Hail Storm

by Brass Polish

1 Snow Alicorn

The weather team were a bit behind with Ponyville’s next snowfall, and now there were large patches of grass among the snow in town. And these green patches were only getting bigger because the Cutie Mark Crusaders would not abandon the plan they’d made yesterday to try making a large snow sculpture. Dozens of citizens were taking advantage of the decent winter weather to stroll in the park, so the three fillies had plenty of passers by to watch them work. It wasn’t easy sculpting a life-size alicorn out of snow; especially wet snow.

“Apple Bloom, try to add more snow to the mane,” Sweetie Belle said when they were nearly finished. “It’s gonna fall off.”

Apple Bloom clambered gingerly onto the snow alicorn’s back and promptly sunk into it.

“Little help?” she asked from within.

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo weren’t sure how to proceed. They didn’t want to climb onto their sculpture as well. It would surely collapse.

“I’m gonna try and use my magic,” decided Sweetie Belle.

Her horn glowed green. Apple Bloom felt herself begin to rise out of the hole in the snow alicorn’s back. But she was moving slowly, and Sweetie Belle was already exhausted. Scootaloo chose to contribute by hovering up and grabbing Apple Bloom by the shoulders as soon as she saw her appear. She was immediately wiped out as well with the effort, but the combined efforts of Apple Bloom’s friends succeeded in freeing her without damaging their artwork.

“Thanks, gals,” Apple Bloom smiled once she was back on the ground.

The sculpture’s mane fell off as Sweetie Belle predicted.

“Why do you even bother?” groaned an agonizing voice.

Sweetie Belle bared her teeth when she turned and saw Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon standing close by, Diamond carrying a Daring Do book on her back.

“You know why,” said Sweetie Belle. “We’re trying to find our special talents.”

“And look how far you’ve gotten,” Diamond Tiara said derisively. “You’re learning magic, just like every other unicorn. Scootaloo’s learning to fly, just like every other pegasus.”

“And Apple Bloom’s not getting anywhere,” taunted Silver Spoon. “She’s even lost her hide-and-seek skills.”

Diamond Tiara blocked a snowball by shielding her and her friend with her book.

“Play nicely, girls!” called a voice.

The five fillies saw Mr and Mrs Cake walk up pushing a stroller with their twin foals in it.

“Oh, it’s OK, Mrs Cake,” Silver Spoon lied. “We were just watching those three work.”

“And giving them some constructive criticism,” put in Diamond Tiara.

“Criticism?” repeated Mr Cake. “What’s there to criticize? Just give it a mane and it’ll be perfect.”

“Look out!”

Pound and Pumpkin bounced up and down in their stroller and cooed excitedly.

“Run!”

“Looks like they love it,” Mrs Cake smiled.

“Look out!”

Everypony looked up.

“Runaway hail cloud!” shrieked Silver Speed’s voice.

A large, dark grey cloud was tumbling down through the sky above Ponyville, and chunks of rock hard snow the size of eggs started spewing from it.

“Hurry, girls!” cried Mrs Cake as she and her husband began pushing their stroller away.

Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo ran alongside the Cakes. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had just begun to follow when they heard the twins cooing again. It wasn’t coming from the stroller. They looked frantically around and gasped. Pound and Pumpkin had left their stroller and crawled onto the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ sculpture while everypony had been looking to see what the trouble was. The runaway hail cloud came barrelling down. A downpour of ice was shooting down towards the snow alicorn. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon leapt towards the two yearlings and grabbed them, one each. The raining hail demolished the CMC’s snow sculpture in seconds. A nearby tree was pelted until some of its bark was stripped and some of its branches had fallen to the ground with the hail. The cloud itself hit the ground and burst loudly. More large snow chunks tumbled out and rolled all over the park grass. Benches, garbage bins and drinking fountains were punched and battered.

Silver Speed and several other pegasi dived down to the ground. Cup Cake and Carrot Cake were wailing.

“Where are our babies?!”

