Paradise by the Dashboard Light
Paradise yawned and stretched, then hopped out of the bed. It took her a moment to orient herself—it always did at a new hotel.
All around her, pegasi were waking up. A dozen total, counting herself. An exploratory team, summoned to see if pegasi could fight tornadoes on Earth. She’d been one of many applicants, seeing it as a chance to reinvent herself, to avoid becoming stagnant back home, and she’d made the cut more for her interpersonal skills than her raw wingpower.
The first weeks had been a dizzying array of meeting with officials, learning radio etiquette, getting pilots licenses—a dumb requirement; she’d been flying since she was a filly—and meeting with the human team: Bill and Jo, the leaders; Doctor Tetsuya, who crunched the numbers, and Dusty, the van driver. Instead of having a home base like they did back in Equestria, Bill and Jo studied the weather maps and then took the team to where the storms were.
They’d visited what the humans called Tornado Alley—Texas to Nebraska, Iowa to Missouri and every state in between.
She glanced out the window, where the first rays of the sun were making their way over the horizon. No storms in sight yet.
Paradise fluttered her wings and stepped back to let Rocky Storm zombie-shuffle her way to the coffee maker. In exchange for getting the first cup out of the machine, Rocky made coffee for everypony.
She spared a glance at the clock—humans had time zones, which further confused her. Just crossing an invisible line made the clock jump an hour forward or back. Six AM. An early hour for humans, she’d learned.
Other ponies were waking, so Paradise made her way to the shower before it got too crowded. Lofty was drying off in front of the mirror, while Medley was rinsing the shampoo out of her mane.
Paradise joined Medley in the shower, sticking her head under the spray as soon as Medley stepped back. “Do you know where we’re going yet?”
“West,” Medley said. “Bill texted me already, said a line of storms is building in New Mexico and is gonna trend up into the panhandles.”
“Texahoma,” Paradise said. “Again. We shoulda stayed in Shamrock.”
“And miss that storm in Wichata?”
“That was hardly a tornado.”
“Plenty of rain, though.” Medley stuck out her tongue.
Paradise nodded. It had been coming down in sheets, about the worst she’d seen. As bad as it had been up in the cloud, she couldn't imagine what it must have been like on the ground. Dusty followed them in the van, and if she could barely see the pony in front of her, how could he see anything on the ground?
•••
Dusty slapped at the alarm clock, missing the snooze button but managing to knock it off the nightstand. That was enough of a sign that he should be up—he pushed the covers off and sat up in bed, resisted the urge to punt the alarm clock, and instead walked over to the coffee maker.
Just the smell of coffee brewing was enough to start clearing the cobwebs. He pulled back the curtains long enough to verify that there weren’t any storms currently bearing down on the hotel and then headed to the bathroom.
He didn’t yet know what today would bring. He never did. Last night the weather maps had suggested there might be activity in Texas and Oklahoma; if that wasn’t promising, they might move southeast, towards Missouri and Arkansas.
Wherever the storms were, he’d be driving a team of pegasi in the back of his Econoline. The ponies had brought all sorts of changes. No longer did he have a clapped-out bus crammed with whatever tech gadgets he could fit in it, he had a decently new van with plenty of power and cargo space.
He stuck his head under the shower and let the water wash over him, the memories of the storm yesterday still fresh in his mind. The shower had nothing on that storm; the rain had been coming down so hard he’d seen whitecaps on the road. He shuddered thinking how it must have been for the pegasi up in the clouds. They’d all looked like drowned rats when they finally landed. Paradise had given up on her navigator duties—she’d just curled up on the passenger seat and fallen asleep, and he didn’t begrudge her.
Paradise . . . it was still weird getting used to pony names, and some of them had their own issues with humans. Even now, some of the ponies still only saw him as a van driver, a way to get from the hotel to the storm. Some of them—justifiably—didn’t consider him a proper storm chaser, just some guy with a van and a grounded view of weather.
Paradise didn’t. She’d reached out to him and made friends, and she respected his experience. There might have been a tiny amount of pity when they talked; she could fly in the storms and he couldn’t. But she didn’t dismiss his experience outright, and she understood that what she knew about storms in Equestria didn’t always count for storms on Earth.
•••
Paradise shook herself off in the bathroom and grabbed one of the towels that was piled on the vanity. They’d learned to ask for extra towels when they checked in—they’d use them.
Some of her teammates liked the hair drier; it was a quick way to dry fur and mane. She didn’t; it made her fur feel funny and static-y.
Outside the bedroom, things were getting into full swing. Medley and Lofty were already downstairs with Bill and Jo; Rocky Storm had a rank of cups set up by the coffee machine and was looking decidedly more awake. Even Dewdrop, who often had to be pushed out of bed for early-morning starts, was awake.
Awakeish; he was still sitting in bed, but he had a cup of coffee on the nightstand, and as she watched, he took a sip.
The clock said it was six forty-five, and the light in the room was almost daylight. Merry May had her muzzle pressed up to the cool glass, studying the early morning clouds.
Paradise took another look at them herself, then grabbed her door-card and headed out. Not downstairs to the continental breakfast, but instead down the hall to Dusty’s room. Medley and Lofty got the storm briefing, while she and Dusty prepared the maps.
The van had a GPS suction-cupped to the windshield, and it was fantastic for long trips. It knew where the exits were and where traffic was; not only did it have a moving map but it also had a pleasant robotic voice issuing instructions. For stormchasing, it was useless. There was no way to know in advance where the storm would be, where a tornado would touch down or what path it might choose to follow.
For that, they had books of county maps, showing all the little roads the GPS didn’t care for. Dusty had used them for years, tearing the pages out of their bindings so that they could be arranged for each particular storm.
•••
Dusty heard the knock at his door sooner than he’d expected. He put down his electric razor and rubbed the stubble on his face. He could make her wait—but no, even if was earlier than he liked, she was good company.
