Rainbow Dash wiped the sweat from her brow and looked up at the clouds above Ponyville. The temperature for the past day had been unbearable, the result of a particularly bad heat wave that had moved up from the south. It had taken a while, but she had rounded up all the pegasi in town, and together they had formed a mass of dark clouds that hung low over Ponyville in an attempt to bring the heat wave to an end.
From her position, none of the clouds looked out of place. The temperature had even dropped noticeably now that the setting sun was blocked out. All it would take to bring it lower was a swift kick to the clouds, and the rain and wind would make it so that the town didn't feel like it was in the middle of the desert anymore.
Rainbow turned to Honey Rays, another of the weather pegasi in Ponyville. "Is that everything? No holes in the clouds?"
Honey shook her head. "Nope! No holes anywhere."
"Good." Rainbow looked back up at the clouds, where a small team of weather ponies were scattered on top. "Okay! We're all good down here!" she yelled at them. There was a barely audible thud as they kicked the clouds at the same time, and after a short delay, raindrops began falling one by one into the parched air.
Rainbow nodded to herself, satisfied. "Perfect. Now let's get out of here before it starts pouring," she said to Honey. They both prepared to take off to their own homes, but they stopped when they saw a cornflower-blue pegasus with an amber mane and grape eyes speeding toward them.
"Rainbow Dash!" the pegasus shouted, whom Rainbow recognized as Cloudkicker. "We have a problem!"
Rainbow sighed. Of course there was a problem - there always was. It was like a curse for her and her friends. "Where is it going to flood this time?" she asked, flinching as she thought back to the time she flooded Ponyville on accident during a prank.
Cloudkicker shook her head vigorously. "It's not that! Derpy messed up moving around some of the clouds!" She turned and pointed to a large cloud-like object in the distance, which was heading toward the Everfree Forest at breakneck speed.
Rainbow squinted at the floating object. Her eyesight wasn't what it used to be, and it took her a moment to realize that it was her house.
"Crap! Hailstorm and Tank are still in there!" Rainbow thought as she shot off toward her house. It was such a long distance away, and even though she could have made the trip in a matter of seconds as a filly, she had begun to feel her age over the years. Late thirties wasn't too old, but even so, she wasn't nearly as agile as she used to be. She couldn't even do a Sonic Rainboom anymore.
Before long she was flying next to her house, which was already almost at the Everfree Forest. "Okay, I can do this." Rainbow flew out in front of her house and began pushing against it as hard as she could. It was WAY heavier than she had expected, and it barely slowed at all. She'd never tried pushing it before, but for some reason she'd always expected her house to be as easy to move a regular cloud.
They passed the border into the Everfree Forest, still at a high speed, though noticeably slower than before. "When I get my hooves on you, Derpy..." Rainbow growled to herself, pushing even harder.
After another kilometer or so, Rainbow finally managed to bring her house to a halt. She sighed and flopped onto her yard, panting from exhaustion. "Ow. I haven't flown that hard in years," she mumbled as she rubbed her aching wings.
Booming thunder made Rainbow jump, and she scowled to herself. "What? But we didn't use any thunderclouds. It's only supposed to rain." She sat up and glanced over at Ponyville, but there was no lightning there. Only a drizzle of fat water drops that would soon turn into a downpour. The cloud cover ended a good distance from where she was anyway, so why did the thunder sound so close?
A blot of lightning struck the ground a few meters from Rainbow, accompanied by a piercingly-loud thunderclap. She shot into the air and turned around to see a mass of thorny clouds heading toward her. "Oh no, I forgot about the clouds here!" she thought. Everfree clouds were impossible to control, and having them anywhere near her or her house was dangerous.
As if confirming her worries, lightning lashed out again, dissipating a large portion of the clouds that supported her house. It shifted so that it was now floating at an odd angle, and Rainbow realized it wouldn't be long until her entire house went down. With the speed the Everfree clouds could move at, there was no way she'd be able to move her house to clear skies in time.
There was another boom of thunder, this time followed by a scream from inside Rainbow's house. "Hailstorm," she gasped as she flew into her house through one of the windows. She found herself in Hailstorm's room, where the ice-blue pegasus was curled up on her bed with her rose-colored eyes screwed shut.
"Hailstorm! It's okay, I'm here," Rainbow said as she picked up the young filly.
"Mommy! What's happening?" Hailstorm cried as she threw her hooves around Rainbow's neck.
Just then the storm clouds struck the house again, and it suddenly rolled violently. Rainbow took to the air in time to avoid being hit by a falling bookcase, and she flew over to the door and out into the foyer. A quick glance around told her that Tank was still in her room, so she sped over to it and flung the door open, which was now below her as the house continued to tilt.
Rainbow flew into her room just in time to see Tank tumble out the window, still half asleep. "Tank!" she shouted as she shot after him. She glanced at a picture that had fallen just next to the window as she passed, and time seemed to stop for a moment. The picture was at an angle such that Rainbow could only see herself wearing the fanciest dress she had ever worn, but she knew well who the other pony was.
The only ponies who had known about the wedding were Rainbow's close friends and Mayor Mare, who had overseen it. Of course, that all changed when Hailstorm arrived and Rainbow retired from the Wonderbolts, but she had stopped caring so much about her public image at that point.
Rainbow had loved her husband more than anypony else, to the point where she'd even loved him more than herself. However, everything changed on one fateful day, not long after Hailstorm's birth. The three of them had been walking through White Tail woods on a cool fall evening. An Ursa Minor had appeared from nowhere while Rainbow was poking at an odd plant she'd never seen. She was too far away to do anything, and the Ursa Minor had killed her husband, who had put himself between it and Hailstorm.
Rainbow shook her head as she sped toward Tank, ignoring the heat building up in her eyes, which still always happened whenever she thought about him. There was no way she could grab the picture and still be fast enough to save Tank. She'd just have to hope the picture could survive on its own.
Rainbow grabbed the tortoise seconds before he crashed into the trees, then flew high into the sky, well above the gathering storm and her falling house. Tank rustled slightly in her grasp as his propellers spun to life, and she let him float into the air next to her.
The last cloud supporting her house had disappeared just as she had flown out of the way, and she turned in time to see it slam into the ground and crumple into chunks of stone and wood. Lightning flashed again and again, still assaulting the fallen building. It didn't take long for it to burst into flames with all of the furniture and wooden beams exposed.
Rainbow felt her hopes fall. There were so many memories inside her house, so many special items, but they were all gone now. She'd thought she would have been able to save some of it, but there was nothing she could do now. It was all gone.
"Mommy?" Hailstorm asked as tears began streaming from Rainbow's eyes.
Rainbow shook her head and held Hailstorm close to her. "It'll be okay," she muttered half to herself as she stroked her filly's rainbow mane.
"I guess we'll need a new place to live," Rainbow thought. She glanced at the sky, where the moon had just begun to rise. "Maybe with Applejack. She has enough space, and she probably wouldn't mind help around the house now that Granny Smith can barely get out of bed anymore."
"Come on, Tank. Let's go," Rainbow said subduedly after a few minutes as she wiped the tears from her eyes. She glanced back at her smoldering home one last time. She held Hailstorm tighter against her chest, who squeaked in protest. "Hailstorm is all I have left of him now." If only she could have flown a second faster. Then she could have saved both Tank and the picture of their wedding.
Rainbow glanced down at Hailstorm, who was still looking back at their burning home. "Don't worry. I'll take care of our foal," she thought, thinking about her late husband again. "I won't let anything hurt her. She'll still go on to live the life we'd always wanted her to, even after all that's happened. You'll see."
