Chapter 1
Rainbow Dash grumbled as she tried to jam the snow shovel under the frozen snow. The impact sent yet another painful shockwave through the shovel and then through her teeth and head. She spit the shovel out and shook her head, trying to make the shaking stop.
“Ugh. Stupid.” She grabbed the shovel again and stuck it into the snow as hard as she could. “Frozen.” She pulled back and struck one more time. “SNOW! Whoa!”
The snow finally gave way with the last push and Rainbow Dash fell face first into the snow. The snow she had been trying to shovel away slid down the roof and vanished over the edge.
“Hey Rainbow Da—oof!”
Rainbow Dash stood up, brushed the snow off of herself, and then walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. A tuff of purple hair and two small orange hooves were poking out of the snow.
“Scootaloo?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Uh, hey, Rainbow Dash.” The filly pulled herself out of the snow mound, adjusted her hat and scarf, and then flapped her little wings to clear away the rest of the snow on her.
“S’up Scootaloo,” Rainbow Dash said.
“Well, we’re getting ready to have a huge snowball fight, and I was kind of hoping…” Scootaloo looked down at the snow and kicked it a little. “That you’d come be on my team, maybe?”
Rainbow Dash instantly jumped into the air and hovered there, her blood pumping at the idea of an epic snowball fight. No pony in Ponyville would be a match for her! Why, she would be completely unstoppable.
The thought instantly left her mind as she looked down at the snow-covered roof. Slowly, she floated back down to it and landed next to her shovel. “Uh, sorry kid. But I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Aw,” Scootaloo whined. “Why? What are you doing?”
Rainbow Dash gestured toward the rest of Ponyville. “I…kind of have to clean all of the snow off of Town Hall. And…a few other buildings.”
“How long will that take?”
Rainbow Dash looked at all the snow-covered buildings and scratched under her scarf. “Uh…probably a while. There are a lot of buildings.”
Scootaloo looked over her shoulder. “You have to clean them all?! How come?”
The events at the Cloudsdale’s weather factory came flashing back into her mind. “I, uh…may have caused winter to arrive a bit ahead of schedule.”
“That was you?”
“Heh heh. Yeah.”
Scootaloo’s purple eyes grew giant and her wings flapped rapidly. “Cool! All we saw was a giant snowball flying toward Ponyville. Tell me what happened.”
“Um…I don’t know.” Thoughts of Tank flashed back into Rainbow Dash’s mind. She wasn’t sure she could handle telling that story so soon.
“Pleeeease…” Scootaloo begged, her eyes wide and pouty.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay.”
* * *
Rainbow Dash and her trusty companion Tank waited outside of the Cloudsdale’s weather factory. The Pegasus turned to the tortoise, a determined look on her face. “Are you ready for this, Tank? This place is heavily defended. Sneaking in won’t be easy.”
The tortoise narrowed his eyes and nodded.
“That’s the spirit! We have to get in there if we’re going to save winter.”
Rainbow pulled her goggles down over her eyes and scanned the security around the factory. Laser tripwires everywhere, at least ten, no, twenty watchtowers with three guards each, a giant fence around the whole building, and four guards stationed at the only way in or out.
“Piece of cake,” Rainbow said as she pulled her goggles off and put them back in her satchel. All of the new security had, of course, been installed at Princess Celestia’s order because somepony had threatened to stop winter. When Rainbow had reported such a threat, the Princess and Cloudsdale had promised that they would take care of it and that winter would come.
Raindow once again looked at her green-shelled companion. She rubbed his shell. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’re going to get in there and make sure that winter arrives so you can get your rest!”
Rainbow checked her watch. She had naturally timed their approach to coincide with a special event. In exactly four seconds, there would be a perfect opportunity for her and Tank to sneak in.
A loud bell rang through the weather factory.
Lunch time.
