Pegasus Device: Reckoning

Sleet battered the two stallions as they walked down the old farm road towards Shade’s End. The wet and heavy snow clung to Oaktree’s fur, and he shivered. Any doubt he had in Colonel Sundown’s word about the Reckoning was gone now, as the weather from the depths of winter blasted him on what would have otherwise been an early autumn day.

Colonel Sundown extended a wing and covered the old earth pony’s back, shielding him from the snow and urging him along just a little quicker. The sunglass-wearing veteran gave Oaktree a friendly smile and continued on.

Oaktree didn’t like considering Sundown friendly. There was something that sickened him about the genuine compassion he felt coming from him, somepony who was so comfortable with herding his neighbours up like cattle and raiding their homes like vikings from the ancient pegasus tales. Here was a stallion, Oaktree figured, who had climbed the ranks of this organization, to be chosen for not only his loyalty and his intelligence in regards to coordinating a mass, institutional destruction of every facet of a normal daily life, who was currently covering his exposed back with the warmth of his downy feathers. It wasn’t right- how could anyone be so dichotomous in their nature? To care for an individual and an organization, but not for the wellbeing of the public as a whole. His head hurt, thinking about it.

“Now you remember what I told you? This is a very important first step for our cooperation, Oaktree,” Sundown shouted over the now-constant gust of wind. “We absolutely need every single unicorn who can cast those spells. This whole operation fails if we can’t get them, you understand?”

Oaktree shouted a hoarse “Yes, sir” back to Sundown, before something to the southwest caught his eye. He paused, and Sundown let him, as far off in the distance a great flash shone from the nearest Auxiliary Factory. A sheet of air from the ground below it and all the way to the troposphere seemed to shimmer. A distant hum met Oaktree’s ears and he realized it must have been deafening on site. As he watched, the top of the factory let off another blinding flash, and a beam of rainbow exploded from it. It rocketed towards the Meganimbus, disappearing somewhere over the gargantuan cloud.

Sundown’s radio crackled and a feminine voice made it to Oaktree’s ears over the wind.

“Logistics to Primaries. Primary Fourteen online. Primaries Thirteen and Twelve, progress report required.”

Sundown tapped the radio and replied, his words mostly lost in a new blast of freezing air, and then pressed forward with his wing on Oaktree’s back, and they continued forward.

“What was that?” Oaktree shouted into the sunglasses next to his face. “Is that what you’re doing here?”

Sundown looked at him and nodded. “It’s the outer boundary of the safe zone, and what most of this equipment is for.” He shook his head and knocked some of the snow that was accumulating on his nose off. “A series of wind generators that have been repurposed into forming an air shield. It’s some interesting stuff; it allows for gas exchange inside and outside the bubble, but blocks the inclement weather. It will allow us to control the weather like we normally do inside the zone.” He paused as another blast of wind made hearing impossible. When it subsided, he continued shouting. “There’s some proprietary equipment in the Auxiliaries that adds magical reinforcement to the shield, keeps it from bending or breaking from even the strongest of hurricanes.

Oaktree looked up, the ice stinging his eyes, and back towards the new shield. The storm from the east had not quite met it yet, but already he could see the column of air disrupting the edge of the dark clouds that inched towards it. He had a moment of solace watching this, before his next worry came to him.

“What do you need the unicorns for? For that?” He pointed an accusatory hoof at the rainbow laser that was pulsating randomly above the floating tower. He didn’t need to explain his reasoning. The Pegasus Devices in the base were reason enough for him to worry.

Sundown laughed, an uproarious bark that was loud even over the gale. “Haha! No, Oaktree, they’re not going to be turned into rainbows. That’s actually not even Spectra! It’s artificial magic from our machines in the Auxiliary. Pegasus technology is state of the art, my friend! With mechanical energy we can replace even the most specialized of spells.”

Something about his explanation did not reassure Oaktree, though it seemed genuine enough. Probably hearing the word ‘friend’ come out of that mustard coloured muzzle was what unsettled him, he figured.

They reached the gates of the town--now splintered and broken--and passed by. Some of the quickly-abandoned houses’ doors were slamming in the wind, and others were filling up with snow where the attacking workers had punched holes in their roofs. Oaktree felt pain in his heart for the sorry image of the town he had grown up and grown old in. There had been hard times in the past, but never anything like this.

“Colonel, will we be able to return to our homes? In this weather…” He didn’t complete his question, instead opting to simply look around at the icicles already forming on some gutters.

“In due time, Oaktree. Very soon now, once we have the unicorns separated and the wall up, you will all be able to return to your own houses. We knew there’d be a storm shortly after we started setting up the zone, but it was impossible to predict how shortly after. We thought we’d be finished before the first flakes had fallen.”

