Rainbow Dash yawned and shifted in her seat, her wings twitching with barely contained tension. The Mayor had called Dash into her temporary office in the town granary first thing in the morning, way too early for the sleepy pegasus mare's liking. It did not help that Dash had a very good idea what the Mayor wanted to discuss with her: the yesterday's fiasco, when Ditzy Doo had blown up the Town Hall's turret roof with an errant lightning bolt or two. She did not look forward to it.
”Ms. Dash, the Mayor will see you now.”
Dash took a couple of deep breaths and flew across the converted waiting room to the door the Mayor's secretary was holding open for her.
The Mayor looked up from the papers piled up on her desk, hastily moved here from her office in the Town Hall. She looked tired and frazzled, but mostly her expression reminded Dash unpleasantly of one of her old Flight School instructors after that one time she'd crashed through the school atrium's ice dome.
”Sit down, Ms. Dash,” the gray-maned mare said, fixing Dash with a stern look over her glasses. Dash slumped down onto the uncomfortable visitor couch set up for her, and prepared herself for the chewing-out that was coming.
Sure enough, the Mayor did not waste time with niceties, going right into business.
”Rainbow Dash, why in the name of Princess Celestia was a mail-mare handling the weather over the town square? I understood that Ms. Doo had left the weather service years ago, and taken up a job at the Post Office. Why was she working with the clouds again?” The Mayor slid a sheet of paper across the desk; Dash, craning her neck, recognized it as a copy of Ditzy's personnel sheet from the Weather Patrol's archives. ”Especially since she quit her weather job because of the series of accidents and near-accidents she caused due to her difficulties in handling those clouds!” the older mare snapped.
Stifling her twin urges to snap back at the leader of the local government and to yawn, Dash replied carefully. ”She was temping for the Weather Patrol. I don't know why Cloud Kicker assigned Ditzy to that job, though.” Drawing a breath, she continued. ”We're awfully short on capable ponies these days, you know. Everypony's breaking their wings trying to deal with all the freak weather that's showed up since Discord showed up. It's like what we've had here in Ponyville, next to Everfree, all over Equestria and even abroad! Ditzy's got the experience, and she's willing to put in the extra hours, so I'm not gonna turn her down when she asks to temp!”
”Yes, Ms. Doo does have experience with weather catastrophes, doesn't she?” the Mayor said, rather crossly. ”The Weather Patrol's job is to try and mitigate the dangers posed by unruly weather, not exacerbate them! Furthermore, if you, the captain of Ponyville's weather patrol, don't know what your underlings are doing and why, perhaps you aren't the right pony to run the town's weather patrol.”
Dash's mane bristled at this. ”Oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna get to the bottom of this! And I don't appreciate being told how to run my crew! Besides, if your folks had paid more attention to lightning-proofing and reinforcing the Town Hall after half its timbers got turned into taffy and back again, we would have gotten away with just a few singed shingles. The whole top floor was unsafe way before the first lightning bolt hit it!”
From there, the discussion turned really nasty.
Rainbow Dash shot out of the granary building, feeling truly pissed off. The Mayor had told her in no uncertain terms that she did not want to see Ditzy Doo in the weather patrol again, and that another debacle like this would mean she'd start looking for somepony to replace Rainbow Dash as the captain of the Ponyville weather patrol.
Grumbling, the blue pegasus zoomed across the town towards the Weather Patrol office to see what Cloud Kicker had to say in her defense. She was a capable weathermare, Dash knew. What the buck had she been thinking when she'd sent anypony, let alone Ditzy Doo, out over the town with a fully charged thundercloud?
Dash barged right into her second-in-command's office without bothering to knock. She found harassed-looking Cloud Kicker struggling with tons of meteorological observation charts. The startled mare dropped her slide rule and greeted Dash nervously.
”Uh, good morning, Rainbow! I, um, I didn't expect you here so early...”
”Yeah, me neither. But the Mayor just bit off my tail over Ditzy blowing up the Town Hall yesterday, and now I'm going to bite off yours,” Dash grumbled, sinking into the comfy cloud floating in the corner of the room. ”Start explaining, will you?”
Cloud Kicker sighed and rubbed her eyes. ”It was an accident,” she said in a tired voice. ”Thunderlane and Blossomforth were busy handling the monthly irrigation over the Whitetail Wood, and I had Ditzy bringing them extra rainclouds. Unfortunately, we got a mislabeled thundercloud kernel from Cloudsdale, and nopony at the depot noticed the error as it was brewed up. That it blew up right over the Town Hall was nothing but bad luck.”
