They Press Ion Charges For That
With Rainbow, it often came down to two things: the details which nopony had ever told her, and that which they had.
For example, when it came to the strength of her magic, she was the only member of her class to have never been provided with the exact results. She'd been tested shortly after coming into her own, just like every other pegasus in the modern era -- but those tests had been administered by ponies who'd had the chance for direct exposure to Rainbow, and so they had collectively agreed to temporarily withhold the true numbers from a young mare whose already-burgeoning ego didn't need any more excuses. The duration of the pact had been determined as 'Until her behavior shows that she's mature enough to react responsibly,' and everypony involved was still waiting. For Rainbow's part, she knew she was strong: you couldn't manage something like a Sonic Rainboom unless you were well above the species average -- and as far as she was concerned, that was all she really needed to know. Besides, when nopony had given you the true number, it was so easy to believe in any result you wanted...
(Of course, there were things she'd still never been able to manage. Redirecting bolts as they hit her? She'd never found the key to that, and dreaded the day she might need it. And when it came to lightning... well, there was something she'd never seen, something hardly anypony had ever done -- a fact which made it impossible for the current generations to demonstrate -- and when it came to that rarest of forms, she was about to achieve it.)
But there were also facts which she'd been readily provided with. They had arrived during Flight Safety classes, been delivered in the course of lectures on Responsible Weather Manipulation. And like all such facts, they had charged down a wall created by daydreams and that steadily-increasing ego, willingly going into battle against an unassailable opponent to what would ultimately turn out to be their rather pointless deaths. After all, a filly who knew she was getting into the Wonderbolts when she grew up didn't really need to pay attention to certain subjects, especially when what would have otherwise been the stupefying boredom of useless classes offered endless time for planning out that next stunt.
And so after enough of the debris had been cleared to allow questioning, Rainbow's first defense would be to claim that nopony had ever told her what might happen when a pegasus of exceptional magical strength -- one who was known to lose a little control when exceptionally emotional, only the smallest degree no matter what anypony tried to claim when speaking to the other, more familiar police department -- tried to have sex in a cold, dry environment. And that meant everything which had taken place was totally the fault of whoever should have let her know about that, probably some teacher, she really didn't remember any of their names except for some of the flight tutors whom she'd memorized just so she could mention them while accepting awards and declare they had been no help whatsoever, but just get her some yearbooks to nose through and she'd figure out who was really to blame!
But they had told her. She just hadn't been listening.
There were many things which Rainbow saw as being in no way her fault, and the fact that this particular winter evening was both exceptionally cold and dry couldn't possibly be blamed on her. Those conditions were what the Weather Bureau's schedule had dictated, and she'd led Ponyville's team in executing those directives to what she insisted was perfection. Having the town's residents glare at her as the chill went directly through fur and settled into bone... that was just unfair.
If they wanted to be warm, then they could wear extra layers when they went outside. Rainbow felt that was a perfectly reasonable thing to go around telling ponies, although it had taken the fifth hasty departure before she'd realized that sufficient extra layers would also restrict joint flexibility. Not that she was willing to put up with any degree of that herself: she had to be capable of speed at all times, so her winter clothing tended to be minimal and nothing could force the covering of wings -- but with everypony else, it would have at least made it that much harder to kick snow at her.
(At least she had the very minor comfort of knowing that the ones who'd claimed their eyelids were sticking together had been lying. The humidity was at a Bureau-ordered level of near-zero, and so there just wasn't enough moisture in the air for gluing icicles to form on lashes.)
Cold and dry, exceptionally so. And she was getting to feel every last lack-of-degree, because -- this also wasn't her fault -- her house was leaking.
Responsibility for that annoying detail could be placed at the hooves of the palace. Rainbow had created her own home, personally arranged the weave which both locked vapor into the desired shape and made sure the interior remained temperate at all times: something which had been holding for years. But there were missions, and one of the things about a cloud house was that some degree of maintenance was required -- something which was normally automatic, because the enchantments took new strength from the presence of the occupant. All any pegasus structure needed to remain intact was regular use: one which had been abandoned for two weeks, two whole weeks because there had been a mission and nopony had told Rainbow that it might go on so long as to force her to acquire a housepercher...
(They had. She hadn't been listening.)
...that was long enough for things to weaken a little. Nowhere near what would have been required for her furniture to start rearranging itself in a distinctly downwards direction, but enough that two thieves had decided it was the right time to try and mold a hole right through her walls.
They hadn't broken in: a passing police patrol had noticed the activity, chased off the intruders before the work could be completed. But the attempt had done something to the weave, and Rainbow's home was leaking heat like... like... something with a lot of holes in it which was designed to leak for some stupid reason. She'd been back in Ponyville for eight days, and that had been long enough to establish the dismal cycle: all of her free time under Sun was being spent trying to find and fix the problem. And for the last three nights, just about every last moment under Moon was also one where she was huddled under an ever-increasing number of blankets.