“Logistics to Primaries,” said the voice on the radio. “Primary Twelve on schedule, ETA thirty minutes to activation. Primary Thirteen ETA one hour. No further updates until Primary Twelve is online. Advise if any changes.” The radio crackled, its speaker easier to hear now with the buildings acting as windbreaks. Nineteen different voices replied “copy” in turn, with Sundown jumping in slightly half pastway. The two stallions carried on, rounding the bend towards the town market.

Two pegasi stood in between the huge barriers that had been dropped, one facing in towards the square and the other out. The one facing them saluted Colonel Sundown with a sharp wing movement.

“At ease,” Sundown said, all friendliness gone from his rough voice now. “Status report?”

“All currently around the fire sir. No further casualties since Phase Three. No unrest or unruliness.”

“Excellent work, Hawk.”

“Casualties?” Oaktree asked, feeling awkward stepping in. The guard flicked his head to look at him. “There was a friend of mine in that bakery… She was arguing with one of… you, over a jar of flour. There was a fight and she…” He trailed, looking back to where she had laid in the road.

“Was her name Pastry Keen?” The guard asked. Colonel Sundown watched this exchange silently.

“Yes! That’s her! Was she a… a casualty?” He choked on the word as it came out.

“She was indeed a casualty--hold on, now,” the pegasi said, putting a stiff hoof out and steadying the shaking earth pony. “As in injury. She has a concussion, and has been taken to our medical tent near the base of operations. She will be fine in a day or two, sir.”

“Oh, oh thank Luna…” Oaktree’s shoulders dropped, releasing the tension he must have been holding on to since the invasion first started. Sundown saluted the guard and pushed Oaktree forward again with a bit more urgency than before.

“Close friend of yours?” he asked.

Oaktree looked at Colonel Sundown directly in the centre of his sunglasses, right where he hoped his pupils were, trying to stare even further in than that. “All of these ponies are close friends of mine, Colonel.”

“Hmph,” he replied.

They reached the huddled mass of tired and poor ponies, and Sundown gave a nod to Oaktree. They were the same height, but Oaktree could have sworn that the colonel was looking down on him then. That same convergence of hearty and heartless hit him, and he swayed slightly in place before stepping forward and clearing his throat. Most of the gathered crowd glanced up at their old friend with curious looks as they examined his newfound company.

“Uh, hello all. I know it’s been… rough, these last few hours or so. Uh…”

“What’er you doin’ with that there pegasus, Oak?” The voice came from another of the farmers in town.

“They asked me, to uh, kind of be the representative for our town for them. The mayor--” He stopped, this throat drying up. He looked to Colonel Sundown, his face griefstriken. Sundown tilted his head in a “go on” sort of manner, with no other expression. “Well… They killed the mayor.” Tears came up in his eyes and he again reaffirmed his need to be strong for his friends. For his family. He swallowed hard as the amassed ponies started shouting out in fright and complaints. Colonel Sundown stood still, unmoving, and though they were upset, none of the others moved either.

“They… killed him?” the farmer from before asked, his voice distinct to Oaktree from the crowd. Oaktree nodded, grimacing, and the crowd’s shouts died down as they waited for him to continue.

“Y-yes. So, they asked me to represent Shade’s End. I… I won’t do so if any of you object, of course.” He paused and a murmur spread amongst the townsponies. After a moment the babble seemed to coalesce into a mixture of “yeah”s and “go ahead”s. “Uh, thank you. So, uhm. I should start with what’s going on.

“This here next to me is Colonel Sundown, with the Weather Corporation. He’s in charge of the Pegasi around us. He’ll be working with us and we’ll be working with him--and them.” There was silence as a hundred ponies locked eyes on the rigid stallion next to Oaktree. Sundown nodded once in recognition, still quiet. “We uh, we’re being saved,” Oaktree continued.

At this, a chuckle ran throughout the crowd, and the farmer yelled again. “From what, ourselves?”

“From the Reckoning,” Sundown said, his deep voice and matter-of-fact tone silencing the group again. “From hailstones the size of apples, ice colder than the top of Mount Canterlot, sun harsher than a mother-in-law’s tone.” Nopony laughed at his joke. “Look around you, folks. Feel the wind, and see the snow? You’re smart folk. It isn’t the right time of year for this, is it?”

A smattering of ‘no’s came back to him.

“Now do you see any Pegasi doing this? Do you see us dragging in the clouds, and filling them with ice? Do you see a hundred of us blowing with frozen breath?”

Silence.

“We can’t stop the storms, not these ones, but we can keep you safe from them. Look to the north and south, see the ‘walls’? This is what we’re doing. We’ve asked Oaktree to be our point of contact for you all. I think it would be better if you listened to him about it.” He turned around and walked a few feet back, standing at attention behind Oaktree. “Luna knows you’ll trust him more than me,” he said with a smirk.

