Tempestby TimbukTurnipChaptersChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 1Pinkie Pie. That was all she could remember. There was something important about that name. Was it her name? No, thinking of herself as Pinkie Pie didn’t feel right. In fact, the name filled her with… fear? Why would it make her feel fear? It wasn’t fear of the name either; it was fear for it. Why? She couldn’t remember; she just knew she had to do something important with that name. Something dangerous… but vital. It was also urgent. “Rainbow?” Rainbows? Why would she suddenly think about rainbows? This was no time to be thinking about a display of colours, she had something important she- wait. Rainbow? That was a name, another name, one that sounded familiar. Did Rainbow have some significance on what she had to do with Pinkie Pie? Did Pinkie Pie know Rainbow? Was she Rainbow? She was certainly confused if nothing else, and it was making her tired. Very tired in fact; maybe she should just go to sleep and think about it when she woke up. “Rainbow??” Hold on, that wasn’t one of her thoughts, that was a voice, a voice from nearby. It made her aware of her surroundings for the first time. Blearily, she noticed she was in a forest, laying on her right side, head against a tree. The treetops acted as a blanket that censored the ground from the majority of the sun’s rays, causing the area to be dimly lit. At least, she assumed it was the sun that was shining – she could not see through the treetops from her position and she had no idea what time it was. Considering the level of light, it could’ve just as easily been the moon that would be sitting above the forest. That didn’t matter to her right now though, as there was a voice that had originated behind her just a moment ago that could hopefully tell her… well, something useful, she hoped. Tiredness forgotten, she rolled over, experiencing an intense pain in her right forehoof and a sudden throbbing in her head as she did, causing her face to scrunch up in pain and her vision to blur. As the pain in her hoof slowly dissipated and the throbbing slowed a little, her eyes eventually came to focus on a pony in front of her. It had a light pink coat and an incredibly straight dark pink mane and tail. It looked wrong and depressing, as if the hair itself had given up on life and wanted to just sit in a corner and let the world go by until it and its owner died. She briefly wondered how a hair style could conjure up such a thought, before remembering the situation she found herself in; curiosity about hair style could wait. The pony itself was a slight contrast to its hair – it certainly didn’t look happy, but it wasn’t laying down and moping either. It looked worn out, breathing big breaths and covered in mud and scrapes, but it was standing looking alert, leaning forward, body tense, staring straight at her with wide blue eyes that exhibited fear and concern and appeared to be shining with… tears? That just raised even more questions. This whole thing was just getting more confusing and ridiculous by the second. She began to sort through the multitude of queries she had in her mind, intending to pick which one she wanted to voice first, but before she could open her mouth, the pink pony said something. It was pronounced in something between a shout and a high-pitched wail, but it was easy to understand. “Dashie!?” Dashie. From the utterance of that name, all of her memories raced past her eyes, and she remembered. She knew what she had to do. “Not now Pinkie Pie.” “Aww… come on… Dashie!” Pinkie was bouncing on a trampoline, head popping through the floor of the cloud Rainbow Dash was sat atop at a constant rate. Each time she broke through the cloud and appeared before Rainbow, she quickly voiced as many words in her sentence as she could before gravity caught up with her and pulled her back down to her trampoline to repeat this process. “Sorry Pinks, not right now,” Rainbow said apologetically yet with a slight tone of annoyance in her voice, “I have to practice my moves for the Wonderbolts! If I’m ever going to join them, I need to perfect my awesome stunts and keep them perfected; that means practice!” “But Dashie… I have a super-awesome-… terrific prank idea… that we have to… try out!” replied Pinkie as she reached the apex of her jumps. “It involves hot sauce!” she said, managing to hold a pout during her jumps. “Pinkie…” Rainbow did enjoy spending time pranking with the pink earth pony, and she was curious about this new prank, but she hadn’t practised her aerobatics for a while. She felt guilty turning her friend down, but her stunts were important; what if she bumped into the Wonderbolts and managed to mess up one of her tricks due to a lack of practise? Okay, randomly meeting the Wonderbolts in Ponyville was a bit unlikely, but she wasn’t ready to take the risk. She would be prepared. The twinge of guilt she felt when thinking about turning one of her best friends down – her happiest, most energetic and enthusiastic friend at that – didn’t disappear though. She was the element of loyalty after all. Maybe she could find a way to please both her friend and herself? Of course she could; she was Rainbow Dash! The quickest pony in Equestria! She could go pranking with Pinkie, then get her practise done swiftly afterwards. Moving to the side of the cloud while being continuously observed by Pinkie Pie with each *poof* of cloud, she allowed herself to fall