The Great Alicorn Hunt
Chapter 50
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Mach was a touch bewildered as to what had just occurred. One moment a smoking hot she-alicorn had been purring at him from an inch away, so close he could smell her body wash (Mountain Racer Sport scent, if you must know), the next there had been an earsplitting scream and a flash of light, and now she was on the opposite side of the room, squared off and hyperventilating in panic.
As for Dash, it was a shame she was so busy going into hysterics. She might have been able to appreciate having accomplished her very first short-range teleportation.
After a few seconds she managed to get something of a grip. She glared at the rangy pegasus colt on the opposite side of the room. "Ah, geez, what the buck is this? How old are you even, kid?"
Mach One bristled. "I'm fifteen. And how old are you, Grandma?" he snarked.
She growled but didn't answer him. Her horn suddenly lit up, and a moment later a seriously alarmed Harshwhinny was yanked through the wall and into the room. "You're an eyewitness," Rainbow Dash said to her nervously. She pointed a hoof at Mach. "The kid is over there, I'm over here. Nothing's happening, nothing happened, nothing will happen-"
"I'm starting to take this personally," Mach One said, his ears laid back in irritation.
"Shut up. I want your word you'll confirm nothing happened-"
Harshwhinny rolled her eyes. "The ponies standing guard outside this room can confirm that, Your Highness," she said. "Cloud walls aren't exactly soundproofed."
"Yeah, yeah, that's right," Dash said, clutching her head with her wings. "So- no harm no foul... why did you leave me alone if you knew- you KNEW." Dash's distress over her hairbreadth escape from infamy as a cradle robber turned to outrage. "You knew all along he was just a kid, and you- How could you- I OUGHTA- Ooooooh!" She stood there seething, her mane frizzing.(1)
Harshwhinny stood there, despite being yanked unceremoniously through the air, calm, collected, and with an evil smirk spread across her normally implacable face.
Mach interrupted what promised to be one hell of a row. "Hey, pardon me for butting in, Your Highness, but is there some reason other than kicking me in my masculine self esteem that you brought me up here?" he said irritably.
The Princess of Loyalty sighed and seemed to sag. She rubbed her face with a hoof. "Sorry, kid-"
"The name's 'Mach One,' not 'kid,' " the offended colt snapped.
"Mind your manners, young stallion," Harshwhinny said as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "You're not as much of an adult as you think you are."
"Considering how all the so-called adults I've seen in my life tend to act that's not much of a sell," Mach said with an evil glare. "Now are you gonna keep insulting me or is somepony gonna tell me what they want? Or do I just turn around and walk out of here?"
Dash groaned. "Take the chip off your shoulder, we're not here to diss ya," she said. "Just- just take a seat." She gestured at the cloud pillows scattered around the room. Moving stiffly, Mach jerked a nearby cushion over to him and sat down. Dash did the same. She gave the colt the once-over; he was practically radiating hostility now.
Great, I'm doing just great with this, she thought in annoyance. She couldn't exactly blame him for being honked off, either. She knew teenagers could be touchy, and she didn't know much about how guys thought but she could imagine that going from a filly from hitting on you to her cringing away from you like you smelled nasty would put anypony in a bad mood.
Hopefully what she told him next could patch things over. Or at least give him something else to think about. Just for the sake of argument she cast the detection spell again and waved her horn around him. Oh yeah, that tingling soda-fizz buzzing bell sensation was definitely there.
Mach looked at her like he was weighing whether he was closer to the exit than she was to him. "What the heck was that?" he demanded nervously. "Look, is this some sort of... new Alicorn Princess hazing ritual or something? Do you each have to go out, find some guy, and see how badly you can freak him out? If I run screaming from the building does that mean you win?"
Dash sat back down. She rubbed her face with one hoof. "Okay, let me take it from the top. I'm sorry about... hitting on you and all that. But that's not important now. There's a real serious reason you were brought up here."
"Why me?" Mach frowned. "I'm just an ordinary guy."
"Ordinary guy," Dash said. "Yeaaah, let's start with that..."
"You... think I'm an alicorn."
Dash and Harshwhinny both nodded. "Um, a nascent one, yeah."
He blinked slowly. "Okay. And there are more of us? All over Equestria."
"Hey, me and my friends used to be, you know?" Dash pointed out.
