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Chapter 3

CHAPTAR 3 HIE STORY

Greg woke up when the sun was still down. According to what he heard from Twilight, this meant Princess Celestia still hadn't even woken up to raise the sun. Cursing himself for agreeing to wake up at such an hour even Celestia herself refused to grace it with her presence, he made his way to the shower outside his room.

After fumbling with the knob, slipping and accidentally burning himself with extraordinarily hot water, he managed to use a wing to turn back the dial to somewhere more in the comfort zone. He washed his mane and coat before letting the water just flow over him. Sighing, he removed himself from his little piece of heaven and shook himself dry. It wasn't very effective in any other way except that he got the floor and mirror wet with droplets of water. He decided he would be dried soon enough after a little flying anyways, and made his way to the door and downstairs.

He ate a quick breakfast of cereal and toast. He realized he would miss meat, but decided to keep that to himself. It might scare other ponies.

He was helping himself to his third bowl of cereal when Rainbow Dash came flying downstairs.

“Oh hey, you're up!”

Greg nodded, “Uh, yeah. You know there's a door right there right?”

“Pft, doors are for losers” She stuck a tongue out at him, and then wolfed down his bowl of cereal. “Brush your teeth and let's go, we only have a few hours before we're needed in the skies.

He flew upstairs and quickly brushed his teeth. He then met Rainbow Dash in the air above the Library and they flew to a nearby group of clouds.

“Alright, our assignment today is pretty basic. A shower in the morning and then clear skies the rest of the day. You're going to need to know how to make them start raining, and how to get rid of them.”

She flew up to a cloud and demonstrated this by jumping up and down on one of the clouds. It responded by releasing its water, soaking the ground below it.

Greg in awe watched as she kicked the cloud afterward, causing it to disappear. “That's awesome! You must never run out of water or anything if you can just do that.”

Rainbow shrugged, “It's mostly just the ponies at the weather factory up in Cloudsdale that do all the planning, I just jump on the clouds.” She flew up and dragged another cloud above where they were standing. “What are you waiting for? Get over here!” She flew aside and landed on the other edge of the cloud. Greg sprang from where he was standing a fluttered up to the cloud.

He prodded the cloud with his hoof, not knowing exactly what to do. Rainbow saw this look, and motioned for him to continue. He took a deep breath, bent down, jumped up, flapped his wings once and then smashed back down the cloud.

The roar of thunder ripped through the cloud as a bright lightning bolt shot out below it, and hit the ground, leaving a nice scorch mark where it had hit. He cringed. Rainbow just laughed, “Hey! We're aiming for a nice little shower, not a ground scorching lightning storm!” He started to apologize, but Rainbow cut him off, “Just use a little less force this time, alright buddy?”

He turned his attention back towards the cloud. Rainbow flew in place in front of him going through the motions in midair. He bent down, jumped up, flapped his wings once and then hit the cloud again with what looked like the same force Rainbow had. He saw her rose colored eyes roll as he realized he had put too much power into it again. Looking down, there was a flash of rose colored lightning that left a scorch mark right next to his previous one. Rainbow gasped.

“Dude, was that light pink lightning?”

He shrugged, unsure what the significance of it was. He hadn't seen different colored lightning on earth either, but then again, he hadn't seen talking ponies there either. “I guess?”

“OhmygoshOhmygosh! That's not supposed to happen! I've never seen anypony do that before!” She flew down and plucked something off the ground. As she brought it closer he realized it was one of the purple flowers grown behind the Library. “Can you do this color?”

He focused on the flower, and started the motion again, not taking his eyes of the flower. He bent down, jumped up, flapped his wings once and then smashed back down the cloud. Sure enough, a purple lightning bolt struck the ground. Dash stared awestruck.

They continued with all sorts of colors. Green, blue, yellow, orange, red. Success every time. After Twilight yelled at them to keep it down out there, they decided it was probably time to get going, and after a brief recap, Greg decided that since he weighed a good deal more than the slender pegasus, he could simply use a light jump, or pound the cloud with his fore hooves to release the rain.

They flew over to the other side of Ponyville where they were met by the other members of the weather team in Ponyville. Rainbow provided them all with instructions, and soon they had Ponyville blanketed with a cover of clouds. They got to work jumping on the clouds, and the rain began to cover Ponyville.

About an hour later, Rainbow announced that they had met the required rainfall amount and were free to go once they cleared the clouds. Greg kicked away a few clouds and carried one over to by the Library were he settled down for a nap.

“Hey there, Lightning” Rainbow landed next to him on the cloud. “I wasn't going to say anything, but I figured you would be scared if you found two random tattoos on your flank in the shower or something.” She stuck a tongue out, “Congrats, you're no longer the oldest blank flank I've ever known.”

