//------------------------------//
// The Storm 
// Story: Twilight Breaks All of the Storm Chasing Safety Rules 
// by MooseWhisker 
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Twilight's eyes fluttered open as the rising sun began to shine directly onto her face. She instinctively reached over across the bed she was lying in to get in some last minute cuddles with her wife before the day began, but upon finding nopony else there, the events of the past month came back to her. Deciding to study the tornadoes, creating a weather scanning spell with the help of Rainbow Dash, finding a way to remotely record the data, and heading out to the settlement that had been hit with the most tornadoes to hopefully get some data on them.

Yawning, Twilight made her way over to the window to look over the oak homes of Bull Town. She had been staying here for just over a week, and the cattle had shown the utmost hospitality toward her. She got the feeling that their hospitality was not just because of her crown, or because she was offering a potential way to stop the destruction of their homes, but just how they are. A smile graced her lips as she saw a couple calves run out of their house and down the street towards the nearby park.

Turning away from the window, she grabbed her hairbrush, toothbrush, and toothpaste in her magic as she trotted over to the bathroom. The grooming tools rushed about her head in a whirlwind as she made herself presentable for the outside world.

She greeted the various cattle she passed by as she made her way to a diner for breakfast, and paused to take a few pictures with some of the calves that asked for one. Her breakfast was good, though nothing compared to Spike's cooking. The thought of her little brother dampened her mood a little. He had tried to convince her to let him come with her, but she had refused and they got into a bit of an argument. Ultimately Twilight was able to convince him to stay back at the castle to keep Celestia company in her stead while she was out.

Twilight chuckled as she remembered her wife poking fun at the situation, and how it was payback for their own disagreement.

Finishing up her food, she thanked the cooks for the meal and headed out to the house she was helping to fix up. Several of the houses in town had gotten hit by some of the smaller tornadoes, and had some moderate damage. Since Twilight had nothing to do until the next big storm, she had been all too happy to help out with the renovations. The current project was fixing the roof on a house that had its old one completely ripped off.

It was an hour after the construction crew had wrapped up their lunch break when one of the younger cows ran up to her.

"Princess Twilight!" she called out. "It looks like there's a storm brewing to the west!"

Twilight gently set the hammer she was floating in her magic down. "Thanks for telling me, I'm going to take a look."

Twilight took to the air to get a better view, and saw that there was a tower of fluffy cumulus clouds rising very quickly over a darker base. The top of the tower had begun to shoot out towards the village. Her brow furrowed as she continued to watch the system develop. The top of the cloud had developed into a long flat section, not unlike an anvil. Beneath the anvil, the clouds appeared to be moving to the right, but the storm itself didn't appear to be moving at all.

Twilight lowered herself back to the ground where a crowd had gathered to hear what she had seen. 

"Listen up, everypony," she began. "Er... everycattle, I mean. There's a storm system coming, and it looks nasty. I'm going to go out to observe it a little closer. While I'm out there, I want you all to get everycattle in town down below ground. I want you all to stay there until the storm has passed. Once the storm has passed, I'll be back to review the data. Understood?"

The cattle dispersed to spread the word as Twilight made her way back to the inn she was staying at. The basement held a data receiver she had set up to remotely record the data she was gathering from the storm. She quickly flapped her wings to get some wind blowing down there, and began to magically scan the air around her. Happy that the device was working, she teleported out to a field closer to the storm.

Taking stock of her surroundings, Twilight noted a vast open field in front of her, and the oak forest where the cattle had been gathering the wood to repair the houses that were damaged by the storms. The portions of the fields that weren't beneath the storm were depleting as the storm rolled in.

Now that she was closer to the storm, it was a lot easier to see that the whole thing was rotating counter-clockwise. The clouds closer to her were moving left to right, whereas the clouds further back in the storm were moving right to left. There didn't appear to be any precipitation quite yet, at least none that was reaching the ground, so she had an unimpeded view of the storm.

Twilight closed her eyes and lit her horn. Breathing out, she centered herself. The scanning spell itself wasn't too complex, but casting it over the entire storm would be incredibly difficult. She was reasonably certain that nopony else in Equestria had enough magical strength to attempt such a thing. Even Celestia and Luna would likely struggle to output enough magic to get a full scan of a storm of this size.

Luckily for Twilight, her magical strength had been growing exponentially ever since she became an alicorn, and she had more than enough strength to get it all. That being said, there was still a lot the spell was keeping track of, and concentration would be the biggest difficulty for this task.

Finally, once Twilight was fully centered, she began to draw upon her unicorn and pegasus magic to cast the spell. After a full minute, the spell was ready to go. Twilight opened her eyes to make sure that she was aiming correctly, and the storm took on a magenta hue as her magic took hold.