"Yeah, yeah, I get that. Whoa." He looked staggered. But who wouldn't. He took a long drink from the soda he'd plucked from the refreshment table, thinking things over. "And you're wanting to, what, trigger me or activate me or-"
"Ascend. Celestia says each of us should be powerful enough to perform Starswirl's ritual on our own, but..." Rainbow Dash winced. "I'm thinkin' we should wait until we get more of us together. Or at least get Twilight or Celestia or Luna to lead off. They're the smart, magical ones... I've... never been exactly the smartest one in our group, and I'm not really used to this horn yet." She tapped it for emphasis. "Shoot, I'm still getting through the 'magic kindergarten' stuff." She shrugged her wings and laughed weakly.
"And... eventually you think that if you ascend enough alicorns, you'll..."
"We'll figure out how to ascend everypony," Dash finished. "We'll all be strong and tough as earth ponies, and magical as unicorns, and able to fly and walk on clouds like pegasuses. No more ponies dying of old age, or illness, or stupid little injuries that wouldn't heal." She looked out the window, down at the royal box, where the colts and fillies from the clinic were seated. "No more ponies with legs or wings or ears or eyes that don't work.
"It won't be a perfect world, but it'll be a better one. And we're this close-" she held her hooves an inch apart. "This close to making it happen."
The teenage stallion stood in front of the window, staring out into space at nothing. Dash could almost hear his mind churning. "This is... this is so big," he said, laughing shakily.
"I know," Dash said. "It's so awesome it's kinda scary."
"Yeah... it..." He stopped speaking in mid sentence. His smile faded. "No, no, no this is bad. This is gonna be real bad."
Rainbow Dash was taken aback. "What? Whaddya mean it's bad?" she said. She grunted as she thought she realized where he was going. "Oh you're not gonna do that 'who wants to live forever' emo junk, are you ?" She snorted. "Or going on about population density or resources or all those other egghead arguments? C'mon, we're magical alicorns living in a magical kingdom who can fly to the moon if we want to. If we can't figure out how to fix problems like that we're not even trying."
He snorted. "Come on, give me some credit," he said. "People being healthy, strong and living longer lives being a good thing- that's a no-brainer, no matter what other piddly problems pop up." He turned away from the window. "But is Celestia thinking about what comes between?"
"Huh?"
"She's got this great idea, yeah. First step find more alicorns. Last step, everypony becomes a nigh-immortal, powerful, magical alicorn. And I'm sure she's got all sorts of plans for after that. But what kind of plans does she have for all the steps in between?" At Dash's incomprehending look he stamped his hoof. "Come on, Princess, think it through. You're on board with this, and the other princesses are on board with it, and I pretty much think it's a good idea too- but what plan do you have for dealing with the ponies who aren't?"
Dash gave a faint shrug and looked a little sad. "Well, it's sad for them... But we're not gonna force anyone to ascend who doesn't want to..."
"And do you think that the ponies who are against it are gonna leave it at that?" he said in disbelief. "Your Highness, do you know anything about Windy City? Maybe you've missed the stories about the kind of social movements that are coming out of the Idiot Factory up on Scholar's Peak, or are running our city hall. There are groups out there who think that helping those crippled kids out there walk or fly-" he pointed out the window at the kids from the clinic- " is a hate crime. Ponies who think that magical prosthetics- mechanical legs, hearing aid gems, artificial eyes- are an 'abomination of nature.' That medicine is 'unnatural' and that we should all go out and eat grass and bark or something when we get sick instead.
"But it's never enough just to live and let live. They form groups, and committees, and protest marches, and petitions and voting blocks- and when they can't get enough petition or votes to get what they want, they'll pool their money and "donate" to politicians, and press lawsuits, to FORCE everypony to do what they want. It's how they got Big Chug soda cups and Jumbo Hayburgers outlawed here- with the help of my idiot uncle."
"Hayburgers are outlawed here?" Dash squawked.
He pressed on. "-And maybe Windy City is Ground Zero for control freak idiots like that, but I'll bet you a bit to a biscuit that Windy City isn't the only place you'll find 'em. There are Just SIX of you, and those kinds of ponies are freaking out already. They're already throwing protests in the streets. What do you think they're going to do when you start cranking out alicorns in bulk? What does Celestia think they'll do?"
