//------------------------------// // First Storm // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// “One day out from the Sea Lion Reefs and we get stuck in this. That’s just our luck, isn’t it?” Daylight Gleam said as the Heart of Azure made its way through the sudden ocean storm that had fallen upon them. The waters raged violently all around them, large waves threatening to capsize the ship if they hit it the wrong way, while powerful winds buffeted all of them onboard and made the sail billow about wildly. Thunder and lightning crashed together in the sky to create a cacophonous light show while heavy rain poured down below. The rain was being blown every which way by the wind as well. At times it felt like it was coming straight down, other times it felt like it was assaulting them from the right, then the left, and sometimes straight up at their faces. Through it all, Breakwater had the wheel, fighting the storm and doing his best to keep his ship afloat. The bow crashed through a large wave and the top half of the water smashed down onto the deck, flooding half of it before it started draining through the side rails. They then went down, between the swells and waiting for the next big wave to crash upon their ship and flood them all over again. Gilbert and Rainbow Dash were in the air around the ship, doing their best to fend off the winds and keep the sail from rupturing or the ship being blown off course. Senax was by the wheel with Breakwater, ready to help him with anything he needed or take over if he was incapacitated. Daylight’s duty was to dampen the effects of any waves striking them—but she was already near the end of her rope when it came to magical power. Any kind of use that didn’t directly involve her Cutie Mark talent tended to take a decent amount of energy out of her. Rainbow Dash found the winds were doing their best to carry her off into the storm like a rag doll or throw her into the violent ocean, but she had been in worse storms than this. “I’ve been in worse storms than this!” She shouted to make sure she was heard. “We’ll get out of this, just everybody work together!” “Can do, Rainbow Dash!” Gilbert shouted from the port side—flying practically parallel with the mast and using his body and heavy wings to change the course of some of the wind. “Although not being an actual pegasus like yourself I’m unsure of the use I’ll be up here!” “Just cause you don’t have pegasus weather magic doesn’t mean you can’t do anything! Stick with what you’re doing right now, you’re doing a great job!” She reassured him. It was true that her innate pegasus magic made her the most useful member of the crew right now. It was practically why any major shipping vessel or other large ship wanted at least one pegasus with them. Even if they couldn’t fully break up a large ocean storm they could at least weaken it around the ship or do something else to help. And Rainbow Dash had a lot of experience dealing with storms thanks to her history. She was putting all of it to good use. “The both of you just be careful! We don’t want one of you getting blown away!” Breakwater shouted. “Don’t even worry about that! I’m way too good of a flier for that to happen!” Rainbow grinned. Down below, another wave came from the front, hitting the bow at an angle. Daylight Gleam grit her teeth and created the best magical barrier she could at the moment to dampen the blow and keep too much water from washing aboard. The force and strain caused her to stumble back until she accidentally bumped into the mast and fell over. As if the boat wasn’t moving around enough she had to be stumbling about too thanks to overusing her magic. “Are you okay, Daylight?” Senax shouted. “I’m fine! I can handle it!” The unicorn replied. Senax grimaced, watching as everyone else worked hard to get them through the storm. “If only it hadn’t come upon us so suddenly...” Rainbow Dash was napping in the crow’s nest earlier in the day. The weather out was fair, not too cold or too hot, with a mild breeze to accompany it all. She found it pretty easy to just relax and let herself fall asleep at times like this—still bored on their “long” trip to the Sea Lion Reefs. The others could look up and see her long, rainbow tail draped over the side of the nest. Gilbert was below at the bow, squinting out to see if there was any visible land in front of them yet. He came up with absolutely nothing, they were simply too far away. Even if he flew up to the crow’s nest or higher it would be unlikely he saw anything. Bored, he turned his eyes to the water instead, and tried to see if he could spot any fish swimming down there… Daylight Gleam was asleep in the hold after deciding not to tear Gilbert’s dumb journal that he kept bothering her about to pieces. Instead she decided to nap and hope he might stop annoying her about