He pulled on his t-shirt, closed the bathroom door, and then opened the hall door, looking down at the pegasus. Of the dozen on the tornado team, she was the only one who wasn’t pastel—instead, she had a white coat, red mane and tail, and beguiling green eyes.
“Morning, Dusty.” She nuzzled his side, and he reached down and petted her mane.
“You know where we’re going?” He was sure that Bill had already texted him, but he hadn’t checked. Paradise usually knew.
When he’d first started driving them around, they’d known next to nothing about US geography. Even naming a state was new information for them, and then they’d get there and the ponies would be mildly confused that it was basically the same as the last state they’d been in. Like they were expecting Nebraska to be populated by bipedal cats or something, instead of just more humans.
It really made him wonder what Equestria was like.
“Yeah, Texahoma—that’s what Medley said.” She hopped up on his second bed, the one he wasn’t using, and tipped out his expanding folder of maps. They were arranged by state, with a map at the beginning labeling which page each county map was on.
Paradise hadn’t memorized them all yet, but she was well on her way. She leafed through the loose pages, gathering maps for the area into a pile.
“You got a notepad?”
Dusty shook his head. He’d left it in the van. “Hotel’s probably got one.”
The two of them scanned the desk—there weren’t any notepads there. Not even pens—either the last guest had been a petty thief, or this hotel didn’t offer them.
He pulled open the nightstand. There was a Gideon Bible, as well as a couple pages torn out of a book. Thick, heavy paper. Why would somebody have torn this out? The printing was faded, barely legible.
“Maybe this?” He held up the sheets.
“It’ll do,” Paradise said, and grabbed the sheaf of paper in her mouth. She set it down on the bed and picked up his pen. “Huh, I haven’t seen any paper like this on Earth before.”
Dusty hadn’t, either. “Looks like something that belongs in a spellbook.”
She set it on the bed and started scribbling notes, making her own predictions on where the tornado would be. Later on, in the van, she’d revise her maps when they knew where the storm was.
“Northeast out of the Texas panhandle and into Oklahoma?”
Paradise nodded, then set the pen down. “That’s what I’m feeling.”
“Want to put some cash on it?”
She shook her head, then turned back to the flowchart she’d made, re-considering the wager.
“Easy money.”
“Your weather’s too feral to really predict—for now.”
“It’s the wonder of nature, baby.” He helped her put the maps back in the expanding folder. Just then his phone chirped. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Huh, did you know there’s actually a town on the border called Texhoma?” He looked at the page, on which she’d written Texahoma.
“No, why?”
“‘Cause that’s where we’re going. You ready?”
Paradise nodded, picked up the expanding folder in her mouth, and the duo headed downstairs.
Dusty would have taken the elevator, but Paradise didn’t like them. None of the pegasi did.
She hopped and glided down to each landing, and then waited for Dusty to catch up. Some of the pegasi occasionally tried to glide all the way down, banking sharply around the landings—in some cases, planting their hooves on the wall and then jumping off again. Stormbreaker had the current descent record, which ended in ignominy when he got going too fast and crashed into a wall, tumbled most of the way down a flight of stairs, and fetched up on the next lower landing.
As the two of them pushed open the ground-floor doors, they could both hear the thump of hooves several floors up—another pony was coming down.
Dusty hesitated, the door half open. “Rocky?” he finally asked.
Paradise nodded. Dusty had been learning how to tell the ponies apart by their hoofsteps, which he used to think were all the same.
•••
Even at this early hour, the parking lot was bustling with activity. While Paradise and Dusty had been going over maps and Lofty and Medley had been discussing upcoming storm activity, Merry May and Flanking Line had been loading their equipment in the van—some of the pegasi wore flight uniforms or Camelbaks and all of them had harnesses with anti-collision strobes mounted. The pegasi grumbled about having to wear them, but they were useful during the reduced visibility of a storm.
There were also equipment packs, well-armored bundles of instruments to take measurements of practically everything in the air. Getting instruments into tornadoes was the holy grail of the stormchasers, and the pegasi just flew them right up there.
Usually not directly in the tornado, but sometimes things went sideways.
Merry May hopped in the back of the van, while Flanking Line waited for other ponies to climb in.
Across the parking lot, Medley was having a last-second conference with Bill outside his Ram pickup, while the crew of a beetle-shaped tornado-proofed truck finished prepping their vehicle. They weren’t official members of the group; they were tornado chasers working for The Weather Channel who had figured out that the weatherponies were really good at finding tornadoes and followed along with the dual goals of getting good data and good television footage.
Dusty and Paradise came out of the hotel together. He got into the driver’s seat as she walked around the front of the van, then he leaned across and popped open the door for her. She could open it herself, but seeing her grab at the handle with her mouth felt wrong.
She hopped in the passenger seat and began turning on equipment as soon as he started the van. Two GPS units; one for the route and one for traffic alerts. A tablet for weather maps and a Toughbook for pressure charts and other data. Weather radio, aviation radio, and a CB—Paradise picked up the mic of the latter. “Paradise for radio check.”
“Loud and clear,” Jo replied back.
“Everybody in?” Dusty asked.
“We’re still missing three,” Medley reported. “Whizzer, Stormbreaker, and Prism Glider.”
“They went out for a morning trot,” Velvet Light said. She flew up and settled on the van’s roof, scanning the sky. “I see them.”
The trio could have glided into the back of the van, but instead chose to land in the parking lot and then hop in. The ponies had tied ropes to the pull-handles on the doors so they could close them; Dusty backed out of the parking spot after they pulled them shut, forming up behind the Ram.
•••
Kansas scenery was boring and predictable. Since there was no direct highway route, they were driving on state roads, which were at least somewhat more interesting. Every now and then he’d see ponies watching out the window at some feature that caught their interest. A small town, a Union Pacific freight paralleling the road, a particularly interesting cornfield.
Paradise had the best seat in the van—the only seat besides his. She was nodding her head in time to Kýrie—the ponies loved power ballads.