The eyes focused on Sundown turned in unison--as if practiced--back on Oaktree, and he continued on.

“So, uh… Yeah. There’s some sort of air wall they’re going to put up. We’re going to be in a safe kind of bubble thing that goes all the way around Cloudsdale.”

“If we’re gonna be saved by them, why’d they go and kill Mayor Eloquent?” interrupted a colt, a yearling from what Oaktree could see.

“He said they refused to let the Pegasi help the town. I’m not… I’m not happy about this either. But I think he’s told me the truth so far, about a lot of things… And I don’t reckon we’ll survive this… event without what they have planned. But there’s a catch, I’m sure you all figured…” he scuffed the ground with his forehoof, kicking up a bit of mud in the freshly fallen snow. He waited for another outburst, but one didn’t show. “I won’t sugar coat it. You all deserve so much more than this but…”

After a moment, somepony else spoke up. “Well, what is it?”

“In exchange for keeping us in this ‘Safe Zone’ they’re calling it, we’ll be working to support every pony in with us. We’ll still get to eat, and we’ll get to keep our homes, but supplies will be rationed out, and a lot of it will go to the City. Colonel Sundown says that so long as we work well with them, he can pull favors to help make life a little better for us every once in a while.”

“And if we don’t?” It was the farmer friend again.

“You’ll be evicted,” Sundown said, and the implication was immediately realized by all.

Another murmur rose up now, louder than before, as the townsponies spoke amongst themselves. As if on queue, the snow that had been harrowing them consistently throughout the conversation stopped, along with the wind, only to be replaced with thick and heavy drops of freezing rain. Conversation petered out as the rain pattered on, and again all eyes locked on Oaktree.

“We’ll do it,” some pony up front said. “So long as we get to sleep in our own beds, and nopony else dies, we’ll do it.”

Oaktree hung his head low, still at odds with his morals. His friends had chosen the same as him, to exchange dignity for safety, and freedom for another day of life. He couldn’t blame them, but deep in his heart, he felt he should have fought back. But where would they go? Already, they would not do well to stay outside for much longer in this weather.

The guard facing the town square absentmindedly flicked the subzero water from its wings, but all others were still.

“Colonel,” Oaktree said, raising his head high again. “Please, let them inside. They’ll get sick out here.”

“Soon, Oaktree. The unicorns.”

Right, he realized. The stress of the conversation had made him forget. He addressed his neighbours again.

“Oh, yes, uhm. The Colonel says they need any and every unicorn who knows a Flight or a Cloudwalk spell, to come with him back to the base.”

A small group of unicorns walked forward from the crowd, but stopped when one yelled from near the back.

“Why?” they shouted. The others that had moved forward sat down, and questioned him as well.

“Why?” came a chorus of unicorns and earth ponies.

“Why?” the one at the back said again. “What do you want to do to us? You already killed our Mayor because they were in your way! Why are we being singled out?” He was yelling at Sundown, not Oaktree.

Oaktree started. He looked to Sundown. “Why?”

Sundown stepped forward again and spoke, infusing his voice with that same friendliness he had been using with Oaktree earlier.

“Cloudsdale is, obviously, a city in the sky, made of clouds. Clouds that Pegasi can stand on, but Earth ponies and Unicorns can’t. Unicorns who know how to cast Fly and Cloudwalk will be absolutely crucial to any and all equal movement between the satellite towns like Shade’s End, and Cloudsdale. If any of you--” he swept his foreleg, indicating the whole town, “--are to make it there, it’ll be from the help of those Unicorns. We need you, all of you who can, to come with us for preparations for that. Once you come forward, the rest of you can return to your homes. Any abodes that have been damaged by our earlier operations can rest assured that a Squadron will be out to patch them post-haste, with full repairs beginning tomorrow.”

The pony from the back came forward then; a yearling unicorn, just about to graduate from the small school in Shade’s End. “So we’ll be helping you?”

“Precisely so,” Sundown said, giving a curt nod to the young unicorn.

“Alright then.”

He walked up to Sundown then, and the other unicorns that had begun to leave the crowd continued to gather around the pegasus. Sundown took a quick count of the six ponies who came forward, and made one final call for any and all unicorns that knew either of the spells. There was a brief moment of silence, before one final, older unicorn pushed her way to the front and stood next to her neighbours.

“Very good then. Follow me, now. Oaktree, you and the rest of your town may return to your homes. I will call on you when I need further assistance.”

He turned and started walking away, giving a quick shouted order to the two guards to let the rest of them go. The ice-cold rain was battering them now, and he picked his pace up and urged the rest of the unicorns to jog behind him.

