Skycloud

"Are you sure you're going to be okay here all by yourself?" his mother asked. She was dressed from ear to hoof with fine clothing. Even for a pegasus family with somewhat little money, they usually did well with maintaining the illusion of great wealth in their image. Their mother made sure of that. She had been to Canterlot on numerous occasions, and thus knew all of the latest fashions and sophisticated lifestyles, which also helped to impress the employers she searched out.

"Mom, I'm not a colt anymore! I can handle myself just fine!" he griped.

She finished putting on her earrings, and joined her husband as a carriage arrived out in front of their house. Tonight was a very special night. It was the grand opening of a so-far successful corporation that Thundermach's father was a part of. The company was just recently kicking off, and was sure to have a boost to its profit now that the HQ was right in the center of Cloudsdale.

As his parents headed out the door, they said their good-byes and departed in the carriage. Thundermach was in for one interesting night. He just didn't know it yet.

As he closed the door, he stood there wondering what to do. For a few seconds he remained motionless with a stupid look on his face. Was there even anything to do at this time of night? He decided he'd think of the answer to a nice bite of food, along with some cider or something. He went to open the refrigerator and noticed that the last piece of appleloosa pie he was looking for was gone. He searched the shelves for a second, and then he saw it. Down towards the bottom, below the door of the freezer, there was a small pink piece of paper. He leaned down to pick it up, and read the note on front aloud.

"Turn around..."

He followed the directions.  On the wall behind him, there was another note.  He approached slowly, taking it off the wall and holding it on his hoof.  He followed suspiciously, reading aloud as he went.

"Go forward, turn left--no, the other left.  Oh, wait, no, you were right the first time.  Now go forward again..."

By now the paper was leading him through his living room and back towards his bedroom.

"Now stop. Aaaaaand...turn around again...." he read sarcastically.

As he turned, h--

"HI!"

"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!" he squealed like a little filly.

"My name's Surprise!  What's yours?" It was her, the white pegasus with the weird hair! But how did she get in here? None of this was making sense. What was she doing in his hallway?

"Sweet Celestia! Wh--How did you get into my house?!" he screamed.

"Oh, it was simple. Your window was open, so I went to close it, but then I saw you inside, and remembered you from today at school. You were staring at me, and I was thinking 'I wonder who that could be' but then I remembered that I also saw you flying REALLY fast through the hallway this morning and I was like 'WOAH!', so then I came inside and I may have had just a teensy weensy bit to eat, and then I wrote directions on that sheet of paper and set up that confetti shooter," she pointed at a small barrel taped to the ceiling.

BAM! Before she could say anything else, it blew 3 short rounds of confetti straight into his face. After wiping some of the paper shredding from his eyes, she continued.

"Wow, THAT went off late. Anyway, so as I was sayi--" he stopped her, planting a hoof in her mouth mid-sentence.

"Why are you here? Surprise, WHY ARE YOU IN MY HOUSE?!"

"To give you this." She handed him another piece of paper. In brightly illuminated letters read the words Dj Pon-3 at Cloudsdale - This Friday from 10 PM to 2 AM. Be there, or be jealous you weren't!  Why hadn’t anypony else invited him already?  “I just thought that you look a little lonely.  I mean, the only pony you hang out with is that big guy…is he your dad?  Oh!  I know!  Maybe he’s your long-lost brother and you two are secretly connected but you don’t know it yet!  You know, I have a long-lost cousin I’ve been looking for!  Maybe we could all be long-lost brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins together!”

“Uh-huh…well…okay.” Could she get any weirder? “I’ve just gotta’ take one more look at this.”

He read it a couple of times, going over each word carefully and making sure he understood correctly, and that it wasn’t going to be a stupid prank or something.  The paper was in the standard condition of a poster, shiny and thick.

"Well..." she started, "Are you coming or not?"

"I guess...oh wait, no, my parents said that I'm not allowed to go out after 11. Well, I suppose I could just leave around 10:30 and make it back in ti--".

"Great!" she cut in, "Let's go!" She suddenly grabbed his foreleg and yanked him out the window, closing it behind her. They flew together for a while.

"Do you even know where this thing is?" he asked after about 10 minutes of flight.

"Of course I do, silly!" she said playfully, "Why would I bring you to something if I didn't even know where it was? That would be kinda' weird, don't ya' think?"

"Yeah...weird..." he repeated.

After another 5 minutes or so of flying and occasionally passing another pegasus or two, Thundermach began to hear music. It had quite a beat to it, and even though it must've been at least a full kilometer away, it had enough bass for him to feel it in his chest!

Cloudsdale was now a couple of miles behind them. However, up ahead, something was bright and lighting up a portion of the sky. They passed a couple more clouds, and that's when he saw it:  A huge club absolutely packed with hundreds of pegasi. The music got louder and louder, the bass heavier and heavier. When they finally landed on the main cloud set, the puffs of evaporated water themselves were shaking from the wubs being emitted. Surprise, before running off with some friends, told him to have a good time, and gave him a brief hug. Yeah, this was going to be a fun night...