When the song ended, she turned her attention back to the maps and the torn page, scribbling a few more notes.
“What are you thinking?”
She pointed to the tablet, which was showing pressure and dewpoint charts. “I think we’re gonna wind up east of Texas, and I was preparing an alternate. Weather’s changing fast, if it’s an early afternoon storm, it’ll be more east. If that doesn't kick off, then it’ll be Texas.” She scribbled a note on the page. “So I’m starting a new route, based in Kiowa County, Oklahoma.”
He couldn’t really take his eyes off the road long enough to really piece together the new data, but trusted her judgment. “Should I radio Bill?”
Paradise shook her head. “Not yet, it’s just a feeling I have.”
“I’ll second it.” Lofty and Rocky Storm had the Toughbook on the floor of the van and were gathering their own data. “There’s a lot of energy building up, and a developing storm coming from the west that wants to grab it. Gonna be a few hours, then things are going to start to get wild.”
•••
The convoy stopped for lunch in Hooker. Besides a chance to eat and stretch their legs, updated weather maps were studied and discussed over food from Godfather’s Pizza or Subway sandwiches—the Love’s had both. All the ponies were interested in the dessert pizza—apple streusel, something none of them had ever tried.
As was tradition, the tailgate on Bill’s Ram was folded down to make a temporary table where everybody could feast, humans and ponies alike.
The weather was starting to get active as the day’s heat added to the energy already in the unstable atmosphere, and clouds were starting to really build, giving everybody an idea how the storm would shape up.
“It looks like it’s going to be further west than we thought,” Bill said, and Lofty nodded in agreement.
“Back in Texas,” Dusty added. “And then running northeast from there.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Paradise said, “but I’ll reshuffle the maps. After I have another slice of pizza.”
•••
They made it to Texhoma, which had a sign just outside the grain elevator welcoming them to Texas. For all their confusion with all the states being mostly the same, Dusty and the ponies felt that Texas stood in its own category.
Everyone was watching the building clouds with interest. Now it wasn’t just numbers on a map, or blobs of color; now it was a storm they could see. Or it would be.
“Dusty, you got a copy?”
Paradise’s ears perked as the CB spoke. Dusty grabbed the mic, and then turned down the radio, to the disappointment of Electric Blue who was singing along with Icehouse.
“Yeah, Dusty here.”
“Cut west on Route 15 when you get to Stratford; it looks like the storm’s gonna hit in Oklahoma.”
“Ten-four.”
He looked over at Paradise, who stuck her tongue out at him and then started sorting maps. The GPS was good when they knew where they were going, but bad at planning a vague route. By the time he stopped at a traffic light in Stratford, she had a town name picked out. “Pringle, then when we get there, it’s a straight shot to I-40.” She picked up her sheet of paper and scribbled on it, marking down the new waypoints. “I think it’s gonna hit in Kiowa County.”
“Are you making firm predictions now?”
“Do you want me to?” Paradise looked at the map she was sorting, and then wrote something on the sheet of paper. “There.”
“Get it right and people are going to say you’re a prognosticator.”
“I hope not; I’d rather just be a weatherpony.”
In the back of the van, Prism Glider had his hooves up on a rear window ledge, his eyes to the sky. Even though the van had AC—which was turned on in deference to the muggy day—he had the window tilted open so he could smell the air.
Thus far it had hardly been beneficial; there wasn’t much air circulation through the narrow crack, and too many smells of the road.
He thought about asking Dusty to roll down one of the front windows, but that would blow Paradise’s maps everywhere.
•••
As the van drew closer to their destination, all the ponies in the back started to get themselves in professional mode. They each started kitting up—today, Stormbreaker, Flanking Line, and Skydancer would wear equipment packs. Already, they could see the stormclouds on the horizon, with occasional flickers of cloudtop lightning.
“It’s gonna be a big one,” Lofty said.
Medley nodded. “Hey, Dusty, do we want to get up early and get preliminary data, or are we gonna wait until a funnel’s established?”
“I don’t know.” He picked up the mic and radioed her question to Bill.
A moment later, the reply crackled through the radio. “Right now it’s still building, and we don’t have any definitive radar indication. We’ll run in front of the storm and have the pegasi go up when we know.”
Dusty grinned. “My favorite kind of storm chasing.” Getting the pegasi in the air early was boring—he’d pick a side road, everypony would take off in an orderly fashion and start to do orbits. Sometimes they’d send an exploratory crew into the clouds and gather data on the storm in progress.
“Dr. Tetsuya says that it looks like if we get anything, it’ll be F-3 or higher.”
“Aw yeah.” Stormbreaker had moved up to the front of the van, where he could hear the radio better. A couple straps still trailed off his equipment pack; Merry May followed him and started buckling them.
Dusty looked in the rearview mirror at the pegasi. Running storms was fun. Before, it was just him and the weather; now it felt like storming a beach in wartime—he’d race in front of the tornado, get the van into position, and then all the pegasi would boil out and take to the sky, forming up in the air. Then it was a battle with the storm, until they’d either broken up the tornado or it had gotten away from them.
Ever since he’d started working with the ponies, he’d learned to understand tornados in a whole new way. Previously, they’d just been unstoppable forces of nature which went where they did and there was nothing which could be done about them. All his work had been focused on getting more data to better predict them, to give people more warning that they were coming.
The idea that they could be prevented or at least manipulated had never been on his radar screen.
The ponies couldn’t protect everything, and they often missed storms that did spawn tornadoes. But once they had enough data, once they’d proven to everyone’s satisfaction that it worked, they might be able to get more pegasi and protect a larger area.
How many would it take to calm a thunderstorm enough that it couldn’t produce a tornado at all?
He didn’t know. They didn’t know, but they were figuring it out one storm at a time.
•••
Paradise unfolded the Toughbook and jammed it up on the dashboard. The radar clearly showed the storm, and she started intently studying it. Lofty and Medley crowded in between the front seats so they could see, too.