She had heat projectors: ones which had been rented using what had been available in her perpetual lack-of-budget. She also had a tortoise, and so every last one of them was carefully arranged around the terrarium. And no matter how good she was with magic, how skilled she might be with keeping some portion of whatever degrees existed close to her body at just about all times... she was still a pegasus. A member of the species for whom magic required movement.
A short-term weave always fell apart eventually, did so more quickly when fighting against the thermodynamics she'd been ordered to set up. And when the only movements came from tucking ever-tighter into an inefficient cocoon in a futile attempt to stop shivering, nopony could keep a technique going in their sleep.
Rainbow was tired, cold, and out of friends to stay with because honestly, if Twilight didn't mean for the contents of that beaker to be drunk, she should have labeled it! The same quite frankly went for most of Pinkie's personal fridge, Rarity just had be lying about the snoring -- Rainbow was still trying to figure out a way where the same could be said for Applejack -- and when it came to staying with Fluttershy, one night was all anypony ever got. It wasn't that the caretaker objected to longer stays: it just usually took a night before Rainbow remembered that every last square hoofprint of the cottage was claimed territory, most of which would be spent dealing with the animals who'd decided you were in their space.
A two-week mission, one which had placed her in close proximity to the others at all times, where somepony was always awake because staying on watch was the best way to stay alive. Then eight days of frantic, frustrating, pointless work where calling in a specialist would mean admitting failure, five nights when she either hadn't had a bed to herself or there had been somepony far too close by, and now it had been three nights of shivering within a poorly-made cocoon of blankets. Something which failed to retain enough heat, and yet bound all limbs in a way which kept them from doing anything. Added together, it had been nearly a moon in which she'd had no real time to herself.
Rainbow was tired. Cold. And not having been able to so much as masturbate in nearly a moon had also rendered her horny enough to qualify as a phantom alicorn.
She tried to wriggle within the blankets. No limbs shifted in anything close to a desired fashion.
Some attempts were made to bring vital parts into close contact with fabric, because at least shivering was vibration and in theory, getting everything lined up should produce something. Two fresh loops of flannel wrapped themselves around her hind hooves.
Magenta eyes glared in the only direction which a doubly-frozen neck had made available: straight at the terrarium.
Doesn't matter. Even if she could somehow get something going, Tank was... well, he was probably asleep, but the heat lamps had done a lot for his activity level. He was more responsive than she'd ever seen him during the season, paid closer attention to his surroundings, listened when she vented about the stupid damage to the dumb weave, and would probably react to her having a little fun by -- watching.
Rainbow was completely confident that when it came to her self-pleasures, Tank really didn't understand what he might wind up watching. (She'd looked up tortoise sex once, because she was sure the time would come when her companion would want to consider the joys of children. Their version of the act only seemed to take place with a partner. Fluttershy had also provided her with a phonograph recording of what that sex sounded like, and it had taken Rainbow nearly five minutes to stop laughing.) But it was still like trying to have sex in front of a particularly attentive rock. One which kept tilting its head for a better view.
It wasn't fair. Getting out from under the blankets, going to any other part of the house... it would leave her too cold to do anything, at least when she was alone. Bringing a heat projector along risked hurting Tank, so that was right out. More than three weeks without a single orgasm, no release of stress, she was so horny that her last produce shopping trip had brought home nothing which didn't arrive as a cylinder and she didn't even like Kazakh eggplant, and she couldn't do anything, not when she was so bound in the dumb cocoon that most of what she could do was blink...
Rainbow blinked.
...at least when I'm alone...
Her wings tried to flare, which only let the stupid blankets show off the lone thing they were good for. And then a pegasus who was suddenly excited in a new way, anticipatory, looking forward to the rest of the night, and just a little bit emotional began to desperately kick out in all directions, forcing the wrapping to let her go free.
It took a little while, scattered the blankets across most of the bedroom, and eventually got down to where she just had one loop of fabric around her left hind hoof. She could just step out of that, and so Rainbow raised the limb accordingly, then trotted forward.
The blanket came with her.
It took a moment before she truly noticed something was wrong, and she didn't glance back until the fabric snagged against a projector's metal stand.
"Huh," Rainbow observed, and shook that leg. The blanket remained where it was.
The next "Huh," was more of an irritated declaration, and she added a bit of kick to the next attempt. This brought her left hock into contact with the stand.
There was a spark, and it was something Rainbow didn't really notice. Her attention wasn't in the right place to spot the tiny arc, her ears didn't pick up on the minimal sound, and she never truly felt it. The needs of her species had directed its collective evolution into something which could safely ignore a degree of electrical discharge. All she knew was that the blanket dropped off her leg, which was the desired result and so everything was fine.
"Huh," Rainbow decided with satisfaction, and moved towards the hallway.
She went past multiple discarded blankets on the way out, and every last one of them subtly twisted as her fur went by the fabric. The inanimate stretched towards her, longing to touch.
