Forged in Fire, Tempered by Time

A loud 'crack' and a purple flash heralded the arrival of the three ponies just outside Ponyville's weather centre. Twilight, being well used to the effects of her teleportation spell by now, was completely unfazed. The same could not be said for the two pegasi. Rainbow Dash swayed unsteadily on her hooves, left disorientated and dizzy by their magically assisted trip. Squall outright collapsed, his knees giving way.

"I think I'm gunna hurl," he complained weakly, looking rather green in the face.

Twilight ignored them both and dashed inside to seek her patient. He wasn't hard to find; the smell of charred meat and burning feathers lead her straight to where he lay - mercifully unconscious - on a table. The items that had previously occupied the table lay scattered on the floor, having been hastily swept aside to make room for the downed pony. The various charts, timetables, and maps were trampled underhoof as frantic ponies circulated through the room.

Midnight was not a pretty sight. The lightning had caught him on the wing near the base; the feathers all along the limb were almost completely absent, and the skin and flesh itself was horribly burnt and blistered. His side had obviously caught a dose of the lightning as well, a cauterised furrow had been carved along his chest laying bare the odd patch of stark white rib. These injuries were serious enough on their own, but the intense heat had also melted several pieces of the weather equipment he had been wearing into his fur and flesh. The smell of burning plastic intermingled with that of cooked flesh was a sensory experience that Twilight fervently hoped she never had to experience again.

Nurse Redheart, along with a collection of other nurses and doctors were already busily working away. They had several IV bags set up, replacing vital fluids, and had begun cutting away the pieces of fused weather equipment. Midnight was also receiving numerous injections, and a portable defibrillator lay on a nearby table. Nurse Redheart turned as Twilight entered.

"Twilight, thank day and night!" she cried out. "We could really use your expertise on this one. The base injuries we can deal with and we've already got his heart going again, but we need you to siphon off the wild magic before we can deal with anything properly. It's already flung Dr. Kendrick across the room and burnt out the defib! If his heart stops again we won't be able to get it going this time."

Twilight just nodded stoically and closed her eyes as she stepped up to the table, everyone else instinctually stepped away. She focused her magic on the pegasusl, the purple glow enveloping him.

When focused, a unicorns magic is like another sense organ, but with an acuity that puts their purely biological ones to shame. Twilight's magic, being so much more potent than the average unicorns, gave her a level of insight and detail, orders of magnitude greater than normal. It had taken years of Celestia's  strict and rigorous tutelage to properly use and interpret everything. When she had been just a foal, the sheer quantity of information she received had been too much for her. She had been able to understand only a tiny fraction of the data she received. She never liked to talk about it, always fearing to boast about her abilities, but her time as Princess Celestia's protégé had left her with, arguably, one of the most finely honed, and frighteningly powerful minds in all of Equestria. This considerable mental capacity was even now filtering through the data concerning the pegasus before her.

She immediately noted the wild magic's presence. She could see the microscopic arcs flickering across the craggy, scabbed landscape of Midnight's burns, felt as they penetrated the skin, and pierced cell membranes, smelt them as they proliferated in the blood, and heard the sickening tearing as they ripped into the pegasus' fragile DNA.

The sparks were mostly centred around the injuries, like bacteria infecting a wound, but were beginning to spread throughout his body. She noted each of their locations, and willed them all to the surface, stopping their rampage of wanton destruction throughout Midnight's body. They flowed like oil across his skin, congealing in a mass about the size of a tennis ball before lifting off and floating dead centre above the table.

The magic had not put up a fight thus far, but having been removed from its playground, it decided it wanted back in. It lashed out at the one who had contained it, a bolt of magic shooting out at Twilight. Having felt the build up of power though, Twilight was well prepared. A shimmering bubble appeared around the angry ball of magic, negating any attempts it made to break free.

Now the hard part had been done, she simply had to nullify it. This was far easier than extracting it, all she had to do was eat it. Or at least the magical equivalent of eating it. She had thought enough to spare to think that mundane words like 'eat' were never quite suitable for describing magical events. They could never seem to captured what was actually happening. The writhing ball of magic, still safely encased, floated serenely towards Twilight's horn. Upon contact, her horn absorbed the sparks, leaving only an empty sphere, which popped like a bubble. Twilight's considerable reservoirs of her own internal magic would overwhelmed and impose order on the wild magic, simply adding it to her reserves of power. The process complete, she exhaled heavily and opened her eyes. To the surrounding ponies, the entire process had lasted only seconds.

"There, the magic had been neutralised. He is now free of its influence and I was able to limit any damage it was able to do," Twilight explained.

