hopeless resentment. Take your pick, any and all of those emotions could be used to explain how it felt to be in this position yet again. 'And what will go wrong next?'

They found Gloom and the Border Rangers in one of the first houses they came to, the earth pony owner having thrown open the door to let them haul Trail Blazer inside out of the storm.

Prey pointed out the house, and Crimson forced the front door open, and then forced it back closed against the driving rain. Immediately, the din of the storm halved, but it did not fade. It still moaned through the cracked windows, under the door, and down through the leaking rafters.

And there was plenty of other noise to make up for the missing half. That of Nimbus, Inky, Bravo, Gloom, and the house's owner all trying to talk and rush at once, Trail Blazer laid across the hastily cleared table.

Prey and Crimson stood there on the doormat, and dripped more water into the already present puddle.

"Towels, do you have any dry towels?", "Ah, no. Nothing's been dry in weeks, I'm sorry.", "Blankets then-Celestia damn it! We left our bags in the lighthouse!", "Get the last of his armour off. Carefully. He's burned."

More noise, more panic, so similar to what they'd left behind on the docks not five minutes ago.

On the table, his head cushioned and held still by a balled up cloak, Trail Blazer lay unmoving. His fur and mane was both soaked, and also sticking out unnaturally. And in some places, patches were missing entirely, the exposed skin an ugly red. Or worse, a greyish white.

His wings were motionless and slack on the table, orange feathers an uneven mess. Also not a good sign.

Crimson and Prey's arrival was noticed, but no one had any time to address them. Not when there was someone here injured, and quite likely teetering on the brink of death. There was precious little they could do to stop Trail Blazer from slipping over that edge, the damage had already been done, but that just made their efforts all the more urgent. They had to do all they could right now, and hope their meagre efforts proved to be enough to blunt the edge of the knife he balanced on.

Prey took a judgement of Trail Blazer's condition based entirely off outwards appearances, and despite the limitations of an external inspection, he still quickly came to an estimate of the pegasus' chances. He decided it best not to share those odds out loud.

'-you better get back up, you'd better. I'm not going to tell your pops. Get up, I've taken worse static shocks off the carpet-', Prey overheard Inky angrily thinking, while working as fast as she could.

'Anger, a predictable, tried, and true go-to reaction.' Prey thought, seeing Nimbus Feather taking Trail Blazer's pulse, surprisingly doing it correctly on the first try. Must have finally remembered his Guard first aid training. Inky was merely the first to move on to anger, he wondered how long it would take the other two Royal Guards.

Anger was one of the two possible feelings which came after the helplessness. The other was despair.

Water dripped off Prey's face and ears. He unshouldered his backpack and let it slip to the floor beside the door. Outside, the storm continued to moan and howl. He wasn't going to get involved with this. There were enough people crowding around and panicking over the downed pegasus already. There was little Prey could do to help. Or little he would do at least.

Part of it was that lightning didn't just burn the flesh, it burnt a person's organs from within. That was a major complicating factor. But even if he was to put aside that and still try, Prey wasn't about to display some very illegal skills to try to save Trail Blazer. So no, he'd be keeping his, admittedly, very limited blood magic knowledge to himself.

Prey stopped, backpack halfway off. He twitched his head towards the door. Crimson almost immediately noticed and began to turn, just as Prey smartly scooted away.

The door slammed open, the force of the wind yanking it from the pony's grip to bounce off the wall with considerable force. "Sour Grape? Are the Royal Guards here?" One of the three ponies standing outside shouted into the crowded house.
The question was answered by everyone inside instinctively turning their faces towards the open portal of the door. Prey spotted Jetson as one of the trio of ponies clustered outside.

"Come in, and close the door. Quickly!"

The lead earth pony -a heavyset red-maned stallion- did just that, water and smears of mud clinging to his hooves. He was in too much of a hurry to scrape them off on the doormat.

"Guards, I'm Sheriff Lumber, we must to speak-Where'd you spring from?" He jumped in surprise as he found Crimson and Prey waiting beside the door, not having been able to see them from outside. Prey gave the self-identified sheriff an empty smile, and Crimson just blinked blankly.

"I'm Staff Sargent Nimbus Feather. Sorry, but I'm a bit busy at the moment, yeah? What do you want?" Nimbus Feather asked, barely looking up from Trail Blazer, all of the limp pegasus' scorched armour removed and discarded by this point.

Behind the newly identified sheriff, Jetson and the other earth pony crowded in through the door, hastily fighting to get the abused door shut again after them. Prey gave the third and last pony a once over with his eyes for any weapons or an obvious threat, but neither that nor their thoughts warned him of anything. They, much like every other pony he'd gotten a headache from at the docks, were a mix of worry, anger, and helpless frustration. He noticed Jetson was anxiously checking the pockets of his raincoat for something.

"Of course. Is he, will your Guard be okay?" Lumber coughed into his hoof.

"He'll pull through." Nimbus immediately answered, as if doubting it would be a crime, "...It's just gonna' take a while to get him back on his hooves."

"Let me see." The third and last earth pony pushed forwards in the room.

Bravo didn't stop them, but he didn't move to get out of their path either, "I'm sorry, you are?" He asked looking down at the smaller stallion.

"I'm the town doctor. Well, doctor in training. Doctor Doodle is out trying to help with-Not important. Look, I can help. Will you please let me through? Sir." The earth pony hastily tacked on.

Bravo got out of their way at record speeds, throwing a wing around their shoulders to physically drag them closer to the table, "Yes, please help if you can."

Meanwhile, Sheriff Lumber was fighting to control his expression at meeting a yellow eyed thestral for the first time, while also being too worked up to really care as he spoke to Nimbus and Gloom, "I'll cut to the chase. Ya' must've been told about those bucking useless weather ponies already, Jetson said as much."

He gesticulated angrily, raindrops flying, "I know you've just arrived, but do you see what's happened? What's been happening? Like today, we got no warning whatsoever from the Tower about that storm. And now-"

Lumber's gaze shifted to Trail Blazer on the table, the doctor checking him over and taking his vitals. Lumber's throat bobbed, "...And now ponies have been hurt. Not just him, but the poor ponies on that ship. It's disgusting, immoral, and even more it's flat out illegal. The Heights family have been negligent, but this is now basically indirect ponyslaughter!"

"I am not disagreeing in any way," Nimbus stated loudly, "But everypony here already knows all this, or they do now. What's your point?"

Lumber paused, as he realised that all the other ponies in the room were already on the same page as him and didn't need any further convincing of the magnitude of this buck up. The helplessness had sat for long enough that the shock had faded into the anger Prey was expecting. A bubbling, resentful sort of anger. And it was slowly rising higher inside of everyone here, the storm battering the house from outside only further reminding everyone of what had gone wrong.

And the target their fresh anger locked onto was the Weather Tower ponies, the Heights family. Again, the ISND and Border Rangers had only arrived in Haven Hay this morning, as impossible as that sounded, but already Prey had heard a lot of anger and blame being directed at these Heights.

From the townsfolks perspective, the storm, and therefore the disaster it'd just caused, should have been entirely preventable by Haven Hay's only weather team.

'Oh, but what we wouldn't have given for even just five days of weather control a year on the border. And after only two weeks without, Haven Hay is already coming apart.' Prey thought cynically. But nothing was crueller than the forces of nature, he couldn't deny that.

Sheriff Lumber re-centred himself, "The Weather Tower ponies must be brought to justice. They didn't even try to help today. Where were they? I didn't see any of those airheads battling that storm. Staff Sergeant Nimbus, and, uh, Sargent Gloom, I want your help to arrest all of them, and arrest them today!"

Nimbus Feather didn't even stop to think, nevermind that this task was supposed to be the ISND's, "Yes. In fact, why haven't you done so already? You said they've been sitting on their tails and doing nothing for two weeks, yeah? Why haven't you done anything about them yet?"

Gone was the previous stance of getting all the facts first, Prey saw. 'Because suddenly it's personal. Because suddenly it's no longer black and white, and you want revenge.'

Three measly hours. The Border Rangers had been in Haven Hay for only three hours, and it had all already gone wrong. From hero to just another one of the victims.