“So how come you aren’t flying?” It was the yearling again, quickly catching up to the trotting stallion. “I thought all you folk in the Corporation were really big on always using their wings.”

Sundown winked, though the child didn’t see it behind his shades. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Colton.”

“Good observation, Colton. It’s a whole trust building exercise, you see? Sure, I have wings, and I could fly quickly to the base and leave the rest of you to crawl in the rain. But we’re going to need to be friends, all of us. So I will be walking on my hooves so long as I’m addressing any of you and yours in Shade’s End.”

Colton was quiet, thinking Sundown’s words over. He felt it made sense, after all. There was a lot of trust breaking that just occurred over the last evening. He looked around at the sky, marvelling at the darkness of it all, with the rainbow shimmer of the air walls contrasted against the billowing pillows of thundering storms behind them.

Sunrise should be soon, he thought. It’s been a long night, but there should be some light for us eventually. Celestia would never let any of us ponies down. ...Celestia… ...Celestia?

“Where’s Celestia?” His voice came out sharp and accusatory. If this whole operation was to save a last bastion of pony-kind, the Sisters should be involved. Even a foal could figure that out.

Sundown didn’t skip a beat. “They’re assisting in their own way. We’re down here on the ground, getting everything set up. They’re somewhere up there,” he said, giving a general throw of his head towards Cloudsdale and the open sky above it. He ruffled the unicorn’s mane and chuckled. “You’re a really smart kid, you know? You’re exactly the kind of pony we need.”

Colton felt a little proud at that, and felt a bit ashamed of his tone. He cast it from his mind though, as they had just arrived at the main base. The tent’s former access points were now all covered, with tarps and awnings wrapped over the windows and exits. Sundown detached a clasp and pulled the tarp to the side.

“In there, please, all of you. Once inside, hang a right and gather in the corner there. There should be a heater running there, that should warm your hooves up perfectly, thank you, very good, go ahead…” He continued his platitudes as the unicorns filed inside, single file. The yearling waited for all the adults to go first and then followed them in.

There was indeed a heater in the corner, and the dim, electric blue light from it--though strange to him--radiated a comforting warmth that called to him. He wandered over to it and nestled down on his haunches, grateful for some relief from the aching cold. Once all seven of them were huddled around the heater, Sundown walked in and refastened the tent door, and then made a clicking noise with his tongue.

The heater exploded- or, something exploded out of it. Colton didn’t get a chance to see anything except for a bright flash. He wasn’t sure if he had seen the neon baby blue liquid that had splashed him, or if it was just a side effect of the searing pain that ripped through his nervous system. He collapsed on his side, unable to control any of his seizing limbs, and simply convulsed spasmodically on the cold ground. He could not lift his head, but from where it fell he could see the other unicorns around him had also been affected by whatever broke.

He saw a dim magenta glow start to form--or rather the reflection of one off the drab tent wall--before a pegasus worker flew over him. The light was replaced by a scream, which was muffled almost as quickly as the magic was snuffed out.

“What’s-” Colton managed to croak through clenched teeth before a different pegasus walked up to him and, without a shred of hesitation, stomped on his horn with force enough to break bone. His horn broke off at the base of his skull and shattered instantly, and were his nervous system not overloaded with more pain than he had ever felt through his entire life combined already, he suspected he would have screamed. As it was, his jaw was wired shut by the liquid thunder coursing through his body, and he made no noise.

He lay there for a minute--though for him it could have been a year--before he heard a dragging noise move from behind him to in front. He opened his eyes again, vision blurred in agony, but clear enough for him to make out one of the adults being loaded onto a small conveyor belt that extended from a strangely plain, white, rectangular machine. He closed his eyes, his lids shut tighter than his mouth, as he saw the shape of his neighbour move unnaturally while the Device pulled them in. He did not open them again until the new round of screaming--which had quickly turned to wet garbling--subsided.

Turning his gaze to the floor, he saw a mustard-yellow leg move next to him. Rage filled the yearling. Hatred like he did not know could exist seeped into his every pore. It crept into his bones and his blood, and with all the anger within him he was able to turn his head--ever so slightly--to look in the eyes of the now sunglasses-free Colonel Sundown.

“W… Why…” he seethed. He glared at Sundown, hoping his detestation could manifest itself and drop the pegasus dead where he lay. His horn sparked once, and a new round of pain coursed through his body. “You said… useful…”

“I didn’t lie,” Sundown said, looking down without dropping his head. He silently pointed at another unicorn behind Colton and then pointed to the Device. “Unicorns who can cast Flight or Cloudwalk are absolutely, positively essential to free movement to and from Cloudsdale for non-Pegasus ponies.”