She pushed the button on her door to make the window go down, angling her hoof to get in the recess. She couldn’t put the window back up, but Dusty had a button for it.
Dusty glanced over at the screen, then turned his attention back to the road. “Any opinions, guys?”
Lofty watched the sweep of the radar, and thought back to the charts she’d seen while they were eating lunch. It didn’t entirely make sense to her.
“I . . . I’d say down towards the bottom left on the screen, but I’m not sure. Something seems different about this one.”
Paradise often watched as they approached storms, but right now they were running from it, which left the ponies in the back to see what they could out the rear windows.
Suddenly, a shout. “There’s some rotation in the clouds. Southwest.”
Dusty squinted in the rearview mirror, but he couldn’t make it out. He grabbed the radio. “Bill, Skydancer says she sees rotation.”
Paradise stuck her head out the window, her mane whipping around in the slipstream, and studied the clouds behind them. “I see it, too. Three or four miles south, two behind.”
“It’s got an inflow tail, too,” Lofty added. “It’s going to be a big one.”
“We’re on.” Dusty relayed the message into the radio, while Paradise grabbed the map. “Get set up, this is a go.”
Dusty slammed down the accelerator—he knew how far in front of the storm the pegasi should be if they wanted to get aloft, to get up in to the heart of it before being overrun by the funnel. A couple miles, and that was cutting it close.
Of course, in this line of work, everything was cutting it close.
“Straight past the next road then cut south,” Paradise said. She had a map unfolded on her seat and was tracing the van’s route with a hoof. “One intersection, then east again until we’re clear of it.” She consulted the page from the book she’d been using in lieu of note paper. “You can mostly run east from there; you’ve got a few road choices.” She scribbled some more notes on the torn page, roads he could take all the way to Babbs Switch and then two beyond. “That should be enough, you can figure it out after that, depending on what the tornado does.”
“It’s a fast one,” Skydancer shouted from the back.
“Winds are going to hit hard,” Paradise reminded him. Right now it was still eerily calm, even as he saw the dark clouds piling up to the west, turning the sky greenish. “You’ll want to be heading east when the front hits if you can.”
Dusty nodded. A few storms back, they’d been perpendicular to the front; even knowing that it was coming hadn’t been preparation enough. The winds must have been moving at least sixty miles an hour, maybe more. The van got pushed almost all the way off the shoulder before he got it back under control—the semi-truck in front of him hadn’t been so lucky, and had flopped over like a dying giant.
The video of Stormbreaker standing on the driver’s side window and shouting into the cab had already gone viral.
Dusty slewed around another corner, paying only token respect to the stop sign. They were surrounded with fields, and he could see that there wasn’t any oncoming traffic.
He matted the accelerator, watching as the speedometer crept up to eighty, ninety—and that was it. The engine had no more to give.
When he’d judged he had sufficient space ahead of the storm, he shouted a warning to the ponies in back and stood on the brakes.
“Form up as soon as we’re out, V-formation direct to the tornado,” Lofty ordered. “Stagger with your wingponies.”
Meanwhile, Medley radioed in to the air traffic controllers: “Pegasus tornado team, special weather flight, we need block clearance south of Hobart.”
Up in front, Paradise also had last-second instructions. “Maps are in order, we’re right here.” She tapped it with a hoof. “Next map up is east, behind that is north, and I’ve got the note in the front just in case. That should keep you ahead of the tornado.”
“Be safe.”
“You, too.”
It was eerily quiet as one of the ponies in the back popped open the rear door, not even waiting for the van to come to a complete stop. Dusty smelled a wash of exhaust and the smell of hot pavement, and then felt a tentative gust of cool air explore the front of the van, ruffling Paradise’s feathers.
They were still unloading as she exited through her window, her tail disappearing up as she crossed over the top of the van. He slammed it into park and jumped out—the pegasi never remembered to close the rear doors behind themselves.
To be fair, they were rushing to fight a tornado, while he had a few minutes before he had to do anything.
He stepped out into a gentle rain, big fat drops splattering down. Dusty hesitated for a moment, watching the formation take to the sky. That was something he never got tired of seeing.
As they climbed, he saw every one of them waver in turn as they crossed into the heavy winds. They’re not that far away yet. Dusty slammed the back doors of the van shut, and stayed by the side of the road as the winds at the front hit him, too, tearing at his clothes. He squinted his eyes against all the road grit it threw up, then he jogged back to the van, the wind at his back.
It felt like climbing back into a nest. The wind rocked the van but couldn’t get in. That was how people got killed in cars—they felt safe from a tornado, but they weren’t.
He checked his mirror before pulling back on the road. The mad dash had worked, the pegasi had gotten off in good time; now he just needed to parallel the tornado as close as he could.
The dash had a small panel of LED lights showing the uplinks from the instrument packs. All three were green, flickering to indicate that data packets were being received.
In his rearview mirror he also saw blinking lights, the anticollision lights that the pegasi had to wear, highlighted against the storm, completely washed out in lightning flashes.
Dusty grabbed the map off the passenger seat and stuffed it in place on the engine cover. The paper she’d been writing on was just below it, and he took his eyes off the road long enough to see that she’d written Babbs Switch, then circled it.
He spotted the town on the map. There was no way it would hit, not unless it drastically changed course.
•••
The formation wavered as they caught the wind on the front, each of them trying to pick up speed as it hit. Significant rain didn’t follow, which was worrisome—that meant that the winds aloft were keeping it up, and there was likely to be hail.
Maybe it’ll stay behind the tornado, Dewdrop thought. That was unlikely . . . and hail was not going to be the worst this storm had to offer.
Each of the ponies were sizing up the storm, feeling the currents in the air and the way the clouds were building and rolling. Much like waves, the cloud formations told their own story of updrafts and downdrafts, of electrical potential and hail and ice and rain, and the little hook at the backside of it which was already getting itself organized into a rotation.
The more it rotated, the less chance they had to stop it. Instead, they would transition to damage control, trying to set up enough of a counterwind to slow the tornado, or if it was near a populated area, to steer it.
