It is almost unanimously agreed that the day after a storm is one of the most beautiful.
Storms were common in Equestria. Granted, they weren't THAT common, but it was no surprise to see dark clouds floating around every now and then, mostly due to water crews pushing said clouds to wherever they were needed the most.
Ponyville, and most of its surrounding area, was usually not in need of said storms. Being a town of mostly earth ponies, they ha learned to how to keep a careful yet useful balance between using and saving their resources.
It helped of course that they were right besides Canterlot. The princess had always been fond of it for some reason.
As mentioned before, storms clouded were herded to where they were needed by pegasus ponies. One large weather team that managed most, if not all, of Equestria's weather.
That didn't mean that every pegasus pony was part of said team. Many of them worked in other areas, like racing, taking care of animals and even the occasional farmer.
Others were too young to work yet, so they earned their money with smaller jobs., rangin from cleaning houses to moving smaller clouds.
One of them was Cloudchaser.
"It looks like a grumpy Rumble!" she laughed a she circled around a lonely dark gray cloud, freeing of the excess of water.
She started ascending higher and higher. A warn summer day. A nice breeze through her feather and a few, fresh clouds to play with.
What more could she ask for?
She smiled as she dived inside a large fluffy mass cloudy mass, bouncing twice as high as she was already. All the ponies in the floor looked like little antes at this point.
She closed her eyes and lingered in the spot were she was floating, letting the breeze envelop her before allowing herself to free fall.
After ten seconds of allowing herself to fall, Cloudchaser gathered her bearings and began flying anew, almost touching the ground. Granted, she wasn't the fastest pony or the strongest, be she was as agile as a cat.
And it showed.
Climbing once more, she flapped her wings harder and harder, intending to repeat the fall. The exhilaration. The brief weightless moment between the fall and the final beat of her wings.
"Couple of more times through that cloud and then I can…uh?" Cloudchaser devoted her attention to the forest as her eye caught a rather unusual sight.
A lonely cloud was hovering over the Everfree forest, not too deep into the woods. The forest was known for having its own weather system, completely free of pony influence. Seeing a cloud hovering by itself over it was just a unusual natural phenomena, and thus, of no real importance.
What really was an odd sight was that said cloud wasn't white. Or black. Or gray. It wasn't any color that clods usually were.
No, this cloud was mint green.
It was a mint green cloud hovering over the entrance of the Everfreee forest.
Our dear Cloudchaser, being the smart and attentive pegasus mare that she was, decided that there was only was course of action to do in this situation.
"I have to rip through that cloud." she mumbled before a gigantic grin was plastered on her face.
She started ascending again. Once she was at more or less the same altitude as before, she started gliding towards the mint green cloud, accelerating more and more by the second.
It wasn't long before the wind started whipping around her, flattening her mane and making her cheeks pull back a little. The green cloud was closer by the second.
"Almost there! Almost there! Almost the-!"
Cloudchaser impacted the cloud with force of a bull and, much to her surprise, didn't rip through the cloud like she had planned.
"Is this…." was the only thing she could muster before being bounced back with extreme force, sailing through the sky like a cannon ball.
Meanwhile, back in the town, Minuette was calmly working in her work shop. She had her door open to let the air flow, being still summer and all that. A new idea had opted in her head.
A magical door opener!
"Now I won't have to worry about opening the door myself when i'm carrying too many things." Minuette thought while she tightened a screw. It had taken a couple of day of planning though, but nothing impossible for her.
"Now I just need to work on the pressure plate and-"
CRASH.
Boom.
She nearly dropped the entire project on the floor from the shock of the racket. Running outside her workshop she had to stop brusquely so as to not step on the pieces of broken glass and was left of a sofa.
"Wow…I have never been bounced by a rubbed cloud." Cloudchaser mumbled from the floor. "Hi Minuette!"
"What…are you doing here?" Minuette growled. SHe gave q hick glance around her room. "And what happened to my sofa?!"
"OH, I crashed into it, cuz I needed a place to land and I didn't see one and I was about to crash real hard and I was-"
"Why didn't you use your wings?!"
"I was going too fast."
Minuette groaned, realizing the futility of trying to argue with Cloudchaser. At least the amount of destruction was a lot less. Just a sofa and a window.
"Just a sofa and a window…" she muttered while magically picking a broom.
Meanwhile, away from her house, the single mint green cloud inched a little closer to the town, stopping right at the entrance of the Everfree forest.
For a brief second, it expanded.
Hours later, night had fallen. A few rays of light were still shinning over the horizon, but were vanishing one by one.. While the green cloud had gathered some stares along the day, it was quickly ignored. Most ponies were too busy to pay attention to it anyways.
One of said ponies was Octavia.
"Alright Hugin, bring me the next score." she said, closing the small collection of music sheets and removing from the music stand and placing on the table.
"You've been plain all day. You ought give it a rest. Plus, you're giving a headache."
"All the more reason to keep practicing." Octavia smirked. " And in any case, I have to keep practicing. The summer gala is almost here and I need to keep myself skilled for it."
"What makes you so sure that you are going to be elected?"
"Is that a serious question? I am the best musician in Canterlot. Why wouldn't they choose me?"
"Maybe because you've got the temper of an enraged dragon?" Hugin snarked. Octavia frowned.
"Just bring me the next score and keep quiet."
"Of course…your angryness." Hugin flew to one of the shelves, carefully retrieving a small book of musical sheets. Octavia did't blink as he allowed them to flop on the stand.