it by the time she woke up. Unlikely. She did find though that the steady rocking and swaying of the boat from inside the hold felt very comfortable to her nowadays when she was trying to sleep. It was easy to nod off down here. Captain Breakwater was standing beside Senax at the wheel, watching the merpony again as she directed them over the waves. She had improved greatly in his eyes in just a brief amount of time. Like she had a natural talent for seafaring. Considering her blood and heritage, maybe she did. Although at the same time, using ships might’ve been kind of irrelevant for a species that could breathe underwater and swim like merponies. Senax had a focused look on her face. But on the inside she was thinking about the recent conflict with Godfrey and how useless she had been. A caretaker at best, she couldn’t fight or do anything else. And she wanted that to change. That’s why she had been throwing herself into learning how to pilot the ship even harder than before. Everyone was on this adventure because of her in the first place, if she got them in danger and couldn’t even help them… A drop of water fell onto the merpony’s snout. Senax blinked and looked up at the sky, noticing that a series of gray clouds had formed, practically coming out of nowhere. With each passing second it was getting darker and darker and more drops of rain came down to splash on her and the boat. “Uh oh...” Breakwater grimaced as he watched the sky and the storm forming directly over them. “Sudden storm. All the checking I did earlier for our route didn’t show anything like this.” “More crazy ocean weather?” Senax said. “Yep. Let’s hope it’s just a mild storm and it doesn’t get too bad.” The wind started picking up more and more each passing second, complementing the heavy rain that was now falling on their boat and the ocean around them. Bigger waves started to form thanks to those winds and shortly the Heart of Azure was rocking quite a bit more than usual. Gilbert quickly realized this was no mere squall they had gotten stuck in and he started walking from the bow over to the two of them to see if Breakwater had anything to say. And meanwhile Rainbow Dash was tossing and turning in her sleep—dreaming of her tail being stuck in the shower drain. “I say, do you think this storm is going to keep getting worse?” Gilbert asked Breakwater and Senax, the wind howling now and ruffling his feathers. “Looks like it,” Breakwater nodded. “Sky’s already gone dark. Rain keeps coming down harder and those thunder clouds are looking pretty bad.” Gilbert looked up—the gray clouds had already given away entirely to black storm clouds that rumbled with thunder and lightning. “Yes… those very much don’t look good.” Some sputtering then came from the crow’s nest and the others looked up to see a wet and confused Rainbow Dash clambering over the side of it and looking every which way through half-lidded eyes. “W-What? What’s going on? I was punching a Reindeer and then… huh?” “Welcome back to the waking world, Rainbow Dash! We’re in the middle of a storm!” Gilbert shouted to her. Rainbow Dash blinked and now with a little more sense she looked around at what was happening. “Oh.” “Enjoy sailing through your first storm on the Grand Ocean!” Breakwater said. “Well at least storms are something I’m familiar with...” Rainbow said as she fully jumped out of the crow’s nest and glided down to the stern with the others. The wind not quite as vicious yet to knock her around. At this point though she was already drenched by the rain and the parts of her body that were laying in the bottom of the crow’s nest were especially soggy. “What do we do? Do we just try and sail through it like normal? Keeping to the same course?” Rainbow asked. “That’s about all we can do. Since we don’t know how big it is or how long it’ll last,” Breakwater said and took over the wheel from Senax. “Sorry, Senax, but I should be steering us for this.” “R-Right,” Senax bowed out of the way, her mouth open and closed a few times but in the end she didn’t speak up. “I’m going to wake Daylight up,” Gilbert said and walked down to the hold. “I’m gonna keep on my wings, see what I can do to break up the storm as much as possible. Maybe I can make an easy path for us,” Rainbow Dash said. She squinted out at the dark clouds and drowned. “Although… it’s kind of a big looking storm so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do a whole lot.” “Anything would be a big help,” Breakwater said as a series of larger waves started coming at them. “I’ll watch you, Captain. Just tell me if you need anything,” Senax said as Breakwater’s hooves tightened on the wheel. Everyone got into position as the storm’s ferocity grew around their small boat. Gilbert brought up a groggy Daylight from the hold and she only needed to take a single look around to