Winter's F***** Up

by JuIy

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life
Length: 979

Long story short, everyone hates winter.

Short story long, the ponies of Ponyville are having a bit of trouble wrapping up winter.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-12-25 20:30:02 UTC

Insert Chapter Name Here

Twilight Sparkle woke up to the smell of the dew on the leaves. It had snowed the previous night, which was typical, considering it was winter.

Wait.

Twilight got up and looked at the calender on the wall. The date read March 19, which meant...

Today was the day before the Spring Equinox, which meant it was Winter Wrap-Up!

The lavender mare woke Spike, and put on her scarf, jacket, and hat, and set out to help out the rest of the ponies.

During the previous years, the traditional methods had failed due to a lack of coordination. Arguments arose and inevitable mistakes turned into major problems due to a lack of planning and coordination. Twilight lent her skills to the effort, helping Ponyville bring spring in on time, earning the title of All-Team Organizer, and a special jacket comprising of the colors of each team.

Her first job was to make sure nothing like that would happen again, so first she checked on Rarity and her basketweaving. She had to make sure nopony was cheating and using magic to wrap up Winter, else the tradition was broken. Twilight remembered exactly what happened last year.

When Twilight reached Rarity, she was done with four nests out of twelve for her share of the baskets. It seemed to be going fine, so Twilight left Rarity as she was and proceeded to check on the ice-skating, which helped break up the ice in the water. In turn, it would aid fish with fresh sunlight and plants could grow in lakes again.

The mare trotted up the road, taking in the beautiful scenery and hard work that had gone into creating Spring. It seemed like an awful amount of work for one day, but hey. A tradition was a tradition.

Twilight arrived to the mouth of a small river branching out of the lake. It was frozen, which meant the lake probably still was too. She began to move towards the actual lake, and to her dismay, saw almost no progress in the ice-breaking.

A pink blur moved toward her in a hurry. "Twilight! Thank goodness you're here. The ice, it's not melting! We've tried everything but it just doesn't seem to work and--"

"Quiet, Pinkie! Explain to me exactly what happened. Or, rather... what is happening."

Pinkie cocked her head towards the lake, and opened her mouth. "Weeeelllllll... our skates aren't cutting the ice! And I tried really really hard already but we just can't seem to work it out because sometimes when I'm at the Sugar Cube Corner and Mrs. Cake says to eat one raspberry potatoe muffin I purposely take two! I'm sorry, Mrs. Cake!"

"Would someone who's not a complete idiot come out and tell me what's happening to the lake?"

One contender, Sweetie Drops, stepped forward.

"The lake isn't cutting. It looks like it's too thick, and we can't make a dent in it."

"Thank you, Sweetie Drops. I need to find a solution. I will be with you shortly." Twilight walked off back to the treehouse, where she drew up a solution, but not before a pegasus by the name of Rainbow Dash crashed in front of her, and shortly after, a stampede of animals echoed through the town.

Twilight scrambled to help Rainbow Dash up, quickly asked, "What's happening?" and ran back to her house.

She saw Spike cooking in the kitchen, using his breath to heat up breakfast in a pan, and quickly thought of an idea. "Spike, come here please!"

Spike ran to Twilight's aid, and she explained the issue with the ice skates and the animals and how the weather team isn't doing a very good job. Spike offered to help on the ice skates, but refused to say what he had in mind for the other ordeals.

They together ran outside and raced to the lake, where Spike then heated up all the ice skates with his fire-breath, which allowed more versatile skates: clearing the lake quicker and more efficiently. This would help the weather team, once they were done with clearing the lake, allow them to reach out to the town's needs as well.

The lake was cleared pretty quickly, and the ice was neatly cut up and organized into piles.

Baskets and ice, check.

Animals, weather... no check.

Next, Twilight went on to see the seeds, near Applejack. That group seemed to be holding up well, save a shortage of ponies who were currently helping the town from whatever danger a couple of gophers and rabbits could possibly do.

The seeds were almost done, with only a small area not finished because it wasn't completely thawed out due to the lack of sunlight above it, so Twilight went on to check on the weather team.

Plants & Seeds, half check.

The weather team's only issues seemed to be colossal laziness. For example, half of the group was playing hoofball while the other were sleeping in clouds. Only one pegasus seemed to care about the current situation, who was helping the animal clean-up. Twilight decided to get that out of the way first, and save the easiest for last. She moved onto the town square, where the mayor was holding an emergency meeting for any able-bodied pony willing to round up all the animals before they drilled holes in the houses.

Twilight and Spike both volunteered, as well as Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and some other background pony by the name of Applejack. Their job was to go around Ponyville, looking for any rancid or burrowing animals and grouping them back to the square, where they would be returned to the forest.

But the ponies weren't prepared for the amount of angry animals.

"Um, Twilight?" Spike broke the silence. "I don't think we can handle that. We're going to need...

"A Megatron."