Lift Your Skinny Hooves, Like Antennas To Heaven...
A cold wind blew through Ponyville, and Rainbow Dash stood above it all. She wore nothing but her weather goggles and a manic grin on her face, hooves plodding against the cloud below her. She shivered slightly before freezing, as if irritated at her spine for betraying her weakness to the weather. No more.
She kissed her hoof gently, licking it ever so slightly, and then held it out in front of her. The wind against the dampness chilled her, and this time she did not shiver. Smiling, she put her hoof down against the cloud, the cold-cotton feeling soothing her.
“Perfect.”
Taking to her wings, she shot off the cloud, plunging forward into a smaller cloud just before her. Rainbow pulled herself upward so that she was standing on it, and flapped her wings with small, rapid beats, pushing her into a hover. Turning around, she kicked the cloud so that it collided with the one that she had just taken off from. They collided, and the smaller cloud coalesced into the larger one.
Rainbow returned to the now singular cloud, and inspected it. She pushed her hoof against it, she looked it over once and then another time, and finally leaned in close, inhaling. The cloud had gotten slightly darker in coloration, but was hardly anything but an off-white color to any but the most trained eye. Which Rainbow Dash was.
“Alright, you’re coming with me,” Rainbow said, flying over to the far side of the cloud and giving it a hard, solid kick square in the middle of the side. The cloud shot away from her, and she quickly pivoted to see its progress. The cloud had darkened more visibly with this kick, and could easily be called a light grey.
The clouds it was approaching, however, were much darker. There was a huge mass of them, just outside the outskirts of Ponyville, towering above the hills and forests below it. It climbed through the atmosphere, so high that Rainbow had to crane her neck to see all the way up it. She still couldn’t see the top--but it was a sight to behold nonetheless. Grinning, she whistled, brushing a bit of mane from in front of her goggles which had been tossed there by the winds.
“Thank you, Cloudsdale Weather Team,” she said, chuckling to herself.
She extended her wings fully, and beat them over and over, slow but powerful pushing. The wind from these movements gathered up small bits of cloud that had been hanging around in the air around her. Rainbow drifted along as she did this, before she was but feet away from the cloud whom she had kicked the smaller one into. With a final push of her wings, the collection of tiny clouds in the buffets of her wing-wind blew away from her and joined the pillar of grey.
Rainbow flew up to the wall of cloud, and rested her hooves against it. Inhaling sharply, she kicked, and a loud thunderclap echoed over Ponyville, into the nearby foothills, and over the wild weathered Everfree. A storm like this belonged to those forests, where the skies remained untamed and no pegasi were needed to reign in the weather. But a storm like this had been decided for Ponyville, and Rainbow Dash was just the pony to deliver it.
She kicked it again, coiling her legs up tight to her body and pushing down as hard as she could. She flapped her wings, sending her flying back. Assessing the storm, she grinned. She could feel the power contained within, just waiting to be unleashed. The bottle was tight, and primed. All it needed was to be shaken a bit.
Rainbow sped forward, and dove directly into the clouds, grunting as she pushed through the thick outer wall. Popping out the other side, she spat out a little chunk of grey, wiping her tongue down with her hoof.
“Ugh, these storms are always so bitter.” Her ears perked up, and she turned her head to the side, a grin slowly dawning on her muzzle. The winds whipped and tore through the inside of the great cyclone, little arcs of lightning crackling and flashing between larger groups of clouds. Everything was contained within a vaguely-cylindrical encasement of thick, nearly black stormclouds.
Rainbow whistled. “Cloudsdale really took pride in this, huh?” She chuckled, hovering in place. “Well, you guys did good, but it’s not perfect yet. That’s where I come in.”
She zipped to the side, slamming her back hooves into the clouds, rocketing to the side and plunging directly into the winds. She banked a hard left and sailed forward at great speeds, curling into a ball and slamming directly into a large clouds that was being spun around and around by a vortex of the storm’s gales. As she crashed into it, Rainbow uncurled, peppering the cloud with her hoof strikes. With a final kick, she flew off into the winds again, and grinned as she watched the cloud heave, and then begin to pour water from its underbelly.
“Yes!” she pumped one hoof as she sailed backwards with the winds, and extended her wings, sliding upward. She was flying parallel to a large body of a cloud, a towering cumulus. Every few moment she would slam a well-placed jab into its surface, sending a ripple of her innate pegasi magic through it.
Rainbow flew in and out of the clouds, zigzagging back and forth, leaving a path of turbulent and pouring clouds in her wake. The winds picked up with each strike and slash she made, her wings adding to the great rushes of air. After a good ten minutes of constantly pummeling and body-slamming, she fell with a wet phwump onto a gently drifting smaller stormcloud shielded by some jutting sections of the larger, thicker encasement of cloud that made up the outer layer of the massive storm.
Tiny bolts of electricity zapped through the cloud, and snapped against Rainbow. Her coat stood on end and her eyes opened wide as she jolted up, taking to flight as fast she she could, a single feather falling from her wings and getting sucked into the vortex not a moment later.
“Whew! That’ll keep me on my hooves, haa...”
