//------------------------------// // Chapter 76. The Gathering Storm // Story: Dust on the Wind // by Sparky Brony //------------------------------// Once again, the plane kisses the pavement, this time at Orlando International Airport. Helen writes out the check for the service and we take off. Heading south on the Florida Turnpike until we turn at yeehaw junction, then we head west for a while. Finally we turn to a ferry landing. The van trundles onto the small ferry. And soon we are following the channels. I find myself looking up out the windows of the van. I can see pegasi moving clouds around. Soon the small ferry noses up to a dock, and the front is flipped down. Our van drives slowly down the concrete dock and to a small parking area. As we park, Moon Shadow hops from the driver’s seat and her magic opens all the doors. We pile out, too long confined, Star and I immediately take to the air. But we just keep off the ground. Irony shakes her head at the two pegasi of the family, a small grin on her face, I flash by her, planting a small kiss on her cheek. “Welcome to Joie de Vivre, Lightning Dust.” A stallion’s voice sounds. I turn and smile. The stallion has the same Cajun accent I remember from that one episode with Apple Bloom, off white coat with a dark mane, and…beard? The stallion steps forward, “I’m the mayor of Joie de Vivre, and it’s a pleasure to have you all here. I’m Bayou Beau.” I reach out a hoof, only to get it nearly shaken off, Bayou shakes hooves just like an Apple. I take a moment to introduce my herd. And everypony else gets the same treatment, though he really gushes at Sunset Shimmer. “Oh, Sunset Shimmer, I’m such a fan, I watched all the Equestria Girls movies, and you were awesome.” The golden mare blushes a bit, “Well, only the first two movies were somewhat accurate, Bayou.” “Well, you were awesome.” I clear my throat, interrupting his fanboying, I hover forward a bit, “You told me a couple of deer have shown up?” He nods, “Oh, yeah. Five of them, it’s the damndest thing. They look a lot like the deer I used to hunt. You have to really look to see the differences.” He starts walking, along with my herd, while he talks, “I think we are going to have to find some way to restrict hunting seasons. There were quite a few sent out to find the ponies before they were cursed themselves. That Discord, he was an evil cuss. He sent them all over. One grew up human all the way in Illinois. When she changed, she had to get here, during hunting season last year, poor thing. She didn’t get shot, but she had a few close calls.” He moves over and nudges me a bit, “Likely gave a couple of hunters a heart attack, her screaming at them to not shoot.” I chuckle, I was a hunter, though I don’t anymore. Don’t have the appetite for venison anymore, but Hannah and Dylan do still hunt, from time to time. Though with the emergence of equestrian deer, they’ve had to be really careful. Soon we are walking through the town. It’s easily as colorful as Ponyville, or New Beginnings. They have the same type of farmers market set up, though the town itself, with nearly twenty thousand ponies for population, actually covers most of the island. A lot of the land around the south part of the island is pony owned farmland. I look around, pegasi are flitting everywhere, “So, is this town mostly pegasi?” He chuckles and shakes his head, “We’ve got a lot of pegasi, several thousand. Most of them are either handling the weather all over this region, or they have other jobs in town. But mostly, we have earth ponies. Our farmland has been very bountiful.” He sits and looks at me, “We’ve been quite fortunate, Lightning Dust. Between weather income, and farm income, and most of all, our tourist income, we’ve been quite prosperous.” I land, a little surprised, “Tourist income?” He smiles, “Oh, yeah. We’ve got tourists from all over the world visting. At first it was exclusively bronies who visited. But over time, more humans visit all the time. Since we are real, and that toy company’s trademarks were invalidated, we are a nice little tourist trap. Humans from all over come to see the ponies live their lives. We sell a lot of pony made crafts, we have tours of the town. Festivals, all kinds of celebrations. We welcome the humans here.” I chuckle, “A lot of the residents of New Beginnings feel insulted by the bronies.” He guffaws, “Oh, some of the ponies here felt the same way, felt that the bronies were just insulting us. But we decided it was mostly honest affection