He started pacing in a circle as he ranted. "And then there's the nobles. Maybe you missed it, but those who have power and privilege don't like to share. Once all those lords and ladies and barons and dukes and duchesses figure out there's a whole new upper class on the way, one made up of winged unicorns, one that will be even more powerful than them... they'll try to stop it." He laughed ruefully. "And if that fails, they'll try and make sure that they're the only ones allowed to join it.
"Laws, bribes, blackmail... every little dirty trick in the book. Anything to preserve their place of power and privilege. And the hilarious thing is that the control freak idiots I mentioned before will help them. The crooked nobles will feed the ever-so-enlightened little dum-dums whatever protest sign slogan triggers them the most, bankroll their little Social Justice groups under the table, and then send them off. The useful little idiots will go out and do their dirty work for them."
"Protests, riots, acts of treason... maybe even civil war..." he looked out the window again.
"Holy horseapples, kid, are YOU grimdark," Dash blurted. "Where are you coming up with this stuff?"
"From what I've overheard, my guess would be 'experience,' " Harshwhinny said cynically. Dash stared at her. "He's Fussbudget's nephew, Your Highness. He's had a very good look at what stupid people in power will do- from the inside, and the outside."
Dash sat there and stared at him. Everything he said, it had the painful sound of something that could all too possibly be true. "It won't get like that," she said firmly. "Celestia, Luna, and the rest of us won't let it."
"How?" he said scornfully. He poked at one of the ornate water globes decorating the refreshment table. "Does Princess Celestia have some secret master plan for dealing with the inevitable?"
"I don't know what she has planned," Dash said. "But she's Celestia. She's, what, a couple thousand years old? She's seen it all. It'd be awful strange if she didn't have some idea how to deal with stupid mobs and conniving nobles. And her sister's no slouch either, for that matter. And the rest of us aren't exactly pushovers either. We'll keep things flying straight and true."
"And what if you can't?" Mach challenged.
"Then we'll do this anyway," Dash said. Mach twitched in surprise at her bluntness. "Mach, believe me, we talked about this. About all the things that could go wrong, and all the trouble that it would cause, and how many things that could happen that we don't know about and couldn't even guess. But we figured out fast: none of that changes anything.
" This is a good thing. This is the right thing to do. And sometimes, you just have to have faith that doing the right thing will be worth the cost."
For a little while none of them spoke. The sun finally dropped below the horizon, the lights in the Thunderdome came up. They all silently stood at the viewing window and watched as the Wonderbolts airshow began to open.
The sun set. The stadium lights went up, glimmering off the water globes decorating the royal box and the VIP seating. Far down in the chasm in the center of the Thunderdome, lightning flashed, sending illumination stuttering up into the sky. If you were seated high enough to look down into that void, curtains of rain could be seen starting to fall.
Everypony held their breath. Then with a whoosh of skywriting smoke and the thunder of wings, the Wonderbolts began flying up from below, out of the bottomless stormcloud-chasm. A half dozen of them, a dozen, twenty, fifty, every Wonderbolt and Wonderbolt reservist on the roster in flights of five, some of them trailing smoke, some trailing sparks and fire, others trailing lightning magically dragged up on their wingtips from the rainstorm below. The nearest grouping swooped in low and flew barely a foot above the heads of those in the royal box, scattering sparks of fairy fire over them.
The cheers and applause from that section alone was deafening.
Mach looked over at Rainbow Dash. "Shouldn't you be out there? I thought this was, you know, your 'thing' as a new Princess," he said.
Dash shrugged her wings. "This was more important. Fate of all ponykind, right? Besides, they save me for the grand finale. I can't really fly with them anymore; I'm just too far outta their league. Like, 'a Wonderbolt flying with foals from flight camp' outta their league."
"Seriously?" Mach said skeptically.
"You ever see Celestia fly with her guards anywhere?" Mach shook his head. "No, ya don't," Dash agreed. "You wanna know why? 'Cause she's so powerful a flier it's like trying to go jogging with a group of toddlers. It's just easier for her to let them haul her around in that chariot."
"Well she is pretty big," he said. "The backwash from those wings must make flying close to her kind of dicey." Dash made a noncommittal noise of agreement. "One of those 'unforeseen consequences' you were talking about, I guess," he went on.
Dash nodded. "Not everything's a plus," she admitted.
Mach tore his eyes away from the formations racing through the sky and looked down to where his friends sat, in the expanded area of the royal box. If he became an alicorn, he'd gain all sorts of things... his wing stub twitched. Alicorns healed from almost anything. Could he... could he get his wing back?