off, landing on the trampoline and proceeding to jump in time with her favourite pink friend. The pink pony beamed at her. “Okay then Pinks; what’s this new prank?” Author's Note: Thought I might as well give writing something a go; feel like I've read enough stories to hop on the bandwagon. Any feedback is appreciated as it will help me know whether to continue attempting to write or give up due to being bad and not waste time; the same applies to any and all following chapters. Chapter 2The new prank turned out to be switching salad dressing with a bottle of hot sauce masquerading as a bottle of salad dressing with no one noticing. Knowing Twilight’s previous inability to handle hot sauce, the pranking duo applied the new prank to her as she sat down with a salad outside a restaurant for lunch. Pinkie distracted Twilight by suddenly appearing to her side and rambling on at her about anything and everything – effectively taking forever to say nothing – before disappearing as quickly as she appeared without letting Twilight utter a single syllable; during this time, Rainbow swiftly and quietly flew down from a cloud above and hovered next to Twilight on the side opposite to which she was facing, silently switched the bottles, gave a quick wink signal to Pinkie and retreated back up and landed on her cloud. She laid down with her head looking over the side of the fluffy surface as the pink pony disappeared from sight and materialised inside a bush beneath her. Both of them closely followed the actions of their unicorn friend as she slowly returned to her meal – no doubt confused by Pinkie’s actions before passing them off as ‘Pinkie just being Pinkie Pie’ - with steadily evolving smiles, eventually having to stifle their giggles with their hooves as Twilight applied the disguised hot sauce to her salad. Ultimately, they found themselves rolling on their backs laughing loudly as the Princess’ most faithful student ran for the nearest water source after her first bite, smoke billowing from her ears. The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, the duo playing tricks and pranks on different ponies around Ponyville until late into the afternoon, as the autumn sun was beginning to slip below the horizon. After another episode of fooling a pony into getting sneezing powder on their nose, they decided to call it a day. “That was a super-duper fun day Dashie!” Pinkie said with a cheery voice and an even bigger grin than the one she had seemed to have been holding all day. “We should do this again soon – pranking is twice as fun with you to help me!” “Heh, sure Pinkie, today was a lot of fun” replied Dash, doing her best to hide the strain in her voice. Pinkie didn’t seem to notice. “I better get home and check on gummy. See you later Dash!” said Pinkie while waving, before bouncing off in the direction of Sugarcube Corner as energetically as she had been all day. Dash on the other hand waited until the joyful pink earth pony disappeared from view before letting her shoulders slouch and releasing an exhausted breath; luckily the particular street she was on was devoid of any other ponies, so no one saw her do so. Phew. Another impromptu day with Pinkie Pie. Going pranking with Pinkie was definitely fun but bloody hay was it tiring; every joint in her body was aching and she felt not far off from the way she did after the Running of the Leaves. Not that she’d ever let anyone know that of course – she was the Iron Pony, she was too cool to be worn out by a bit of pranking, especially when Pinkie seemed to retain the same level of energy all day. Although, she was Pinkie Pie - she was known for her apparent boundless energy. Rainbow had no idea how the party pony achieved this limitless energy – probably from all the confectionery and such that she ate, though how she ate so many was another question itself – but she supposed it meant herself being worn out while the other pony remained effervescent wasn’t such a bad thing. Besides, her aches and pains included her jaw and stomach as a result from simply laughing too much, so it wasn’t all bad. In a bittersweet sort of way. With a loud groan, she remembered she had yet to practise her stunts; as if she wasn’t tired enough already. No matter, she had tenacity (that new word Twilight had taught her that she used whenever she could), at least when it came to the Wonderbolts. She had told herself she would do them, and do them she would. Giving herself a quick shake in an attempt to drive the exhaustion off her, she took flight in the direction of her cloud home, albeit at a slower pace than she would normally. Upon reaching it, she landed on a cloud outside in order to do a few stretches in order to work out any kinks and prepare herself, then once again took off into the air to begin her stunts. She quickly found herself growing frustrated as even the most basic of stunts turned out to be a struggle. Loops were uneven and messy, looking like they were scribbled out by a foal using Rainbow Dash as a pencil and the steadily darkening red sky as parchment; any attempt at barrel rolls caused her to lose control and start flying off to one side until she crashed into something, be it a tree or the ground. Only once or twice had she managed to regain control before living up to her old ‘Rainbow Crash’ nickname. “C’mon Dash, you can do this! They’re easy stunts! Concentrate – get it right!” she chastised herself. “If you can’t pull this off, your name