"I don't remember seeing you there. I could have used your help."
"Like if I knew any music myself. Besides, you seemed to handle yourself pretty well…until you started acting like a pompous jerk." Hugin landed on the table. "Oh wait, thats your usual behavior."
"You are quite a hypocrite by saying that. If I am so petty and easy to anger, then you are worse, since you are always arguing with me."
"Well, then you-"
BOOM!!
The upper window of the balcony shattered into a thousand pieces, while Octavia covered her ears, recoiling at the extreme noise. Hugin peered through his feathers before removing his wings from his face.
"What…what was that?" he asked.
"What?" Octavia rubbed one of her ears.
"What was that?!" Hugin asked louder.
"Lighting." Octavia sighed, finally feeling the ring in her ears vanishing. "But the storm ended yesterday. And it was a mild storm at that."
"That was worse than when Spike ate those green spinels." Hugin flew to the balcony. "Whoever is responsible for that owns us a window."
"Again…" Octavia walked to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"To the wherever the cloud was of course." Octavia replied, as if it was the most obvious thing int he world. "Whichever pegasus left that cloud over there will probably go and try to remove it. And I'm going to have a few words with him. Are you coming?"
"Why would I wan't to go?"
"Well, considering that its OUR house…"
"I get the message." Hugin muttered before flying down and landing on Octavia's back. "Lets do this."
A few ponies were out on the street, wondering what had happened, but Octavia ignored them. They weren't really curious and most of them returned back to their homes after a couple of minutes.
"Hey Octavia! Hello Hugin." Flitter said, landing besides her.
"Good evening Flitter." Octavia replied.
"Oh my godess! Did you two hear that thing?!" Cloudchaser circled around them. "It was awesome! it was so loud that one of our windows exploded! Like…BANG!
"Yes…very funny." Octavia deadpanned.
"Do you have any idea where the lightning came from?" Hugin asked.
"The only cloud I remember seeing was that green one over the forest…" Flitter answered, but was interrupted by her sister, who giggled for a few seconds.
"I tried playing with it, so I flew straight to it and bounced like a rubber band! I've never seen that happen before! It was awesome!" Cloudchaser cheered. "Until I crashed into Minuette's living room. That wasn't so awesome…"
"You flew straight into a cloud over the forest. Smart." Hugin snarked.
"That was a pretty lightning. We should go check that nothing bad happened where it landed." Flitter suggested.
The three ponies made their way through town. Just Octavia had thought, it didn't take long for the town ponies to dismiss the incident and return to their beds. Before long, they had reached the edge of town, being a few minutes away from the forest.
The full moon allowed a more or less clear view of the sky, which was odd, since just a few minutes ago, the green cloud was at the edge of the forest. And now it was gone without a trace.
The entrance to the forest stood before them. Octavia shuddered as memories of the Warlock Stallion and the fenrir wolf flashed in her mind.
"Ouch." Cloudchaser rubbed her head while distancing herself from a branch. Octavia chuckled, the bad images slipping from her mind.
Slowly and without making much noise, they entered the woods. While the entire forest was a rather dangerous place, it only got really dangerous in the denser areas.
"I don't see thing anything. Maybe the lighting blot didn't fall here?" Hugin said.
"I don't see anything either. But I can smell something burn nearby." Octavia replied.
"I can too. Its fain though." Flitter added.
"I can see some smoke over there!" Cloudchaser said from up high. "Follow me!"
Navigation through the woods, the three ponies and crow reached a clearing. It was a perfectly circular clearing, which was weird, given the chaotic nature of the forest.
The light of the moon was perfectly reflected in the burned ground. Pieces of wood were strewn all over the clearing. A burnt smell covered the area as well. But it wasn't like any normal burnt smell. It was different.
Like if something that shouldn't be able to be burned was roasted.
"Mayday!" Cloudchaser shouted before slamming over Octavia. Hugin barely managed to jump before the pegasus crushed her.
"Wow, easy there. What are you doing?" he complained.
"I don't know. I was flying just fine a minute ago. Then we entered the clearing and I just stopped flying." Cloudchaser stood up and flapped her wings, but she wasn't raising one bit. "See?"
Flitter repeated her actions. Just like her sister, her hoofs were still on the ground.
"Its like the air doesn't wan't to hold us anymore."
Thats when they heard the groan.
It was clearly a female groan, though from who or what did it was beyond them. For a few seconds, the froze, waiting for another sound. It wasn't long before another pained groan reached their ears.
"Should…should we stay here?" Flitter asked.
"Somepony else is here…" Octavia gulped. "We can't just leave."
"The groan came from over here." Hugin said, hovering over them.
The three ponies carefully walked towards the direction Hugin pointed at. Wood breaking under them was the only sound that could be heard. It would be a couple of minutes before Flitter would steep on something different.
Something soft.
"Ouch…" a voice came from the ground.
Laying on her back, a mint green unicorn rubbed her head. The three friends surround her, giving each other curious glances.
"Are you alright?" Octavia asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine…" the unicorn opened her eyes. Her eyes went from one pony to the other. "Ponies? But who asked that?"
"I did." Octavia answered. The unicorn looked at her intently for a few seconds. Suddenly her eyes widened and she screamed.
"OH MY GOD! A TALKING PONY!"
Then she promptly fainted, leaving the three friends and crow utterly bewildered.