Nobody ever admitted that the pegasi could potentially steer tornadoes, not out loud anyway. That was a can of worms that the team had no interest in opening, a tornadic trolley problem.
“Start spreading out,” Lofty ordered. “Pincer formation.” Her voice didn’t carry in the winds, and the pegasi relayed the order down the lines. They’d tried all wearing radios—it was more equipment to wear, and it turned out the so-called water-resistant radios couldn’t survive tornadoes. Even their specially-designed equipment packs had a high attrition rate—they’d started out with a dozen, one for each pony, and on actual patrols they only flew with three to avoid burdening the whole team. They burned through spares almost as fast as they could be built.
The legs of the V widened as the pegasi took their new formation, briefly forming a defiant line in the face of the storm, then curved back in as they climbed to the base of the clouds.
A couple of them were already sparking or glowing with electrical energy.
They were rapidly closing in when the rotation finally reached its tipping point, and a funnel started to appear at the base of the cloud, questing for the ground. It was ghostly white, a tentative spout that started stretching down for the earth, twisting and dancing in the winds aloft. It danced and wavered in the air as the patrol closed in on it, hoping to reach it before it fully developed.
It fattened and descended, now below their altitude and expanding out and down as it entrained more and more air with it.
“Come on!” Lofty yelled. “We can beat this one!”
But they couldn’t; they were still climbing as it widened, grabbing everything it could in its vortex, as inevitable as an incoming tide. It raced downward as it grew in strength.
Velvet Light was the first pony to see it hit the ground, kicking up a fountain of sod and crops. Her touchdown warning was relayed up the formation, and Medley lifted her foreleg and yelled into her radio: “Touchdown confirmed.”
“Ten-four,” was the staticky reply.
•••
The currents around a tornado were paradoxical and unpredictable. Updrafts and downdrafts collided chaotically as the tornado formed, and then as it matured everything got brought together into the vortex. As they closed in, the air still felt normal—and then they crossed the dry line, they crossed into the mixing bowl of the funnel, and everything changed. Now the cyclonic winds started to hit. Skydancer got slammed by a downdraft, losing a few hundred feet of altitude in an instant.
Paradise watched Whizzer hit the downdraft—Whizzer had been prepared for it and still dropped like a stone before she recovered. Paradise braced herself as she crossed, also getting slammed down a few hundred feet. She was almost through it when she started getting pelted with hailstones.
And then she was into the more organized grasp of the tornado, the inevitable result of two big pressure systems colliding and trying to change places. Paradise slowed her pace to let Flanking Line, who was right behind her, get back up to altitude, and to let the other ponies get through the dry line and re-form.
Paradise felt the fur on her back prickle with the electricity in the storm, and looked back to see a faint blue discharge on her feathers—St. Elmo’s Fire, the humans called it. Not only was the air unbalanced, but so were the electrical charges.
She beat her wings to climb back up. The tornado was gaining momentum as it established itself, and now the smart move was to let it come to them.
•••
It wasn’t long before it did—screaming winds, tiny debris that peppered them like bee stings. Their line wasn’t fully formed before it overran them, and she could faintly hear Lofty shouting out orders, her voice torn away by the wind.
They didn’t need orders; they all knew what to do. Get to the root of the tornado and start pushing back, start flying against its rotation, use their magic to create a counterforce, to provide a braking effect on the tornado. Back in Equestria, there were charts that everypony had memorized explaining how many ponies were needed for a given size of tornado. On Earth, where the weather wasn’t managed, it was more of an unknown; their experience had taught them that they needed at least twice as many. With the size of this tornado, they were woefully outclassed—despite their efforts, buy the end of their first circuit the funnel had grown even wider.
Long ago, they had a meeting to discuss what to do if a storm was too powerful. Break away, fly clear, go back to the ground and get picked up by Dusty, ride back to the hotel with the battle unfought. The data was important, but not as important as everypony returning uninjured.
And they’d all nodded their heads and then exchanged glances as the meeting continued. They were all bull-headed; none of them were willing to quit until the battle was well and truly lost. Until then, they’d fight on, using every trick they knew to bend the storm to their will. If they couldn’t stop it, they could still redirect it.
As they circled around to the back of the tornado, the rain started in earnest. Everything that the winds had been holding up suddenly started pouring down, a waterfall from the heavens. Even with the special hydrophobic sprays that the humans had put on their goggles, the crew was flying blind until they came out the other side, relying on their senses and experience, trusting that the pony in front of them knew their course, that the pony behind them was following along.
Paradise caught a glimpse of the tornado’s path of destruction as she cleared the rain, a huge furrow carved through the earth, a zone where nothing could survive. Trees were stripped to their trunks, buildings reduced to kindling, cars tossed around like Hot Wheels at the hooves of an angry filly.
The sight of the destruction filled her with determination. Any other time, this tornado would have gone unopposed; any other time, it would have run free. Today, its rampage would be tempered by the pegasi.
A brilliant flash of lightning briefly blinded her, instantly followed by a thunderclap that rattled her bones. As she blinked spots out of her eyes, she turned and saw Flanking Line staggering in the air, smoke pouring from her equipment pack.
“Got hit,” she yelled as she struggled for the emergency release buckle under her belly. A moment later, she got it, and the ruined pack started tumbling to the ground, only to be caught by the tornado and sucked back up.
If there’s anything on that still recording data, Dr. Tetsuyu will get some really interesting stuff, Paradise thought.
They were one with the storm now, being carried along by its winds even as they flew against them. Paradise focused her attention only on the funnel, tightening up her orbit, getting as close as she could to disrupt it. Flashes of lightning lit the sky all around them, sometimes accompanied by blue flashes far below as the storm took out power lines.
Torrential rain soaked them, hail pelted them, and still the pegasi soldiered on.
Bull-headed or not, by their fourth orbit it was obvious that they were completely outclassed.