'The ISND is cursed. We must be. How else can this keep happening?' Prey meant that seriously. Could they really be cursed? He didn't know, but it certainly seemed like they must be.

The sheriff answered Nimbus' question, unhappily grinding the admission out, "Because we, because I, haven't been able to arrest them."

"Why not?" Nimbus demanded hotly.

"Technically, they hadn't broken any law that could be proved. And the Weather Tower isn't theirs, but government property. I didn't have any authority to inspect it, only a trained weather specialist can. An' guess what? The Heights are the only trained weather specialists. That, or they just flap off or don't unlock the bucking door so I can't get in or put them in cuffs!" Lumber almost snarled. He tried to take a calming breath, but all it did was fuel the fire of anger with more air:

"There ain't no more pegasi in all of Haven Hay, and what with them and the lighthouse arguing all the time-Forget that. The short and the long of it is, they've been uncooperative bastards, but until now the due process of law has been keeping my hooves off 'em, and that smug featherbrain Gale knows it too!"

Gloom cleared his throat, cutting in for the first time, "Has there been any other evidence before now? Anything which in the light of their inaction today could now count as evidence?"

"Isn't today enough proof of everything? That giant storm just waiting to break out on the Breathless?"

"Yes, but do you have anything definite?" Gloom stressed, "Because I'm sure that this Heights family could come up with a reasonable excuse, given time."

'-and the word family, does that mean there are foals? This is about to get very messy-'

Gloom was getting a lot of disbelieving looks, as if no one could quite believe he was trying to defend the clear wrongdoers in this situation. Even the doctor paused for a moment in shifting Trail Blazer with Bravo's careful help to give Gloom the eye.

Lumber chewed his words, like he wanted each one of them thoroughly crushed before he let them out, "Nothing they couldn'tah' argued, but once they're in my custody, then yes. I'll make the charges stick and make sure they get locked up, and we get a replacement weather team. A real weather team this time."

As if to punctuate his words, a particularly loud howl of wind made the roof tiles of the whole house rattle. A brief burst of increased water trickled in, caught by one of the placed buckets collecting the leaks.

"There is a difference between thinking and knowing there has been a crime committed. The courts hold a pony innocent until proven guilty. So are you absolutely sure this is the Heights family's fault, and theirs alone?" Gloom insisted. It wasn't that he hadn't heard all that'd been said, but he was well aware of how high tempers were running, and he refused to let this descend into any sort of mob justice.

"Yeah, I've already told you-"

"Sheriff Lumber, we do not prosecute a pony who is not present to offer their own defence. We will help you arrest them on suspicion of criminal conduct, but that does not automatically mean they are guilty. We will interrogate them, and find out the truth first. Then we will decide if there is anything to be punished for."

Again there was that mass look of disbelief, but Gloom flatly stared all of them down:

"You may be unawares, but weather control problems have been ongoing all across Equestria since Discord's return. This is the worst and most long term, yes, but that doesn't prove a crime. It might be they've requested backup for these storms, but nopony was available for all we know. Perhaps, perhaps not. But I won't stand for jumping to conclusions. Is that clear?"

'-thestrals have been judged on hearsay all the time. I won't allow it to repeat here-'

Prey agreed completely with Gloom. There are two sides to every story, and he himself had seen how quickly and seemingly without reason a mob could escalate out of all control. He'd seen what depths of cruelty the Resistance could sink to when led by just one insane individual.

Lumber snorted, but couldn't win a staring match with Gloom. Nimbus turned his head sharply away rather than continuing to try. In the brief following silence, or relative silence with the rain hammering away, Prey carefully looked each person over and observed their thoughts.

"Fine, sure. I will, we will do it your way. You can try interrogating them for all you're worth, it's not like you'll get anything new or useful out of them idiots. They've got nothing but clouds on the bucking brain." Lumber snorted, wet tail snapping to and fro.

Jetson let out a bark of humourless laughter, before quickly smothering it as they looked at him.

Nimbus twisted round, looking between Lumber and Jetson, "Hoy. Explain that. Is there a problem going on with them we should know about?"

"No no, it's ah, well sort of yes, but no." Jetson hedged, before Lumber rolled his eyes and angrily spoke:

"You'll see what we all mean after speaking with any of them for more than five minutes. Their nickname around the town is airheads for a damned good reason."

"Care to elaborate?" Gloom asked calmly, his eyes briefly shifting to Prey and Crimson just to check on them.

"You'll see." Lumber just repeated with a knowing, spiteful nod.

"Well, seeing is going to have to wait for a bit." Prey cheerily announced to the room.

Everyone looked over to see the lamb standing up against the cracked window, forehooves resting up on the slightly rotten windowsill, and looking out. Heavy raindrops were streaking the window panes, and the street outside was running with water, the storm still loudly lashing the town.

"Nobody is going anywhere until it's safe. Unless you're prepared to risk the path to the Weather Tower...? Then go right ahead. It's, what? Nearly an hour by hoof up rocky, wet, slippery slopes to get there? I'm happy to wait for the storm to blow over first." Prey finished, nodding out the window to what he was talking about.

"Prey's absolutely right." Gloom smoothly carried on, "Enough ponies have been hurt already by this storm. Or worse. There's nothing to gain by rushing into this and breaking a leg, or getting blown off a cliff. So we all are going to wait."


----


The storm was strong, its’ dark clouds heavy with rain, and driven by strong winds. Out on the angry grey sea, the waves it churned up in its wake were frighteningly loud and high.

However, compared to the vast mountain range squatting over the Breathless Sea, waiting to break, this storm was small. It also happened to be just passing over. Those strong winds served to speed its passage across the sky and past the battered Haven Hay. After an hour and a bit, the storm passed.

The sun didn't come out, the sky remained a formless grey instead. The ground stayed just as soaked, and the biting wind continued to blow, but now you could at least set hoof outside again without immediately being drenched to the bone.

An hour was not a long time. And this storm had caused a lot of damage and strife. Now it was time for everyone to emerge and face up to the change.

The half-wrecked ship was still sitting right in the harbour's mouth, far too low in the water to move, and listing subtly to the side. All the exhausted sailors who'd been hastily rescued and rushed inside the closest house with space were still here, and now a brand new strain on Haven Hay's population.

And then there were the two ponies who'd gone over the ship's side in the storm and lost at sea.

Trail Blazer was a limp, unmoving pile of lightning-struck flesh. The Royal Guard pegasus was still alive, so there was that, but from the examination he'd performed, the doctor was hesitant to give any sort of prognosis. Every time Nimbus or the other two Border Rangers pushed him for an answer, the earth pony doctor had hummed and hawed and not given a straight yes or no. Which was an answer in and of itself, really. Trail Blazer was now lying unmoving in a bed borrowed from the house's owner.

An hour had not been long enough for anything to change, or for someone to hit upon a solution to everything. Nothing had improved, it had only gotten that bit worse. So as the ponies of Haven Hay started to emerge by some unspoken signal in the storm’s wake, it was to an ugly mood.

'At least an hour was long enough to dry off.' Prey thought, swinging his pack onto his back as they stepped out the door. Gloom and Crimson still needed to go by and fetch their saddlebags from the lighthouse. He suspiciously wondered if Flash Light, or his wife Sandy Shine, had dared to try stealing from their bags. If so, they were going to regret it.

Outside, seagulls were already cawing everywhere again, carried on the moaning wind.

"You need to stay in control of this one." Prey muttered to Gloom as the three of them moved into the street. They were the first ones out, Jetson, Sheriff Lumber, and the Border Rangers still at the door.

"What do you mean?" Gloom asked, eyeing the resident ponies emerging from houses.

"The whole town is angry. This is close to being the last straw. If Lumber starts throwing around more accusations at the weather team, these lot might turn into a mob." Prey said, eyes roving over the congregating ponies.

He saw scowls, ears back, angry expressions, and heard the hot words starting to flow. One pony complaining to the next, and that one reciprocating with their own bitterness, building up the other’s discontent. Then another pony would join in, or they'd join a different huddle, and the anger would spread and grow. It was already happening right in front of them.