He walked around for a couple of minutes, unable to really get a clear view of anything due to the sheer number of ponies moving around him. When he got the wing-room, he flew up above the crowd and landed on a small white puff which was being turned into various colors by the lights in the center of the party. He decided it was time for a closer look. He flew even higher, where the air was crisper and a cool breeze was drafting around him. It felt nice, being accompanied by Luna's beautiful moonlight. He looked down and noticed that pegasi weren't the only ponies down on the cloud level, but also unicorns and earth ponies. But how did they even get up here? They couldn't stand on clouds, so there must be some other explanation. That's right! How could he not have noticed?

In the middle of the party was a massive stage with giant speakers in between the bars attached to the sides. Tied around those were two columns of string rising up over the leveled off platform, forming the largest cloud of balloons that Thundermach had ever seen. Never once had so many balloons been in one place that he could remember. He simply stared in awe as the stage began to float higher until it was right below him.

Suddenly, from behind him, he heard a familiar chuckle. He whipped around to find none other than Wind Twirler standing on another cloud bridging the back of his. His best friend stepped across, a calm grin on his face. He stopped next to him.

"I figured you might be down here," he said in his low voice.

"You mean you've known about this? Dude, you didn't even tell me! Why not?"

"Didn't want you to get in trouble."

"Aw, dude, whatever! I never get in trouble."

He raised an eyebrow, "Uh-huh...never..."

Thundermach scoffed, obviously pretending to be taken back by his friend's lack of confidence in him.

After a moment of silence, he said something that would change the entire course of this night. With a swift glance at Wind, he said....

"Hey. You wanna' get a drink?"

"...And so we WOund uP GeTTing kickEd outTA ThiS blace 'guz hE," he pointed drunkenly to a sober Wind, "din't HaVE hIS haIr cut ShORt enough!" Then, without another word or a moment for anypony to realize what he was doing, he got up from their table of about 13 ponies to a nearby game booth. It was the Balloon Darts game. He walked up, reached inside his mane and emptied out an unusually large amount of bits. He set them down on the table beside the pony up front, and took the remaining darts.

"ThAngz!" he said to the prize teddy bear on the counter.

Before anypony could figure out what he was up to, he threw one of the darts. It wasn't in the direction of anypony specific, but it might as well have been. He threw high and hard. All of a sudden, there was a pop. And then another pop.

"LoOk guys! I'm hittin' all the balloonzes!" He turned back around and continued.

It was then that Wind realized what Thundermach was doing. He was popping the balloons, yes, but not the right ones. Just then, the stage started leaning in on one side.

"Thundermach, stop!" Wind yelled. His friend could not hear his hollering, and kept at his dart-chucking with some kind of drunken precision, each one taking out a minimum of 5 balloons or more as it passed through. By now he had to have taken out at least 50 of them! Wind ran over to his friend and slapped the darts out of his hooves.

"WhADDYa do THat fOr?" Thundermach said with a confused look.

The stage was now noticeably tilting. Nopony knew what was happening, although some of them were beginning to slip around. Panic was starting to spread. Some of the earth and unicorn ponies were getting back into their hot-air balloons that they used to get to the stage once it got airborne.

"Thundermach. I think it's time we took you home." Wind was more serious than usual.

"WhyYy? I's not like it's gONna CollAPSE 'er something!" He patted Wind on the head, "Silly filly."

From the stage, they heard a loud CRACK!. They turned and looked, and saw something positively horrifying. Shrill shrieks and screams of panic and chaos filled the air with piercing decibals as the entire line of strings holding the left side of the stage afloat suddenly snapped, and the whole thing...just dropped. Fear and panic now surged through the crowd as the majority of the pegasi--including Wind--dove off of the clouds to save the falling ponies. Thundermach leaned over the edge, brought out of the drunken stupor by the sudden rush of adrenaline. He watched as the pegasi who dove off to save others returned with at least one each, some with two, dropping them off on any of the available hot-air balloons. Meanwhile, the stage inflated and deployed its emergency balloon supply, which caught it and leveled it out once more. Wind, returning with 3 ponies total, dropped them off in some of the available "parking", which was now almost filled up with panic-stricken earth and unicorn ponies, and looked back at the cloud his best friend had been standing on. He looked towards Cloudsdale, and with the aid of the moonlight, saw a small pegasus flying away in a rather off-balance fashion.

"Thundermach..." he whispered.

By the time he got home, it was about 1:30 in the morning. Hopefully his parents weren't home. However, when he noticed the lights on, he assumed otherwise...he assumed. When the door opened, it always made a loud squee sound for some reason. As he closed it behind him, he saw a silhouette--no, he saw two silhouettes--standing in the middle of the hallway, their expressions a frown from what he could tell from the dim illumination of the moon, their hooves crossed. When he saw their faces with better light, he realized that they were those of Surprise and Wind, both standing silently, both staring. Surprise was first to break the silence.

"Wait, why are we angry again?"

"Ugh!" Wind sighed, "He just almost caused a catastrophe. Thundermach! What if somepony had gotten hurt? How would you feel?"

"Hey!" Surprise cut in, "I'm sure he didn't mean it! That BerryPunch Wildcard juice can really make a pony do some funny stuff! I've seen it a bunch of times!"

"How did you even get here before me?" His comment was ignored.

"There's nothing 'funny' about this, Surprise, and that's not the point." Wind's deep, calm voice was now more audible and much more intense. "The point is that he almost got somepony seriously hurt, maybe even killed! What do you have to say for yourself?"

Thundermach took a moment to think before responding.

"Good-night." And with that, he fell face-first and cross-eyed right into the carpet.