Panting, Silver Speed approached the spot where she’d seen several foals and the snow sculpture. Her heart leapt when she saw movement amongst the mess. Scrambling over the hail, she approached the spot and dug. Suddenly, she came across the beaten up, slightly shredded cover of a copy of “Daring Do and the Griffin’s Goblet”. She lifted it up. There was Diamond Tiara with Pound in her hooves, and Silver Spoon with Pumpkin in hers. All four were very wide-eyed.

“I’m so sorry, girls!” Silver Speed cried. “I overcompensated and added too many ingredients to my snow cloud. Are you hurt?”

Diamond Tiara stood up, her dented crown in danger of falling off her head. Pound Cake remained in her clutches, hugging her chest.

“We’re OK,” she said. “What about you two?”

Silver Spoon, both lenses in her glasses cracked, didn’t stand up. Pumpkin was hugging both her hooves.

“I think we’re OK, too,” she said.

Mr and Mrs Cake were over the moon.

“You saved them!” Mrs Cake said at the top of her voice.

“You two are heroes!” Mr Cake babbled.

“Oh, it was nothing really,” Diamond Tiara said with a wide smile.

Rainbow Dash, who’d been amongst the pegasi chasing the runaway hail cloud, seized Diamond Tiara’s wrecked book.

“Haha! A rescue worthy of Daring Do herself!” she chuckled.

Nearly hundreds of other ponies were walking over the spilt hail to crowd around the scene of the rescue and offer kudos to the heroes of the hour. Sweetie Belle hadn’t moved since the hail cloud had ejected the last of its snow chunks. She’d been watching everything going on where their snow alicorn once stood and her mind seemed to be jammed. As the crowd grew larger, Sweetie Belle finally looked to her friends. But Apple Bloom and Scootaloo were nowhere near her. She looked around. She heard their voices amongst the chatter.

“That was real brave!”

“I can’t believe you pulled that off! Way to go!”

Sweetie Belle’s bewilderment intensified. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, her best friends in Equestria, were also congratulating Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, the two ponies they hated with all their hearts.

“But… but… but…” she kept repeating.

Sweetie Belle had been there when the crowd had eventually broken up and the weather team was cleaning up the mess of hail from the park, but she hadn’t really witnessed anything. Morning turned to afternoon rapidly for her.

“Sweetie Belle, where have ya been?!”

Sweetie Belle looked. There were Apple Bloom and Scootaloo running up to her.

“The ceremony’s gonna start soon,” Scootaloo said.

“But… but…”

“Come on, let’s go watch!” Apple Bloom tugged Sweetie Belle’s hoof.

Sweetie Belle followed her friends to the town hall, still not quite completely present.

“Mares and stallions,” the Mayor took the podium, “we are here today to pay tribute to two brave fillies who risked their lives to rescue Pound and Pumpkin Cake from this morning’s hail storm!”

Applause broke out. Sweetie Belle looked up at the stage. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were smiling broadly at their admirers. Diamond Tiara’s bent crown had been replaced, and Silver Spoon now had new glasses on. In fact, just as Sweetie Belle had looked at them, someone standing behind Silver Spoon has tossed the old cracked pair of glasses away into the nearby garbage bin. Sweetie Belle quickly realized that it was Silver Spoon’s dad. Both of the praised fillies had their parents standing proudly behind them. All four of the Cakes were also on stage, clearly enjoying every moment of this. Twilight Sparkle was there as well, standing close to the Mayor as she continued her speech.

“The accident this morning might have caused a great deal of damage to our park and led to the suspension of a weather crew employee without pay, but thanks to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, there were no victims of the hail storm.”

More applause.

“But…” Sweetie Belle said again. “But…”

Twilight took the podium.

“It has been decided that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon may chose a reward for their actions,” she said before turning to the toasts of the town. “So what will it be?”

There was no hesitation.

“We want to meet A K Yearling,” Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon said together.

There was interested chatter in the crowd, but Twilight faltered a bit. Diamond Tiara seemed to notice this.

“That won’t be hard, will it?” she asked. “We know Rainbow Dash did.”

“Yeah. She won some kind of contest we’d never heard about and had a character based on her in the last Daring Do book,” Silver Spoon added. “Isn’t that right?”