"Ah. Right. That." Gloom looked, and he saw what Prey meant. A potential mob.

'-they've all privately been blaming the Heights family for the last two weeks. Now they're doing it all openly together. It's the last straw for them-'

And the potential mob was steadily growing even as they looked on.

Crimson glanced back over his shoulder. His wing flicked, and he quietly warned; "The sheriff is coming out now. What do we do?"

They needed to make a decision quickly. They had less than a minute to settle on a course of action. Already the closest ponies had noticed the emergence of their sheriff, their town’s law figure, and their moods were shifting. They wanted more than answers this time, they already had their answer. It was the Weather Tower ponies’ faults.

What they wanted now was action.

"We could fly ahead to the Weather Tower, take the Heights into custody ourselves before anyone else reaches them." Crimson suggested, tilting his head skywards.

"Or stop Lumber before he can doing something stupid." Prey put forth, eyeing the swelling crowd on the streets. There had been no agreement or signal to congregate, but this was also what happened after a disaster. Those who had witnessed gathered in its wake. Angry voices were starting to rise above the wind and the gulls.

Gloom thought furiously, trying to find a path to the solution. He hissed through his fangs, "Moon blast it. This could all go so wrong."

Gloom swiftly turned to intercept Lumber before he could incite anything, "Sheriff-"

It turned out, it wasn't the town's sheriff they should've been on guard against. They should have been watching their own first.

Lumber paused at the thestral's call, but Nimbus Feather didn't. The Pegasus strode forwards gathering speed, wings spreading, and jumped into the air with a powerful clap of wings.

"Crimson, quickly, block him-", Prey's warning was too late. Nimbus taking to the air, and resplendent in his gold Royal Guard armour, had already drawn every pony's eyes up to him.

"-Too late." Prey sighed, and Crimson stalled in the action of taking off after Nimbus.

Nimbus was an impressive stallion; large wings, strong, brilliant white teeth, and most importantly, had the confidence and ego to go with it. It was that confidence which allowed him to catch the attention of every angry resident in the crowd, just for that first moment as they all waited for the important and confident looking pony to address them.

"He isn't going to, is he?" Gloom asked, but no one aside from Prey and Crimson were listening.

"I'm Staff Sargent Nimbus Feather of Her Royal Majesty's Guard!" Nimbus shouted above the heads of the crowd, strong voice easily carrying over the wind, "Yeah, the same one who was out trying to fight that storm an hour ago, just in case you missed it. Me and my squad came here to put a stop to all this wild weather. We touched down in your town like, literally just this morning. And already we've had to fight a rogue storm. I didn't see your supposed weather ponies out there helping, did you?"

Nimbus Feather exaggeratedly swept his gaze over the crowd as if searching for the absent weather team, as loud denials came those who weren't afraid of speaking up echoed back the answers.

"That's what I thought! So nopony here is gonna' have any problem when we arrest them, yeah?"

A surge of eager anger answered back, "About time!", "The sheriff has taken too long!", "Arrest them warts them all!", "Break down their home!", "See how they like it!", "That'll be fair!"

The sudden fervour with which the whole crowd was gripped was alarming. It was shocking how quickly they willingly let their emotions take control. Prey looked around, looking for an escape route in case they needed to run. Gloom was gritting his teeth, fangs showing:

'-that absolute fool traitor idiot!-'

Nimbus hovered in place, "Hey, I've got this, don't worry. They will be punished. We're about to go up to their tower right now and arrest them."

The surge of excited anger was spreading, rising higher. They'd been a dry tinderbox, all they'd needed was that last spark, "Break the tower.", "Throw away the key!", "Get rid of them.", "I'm going. Who's with me?!", "Let's go get them already!"

Nimbus crossed his forehooves in an 'X' of negation over his chest, "Hold on a second there!"

"Kick some sense into that empty airhead!", "Justice for Haven Hay!", "Justice! Law! Order!", "Bucking airheads!"

"Hoy! I said hold on a second there!" Nimbus bellowed, for a second drowning the crowd out. A few moments later, and it would have been too late, the crowd had been right on the tipping point of boiling over into becoming a mob.

In the surprised moment of relative quiet as the still crowd, not quite a mob yet but very almost, paused to wonder why their leader was telling them to wait, Nimbus gestured:

"This is about justice! Not revenge. Justice! Let's get that one fact straight, this is justice. One of my guys was hit by lightning! He's in there now, fighting for his life. But I'm not going up there to take revenge. I am the Royal Guard, so I am justice! I represent the law. There is no place for 'I' in team, and same here!"

"Well, I honestly wasn't expecting that. Let's see if he gets away with it or if we're about to have a riot on our hooves." Prey muttered loudly enough for only Gloom and Crimson to hear.

Someone in the crowd, someone even more disenfranchised than their fellows, shouted out against the golden-armoured figure of Celestia's authority hovering above them; "That just means they're going to get away with it! Again!"

"And what's revenge got to do with that, huh?", Nimbus immediately shot back, even louder, "You're the bigger pony, aren't you? So tighten your buckles and pony up! But yeah, I get where you're coming from. So here's my offer to you, to all of you! You all listening? Good and proper? Well here's my offer!"

Nimbus had the flow of the crowd. He rode it, always just ahead of the wave, a precarious balance that if he lost, the crowd would turn on him next. But right now, he controlled the flow. With a powerful down beat, he rose another few hooves higher, making the ponies below look up to him even more with bated breath, just waiting to see what he was about to say:

"You wanna' make sure justice is done? Good! I invite every single pony here to come on up to the weather tower, and see us arrest the Heights family for yourselves. They're not gonna' fly off anywhere with me there ready to catch them, and I'll dunk them into the ground like a hoofball if they even try. So you wanna' see justice? Then come along and make sure for yourselves. But only justice! Not revenge."

"That idiot." Gloom stated. Not angrily, or loudly, but tiredly. Only Prey and Crimson understood.

"Well, that's one way of managing the situation. Annnnd potentially making it twice as bad." Prey observed, almost awed by the cocktail of brash and stupid that was Nimbus Feather at this moment. But awed was not the same as impressed at all. He turned to Crimson.

"Crimson." Prey caught the pegasus' attention, snapping him away from blankly staring Nimbus Feather. The crowd milled about for a second, trying to decide what they wanted more, and then swelled with a roar of agreement of Nimbus' words.

"What?" Gloom also twisted, one eye on the crowd and the other on Prey and Crimson.

Prey gestured, "Fly ahead. Get to the weather tower first. Make sure they don't fly away the moment they see this huge mob tramping up the hill. If they run, it'll be like blood in the water. This mob will turn into a true mob if that happens."

Prey was not the one supposed to be giving orders, Gloom was the Sargent, but they were all three of them beyond that. Back in Canterlot, where they had to stick to their roles in the Night Guard, it was different. But that was there, and this was here. After all they'd done together, how could they not have learned trust, and have had that trust reinforced time and again? If one of them thought they knew best in any given situation, especially when time was precious, then the other two would snap default to following their lead. If there was time to discuss and raise a counter argument, then that was fine too, but not when it was an emergency.

Besides which, Gloom caught on to what Prey meant immediately himself, "Yes, you're the fastest flyer Crimson. Me and Prey will take the ground route with all these ponies. You get there, make sure the Heights are there, and make sure they don't run."

Crimson flexed his wings, looking up at the grey and overcast sky, "Which way is the Weather Tower?"

That was his way of agreement, immediately asking how to implement their plan.

Gloom looked to Prey, expecting him to know the answer. With hastily called up memories of all the maps he'd memorised before coming here, Prey orientated and pointed in a direction to the east, "That way. Fly for just over four miles, but if you don't see it or it's too foggy, stop flying and land. Do not keep going in the sky under any circumstances. Because if you somehow miss the Weather Tower, the Cliffs of Dove are further on."

Prey stressed that part, making sure Crimson understood the potential danger if he overshot. Crimson was far from incompetent, but it only took one mistake.

"I've got it. Thank you for the warning." Crimson said, backing up a few steps to get enough take-off space. "I will see you both there."