Sure enough, when he leaned over to find out what she was talking about, he found two clouds on each flank with lightning bolts coming out of each cloud. “Come on, lets go show Twilight.”

They lept off the cloud and into the Library, were Twilight was still looking sleepy from just waking up. “It's already noon Twilight! Even I'm normally up by now!” Dash scolded playfully.

Twilight smiled, “Hey Rainbow, hey Greg, how was your morning?”

“Great!” Rainbow exclaimed. She jabbed Greg in the side, “Bright flanks here has something to show ya though!”

Greg turned to the side and revealed his newly acquired cutie mark to Twilight, “Bright flanks? Really Rainbow?”

“Hey, until you come up with an actual name for yourself, I have to call you something don't I?”

Greg just rolled his eyes, “So what do you think Twilight?” Twilight got up and examined his cutie mark.

“Is your talent dealing with storm clouds?”

“Please Twilight, how lame would that be?” asked Rainbow, “Remember when we were making lightning outside the Library before the showers?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, “Yes?”

Rainbow flew over and picked up Twilight, who protested but let her carry her outside. Greg followed them and flew up onto a cloud.

“Pick a color Twilight! Any color!” he called down.

Twilight thought for a second, “Lavender”

“Easy enough.” He focused on Twilight's coat. He went through the same motion he had before, and out came a color similar to Twilight's coat in lightning. Her jaw dropped. “That's incredible Greg!”
He grinned wildly as he flew back down. They walked back inside the Library. “I've never even heard of that before!”

Rainbow gasped in mock horror, “Twilight Sparkle, personal student of Princess Celestia, Librarian of Ponyville, doesn't know everything?!?”

Twilight laughed, “Yeah yeah Rainbow, laugh it up. Still, that is really cool Greg.”

“I guess, but I thought your cutie mark was supposed to tell you what you were supposed to do, career wise. As far as I can tell colored lightning isn't much more than a cool trick.”

Twilight was quick to respond, “Of course not! I'm sure someponies would love to see a little bit of flavor in their next lightning storm.”

“Yeah! I could totally get you a job as a weather pony here. Part time at first, but you probably don't want to be working full time just yet anyways.”

Greg grinned, “That'd be great Rainbow”

“Sure thing. You might want to decide on a pony name before we do the paper work though. Unless you want to be known as Greg forever.”

Greg laughed, “Is it really that weird?”

Twilight nodded, “A little bit”

Greg paused, “What was it you called me earlier Rainbow?”

Rainbow blinked, “Bright flanks?”

“No! Before that, when you first flew up to me on the cloud”

Rainbow laughed, “Oh, Lightning?”

“Yes! Lightning!” Greg snapped, “How about Lightning, Dash?”

“Lightning Dash? Way to be original. No stealing my last name.”

“That wasn't what I meant. But do I really need a last name?”

“Sure, everypony has one” said Twilight.

“But what about Rarity? Or Fluttershy? Or Applejack?” asked Greg.

“Oh, their names are-” Twilight answered, but an unfortunate accident outside involving a piano, an anvil, a cat, and a confused looking pegasus mailmare muffled her answer.

Greg took this into consideration, “Fine. How about Lightning... Flash!”

Rainbow thought for a moment, “I like it!”

“I think it's fitting.” Twilight agreed

“We can do the paperwork and everything tomorrow, for now we should go celebrate or something.” said Rainbow. Not quite sure what celebration entailed, Lightning agreed and followed the ponies out the door.

As it turned out, celebration entailed a trip to Sugarcube corner and lots of cupcakes. Pinkie had wanted to throw a Congrats-On-Getting-Your-Cutie-Mark-And-Choosing-A-New-Name party, but the idea was shot down when she was reminded they had just had a party yesterday. Pinkie was still happy to provide the group with plenty of cupcakes. They had just settled down when Rarity and Fluttershy walked in.

“Greg! What a pleasant surprise! Although I'm sorry to see you aren't wearing the outfit I made you.”

“Actually, it's Lightning Flash now!” said Lightning, “And I would have gladly worn the vest and everything, except...” He pointed to his coat, which was covered in cupcake frosting.

“Lightning Flash?” asked Fluttershy

“Just a second, sit down over here and I'll show you.” He flew away from the table they were sitting at and put 2 more chairs down by it, offering them for Rarity and Fluttershy. After they had seated, he dashed outside and grabbed a cloud, bringing it over to the window next to where their table was.