He turned his head down now, smiling slyly at the catatonic yearling.

“And we just can’t have that happening at all, now, can we?”

Colton closed his eyes at the reply. A tear formed and ran down over his cheek to the frozen dirt below him. He started to shake, not from the liquid thunder, not from pain from his obliterated horn, but from sobs.

He continued to sob as a rough hoof grabbed his leg and pulled him up into the air. He continued to sob as his limp body was dropped onto cold steel. He sobbed, still, as rollers ferried him within that huge white box. He sobbed, still, as laser guided blades hammered through his joints so fast he couldn’t even feel the pain from them. He even sobbed as his mane was sucked into a hammermill, dragging him further inside.

And then he did not sob.

Colonel Sundown walked over to the backside of the Pegasus Device, and watched with satisfaction as three separate outputs shook and sputtered out their produce. From one, Spectra poured out, its brilliant colours lighting up the boring-looking tent. From another, a brown, fibrous mush was extruded. Fertilizer for the fields. The last one was not a simple spigot, though. The colonel watched, pleased, as a battery showed an increase in charge.

It really was fascinating to him, what you could extract from ponies.

“Squadron Four we register your tower online, please proceed to base for…”

“Squadron Six to Command, tower online, orders required-”

“Squadron Six reconvene with Squadron Four and proceed to base for debrief. Squadron Five, ETA required on tower.”

Stormy Night shivered in the rain. It had warmed up, thankfully, and he was no longer struggling to hold frozen tools with numb hooves and lips, but the wet still soaked his coat entirely. It wasn’t enough that this work was tough, but now he had to be carrying what felt like at least twenty pounds of water in his hair. He spat out the wrench he had been holding and tapped his radio.

“Squadron Five to Command, ETA on power-on five minutes.”

There was some standard reply but Stormy Night wasn’t listening to it, having already replaced the wrench back in his teeth. Giving status updates wasn’t going to get this command module tower operating, and the cracks and snaps menacing from the blackness a thousand feet up were more than enough motivation.

He finished with the wrench, and spat it out again. At the same moment a jagged bolt of lightning erupted from the cloud above and exploded a tree just a few hundred metres away from him, and he thought the wrench had broken something before he realized it was just the storm.

He looked at the smoldering remains of the tree behind him and hastily tucked the rest of his metal tools back into his saddle bag. The rain had gotten warmer, and with this unnatural heat the sky too had started boiling, the inky masses roiling with convection and friction, building up more charge than any cloud Stormy Night had ever seen. He was pretty sure there were legal limits on safe energy capacity, but then again, Mother Nature didn’t care for a bureaucrat's rules. He did find it curious how she seemed to be ignoring her own rules, however; by all accounts, and though he was a mechanic by trade and not an electrician, that much static charge should not be able to fit in the sky at one location.

Another blast of lightning ricocheted down, its path-of-least-resistance seeming to bounce off of nothing but air alone, and struck the same exploded tree. He closed his eyes to the blinding light and the explosive noise knocked him onto his side.

“You’re not supposed to do that, either!” he shouted at no one in particular while scrambling up. He was getting distracted, and he shook his head and turned back to the module. All that really remained since assembling it was to plug the windblade generator and chaos converter lines in, and throw the switch. The rest of his squadron, having brought the pieces together for him to affix with bolts and screws, had been recalled to assist Squadron Two with their tower, and it was up to him alone to get his operational.

He looked down at the first cable, coming from the south section of windblades. It was massive; a good foot in diameter, with a thousand little gold pins of varying sizes sticking out of the end. He straddled it and hugged it with all his hooves, and then lifted himself and the cable off the ground with his wings.

The weight of the cable did nothing to help how his feathered limbs felt. First, he had flown for half a day straight while pushing a building. Then he spent another three hours directing civilians and flying from the village to the storage location they had set up behind the base, and that precision flying had given each of the muscles in his wings their own opportunity to complain of overuse. Now, he was flying with what felt like another two pony’s worth of weight in his hooves.

They ached, but yet another empyrean discharge set his ears ringing, and he decided it was prudent to ignore how he felt and finish setting up the damn shield. He flapped hard yet decisively, and connected the cable in the perfect orientation, before dropping to his hooves and spinning the twist-on connector until the cable locked.

He moved quickly now, with the rain picking up veracity again, to the cable for the north windblades. With another complaint from his back, he hefted it into the air and slapped it into place. He spun it closed and moved on to the chaos converter power lines. There were three of them, but they were much smaller, and he could hold each in one hoof and walk up to the tower.

