The day seemed to be slow to start because of the clouds hiding the sun. This was a major concern for all of Ponyville, because Rainbow Dash wasn’t scheduled to let it rain until the end of the week, and try as she might these clouds simply wouldn’t stay away; the rolling thunder prompted all the ponies to take shelter for the rest of the day. Work would be almost non-existent and some ponies would be bored out of their minds, but they would all manage to make due.
Twilight, predicting the severity of the storm well ahead of its arrival, worked together with Pinkie to gather all her friends in her library to wait it out safely and comfortably. It took a bit of convincing and a lot more pushing to get Applejack to leave her crops, and she was currently sulking in front of a window, watching as the rain began to pour and her crops waited to be picked. “Ah can’t believe ya couldn’t clear this up, Rainbow Dash!” she said crossly, interrupting their game of Monopony. “Y’all are just sittin’ there, playin’ yer little game, while mah crops are gettin’ drowned!”
Twilight clicked her tongue and tried to decide on buying Conneticolt Avenue, only sparing a small portion of her attention to Applejack’s griping. “Really, AJ, she tried, and there was nothing she could do. We all watched her try it most of the morning. Heck, most of Ponyville did!” She levitated the money she needed to buy the property, then lowered it down again as everypony else moaned. “What? I want to make sure it’s a reasonable investment!” she argued, performing multiple calculations as to her return and how often to upgrade her property if she were to buy it.
Rainbow Dash groaned and flipped upside down, cranky about being stuck inside and her inability to clear the skies. “It’s ponies like you that make this game take fooooreverrrrrr,” she whined, flipping onto her back and leaning halfway off the couch they pulled in from Allegretto’s home. “It’s not like it’s real money, Twilight! Just buy it or don’t!”
Twilight stared at the space for a moment longer, then finally ponied up and sent the money floating over towards Pinkie Pie, who had somehow, certainly without anyone knowing, become the banker, with Gummy sitting on her head to, as she put it, ‘help her count right‘. She took the money, a 200 bit note, and looked down at her haphazard pile of bills. “Let’s see… We don’t have any eighty bit notes…” She tilted her heard a bit and glanced up at Gummy, then smiled and nodded. “Of course! How silly of me!”
Twilight reached out her hoof to take her change, and wore quite the surprised expression when she felt the soft paper of the bottom of a cupcake. She turned it side to side, then glanced up at Pinkie with a confused and disapproving look. “Pinkie, this isn’t Monopony money. This is a cupcake.” She held the pastry as far as she could and wiggled it around a bit for emphasis. “A cupcake.”
Pinkie nodded vigorously, Gummy flopping back and forth, but defying gravity so deftly he barely slid an inch from her head. “Yup! We don’t have any eighty bit bills, so I decided to make cupcakes worth eighty bits! So you get a cupcake!”
Twilight looked to her friends for help, but they all just shrugged, not surprised in the slightest. “What did you expect when you made Pinkie the banker?” Spike asked, his bills fanned out in front of him like a poker hand. He grabbed the dice and threw them with a flick of his wrist, spinning them to land on double threes. “Oh, darn…” he cursed under his breath, reaching for the dice again.
Twilight gaped at them all. “But she’s the only one who has access to any cupcakes!” she argued, still holding the cupcake as she pointed at Pinkie. She looked around again to try and catch some look of agreement, but the others were losing interest quickly and were wandering away from the board.
Pinkie hopped up and laughed, bouncing around the room. “That means I win! I have a monopoly on the cupcakes!” she cheered, grabbing Gummy and dancing in a circle. The others were so relived to be able to leave the game they actually congratulated her, finally free to spend the stormy afternoon as they wanted. The storm raged on angrily, though, and each crack of thunder made them more and more worried.
Fluttershy gulped loudly and buried her head into Allegretto’s mane, trying to not shake and failing spectacularly. While he tried his best project a sense of calm for her sake, storms frightened him, and he began to breathe heavily when the rain became peppered with hail. “Hey, Dash, you deal with weather a lot. What are you predicting this storm will do?” he asked nervously, and was infinitely appreciative when Fluttershy put a wing over him and held him tight.
Rainbow Dash opened one eye and looked at them, huddled together near the doorway like that, and crossed her hooves in thought while all the blood rushed to her head and flushed her cheeks. “The thing is, I’ve cleared clouds way worse than this before. And when I tried, I couldn’t even touch them! It was like I was an earth pony!” She grunted and hid her face in her hooves, completely nonchalant as the lightning struck closer than normal and the thunder rumbled through them all. “I mean, it’s my job to clear the skies! How could I ever hope to be a Wonderbolt if I can’t even do simple pegasus chores anymore?!” She grabbed a cushion off the couch and screamed into it, kicking at the back of her seat as she did.