The surrounding ponies gave a sigh of relief and the medical personnel immediately set back to work. Twilight waited around just long enough to take the weather harness off the nurses hands, so she and the weather team could begin analyzing the data. It was a gory trophy, encrusted as it was with dried blood and melted flesh. She tried not to think about it as she left the room. Across the corridor, several weather ponies, including Rainbow Dash and Squall, were gathered around a chart table.

"I've got the instruments," Twilight announced to the room at large, before depositing the rig on the table.

The pegasi stiffened at the sight of the damaged and soiled artifact laying before them. Squall, still barely recovered from the unsuspected teleport, began to grow green again. No one moved to inspect the instruments.

With a resigned sigh, Cloudburst stepped forward to undertake the task. He had commissioned the fly-by, he should be the one to collect the data, he reasoned. He started gingerly removing the still functioning devices, deliberately averted his eyes from the damage the storm had inflicted. There was nothing he could do about the smell. It was pungent mixture; the smell of burnt feathers, mixed with the metallic smell of fused metal, all overlaid with the sickly sweet scent of cooked flesh. The slight tang of ozone, evidence of the fateful lightning strike, still lingered.

Guilt wracked him; after all, it had been him who sent Midnight out into the storm. He had left it too late, any storm coalescing over the Everfree should have been scouted almost immediately. By the time he sent a pony out there, it was already too powerful. True, Midnight had volunteered knowing it was dangerous, even a foal could have seen that, but had he asked the same question a few hours earlier...

"I-I'm going to...to lay down in the other room," he choked out when he had finished, noticeably pale. "Rainbow, you know how to read the machines, but call me if you need anything."

With their forepony gone, everyone looked to Twilight for instructions, automatically affording her seniority. While often looked to for advice or knowledge, Twilight was unused to being the one outright calling the shots. She wasn't quite sure how to handle it and, for a moment, froze up. A poke in the ribs from Rainbow Dash brought her back to reality. Being the personal protégé to Princess Celestia did grant her authority in the eyes of other ponies, she supposed. To be honest she never really thought about it, and had certainly never used it. But she was getting off topic.

"Er, right. Rainbow, can you gather the information from the equipment. Squall, can you keep an eye on the weather station on the roof and tell me if there is any drastic changes. And can a couple of you go outside and keep an eye on the storm, I want to know the moment it starts moving. Everybody else, er...just stand ready," Twilight rattled off.

The gathered pegasi immediately went about their appointed tasks, much to Twilight's amazement. She still found it odd that they did as she asked without question. Blinking away the thought, she adjusted her stance and concentrated. She envisaged the circle she had drawn in the middle of library floor, ready for just such an occasion. The space was always kept clear, Spike occasionally renewing the circle if it got scuffed or worn. Twilight knew the precise dimensions and position of the circle, which made it that much easier to transport material from within the circle to her current location, providing she was in range of course. If Spike had done as she had asked, there should now be a pile of relevant books ready for transport.

Her horn flared with power, heralding a crack and flash of light. A stack of books, nearly as tall as she was appeared on the ground in front of her. Much to her surprise, there was there was also a groggy, and slightly smoking, baby dragon, a book grasped in his claws. He swayed briefly on his feet before toppling over backwards with a groan.

"Oh, sorry Spike!" said Twilight, quickly moving forward to see if he was alright. "I was in such a hurry that I forgot to send the warning spark first. Are you okay?"

"That was...unexpected," he groaned, rubbing his head as he pushed himself into a sitting position.

"Are you okay?" Twilight asked again.

"I think so," he said as he quickly eyed his body and felt for his spines. "Yeah, I think I'm all here. That was rougher than your usual teleportation spell."

"Hehe," Twilight laughed sheepishly, "I wasn't really expecting any living passengers. Books tend not to complain if it's a bit of a bumpy ride."

She couldn't see any obviously missing or misplaced body parts, but just to be on the safe side Twilight gave her draconic charge a quick once over with magic. She was relieved to find that he really was fine.

"Did you get all the books then?" she asked, scanning the spines of the stack in front of her.

"This was the last one," Spike replied, holding up the book he had dropped.

"Thanks Spike," she smiled gratefully at her assistant. "Now that you're here, you can help me sift through these books for information concerning free magic induced storms. And we need to be quick about it, who knows when that storm will start moving or what it'll do to Ponyville."

The pair started pulling books from the pile, both being seasoned readers, they were able to breeze through a book rather quickly. They scanned the pages for keywords, only stopping to read a passage if it seemed relevant. Twilight was quickly amassing notes about free magic and weather, but so far no book mentioned what happened when the two were one and the same. After ten minutes or so of frantic reading and scribbling, Rainbow Dash came over with the list of readings.