She'd decided to do it in Canterlot, because that was what she saw as the best way to prevent consequences. Rainbow's first intent was to have a strictly casual encounter: the sexual equivalent of getting an itch just behind your left shoulder and roaming through the woods until you found just the right bark to rub up against. And if she somehow managed to find the sort of tree which you wanted to plant under your house because it was the perfect spot for napping -- well, that was just fine. But she wasn't exactly planning on having that happen, and so doing the deed in the capital would offer her a warm pony, a hopefully-even-warmer bed and if things somehow went wrong, the best chance of never having to deal with either one again.
Rainbow knew about preventing consequences: it was why she'd taken three minutes to carefully chew a precisely-blended mix of preventative herbs because Tank might be getting ready to think about children, but she was a Wonderbolt-in-training and a pregnancy belly did horrible things to your aerodynamics. (At least after the fifth moon. Rumors claimed before that, it was actually easier to get some of the rolls in.) But there were many things to preemptively stop for this kind of encounter, and high on the list was rumor. She was getting out of Ponyville because looking for a one-night fling in the capital would have her doing so well away from her friends. They were mares she loved and never wanted to see hurt -- unless it was the really minor kind of injury to dignity which came from a good prank and in that case, they should really just shake it off. And she still understood that if Rarity saw her leaving a Ponyville bar in the company of a temporary conquest, that was all any of them would be talking about for the rest of the season.
It wasn't worth taking the chance. So she'd left Ponyville for Canterlot and its dismally-matching forecast because the two areas often received identical Bureau schedules, all it would ultimately get her was the chance to be questioned by a police department which wasn't quite so willing to look the other way, and it still provided a bad moment as, halfway into the city and closing in on the entertainment district, she realized that she'd just flown over Twilight.
There were two possible ways to deal with it, and speeding on while pretending it had never happened left her with the possibility of facing some rather awkward questioning in the morning. (That would still happen, but while Moon was up.) Rainbow quickly looped back, picking up some extra altitude along the way so she could initially check on her friend from the city's shadows. It had to be done: any reason for the librarian to be in the capital at this hour (especially when the scroll of a mission summons hadn't bopped Rainbow in the snout) was potentially either something where Rainbow had to look after the smaller mare, or a situation where she got to be the one launching the first round of gossip. Either way, it couldn't be missed --
-- there she was, going up to one of the theater entrances. Possibly just taking in a show --
-- Rainbow blinked.
No wings.
It was the first thing she truly noticed, because their arrival had been the hardest adjustment and so the departure stood out. The next thing to register was the dress: something Rarity clearly hadn't designed, and she knew Twilight would never insult their friend by donning something else. The fur not being quite the right shade, the bangs having been arranged into something which was almost proper and the fact that the stranger was nearly two hoof-heights taller -- all of those details came after.
Not Twilight. Just a unicorn who looked something like her and was sporting similar tail and mane styles, right down to what looked like a rather uneven stripe.
Rainbow silently hovered for a moment, watching the stranger go into the theater. The wind swirled around her, and several scraps of newspaper danced around her feathers.
They spiraled in. Made contact, clung, and the sensation of something touching her wings couldn't be missed. She instinctively flapped harder, trying to shake them off, and it sent her up out of the hover and nearly into a collision with somepony who was using the higher, less illuminated air lanes at night, so really, that was all their fault and the cursing was totally unjustified.
It made her angry, just for a moment, and so the scraps clung all the more tightly until she wound up nipping them off one at a time, wondering who'd been so stupid as to decide dipping pieces of newspaper in invisible, odorless, tasteless glue was a good prank.
"Jerk," she muttered to herself as she glided back towards the better-lit lanes, and that just let her spot Twilight again.
That took a few more blinks, mostly to make the imaginary horn go away.
Just a pegasus. One whose fur shifted in the winter wind, enough to show where the dye hadn't reached the roots.
So she was so tense about getting spotted by her friends as to be seeing them everywhere. It meant she really needed the upcoming release and Rainbow got back on track, maintaining course right up until the moment she went over Fluttershy.
Or rather, Fluttershy without the tail. Enough of the tail, because in terms of success, the rather visible extensions hadn't.
By the time she picked a bar, the semi-illusions among the night traffic had startled her into near-collisions (which were still in no way her fault) seven more times. It left her jumpy, enough that she just shrugged at the garment check mare as she passed, and so missed the sight of two dozen winter coverings subtly leaning in.
But she had to focus. There was a feather arrangement which signaled the presence of a pegasus on the prowl and even if she didn't quite remember what it was supposed to look like, whatever she came up with would naturally supersede it. A particular set of the hips allowed her tail to enticingly sway as she passed through the minimal degree of crowd which had been willing to venture out in the cold, and a valiant attempt at side-eye failed to spot anypony looking at her butt, mostly because she didn't have much of one and at any rate, it would have required more of a rear-eye.
Applejack occasionally teased Rainbow about her relative lack of backside endowment. Rainbow usually huffily countered that it was a choice: certain flight exercises just naturally trimmed you down and in any case, a well-padded rear was an earth pony standard of beauty. A pegasus mare was supposed to be so streamlined that any air in the room would feel as if it was sliding away from her, and Rainbow did rather well in that department. To watch Rainbow on the prowl, moving through a bar in search of sex, was to feel as if the local oxygen was relocating itself, along with directing quite a bit of the region's blood to locations which were never going to have a chance at doing anything with it.