isn’t Rainbow Dash!” Several failed attempts later, she decided her name wasn’t Rainbow Dash - at least not tonight. She was just too tired. Seriously, how did Pinkie Pie do it? That inexhaustible energy she has was all used on throwing parties and practical jokes. With that energy, Rainbow Dash would be unstoppable; nothing would be able to stand in her way of performing sonic rainbooms, winning competitions, joining the Wonderbolts… and she wouldn’t get tired from pranking. Maybe she should ask Pinkie the secret to limitless energy? Nah, assuming she got one the answer would likely be as incomprehensible as one of Twilight’s lectures about magic. Possibly more so. Giving a final despondent sigh, with her head and legs dropping, she began to fly the short distance to the door of her home and sweet, comfortable sleep. As she did, she took a cursory glance along the horizon to see the effect the rays of the almost completely hidden sun had on the mountains and trees in the distance. The city of Canterlot looked beautiful; the sun shining off its side gave it a golden glow, as if to signify its magnificence. The mountain it rested on was also enhanced by the rays of light, appearing prominent, like it was a knight in shining armour protecting the city attached to it. She looked over the Everfree Forest. The very treetops were caught by the remaining sunlight, giving the trees an odd look, as if the very tops of them were in the middle of autumn. The mountains too were illuminated by the light, giving a warm and comforting backdrop to the expanse of wild and dangerous forest before them. It was here that something caught her eye. In front of the mountains, hovering in the sky, appeared to be a black blob. It looked like it was bubbling too. Considering the quantity of the mountain it concealed, she judged it to be quite large. What was it though? It was over the Everfree Forest, a place where everything moves and acts on its own with no intervention from ponies, be it plants, animals or… clouds. A storm? It was in the sky, so that would make sense. A very large storm. Dangerously large in fact; if that storm moved towards Ponyville it would cause havoc on the town. Everfree storms are notoriously difficult and perilous to tackle, and this storm was huge – all the pegasi in town probably wouldn’t be able to make even a dent in it. The only course of action for the ponies of the town might be to board up the windows, barricade the doors, bundle up together and hope for the best. The destruction to the town could be even greater than the… incident with the parasprites; many ponies could find themselves injured and homeless. Her cloud home would be fine as it would be above the level of the storm clouds – she hoped – but the rest of town… what if all of Ponyville was decimated? What if something bad happened to one of her friends? To all of her friends? Nah, she was completely over exaggerating; the storm wasn’t that big, and it was highly unlikely going to head towards Ponyville anyway. If it did, Rainbow Dash could surely find a way to change its direction or break it up into little pieces. Yep, there was no need to worry, everything was just fine. Or at least it would be, as soon as she had some much needed sleep; that was likely what was causing her overstatements in the first place. Shooing away her outlandish worries, she flew through the door of her cloud home. Making her way into her bedroom, she flopped down onto her cushiony mattress, and without bothering she pull the duvet over her, she let her eyelids collapse and the resulting darkness take her into deep slumber filled only with loud snoring. Author's notes: Meant to say, I hope the prank at the beginning is plausible; I can be a freak when it comes to food and as such, I have never eaten salad, let alone use salad dressing. Too boring a taste for me personally, but considering ponies are vegetarian (and I've never done pranking either), it was the only thing I could come up with. Chapter 3Pinkie Pie was walking down a dark corridor. She took a left, a right, another left, then proceeded to walk straight ahead once more. Her brain had no idea where she was, but her legs seemed to be acting on autopilot, as if they had done the journey many times before. This fact only served to make her anxious, but being the happy and cheerful pony that she was, she held an air of optimism, hoping that whatever her destination might be, it would be something good. Something fun or exciting. Perhaps a room full of cake. Her legs took one last left turn then halted, causing her to draw her mind back from all the possible destinations she was thinking of and instead observe the one she had actually arrived at. She found her optimism had been well placed. She found herself standing in the doorway of Sugarcube Corner, its bright light leaking out into the mysterious dark corridor to which the bakery was now apparently connected. The inside of the shop had been completely decorated for a party; balloons, streamers, a table with a bowl of punch on top off to the side of the room, everything necessary for a party. In the middle of it all sat a round table, on top of which was a triple layer chocolate cake with pink icing. Suspended from the ceiling above it was a banner that read ‘Happy Birthday Pinkie Pie’. Her five best friends, all present at the apparent party, quickly noticed her arrival and simultaneously yelled “Surprise!” before trotting over to her