Rainbow watched as all the guards abandoned their posts and a few moments later, dozens of ponies in white lab coats and hardhats began streaming out of the factory and past the security gate. Rainbow shook her head at the display. This was why she was taking matters into her own hooves. She had told them that they needed to remain vigilant for the mysterious invader, and that they couldn’t all go to lunch at once, but they were doing it anyway.
Lucky for them, and Ponyville, Rainbow Dash and Tank were on the case.
The companions waited until the last of the weather ponies exited the factory and then they flew right in through the front door.
“Amateurs,” Rainbow said as she shook her head.
Once inside, they began to make their way through the factory. They stopped at every corner and made sure to peek around it. They hadn’t run into anypony yet, but it was still possible that some of them weren’t complete slackers. And if anypony saw her and Tank sneaking around, they might mistake them for the saboteurs!
The duo reached a long hallway lined with lockers and began to make their way down it when somepony called out to them.
“Hey, you!”
Rainbow froze on the spot. She had been compromised! Slowly, she began to turn around and noticed that Tank was nowhere to be seen. She hoped he was okay.
A stallion in a white lab coat came walking down the hallway toward her. “Who are you?” he asked, a suspicious look on his face. “I don’t recognize you.”
Rainbow was slightly insulted. How could somepony not know who she was? “Um…I’m new. I just started working here a week ago.”
The stallion looked her over. “If you’re new, then you should know the rules. No pony should be wandering around without their coat and helmet.” He tapped his hoof against the white helmet he was wearing.
“I know, sir. But, you see, mine are in my locker.” Rainbow pointed to a random locker on the wall. “And, it’s, uh, stuck.”
“Stuck?”
“Stuck.”
The stallion rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let me see if I can get it.” He mumbled something about hired help as he walked over and began to fiddle with the locker. His helmet slid down and blocked his view, so he pulled it off, set it on the floor, and went back to working on the lock.
“Hey, this locker isn’t—”
Tank came flying in just as the stallion opened the locker. The tortoise crashed into the stallion’s head and he tumbled into the locker, his eyes spinning.
“Wow, you’re right,” Rainbow Dash said as she pulled a coat out of the locker and picked up the stallion’s helmet. “You really do need to wear a helmet here at all times.” She closed the door, leaving the unconscious pony in the locker, and slipped into the coat and helmet. There. Now she would be able to move about the factory a bit more freely.
“Now, to find—”
* * *
“You mean you just left him in there?”
Rainbow Dash stopped telling her epic story and looked down from the roof. Sweetie Bell was standing next to Scootaloo now, a horrified look on her face.
“Shush, Sweetie Bell!” Scootaloo said to her friend. “I want to hear the rest of this! It’s getting good. I had no idea somepony had threatened to stop winter from coming!”
“But! But!” Sweetie Bell’s lower lip stuck out and she began to sniffle. “He didn’t do anything wrong! He was just trying to help you.”
Rainbow Dash scratched the back of her neck again and laughed. “Well, yeah. That’s why I…promised to come back for him! Yeah!”
* * *
“Don’t worry,” Rainbow Dash whispered to the locker after she had slipped into her disguise. “I’ll be back to let you out. I promise.”
The Pegasus and the tortoise began to move down the hallway. Rainbow went over the blueprints for the factory in her head. She had spent many long nights going over them to prepare for her secret mission. She knew exactly where they were, and exactly where they needed to go. With no trace of doubt in her mind, she proceeded down the hallway and took the next right.
“Bingo!” Rainbow said as she turned the corner. There was a door up ahead with a storm cloud and lightning bolts above it. It was the winter lab. If anypony had any hope of stopping winter, that would be their best bet. Which meant that that was where she and Tank needed to be.
The two companions approached the door, but when they got close enough, Rainbow Dash noticed that the door was slightly ajar. A second later, she heard a loud crash come from inside the room.
Tank gently nudged her.
“You’re right, buddy,” Rainbow whispered. “Sounds like the criminal is already in there. We better hurry.”