It was also to completely overlook the fact that her hooves had already picked up a considerable collection of lost napkin scraps, but that was mostly because nopony's gaze ever got that low.
She didn't subtly bat her eyelashes as she moved, because that was more of a Rarity thing and in any case, it would have required some understanding of subtlety. Rainbow had no intention of being subtle, because that led to things like multiple dates and long trots around the city's parks and things which weren't sex.
But she did intend to be choosy. There was a minimum standard for being with Rainbow, and gender wasn't any part of it. Rainbow's opening requirement for finding somepony attractive was judging their taste: if they thought she was beautiful, then they were a pony worth considering. Beyond that, she liked energetic, daring, they pretty much had to be a good listener because anypony who was around Rainbow for more than a few minutes quickly realized she would be doing most of the talking, and a predilection towards spontaneously arranging stunts in every part of her life indicated a certain need for flexibility. Multiple definitions of it. She'd never found a way of asking anypony if they were a fast healer, but that was small talk for you.
It also helped if they were somewhat smaller than she, because when Rainbow went out to pick up somepony for sex, she meant it.
That was one of the reasons she'd already been considering the pale green unicorn stallion at the end of the bar: his build was slight enough as to make her fully confident of keeping him in the air for a while, not to mention her being able to execute the sort of leg press which would prevent centrifugal force from relocating a number of sexual positions to OFF. His features were pleasant enough, and she really didn't mind the apparent lack of careful grooming because it looked like it was the result of somepony recently putting in some physical effort. (Unfortunately, it would just turn out to be a lack of careful grooming.) He also had a rather short, very blunt horn, and Rainbow preferred that in a unicorn: while it eliminated certain carefully-positioned possibilities, it also meant a lower chance of collision headaches in the morning. There were unicorns who seemed to have no idea where to put their horn during sex and if you were lucky, you would realize you were dealing with one of them before taking a poke to the eye.
She was looking at him, and the instincts granted to a prey species let him pick up on that. It led him to look at her, and in the instant Rainbow saw orange eyes widen, she knew she'd won.
"You're going with Rainbow Dash!" the stallion exclaimed with a mix of open delight and arousal, the small body already trying to scoot across enough of the plush bench to offer the open hope of extra sitting space. "That is so cool!"
It made her grin, because there was nothing like being recognized: it didn't happen often (or rather, as often as she wanted it to) and most of the time, having somepony actually recognize who she was just led to her name being spelled right on whatever the court summons wanted, but at least it meant somepony knew her. Having ponies remember her was pretty much the whole goal --
-- she blinked.
"'Going with'?" Maybe that was some new form of capital slang.
He tilted his head to the right, which allowed her to examine what was frankly a rather pleasant jawline. Smiled.
"You're Rainbow Dash," he corrected with a grin. "You're the most Rainbow Dash who's ever trotted in here." His gaze moved over her, pausing at all the parts she personally wanted examined. It was possible to watch the math being worked behind his eyes, and the sum total landed on a number she liked.
"Enjoying the view?" she teased.
"You're perfect," he softly declared. "Perfect..." And with just a little desperation added to the hope, nodded at the empty portion of bench.
She thought about it. Let him watch her think about it for five sanity-breaking seconds, because she wasn't a mare for just anypony. And then she gave him a chance.
"Perfect, huh?" she checked as she plopped herself down onto the padding. (Rarity would have sashayed. Rainbow plopped. It was just one of those things.)
He was looking at her again. Rainbow recognized the expression. It was the face of a pony who had just sat down for their first-ever game of poker, been dealt a Princess Flush for their grouping, and was trying to simultaneously trying to figure out whether they had actually been that lucky and if so, what they were supposed to do with it.
"I've got the rookie card," he shyly admitted and with that, her ears perked.
"Which one?" Rainbow eagerly asked.
"Blur #3," the stallion confessed. "It's all I could afford." Which was okay. She wasn't looking for wealth and at any rate, it took dedication to get a Blur #3. Shimmy #2 was much easier, and just about every Wonderbolts rookie squad card collector had Feather Flare #6...
(It hadn't been her fault. She'd just been excited, because having that picture taken had been one of the greatest dreams of her life, she'd pictured it over and over on nights when her mind was practicing a different kind of masturbation, it had actually been happening and... well, honestly, in that kind of situation, who could stay still? Besides, it was the photographer's decision to keep trying picture after picture. Rainbow certainly had no idea how so many versions from the attempts had gotten into the final print run. And anyway, maybe it would have gone better if somepony had bothered to close a window, which was the only reasonable explanation she'd been able to find for why so much wind had been whipping around the (completely enclosed) studio.)
"Did you look at the stats?"
His eyes sparkled. "Do you want me to quote them?"
"I dare you," was the natural response.