"Here you go Twi," she said as she handed them over, "from what I can tell this is a seriously powerful storm, but some of the readings don't really make sense."

"That may well be the magic interfering with the equipment," Twilight guessed, "or it could be the magic is altering the way the storm is forming. It needn't conform to the usual rules due to the magic's influence."

"What is free magic, anyways?" Dash asked. "I've never heard of it."

"It's naturally occurring magic, it doesn't need a unicorn, alicorn, or other magical entity to cast it. It's unpredictable, and theoretically doesn't have an upper limit to its power. When magic is usually cast, the limiting factor is whomever is casting it, with free magic this obviously isn't the case," Twilight explained as she scanned the list of figures Rainbow had handed her, comparing them to her notes. "It's not always dangerous though; there are several cases of completely benign free magic. The Dream Caves under Canterlot, or The Floating Crystals in the desert beyond Appleloosa for example."

Twilight stopped reading abruptly, eyes widening and mouth dropping open. She checked the numbers again, repeatedly glancing between the readouts and her notes.

"Nononono, this can't be right!" she looked Dash in the eyes, fear evident in her own. "Are you sure you read these all correctly!?" She pointed at the readings for electric charge and current.

Dash read the numbers, turning round to double check the apparatus that measured them.

"Yeah, that's right. Is that bad?" she said, as she turned back. Lightning was not something many pegasi wanted to deal with, for obvious reasons. As such, Rainbow had only minimal training in the area.

"These figures are a factor of ten higher than they have any right to be!" Twilight said incredulously. "This storm is going to be producing a lot of EXTREMELY powerful bolts of lightning. The one that hit Midnight can't have been anywhere near as powerful as that or..." she trailed off. Rainbow had grown very pale.

"W-well, what do we do about it?" Rainbow asked uneasily.

That was an excellent question. How did you deal with a storm powered by unknowably powerful free magic that actively targeted approaching ponies with unnaturally strong lightning? Targeted ponies...Squall was on the roof!

"Oh Celestia! We have to get Squall inside, NOW! And anypony else for that matter!"

A pegasus dashed into the room then, looking windblown and dishevelled.

"The storm has started moving, and it's coming right this way!" he blurted out before he had come to a complete halt.

"Oh Celestia! Cover your ears everypony!" Twilight cried, before she concentrated and summoned her magic. After a second of concentration, a choker of translucent lavender magic appeared around her neck.

"EVERYPONY GET INSIDE NOW!" she yelled with her magically amplified voice. Motes of dust spiralled down from the ceiling and Rainbow Dash felt her teeth shake.

This was immediately followed by the sounds of hooves clattering on the floor and the door swinging open and slamming shut several times. There was also a series of sounds from the roof which sounded suspiciously like a pony rolling down the shingles. Less than a minute later, the room was jammed with ponies, Squall bringing up the rear rubbing a bruise on his head. Everybody was looking expectantly at Twilight. She swallowed nervously.

"The storm has some very worrying properties, first and foremost is extremely powerful lightning. Far more powerful than anything a natural storm would produce. And, er, it seems the lightning is deliberately aiming for ponies."

This last piece of information was met with fear and consternation by the assembled weather ponies. Only those that had been witness to Midnight's accident had been aware that the storm seemed to be able to target anything it wanted. Twilight called for quiet before continuing.

“We obviously can’t risk any flights given this knowledge. One casualty is more than enough. I will try and deal with this from the ground, and failing that we will just have to sit it out and hope for the best.”

A mixture of relief and frustration rippled around the room. The magical nature of the storm had rendered the weather ponies impotent, but they no longer had to risk life and limb to combat the storm. Twilight turned to leave, but a hoof on her shoulder stopped her.

"No way you are going out there on your own," said a very vehement Rainbow Dash. "I'm coming with you!"

"What? No! You can't come with me, the storm will swat you out the sky!" Twilight replied, shocked at her friends recklessness. Surely she knew what lightning did to a pony.

"Well then, I guess I'll just have to stay on the ground. There's no way you're going out there without me Twi, Element of Loyalty and all that. I didn't get it just because I look awesome."

A flat stare did nothing to discourage the brash pegasus; the determined glint in her eyes shone bright and true.

"Rainbo-"

"Nuh uh," Rainbow interrupted. "No excuses, you can't go expecting to save the town all by yourself. You need somepony to watch your back and I just happen to be the pony for the job."

"...Fine, but you've got to do exactly what I tell you or you could get hurt," Twilight finally replied, looking serious.

She was actually glad that the pegasus was coming with her, she didn't relish the prospect of combating the storm all by herself. The almost stern expression dropped, to be replaced with a warm and sincere smile.

"Thanks, Dash."