Slowly, Rainbow opened the door. She crouched low so that he stomach was brushing the cloud floor and scooted forward, her expert training making it easy for her to not make a sound.
Tank activated his copter’s stealth mode and followed.
The first area that Rainbow and Tank came to was the snowflake making tables, and what Rainbow saw made her furious. Countless beautiful snowflakes were scattered around on the floor, trampled under hoof. The tubs that the ponies used to store them were all over turned and smashed, and the magnifying glasses were dented and broken.
Rainbow was upset for sure, but not because winter was ruined. It would take a lot more than a few buckets of destroyed snowflakes to ruin winter. No, she was upset because so many ponies had worked so hard on the beautiful things and somepony had destroyed all that work.
“Wait here while I check things out,” Rainbow whispered to Tank. The tortoise nodded and Rainbow flew up toward the ceiling, using the water vapors as cover. She flew among the cloud pipes, looking for any damage. Thankfully, they all seemed to be intact, but as she looked down, she noticed that all the clouds that should have been on the assembly line were missing.
“That’s still not big enough!” a new voice said, and Rainbow ducked behind one of the cloud making machines. She peeked over the top of the machine and looked down.
“Who is that?” she whispered to herself when she saw a lone pony standing in the middle of the room.
“Slam dunk!” the strange pony said when she looked over at the giant water containers. “With no water, they can’t make clouds or snow! They can’t make winter!”
“Oh no you don’t!” Rainbow flew down and landed in front of the pony. She was wearing a cloak with the hood up, so Rainbow couldn’t see her face to tell who she was. “I won’t let anypony stop winter! Tank needs to hibernate. It’s good for him, and I won’t let you or anypony else stop that!”
“Oh really?” the pony asked. “We’ll see about that!”
A glow appeared under the pony’s hood, and Rainbow knew instantly that this pony was a Unicorn, and that meant that she would have the advantage at range. Thankfully, Rainbow knew she could close that range in a heartbeat, maybe even half of one. She flew toward the Unicorn, ready to tackle her to the floor.
“Too slow!” the Unicorn laughed. Rainbow expected to be blasted with magic, but instead she suddenly found herself flying headlong into gale-force winds. This Unicorn had opened the storeroom for where the weather ponies kept all the wind!
Try as she might, even Rainbow wasn’t strong enough to fly headlong against such a strong wind. She was hurled backward and crashed into another room. When her head stopped spinning, she realized she had been thrown into the lightning room. Countless brightly colored jars lined the shelves, each one containing a small lightning bolt.
“Oh no!” Rainbow dove forward and stopped one of the jars from falling onto the floor. Relieved, she wiped her brow and began to put the jar back on the shelf, but then she got an idea.
“Oopsie!” came the Unicorn’s voice from the other room. “Looks like these were a little loose.”
Rainbow tucked the jar of lightning under her wing and rushed back out into the main room, but she was too late. The Unicorn had removed the two water pumps from the storage container. Ponyville’s winter was spilling out all over the floor!
“And there goes winter down the drain!” The Unicorn laughed. “Finally! No more runny noses! No more bitter cold! No more aching hooves! I’m free from this terrible winter!”
“Not so fast!” Rainbow shouted, puffing out her chest.
“Heh heh. It’s over, Rainbow Dash.” The pony turned around and removed her hood. She had a sunny blonde mane cut short and her coat was a dazzling shade of golden sand. She wore a pair of sunglasses, and as she removed them to look Rainbow in the eye, Rainbow saw that this pony had spent a lot of time in the sun.
“It’s not over as long as I’m still standing!” Raibow shouted back. “Sun Tanner!”
The beaching-living, sun-loving pony glowered at Rainbow. “For years now I’ve had to endure this horrible cold. Every year it’s the same! The weather ponies come and cover the beautiful sun with their tacky snow clouds. They freeze over my favorite swimming lake. And finally, they insist on making it so cold that I have to wear so much clothing that I can’t even get a tan!” The Unicorn stomped her hoof in frustration. “Well no more! This year, winter isn’t coming!”