And then he did.
It could be said that he'd won, because they were talking about her and if you wanted to get Rainbow's attention, that was the subject you usually needed to start and stick with: the alternative was tortoise care. And as the winner, he got to leave the bar at the side of the prize, even if all he'd won was a single night of custody and memories for a lifetime.
Memories he would spend a lifetime trying to forget.
He had, in every way, won. But what he had won was Rainbow Dash.
She had made her intentions clear, and so he was trying to stay close to her as they moved through the increasingly-empty streets of Canterlot, passing no more than two unnoticed Applejacks along the way. But it was taking something of an effort, even when she'd deigned to be polite by staying on the ground. She had made her intentions very clear, and it was giving him some issues with walking.
"So where are we doing this?" he smiled, because no part of his mark applied to foresight and so smiling could happen.
There was an obvious answer for that, and Rainbow went right for it. "Your place!" Because even beyond sneaking him out prior to Sun-raising, there was a certain thermal issue with using hers... "-- why are you shaking your head?"
A small tide of rising red underlit his fur. "I've got a roommate. It's a Canterlot rent thing."
"I can keep it quiet," Rainbow lied. Besides, anypony who heard would just know their living partner had been graced with the chance to have sex with her. There was something... interesting about that thought... "It won't get through the walls --"
The red intensified. "-- same room."
Oh. All right, that was a problem. When it came to performing at her peak, Rainbow appreciated an intently-focused audience in just about every part of her life: she just hadn't decided if sex was supposed to be one of them. And while this might have been the night for figuring it out...
...no. Not when her partner clearly didn't want to. You had to consider the needs of the other pony, especially when you were about to tell them how to treat all of yours. "Okay. We'll use my house." Considerately, "But I have to warn you: it's cold. I've got a flaw in the weave from something somepony else did, and it's letting the heat out. But as long as we stay close --"
-- his brow had furrowed. "The weave?"
Oh, right: it wasn't really a unicorn term. "The magic in the vapor."
He stopped moving.
"You live in a cloud house?"
"Yeah! In --"
He was moving again, and that would have been fine if his legs hadn't just tried shifting into reverse. "I -- how -- how am I supposed to --"
She stopped trotting, unheeding of the Pinkie passing on their right. Stared at him. "You just use the cloudwalking spell! And then I'll fly you up, same as I'm gonna do for getting you there in the first place -- why are you shaking your head again? Half the unicorns I know can..."
...oh.
Having the wince happen in public almost counted as a special occasion, because it was the sort of expression which admitted to error. But it was justified, and it was also, in every way, somepony else's fault. Hanging around Twilight had a way of making ponies forget that every unicorn couldn't cast what was probably a significant percentage of all the spells to ever exist.
"...sorry," she softly offered (and if not for what would soon follow, that would have been the most memorable thing about the night). Which was followed by a compensating surge of confidence. "But you don't have to worry about it! I've got the best pressure carry in town: you'll see that when I take you home! And feel it. So we don't have to stay centered over the bed the whole time." Which was for the best because otherwise, it was going to be some really localized stunts. "Besides, if anything happened, my catch dive is --"
The red was gone. Green seemed to be intensifying. "Over?"
It had been more than half a gulp, and so she stared at him again until his tail tucked itself between his legs --
-- her gaze softened.
"I'm your first pegasus, right?"
It took some time, and she watched him fight through the wall of reluctance. But eventually, he nodded.
That made it even better, because she was going to be his only pegasus. (This turned out to be true.) ...well, he might have one more, but that was all it should take before he realized that she'd spoiled him for all other feathers. (This was almost true.) And the more she thought about it...
She was... going to be the one who dispersed his vapor. It was something which only happened once. She had to make it special, and the mere thought was adding to her excitement. His first...
The stallion shivered.
"Wind's picking up," he noted, because it was better than talking about the other thing -- and as it turned out, that was all the small talk he had. "I..." The shivering intensified. "...I don't want you to... I'll understand if you don't..."
His head dipped.
"...it's just that... you're perfect..."
Feathers gently brushed his chin, and he jumped as if he'd been shocked. Neither of them recognized the other reason.
Rainbow smiled at him.
"Hotel room?"
His eyes brightened -- then dimmed. "I'm not carrying that many bits. You?"
It was her turn for the head shake. She'd brought what she thought would take care of any potential cover charge, which had been making a rather dark assumption that she wouldn't have gotten in for being Rainbow Dash. And after that, somepony would have been buying her drinks.
"Neither of our homes," she considered. She really couldn't drop by at a friend's for this. "Can't use a hotel." In theory, a pegasus always had the option to use a roof and in practicality, the police knew that and patrolled accordingly. "So where can we...?"
The stallion grinned.
The final lock clicked open, and the blunt horn's corona slowly dimmed.
"...there," the stallion panted (and it would be some time before Rainbow recognized how hard he'd had to work for it, because hanging around Twilight had also falsely taught her a number of other things). "We can go right in." His right forehoof nudged the door ever so slightly open, and sound emerged: something metallic, regular, and magnified so far off the normal source that she didn't immediately recognize what it was. "After you, mimare."