from a show they loved. I can’t fault them that, being a pony is awesome.” I know that. I follow him to the town hall, as we are escorted in, a large stag is sitting there, at his ease. Four does are there as well. The stag steps forward, “Greetings Lightning Dust, I am Lord Rosethorn. With me are Persimmon, Olive, Pear, and the youngest is Lychee.” He says, pointing at the other deer. I bow formally, “A pleasure, I have been in communication with Prince Bramble, of the Everfree deer. He has asked me to find the deer that Discord has cursed, and send them home.” Lord Rosethorn bows back, “Thank you Lightning Dust. We know some of what’s going on.” He shakes his head, “That evil creature, Discord, did horrible things in Equestria. We were able to get around, and meet some of the ponies before he got us. Sharp Thorn and his party was separated from us, he got them first, it was a few weeks before he got us.” He shudders. “I know you have homes here, you’ve been here a few months, but I am here to offer you refuge in New Beginnings with Sharp Thorn and his companions.” He looks back at the does, then back at me, “Thank you, Lightning Dust, we will consider your offer. Though I like the idea of being with other deer.” The does all nod, getting a smile from me. “The offer will stand, my Lord.” I get a gracious nod from the stag. *** Several hours later, we are continuing to tour the city. One thing I’ve seen that amazes me, a lot of Equestrian non pony life has made it here, a full dozen minotaurs are here, hippogriffs, griffons, donkey’s, mules, and even zebras. And the humans, oh dear Celestia, the humans. Some are obvious bronies, wearing pony t-shirts, or wigs, or carrying plush dolls with them. But what surprises me the most, the humans without any indication of love of ponies are here. One furniture shop has a good dozen humans browsing the merchandise. I trot up to a human, “Fan of the show?” The woman turns and blinks at me, after a moment, she shakes her head, “Oh, I’d never heard of the show.” I cock my head to the side, “So, why are you here?” She giggles, “Are you kidding? You ponies make some of the best furniture around! Ikea or Joie de Vivre, pony work wins every time.” I sit down, “Really?” She nods, “I’ve got a dining room table and a sofa so far, and I’m buying more. I’ve got little kids, and the sofa doesn’t hold stains, it stands up to the abuse wonderfully.” I thank the woman and move on, one man tells me the fresh grown crops here are better than anything at the grocery store. Another woman tells me the carvings are the best. I smile, this town is very prosperous, the ponies have made a happy life here. Symbiosis with the humans. And both sides are happy with the arrangements. *** My family is scattered all over this town, three days so far, enjoying our time here. I’m enjoying a wonderful lunch at a creole restaurant. I’m interrupted by a droning howl. Looking around, in response to the howl, the pegasi are heading for the ground. Then, the rhythmic thump of a helicopter starts to get close. It only takes a moment to determine where the sound is coming from. A helicopter is coming, flying low. That’s why the alarm sounded, a ward for the pegasi to keep clear. The side of the helicopter says air ambulance, so that answers my question. I take to the air, keeping well clear of the chopper as it flies over the town. Soon we are on the northwest side of the island, near the fairly large hospital. The helicopter lands on a helipad near the building as a half dozen ponies pile out from a building entrance facing the helipad. Two get out, one a human, the other a unicorn, as the blades slow down. They yank open the door on the side of the helicopter and pull out a stretcher, then a second one. The other ponies from the hospital surround the stretchers. One of them has two ponies on board, strapped down. The other stretcher has a human, also strapped to a backboard. The staff of the helicopter and the hospital staff are chattering to each other as the stretchers are wheeled in. I’m not hospital staff though I land near the emergency entrance to the hospital. I push through the door, and watch momentarily. The staff is swarming over the ponies and the human. It seems the healers are working hard to help them. One of the healers moves back, a happy sigh escaping from her. I trot over, “What happened?” She looks at me for a moment, then recognition flashes in her eyes, “Oh, Hi Lightning Dust. It was a pretty bad car wreck on the Turnpike. We’ve