to wish her a happy birthday independently. They hadn’t decided to hide; perhaps they believed the fact they were having a party at all was enough of a surprise for their pink party-loving friend. She had forgotten her previous birthday after all. Pinkie didn’t seem to miss a beat however, switching from the apprehension she had felt only a few moments before to a feeling of blissful contentment, with not a single moment of confusion in between, her previous uncontrolled trek through a darkened hallway apparently forgotten. Each of her friends gave her a hug as they said their well wishes, starting with Fluttershy – surprising considering how shy the pegasus was – and ending with Rainbow Dash. She enjoyed Rainbow’s hug the most. She always did. She didn’t know why; perhaps the cyan pegasus simply had a more comfortable hug or a more cuddly body. Not that she would ever tell her that of course – she knew the tough flier would most likely hate being thought of as cuddly. Pinkie actually disliked the fact that she enjoyed one of her friend’s hugs more than the rest; she had the five best friends anypony could possibly hope to have in all of Equestria and she treasured them all equally and dearly. She wasn’t meant to have favourites – she didn’t have favourites. She enjoyed each and every hug they gave her; it didn’t matter who was giving the hug as she loved them all. She just loved Rainbow’s hugs a little bit more. Music began emanating from a record player, blaring out different party songs to accompany the varying games that inevitably began, as well as being background noise to any mingling that occurred. It was everything Pinkie could’ve wanted it to be; all of her friends were enjoying themselves and having fun, her along with them. It was much better than her last birthday – her surprise party back then had also been a lot of fun, but her… episode that day had put a dampener on the start of the celebration; this time, that was not the case. She had learnt her lesson and had not doubted her friends once since. The result was a truly happy start to a surprise party and a birthday in which nothing bad had happened at all. That was subject to change however. An hour or two into the party, in the middle of a game of Pin the Tail on the Pony, a blindfolded Twilight Sparkle slowly approached the picture. As she neared it, everything in the room began vibrating, startling her and causing her to halt her movement. A steadily increasing rumble was heard as the ground began to tremble and shake, making Pinkie’s hooves tingle. As quickly as the disturbance occurred, it disappeared, leaving Twilight to remove her blindfold and join her friends in looking around quizzically and with no small amount of concern. Fear and utter confusion had them gripped in a vice, anchoring them to the spot they each stood upon, afraid that moving even an inch would start the whole disturbance anew. For several moments they all stood there, waiting, none of them saying a word. They didn’t have to wait long. The room was suddenly shrouded in utter darkness, a blackness that pervaded into every possible part of the bakery and blanketed the eyes of the ponies, preventing them from even seeing their own hooves. Pinkie could hear the shriek and screams of panic from her friends, she herself remaining surprisingly quiet but sweating heavily. The sounds of distress were abruptly cut off, drowned out by the sudden noise of howling wind, a large impact and what sounded like many pieces of rubble falling to the floor. This was swiftly followed by a large ripping sound; a sound which seemed to drain the energy completely out of Pinkie, causing her to fall to the floor and her eyelids to fall like lead, her ears no longer comprehending any noise around her and her body quickly going numb as the encompassing darkness encroached into her mind, making it go blank. In the room atop Sugarcube Corner, a pink pony bolted upright in bed, covered in a cold sweat, swaying her head frantically from side to side with her blue eyes as wide as saucers. A dream. That’s all it had been. A crazy, beautiful, frightening dream that varied between being a little bit of heaven and a horrible nightmare; a dream like none she had ever had, but a dream nonetheless. She was okay, her friends were okay and she had nothing to worry about. She could still feel the tingling in her hooves. Verbose Author's Notes: A whole month without an update and the only result is a stupidly short and bad chapter? Yes. When I first sat down to write this chapter, a month ago now, an idea for another fic randomly came into my head. Try as I might, I couldn't get rid of it. So, I wrote it. It took two weeks, due to lack of time, concentration and imagination. I also ended up putting much more effort into it than planned and it came out (in my opinion) much better written than what I have of Tempest so far. That accounts for the majority of the time I spent away from this fic, the rest being due to the fact I'm now busy with schoolwork stuff and.. I've lost some of the motivation I had on this. I still plan on finishing it one day and working on it when I can, but I don't have as much fun writing it as I do my other story. Also, this chapter felt very cheesy. I'm not happy with it at all but I wanted to get something up here after a month of nothing. Theres more I would write but these notes are already a tenth the length of the actual chapter (I can't help but be verbose) so I'll save the rest for another time.