She didn't move at first. "After me into where? You just said you knew a place, and then you didn't say anything else! Center of town, turn left at the precinct house, then go into this really tall building which doesn't look like a home or a business or anything else, just this half-cone stretching into the sky when it's too dark to see what's at the top!"
"You'll see," he smiled, and stepped aside for her.
She looked at him for a moment, using that time to review every piece of magic she could use on offense, just in case. And then, never completely letting him out of her sight, she stepped forward into the ticking --
-- the gears intermeshed, and that was something which started at floor level. They touched each other everywhere: one on the horizontal contacted another which had been placed vertically, and it just kept going up. Little gears, bigger gears, gears which were large enough for a pony to lie on. All kinds of air-chilled metal, although most of what she could spot in the dim light was brass and iron. Everything connected and turning to the beat of the tick, forever turning as they tried to push those at the peak that much closer to the sky...
"Seabiscuit Clock Tower," the stallion said, and she recognized the awe in his voice even as she completely missed the newness of it. "This is where I work."
She glanced back at him, with a little of that awe in her own eyes. And then she automatically looked at his mark.
"Double-pony white masks means clocks? When one's smiling and the other is frowning --"
"-- it's symbolic," he quickly said. "You know, how some parts of the day make you happy and the night can make you --"
"-- don't."
He stopped.
"What?"
"Don't," Rainbow repeated, still drawing on borrowed frustration. "It's offensive."
He had to think about that. "You know a lot of ponies on the Lunar shift? I'm sorry if it sounded like --"
"One pony," she huffily stated, because he really should have known that.
"Sorry," he weakly repeated. "Celestia's hooves, it's cold in here..."
She'd already tracked the currents: the tower had multiple openings near what was probably the clock faces, and cold tended to sink. "Which is not my fault."
"Huh?"
"The cold. When you're a weather coordinator, cold isn't a fault: it's responsibility. I'm just following the schedule, even when it's stupid --"
He laughed. "All the way, huh?" And before she could think about what felt like strange wording, "It's cold. But it's private, and... there's two of us." His voice dropped a little. "We can keep each other warm."
She went back to looking around.
"We're... not supposed to be here, are we? I'm not..."
"...yeah," he finally admitted. "If that worries you --"
Her eyes sparked and in her growing excitement, neither of them noticed the other sparks. The ones which started around her hooves and wingtips, grounding themselves almost immediately into the plethora of available metal. Every last bit of that escaped them, right down to the moment when some of the smaller gears seemed to shiver.
They weren't supposed to be there, and that was the best part. There was nothing quite like the thrill of doing something where you weren't supposed to: eating in the library, practicing stunts around the central air lanes, and Rainbow's deepest instincts had always known that the best naps were taken in somepony else's tree...
"You see that really big flat gear?" she softly asked. "The one that's big enough to lie down on?"
He nodded.
It was a semi-confined space (which was about to become a lot less confined) and she was still working out the finer aspects of the air currents. They were best off starting low. "Let's go lie down on it."
"It's... rotating."
Her feathers brushed against his flanks.
"I like to move."
His jaw dropped as she stepped away from him, her tail majestically swaying as she closed in on the gears, air seeming to slide away from her form with every movement while the paper scraps on her hooves failed to do the same. And with so much of his blood diverted away from the brain, he never heard the crackle.
She wasn't just horny enough to be a phantom alicorn. She was going to have sex in a forbidden place, one where things were moving, after nearly a moon without. The accumulation of factors felt as if it had sent certain parts of her into overdrive, and she was now horny enough to be the entire Gifted School, plus several visiting guest lecturers.
Dispersing his vapor. That made it extra-special, and so she decided to let him show her what he could do before she started giving instructions, which would eventually wind up including 'Don't look down!' Besides, there were times when the best way to work with a partner during a stunt was by freely letting them have a chance to show off.
Sex. Nearly a moon without anything, anything at all, and in a place where she wasn't supposed to be...
He was approaching her, something which she felt was taking place far too slowly. Staring at her with the expression of a pony who truly couldn't believe his luck (which would remain true forever, only reversed), with little course adjustments made as her chosen gear rotated. And the metal was cold against her, but he would be warm, there would be two of them and it would be so warm, with so much of that warmth going inside...
The stallion -- had she gotten his name? -- blinked again.
"Did you see that?"
"I'm looking right at it," she half-purred. It was, as endowments went, perfectly respectable -- but Rainbow really didn't worry about size. Snowflake had the smallest adult wings she'd ever seen and he'd made it as far as the Academy, when ponies with wingspans of twice their body length didn't even get through the practical auditions. If that didn't prove it was ultimately about how you used it, nothing did. "I'd rather feel it..."
"It was just brighter in here for a second," the stallion delayed. "Like there was a little flash."