Twilight staggered from the force of the magic she was outputting, and almost fell due to the lack of concentration the spell took to keep going. Twilight clenched her teeth and planted her hooves firmly below her and slowly got used to holding the spell.

By the time Twilight felt stable enough to walk, the storm was nearly upon her, and had increased in intensity. Twilight looked up towards the clouds to get a visual on what was going on. Lightning flickered across the sky, and occasionally wandered its way down to the ground, in a chaotic branching mess that Twilight thought Discord might appreciate. 

As the storm began to roll over her, Twilight noticed something peculiar in the clouds. There appeared to be what looked like a giant horseshoe shape in the clouds. That's odd, Twilight thought. I wonder what could be causing that. Tapping into the scans, Twilight noticed some concentrated rotation near the north end of the horseshoe, and the rest of the storm seemed to be feeding it.

Twilight stared at the north end of the horseshoe as the rotation became more and more visible. The lightning seemed to change; instead of the branching and flickering that had characterized the earlier bolts, they seemed much smoother and were  comprised of a single bright flash rather than many. Suddenly the clouds at the top of the horseshoe seemed to be descending, and soon, there was a tornado on the ground. Twilight checked to make sure that the spell was still going fine, and that she had captured the formation of the tornado, and was relieved to find that the spell was going fine.

It was beautiful. Twilight gawked openly at the sight of the tornado on the ground. It was a thin fragile thing at first, but it quickly picked up dust and took on a much darker and more sinister look. It appeared to be frozen in place, and Twilight was content to just watch it if it wasn't going to go anywhere. She levitated a stray stone she had found lying near her out in front of her to make sure that the tornado wasn't moving subtly left or right, but it stayed perfectly centered on the stone.

It was then that the clouds finally began to let loose the rain that it had built up. Twilight watched as it fell in sheets around the tornado, quickly moving from left to right. It looks sort of like a curtain, she mused as she watched the rain. 

Twilight's ear twitched. A faint roaring sound could be heard from the direction of the tornado. How odd, she thought. Is it getting stronger? Twilight closed her eyes to check in on the scanning data, only for them to fly open in shock.

"450 kilometers per hour?" she cried out in shock. "I didn't even think it was possible for tornadoes to have wind speeds so high! Hay, I didn't even it was possible for air to move that fast in general without magical interference."

Twilight continued to stare in shock at the utter beast before her as the roaring grew louder and louder. The rain was coming down harder by the second, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to see where the tornado actually was.

Suddenly the wind around her intensified considerably, and seemed to be pulling her away from where the tornado last was. She turned away to see what was happening, only to be greeted by a smaller, but significantly closer tornado that was right on top of her.

Twilight screamed as she felt her hooves leave the ground. The smaller tornado carried her for a bit, before she managed to use her magic to increase the force of gravity on herself. She grunted as she hit the ground after falling out of the smaller tornado, but was hopelessly disoriented and bruised from some of the debris that was picked up with her.

This is crazy, Twilight thought frantically. If I don't get out of here right now, I could get seriously injured, or worse. Twilight looked around, finding the forest from earlier just behind her, but could not see the tornado. She tapped back into the scanning spell to try to locate the tornado, only to be horrified that it was quickly approaching her, and would be right on top of her in less than two minutes. 

Twilight quickly decided that she wasn't particularly fond of trees getting in the way of her and a view of the tornado, so she turned and ran to the south. She barely made it ten seconds before slamming into harsh winds and heavy rain. She tried to run through it, but the wind seemed to be pushing her back to the northeast, and the rain had quickly given way to hail that was rapidly growing from the size of a pebble to the size of a bit, and larger still.

Deciding that continuing deeper into the hail was not a great idea, she turned around and ran into the forest. She ran as fast as she could, ducking between the trees. The roaring of the tornado sounded like it was coming from everywhere, and was so loud. It's probably in the forest with me, Twilight's mind wizzed. The sound has to be coming from the leaves getting ripped from the branches.

Her head whipped to the right as a loud cracking came from right beside her, only to see the tree that she was passing by was twisting and began to fall away from her and towards where the tornado was. The same horrible sounds of the trees being cleaved apart were now coming from all around her, as the tornado began to tear its way through the forest towards Twilight.

Twilight skidded to a stop as she ran right into a dead end. Trees were down in front of her and to both sides, and behind her was the tornado. She frantically looked around for some way to get out of this when suddenly, pain exploded across her face and right over her eyes.

