//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: Tailspin 
// by michaelb958 
//------------------------------//

Thunderbird 1 flew through Equestrian airspace at a severely restricted speed, due to the high risk of mid-air collision. Even so, it took a mere fifteen minutes to reach Cloudsdale from the teleport pad, during which time Wild Fire (strapped securely into the other jumpseat) gave Scott and Alan a lightning primer on pegasus weather control ("That'd make a lot of things easier on Earth"), local government and culture ("So what happened to the Queen? ...touchy subject?"), and cloud cities ("I thought that was figurative!"). This was nowhere near enough to be prepared for seeing Cloudsdale, especially given the cloud city's precarious position at the centre of a cyclone.

Of course, this was more preparation than the herds of frightened ponies near the scene got, and there were very nearly major stampedes as a rocket plane made a dramatic appearance from the south, averted only by Wild Fire appearing from the hatch underneath and very loudly (with the aid of a borrowed megaphone) assuring everypony that everything would be just fine and if they could let the professionals do their job that would be great. With panic barely in check, Thunderbird 1's powerful weather radar gave Scott his first proper analysis of the task ahead, interrupted only by Wild Fire commenting that "it wasn't quite this bad when I left..."

"Alan, take the pod out and scope out the danger zone more closely. I'm going to land, power down, and see if I can't reassure the crowd."

"Wow, didn't know you were that much of a people person."

"...I'm not."

Questionable competencies aside, Scott landed his craft and prepared to play human damage control. Or maybe equine damage control, now that he thought about it.

Still, better me than Alan.





Fortunately for everyone involved, help was waiting at his landing site.

"Good morning, dear stranger. I'm Fleetfoot, local Wonderbolt commander."

"I'm Scott, from International Rescue."

"Before you ask, yes, we have tried to shut that thing down. It was just too strong by the time anyone called us."

"Apologies for having to ask, but how good are you?"

"I'm around the average, and I could about keep pace with you as you arrived over the crowd."

"Yikes. It's that bad up there?"

"Well, it looks like that thing you're flying has more wingpower behind it. I'd say you have more hope. Anyway, my apologies for having to ask, but ...what are you?"

"Uh... we call ourselves humans."

"Huh. Sounds familiar from somewhere. Anyway. Hey Wild Fire, pass the megaphone? ahem THIS IS SCOTT! HE'S A HUMAN! HE'S HERE TO HELP! There, that should deal with the crowd. It's always safer when the site is clear of civilians."

"That's exactly what I was going to say..."

"I get the feeling we'll get along fine."

Further discussion on what actually went on in a weather factory was interrupted by the return of Alan. "Couldn't work out much more, other than that it's slowly getting worse. I sent our data to John and he said it looks safe to go in, so might want to do less talking and more, y'know, fixing?"

Seeing the two pegasi don similar expressions, Scott decided that it probably was time to get moving. "Right. The idea is to locate the controls and turn the wind generator off?"

"If you do that, the cyclone should lose power, and we can clean it up from there."

"Alan, you think the pod can handle flying into that?"

"Uh, it should?"

"Great. I'd like one of you two, um, ponies to ride with me; you'll have a better idea of what to do inside than I will."

Fleetfoot volunteered (contrary to popular belief, you had to be well-qualified in weather manipulation to get anywhere near the Wonderbolts Academy). After managing to strap her in (the harness in the pod's back seat was less forgiving than the jumpseat on One), Scott and passenger rose into the air on four rotors to take the sting out of the storm.





Unfortunately, there was even more sting than expected.

"This isn't good!" Scott noted from the front seat as another gust buffeted the pod.

"It's not supposed to be this strong yet!" Fleetfoot agreed from the back seat. "What do we do?"

"What International Rescue always does: push on anyway!"

"Are you crazy?!"

"Probably, but that's never stopped us!"

Alan took the opportunity to observe from the safety of the ground that "Actually, it's stopped me a lot. Now Scott, on the other hand - I remember this one time in the Arctic-"

"Oh, like you can talk, Mister Must-Touch-Halley's-Comet!"

Fleetfoot began to wonder How does this organisation get anything done with all this bickering?, before remembering that she and Spitfire disagreed almost as often. She made a mental note to ask what a hal-ee's comet was meant to be.

Scott just pushed up the throttles and steered through the raging clouds as best he could.

A minute or so later, he still hadn't made any noticeable progress, and was unsettled enough that he called Alan to ask if he'd actually made any progress.

"Yeah, you've made it another thirty metres, and for the fifth time I haven't touched your precious flight controls!"

Oops, thought Scott, maybe I'm being a bit possessive of One. Then Thirty metres in a minute? That's hardly- and was cut off by a bang and a lurch that never stopped. His instinctive pilot's responses brought the pod to heel (mostly), and a quick look at the instrument panel revealed that something had crippled one of the turbofans. "Gaah! Turbofan three is dead, I can't stay in here!"

"At these wind speeds, not a chance! Gonna have to stop for once, big bro."

Scott Tracy could be described as stubborn, and capable of ignoring people around him reaching their breaking points, but he at least knew his breaking point, and got on with his equipment. Faced with both deserting him at once in the midst of a cyclone, he turned around and left - he might be IR-brand crazy, but that didn't mean he had a death wish.

Most of a minute later, he spoke again. "We've made it out, but this is getting really fierce. I'm going to have to take Thunderbird 1 in there."

Observers of Thunderbird 1's original entrance to the scene, polled at this instant, would have rated this plan much more likely to be successful than the one with the "dinky little yellow thing".