...okay, now he was getting annoying. There was what he had declared to be, with expert taste, a perfect pegasus in front of him and he was worried about the light level? The purring clearly wasn't working and besides, that was obviously more of a Fluttershy thing to do. "Come over here! And come in!"
He did. He did. And for the other definition, he didn't, at least not immediately.
(He never would.)
But she could feel him, feel so much of him, and she'd chosen a position which would allow his warmth to drape across her while her wings reached up to caress. It let her see his face, and experience with those who spent their lives in physical commitment told her how much he was struggling to keep going. Not because she wasn't perfect, because she was. Not because he didn't want to: he did, and that would maintain for a little while yet. But because she was too much for him. He'd probably had dreams about a moment like this, he didn't have her drive, not that kind which said you could make a dream come true, and now he was fighting against himself, trying to keep going, trying not to finish right there because he wanted her to feel good...
She was his first. She would be his best, and that thought combined with his movements (not expert, but she could feel the potential) to drive her excitement ever-higher, his warmth and her growing heat radiating into cool, dry air.
Friction. So much of it was about friction, and so she moved against him. To show that she was participating, that she could do so much more than this and she would, once they flipped orientations and she got him into the air. But not too much movement. She was willing to give him the time he needed for recovery before the true stunt began and she already had plans for that barely-visible mainspring, but she wanted the first part to last...
...she would have truly noticed it, had she been paying attention. Instead, her eyes reacted on instinct, and that was mostly just a minor, almost instant adjustment to the iris. Evolution had also tilted her species towards dealing with brief moments of brightness.
The stallion, however, had a horn.
"What was that?"
"I didn't hear anything," Rainbow smiled. "Just the ticking." He was staying on rhythm and when the sound was that pervasive, potentially didn't have a choice. "Why? Did you hear somepony coming in?"
The thought of discovery should not have made her more aroused, if only because she would have argued that there was nothing which could send her any higher. It did anyway and so she reveled, with her hips shifting all the faster.
"There was a flash! -- and now there's another one!" The blinks were becoming frantic.
Above them, around them, gears ticked along. But two groaned, and one slowed. It was still trying to turn as best it could, but that task had just become all the harder.
"Two Flashes?" Rainbow considered -- right up until the hormone-saturated part of her brain remembered the upcoming stunt, and decided that there was in fact nothing wrong with an audience. "They don't get to join in, but if they want to watch..."
The concept, the image of doing it all while ponies were gasping and cheering and wondering if she would make it work... it nearly sent her out of the troposphere all by itself. She could feel her climax building, no, it was going to be two orgasms -- buck that, she was going to have four, there was no point in having a multiple orgasm which didn't match your leg count and now that she thought about it, going for total limbs instead would let her make it six...
The sound burst through the tower, and nearly did so in the most literal sense: there was simply no way for the walls to contain all of it. It made metal tremble, the west clock face lost a beat, and the slowed gear stuck.
It had been a burst of sound. An explosion, because that was what happened when that kind of thing rent the air. It was a noise born from pleasure and the unicorn would redirect his life's love quest to never being with another pegasus shortly before he moved to Appleloosa, just so he would never have to hear it again.
"That was thunder!" the stallion shouted, because those who'd just been half-deafened had a tendency to speak too loudly. "There's no thunder in the schedule! And it was right on top of us! Why is there thunder --"
He was, in the most basic way, wrong, and he only realized it at the moment he instinctively looked down, searching for any kind of answer from the mare he was with.
He got one.
"-- you're sparking! There's sparks all over you! Why are there sparks?"
Above them, the gears struggled. They could function with a single stuck component, but compensating required time for switching over and, if possible, a trained operator: two things which were currently lacking. It was a machine made for keeping time, no part of it could think about anything other than counting the next second, and so it had no way to recognize when any part of itself had just become magnetized.
The thunder wasn't right on top of them.
He was right on top of it.
But Rainbow didn't listen, not just yet, because the pleasure was so great, because her entire body felt as if every nerve was its own little bit of electricity and in many ways, this was entirely true. Little arcs bolted between strands of her fur, voltage crawled across her tail, and some of it went into the gear she was lying on and other portions went through the air, more of the machine was slowing down as amperes danced across a perfectly-streamlined body, hot yellow and burning white and flashing blue put new highlights into a prismatic mane as storms raged over her closed eyes, she moved all the faster against the stallion as her sparking, flashing, shocking wings reached towards the unicorn to bring him all the closer for the moment of her --
-- and then he wasn't there.
He'd pulled out, scrambled backwards until he was completely off the gear, with all four hooves jittering against the floor as his body shook with terror.
He wasn't inside her. He wasn't with her, and that realization shorted out her pleasure in a single crashing swoop, sent the horniness to peaks it wouldn't know again until after the next too-long mission, forced her eyes open so she could see where he was: not inside her, not with her, not on the gear and, incidentally, no longer grounded.
She didn't pay any real attention to the flashes or the arcs, much less the newest burst of angry thunder. She was focused entirely on him. Staring at the source of betrayal.