got them stable.” I look at the patients, “So, they are going to be okay?” She nods, “The pony driving apparently fell asleep, drifted into the other lane. Offset head on collision, at least she was slowing down when her magic failed.” “The poor human.” She chuckles, “I know, just having a car drift into your lane. Very scary. But he’ll be okay. We’ve healed a couple of broken ribs, his arm was broken as well.” I look at the ponies, one of them is starting to come around, her wing extending, I look at the healer, “Well, if a pony is going to drive, they need to make sure they aren’t going to fall asleep mid drive.” She nods, “Safe driving tip number one, be rested and alert while driving.” She turns and draws me along, “I know you ponies from Montana are visiting, feel free to look around the hospital. We are a decent size for the area. We are the trauma center for the area as well. We have therapy areas too, including hippotherapy, and other types of physical therapy that ponies are good at.” I put a wing over the healer and pull her into a hug, “Thank you.” I get nuzzled by the mare in return, “No worries. Keep doing what you do best, Wonderbolt.” I trot throughout the hospital. The patients are a mix of human and pony, though I think there are more humans here. There is a large children’s hospital section. While cancer is out of reach for most of the pony healers, we can heal some other ailments that are common to humans. So in the end, a pony staffed hospital ends up having quite a few human patients. A service we are happy to supply. Good health is an important part of life, a tenet of pony life. I trot out of the hospital proper, and end up in a large semi-open stable. I walk through the air curtain, into the large, cool building. A well maintained dirt floor, stalls with plenty of Earth horses. Though one of them really catches my eyes. This mare is walking, with a small boy, maybe six years old, on her back. She’s whinnying her way through eponese, the pony language. She’s wearing a bridle, a name is emblazoned on it, Avira. Something tickles in my mind. But what gets me, her color is more equestrian, a pale lavender. Her eyes are bigger than a earth horse’s as well, but her head is more earth equine shaped. Holy hell, they have a pony blanking here, and it’s bad. Her cutie mark is gone. I rush forward, I tap my Bluetooth, “Call Mindy.” I shout when the tone sounds. I take to the air, gently pulling the child off of her back, and hoofing him over to his mother, with profuse apologies. I’ve been in pretty bad shape, but my cutie mark never disappeared. “This is Mindy.” Comes over my ear piece. “Mindy, I need you here, right now. I found a pony, it’s blanking, like I did.” “On my way.” By the time way is out of her mouth. She’s blinked right next to me. I’m standing in front of the horse, a confused look on her face. “It’s okay, Avira. We will help you.” I say in English. “But I’m okay.” She responds in Eponese. I look at Mindy, “We need to get Moon Shadow here.” Mindy is on her back, all four hooves in the air, she’s laughing. I look down at Mindy. “Mindy…” She is laughing so hard she can’t breathe. “Mindy, this is a pony’s life we are talking about.” Mindy hiccups as she tries to stop laughing, then falls over in peals of laughter again. “Mindy, please?” “Oh, Dustie. I can’t believe you would do that kind of joke.” I look at her, completely confused, finally she flips onto four hooves, “Avira here isn’t a pony, she’s a horse. A Saddle Arabian.” What? Mindy gets up and bounces over to Avira, “I didn’t know Discord got horses in Saddle Arabia.” She says, cupping Avira’s muzzle with her hooves. Avira looks down, “Saddle Arabia?” Mindy easily shifts to Eponese, “Oh sweetie, I can’t believe you are found. We need to get you home, you don’t belong here, you are royalty.” Both her and I jerk, “Royalty?” Mindy turns and looks at me seriously, “Oh yes, Avira here was a delegate to Equestria. She’s a member of the royal family there.” She turns and adopts a scolding tone, “What are you doing letting humans ride you?” She shakes her head, “I’m a horse.” Mindy giggles, “So?” The pale lavender horse scuffs a hoof on the dirt, “I’m a horse…so I got a job that a horse could do.” Mindy rolls her eyes and snorts, “And the ponies here didn’t know who you were?” A head shaken no. “Well, silly billy, we’ll take you to New Beginnings, and when the portal opens, you can go home.” She looks confused, “Some of the other horses here, and I know they were born