“Steer it!” Lofty and Medley couldn't be heard over the screaming winds; orders were relayed forwards, one pony at a time. “South!”
Paradise knew the tornado was headed for a town. If they couldn’t stop it, they could try and keep it away from towns to protect as many people as possible.
In theory, it was doable. Angle wide on one side, and the tornado would naturally start to turn. In practice, they didn’t have half as many ponies as they needed; they were nothing but gnats against a dragon.
•••
Dusty raced along the rain-slicked roads, scanning between the weather radar on the tablet, the road in front of him, the maps Paradise had laid out, the storm in the rearview mirror, and the three green LEDs on the dash.
The two green LEDs on the dash—one of the equipment packs had failed. A common enough occurrence that it shouldn’t have worried him, but it did. Did the pack drown in the rain? Or did the pegasus carrying it get knocked out of the sky and crash land?
The thought that the pack might survive even if the pony carrying it didn’t was no consolation.
He reached for the radio and reconsidered. Even if he called Medley, would she hear him? Would she answer? Was there anything he could do if she did?
He had to know. “Medley, Dusty here, one equipment pack’s offline.”
It was a moment before she answered, a moment where there was nothing but the rumble of thunder and the swish of tires on wet pavement, the constant thunk-thunk of the windshield wipers battling the rain, the plaintive wail of tornado sirens in Babbs Switch.
“—got hit . . . can’t stop . . . too big.” He could barely hear her over the shrieking wind and the constant pops from lightning.
He slammed on the brakes, and slid to a stop on the shoulder. There was a tracker on the equipment packs. His fingers flew over the laptop’s keyboard, and a moment later, he saw two green dots in close proximity, and a third behind.
Should I turn around, in case she needs to be rescued? The dots were overlaid on a Google map, and two of them were rapidly closing on Babbs Switch.
Warn people on the ground, then turn around—it’s what they’d want me to do. He slammed the accelerator to the floor, skidding the rear end of the van before it got back on pavement.
He clenched the steering wheel, racing the tornado. He couldn’t see it at all, but he knew it was coming—two miles that felt like forever, and then he was in town, blatantly violating the speed limit.
A few people were out on their porches or their front lawns, watching the storm as it came in. He shouted out a warning, told them to get inside and get under cover, that the tornado was only a few minutes away. As the wind started really whipping the trees, he roared out of town, obliterating a rogue trash can as it slid across the road.
•••
A dozen ponies weren’t enough. A few of them glanced down as the tornado tore through Babbs Switch, decimating the town. Their attempts to turn it had been rebuffed by the storm, and for a few orbits they had to back off as it vomited debris out the top—branches, shingles, picture frames, clothes.
And then they moved in again, focusing their energy on stopping it before it got to the next town. It felt them and fought them with everything it had, twisting onto a new course.
•••
I’ve lost it. The sky was almost pitch-black, and then he drove right into the hail, ringing the van like a drum. Star-cracks appeared across the windshield, almost like magic, and he jerked back as one materialized right in front of his face.
Somewhere in the rain behind him was a huge tornado, and he couldn’t see it. The weather radar was nothing but red, and he blinked spots out of his eyes as a power pole got hit right in front of him, sparks still raining down as he drove under.
It’ll be headed northeast. He knew tornadoes, he knew how they behaved. Dusty blew past a crossroads warning sign, braking at the last moment to turn and run south, perpendicular to the tornado. Once he got clear enough, he’d turn back and see if he could find the equipment pack which, God willing, didn’t still have a pony attached to it.
There was a solid sheet of rain to his right, practically a waterfall.
And then it suddenly flashed blue, and he realized that the tornado was right behind it.
Instinctive calculations—it’s a mile away, I still have time. He could reverse north, accelerate south, or abandon the van, lay down in a ditch, and hope for the best. He opted for racing south.
That was the wrong choice.
He heard it just before it hit, a roar like a freight train. The sky turned black and then he was pushed down in his seat as the van got lifted off the pavement, the engine screaming against its rev limiter, the wheels spinning uselessly in the air. The tornado twisted its new plaything, slamming it into a power pole and caving in the side—he felt the blast of air as the windows shattered and everything inside the van suddenly got sucked out. The Toughbook bounced off the windshield and ceiling before vanishing out the passenger side window, and the glow of its screen stayed visible as it whipped in front of the windshield, then smashed off a rearview mirror.
Dusty heard debris slamming into the van, felt rain and hail pelting him, and narrowly avoided a wooden beam that speared through his door and tore the engine cover free. I think I screwed up, he thought, and then, mercifully, nothing.
•••
Tired of its new plaything, the tornado spit the van out its backside. It dropped nose-first into a beanfield, blowing the airbags as it hit, then toppled over onto its roof, its wheels spinning their last as the engine finally quit.
•••
“Dusty!” Paradise didn’t see the van get hit, but she saw it get flung out the backside of the tornado, its strobes still flashing. She watched it tumble through the air and then slam into a bean field nose-first, then lazily crumple onto its roof. There was one last flash of a strobe light under it, and then it was extinguished.
She banked in, letting the tornado catch her wings, letting it grab her and yank her out of formation, and then she dove, her eyes and ears locked on the van. She dove, the momentum of the tornado and her fear driving her, a tiny speck against the vastness of the tornado where eleven pegasi tightened up their formation in their futile fight.
As singularly focused as a hawk who’d spotted its next meal, Paradise’s ears and eyes were locked on the van to the exclusion of all else. There was no tornado, there was no rain, there was no nothing save for a crumpled van fetched up in a bean field, a van which contained her friend.
Despite the raging storm and the tornado that was passing her by, Paradise’s flight to Earth was laser straight. Her muscles ached from flying, her goggles were splattered with rain, and her ears were ringing from the tornado, but that didn’t matter. She had one singular goal in mind, and she dove out of the clouds, her wings beating furiously at the roiled air. A tangle of sheet metal, sucked up by the storm, plummeted past her, and she didn’t even flinch.