"WHY -- WHY DID YOU STOP?" demanded a multiply-Elemental force of nature, as the stallion's trembling legs tried to work out a direction in which to run. "HOW COULD YOU JUST --"
But that was when the sparks rose from her fur, streamed away from her skin, moved into the air with a slowness she'd never seen before, not when it was electricity. Power jolted, streaked: it didn't float. And yet it almost lazily gathered itself, everything leisurely levitating towards a central point as paralysis-terrified unicorn and abruptly-fascinated pegasus stared at what was happening, unable to look away until...
It was beautiful.
In a way, the sphere was partial: not quite even, and it was possible to get glimpses of the center at any time. The curving partial walls had an arc, and they also arced from one part of the construct to another, flashing their way about the whole. Luminescent, truly electric blue, generating a fluctuating aura of the same hue around the whole, with a smaller sphere of greater brightness intermittently visible at the center. It floated and it hovered and it simply was, in a way which Rainbow and no pegasus of the living generations had never been privileged to see.
The arousal was momentarily replaced by a moment of deepest honor.
"Oh," she softly stated, about half a minute before the police closed in on the source of all the noise and a mere split-second before the name became extra-relevant. "So that's ball lightning..."
The sphere, acting in the name of magic, horniness, frustration, and just a little bit of irony, moved.
Not only was the holding cell cold, but the air was completely dry. Rainbow had already decided it was because the Canterlot police didn't care about anypony being comfortable.
There had been too many questions, and all of them had been unfair. No, nopony had ever told her about not having sex in that sort of environment, and no offficer had offered to head into Cloudsdale for the yearbooks! The stallion hadn't told her that he was breaking in, but would you expect him to? Oh, really: he'd just seen his newly-hired roommate practicing the opening spell and tried to duplicate the corona flow, was that what he'd told the police, because he was willing to tell them anything if they would just give him a little more ice for the smoldering fur on his testicles? And how was Rainbow supposed to have known that?
They'd asked her a really stupid one, whether she knew about ponies lying to make themselves look more important than they were. The Bearer and Wonderbolt-in-training had naturally said no, plus it was just stupid for an actor to think clock maintenance was really important. She hadn't been aware of the minor lie any more than she'd known that there was currently a fad going through Canterlot for making yourself look like the actual Bearers (which had apparently started in Maretha's Vineyard, not that she cared just then) and what do you mean, he didn't think I was really me? Then he should consider himself the luckiest stallion in the world, shouldn't he? He'd been ready to settle for a knockoff Rainbow Dash and he'd gotten the real thing! Imagine the stories he could tell! Just... maybe not this one. To anypony other than the police, since that fell under 'too late'. And besides, she'd gotten him out of the way once the gears started crashing down, so maybe when you looked at her saving his life versus the illegal entry and -- other stuff... it all balanced out, right? So when you looked at it as scales being weighed against each other, the top needle just had to be pointing to Let Rainbow Go And Never Say Anything About This To Anypony, EVER...
But she was in the holding cell. The lone occupant of the cold, dry holding cell, possibly the only pony being kept in the building's basement at all, with just a thin blanket for company. And they were keeping her until morning at the very least, because they wanted to contact both Princesses to ask what would be done about this, while snickering the whole time.
Rainbow sighed. There probably wouldn't be any true lasting punishment, although she could dimly perceive a huge iceberg of Community Service looming within the future's fog. But it was just embarrassing, especially when no part of it was in any way her fault.
They hadn't even complimented her on having achieved ball lightning. When she was the first in over a century to do so.
(She'd already decided to spend several days in trying to recreate it.)
(Possibly weeks.)
(Moons was an option.)
And she was still horny.
She sighed, adjusted her position on the minimal mattress. Rolled her eyes at the sheer injustice of it all...
...Rainbow got up. Trotted to the bars, got her eyes as close to the iron as she could and looked all the way to the right. Repeated the process on the left. No officers were visible: the guard station was at the far end of the hall, and they didn't patrol during every last minute. She couldn't see or hear any other prisoners.
The blanket was thin. But it was also large enough to cover her body. And sure, there was a chance she'd get caught, but... her hearing was good, she could easily keep her ears focused at all times...
(She wouldn't.)
...and something about the prospect of potentially getting caught in a place where she probably wasn't supposed to be doing it was making her want all the more...
Besides, it was cold. (And dry, far too dry.) It would warm her up. It would make her feel better. And sure, she knew what had just happened. She also understood how unfair it was, and that no part of it had been her fault. But she fully recognized the most important part.
That had been from sex. Something which happened with a partner, and so the stallion was due his share of blame. Which was pretty much all of it.
This was just masturbation.
That was completely different.
The defense attorney's face had locked into a wince. Rainbow's head was down, with magenta eyes staring at the papers strewn across the table as if reading them was the only thing she wanted to do for the rest of her life: given the alternative, this was currently true. The court stenographer simply got twelve new rolls of paper ready.
"All right," the judge slowly said. "Explain slowly, for the permanent record, on a moment-by-moment basis, using exacting details. How did you manage to short out an entire precinct station?"