Chapter 1Pinkie Pie. That was all she could remember. There was something important about that name. Was it her name? No, thinking of herself as Pinkie Pie didn’t feel right. In fact, the name filled her with… fear? Why would it make her feel fear? It wasn’t fear of the name either; it was fear for it. Why? She couldn’t remember; she just knew she had to do something important with that name. Something dangerous… but vital. It was also urgent. “Rainbow?” Rainbows? Why would she suddenly think about rainbows? This was no time to be thinking about a display of colours, she had something important she- wait. Rainbow? That was a name, another name, one that sounded familiar. Did Rainbow have some significance on what she had to do with Pinkie Pie? Did Pinkie Pie know Rainbow? Was she Rainbow? She was certainly confused if nothing else, and it was making her tired. Very tired in fact; maybe she should just go to sleep and think about it when she woke up. “Rainbow??” Hold on, that wasn’t one of her thoughts, that was a voice, a voice from nearby. It made her aware of her surroundings for the first time. Blearily, she noticed she was in a forest, laying on her right side, head against a tree. The treetops acted as a blanket that censored the ground from the majority of the sun’s rays, causing the area to be dimly lit. At least, she assumed it was the sun that was shining – she could not see through the treetops from her position and she had no idea what time it was. Considering the level of light, it could’ve just as easily been the moon that would be sitting above the forest. That didn’t matter to her right now though, as there was a voice that had originated behind her just a moment ago that could hopefully tell her… well, something useful, she hoped. Tiredness forgotten, she rolled over, experiencing an intense pain in her right forehoof and a sudden throbbing in her head as she did, causing her face to scrunch up in pain and her vision to blur. As the pain in her hoof slowly dissipated and the throbbing slowed a little, her eyes eventually came to focus on a pony in front of her. It had a light pink coat and an incredibly straight dark pink mane and tail. It looked wrong and depressing, as if the hair itself had given up on life and wanted to just sit in a corner and let the world go by until it and its owner died. She briefly wondered how a hair style could conjure up such a thought, before remembering the situation she found herself in; curiosity about hair style could wait. The pony itself was a slight contrast to its hair – it certainly didn’t look happy, but it wasn’t laying down and moping either. It looked worn out, breathing big breaths and covered in mud and scrapes, but it was standing looking alert, leaning forward, body tense, staring straight at her with wide blue eyes that exhibited fear and concern and appeared to be shining with… tears? That just raised even more questions. This whole thing was just getting more confusing and ridiculous by the second. She began to sort through the multitude of queries she had in her mind, intending to pick which one she wanted to voice first, but before she could open her mouth, the pink pony said something. It was pronounced in something between a shout and a high-pitched wail, but it was easy to understand. “Dashie!?” Dashie. From the utterance of that name, all of her memories raced past her eyes, and she remembered. She knew what she had to do. “Not now Pinkie Pie.” “Aww… come on… Dashie!” Pinkie was bouncing on a trampoline, head popping through the floor of the cloud Rainbow Dash was sat atop at a constant rate. Each time she broke through the cloud and appeared before Rainbow, she quickly voiced as many words in her sentence as she could before gravity caught up with her and pulled her back down to her trampoline to repeat this process. “Sorry Pinks, not right now,” Rainbow said apologetically yet with a slight tone of annoyance in her voice, “I have to practice my moves for the Wonderbolts! If I’m ever going to join them, I need to perfect my awesome stunts and keep them perfected; that means practice!” “But Dashie… I have a super-awesome-… terrific prank idea… that we have to… try out!” replied Pinkie as she reached the apex of her jumps. “It involves hot sauce!” she said, managing to hold a pout during her jumps. “Pinkie…” Rainbow did enjoy spending time pranking with the pink earth pony, and she was curious about this new prank, but she hadn’t practised her aerobatics for a while. She felt guilty turning her friend down, but her stunts were important; what if she bumped into the Wonderbolts and managed to mess up one of her tricks due to a lack of practise? Okay, randomly meeting the Wonderbolts in Ponyville was a bit unlikely, but she wasn’t ready to take the risk. She would be prepared. The twinge of guilt she felt when thinking about turning one of her best friends down – her happiest, most energetic and enthusiastic friend at that – didn’t disappear though. She was the element of loyalty after all. Maybe she could find a way to please both her friend and herself? Of course she could; she was Rainbow Dash! The quickest pony in Equestria! She could go pranking with Pinkie, then get her practise done swiftly afterwards. Moving to the side of the cloud while being continuously observed by Pinkie Pie with each *poof* of cloud, she allowed herself to fall off, landing on the trampoline and proceeding to jump in time with her favourite pink friend. The pink pony beamed at her. “Okay then Pinks; what’s this new prank?” Author's Note: Thought I might as well give writing something a go; feel like I've read enough stories to hop on the bandwagon. Any feedback is appreciated as it will help me know whether to continue attempting to write or give up due to being bad and not waste time; the same applies to any and all following chapters.