She wasn’t the fastest flier in the group. Right now, motivated by fear and compassion, she was, tearing towards the Earth in a steep dive, her speed increasing with every beat of her wings.
Paradise felt a last, vengeful bolt of lightning behind her and outran it, its crash no more relevant to her than a dried-out raincloud dribbling its last.
She raced to the ground, unwavering, unerring, a blur of white under the leaden sky.
•••
Paradise pulled up late, skidding to a less than graceful stop in the beans. She trotted around to the side of the van, the crushed-down roof completely blocking her view inside—it had collapsed all the way to the window sills. “Dusty?”
No answer.
She could see the seams of the door, but there was no way she could possibly open it. She tried anyway, pulling at the handle with her teeth, trying to get a hoof in, and when that didn’t work she kicked the van in frustration.
Then she galloped around to the back. The van was resting at an angle, and one of the rear windows was exposed enough that she might fit through it.
The opposite side windows were a better bet. The opening wasn’t any taller, but it was wider.
She got down on her belly and scooched in, wincing as a few jagged pieces of glass scraped her belly.
Paradise only spared a glance at the van’s cargo area. The headliner was torn up, the rubber matting on the floor was shredded and hanging down in strips. Mud and dirt and leaves and bean plants were everywhere, while everything of theirs was gone.
She hurried to the front, trying to ignore the weird squishy feel of the van’s roof under her hooves and the increasing sense of dread as she neared the space between the seats.
The engine cover was gone, wedged against one side of the van, and she could see the sky around the engine and transmission. Hot coolant was dribbling down, filling the van with steam and a cloying sweet scent. A splintered board was speared diagonally across the footwells.
She turned her head to the left, instinctively—the seatback was crushed with the engine cover jammed between it and the floor. The coiled wire for the CB mic was hanging down from the dashboard; the mic itself was nowhere to be seen.
Paradise pulled at the engine cover before a soft noise behind her got her attention. She snapped her head around to catch her first sight of Dusty. He was hanging by his seat belt, his head only a couple inches away from the crushed-down roof. The deflated airbag hung down like a dirty towel, half-covering his face.
Paradise grabbed it with her mouth and pulled it away, tucking it behind the ring of the steering wheel, ignoring the horrible taste and smell of the chemical propellants.
“Dusty, are you okay?” She nuzzled his cheek. He didn’t look too badly hurt. There was blood running down his temple, but he looked intact otherwise.
“Murgh.”
“Wake up, Dusty, you gotta wake up.”
The dashboard lights were still on, giving the crushed interior of the van an eerie glow.
“Pa—Paradise?” He blinked open an eye. “Where—what happened?”
“Tornado got you. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” He brushed his hand against her side, her wings and the soft fur of her barrel. “This is really uncomfortable. I can’t—” He reached up for the seat belt buckle and tried to work it, to no avail. “It’s pulled too tight. Can you get me out of here?”
“Yeah, we need to get some slack.” She studied the seat and the belt—there was a release to tilt the back of the chair, that would give her some room to work. “Okay, I’m going to go behind you and tilt the seat, and then I’ll get under you so you can land on my back.”
“Let’s try it.” He looked past her and his eyes lit on the darkened equipment pack monitor. “I was . . . I remember one of the packs went offline.”
“Flanking Line’s,” Paradise said. “She got hit by lightning.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah, we’re immune to most lightning.”
Dusty nodded, then pointed to the passenger side of the van. “Hey, is that my hat?”
Paradise followed his finger. She could see the bill poking out next to the broken sun visor.
“I’ll get it after I get you out, okay?” She hated leaving him, but had to give herself more working room.
It took a couple of tries, but she got the lever, tugging the seatback down to give Dusty more room between himself and the seat belt.
She wedged herself back under Dusty and lifted him up as best she could, letting him brace his shoulders on her back. He fumbled with the buckle until it finally released with a click.
Paradise wasn’t expecting Dusty to be as heavy as he was. He grabbed at her tail as he slumped across her back; she dropped to her knees and tried to put her wings out for balance, but in the tight space they were in that wasn’t possible.
She couldn’t really walk with him on her back—maybe if they hadn’t been crowded into the front of the crushed van, she could have.
“If you slide off my back, will you fit between the seat and the roof?”
“Not—yes, but I can’t really crawl. Something’s wrong with my leg.”
“If you hold on to my tail, I can pull you through.”
“Won’t that hurt you?”
“It’s not great,” she admitted. “Grabbing your shirt with my teeth and pulling you isn’t, either.”
“I can help push with my good leg. I like mouth-grabbing, that doesn’t risk hurting your tail.”
“If you insist.” Paradise studied the situation. “Okay, once I get you pulled clear of the front seats, we’ll get you rolled over and you can crawl towards a window.” Would he fit? “You can put some weight on me.”
“Alright, let’s do it. I’m ready to be out of this van.”
“Yeah . . . at least you’re not claustrophobic.”
“You are?”
Paradise nodded. “This is not a place where a pegasus belongs.” She leaned down and grabbed the collar of his shirt with her teeth, then shifted around on her forehooves to get a good stance that didn’t involve accidentally stepping on Dusty.
True to his word, as soon as she started pulling, he started pushing, digging his heel into the headliner. She dragged him into the middle of the van before letting go of his collar. “Hold on a second, I’m going to step over you.”
Her tail brushed across his face as she went back to the front of the wrecked van. He leaned up and watched as she stove in the side of the engine cover with a hoof, then grabbed his hat with her mouth.
He reached for it, but she shook her head and put it on for him.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Paradise nuzzled his cheek again and then turned her attention back to the van. “I don’t know if I like the idea of you rolling over, ‘cause you won’t fit out of the window on your hands and feet. What’s this roof carpet made out of?”
“I’m not sure, some thin fabric and a stiff backing, it’s like cardboard—I had an old Chevy where it fell down and I just peeled it off.”