Prey covered his eyes from any sand kicked up as Crimson took off almost vertically, passing seagulls which shrieked angrily and ungracefully as they flapped out of the way. Prey uncovered his eyes and looked up just in time to see Crimson give them both a nod, and then he was off.

Over with Nimbus and the crowd/possible mob, they hadn't even noticed Crimson's departure, or at least didn't care. The ponies were gearing up to go, mostly mentally, but some were grabbing thick coats, waterproof travel cloaks, or rain hats. No pitchforks and torches, yet. But it wasn't even midday yet, so a torch for light was redundant, and carrying one for a more violent purpose was pointless. It was four miles to the Weather Tower, uphill in the wind, wet, and possibly rain. How were you going to keep any torch burning for that long?

Prey actually even spotted and overheard a few telling family where they were going, and not to worry as they'd be back soon. 'How very responsible and conscientious of them. Don't want the wife to worry. Or husband.'

But an angry crowd of over five hundred ponies out for revenge, or justice if you believed Nimbus' words, was anything but reasonable and conscientious.

Prey saw Sheriff Lumber going right along with the swelling crowd, standing in the front, shouting his agreement to Nimbus Feather. The perfect example of an upright, unbiased, law-abiding official.

Nimbus turned himself about mid-air, and shouted over their heads, "Let's go!"


------


Prey and Gloom followed just behind the marching crowd on hoof, but at a hoof removed. They weren't part of the potential mob.

This was wrong, against the law, and flat-out dumb, but Nimbus Feather had thrown that all out the window by taking the lead. Of course, he'd probably argue the mob had already formed and he was actually acting to try to minimise the damage by directing them instead.

'-but he's still going to have to face up to this once we get back to Canterlot-'

Outside of the port town, the sea wind whipped over the rocky hilltops, the grass and plants tough and spiky. But for all that, it had a capturing, undeniable rugged beauty. Open, stretching hilltops blurred by grey rain squalls and low hanging cloud. And taking up one half of the world, the unending view of the restless sea.

The smell of the sea was a constant, as was the sound of distant waves and wind blowing in your face. And the seagulls too, of course.

There was a trail of sorts leading the four miles to the Weather Tower, but not much of one. Few who came this way couldn't simply fly, after all. But nevertheless, the angry crowd of over five-hundred marched up it, moving in a swell rather than in winding single file.

Nor were they silent for the trip. They were loud, angry, and working to maintain their anger. If Nimbus' plan had been to wear them out over a four plus mile trot and give them time to cool off, well it was obviously failing.

Prey sent a dirty look over the heads of the crowd to the figure in question flying at the front, cheerfully leading the potential mob onwards. Inky was up there too, flying right behind him. Bravo had been left behind to stay at Trail Blazer's bedside.

After the first mile, the hilltops and path took a definite turn towards the rockier, the wet ground hard and studded with the tops of wind-scoured boulders, the bulk of the rock still buried beneath their hooves. The rockier terrain didn't slow the marching ponies though.

Prey just kept putting one hoof in front of the other, keeping pace with Gloom here at the back. The thestral was worrying about the report he was going to have to send back to Nighthawk, and wondering how condemning of Nimbus Feather he should be in it.

'-there's unprofessional, and then there's this-'

"If this turns into a lynch mob, what's the plan?" Prey asked, eyes looking ahead.

"It won't."

"Right, but if it does?"

Gloom was silent for a moment, "Stay far out of the way. Me and Crimson can fly, and so can the Heights family. We'll get them into the sky. Sargent Nimbus won't actually try to fight us, or he'd better not. If it comes down to it, one of us can carry you with us."

"Don't touch me." Prey immediately muttered.

"It's not going to come to that, so don't worry, we won't have to." Gloom said firmly.

First it was the distant shape of a lone tree. Then it became dark spire of rock. And finally it was too large for any of that and became a tower. And then larger still as the Weather Tower finally came into focus and they arrived at their destination.

The Weather Tower, designed by highly skilled architects, and built by a contingent of unicorns to exact specifications who'd travelled all the way out here from Cloudsdale and Canterlot. It was equipped with magical equipment to generate weather, and reinforced enough to survive tornado force winds.

It didn't remind Prey so much as a giant nail hammered into the bedrock of the hilltop.

A giant, pale white nail. Craning your head back from the ground level, it was difficult to accurately judge size, but it was big, and Prey was guessing forty or fifty meters high at least. Its walls were perfectly smooth and round, not enough space between white blocks to force even the tip of a knife. The tower was completely vertical, no narrowing or widening of the column until you hit the 'nail head' at the top, which was actually a circular observatory room.

The walls and stone didn't show the wear of the salt or weather. In fact, the smooth, pale walls almost gleamed. 'So it's magically enhanced, then.'

The Weather Tower was certainly impressive, but Prey had also seen the Mage Towers of Canterlot, and so this rather paled in comparison. Maybe that's why they'd gone for the pale white colour scheme?

Of course, that was only when comparing it to a Mage Tower. In and of itself, the Weather Tower rising before him was still without a doubt the best built, and likely most near-unbreakable structure within three hundred miles. And only three hundred, because Prey knew that was the distance to the next closest Weather Tower. This one had been built here ninety-eight years ago, and received full maintenance visits every three years, Prey further knew from his background research.

'So when the sheriff said he couldn't gain access, he probably meant it quite literally. As in, he couldn't force entry in.' For a moment, Prey imagined Lumber trying to beat down the impregnable, magically-reinforced steel door with his bare hooves.

'Hah. May as well try to chop down a tree with a slice of bread.'

The people of Haven Hay weren't anywhere near as impressed with the reinforced and pristine appearance of the Weather Tower. They weren't here for that, they were here to punish the tower’s keepers! They didn't care about the impressive visage of the tower, not when it wasn't doing its damned job!

But just as none of the five hundred ponies were interested in that, Prey was not interested in any of them or what they were shouting about. Aside from the top of the 'nail head', there were no windows set into the Weather Tower. Prey squinted up, trying to see any shadow of movement behind the glass. He turned around in a slow circle, methodically scanning the grey, heavy, hanging sky and open air. Nimbus, Lumber, and some other big earth pony Prey hadn't seen before were all hammering on the tower's door, ordering:

"Windy Heights! Gale Heights! By the authority of the Royal Guard, unlock this door!"

The crowd of angry ponies were pressing in around the door too, hundreds of hooves stamping and stomping, the heavy drumming raising a din more intimidating than what they were shouting. Prey had heard the saying, "The safest place to be in an elephant stampede is directly behind it". The elephant was this mob, and so long as Gloom and Prey didn't get in their way, it was actually better to be here than waiting without any information back in Haven Hay.

"It's too late to hide now!", "Gale Heights!", "Not so fun on the other end, huh? Huh?!", "Windy!", "Cowardly buckers!", "Gale! Windy!" And so on and so forth trumpeted the elephant, the mass an angry animal.

Prey and Gloom were standing well back, but the door the crowd was banging and kicking didn't budge. There was no movement behind the windows above, nor any light in the tower. Prey looked all around the grey hilltop, ignoring the biting chill of the wind, and didn't see what he was looking for.

Gloom asked what Prey was thinking, "Where's Crimson?"

Unease rose unpleasantly in the back of Prey's throat. He tried to swallow it down. Where was Crimson? He'd gone ahead, so he should be here already.

Hastily, Prey shut his eyes, blocking out the hill, crowd, and tower, and focused inwards. He reached out for the link he knew was there, blindly feeling out after it.

The electrite feather. Prey opened his eyes, 'There.'

Fifty odd meters away, another barren, rocky hill rose. It took Prey a long minute to spot the slightly larger boulder, which just so happened to have a tiny gully overgrown with scraggly plants behind it. Prey stared hard at it, until abruptly the plants shifted and for a moment Crimson looked back across the hilltop, letting himself be seen.

He didn't give any signal, just waited long enough to be sure Prey had spotted him. Then he pulled back behind the boulder and returned to hiding.

"What's he doing hiding over there?" Gloom asked worriedly. Prey realised the thestral followed where he was looking to spot Crimson too.