“Oh yes it is!” Rainbow declared with confidence. “Now, Tank!”
Tank emerged from his hiding place, nodded to Rainbow, and flew toward the room’s power switch. He flipped it on, activating the cloud-making machine, and then picked up one of the snowflake maker’s magnifying glass and threw it into the machine’s fan.
Perfect! Rainbow thought with a grin. Now the machine will overheat and go into overdrive. All that’s left now is to give it a little—
* * *
“How did Tank know what to do?”
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and slowly floated back down to the roof. She hadn’t realized that she had started to hover in the air as she spun her tale. Once again, she looked down over the roof.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“How did Tank know what to do?” Apple Bloom asked. She was sitting with Scootaloo and Sweetie Bell in the snow. “I mean, you didn’t talk to him or anything after you got tossed into the room with the lightning.”
“Well, uh, you see…” Rainbow scratched the back of her neck. “Tank and I, we have a special bond. Yeah, that’s right! We just know what the other one is thinking.”
“Oh.” Sweetie Bell said, smilingly brightly. But a moment later, that smile faded and a puzzled expression crossed her face. “Hey…how come Sun Tanner can be in Cloudsdale? My sister said that when she went there, she needed wings, because only Pegasus ponies can walk on clouds.”
Rainbow Dash swallowed. “Well, um…your sister must have mentioned that Twilight found a spell that let the rest of them walk on clouds. So, as I was saying—”
“Oh yeah!” Sweetie Bell interrupted again.
“But Applejack said that that spell was super hard for her to learn,” Apple Bloom put in.
“Well, Sun Tanner is…really good at magic,” Rainbow Dash replied. Despite the cold, she was starting to sweat.
“You guys!” Scootaloo interrupted. “Stop interrupting! I want to hear how this story ends!”
“Right!” Sweetie Bell said with a cheerful smile.
“Sorry, Rainbow Dash,” Apple Bloom added.
“Er-hm!” Rainbow Dash cleared her throat. “Now, as I was saying…”
* * *
All that’s left now is to give it a little more juice! Rainbow pulled the jar of lightning out from under her wing and flung it toward the cloud-making machine. It shattered on the emergency override switch, sending the electrical current tearing through the machine.
The machine surged to life, and the sudden burst of power broke the cooling fan that Tank had jammed. Clouds began to fill the room at a breakneck pace as the machine drew up the water spilling onto the floor. The lightning continued to dance around the room, soaking into the clouds and turning them into dark thunderheads that sparked rapidly.
“No!” Sun Tanner cried as she jumped on a table to avoid the rising water that was no doubt electrified. “You fool! What have you do done?”
Rainbow Dash grinned as she hovered in the air, watching the room fill with snow-packed clouds. “I’ve made sure winter is coming!” She flew over to Tank and wrapped the tortoise up in her forelegs. “Let’s get out of here!”
Rainbow made a dash for the exit, but a cry from behind her made her stop.
“Wait, Rainbow Dash!” Sun Tanner called as she hopped around the table. “You can’t leave me here!”
Rainbow didn’t hesitate for a second. Despite Sun Tanner nearly ruining winter—and worse, nearly making Tank miserable—the Pegasus pony knew she had to save the Unicorn. She flew toward her as fast as she could, scooping her off of the table just before the water swallowed it.
“What do we do?” Sun Tanner asked in a panic. “We’ll never get out of here in time!”
Rainbow looked around until she spied the tube that was sucking up the air and moister to make the clouds. That was their ticket out.
“Hold on tight,” Rainbow said as she flew toward the opening.