Scootaloo sat with her friends and watched her idol’s dreams crash before her eyes, feeling lower than she ever had before. While the older ponies knew that this wouldn’t affect Rainbow’s chances of being a Wonderbolt in the slightest, some young pegasus weren’t so logical, and it broke her heart to watch Rainbow Dash act so upset. She walked to the couch and began to stroke Rainbow’s mane, watching out the window as the wind whipped up and the upper branches began to creak and moan. It scared her terribly, and she yelped and hugged Rainbow as tight as she could as everyone else found someone to hang on to.
Rainbow glanced around the room and saw everyone huddled together, felt Scootaloo wrapped around her, felt the tree they were in begin to sway, and felt rage bubbling up inside her. Who did this storm think it was, trapping her friends and scaring them like that? How dare it not listen to her?! Didn’t it know who she was?! She was Rainbow Dash, the best flier in Equestria, and some little hurricane wannabe wasn’t going to stop her! She wrenched herself from Scootaloo’s grasp and flipped back off the couch, and before anyone could stop her she threw the door open and marched out into the howling winds, screaming something about ‘showing that storm who was boss’.
The others made no move to stop her, frozen in surprise and still clinging onto one another. Finally, a bolt of lightning struck very close nearby, and the booming thunder shook them into action, everyone shouting and running around to gather supplies to go out. In the midst of all the commotion, no one noticed when another pegasus went missing, sneaking out of an upper window. She barely had enough wing strength to not get blown around while gliding to the ground, and was constantly thrown side to side as she tried to run after her idol.
The ruckus continued in the tree until a loud, ear-shattering whistle made them all stop to cover their ears and look to the source of the noise. Applejack was standing next to Allegretto, and was giving him a appreciative wink. “Sweet apple cider, colt! Didn’ think there was a single pony out there that could out-whistle me!” He bowed, and she turned back to her now captive audience. “Listen! Ain’t nopony doin’ any good runnin’ around in here like a buncha wild stallions! We gotta get organized or Rainbow Dash ain’t gonna be the only one lost out there! Now, we better split up into two groups, one with me an’ one with Allegretto. We got the best whistles and loudest voices, so we can keep everypony together in our group. All right, I’ll take Twilight and Pinkie, Allegretto, you take Rarity and Fluttershy.”
Spike dropped the rain gear he had gathered in a pile in front of them, then spun to look at Applejack with a bit of hurt and outrage. “Hey, what about me?! I wanna help look for Rainbow Dash!” he protested, grabbing a poncho and flipping it over his head. “C’mon, I can help! Just give me a chance!”
Allegretto kept Applejack from responding and nodded, walking over towards the tiny dragon as the others listened to Applejack divvy up the town. He kneeled down and flicked the hood off of him carefully, a little pained that Spike wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Spike, I know how badly you want to help, but we really need someone to hang back and watch the Crusaders. We don’t need them running off like Rainbow Dash did. It’d be a big help, believe it or not.”
The little dragon glared at him and growled, angry beyond belief. “I can help by looking!” he argued still, throwing his arms up as he turned away, watching Applejack, Twilight, and Pinkie run outside towards Whitetail Wood as Rarity began to put her umbrella saddle on. Fluttershy slid up next to her colt and leaned her head on his neck, looking down at the little dragon as he fumed. “I’m so tired of everyone treating me like a little hatchling! I’m a dragon! A dragon! I can handle some rain and thunder!”
“But the fillies can’t, Spike. We need someone to stay back and watch them.” Allegretto moved his hoof slightly to rest on Fluttershy’s, drawing courage from it. The lightning crashed and he cringed, but fought to not show it as he tried to convince his little purple acquaintance to his idea. “We don’t have much time to argue this, Spike. Would you please just do this for me?”
Rarity rushed over and pushed both the ponies out towards the door. “What are we waiting for?! We don’t have time to argue! Spike, I’m trusting you to look after the girls, no arguments about it! We have no time to waste!” She shoved them into the howling winds without giving Spike a chance to argue again, digging her hooves into the ground to fight the drag her umbrella caused. “Oh, when we find that Rainbow Dash I’ll make her pay for what this rain is doing to my mane…” she grumbled, sloshing with her teammates through the mud towards the Apple Orchard.
“Priorities, Rarity!” Allegretto called, squinting against the stinging rain and biting winds as he raised his gaze to the sky. How any pony could ever conceive of going out in this, let alone someone preparing to go straight to the heart of it, was beyond him. And to fly, even! It was a chore in itself to walk, hooves sinking into the mud that covered most of the ground, and he couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be at the mercy of the winds. They were having trouble themselves, with Rarity’s umbrella and Fluttershy’s wings catching more wind than he was, and frequently he had to bite a tail or mane to keep them nearby.