Prey quickly looked away from the other hilltop, "I don't know, but he obviously doesn't want to draw the mob’s attention." He muttered out of the side of his mouth.

Gloom swiftly turned his gaze away from the hill too, "Give nothing away. We'll wait and meet back up after they leave." He ordered, rather unnecessarily. Obviously, Crimson didn't want to be spotted, so what else were they going to do?

'-damn damn and double damn. Is there danger? No, he would've warned us, not merely hidden. But why? What else could it be?-'

'Why? Because he's found something the mob shouldn't see.' Prey thought, but he couldn't very well tell Gloom that. They just had to stand here as they had been doing, and not raise any suspicions.

The trumpeting of the crowd was getting louder, angrier. The door wasn't being opened, but there was no way they were getting through that reinforced steel with brute force alone, not when not a single one of them were unicorns.

"GALE!", "WINDY!", "JUSTICE!"

Their inability to break in wasn't necessarily a good thing. If they couldn't break in, what might they do instead to express their anger? A mob was not a logical animal. If it couldn't trample whoever got in its way, it might just instead start lashing out at everyone else regardless of where they stood.

Logic didn't factor in at all. A mob was only as intelligent as its stupidest member. It wouldn't be until afterwards that they'd even feel any guilt and it was far too late by then.

Prey's hoof warily started creeping for the pack on his back. Inside, at the bottom, the bone rot mine sat. No, Prey caught himself, that was not the answer at all. It had merely been instinct.

"Gloom..." He began warily.

"Hold. We stay here." Gloom stated.

The mob was surrounding the whole tower, not just the door. Stomp, stomp, stomp! The rumbling was a constant now, thrumming in the ground with anger.

"GALE!", "WINDY!", "JUSTICE!"

Prey didn't spot the moment when either Nimbus or Inky finally recalled that they could fly, or if it was one of the raging crowd who reminded them, he was too busy worrying what was going to happen and trying to plan out his escape route on hoof.

Whichever it had been, Nimbus and Inky left banging on the impenetrable door to the mob, and it was entirely a mob now, and flew up to the tower's observation deck, and then disappeared over the top.

Prey and Gloom anxiously waited. The crowd, not so much. Mixed into the angry shouting, there were some very vile threats starting to be howled. In the mob, it was impossible to tell from who, and that emboldened them.

Prey's eyes snapped up to the tower top as he saw the gold-plated figure of Nimbus reappear and tip forwards off the edge. His wings snapped open and he wheeled around the tower in a fast descending spiral.

He drew up, flapping hard in place and shouted down at the mob.

"It's empty. They're not here!"

The seething crowd didn't seem to hear him.

He shouted again, louder, "They're gone! There's nopony here!"

And did the mob care? No. It only made them angrier. They wanted vengeance! Nimbus had tried to lead them with the promise of justice instead, but now he couldn't deliver.

"Oh that utter fool." Prey heard Gloom growl.

Only now did the hovering Nimbus realise he'd never really been in control, that all his efforts had only stirred things up further. The mob of raging ponies, all lost in the grip of herd anger, would not be satisfied until they'd taken something back from the unfairness of this.

It was Nimbus' subordinate, Inky, who realised what her Staff Sargent obviously had not, and acted. She made the choice to give the townsponies an outlet for that anger. From inside, the reinforced door of the Weather Tower unlocked and swung open.

Prey only saw inside for a moment, Inky hastily taking off and flying up to the ceiling to get out of the way, and then the mob was surging inside, fighting to get through the door, and eager to destroy.

"Let me rephrase that," Gloom said tightly, "Those utter fools."

"The Weather Tower doesn't belong to the Heights family. It's government property." Prey very calmly observed as the mob poured in. And its interior and weather instruments were all about to be gutted and destroyed.

Gloom just covered his face with a leathery wing, unable to watch the stupidity taking place in front of them.


---


Prey and Gloom stood outside on the windy hilltop. They didn't move, not towards Crimson's hiding place, nor to find any shelter, even when a small rain shower blew over them.

They just stood far back from the Weather Tower, and listened to the shouts and sounds of breaking echoing from time to time.

It took half an hour for the mob’s fires of anger to finally simmer down, and for them to finish rampaging.

It was almost interesting, in a way, to see who came back outside when. Which groups of ponies were satisfied after only ten minutes of mindless vandalism, which kept going for the entire time, and which were somewhere in the middle.

Last out of the thrown-open door, by some agreed design, was Sheriff Lumber, Nimbus, and Inky, even if it was unlikely they'd been joining in for that full half an hour. No, they'd just overseen everything instead. Real coat holders.

Then, and only then, as the much quieter ponies milled about in groups and tried to decide what to do now, did Prey and Gloom approach.

Very cautiously, Prey followed closely behind Gloom in approaching the tower door. He eyed every earth pony they passed with the deepest suspicion, just waiting for one of them to snap back to unreasoning anger at the drop of a hat. Prey was very aware of the weight of where his ribbon hung, and where the three knives were he'd hidden about his person and backpack straps.

'Any of you try touching me, and I'll kill you by touching you.' Prey silently warned them.

Prey neither saw, nor heard, any contrition or guilt in the ponies he passed. Maybe that would come later, but there was none right now. Those ponies who'd remained behind in Haven Hay were the reasonable ones. But these five hundred? They'd come out here looking for a fight.

A blue furred mare, proudly relating smashing; "-That table in one buck." The stallion next to her showing off the silver spoon he'd crumpled into a ball from out of his pocket. Another lamenting how it was too wet for a good fire.

Lumber, Inky, and Nimbus stood just outside the door. The sheriff looked grimly pleased. Nimbus was unusually quiet, not smiling. Inky was frowning and muttering darkly to herself. All three turned to look at Gloom and Prey as they quietly stepped up.

Gloom looked coolly back, and Prey smiled brightly.

"So they weren't here, were they?" Gloom asked flatly.

"Aye, that they weren't." Lumber nodded, brushing a splinter off his worn raincoat.

"So they wrecked the building instead?" Gloom needlessly asked. He didn't add, 'And you let them'.

Nimbus' feathers bristled, "They went out of control." He defended.

"They weren't going to listen to reason." Inky put in, very aware that she was the one who'd unlocked the door. But Inky's guilt didn't matter to her nearly as much over her anxiety for the lightning-struck Trail Blazer.

'-Bravo's waiting with him, but anything could happen while I'm out here, and not back there-'

"What's done is done." Lumber stated, not sounding very repentant at all, despite him being supposed to be the sheriff.

'-right or wrong, they all feel they've endured attacks at the hooves of the weather ponies-', Gloom reminded himself. He very carefully kept his voice an even calm:

"The Weather Tower is necessary to managing the weather, regardless of whether the Heights were doing their job or not. It didn't belong to them, it belonged to the government. And now it's been destroyed."

"It's not like we gave them permission. They weren't listening to anypony." Nimbus snapped back. His accusing glare said what his voice didn't:

'-I didn't see you bravely trying to block the door with your own body, either-'

'-that's because you're the one who merrily led them up here in the first place-', Gloom's accusing look answered right back.

Lumber snorted, but he couldn't deny that. Inky however did, "Hey! Take that back and shove it. The tower's still standing, and it'll still work."

Gloom very deliberately turned his head to stare at her, "Oh? Please explain that."

Inky glared over Gloom's shoulder, tail swishing, and huffed the strand of her mane out of her eyes, "Unlike you, sir, I've worked shifts in a weather factory. I know the basics of what machines you still need to work a tower with."

Inky's words were a lot more confident than her posture indicated. And a weather factory and a weather tower were two different things.

But Gloom didn't bother pointing that out, instead merely repeating himself in the exact same even tone of voice, "Oh? Which means....?"

"It means that Private Ink Stain thought to lock the door to the enchanted weather equipment before she unlocked the front door to let the luddites in." Prey spoke up cheerily. There was a jingle, and everyone stared in surprise at the lamb as he held up a laden keyring. Everyone but Gloom, that is.

"How did-?" Inky fumbled for keys which were no longer there.