Twilight cried out as her front leg whipped up to her face. She could feel the deep cut that went across her face and went directly over her eyes. Luckily, whatever had hit her didn't seem to cut too deeply, but unluckily, she couldn't see anything anymore. 

This was it, Twilight was done for. She had nowhere to go, and even if she did, she had no way of seeing where she would be going, and would more than likely just run face first into a tree, or twist her leg by stepping into a hole.

She thought about her friends, and wondered how they would receive the news of her death. She thought of her family, and how she had promised them that she would be safe, but had failed them. Mostly though, she thought of her wife. Celestia was right, trying to understand tornadoes was a stupid idea that would only end in tragedy. She could at least take comfort in the fact that the data the spell would leave behind would be able to help Equestria, and she would be the last pony to be killed by a tornado.

Wait, Twilight thought. The scanning spell! I can use that to see. She tapped into the spell to gain more insight into her surroundings. The tornado was rushing towards her, but she still had a good 15 seconds to do something. The memories of her friends panicking in the old castle that night came back to her, as did the memories of Shining Armor teaching her defensive spells when she was a filly.

Suddenly, Twilight had a plan, and things weren't looking so hopeless after all. Tapping into her earth pony magic, she quickly cast the same spell she had used to freeze her friends in place on herself, locking her in place. There was no way she could get tossed around by even the strongest of forces with this spell on her. She began to pay much closer attention to the area immediately surrounding her in the scanning spell.

A large chunk of a tree was hurtling towards her. She tried to form a shield around her, but between the strain from the locking spell and the scanning spell, a barrier was all that she was able to muster. Still, it worked well enough to deflect the debris away from her.

Twilight used barriers to block more and more debris as the tornado bore down upon her.

She knew she was inside of it when the wind started ripping away at her mane and feathers. Suddenly it was a lot harder to keep herself locked in place as the tornado fought her for control.

The tornado's roar was almost deafening now. Luna could be shouting right next to her at full volume, and she probably wouldn't be able to hear her. Twilight's ears popped, as the air pressure dramatically decreased around her, and she began to pant as breathing became a lot harder.

This was a stupid plan! Twilight thought. Why did I decide to try to resist the tornado when I could just teleport away?

Twilight tried to muster up enough magic to escape, but she couldn't afford to let any of her current spells stop to concentrate on teleporting. If she let the scanning spell go, she would be totally clueless as to what was going on around her, and would be clobbered by all the debris that the tornado was hurling around her. If she let the locking spell go, she would get swept up by the tornado, and would just as likely teleport herself dozens of feet below the ground as to safety. If she let the barriers go, there was nothing stopping the large bits of trees from knocking her out. She was well and truly stuck in this position.

Twilight could feel her legs and horn grow tired as the force of the magic she was throwing around began to wear down on her. She just needed to keep going until the tornado passed overhead.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality was only a couple minutes, the wind began to die down as the tornado passed over her. Not being one to take chances, Twilight waited until the wind had died down to the point where it was less than 50 kilometers per hour. Still strong, but not dangerous to her. 

Twilight nearly collapsed as the adrenaline ebbed away, leaving her exhausted from how much energy she had spent. Her legs were sore and her horn was aching, she had small cuts and bruises all over her body from where smaller sticks and rocks had made it past her barriers, and she was barely keeping herself awake, but she was alive.

She did it. She had somehow survived a direct encounter with the strongest tornado Equestria had ever seen. A feeling of triumph unlike anything she had ever felt before flooded through her veins, and suddenly she was completely re-energized.

She checked the scanning spell to make sure it was still collecting data on the whole storm, and hadn't deteriorated from her direct hit with the tornado. She was amazed to find that the spell was still going strong, and didn't seem to have stopped collecting data at all. She did notice something peculiar, however.

There appeared to be a smaller mass of air coming out of the back of the tornado that was feeding it. The wind speeds, while not matching the absurdity of the tornado's core, were still nearly 200 kilometers an hour. She marveled as it appeared to snake its way through the path of destruction the tornado left behind.

Wait, Twilight thought. If that... thing is moving through the path of destruction, and I was directly hit by the tornado, that means...

Panicking, Twilight tried to run, but was quickly caught up in the winds and sent hurtling towards a tree trunk that had the upper portion completely ripped off by the storm. Pain exploded across her hind legs as they slammed directly into the tree, and she was sent spinning as the winds continued to carry her through the ruined forest. Twilight cried out as her entire body impacted another tree. The world was spinning faster than the tornado as Twilight finally fell out of the winds.

Twilight didn't know how long she laid there at the base of the tree, and was only vaguely aware of the sun setting as she slowly slipped into unconsciousness.