She tore upwards, gritting her teeth and narrowing her eyes behind her goggles as Rainbow battled sheet after sheet of cold, oppressive rain. She stuck one hoof out in front of her, as if to cut a path out before her, clearing away obstacles. A useless gesture at first glance, but not a moment later, Dash plunged directly into the heart of a protruding arm of cloud that stuck out from place in the rest of the wall of weather.
She was fully encased in the cloud now, and this was no smooth cold-cotton feeling; she felt like she had been wrapped in several of Rarity’s thickest fabrics, dunked in a lake, and then thrown down a hill. Her entire body quivered and shook as she tried to hook her hooves in to get a decent hold on something, anything, inside the storm. In desperation, she kicked all four of her limbs out in unison, while extended her wings to their fullest span.
The arm of cloud detached from the main mass, and the great winds of the storm immediately took hold of it, sending the cloud as well as its pegasus passenger sailing at incredible speeds into jetstream of intense winds. Her cloud prison crashed into the sides of the dense weather walls, bouncing and ricocheting, turning spins and spirals over and over. After a particularly intense collision with the side of the dense barrier between storm and sky, Rainbow’s cloud broke open and sent her flying.
She sailed backwards, turning flips and somersaults until she felt nearly ready to vomit. Desperately, she shot her hooves out and hooked herself onto the nearest cloud she could reach. It was a small node sticking from a larger cloud which was barely hanging on to the cloud wall, and she tore it free from its larger brother. Her hooves clutching at nothing but small puffs of condensation that quickly disintegrated, she was dragged backwards into the pounding winds.
Rainbow yelped as the huge wall of wind slammed her fully, sending her head over hooves and her wings strained futilely against the storm. Tumbling down the almost vertical shaft of wind, she slammed into several thick groups of small clouds that had detached from the larger masses through the force of the hurricane-level gales. Grunting with each crash through the clouds, Rainbow struggled to push her wings out straight again; it was her only hope to avoid becoming a blue and red splatter against the ground.
Dash let loose an inequine roar, and mustering all her might, tilted her body to the side. Her goggles were completely obscured by accumulated rainwater, which was replaced just as fast as it ran off the lenses, but Rainbow didn’t need her sight to know what was going to happen next. She had calculated it perfectly.
With a muffled grunt, she slammed full force into a dense patch of cloud that hung off the side of the main wall of stormcloud. Her body sunk deep into it, her inertia dissipating into the grey mass. It wasn’t scattered for long, however; the cloud warped and bent, stretching as Rainbow’s body depressed it. The pegasus braced herself for the coming snapback—it had been her pure intention all along.
The cloud flexed against her, and Rainbow Dash went flying upwards. Tumbling through the air, she did three—no, four— somersaults as she accelerated upwards with the winds. Her wings shot out, and she stabilized, soaring higher and higher.
She whipped past rolling wave after rolling wave of stormcloud, her heart pounding in her flattened ears as she ascended into the air
She broke through the top layer, and hung, suspended in space, shivering slightly as the cold air pushed against her sopping body. The sun beat down on her, but it was hardly enough to detract from the chilling sensation of being so high up. Looking down below her, she saw the huge black and grey seething blanket of clouds, but the winds and thunderclaps were muffled by both her distance and the clouds themselves. Occasionally, bursts of purple and white lit up patches of the cloud.
Looking up above her, Rainbow Dash saw nothing but crisp blue skies and the blinding light of the sun. Her lenses had dryed of their rainwater coating, and she could see everything perfectly clear. Her wings beat once to keep her aloft, and droplets of water stuck in her feathers, mane, and coat dropped into a free-fall, crystallizing into ice as they fell. She knew, in the back of her mind, that if she were to stay where she was, she’d be covered in frost.
Taking a deep breath, the chilly air cutting deep into her lungs, Rainbow let out a huge whoop and holler into the empty skies above.
Her time above the clouds was up, and she slowly extended her wings out as full as they would go. Slowly turning her head and neck backward, she exposed her throat to the sky above, and curved in a graceful arc, trimmed belly pushed towards the sun. Her tail flicked once, sending a spray of half-frozen sleet away from her, and Dash pinned her wings to her body, diving back into the gathering storm.
Two pegasi sat on a small bank of clouds a few hundred feet away, lower in altitude than that massive thunderstorm that had been singly built by Rainbow Dash. They followed the speck of blue that burst from the dark grey over and over, occasionally being blown back with a blast of electricity.
“Do you think we should stop her?” Thunderlane asked as the boiling mess of clouds the exact color of his coat expanded, Rainbow Dash shooting up from the top as he spoke. “I mean, that thing’s going to destroy Ponyville if it goes on like this.”
Blossomforth smiled, shaking her head slightly. “Just let her have her moment. Dash knows what she’s doing. You got your goggles?”
Thunderlane popped his hoof into the cloud bank next to him, and uprooted the goggles from their hiding place. “Right here.”
Blossomforth had already slid hers on. “Good. Brace yourself.”
The wind had already picked up, and a single blue feather fluttered past them, borne on the howling gale. The two pegasi’s coats stood on end as cold showers from the outskirts of the monolithic storm washed over them. The huge grey, seething blanket bore down on them, and they could hear Rainbow Dash’s ecstatic laughter echoing inside the cacophony of winds.
Author's Note