understand the situation. Without direction from anyone else she went to the bow of the ship. Gilbert flew up to join Rainbow Dash, and thus they were all in position… ...Now that the storm had raged for hours with them still stuck well inside it with no end in sight, Breakwater kept a steady eye on the sail. He was worried about it. Worried that with the strong winds and the quick patch job that it might tear again. It would be a big pain if that happened once they were out of the storm and still trying to make their way across the ocean. “Hey, Rainbow Dash, Gilbert!” He shouted to the two fliers. They both looked back down at him as they fought to keep steady in the gale-force winds. “Yeah? What’s up?” Rainbow Dash yelled back. “I want you to fold up and tie up the sail! We can’t leave it open in winds like this anymore, it might tear or get completely torn off the mast all at once!” “But how are we going to get out of the storm then?” “We’re just going to have to drift across the waves for now. There’s too much wind pushing from every which way anyways! We’ll get out eventually.” “Alright,” Rainbow shrugged. “If it comes down to it just tie a rope around me and I’ll pull us the rest of the way.” She and Gilbert fought against the cyclone winds of the storm as they went to the bottom of the sail together. They both had knowledge of the sail thanks to Breakwater’s lessons, something that made this much easier, and made Rainbow grumble in annoyance that he was actually right to force her to learn all this stuff. Still, even with them knowing what to do, the constant pouring rain and the strong winds made it difficult to work the sail. They were in the middle of tying it up when another large wave struck the starboard side, not fully weakened by Daylight, and made the Heart of Azure list to the side. Rainbow’s hooves slipped on one of the wet ropes and the know she was tying came undone, her half of the sail now dragging down and partially open. “Dang it!” “Let me help! My talons are a bit better built for things such as this!” Gilbert said and flew over to take Rainbow’s place. While she held up the bottom beam of the sail, Gilbert dexterously got every rope tied and the two of them together had finally rolled it all up. “One problem dealt with,” Rainbow said. “We’ll just have to hold out hope that no exceptionally large wave comes to capsize us now,” Gilbert said. Rainbow turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “You have a really special knack for tempting fate, you know?” “Very much so!” Gilbert fervently nodded. “Hey you two, get back to diverting the winds! The storm isn’t taking any breaks!” Breakwater ordered. “Right!” Rainbow saluted and went back out to try and beat down the storm’s winds with her natural magic. She could feel every trained motion in her muscles as she flapped her wings and created wind of her own and pushed the harshest blasts from the storm from striking their ship directly. There were times back in Ponyville where she had been out during a big storm, doing her best to make sure windows weren’t broken and things weren’t knocked over. It wasn’t a whole lot different from this. Wind was something she knew as well as the back of her own wings. There were only a few times where stormy weather had gotten the better of her, and there was usually a magical reason for that. The Heart of Azure climbed over a large wave and fell down the backside while another large wave came and washed over the bow. This time Daylight managed to create a small half dome to divert most of the water away, but it broke pretty much immediately after it was formed and the unicorn was clearly spent for good this time until she got some rest. They were just going to have to handle things normally from then on. Thunder and lightning crashed around them and the torrent of rain temporarily strengthened. The sheer downpour almost had enough force to knock both Rainbow Dash and Gilbert out of the sky, but the two refused to take refuge on the ship while they still had work to do. Short of being directly struck by lightning, no one was giving up. Rainbow Dash looked at the dark ocean around them during a brief moment when she wasn’t having rain blown into her face. The black water reflected the black clouds—it was a sharp contrast from how peaceful and bright things had looked earlier in the day. A reminder how serious ocean travel was, and a warning that the weather could change at a moment’s notice. More violent waves, larger than the ones around them, could be seen in the distance. It was likely they were the largest waves she had ever actually seen in her life. Perhaps that was the strongest part of the storm. If that was true then they were luckily well away from it. Lightning flashed, followed by the growling roar of thunder, and Rainbow Dash returned to her crucial duty.