He stood in front of the rocket-shaped module and wiped the rain from his eyes. The wind was starting to pick up again, and it brought with it a coolness that Stormy Night knew from his years as a weather pony was going to mix poorly with the warm front he was currently in. He shuddered and climbed up the tower to the next tier, where it sunk in a bit, and fumbled to open the protective cover over the inline port.

“Squadron Five, you have exceeded your ETA.” It was a stallion now at command, but the voice was just as emotionless and steady as the mare’s from earlier. Stormy Night swore. “You must activate the windblades before the air fronts fully reach the Auxiliary. Do you copy?”

“Copy, Command, chaos converters being connected now. Two minutes to activation.” He jammed the power line in, thankful that these connections were universal and didn’t need orientation.

“Squadron Five, you have one minute to activation.”

He sighed and flew over to the last two lines, picking each up in a forehoof and leaping back to the tower. He took out his frustration with the radio on the cables, smashing them into place. He tested the magnetic fasteners with a gentle tug and then landed on the back side of the tower where a small panel was. It was raining so hard now he was starting to have trouble seeing the words on the panel, but he had been trained enough that he didn’t need them. He reached forward and pulled down a bright red flip switch, and then stepped back to watch the magic happen.

Lightning struck a different nearby tree.

“Squadron Five, you have exceeded ETA. That module needs to come online now. If the storm blocks the Auxiliary, the shield cannot be maintained.”

Stormy Night tried the flip switch again, staring in disbelief at the dead machine before him. He had assembled these a thousand times in practice. He could do it in his sleep if he needed to. What had he missed?

“Uh, Command, Squadron Five… The module’s dead in the water.”

“Squadron Five, there is no time for excuses. Power the module on or you’ll face disciplinary action-”

The radio operator cut short for a moment while Stormy Night flew hectically over every part of the tower, checking to make sure it was plugged in and fastened correctly.

“-Disciplinary action provided you don’t kill every one of us first, as per the Colonel. No more extensions, Squadron Five. That tower must be turned on.”

“It’s not flockin’ powering on!” he shouted back. He considered himself a pretty well trained pony, but his exhaustion and now a growing fear had weakened his nerves and he felt himself starting to break down. The operating panel wasn’t showing any faults being thrown. It wasn’t throwing anything at all, actually, which made the whole thing worse for Stormy Night because he had no idea what was wrong. “The whole thing is dark!” He flicked the switch three more times, desperate.

“No more games, Squadron F-” The radio cracked and cut out, and a new voice replaced the harsh one from before.

“Logistics to Stormy Night.”

He froze.

L… Logistics? Directly to me? Oh Luna, please, no, what’s-

“Logistics to Stormy Night, do you copy?” It was another one of those pleasant, perfectly calm, absolutely professional, pristinely clear flight controller voices; a mare’s, and Stormy’s head began to clear from his panic.

“I copy, Logistics,” he replied, smacking the side of the tower in one last bid of desperation.

“Stormy Night, we have traced the source of the error. The third chaos conversion generator will not come online. All digital attempts at ignition have failed, and it must be manually started for the command module to function. You are the closest employee to this generator, do you understand?”

He did. He twisted around and looked behind himself. The forest outside of the town was patchy, and in a large clearing about three hundred feet away--down a small hill, out of site--lay the chaos converter.

Another blinding flash of electricity and shockwave erupted in front of Stormy Night, right next to the path he would need to take. He swallowed hard.

“On it, Logistics.”

He took off flying, staying low to the ground to avoid spontaneous combustion at the hands of the thunderclouds above, following the cable.

“We’ll stay with you while you fix it. Respond if you require any assistance.”

It was strange to Stormy Night to be speaking directly to Logistics department. All communication with them was only ever with the commanders of the Primaries. He realized as he raced forward, passing smoldering, ice-covered trunks and full, aged oaks, that the chatter from the 13th Command had stopped. Logistics seemed to have overridden his channel, he supposed. He wondered what they were currently thinking about him now, with him having suddenly gone offline after being chastised. Did they think him a coward? His eyes were locked on to the cable, following the twisting black serpent in the pitch black of a night obscured by thunderheads. Lightning flashed more frequently now, and with the afterimage of the cable in his retina and the faint glow from burning wood giving enough contrast to see the coil on the ground, he reached the clearing, and stopped.

The temperature continued to drop, and as it did the torrent of rain that had mostly blinded Stormy Night lessened as it congealed into wet almost-hail. The converter in the centre of the clearing was a fantastic piece of equipment that Stormy Night had looked on with awe during assembly practice. It was huge; about five metres by ten metres long at its base, and reaching another 20 metres high--though that was just the lightning rod poking out from the centre. It was pyramidal, with smooth solid steel panelling coming up to meet a layer of caged turbines that surrounded the bottom half of the lightning rod. The two short ends of the converter housed large water wheels that were currently not moving despite being full on one side with ice and water.