“You’re cant’ be—aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!” Sun Tanner’s protest, and scream, faded away as she was sucked into the pipe. Rainbow, still holding Tank close, followed the Unicorn and found herself on quite possibly the craziest ride of her life as she was whipped through the pipe. She went up, down, left, right, backward, forward, and a couple directions she didn’t even know, and then she reached the fluff-o-nator three thousand. It’s job was to spin the clouds so much that they were saturated enough to start snowing as soon as they left Cloudsdate, but with Rainbow’s lightning trick, the clouds had been turned into snow.
The snow, ponies, and tortoise were all forced down into the priming chamber with a thud. “Whoo!” Rainbow said as the chamber shook around her, straining under the pressure. “Let’s go again!”
“You’re absolutely insane!” Sun Tanner said as she poked her head out of the snow. She was about to say more, but she never got the chance. The trio, along with all the snow, was shot out of the priming chamber like a cannonball.
Rainbow Dash cheered as she road the giant snowball down toward Ponyville.
Sun Tanner simply cried out in fear.
The ball of snow hit Ponyville directly in the middle and exploded, blanketing the entire town in the first layer of snow for the season. Rainbow poked her head out and saw Tank smiling back at her.
“We did it, buddy,” she said as she gave him a big hug. “We saved winter!”
* * *
“And that, my little fillies, is how I, Rainbow Dash, saved winter!” Rainbow Dash said as she took a bow on the roof.
“Oh, is that what happened?” Rainbow Dash’s eyes shot open, but she didn’t look up. “Funny. I remember those events rather differently.”
“Oh. Uh…hey, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said as she raised her head. Sure enough, Princess Twilight Sparkle was standing behind the three Cutie Mark Crusaders. A knowing smile was spread across her face.
“Hi, Twilight!” Sweetie Bell said, jumping up in excitement. “Were you there too? Do you know what happened to the guard Rainbow stuffed in a locker?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Cloudsdale has guards now, Rainbow Dash?”
“Heh heh….” Raibow Dash scratched her neck. “Well, you know…I may have embellished the story a tiny bit.”
“Only a tiny bit?”
Rainbow Dash made a face. “Okay, fine. A lot of bit.”
Twilight visibly shuddered as her brain tried to process that sentence. “Such as?”
Rainbow Dash kicked some of the snow off of the roof and mumbled something under her breath.
“What was that?” Twilight asked, rubbing her ear and then raising it toward Rainbow Dash.
“I was the pony who wanted to stop winter,” Rainbow muttered. She winced slightly when she heard the three fillies gasp. “I just…I didn’t want Tank to go to sleep, so…I was the one that trashed the Couldsdale weather factory. There were no guards, and no Sun Tanner. It was all me.”
“Oh,” Scootaloo said. Rainbow looked down at the roof and tried to hold back tears. First she had lost Tank for the winter, and now Scootaloo probably thought she was nothing but a liar. “Well, thanks then!”
“Yeah!” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Bell added together.
“Huh?” Rainbow looked up, baffled to find the three fillies beaming at her.
“Not only was that a great story, filled with action and adventure,” Scootaloo started, punching and kicking the snow with each word.
“But because of you, we got a day off from school!” Apple Bloom said.
“Miss Cheerilee had to cancel class because of all the snow suddenly showing up,” Sweetie Bell said. “We were all on our way there when we got dumped on.” A sly grin spread across her face and she looked at her two companions. “Which means…you technically got the first throw in our snowball fight…”
“Hey now, I didn’t—whoa!” Rainbow Dash ducked as the three fillies each flung a snowball up at her. “Ha ha, you missed—ooaf!”
A massive ball of snow slammed into Rainbow Dash thanks to Twilight. The Princess smiled up at the Pegasus when Rainbow dug her way out of the snow. “I think Rainbow can afford to take a little break from cleaning up. Don’t you, girls?”
“Yeah!” all three of them shouted at once.
Rainbow Dash grinned and began balling up the snow on the roof. “Oh, you four are in for it now!”