“I could make a sledge out of it, and that would protect you from the glass.” She looked down at his belt, and before he could protest, she leaned over and unsnapped the cover for his Leatherman multitool. She slid it out with her mouth and then offered it to him. “I can’t get the blade out,” she said, around the handle.
Dusty took it, opened it, and offered it back, very aware that there was an open knife above his chest that a pony was about to grab with her mouth. He trusted her.
She took it and stepped away, then started going to work on the headliner. A few minutes later, she had a torso-sized square carved out and she offered the Leatherman back to him.
“Just set it somewhere safe for now,” he said. “In case you need it again.”
Paradise nodded, and went to the back of the van, where she stabbed it into the headliner for safekeeping. “Alright, I think the best idea is for you to lie on it and I’ll pull you out a window.”
•••
Miles to the east, the remaining eleven pegasi still doggedly fought the tornado. They hadn’t been able to prevent it from hitting Babbs Switch, but now they’d gotten their teeth into it. “Tighten up, back it down!” Lofty shouted, her words relayed up and down the line.
Aching wings beat against it, even as the tornado spewed debris and the storm peppered them with hail, drenched them with rain, and tried to catch them in downdrafts.
They could feel it weakening, as their counterwinds started really taking effect. The ponies tightened up and focused on the root of the tornado as the tip twisted against them, trying to break free. It tore across a road, snapping off utility poles, then wavered as it hit another field.
The tip of the funnel faltered and came up off the ground, then reached down again, trying to get more energy but there was none to be had—the pegasi made sure of that.
“We can stop it before it gets to the next road,” Medley yelled. “Work together!”
They watched as the tip of the tornado lifted off the ground again, writhing in the air, and then it quickly got sucked back up into the cloud, all of its potency gone. The pegasi made one more circle around it, assuring themselves that their foe was gone, before breaking off.
“Good job, team.” Hoofbumps were exchanged—it was the biggest tornado they’d stopped. “Take five, and then we’re gonna have to fly back.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause there isn’t a van to pick us up anymore,” Medley said. “Dusty got hit.”
•••
After she’d dragged him out, Paradise went back into the van and retrieved the airplane radio—she’d spotted it when she recovered his baseball cap.
The tornado team had made it back to the van—what was left of it. After everypony had verified that Dusty was safe, a few of them poked over the remains of the Ford, while a couple others took flight again, circling over the wreck to guide Bill and Jo.
When they arrived, Bill and Jo parked on the shoulder and walked over to make sure that Dusty was okay; Jo called Dr. Tetsuyu and filled him in on the storm and the aftermath.
Babbs Switch was gone, completely wiped off the map.
Everyone agreed that Dusty’s injuries weren’t serious enough to warrant an ambulance, especially not with so many in need. Instead, they rigged a temporary stretcher and put him in the back of the Ram. Paradise flew in beside him and settled down for the ride.
•••
The hospital often had to deal with enthusiastic visitors, but they’d never had to deal with a flock of pegasi before. Visiting hours—and the quantity of visitors—were flagrantly disregarded. Security rousted them out at first, but once the pegasi figured out that Dusty’s window could be opened far enough to admit a pony, security was outclassed. The options were to either post a full-time guard in his room, or just let it happen and not worry too much.
The ponies were quiet and otherwise rule-abiding, so there was no real harm in turning a blind eye to the near-constant stream of visitors, and the one pony who would not leave his side.
Besides, he wasn’t going to be there very long; a day or two at most to make sure that he was well on the road to recovery and then he’d be released from their care.
•••
“Everything they say about hospital food is true,” Dusty grumbled as he pushed his plate aside.
“It can’t be that bad.” Paradise walked over to the bed and sniffed the plate, then took an exploratory nibble of the Jell-O. “Okay, it is. Do you want me to get you a pizza?”
“That’s got to be against the rules.”
“I’m sure it is.” She picked his cell phone off the bedside table and punched in a familiar phone number. Texting wasn’t her strong suit, but the phone accepted nose boops and had a very good spellchecker. She set the phone back down and smiled. “Pizza’s on the way, pegasus delivery through the window. I even got bacon on it ‘cause I know you like bacon.”
“So do you.”
Paradise stuck her tongue out at him and nuzzled his cheek, then turned her head to look out the window, at the clear blue sky punctuated by fluffy clouds. She twitched her wings and sighed, then looked back at him. “So I haven’t asked . . . it’s not really a thing that us ponies talk about, not directly, but we all know. Sometimes a storm bites and then, um, you realize what the stakes really are and maybe it’s not the thing for you. Lots of bright-eyed ponies fighting feral weather for the first time think too much about the glory and not what can happen, and they don’t want to go back again.”
“That happen to you?”
“Danger is my life, Dusty. I . . . well, I’ve heard stories about when it really went wrong, everymare does, but I know what I’m up against and what I’ve gotta do.”
“Same. If you’re asking if I’m going to quit, not a chance. I went in knowing what tornadoes can do, and knowing that there was nothing we could do about it. Get better data, improve the prediction models—and then you guys came along, and changed all that. I’ll keep driving into tornadoes if that’s what it takes to keep you in the air.”
“Don’t drive into tornadoes,” Paradise advised.
“If I’d gotten into the right part of it, maybe I would have gotten sucked all the way up to where you were.”
“You don’t want that, you can’t fly.” She squinted at him. “What kind of painkillers do they have you on, anyway?”
•••
Being discharged from the hospital involved paperwork, something that Dusty hated. Prescriptions to be filled from the hospital pharmacy, the surrender of his hospital johnny, forms for follow-up appointment, the presentation of a bill for services rendered—he didn’t even bother looking at that, since it wasn't his problem.
Mister Dove, their government liaison, met them in the lobby. “Got you a little something.” He held out a keyring. “New van, since the last one broke.”
Dusty snorted. Broke was the understatement of the year. “I’ve got something for you, too.” He handed over the itemized hospital bill, then he turned to Paradise. “Wanna test out our new van?”
Author's Note
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