//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The Storm 
// by The_Last_Centurion 
//------------------------------//

This story is a fan-fiction of MLP:FiM. I don't own any of it. It belongs to Hasbro, etc, etc.
Don't sue. Seriously. That would be so uncouth.


Part One: Condensation

“You did that on purpose!” screamed the yellow-coated, orange-maned mare at my face. 
“NO!...I mean no. It was an…..” I shut my trap because the mare’s hoof hit my face. “This is the fifth time this week! THE FIFTH TIME! If I ever see you around my cart again, I will beat your orphan blank-flank into next week, you hear!”
I cringed under her verbal assault, but damn, did my face hurt. It wasn’t often that a person from Ponyville resorted to violence. It stung, but the words stung worse. I didn’t need to be reminded that I was a fully grown stallion without a cutie mark, nor did I need to be reminded that my parents were dead. I had known that fact a long time ago. And I also knew it was my fault.
“What’s going on here?” asked a sleepy voice from behind me. I didn’t need to glance back to know who it was. I heard her yawn, a few bones pop, and then everything grew silent for a second.
“Golden Harvest, what happened to your cart? And Little Wing, what’s……..” she asked approaching from behind, her hooves gently clopping on the paved center of Ponyville.
“Little Wing went and destroyed it, again.” Golden Harvest said between clenched teeth. 
“Hahahahah!” the mare behind me laughed, making the whole square echo with her angelic voice. “So you ok LW?”
I sucked in my breath and closed my eyes. I turned my head to face her. “Yep RD.”
She gasped. “LW, how’d you get that black eye?” 
I stuttered for a bit “Um, it happened from the….”
“I gave it to him.” Golden Harvest said challengingly. “It’s high-time that he stops trying to fly with all these contraptions! For Celestia’s sake, he’s an Earth Pony, AND HE KEEPS BREAKING MY CARTS!” she screamed.
“It’s just because they’re always near the soft grass. I try to land there.” I replied, keeping my head down.
“I swear to the immortal sisters, if you break one more of my carts, you’ll be broken next time too.” Golden Harvest said evilly.
“Back off!” RD said, rushing between me and Golden Harvest.
“This isn’t your fight, Rainbow Crash.” Golden said “This is all that little freak’s fault. He’s just a….a Mistake.”
Golden’s words didn’t usually get to me like this, but I could feel a hot wetness around my eyes. 
“Apologize! Now!” Rainbow Dash said getting up into Golden’s face. “How dare you. You know how his life has been!”
“Well maybe it’s time he accepts it too. Maybe Ponyville doesn’t have a place for ponies like him.” Golden said viciously. I started to feel my tears run down my cheeks. I couldn’t stand any more of this. Rainbow Dash, being as loyal as she was, retaliated and started a fight with Golden Harvest. While they fought  and everypony watched, I silently stood up and walked towards the only place that gave me comfort in this town; the Everfree forest.
My name is Little Wing and I am not supposed to be alive. I was born to two pegasi, but I am an Earth pony. The doctors didn’t know what to say to my parents. Maybe it was genes, their environment, or something else. They just didn’t know why I would be an Earth pony, the first in my family. Nonetheless, my parents loved me. They raised me the best they could, until I was eight years old. They were two of the best weather-pegasi in all of Ponyville, and during the summer of my eighth year, a giant storm rolled into Ponyville, by some unknown force. I remember it because everything was silent and the clouds were a sheet of grey, and even though everypony was running around battering up the hatches, I stayed outside and watched the clouds roll in. They were so beautiful and comforting. But they held danger in them too.
During the night, the storms started with concussive blasts of pure thunder and strikes of hyper lightning. Unfortunately, the lightning was striking everywhere, be it Everfree forest, or Ponyville. My parents told me to stay in the house while they went out and helped the other pegasi fight the fires caused by the lightning. I did so and stayed up, waiting for their return and watching the flickering light of the flames in the night. I waited there all night, until I started to sneeze. I sucked in a deep breath to clear my lungs, but found out that I was sneezing because of smoke. I quickly started to panic, and ran to my bedroom door. I opened it and was almost consumed by flames. I quickly shut it and ran to my window. I opened it and started to scream with all my might to the ponies on the ground two stories beneath me.
I was about to jump when I heard something crack behind me. I looked up at my ceiling and saw the wooden beams of my bedroom start to bend and break. Before I could jump out of the window, two things tackled me back just as the wall above my window gave way. I was flung through my door and down the flaming stairs onto our kitchen table. I started to cry but saw that the things that saved me were my parents. I hugged them and they consoled me saying that we needed to leave. I nodded along with them and they picked me up and we flew to the front door. My father tried to open it, but it was stuck, so my mother held onto me while my father exasperatingly fought the door.