Chapter 2The new prank turned out to be switching salad dressing with a bottle of hot sauce masquerading as a bottle of salad dressing with no one noticing. Knowing Twilight’s previous inability to handle hot sauce, the pranking duo applied the new prank to her as she sat down with a salad outside a restaurant for lunch. Pinkie distracted Twilight by suddenly appearing to her side and rambling on at her about anything and everything – effectively taking forever to say nothing – before disappearing as quickly as she appeared without letting Twilight utter a single syllable; during this time, Rainbow swiftly and quietly flew down from a cloud above and hovered next to Twilight on the side opposite to which she was facing, silently switched the bottles, gave a quick wink signal to Pinkie and retreated back up and landed on her cloud. She laid down with her head looking over the side of the fluffy surface as the pink pony disappeared from sight and materialised inside a bush beneath her. Both of them closely followed the actions of their unicorn friend as she slowly returned to her meal – no doubt confused by Pinkie’s actions before passing them off as ‘Pinkie just being Pinkie Pie’ - with steadily evolving smiles, eventually having to stifle their giggles with their hooves as Twilight applied the disguised hot sauce to her salad. Ultimately, they found themselves rolling on their backs laughing loudly as the Princess’ most faithful student ran for the nearest water source after her first bite, smoke billowing from her ears. The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion, the duo playing tricks and pranks on different ponies around Ponyville until late into the afternoon, as the autumn sun was beginning to slip below the horizon. After another episode of fooling a pony into getting sneezing powder on their nose, they decided to call it a day. “That was a super-duper fun day Dashie!” Pinkie said with a cheery voice and an even bigger grin than the one she had seemed to have been holding all day. “We should do this again soon – pranking is twice as fun with you to help me!” “Heh, sure Pinkie, today was a lot of fun” replied Dash, doing her best to hide the strain in her voice. Pinkie didn’t seem to notice. “I better get home and check on gummy. See you later Dash!” said Pinkie while waving, before bouncing off in the direction of Sugarcube Corner as energetically as she had been all day. Dash on the other hand waited until the joyful pink earth pony disappeared from view before letting her shoulders slouch and releasing an exhausted breath; luckily the particular street she was on was devoid of any other ponies, so no one saw her do so. Phew. Another impromptu day with Pinkie Pie. Going pranking with Pinkie was definitely fun but bloody hay was it tiring; every joint in her body was aching and she felt not far off from the way she did after the Running of the Leaves. Not that she’d ever let anyone know that of course – she was the Iron Pony, she was too cool to be worn out by a bit of pranking, especially when Pinkie seemed to retain the same level of energy all day. Although, she was Pinkie Pie - she was known for her apparent boundless energy. Rainbow had no idea how the party pony achieved this limitless energy – probably from all the confectionery and such that she ate, though how she ate so many was another question itself – but she supposed it meant herself being worn out while the other pony remained effervescent wasn’t such a bad thing. Besides, her aches and pains included her jaw and stomach as a result from simply laughing too much, so it wasn’t all bad. In a bittersweet sort of way. With a loud groan, she remembered she had yet to practise her stunts; as if she wasn’t tired enough already. No matter, she had tenacity (that new word Twilight had taught her that she used whenever she could), at least when it came to the Wonderbolts. She had told herself she would do them, and do them she would. Giving herself a quick shake in an attempt to drive the exhaustion off her, she took flight in the direction of her cloud home, albeit at a slower pace than she would normally. Upon reaching it, she landed on a cloud outside in order to do a few stretches in order to work out any kinks and prepare herself, then once again took off into the air to begin her stunts. She quickly found herself growing frustrated as even the most basic of stunts turned out to be a struggle. Loops were uneven and messy, looking like they were scribbled out by a foal using Rainbow Dash as a pencil and the steadily darkening red sky as parchment; any attempt at barrel rolls caused her to lose control and start flying off to one side until she crashed into something, be it a tree or the ground. Only once or twice had she managed to regain control before living up to her old ‘Rainbow Crash’ nickname. “C’mon Dash, you can do this! They’re easy stunts! Concentrate – get it right!” she chastised herself. “If you can’t pull this off, your name isn’t Rainbow Dash!” Several failed