here, they speak.” Mindy looks at me, and back at her, “They speak Eponese, like us?” She nods, “A few. But they all understand us.” Once again, our magic is affecting everything around us. Mindy gets next to Avira and walks with her, “Come on Avira, we’ll get you settled in. And when we go back home, you can join us.” I shake my head, amazing. *** “Looks like we have a new crop of speedsters.” I say, looking at the dozen or so pegasi foals arrayed in front of me. All of them are looking at me expectantly, I’m not a teacher, but I’ve been asked to talk to a new group of speedsters in junior speedster camp. These foals are between four and six years old. They’ve learned a bit about flying from their parents, if their parents are pegasi. But all of them have the potential to be speedsters, like myself. “Today, we are going to learn control on takeoff. Does anypony know why we must control our energy on takeoff?” Not a single hoof raises in the air, I almost feel the desire to sigh, then I remember, they may have grown up here, but their parents likely don’t have the knowledge to be able to teach the young pegasi everything they need. I smile anyway though, “There are actually a couple of reasons, as Equestrian pegasi, our wings are too small to allow us to fly. So how we fly is with our magic. Our wings are the conduits for our magic. When you spread your wings, getting ready to fly.” I spread my wings and naturally crouch, “We aren’t just getting ready for that first down stroke, we are gathering our magic. Ready to use it to get us off the ground. But remember, you must be balanced to be able to fly, all your balance to the back, you’ll do a backflip and eat dirt.” To exemplify, I flap hard, letting my center of balance be too far back, I do a short backward loop, landing on my forehooves. I let my rear hooves touch the ground gently. “Conversely, if you shift too far forward, you’ll end up eating dirt again.” I smile at them, “Eating dirt sucks, little ones.” I spread my wings again, keeping my weight balanced correctly, “Doing it right, you can simply hover, as a speedster, you’ll find you don’t like being grounded, you want to be in the air, or up high. All of you are here because your parents found you up high, or you were using what control you have already to get off the ground. It’s an instinct for speedsters.” I let my hooves come to rest on the ground. One of the foals raises a hoof, and I point at him, “You were saying control your energy, balance isn’t energy.” I nod, the six year old has a good point. “Right, and that is where the next part of the lesson comes in. Without years of training, you will find it very hard to keep balanced on takeoff. So, if you pour all your energy into a takeoff, and your flight will be short. So, you have to learn to control your takeoff energy, and you have to learn to manage your balance.” I flap my wings gently to get off the ground, just hovering a foot or so off the ground, “Most of the time, what I just did is all you need to get off the ground, then you take off in the direction you want to fly.” Another foal raises a hoof, “But Miss Dust, you were a Wonderbolt, you didn’t just take off like that when performing.” I nod again, “That’s right. As I said, most of the time, a gentle takeoff is what you need. And that is what I’m going to teach you today. Hot takeoffs are for another day.” A chorus of groans, “Hot takeoffs are rude to any unicorns nearby. You can give a sensitive unicorn an instant migraine by taking off too hot. Add in the fact, if you are a strong speedster like myself, you can leave a crater behind with the energy you used.” I look around at all of them, “And you are using energy that is better spent on flight. Managing your energy reserves is also a big part of being a speedster. You run through too much of your magic, you risk magical exhaustion, and if it gets severe enough, you could end up falling from the sky.” My smile widens, “And that sucks too.” I clap my hooves together, “Okay class, what is rule number one as a speedster?” A dozen voices intone, “Watch your power on takeoff.” I smile and nod to their normal teacher, who comes forward. I move off to the back of the class, where Irony and Moon Shadow are standing. Practical teaching will be later in the afternoon. Irony giggles, “Oh love, watching you teach, that’s funny.” I roll my eyes, “How did I get roped into this?” Moon Shadow snorts, “You said yes when you were asked, there aren’t very many speedsters down here. You aren’t