It creaked open and my mother flew me out first. My father was right behind her, but part of the second floor collapsed upon his back legs. We both screamed as he went down, my mother dropping me onto the cobblestone street in front of the house. In a dazed panic, she flew back into the house to try to free him from all the rubble. I started to cry and stood up, thinking I could help my parents too. As I reached the front door of what was my house, the second floor of the house gave way to all its burning weight. I saw my mother and father for one last time, looking at me with tear stained faces before they were buried by the rubble. I stood there, emotionless for a few minutes until grief took over me, and my screams of sadness brought on the rain.
I am now 18, but for the moat of my life I lived with different families until I reached the ripe old age of 16, when pony law declares a foal is now a stallion. However, I never received my cutie mark. The doctors say this is because of the trauma of my younger years, but I am a stallion now, so I might never earn it. So I learned to suck it up and carry on, just like I had from day one of being alone. Thus, I took up a job for the weather teams, working as the single pony on Ponyville’s ground-weather team. Basically, all I did was take measurements of the humidity, temperature, and air pressure. But more importantly, this was how I met Rainbow Dash. She was one of the only ponies who didn’t treat me strangely because of my lack of cutie mark or past. She is a true friend, and I know she always be there for me, even if I don’t want it.
Like this morning, for example. I knew I did wrong, but I also know that my flying apparatus is almost done. If I could finish it, I could fly with the rest of the pegasi, just like my parents did. I’m so close to finishing it, but it’s getting harder and harder to fix. 
“Oh well. I guess nothing’s going right for me today.” I said aloud as I entered the Everfree forest. The Everfree was the only place that I felt calm. While all the other ponies were scared of it, the shade of the trees and the quiet atmosphere appealed to me. I don’t know why but it just felt……right. It’s hard to explain, but I loved the place. 
I traveled further into the forest, humming a tune gently, until I came into my favorite place in the forest. The clearing had a large tree at one end of it, the tree which I sat under and always thought to myself, and was filled with grass that moved gently, sighing with the wind. I often sat under the tree thinking about my wings, the way my life was right now, how my parents died, and about all the wildlife I viewed. I often saw Timberwolves, manticores, and other such beasts in the forest, but they never attacked me. Sometimes when I was sitting under the tree, I would see their glowing eyes at the other end of the clearing, but they stood there and when I looked at them….they seemed to bow their heads. But that must have been my imagination, right?  
I sat there like any other day, thinking about my life and gently rubbing my blackened eye, wincing whenever I poked the bruised spot. ‘Why does Rainbow always have to be there?’ I asked myself mentally. She managed to always be there, whether it was when I was being picked on for my blank flank, or yelled at for some wrong I did accidentally. She always managed to defend me, even if it wasn’t wanted. But she didn’t know that. I could never tell her off. 
I hit the tree out of frustration and felt my face get wet. ‘Crying again? Great.’ I thought, before realizing I would have known if I was crying. I looked up at the sky and saw that it was a sheet of grey clouds and a gentle rain was pouring down from the clouds. The tree’s large canopy had kept me dry from the rain, so I sat back against the trunk and sighed. There wasn’t any harm sitting out a rain in a dry place. 
“Plus, it wasn’t like I need to be anywhere anyway,” I told myself as I remembered Golden Harvest’s words. I winced. Maybe Ponyville wasn’t a place for me.
A loud thunderclap shook me, mentally and physically. I jumped up knowing that being under a tree in a storm was not a good place to be. I wanted to run out from under the tree, but large blasts of lightning in the sky accompanied by howling gusts of wind sent me back under the tree. I tried to move, but the gusts of wind kept me lanced to the tree, getting stronger as I heard something strange. I sounded like there was flapping behind the gusts of angry winds. I couldn’t believe my ears as the sound got closer and the winds grew stronger and stronger. Eventually, it became hard for me to even open my eyes against the winds, but I heard it, the flapping of wings, the landing of something large, and a silence that meant I was at the heart of the storm. The winds died down and I fell down, gasping, sucking in a breath I never even knew I had given out. 
I picked up my head off the ground and gazed into the clearing with disbelief. Within my space of calmness and collectivity, laid a giant bird, bigger than any dragon I had ever read about and from the atmosphere around it, many times more powerful. I saw that it was resting, its massive eyes closed, so I decided it was time to go. I picked myself up and started to sneak out.