"Hey." Nimbus reached for Prey, and Gloom smoothly stepped in his path.

"Let's go have a look at what's not broken, shall we?" Gloom enquired politely, but yellow eyes hard, "Inside? In private? You know, perhaps where certain ponies won't hear, and won't come back for a second go at it?"

Without waiting for the answer, Gloom entered, following after Prey who'd already gone on in.


---


The constant, never ceasing low sound of wind and waves cut off behind Prey as he entered the recently vacated Weather Tower. Two things immediately jumped out to Prey, closely followed by a third.

The first was the most visibly obvious; the mess. Shattered picture frames, the glass kicked everywhere, logbooks and weather charts torn to shreds and stamped into the rugs. The tables and chairs were now only so much kindling. Mud, horseshoe-shaped dents in the wall, and cracked plaster was everywhere.

The second thing was only obvious to Prey; the painful prickling of needles starting up in his hooves, signalling the presence of magic. But since it wasn't a shooting pain, he could deduce it wasn't active, but rather likely passive enchantments throughout portions of the Weather Tower.

Nothing had been left untouched, which was where the third observation came in.

As Prey looked around, he realised this bottom floor of the Weather Tower had actually been a home, since ponies who worked at a Weather Tower were expected to live at their work, and they needed somewhere to live.

Had been a home very much like the lighthouse they'd passed through earlier today, actually. Had. Except a fair bit wider, since the Weather Tower was about double the size of Haven Hay's lighthouse.

Which gave a pointed insight into one of the reasons why the lighthouse keepers, Flash Light and Sandy, probably disliked the Weather Tower’s keepers so much. They thought the pegasi, who didn't even seem to do their jobs, didn't deserve the better tower.

It wasn't a home any longer, though. There was not a single fixture which might make a house a 'home' left. Prey idly wondered what the mob had done in the bathroom.

In their destruction, the mob had also inadvertently destroyed any possible clues the ISND had been hoping to find here. Just wonderful.

Gloom stepped in behind him and also looked over the vandalism. "It's the same all the way up the tower too, isn't it?" He guessed.

"Let's find out." Prey said, making for the stairs in which the railings had been torn out of the wall, bricks and sharp screws sticking up.

Prey didn't have to worry about any traps, not with how hundreds of ponies had been tearing up and down here not five minutes ago. Since they were all still alive, he climbed the freshly broken stairs up to the second level only having to worry about the blanket covering of splinters everywhere and the odd nail.

More of the same greeted him at the top of the first staircase; smashed crystal lights, and some sort of storage room for tools and boxes which'd been thoroughly and methodically broken.

Prey didn't stop, he kept going up onto the third floor, also similarly wrecked, except this one had every surface covered with feathers from mattresses, blankets, and pillows ripped to bits. Had those beds even been used, Prey wondered, and not cloud beds instead?

Where had the Heights gone? Where were they now? And would they be coming back?

After the third trashed floor however, came the actual Weather Tower rooms. At forty plus meters of height, the Weather Tower had a lot more vertical space in it to go.

The feeling of 'house' to 'working building' was a sharp contrast the moment your head cleared the third floor. It would have been far more jarring if you weren't in reality just changing one type of destroyed room for the next. All that actually changed was what the mob had destroyed.

Prey carefully stepped over the mangled mess of a metal cabinet which had been filled with delicate crystal components. Had been. The colony of fire ants stinging his hooves as he stepped in told him all he needed to know about the shattered and broken equipment strewn against the walls everywhere.

'-how many thousands of bits worth of damage is just this room alone?-', Prey heard Gloom think as the thestral ascended the stairs behind him.

"Personally, I'm wondering how much in fines those law-abiding and upstanding townsfolk, who so bravely stood up to take justice into their own hooves, are each going to have to pay." Prey joked, already making for the next set of trashed stairs up onto the tower's fifth floor.

It turned out the fifth section was not like the previous four, compact floors. It was here that the interior of the tower really changed. A deep hum filled the air, which also changed to a moving, noticeable air current shifting the air.

Here, the roof abruptly shot straight up, maybe twenty meters, until you hit the floor of the observatory room right at the top.

Looking up, it felt like you were a little sparrow who'd fallen down a massive, concrete-white chimney, the circular walls curving in all around you. The centre of the tower here however was not empty air, but filled with rods and bars, supporting struts securely bolted to the wall every few hooves up, all to support the huge contraption hanging in the middle of the tower.

Prey looked up at the giant metal puzzle of pipes and rods, and saw what was filling the air with that low, thrumming hum. Supported in the air, the machine was made up of a stack of huge, horizontal fan blades, stacked on top of one another, slowly turning.

Some of the fans had three blades, some four, some five, and some ten or more. Each was slowly spinning at a different speed, constantly shifting how deep into the fans you could see as gaps in the huge blades lined up or overlapped.

Prey looked up at it all, as Gloom entered behind him.

"I guess that was a bit too big for them to destroy with bare hooves." Gloom said, voice echoing slightly up the tower.

"They still got whatever those were on the ground," Prey said, pointing to the wreckage of some more instruments which were never going to work again, "But who was going to be dumb enough to try to climb up there? Okay, stupid question, they were a mob, but it seems they were at least scared of heights."

There was no maintenance ladder going up the side of the weather-machine-turbine-thing, and the stairs which circled the tower up to the observation room above didn't touch the huge machine filling the airspace of the tower's centre.

Without wings, you'd have to risk jumping off the stairs to catch onto one of the metal struts, and hope you didn't miss.

'This whole building was built with pegasi in mind. Not angry, disgruntled earth ponies.'

"So where's this equipment Inky said was still intact? Because none of that looks intact in the slightest." Gloom asked, wing flicking towards the broken and gutted components strewn across the floor and walls.

"Assuming she wasn't talking about these fans, but something else, then by process of elimination, right up the top in the observation room." Prey guessed. He gave the keys he still carried a jingle, "Let's see if she was telling the truth."

Together, they started up the winding staircase, hoofsteps echoing slightly on the concrete as the thrumming hum of the slowly spinning fans filled the air.

Gloom could have flown up directly, but he chose to take the stairs after Prey.

The stairs circled the inside of the tower four times before they got to the top. Once there, Prey was finally presented with the locked door Inky had been talking about. It seemed at least a few enterprising mob ponies had climbed all the way up here, as evidenced by the cosmetic damage easily visible to the door and frame, but that was as far as they'd gotten in.

The door was a solid metal hatch affair, meant to be firmly sealed, and unless Prey missed his guess, was further enchanted to help protect any occupants in the observatory while the weather machine below was producing possibly dangerous weather. Like lightning, as Trail Blazer could have attested if he were here. The door hatch didn't have a handle, rather it had a solid metal lever, one which was mildly scuffed and deformed from repeated hammer blows, but still worked fine once Prey unlocked the door.

He spun the key into the lock, and then stretched up as high as he could to hook the lever and pull it down with a heavy metal *clunk* of unlocking internal bolts. The thick door swung outwards on balanced hinges, and a short stairwell let you climb up and out into the observatory room above. Which they did.

Prey turned in a slow circle on the floor. Every side of the circular observatory room was filled in with glass windows, making it into a giant fishbowl.

There was surprisingly little machinery in here. Nor did the controls of the huge weather turbines below look that complicated. Just one circular control board with levers in the dead centre of the room, and that was it. That left the rest of the observatory room rather bare and uncluttered. There was however a massive pair of binoculars on an arm suspended from the ceiling. But otherwise, the whole room was remarkably bare.

Prey spotted a clipboard hanging from a peg with sheets of scrawl-covered papers haphazardly attached, and went over to take it down.

He flipped through the pages of badly scrawled numbers and weather observations, but found nothing else. Certainly no helpful and convenient clues about why the Heights family hadn't been doing their job, or when everything had started to go wrong, or where they might've mysteriously disappeared to.

Gloom slowly paced around the room, peering out the thick windows. It was hard to judge from the inside how thick the glass actually was, but thick was the answer. Gloom stopped by the suspended binoculars, pushing his helmet up on his head so he could bring his eyes to the stocks. He deliberately did not touch or adjust the oversized binoculars, wanting to see exactly where the last person to use them had been looking.