Fluttershy tried to say something to him, but her words were caught by the wind and thrown to Celestia knew where. She tried again, but the timid little thing couldn’t manage to get a word out past the airy barrier. Finally she gave up on talking and pointed ahead, towards the loft of the looming Apple barn, and the huddled shapes that moved within there. The wind died a bit, but when she tried to talk for a third time the sky lit up and thunder boomed so loud their ears began to ring.
Rarity shook her head and ran over to her companions, trying to rush them over to the barn as quickly as she could. “Hurry! I think that may be Rainbow up there!” she cried, taking off towards the barn while Allegretto and Fluttershy tried to understand what was happening around them. Shingles from the barn began to snap off and fly around them, clattering against the ground and bouncing away into the apple trees, which were stripped bare save a few tenacious leaves. They tried to follow Rarity towards the barn, but the mud and water made for treacherous going, and one was forced to balance the other multiple times as they trudged on. By the time they made it into the barn, they were covered in flecks of mud and stuck with twigs and leaves, both feeling quite miserable as they ascended into the loft.
Upon arriving to the second floor, they did indeed find Rarity hunched over something, her frame blocking it entirely. She was muttering things to herself rapidly and tearing bits of her umbrella off to use for this something. Allegretto took a step forward, the floor creaking under his weight, and Rarity spun around to reveal a disheveled and writhing Rainbow Dash, grunting and moaning with pain. Her left wing was flapping around futilely as her right twitched against the floor, mangled and broken with the starts of a splint around it. “What are you standing there for?!” Rarity screamed, turning back to Rainbow Dash to try and calm her down. “I need help! Somepony needs to go get the others, and one of you needs to stay and hold Rainbow down while I try to splint this.”
There was no deliberation, as Allegretto spun to get the others and Fluttershy dashed towards her friend, the storm raging on, oblivious to the going-ons in its borders. Allegretto burst out into the storm proper and ran as quick as he could towards Whitetail wood, ignoring the increase in hail and the wind that was now blowing it right into his face. He fought against it best he could, his coat absorbing enough of the impact to help him push through, but he had to slit his eyes to protect them, and it made for hard navigation when everything farther than a few feet ahead with a roiling gray mess. Still, he had a friend to help, and he wasn’t about to let her down, so he pressed his tongue against his teeth and blew, producing a shrill whistle that barely made it above the cacophony of the storm. He trudged onward towards where his other friends were supposed to be, blowing whistle after whistle as the storm actually intensified, the gale actually making him slide back in the slurry. Something about it caused a bit of a tickle in the back of his head, but he ignored it and whistled again, this time getting some noise in return. Very faintly he could hear Applejack shouting back at him, and his next whistle brought them to him, three dark shapes emerging from the icy curtain.
Applejack had a little lump on her back, and with mounting horror he recognized the purple mane and weakly flapping wings of Scootaloo, his breathing coming faster and faster as they listened to boom after boom of thunder. He grit his teeth and began to shout. “We found Rainbow Dash! She’s in the loft of the barn! We should take shelter there!”
They hurried back as quick as they could, mindful of their possibly hurt little charge, and the storm just seemed to get stronger and stronger as the hail increased in size and frequency. Pinkie, who was usually bouncing and full of vibrancy, could only skip a bit as her mane deflected a vast majority of the hail. Still, it was getting colder, never a good sign for storms, and even she took a shot at complaining. “Grumpy old storm! It’s not winter yet, and this ice isn’t nice!” She slipped and fell headfirst into the mud, coming back up a veritable Pinkie Mud-Pie. “And this mud is a dud!”
They glanced at her friend, unsure if she was trying to be comical or if laughter was just that far ingrained into her mind, but knowing Pinkie the latter seemed much more likely. Nobody had much time to follow that train of thought before lightning crashed in behind them, the pressure and heat tossing them up and onto the Apple property. Applejack and Scootaloo had the worst luck of the bunch, as the lightning hit so close to them that they were thrown against the side of the barn so hard they left indentations in the wood, and the little orange pegasus let loose a wail that chilled them more than the weather could.
Shaking the stars from her vision, Applejack stumbled over to Scootaloo and tried to figure out why she had screamed like that, but she was befuddled from her possible concussion and the dull roar in her ears made thinking that much harder. She was still trying to figure it out as the others dusted themselves off and made their way over, each with varying degrees of pain showing. It took Twilight only a fraction of the time Applejack had been looking to see what had caused the little pegasus so much pain, and it made her stomach turn.