”The buck it was!” Dash said, scowling. ”C'mon, Cloud Kicker! We're supposed to be professionals, and part of that is checking the clouds at the depot before we deploy them! And what in Equestria were you thinking, putting Ditzy Doo, the pony who could get hailstones out of the fluffiest wisp of cirrocumulus ever made, on any job involving moving rain-loaded clouds over the town?”
Dash was all ready to lay into her right-hoof pony a bit more, but the look on Cloud Kicker's face made her relent. ”I... I'm sorry, Rainbow. It was my fault,” the pale lavender pegasus said in a choked voice. For a moment, it seemed like she might burst into tears, but after a moment she collected herself. ”I've just been so busy with all this,” she said, gesturing at the charts spread all over her desk.
As the only other Flight School-educated pegasus in the town patrol, and the only one who had actually graduated from there, Cloud Kicker was responsible for taking the barometric readings, moisture samples and all the other meteorological data and putting them together into the observation reports for the Royal Meteorological Board. Normally, this was a fiddly but not particularly hard job, and Rainbow Dash gladly let her second-in-command handle it while she herself took the point on actual cloud-kicking.
However, just as she'd told the Mayor, Discord's brief reign of chaos had scrambled the climate across the whole continent, and even the normal, factory-made weather was showing signs of chaos. So, instead of just deploying the pre-arranged weather patterns from Cloudsdale according to the Board's schedules, they had to micromanage things, constantly taking readings and adjusting the weather to keep it on track.
”I know,” Dash told her, giving Cloud Kicker a friendly wing-bump.”Just be more careful in the future, okay? And if there's any more manure coming from the Mayor's office over this, just let me know. I'll handle it personally.”
”I will. And thanks, Dash,” Cloud Kicker said, giving her a weak smile.
Leaving Cloud Kicker to her meteorological work, Dash headed out to find the last pegasus involved in this mess. As the fastest pegasus in Ponyville – heck, the whole of Equestria! – Dash could have just flown a high-altitude search pattern until she spotted Ditzy, and caught up with her, but she wasn't in the mood for it.
A quick look at the sun told her that Ditzy would be finishing up with her morning rounds soon. Knowing that the mail-mare would return to the Post Office before heading out for lunch, Rainbow Dash alighted on the building's high-peaked roof of the and settled down to wait.
She didn't have to wait very long before she saw Ditzy Doo winding her way between Ponyville's chimneys and gables towards her workplace. The gray pegasus had a very distinct, fluttering and wobbling style of flight that looked like she was about the lose control and enter an uncontrollable spin any second now, but she never did.
Ditzy's flying always offended Dash's sense of style and cool – a grown pegasus mare shouldn't flounder and flit around like a filly who'd just learned how to fly – but she had to admit that it was surprisingly effective, aerodynamically speaking. Ditzy was, at her very best, only average when it came to speed, but she had a lot of endurance, making her well suited for her job as a letter carrier.
It was clear that Ditzy had recognized Dash as well; with her rainbow mane and tail, and bright blue coat, she was impossible to mistake for anypony else. ”Uh... You're here to see me, aren't you, Rainbow Dash?” she asked as she paused to hover before the roof, her golden eyes even more askew than usually and an apologetic smile on her muzzle.
”Yeah. Drop off your bags, I got to talk with you, Ditzy,” Dash replied, giving the hapless mail-mare what she hoped was a suitably stern glare.
With an unhappy sigh, Ditzy dove down to the street level and vanished into the building. A few minutes later, she reappeared, head hanging and ears folded back, looking all the world like a little filly about to be scolded by her mother. Dash sighed, feeling her anger starting to dissipate. It was impossible to feel mad at Ditzy for very long, especially when she got that look!
”Okay, let's find a bit more private place. C'mon, follow me.”
She launched into the air, heading towards the small cloud she'd left hanging over the lake last night to serve as a napping platform for today. Ditzy, wobbling as usual, followed her at a slower pace, leaving Dash with plenty of time to spread the cloud out enough to serve them both as a place to sit.
”I want to say I'm sorry about yesterday,” Ditzy started as soon as she landed, fixing her good eye on Dash while the other stared bashfully past the blue pegasus. ”I know I should have gone around Ponyville instead of taking the shortcut, and I should have been more careful with that cloud, and after it started thundering, I should have just pushed it away instead of trying to make it stop. I was so sure that if I just knocked it right, it would stop shooting that lightning...”
”Yeah, you should have,” Dash interrupted. ”But you didn't, and it blew up, and now I've got the Mayor's bite marks on my butt!” Ditzy cringed at this, and Dash sighed. ”Listen, I talked with Cloud Kicker, and I know it wasn't all your fault. They shipped us a thundercloud from Cloudsdale, the QA guy must have been asleep or too busy to notice, and Cloud Kicker was too busy to notice what she handed over to you. But it still blasted the Town Hall's roof in, and it was your hoof on the cloud at that point.”