Prey's droopy ear twitched as he caught the sound of flapping over the thrum of the fans coming from below. He ignored Nimbus and Inky as they alighted at the recessed metal door, and trotted on up the last set of stairs. Instead, Prey looked upwards.

He'd had a question from the moment he'd seen the two Royal Guards disappear over the top of the Weather Tower's roof. How had they gotten in?

The answer was a circular hatch above Prey's head in the roof, just as heavy and reinforced as every other outer door leading into and out of the weather tower. There was no ladder or set of stairs leading up to the hatch, meaning it was only for maintenance, or only expected to be used by pegasi.

Nimbus stomped up the stairs and back into the observatory room, face fixed in a scowl. "There's nothing here I tell ya'. We already looked on our way through."

Gloom's tufted ears flicked, but he didn't look away from peering through the binoculars, "Nothing that you saw. Now it's our turn to check."

Inky stalked up to one of the windows, tail and wings unable to sit still. Now that the rush had passed, she was finding it increasingly difficult not to think about Trail Blazer's condition back in Haven Hay.

'-sun smile on him, let him be okay. No, I don't need to worry, of course he's going to pull through. Stop worrying. Stop worrying-'

"Where did they run off to? Where d'you think they're hiding?" Inky blurted the first question that came to her, desperate for a distraction.

"Who knows? But we're going to find out. They'll have to return eventually, and they'll answer for themselves too." Nimbus stated unnecessarily loudly.

That was false. The Heights didn't have to return here for any reason whatsoever. They could fly off into the sunset, or more likely a raincloud, and no one from Haven Hay would ever see them again. Or it might be simpler than that, and they couldn't return. It's a bit hard to undertake any journey if you're dead.

'-are we too late this time too? Is there going to be another salt cellar out there waiting for us to stumble across?-', Gloom thought darkly, unable to help the morbid flash striking him. The unobservant Inky and Nimbus still hadn't questioned why Crimson was absent yet. They hadn't noticed him taking off ahead of them back at Haven Hay, either. They probably assumed he'd been left behind in town.

Inky and Nimbus' restless agitation grew when Gloom didn't comment or look away from the binocular's view.

Nimbus pawed the floor with one forehoof, "What's so riveting about that pair of giant specs?"

"I have a question." Prey interrupted. He pointed straight up at the roof hatch.

"How did you get in? Was it unlocked, or was there an emergency access bar on the outside?"

"How does that matter?" Nimbus frowned, the frustration at Gloom for not having the courtesy to look at them when addressed piling on top of everything else.

His tone was enough to get Gloom to turn away from the binoculars, "If Prey's asking, it usually does matter. So how did you get inside?"

Nimbus snorted, neither him nor Inky willing to believe the notion. At any other time, they would've been much more reasonable, but this wasn't any other time. Especially when it was a precocious foal asking them. "Tch. It was unlocked, because that's obviously how they left, duh. Because the front door was locked, remember? How does any of that matter?"

"So there was no emergency access lever or anything?" Prey pressed.

"That's what I just said. No, there was nothing of the sort."

"I trust Prey to know what he's doing." Gloom stated firmly, biting back from adding:

'-and what little trust I had in you is all gone. Prey always comes through. You've crumbled the moment you've seen what the ISND runs up against all the time-'

Nimbus' hoof pawed along the floor again, "Fine. I'm stallion enough to admit I might be wrong about this one thing. So tell me, why does it matter so much that the door was unlocked? So what? That's just how they flew out of here before we could catch them."

Prey was very tempted to shrug and say, 'Oh, no reason' simply to spite the angry stallion, but not after Gloom had just stood up for him. "Because it means they opened the hatch from in here. And not that someone, or something, forced entry from the outside. That could make a big difference."

"Yeaaaaah, I'm not seeing it. So what? They left. What of it?"

"It might mean nothing, but why not then take the keys with them? Why not lock the hatch behind themselves?" Prey held up the keyring in question again.

Inky rolled her eyes, sarcastically answering before Nimbus could, "Caus' they forgot? Because they didn't need to? Because only they can fly up there? Because you can't lock the door from the outside? Any of those."

"All certainly possibilities." Prey admitted.

Nimbus impatiently gestured with a half unfolded wing when Prey didn't go on, "And? What?"

"And those are all certainly possibilities." Prey simply repeated.

Nimbus stared. Then his thin temper snapped and he threw up his wings, "That's it?! Important my left flank! We're flying back to Haven Hay, where there's ponies we might actually be able to help! When you're done wasting time you can join us."

Nimbus Feather whirled around in a display of gold armour and feathers, and stomped down the stairs. Inky gave Prey a withering look and stomped after her Sargent. Prey just gave them a departing smile.

Gloom glowered after them, yellow eyes narrowed. Only once they were definitely gone did Gloom give his wings a shake and turn to Prey.

"Was that actually important, Prey?" He checked.

"In the grand scheme of this investigation, I don't know yet. But since Inky confirmed it can't be relocked from the outside, it does prove something, though. Assuming it wasn't plain forgetfulness, and that they don't just always leave the hatch unlocked, then either they left in a great hurry, or were expecting to return. One of those two."

"Which begs the question that we don't know the answer to; which one was it?" Gloom muttered. He closed his eyes and rubbed wearily at the poison burn scarring underneath.

'-by the moon, I pray to Luna that wherever they went, they're at least still alive to regret their choices-'

"What did you see out of the binoculars?" Prey asked, changing the subject.

Gloom reopened his slitted eyes to glance at the ocular enhancers in question, "Oh, the stormfront. The big one over the Breathless Sea. It seems the Heights, despite what everypony else says, weren't blind to what's building up out there off the coast."

Prey would have taken a look for himself, if the binoculars weren't suspended above his reach, and he didn't see any stool around to stand on.

"So what's the plan now?" Prey asked into the silence of the observation room, "Talk to and find out what Crimson saw, and why he's hiding, obviously, but what about after that?"

"Reunite with Crimson, yes. After that, I don't rightly know. We'll go from there." Gloom agreed. He stepped up close to the window and peered down, or as sharply down as the angle would allow. You couldn't see anyone standing directly at the tower's base, the mob of five hundred weren't inclined to cluster near the target of their recent vandalism.

'-let's not flit about the cloud. I'm looking down at a desperate group of ponies who all recently crossed the line into criminals. And there's nothing I can do about it-'

"And we hopefully won't have long to wait. Looks like the mob is starting to move. They're on their way back to Haven Hay. Good riddance."

"Better and better." Prey was eager to reunite with Crimson, just like Gloom had said. It could be all this speculation was pointless, and Crimson already held all their answers.

'Right, and hydras can sing a four-part harmony. When are things ever that easy?'

Prey looked back up at the metal hatch in the ceiling. He considered leaving it open, but... "Unless you have any objections, I think we should lock up the whole tower before we leave, and take the keys too. So, would you mind?"

Prey held up the keyring and gave them a jingling shake.

"No, that's a good idea. Nopony but us is going to come back in here and possibly do even more damage." Gloom agreed, holding out his wing for the keys.

He let Prey drop the ring onto his wing instead of passing them, scooping up the keys with a deft flick. A short hop and flight later, Gloom had the hatch firmly shut and locked, and dropped back to the floor.

Gloom went to tuck the keys away inside his chestplate, but then stopped and held them out, the keyring hooked over the end of a blunt wingclaw. "You want? Or should I hold onto them for now?"

"I'll take them." Prey stuck out his hoof below Gloom's wing, and the thestral let the keys fall off for Prey to catch. Prey didn't even have to avoid getting close enough to touch with Gloom politely doing it for him.

Prey took one last long look around the observatory room. Unless you purposefully looked down, outside of the reinforced windows, at this height the formless sky seemed to be an endless void of cloudy grey.

"Okay. I'm ready when you are."

Gloom rolled his shoulders under his armour, "After you, Prey."