attempts later, she decided her name wasn’t Rainbow Dash - at least not tonight. She was just too tired. Seriously, how did Pinkie Pie do it? That inexhaustible energy she has was all used on throwing parties and practical jokes. With that energy, Rainbow Dash would be unstoppable; nothing would be able to stand in her way of performing sonic rainbooms, winning competitions, joining the Wonderbolts… and she wouldn’t get tired from pranking. Maybe she should ask Pinkie the secret to limitless energy? Nah, assuming she got one the answer would likely be as incomprehensible as one of Twilight’s lectures about magic. Possibly more so. Giving a final despondent sigh, with her head and legs dropping, she began to fly the short distance to the door of her home and sweet, comfortable sleep. As she did, she took a cursory glance along the horizon to see the effect the rays of the almost completely hidden sun had on the mountains and trees in the distance. The city of Canterlot looked beautiful; the sun shining off its side gave it a golden glow, as if to signify its magnificence. The mountain it rested on was also enhanced by the rays of light, appearing prominent, like it was a knight in shining armour protecting the city attached to it. She looked over the Everfree Forest. The very treetops were caught by the remaining sunlight, giving the trees an odd look, as if the very tops of them were in the middle of autumn. The mountains too were illuminated by the light, giving a warm and comforting backdrop to the expanse of wild and dangerous forest before them. It was here that something caught her eye. In front of the mountains, hovering in the sky, appeared to be a black blob. It looked like it was bubbling too. Considering the quantity of the mountain it concealed, she judged it to be quite large. What was it though? It was over the Everfree Forest, a place where everything moves and acts on its own with no intervention from ponies, be it plants, animals or… clouds. A storm? It was in the sky, so that would make sense. A very large storm. Dangerously large in fact; if that storm moved towards Ponyville it would cause havoc on the town. Everfree storms are notoriously difficult and perilous to tackle, and this storm was huge – all the pegasi in town probably wouldn’t be able to make even a dent in it. The only course of action for the ponies of the town might be to board up the windows, barricade the doors, bundle up together and hope for the best. The destruction to the town could be even greater than the… incident with the parasprites; many ponies could find themselves injured and homeless. Her cloud home would be fine as it would be above the level of the storm clouds – she hoped – but the rest of town… what if all of Ponyville was decimated? What if something bad happened to one of her friends? To all of her friends? Nah, she was completely over exaggerating; the storm wasn’t that big, and it was highly unlikely going to head towards Ponyville anyway. If it did, Rainbow Dash could surely find a way to change its direction or break it up into little pieces. Yep, there was no need to worry, everything was just fine. Or at least it would be, as soon as she had some much needed sleep; that was likely what was causing her overstatements in the first place. Shooing away her outlandish worries, she flew through the door of her cloud home. Making her way into her bedroom, she flopped down onto her cushiony mattress, and without bothering she pull the duvet over her, she let her eyelids collapse and the resulting darkness take her into deep slumber filled only with loud snoring. Author's notes: Meant to say, I hope the prank at the beginning is plausible; I can be a freak when it comes to food and as such, I have never eaten salad, let alone use salad dressing. Too boring a taste for me personally, but considering ponies are vegetarian (and I've never done pranking either), it was the only thing I could come up with.
Chapter 3Pinkie Pie was walking down a dark corridor. She took a left, a right, another left, then proceeded to walk straight ahead once more. Her brain had no idea where she was, but her legs seemed to be acting on autopilot, as if they had done the journey many times before. This fact only served to make her anxious, but being the happy and cheerful pony that she was, she held an air of optimism, hoping that whatever her destination might be, it would be something good. Something fun or exciting. Perhaps a room full of cake. Her legs took one last left turn then halted, causing her to draw her mind back from all the possible destinations she was thinking of and instead observe the one she had actually arrived at. She found her optimism had been well placed. She found herself standing in the doorway of Sugarcube Corner, its bright light leaking out into the mysterious dark corridor to which the bakery was now apparently connected. The inside of the shop had been completely decorated for a party; balloons, streamers, a table with a bowl of punch on top off to the side of the room, everything necessary for a party. In the middle of it all sat a round table, on top of which was a triple layer chocolate cake with pink icing. Suspended from the ceiling above it was a banner that read ‘Happy Birthday Pinkie Pie’. Her five best friends, all present at the apparent party, quickly noticed her arrival and simultaneously yelled “Surprise!” before trotting over to her to wish her a happy birthday