Many eyes turned to Rainbow Dash, who looked as uneasy as Twilight.

“Uh, yeah, right, a contest,” she stammered.

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon mistook Rainbow’s uneasiness as remembering her excitement over meeting her favourite author, which only made their desire to meet her stronger.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Alright. We’ll make the arrangements.”

The crowd cheered. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon glowed.

“But they’re the biggest jerks in the world!”

Sweetie Belle had finally said what she’d been struggling to get out for hours. Sadly for her, after rescuing two yearlings from being pummelled by hail, no one in town would hear a word against Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Ponies around her began to glare at Sweetie Belle and mutter disapprovingly.

“They are!” Sweetie Belle persisted. “They treat anypony who doesn’t have a cutie mark like dirt! They don’t deserve any of this!”

Silver Tuna stepped forward from behind his daughter.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Sweetie Belle, is it?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you’ll find I’ve raised my Silver Spoon better than that,” Silver Tuna insisted.

There were mumbles of agreement among the crowd. Filthy Rich didn’t look as indignant as Silver Tuna. He had an expression that seemed to say even though Sweetie Belle had a point, he couldn’t hold it against his little filly.

“Sweetie Belle,” Rarity had made her way to her sister, “please don’t take their moment away from them.”

Sweetie Belle looked at Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.

“Don’t you two agree?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, they’re jerks,” nodded Scootaloo, “but saving Pound and Pumpkin’s still worth something.”

Apple Bloom didn’t protest. Sweetie Belle scanned the crowd for Gilt Eyes, who she was sure couldn’t possibly think Diamond and Silver deserved all this praise. When she finally spotted him, he didn’t look too bothered. When he caught her eye, he shrugged. Sweetie Belle fell silent again. Eventually, the matter was put aside and the hero ceremony carried on in front of the outraged unicorn filly’s eyes.

Later that week, Discord was mucking about with a glacier in the middle of a large ocean. His fun was interrupted by a scroll dropping out of his left nostril.

“Oh, which one’s writing to me now?” he asked himself.

He made a bet with himself that this letter was from Fluttershy, but found that Twilight had written it. He wasn’t disappointed though. Twilight was calling for a favour that he could easily honour. There was however a condition that Twilight imposed that he had to send another scroll explaining why she wanted this favour to Fluttershy. Once he’d finished reading, another scroll dropped out of his nose.

“For Fluttershy’s eyes only,” he read the writing on the outside of the scroll.

He smirked and magically changed his eyes to resemble Fluttershy’s. He began to open the scroll, but he quickly spotted an additional disclaimer stating that Discord was not allowed to alter his appearance in order to read the secret document.

“Ha! You’re too smart for me, Twilight,” he chuckled, restoring his eyes to normal.

He stuffed the letter to Fluttershy up his other nostril without reading another word of it.

By now, Sweetie Belle was beginning to think that nopony could see things her way. Fluttershy, having received and read the letter from Twilight, informed the Mayor, who made a public announcement that A K Yearling had agreed to make an appearance in Ponyville to meet Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. Sweetie Belle felt like the worst thing to happen in Equestrian history was about to happen. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo on the other hoof were quite willing to let Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon have their moment in the sun.

“We ain’t forgiving them for all their teasing or nothing,” Apple Bloom assured Sweetie Belle. “But this is separate from that.”

“You don’t get it,” Sweetie Belle said. “If they get to meet A K Yearling, they’ll get big heads and they’ll never let it die.”

“That’s probably true,” Scootaloo agreed. “But if you try to convince everyone they don’t deserve their reward again, you’ll just embarrass yourself more.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed,” insisted Sweetie Belle. “I was shocked. Why doesn’t anyone know how rotten those two are?”

“No idea,” said Apple Bloom. “I think some ponies think of them as youngsters who haven’t matured yet.”

“They’re the same age as us!” objected Sweetie.

“I think they think of us the same way,” Scootaloo frowned.

Determination to discredit Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon absorbed Sweetie Belle.

Author's Note:

Inspired by the Thomas the Tank Engine episodes Heroes, and Bill or Ben?.