---


They locked the thick observation room door before descending the stairs, past the huge fan blades, and then further descended through the destroyed private residence rooms. It didn't look any better going down than it had going up. Quietly, and making sure not to draw attention, they exited the Weather Tower and locked the last door behind them for good measure.

Wind, a smattering of raindrops, distant gulls, and ever the sound of breaking waves awaited them.

'-and now I've got to report the damage and request a repairs team too-', Gloom thought while Prey tucked the keys away into his backpack. Gloom pushed that aside, it was merely something more on the already depressingly long list. It was far below finding the Heights family though, which was also below finding the Heights family alive.

'-Luna, please let them still be alive wherever they are. Please. For once, I want us to be there in time-'

Prey finished re-shouldering his backpack comfortably and looked after the departing mob with disdain.

"Don't think too badly of them, Prey." Gloom said without missing a beat.

Prey tilted his head to the side with his ribbon, giving Gloom a very eloquent, slow, wide blue-eyed blink. He didn't have to say a thing.

Gloom didn't smile, "It's not worth it for one, and they don't regret it for another. None of us know what each of their individual situations are. Besides, we're the Night Guards, they aren't. They not used to anything like we are."

Gloom's yellow eyes narrowed fractionally as he stared after the five hundred or so departing ponies, "It's foolish to hold them up to our standards." He sounded disappointed, like after watching other ponies from Haven Hay rush out to rescue the sailors off the ship, he couldn't reconcile these ponies as ones from the same town, some of them even the self-same ponies, joining a mob.

'Yeeeeah, I'm still going to think badly of them.' Prey thought, sniffing. Or at least, badly of those departing ponies. They were not representative of the many residents who'd stayed behind in Haven Hay, and had not let their anger overwhelm them, after all. But those odd five hundred?

In a moment of distraction, thinking about that triggered a sudden bout of self-reflection. Like a mirror. Prey never looked in a mirror.

Prey blamed his surroundings for the slip. He'd been distracted considering that, glancing furtively towards Crimson's hiding spot on the other hill at the same time, also brushing back his ribbon as a gust fluttered it in his face, and twitching in annoyance at a laughing seagull. So for just a moment there, he was distracted enough by the sight of the departing mob to let it spark off a corresponding thought.

Prey leapt on the spark and smothered it before it could spread, but even snuffing a spark brings a red hot pinprick of pain for those few seconds.

Five hundred, so what? What right did he have to let himself become aggravated, when it was so petty into comparison to the unnumbered changelings?

'That was their fault, theirs, not mine! They attacked me, they brought their fate on themselves.' Prey firmly re-established in his mind and nailed it down with spikes of iron will.

"Lieutenant Gloom."

"It's Sargent Gloom."

Prey started. He looked up to find that Sheriff Lumber hadn't left with the rest of the trailing mob but instead waited behind, and was now approaching Gloom.

Gloom shifted to fully face the earth pony, expression stony. Prey saw the step Lumber fumbled, even if the stallion quickly tried to hide it. Not being able to look Gloom in the face and staying out of reach were other clues though.

Prey heard Lumber himself defensively thinking, '-don't give me that look. You were just as useless as the bucking airhead Heights in doing anything today, freakin' batpony-'

After a moment of silent staring as the sea wind continued to blow against them, Gloom curtly asked, "What is it, 'Sheriff' Lumber?" He stressed the law enforcement title.

Lumber's ears went back in anger, unable to stop himself. Nevertheless, it seemed he wasn't confident enough to try forcing the issue, "I want to know what you're going to do now. Ah mean, you and your ponies. Sargent Nimbus told me just now you and he are each here for a different job. As sheriff of Haven Hay, I want ta' know what you're planning on in our town."

"We're here to do our duty. Sargent Nimbus and his squad are here to assist you in managing your weather, although that looks to be a bit of a tall order at the moment. We are here to investigate."

"Investigate? Investigate what? Investigate the Heights, ya' mean right?"

"We are here to investigate any crime we come across, yes." Gloom stated.

Prey knew that Lumber heard the unspoken but very clearly pointed implications there, but the stallion wilfully chose to only hear what he wanted to hear.

"Well if'n you can find where they've run off to hide, then that'd be a great start. If'n they don't come back at all and we get replacements who'll actually do something about all these storms, then I'll take that as a win too."

Both Prey and Gloom silently looked at him, then back to the Weather Tower, and then back to him.

"Once somepony's come out and gotten it all fixed up, of course." Lumber added, again not outwardly expressing any contrition.

"Yes. I will need to make 'extra' mention of that fact in my report."

'-if you are still this town's sheriff by the time it takes for us to send a message back to Canterlot and them to appoint a replacement weather team, I'll eat my spear-', Gloom thought.

Down the hill, the tail end of the departing mob were making good time, eager to be away from here before any feelings of regret seeped back in, or just to get back to their jobs and homes. Time waited for no one. Prey judged they'd be back inside Haven Hay in about an hour. It was downhill almost all the way back with the wind at their backs. Made it even easier to trot away from your wrongdoings.

'Assuming shame even sets in at all. I've done worse myself, haven't I? And I don't feel any guilt over the changelings. Besides, they're ponies. They let themselves get caught up in their herd mentality, and just went with the flow willingly.'

Lumber was chewing over something, wondering if he should even bother saying it after Gloom's coldness; '-he ain't no normal pony for one, an' all of them are outsiders for another-'

Prey's hoof started inching up towards his ribbon, 'I don't have the patience for this. Crimson is waiting in hiding to tell us something important. Either speak and go, or shut up and go. Or I'll choose for you.'

"You might want to take a minute to have yourselves a look-see at the Cliffs of Dove while you're up here." Lumber said, the nonsensical suggestion coming from out of left field.

Lumber twitched at the looks they gave him, brows snapping together defensively:

"You might want to look because that's where your trail might end. If'n the Heights are truly gone... well that's where they might've gone, let's just say. They lived up here all that time, so close to the cliffs, maybe they listened to a song they weren't supposed to. You get me?"

"No." Gloom stated bluntly.

Lumber grumbled something darkly, unconsciously tugging at the collar of his coat and checking for something underneath.

Prey had heard what he’d said though, "Marefolk?" He echoed.

Lumber jerked in surprise at being overheard, and then scowled, "Aye, marefolk. What of it? There's plenty of things under Celestia's sun that nopony understands. Something tempts good stallions to those cliffs. It's the same out on the sea if you sail too close to the Isle of Dove. Some of them said they've heard singing in the waves. Sounds ridiculous, but it's not ridiculous if'n it really happens, is it? Marefolk is as good an explanation as any for whatever madness them damn cliffs bring."

"Don't speak to me of madness." Prey smiled pleasantly, just a foal who didn't know what he was talking about in the sheriff's eyes.

Lumber snorted rudely and dismissed him. He turned back toward Haven Hay and the trail of dwindling ponies, tail swishing irritably, "Believe whatever you want, what do I care? You go do your job, but be warned, you might already be too late. Those airheads were too stupid for self-preservation, so if'n it ends in the cliffs, I won't be surprised. You'll see."

"That is interesting to hear." Crimson said, from behind and to the side where he'd silently approached.

"What in the bucking-!" Lumber reared, spinning around.

Crimson stood in his dark-tinted Night Guard armour, stance and face unfriendly.

"Crimson. Why'd you come out now?" Gloom asked, meaning; 'while this oaf is still here to see?', "And who is that?"

"Because he is still the sheriff, for now I mean. He should know about this. And this is Alto Heights." Crimson stepped aside.

Prey finally got a clear look at the lanky pegasus colt who'd been following so closely behind Crimson as he'd come up the hill.

"Alto Heights? As in, the youngest child of Gale and Windy Heights?"

The colt blinked around at them all. He was nearly pure white- mane and tail too, with only a dark sooty patch softening the end of his muzzle and a dark sock up to each fetlock. Someday he'd probably be photo-magazine-worthy levels of gorgeous, by pony standards anyway. Pity he was looking around so emptily like there was little going on behind those eyes.

"Hello. Oh, hello Sheriff Lumber. Sorry, mom and dad aren't home at the moment. I'm not supposed to let strangers into our tower. But can I help you?"


---I---