For the second time in a day, Allegretto was face to face with broken pegasus wings, and it did nothing to lessen his shock or sympathy. But while Rainbow seemed to have much more control over how much she let the pain show, the little pegasus hadn’t nearly the willpower, and she was busy crying as Applejack scooped her back onto her and limped into the barn, Pinkie close behind.
“Allegretto, wait for a minute,” Twilight called, and he stopped with one hoof in the barn as she motioned him back to where the lightning struck. The small patch of dirt was easy to find, even as it was turning back to mud, and Twilight stared up at the sky as Allegretto watched her, waiting for whatever it was she was about to do. “Don’t you think it was a little odd that lightning happened to strike us as we were all getting together?” she finally asked, ignoring the downpour for the time being.
Allegretto clicked his tongue once and turned his head slightly as he thought. “Weather can just be unpredictable, Twilight. What, do you think it’s something else?” Still, she had stirred the paranoia in him, and even now he recalled how the storm seemed to be keeping Fluttershy from pointing out where she thought Rainbow Dash was, and now he thought that maybe Applejack’s group may have coincidences like that themselves. “Could it be something else?” he said with a bit of incredulousness.
Twilight answered right as thunder boomed again, then nodded towards the sky as if this proved her point. All at once the clouds began to swirl and precipitation let up around them, building up for a true tempest. The sudden quiet gave way to an all-too familiar laugh, and Allegretto instinctively braced himself as his brother emerged from the rising mist, wearing another smug look that incited the worst in those around him. He was flanked on either side by dressed-to-kill pegasus, and they stopped on the other side of where the lightning struck, staring at them with an oppressive air of condescension. “Well, it’s a shame our ruse was found out so quickly. We were hoping to knock a few of your other friends down a notch, but three isn’t bad, now is it?”
Allegretto snorted and glanced at Twilight, who stood her ground next to him. While he respected her for it, right now he didn’t need somepony else getting hurt on his behalf, and he didn’t think his conscious could take that kind of abuse. “Twilight, please head back to the barn,” he said flatly, and the glare he gave her stopped any argument she may have had. She shot a look at Adagio before galloping off, leaving the brothers to their twisted rivalry. “You said I had a year.” He was on the verge of screaming, it took everything in him to resist the urge to charge.
Adagio inspected a hoof, grimacing at the mud that coated it, then glanced at his brother with that same grimace. “Years, months, seasons. I’ve never been very good at keeping track of things, much less time.” He nodded to the pegasus on his right, who reached into a saddlebag and produced a small present, which he tossed over to Allegretto’s feet. “I did, however, remember a birthday. I wanted to get your opinion on the gift I got for them. Father used to say you had good taste.”
Allegretto eyed them carefully as he bent to open the gift, and when they made no move towards him he focused his full attention on it. The second he did, the ribbon caught his eye, and his heart began to beat quicker as he recognized it as a bow-tie. Trying to not let his terror show, he shifted the lid to the side, and his vision became blurry as he began to cry. “You didn’t…” he whispered, unable to tear his eyes from the contents of the box.
“Not yet, brother, not yet,” Adagio sighed, cantering over to him and looking into the box over his shoulders. “She is such a beautiful little thing, isn’t she?” He lowered his mouth next to Allegretto’s ear, aware of how uncomfortable it made him, and exhaled with faux grief. “Oh, but you know how to make sure we don’t, don’t you? Just come with us, brother. Right now, just follow us, never look back, and she’ll stay safe. They all will.”
Allegretto swallowed the lump in his throat, and tried his best to not sob openly in front of a pony that would and will laugh at his sorrow. He carefully moved the lid back onto the box and made to pick it up, when a quick blow on the cheek kept him at bay. His face stinging and his spirit crushed, he slowly walked towards his escort as his brother grinned so wide his face seemed about ready to split. He kicked the gift to the side and pranced after them, humming to himself and dreaming of the return of his absurd profits.
Twilight had gotten back to the barn as quickly as she could and told her friends of the arrival of Adagio, and as soon as Rainbow, Scootaloo, and Applejack were bandaged as best as they could do they hurried back down to the lightning strike. It still wasn’t quick enough, and Allegretto was long gone before they arrived. The sun finally chose now to begin shining, trying its best to squeeze in a sunset as they tried to find some sign of where their friend may have went. It wasn’t long before Pinkie managed to come across a small present, crumbled and muddy, on the side of the path. Being the type of pony she is, she instantly yanked the top off and let it drop before staring at what lay inside. “I don’t get it?” she said, showing the contents to the others.
A broken cello bow.