”I'm sorry,” Ditzy said, looking contrite.
”Well, yeah, you ought to be,” Dash said again. ”Anyway, the whole building needs fixing – there's no way that observation deck should have broken just 'cause you sat down on it – but with AJ's rodeo money coming in and the insurance, the Mayor's office isn't going to be coming after you for the money.”
Ditzy sighed in relief. ”I'm so glad to hear that. Carrying mail is a steady job, but it doesn't pay very well, and I really need the extra bits from this temp job...”
”Yeah... about that,” Dash said. ”I don't think I can hire you again, Ditzy, at least not until the Town Hall's fixed. The Mayor's gonna throw a fit if she sees you pushing any more clouds across the sky.”
The way the grey pegasus' face fell made Dash feel like a heel. ”But... Please, Dash! I've been saving to take the girls on a real vacation come summer! Dinky's never been to the sea, and Sparkler wanted to visit Port-au-Prance... I'll be super careful, I swear it, but please, just give me another chance!”
Dash sighed. It wasn't fair for Ditzy to bring her daughters into the discussion like that, it made her feel like the bad guy in one of Rarity's fancy historical novels who was snatching the carrots from the mouths of poor orphan foals or something. ”I'm sorry, Ditzy. Can't you find another job that's not weather-related?”
The other pegasus shook her head. ”I can't. I've tried, but I can't. Boxxy isn't taking me back for the moving service, not after I dropped that piano on top of Princess Celestia's favorite student.” She turned red all the sudden. ”Oh, right, I forgot she's your friend, too, I'm sorry! But yeah, that one's out of the question. And with the new railroad to Canterlot, there's no more demand for bulk air freight in Ponyville, and I'm not quick enough for the fast courier jobs. Fluttershy told me she would try asking around in Animal Control if they needed someone to help with the birds and the butterflies, but with the economy the way it is...” She sighed.
Dash nodded, knowing what she meant. Although the worst effects of Discord's chaos had been limited to Ponyville and its immediate vicinity, his influence could be seen everywhere. Entire fields choked with magical weeds, driving up the price of foodstuffs; bridges and roads and ferries requiring urgent repairs and hindering trade; animals acting spooked and strange, leading to stampedes, crop losses and general chaos; and weather playing havoc with everything...
A lamp went on over her head. ”Waitaminute... Fluttershy told me once what that cutie mark of yours means,” Dash said. ”You're supposed to be a whiz with the small air currents and stuff, aren't you?”
Ditzy blinked, unsure about the sudden change in the direction of the discussion. ”Uh, yes... I have a feel for the air. Sometimes, if everything goes just right, I can actually see how it moves and flows...”
”Perfect,” Dash said, nodding and smiling. ”And you've done the basic meteorological training, haven't you?”
”Uh, yes. I did work three years in the weather patrol, Rainbow,” Ditzy said, trying to figure what the blue pegasus was driving at.
”Awesome!” Grinning broadly now, Dash reached out with both forehooves to grab Ditzy's hoof and shake it vigorously. ”You're hired, Ms. Doo. Temp job only, of course, but between you and me, it's going to be almost as good as a steady one.”
Ditzy frowned and yanked her hoof away. ”Is this one of your pranks, Rainbow Dash? Because I'm not in the mood...”
”Oh no, this ain't no joke!” Dash laughed. ”I'm hiring you as a meteorological assistant to Cloud Kicker! You'll be in charge of collecting all the data she needs for her reports to the Meteorological Board. With your skills, you're the perfect pony for the job, and you're already flying all across Ponyville and the outlying farms, twice a day! I bet that once you get the feel of it, you don't even need to lug the equipment with you.”
Ditzy's golden-yellow eyes widened, and her wandering eye suddenly snapped in alignment, so that she was looking straight at Rainbow Dash. ”You- you really mean that? Oh, thank you, Dash! Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!” she gushed. Then she leaped into the air and somersaulted, laughing all the while.
”You're welcome,” Dash said, grinning proudly. ”How about you come to the patrol office after you've done the afternoon rounds, so that you and Cloud Kicker can hash out the details?”
Ditzy nodded, and with a final ”Thank you!” leaped off the cloud and swooped back towards the Post Office.
It was really the perfect solution, Dash mused as she re-fluffed the cloud, readying for a little nap. Ditzy and her kids would get their vacation. Cloud Kicker could use the relief, and her reports would probably turn out better as she wouldn't have to flit all over the place gathering her measurements. And the Mayor would be none the wiser, seeing Ditzy going around Ponyville with her mailbags as usual.
”Tell me how to run my crew, will you?” Dash snorted as she snuggled down onto the pleasantly soft cloud. ”Not on my watch, Ms. Mayor!”