“Do…not leave.” said a voice millions of times stronger than the loudest thunderclap, yet as gentle as a spring shower. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. There I saw the giant bird’s eyes were half open. I wanted to scream and run away, but the eyes, as powerful as they were, seemed to be pleading with me. So I walked back to the bird and sat in front of its wickedly curved beak. It closed its eyes for a moment and breathed gently. I looked over its body and tried to find out what it was. It looked like an eagle, but its feathers were a strange color and it was MUCH too big to be a normal eagle. More importantly, it could talk.
“I am dying pony.” the bird said without opening its eyes or mouth. “I who am the oldest creature of this place, am dying.” it said, opening its eyes.
“I was old when the humans ruled this place, and older still when you ponies took upon that mantle. Your alicorn princesses both have forgotten me and my power will disappear with me when I die. But this is not natural. There must always be one of us.” it said looking directly into my eyes. “You pony, must now bear my burden. I ask your forgiveness.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, frightened.
“In all of the world’s various lives, there has always been one of us. Always one or more of us. But now, I am the last. But even if I die, my power must stay to keep this world in check. The power of the Thunderbird is to keep the world in peace through chaos. You pony, must inherit this power.” he said, closing his eyes and ruffling his feathers, creating tiny shockwaves across his plumage.
“But I am just a pony….I don’t even have a cutie mark….”
The thunderbird opened one eye and I heard chuckling like rumbling thunder. “‘Cutie mark’? Well that can be changed, but more importantly, you must make your decision. Accept me or decline. Please, I do not have much time left to find another. I can feel my death calling to me as we speak.” it said, starting to sound quieter.
I didn’t understand this whole “power” thing, but the thunderbird sounded so sad, and I somehow knew I could help it. A small voice inside of me told me to accept, not for the “power” but because it seemed so sad and alone. Just like I was.
“I accept.”
The thunderbird opened both of its electric blue eyes and smiled. “My name is Storm.”
“Mine is Little Wing.”
“Then I wish you peace, Little Wing. Let the world know who you are.” 
He opened his beak and let loose a scream unlike any other I had ever heard before. The sound wrapped around me, along with strong gusts of wind, loud clashes of thunder, flairs of lightning, and driving rain. I fell to the ground, my body and head pounding with the storm that had invaded me, empowered me, and become me. I started to feel every storm around the world, every single drop of rain and clash of thunder. I felt the ground below me vanish as I leapt into the dark sky, my domain, my home. I saw the Everfree forest miles below me and I could see Ponyville a couple miles away from that. I flew over the town and battered my wings and blinked my eyes bringing on waves of rain, symphonies of thunder, and explosions of lightning. 
I looked down at all the ponies running into their homes and the weather pegasi flying up to greet my storm. I smiled sinisterly, and readied to hit them with bolts of lightning.
“Remember who you are Little Wing.” said the thunderbird’s voice in my ear. I growled at him, but then the clouds near the pegasi shifted and formed into two new pegasi. I saw them and fainted, falling down to Ponyville’s lake. I might be the new thunderbird, but they were my parents. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Miles away, in Canterlot, Princess Celestia looked up from the correspondence she was writing to the King of the Griffons and looked in the direction of Ponyville. She had felt something she hadn’t in over two millennia. Her horn lit up and she quickly teleported into her sister’s room. 
Even though she slept during the day, Princess Luna was sitting at a chair near her window in her bedroom, her eyes on the storm clouds above Ponyville in the distance.
“Did you feel that too sister?” the princess of the sun asked Luna. She nodded. 
“I did not even know he was still alive.” Celestia continued. 
“Why would he create such a storm?” Luna mused.
“We should try to speak to him.” Celestia said as she leaned her head towards Luna. Both sisters closed eyes and touched horns. Their horns lit with a gentle light and they stayed like that for a moment, before pulling apart.
“That is strange.” Luna said.
“Indeed sister. It is like he is not even there….”Celestia replied. “I will send a letter to Twilight. Hopefully, she can find out what this means.”
“Be careful with your students Tia.” Luna warned. “He is not like a small parasprite infestation.”
“I know Lulu.” Celestia said gently. “But Twilight needed to meet him eventually and now is a good chance.” She walked to Luna’s door and opened it. 
“Tia?” Luna called.
“Yes Lulu?”
“If he is angry, we should do best to plead for his forgiveness. But, if he is fighting them…….”
Celestia’s gaze turned solid. “I know Luna. Not even we are a match for them.”

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Outside of the Equestrian border, in the rocky badlands, under the shadow of the doomed mountains, stood a small well. What a well was doing in such a place, no one will ever know, but it had been there since the beginning of the Alicorns, and even before then. The well never held water, but always decided the life or death upon the lands of the badlands. And now the well rang with a chorus of subterranean voices, chanting the same thing: 
The Storm, the Storm, it is here, and it must die!!!!!!