all that common. But having a dozen pegasi speedster foals is a good thing. One or two of them might be as fast as you are, from their magical tests.” I snort, “Nopony is as fast as me.” I get nuzzled by Irony, “There’s Rainbow Dash.” “She’s in Equestria, not here.” They both laugh at me. *** Irony and I walk sedately into the guard station, to be greeted with the sound of a party horn, and a pair of bright purple eyes in front of me, “Lightning Dust!” Then I’m assaulted with a hug that bowls me over. I finally am able to make out the white coat with the yellow blonde curly mane. “Holy shit, Surprise!” The white pegasus standing over top of me giggles, “None other.” I find my ears falling, “So, Discord got you too, huh?” Her ears fall a bit as she nods, then she brightens, “Actually, a good number of the Cloudsdale Wonderbolt team ended up here.” I cock my head to the side, “Why didn’t you come to the Wonderbolt academy at the Rim of the Sky, at the very least, you could have trained the rookies.” She giggles, “I’m a guard member here, Dust. I’m not abandoning Joie de Vivre to help train other pegasi. Our job is to protect the ponies.” “Do they need a lot of protection here?” She looks down, “More than I would like. Before we set up tourist accommodations, any human that could get across about a hundred feet of water came when they heard about the ponies. Florida is fairly densely populated. We got some really bad people here.” I frown, “Bronies?” Her ears flop as she shakes her head, “Oh, no, just perverts. Rapists, murderers, the dregs of human society. Over the last five years or so, we’ve had three ponies murdered, and a half dozen rapes from humans.” I growl, “So, you’ve got wards to warn you if someone is crossing to the island?” She nods, “Yeah, it’s keyed to humans, so we get less false alarms. The ferry follows its route because we wanted some security, and some control as to who visits us. Some of the unicorns have been really helpful at creating wards.” They are good at that, aren’t they… Surprise looks around, “Where’s Mindy?” I think about it for a second, do I want Mindy and Surprise in the same room together? Dear Celestia help us, I smile, “I think she’s around. She should be visiting later. Right now it’s primarily EUP guards right now. Training day and all.” She looks down, “Awww, I wanted to party with her.” I chuckle, “I’m pretty certain she’ll want to party with you, Surprise. But can we focus on training for now?” Surprise puts out a wing and I give her a wing five. Twenty minutes later, we are in armor and sheathed blades. I bow to Surprise. “Oh, pretty wingblades, did you have them custom made?” I giggle, “Yes, Irony made them, before she met me.” She frowns, “You have to be pretty precise to measure them.” I nod, “I know, she just knew, somehow. She didn’t even know they were for me until we went to fight Discord.” She answers with a low whistle. I look around at the other guards here. Irony already has hustled the earth ponies and the unicorns off for their melee training. I’m going to test out the pegasi here. I think I’m going to mix it up, some of the more advanced fighting techniques are air to air, with some altitude. A squadron of pegasi, a full one hundred forty four, twelve flights of twelve pegasi, follow me into the air. I set them to pair off with each other, and keep watch. A few support pegasi are on hoof, in case a pony is actually knocked out of the air, for safety’s sake. Pegasi can play rough, it’s our nature. An hour of them sparring only has two on the ground due to injury. Surprise has won every spar she’s come up against. That mare is crazy fast. I put a hoof on her next opponent’s withers, the tan mare sighs in relief as she hovers away. One of the support ponies is bringing the whistle to her lips when something about my earring just grabs my attention. Somepony is in trouble. I look down, smoke is rising from the training area. Oh shit. It’s Irony. Surprise has noticed my being distracted, she looks down and her eyes widen. “Everypony, to the training yard!” She shouts, and all the pegasi dive. I’m the first to slam into the ground. “Irony.” A voice calls, I know that voice. Where is she? How did she survive? The smoke is too thick, where is she? I put a hoof to my ear and concentrate on Irony. She’s to my left, about forty five feet. I flash that way and stop next to her. She’s holding her middle, gasping in pain, she says three words that chill me to my core, confirming what I heard, “It’s the clone.”