It was designed for taking the brunt of the Reckoning, the chaos, and converting it to power the shields protecting Cloudsdale from that chaos. He had marvelled at how it all worked, the water mills, the wind turbines, the lightning conductors, but now he only felt frustration. The damn thing should have started hours ago, with the first hail storm. What had happened?

“Logistics, I am at the converter now,” he said, frowning as the slush solidified further into hail and bounced off his back. “Is there anything I should focus on?”

“Diagnostics are incomplete but there is a code being thrown from the turbines. If any components are seized, the others will not unlock in case the issue is from the internal coils. Try inspecting the turbines first; there should be an access panel on the top of the lattice.”

Why would one component lock the whole thing up? That’s ridiculous, our engineers are better than that. He didn’t say what he was thinking though, opting instead to zip over to the top of the converter. Looking down through the grating he stood on, he immediately recognized the issue.

“Logistics, it appears the hail from the first storm was small enough to fit through the cage. It’s piled up in the back three turbines, jamming their blades. Is there a function to clear it?” He turned around to face the center pillar, looking for any sort of control panel, and jumped backwards as the rod fulfilled its purpose at that moment. The light blinded him. He didn’t even hear the crash of thunder, only a sudden muted deafness that filled his ears. Somewhere inside his brain, it felt like there was a pony playing a violin poorly, and he jammed his hooves to his ears to try to stop the overstimulated ache. Seconds later, the chill of his frozen wings brought him back to reality.

Words were coming to him from his radio, he could tell, but he could not make them out. It was like trying to read a newspaper, underwater, from a field away. He shook his head and pressed his ear right up to his radio.

“...Night? Do you copy?” The words were distant, but now distinct.

“I can confirm the conductor works perfectly, Logistics. Please repeat your instructions,” he yelled, still dizzy.

“No time for jokes, Stormy,” came the reply. Stormy felt he could get used to the kind, personal sort of communication coming from Logistics. The normal radio chatter made him feel like he was simply a cog, a gear, some tiny part of a machine. “There are no fan clear functions- those things should be spinning fast enough in this wind that nothing can get caught in them. You will have to do it manually.”

Flock.

“Copy, Logistics.” He looked back at the grating over the three troubled turbines, and quickly found the latches. He opened the first one, which had the least amount of ice built up on it, and dropped to his side to reach in.

It was just out of hoof’s reach, and he swore again. He pulled himself up and inspected the clearing for any sign of something he could use. A branch would knock the ice around, he figured, but he needed to clear it out entirely. He sighed, and glanced at his back. His poor wings would need to do some extra work one more time.

He dropped prone and spread his wings wide, and then crawled forward until they covered the access. Resting his body weight on them, he reached down with both hooves and scooped all the ice up in one go. He groaned as he flapped down, pulling himself out of his strange angle on mostly his secondaries. There was a sudden stabbing pain in the sides of his chest, and he quickly maneuvered a knee up onto the grating to assist his wings. Once up, he dumped the ice to the side, and checked the large blades.

It wobbled free, but only moved about a centimetre before locking again. He figured it must be tied in to the same system and wouldn’t budge until the other two were free. He knocked the access panel closed and moved over to the next turbine.

The deafness in his ears persisted, and he felt mildly concerned over this. It was, however, probably a saving grace for him. The discharging thunderhead above him was growing more and more violent, and as the clearing strobed in the night quicker and quicker he felt grateful that he could no longer hear that awful crackle of burning air. The light show was enough to give him a headache, and the acrid stench of ozone that filled the clearing was enough to make it worse. If he had to hear the storm, he figured, he might just pass out and die in the cold.

And kill everypony left on the planet, he thought, despite his best efforts.

He repeated his process again, crawling forwards on his belly and supporting himself with his wings. The middle turbine was crammed with hail, and he chucked some hooffulls of it over his shoulder before grabbing the rest and pulling himself back up against his pectoral muscles’ desperate pleading. He slammed that one shut, not even bothering with the latch, and opened the last one.

There was a vibration on his shoulder, and he pressed his ear against the radio again.

“...Approaching the Auxiliary. You have approximately two minutes to restore the converter before we will be unable to connect Primary 13 to the central beam. No pressure, Stormy Night, but if the shield cannot be closed, the other Auxiliaries will get blocked by the hurricane and be forced to power down. Do not reply, just get it done. Please.”

Hearing the quietest break in professionalism, that little tremor of fear in ‘please’, would have been enough to stop Stormy in his tracks if he had the time. As it was, he was already on his belly, holding himself up by his pinions, over the last turbine. It had the most ice, and after tossing most of it out over his back, he realized a portion of it had frozen together between the base and the fan. He started beating on it with his hoof, reaching back as far as he could in the cramped space and banging the fan awkwardly.

