Rainbow's End

by Bronyxy

1 Storm Watch

The snow was falling hard outside and three pegasi stallions were huddled around a TV screen watching highlights of the previous season’s hoofball on DVD. Anypony would have to be mad to want to go out in these conditions after all. The cider was flowing freely and all three were having a good time relaxing in each other’s company. It’s not as if there was anything better to do, stuck out at the furthest reaches of Equestria.

The small complex they inhabited looked scientific, but had very little in the way of a link to the outside world, except for an ancient teleprinter, an archaic machine that rattled out messages character at a time, taking whole minutes to deliver a few simple words. The words that it had printed tonight were mostly obscenities from colleagues back in Cloudsdale, in turn having been sent in response to equally offensive language from the three stallions huddling in the isolated snowy outpost. The game of sending rude messages had begun to pale with the time it took, and so they had switched the machine off to focus on the much more important issue of hoofball, the nearest thing any of them held dear as a religion.

Hoops, Dumb-Bell and Score had always been keen sports fans; arguably not the brightest of ponies, but the three misfits had drifted together by chance early in life, each revelling in their own mediocrity, forces which when combined between them left even the lowest levels of under-achievement beyond their collective grasp. When younger they had also exhibited a tendency to gang up and bully other ponies, especially Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Time had not cured them of their unjustified self-belief, but it had also generously chosen to gift them with acute laziness as well.

Somehow, fate had seen fit to keep them together and that was how they were here now, watching hoofball when they should have been doing something important instead. A message was backed up at the teleprinter, unable to be received because this vital lifeline had been switched off. Every minute that passed was now going to cause Equestria deeper problems.

They had been released from their duties in the weather factory on Cloudsdale to operate this weather station as the original occupants had all been struck down by illness. The weather factory had been working at capacity creating snowflakes and the three friends had seemed almost to be wilfully setting them behind schedule, so their managers were delighted when the opportunity had arisen to have them out of their manes, especially whilst production was at critical levels.

Their job whilst at this outpost was to make regular assessments of the weather by taking readings from instruments and flying reconnaissance. They were also required when instructed to intercept unexpected storms that could disrupt the carefully engineered weather patterns within Equestria itself. Right now, they were doing none of these things, but instead getting drunk watching repeats of hoofball.

Outside, unnoticed, the sky grew darker and more ominous.

***

There had been a light snowfall during the afternoon in Ponyville; just enough to transform the town into a winter wonderland and allow the colts and fillies to make snowponies, but not enough to cause disruption. It had been perfectly judged, and a certain cyan mare was not being reticent about taking credit. She had supervised the other weather ponies as they took delivery of the consignment of snow from the weather factory and sprinkled it to just the right depth in just the right places.

Once this was done, she had spent the afternoon playing with the CMCs; engaging in snowball fights and crafting snowponies. She loved the time she spent with the fillies, especially Scootaloo, whom she regarded for all intents and purposes to be her little sister.

When she had said goodnight to them all, Rainbow had gone to check in with the other weather ponies and agreed to take on the night shift by herself and let them go have fun with their own families and loved ones, just like she had done earlier. After all, it was not as if any bad weather was scheduled until after Hearth’s Warming. They all checked to see if she was serious, and when she showed she was, they all slipped gratefully away to enjoy themselves. This gave Rainbow a great feeling of satisfaction and she snickered quietly, remembering all the fun she had enjoyed during the afternoon.

From her high vantage point, Rainbow could see the pretty lights festooned liberally around Ponyville all twinkling invitingly, tempting the ponies down below to share in the spirit of the season. She smiled. This was what Hearth’s Warming was all about and she was pleased to be making it happen, and of course, being recognised and appreciated for the larger than life role she played.

Her reverie was punctuated by an unexpected ruffle of her feathers from a breeze coming from behind her. She turned and suddenly saw the stars behind her had been obscured by an incoming storm.
“What the …?” she exclaimed out loud “There isn’t a storm scheduled for weeks yet; we can’t have this – not on my watch!”

With annoyance fuelled by determination she set off to intercept the storm. The closer she flew, the less easy she felt about it; it was bigger than it looked. Procedures had been established following some serious injuries to warn weather ponies that they shouldn’t tackle a storm alone and indeed she would have much rather been supported by her colleagues, but she wasn’t going to lose face by going to round them up to help her, not after she had dismissed them to enjoy themselves. She was Rainbow Dash after all, and that was all Ponyville needed to know.

“Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!” she chanted as she encircled the first storm cloud, spinning round it faster and faster until it had been captured. She set off for the next one, and the next, taking on a workload that would have challenged the entire contingent of weather ponies, but one she was handling by herself.

Suddenly she stopped and her pupils shrank as she beheld what lay behind the storm clouds that she had already neutralised; a twister! She was so far along with the task of clearing the sky by herself, that although this looked daunting, the thought of asking for help now hadn’t even crossed her mind; she would tackle it alone.

“Oh yeah!” she cried, speeding towards the twister and flying round it in the opposite direction to its rotation to slow it down. This was big, so she had to fly really fast and when that didn’t achieve the desired effect, get in closer. Just at the point her brain was starting to wake up to the possibility that her self-confidence may have overruled her common sense, she paused to consider the risk she was running, and at that very point when she momentarily lost focus on her task, an arm of spinning wind reached out and grabbed her, sucking her into the vortex.

Over and over she tumbled, helpless to fight against the rush of wind, incapable of determining which way was up and unable to stop tumbling. This was a nightmare!
“Don’t let it end like this!” she prayed to whichever deity was listening.

She span and she tumbled like she was in a washing machine, getting dizzy and beginning to feel faint, but fighting to stay conscious and catch her breath, increasingly desperate to get out of this hell. Suddenly she felt herself falling and saw that she was in the eye of the twister, finally free of its grasp, but surrounded on all sides by a whirling wall of raw power that she could not hope to defeat.

Flapping her wings with all the power she could summon, she lifted herself straight up, looking to fly out of the top and away to safety, but her wing hurt. She cursed – the twister must have sprained her wing muscles, or worse. Wincing with each wingbeat she continued upwards, gritting her teeth against the pain as finally she emerged into the clear night, looking around for a friendly cloud upon which to alight and recover her composure. To her annoyance, the sky around her was bare except for the frightening spectacle of spinning cloud beneath her.

Although her wing was screaming at her, she had to keep going and looked for the nearest point at which she could escape its grasp and aimed for it. She glided as much as possible to try and rest her wing, but when she drifted so close to the twister that it started to suck her back down once again, she knew she had to fly, and fly for her life.

With every wingbeat feeling like it was driving a knife into her flight muscles, she finally cleared the perimeter of the storm and glided down as quickly as she could, trying to ascertain where she was, but nothing looked remotely familiar. She couldn’t keep going any longer and finally spied the first habitation she had seen all this time and aimed for it, but her wing muscles finally gave up before she got there and she plummeted the last few yards of her descent, ending up in a snowdrift; lost and bruised, but at least she was on the ground and out of the storm.