He looked inside at the ponies, trying to decide a color. He decided that since Fluttershy had asked the question, he would start with the color of her coat. He buried his mind in the soft yellow of Fluttershy's coat, and jumped up to create a bolt of lightning. Not stopping to look down, he immediately tried the purple of Rarity's mane. After going through the array of colors that were in Rainbow's mane, all the pink shades of Pinkie, and Twilight, he kicked the cloud away and flew back to the table the ponies were sitting at.

“I never knew pegasus could do that before!” said Rarity.

“Oh, we can't, just Flash here.” Rainbow playfully slugged on the foreleg as he sat down.

“I thought it was great.” said Fluttershy.

“Indeed, very entertaining” followed Rarity.

Lightning grinned, “Thanks.”

They left cupcake corner before it was too late in the afternoon, so Lightning decided he would go somewhere to practice his lightning. He flew his way over to an open field not too far from the Library. After a while it got too tiresome to keep jumping up and down on the clouds, so he tore off a bit of one cloud and flew down by a tree. He hit the cloud with one hoof, and was pleasantly surprised to see that a bolt of lightning came out. He tried again and imitated the same soft yellow he had before. This gave him an idea, and he flew up to get more chunks of cloud, placing them in the air infront of him. Once the design was complete, he quickly tapped all the cloud pieces in front of him as a certain color.

In front of him was the outline of a yellow coated pegasus with a pink mane, created by lightning. He stepped back to admire his work. It was a while before the lightning fizzled out.

“Very creative.” He jumped as a voice to the side of him appeared. “Oh, hey Rarity. Thank you”

“Impressive, you really do have a talent for lightning.” She smiled, “I see why you chose Fluttershy though. I mean, she's very pretty isn't she?”

Lightning panicked, “What? No! I mean, sure. I mean, is she?” He stopped himself and sighed, “I was just making a yellow color when the idea hit me, so I guess I did it subconsciously, not because she might be... attractive... or not! I don't know.”

Rarity gave him a curious look, “You don't know if you think Fluttershy is attractive?”

“I- I don't know! I haven't thought about it. I would have never stopped to think about whether or not a pony was attractive back on earth.”

“Relax darling, I didn't mean to fluster you, just asking an innocent question. Although now I am curious, I promise not to press the issue.” Rarity said

“Thanks Rarity. I mean, would you have thought on whether or not a human was attractive if you had never been to earth before?”

Rarity smiled, “I guess not.”

There was an awkward pause. “So... what are you doing here anyways?”

“Oh, I was just looking for some gems for an order I was working on. I'm afraid I'm all but out. Care to help me?”

Lightning thought about it, “Sure. I've got nothing better to do.”

As it turned out, helping Rarity really meant doing all the heavy lifting while she walked around, pointing our where to dig. Still, Lightning was being honest when he said he had nothing better to do. By the time she had gotten a sufficent amount of gems it was getting dark, so Lightning grabbed his cloud pieces and walked Rarity back to her Boutique, before returning to the Library.

Lightning said hello to Twilight who was busy reading through a stack of books, and walked up the stairs to his room. He jumped on his bed and laid the pieces of cloud out in front of him. He tried making some new shapes and designs out of lightning, but really only felt inspired to create the same yellow pony again and again. He shuffled up the clouds as his door creaked open, hoping to avoid another awkward conversation like the one he had with Rarity earlier. Twilight walked in the room.

“Hey Gr- erm, Lightning” she laughed, “Tomorrow is applebucking day at Sweet Apple Acres and most of us are going to help with it. Are you up for it?”

“Sure, after I get the paperwork or whatever done for the weather team thingy” said Lightning said.

“Oh yeah! About that” some papers appeared in a flash, “Rainbow dropped these off here. She said to just drop them off by her house after we're done tomorrow.”

Lightning took the papers. “Can do.” He put them to the side of his bed and picked up his clouds again.

“So what are you doing with those anyways?” Twilight asked.

He grinned, “Are you up for a demonstration?” When she nodded, he jumped up off and placed the pieces of lightning in front of her. He traced the outline of her shape and, after asking her to step back, tapped each of the clouds, causing lightning to pop out of each one and connect to another cloud. He stepped back and waited a few seconds for it to fizzle out.

“Wow! That's pretty cool.” She said.

“It's not that hard really, just like a connect the dots picture.”

“Still, I liked it.” She smiled, “Well, I'm going to bed. We probably need up at the farm at the same time the Apple family is.”

He groaned inwardly. There was no reason he needed to be up this early for two day's in a row. Instead, he wished Twilight a goodnight and went and brushed his teeth. Still not tired though, he pulled out his clouds and toyed with them, ending up painting an outline of a yellow pink pony in midair before he fell asleep.

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