independently. They hadn’t decided to hide; perhaps they believed the fact they were having a party at all was enough of a surprise for their pink party-loving friend. She had forgotten her previous birthday after all. Pinkie didn’t seem to miss a beat however, switching from the apprehension she had felt only a few moments before to a feeling of blissful contentment, with not a single moment of confusion in between, her previous uncontrolled trek through a darkened hallway apparently forgotten. Each of her friends gave her a hug as they said their well wishes, starting with Fluttershy – surprising considering how shy the pegasus was – and ending with Rainbow Dash. She enjoyed Rainbow’s hug the most. She always did. She didn’t know why; perhaps the cyan pegasus simply had a more comfortable hug or a more cuddly body. Not that she would ever tell her that of course – she knew the tough flier would most likely hate being thought of as cuddly. Pinkie actually disliked the fact that she enjoyed one of her friend’s hugs more than the rest; she had the five best friends anypony could possibly hope to have in all of Equestria and she treasured them all equally and dearly. She wasn’t meant to have favourites – she didn’t have favourites. She enjoyed each and every hug they gave her; it didn’t matter who was giving the hug as she loved them all. She just loved Rainbow’s hugs a little bit more. Music began emanating from a record player, blaring out different party songs to accompany the varying games that inevitably began, as well as being background noise to any mingling that occurred. It was everything Pinkie could’ve wanted it to be; all of her friends were enjoying themselves and having fun, her along with them. It was much better than her last birthday – her surprise party back then had also been a lot of fun, but her… episode that day had put a dampener on the start of the celebration; this time, that was not the case. She had learnt her lesson and had not doubted her friends once since. The result was a truly happy start to a surprise party and a birthday in which nothing bad had happened at all. That was subject to change however. An hour or two into the party, in the middle of a game of Pin the Tail on the Pony, a blindfolded Twilight Sparkle slowly approached the picture. As she neared it, everything in the room began vibrating, startling her and causing her to halt her movement. A steadily increasing rumble was heard as the ground began to tremble and shake, making Pinkie’s hooves tingle. As quickly as the disturbance occurred, it disappeared, leaving Twilight to remove her blindfold and join her friends in looking around quizzically and with no small amount of concern. Fear and utter confusion had them gripped in a vice, anchoring them to the spot they each stood upon, afraid that moving even an inch would start the whole disturbance anew. For several moments they all stood there, waiting, none of them saying a word. They didn’t have to wait long. The room was suddenly shrouded in utter darkness, a blackness that pervaded into every possible part of the bakery and blanketed the eyes of the ponies, preventing them from even seeing their own hooves. Pinkie could hear the shriek and screams of panic from her friends, she herself remaining surprisingly quiet but sweating heavily. The sounds of distress were abruptly cut off, drowned out by the sudden noise of howling wind, a large impact and what sounded like many pieces of rubble falling to the floor. This was swiftly followed by a large ripping sound; a sound which seemed to drain the energy completely out of Pinkie, causing her to fall to the floor and her eyelids to fall like lead, her ears no longer comprehending any noise around her and her body quickly going numb as the encompassing darkness encroached into her mind, making it go blank. In the room atop Sugarcube Corner, a pink pony bolted upright in bed, covered in a cold sweat, swaying her head frantically from side to side with her blue eyes as wide as saucers. A dream. That’s all it had been. A crazy, beautiful, frightening dream that varied between being a little bit of heaven and a horrible nightmare; a dream like none she had ever had, but a dream nonetheless. She was okay, her friends were okay and she had nothing to worry about. She could still feel the tingling in her hooves. Verbose Author's Notes: A whole month without an update and the only result is a stupidly short and bad chapter? Yes. When I first sat down to write this chapter, a month ago now, an idea for another fic randomly came into my head. Try as I might, I couldn't get rid of it. So, I wrote it. It took two weeks, due to lack of time, concentration and imagination. I also ended up putting much more effort into it than planned and it came out (in my opinion) much better written than what I have of Tempest so far. That accounts for the majority of the time I spent away from this fic, the rest being due to the fact I'm now busy with schoolwork stuff and.. I've lost some of the motivation I had on this. I still plan on finishing it one day and working on it when I can, but I don't have as much fun writing it as I do my other story. Also, this chapter felt very cheesy. I'm not happy with it at all but I wanted to get something up here after a month of nothing. Theres more I would write but these notes are already a tenth the length of the actual chapter (I can't help but be verbose) so I'll save the rest for another time.