There was a crack, and the fan started to shift, breaking the ice further. He sighed in relief, knowing that the last turbine was finally free and the whole converter could now start supplying power to the command module.

The fan shifted an inch again, with harrowing winds urging them all to spin at their maximum velocity yet all held back by the slight lip of ice. It was at this moment that Stormy Night realized he was still in the module, with the soon-to-be-free, massive solid steel blade. The ice cracked one more time, and shattered.

He beat down his wings with no regard to pain. Time seemed to slow as his head lifted out of the enclosure away from the encroaching slab of metal. The top of the turbine skimmed his nose, taking the outer layer of skin away, while he continued to fling his body free from the machine. His temporal perception corrected itself and he found himself laying on his back in a muddy puddle, ten feet away from the converter.

It was moving now, each part of the machine finally free to let loose in the calamity that surrounded it and Stormy Night. He dropped his head into the puddle and laughed in relief. He had done it-- he had cleared the converter, he had powered the command module, and he had lived. In just thirty seconds now, the wind generators would come online, completing the shield.

The shield that he was outside of.

He scrambled out of his dirty pool in panic and bent down to take off. He leapt, and collapsed again with a shout. Agony ripped throughout his chest, and his wings did not respond-- he had torn his flight muscles freeing himself from the turbine. He got up again and started running, galloping harder than he ever had before in his life, jumping over the burnt remains of fallen trees, smashing his hooves through patches of frozen dirt, straight ahead through the patchy forest, uncaring of where lightning was next going to strike. He had to make it back. When the wind blades came online, he would be stuck out in the Reckoning. The air was already colder now than most winter days he had experienced in Trotland, and he expected by sunrise it would be unlivable in just his standard Corporation vest.

He cleared the last of the trees and could see the trench now, and the village just beyond it. The thrumming of his hooves were the only noise he could hear, and he focused on each thump as his legs struck the ground to help him ignore the screaming nerves in his chest. Had the thunder not deleted his perception of sound, he knew he would be able to hear the whine of the wind generators as they geared up to speed. He knew he would be able to tell how close they were to firing based on their pitch. But he could not hear it, and he did not know, and he pushed himself to run just a little bit harder, a little bit faster, a little bit closer.

He looked up from the trench as he approached. He saw Shade’s End and a smattering of pegasi in the air that were watching him with concern. He looked higher, and saw his Auxiliary, with tumultuous fog reaching towards it as if the sky itself had been possessed. Beyond that, he saw Cloudsdale. He saw the seemingly-endless Meganimbus pass over the horizon. He saw the 19 other rainbow-beams piercing the heart of his city. He saw his home, and he closed his eyes, and jumped.

He felt like he was in the air for too long, but did not open his eyes. If he didn’t make it, or if the blades came on while he was over them, he wanted his last sight to be of Cloudsdale. An eternity passed, and he started to suspect he was dead. Finally, he felt his barrel slam into jagged ground, and his body slide and roll over the rocky terrain. He opened his eyes then, looking down.

The first thing he noticed was the blood pouring from his ankle, which seemed to be missing about an inch from what he felt it normally was. Beyond that, he saw the wind blade, almost at the troposphere, closing off the bubble and severing the storm. His radio shook again with orders for the squadrons. He couldn’t tell what it was saying, but watching hundreds of Pegasi rush up to the billowing cloud before the Auxiliary and starting to beat it, he could guess what he missed.

He dropped his head to the ground and watched, upside down, as the Thirteenth Primary Auxiliary Factory lit up on its highest point. Energy wrapped around an antenna at the very peak and then flared, and the last laser of magic raced towards the centre of Cloudsdale. There was a change then, a subtle one, as if somepony had turned all the lights in the Safe Zone up just a little bit brighter, and a massive rainbow pillar raced to the troposphere from the heart of his home. It struck the atmospheric boundary and then spread out, a razor-thin sheet of pearlescent light expanding in all directions towards the air walls. The shimmer turned harshly where it met the air walls, chasing them down to the wind generators. When it reached the bottom, the entire bubble pulsed once, fluttering Stormy Night’s already racing heart, and then there was silence.

There was no more rain. No more thunder. Lightning struck the air wall near him still, like a manic ex trying to break inside, to no avail. There was no more freezing wind cutting through his flesh to his bones, no more hail taking chunks of his hide out, no more snow freezing his eyes shut. There was silence, too, but he attributed that to his blown out ears. He rolled his head over to his radio, listening as his relief gave his exhaustion an in to overtake him. He slipped into darkness, smiling, hearing one last call from the communicator.

“Good job, Stormy. You’ve saved us all. Logistics out.”