But what would he lose? Would a gap open up between him and his gang? The Fools meant the world to him; they'd been more than family for years, and he was their big brother. If he lost that, he didn't know what he'd do.
"Huh," Dash said. "Spitfire must've changed the lineup. Looks like they're opening with the ribbon dancers." He looked; a rectangular cloud platform was being floated into place , three smaller square ones above and around it (and for some reason, he noted, a large thin one some twenty feet below it, rainbow-dyed dark indigo so it disappeared against the dark of the chasm. A safety net?) Six pegasi girls, three to a side, were standing on the main platform in dancer's poses, holding wands that trailed glowing ribbons down to their hooves. They were groomed and coiffed in identical manestyles to look as similar as possible, and were dressed in spangled leotards that glittered like starbursts under the stadium lights. And standing halfway between the two groups, with her own wand held high, was-
"Scootaloo?" Dash exclaimed.
"Rookie?" Mach exclaimed at the same time.
A wide-eyed smile spread over Rainbow Dash's face. "Oh. My. Gosh. They never told me they were going to put her in the show-!"
"Holy carp, it's Rookie!" Wheezer squawked. He dove for his inhaler as exclamations of shock and surprise went up from the Nobody's Fools. The shouts of surprise turned into cheers, whistles and applause.
"Ermagersh," Presto cackled. He started digging through his supplies again, pulling out a hooffull of tiny bottle rockets. "This calls for some skywriting-!"
Scootaloo held her arabesque, wings flared, heart pounding as she waited for the music to start. Almost against her will her eyes were pulled up to the royal boxes where her friends... her friends...
Were they still her friends? A tiny fearful sliver of ice in her heart asked. She knew what Mach One had said... but ponies could be unpredictable, she knew that. Apologies or not, the legendary anonymous Nobody's Fools had been busted and exposed- because of her. By tomorrow their names and faces would be all over the papers, their 'secret gang' of street skaters, performers and pranksters a secret nevermore. Did they blame her for having their secret blown, for losing their hideout? Would they ever forgive the stupid little outsider who made it happen?
There was a ruckus coming from their section. It was faint from the distance, but were they... cheering? A moment later eight whistling pencil-thin streaks of light zipped up from where the Fools were sitting. They cracked and popped, and eight letters formed from firework sparks floated in the air:
E
The icicle in her heart melted away in an instant. She beamed; she felt as light as a balloon, as if she could just leap off the platform and float into the sky.
The music began to play, and she began to dance.
"Omigosh, look at her," Dash said in delight. Mach could only silently agree. The moment the music had begun, the six pegasi had leapt into the air in a twirl of shining ribbons, and Scootaloo had leapt after them. She still couldn't fly, but she could hover and slow her descents to a feather fall, catching lifts and throws from the other dancers, pulling hang time out of thin air.
And what they did with that hangtime was breathtaking. It was half ballet, half gymnastics, and absolutely riveting. They leapt from platform to platform, their ribbons twirling unceasingly, writing out a swirling calligraphy in the air around them. Scootaloo was in and out and among them, sometimes mirroring their steps, sometimes counterpointing their choreography with her own. She even somersaulted through the loops of her own ribbon at one point. "Wow," Mach muttered. The little squirt was more of a gymnast and athlete than he'd even suspected. The princess whispered something while they watched. Mach barely caught it on the edge of his hearing.
"Hang in there, Squirt. We'll get you flying yet."
He looked down at the performing filly and realized how it must rip both their hearts out for her to be unable to fly. But with alicornhood... Alicorns could heal from almost anything. And their magic could do almost anything. He looked from her to the handicapped children from the clinic. One alicorn couldn't fix everything. But ten, a dozen, a thousand, an entire race of them... those foals could go from wheelchairs and braces to skyborne, if the ascendancy worked.
Then he looked at the Fools. Poor Presto. How much it would change his world to have a horn and wings? And Wheezer... no alicorn would be chucking down pills or potions or huffing on an inhaler. Imagine what Spritz could do with magic, instead of just paint. What Crackerjack wouldn't give to have an alicorn's strength to go along with his scrappy courage. And would Flute be mute if he ascended?
Or maybe even Mach himself could use his alicorn powers to give him back his voice. Wouldn't that be something.
In a flash of insight, Mach realize that the ascendancy- that the Alicorn Master Plan- wasn't just some abstract noble cause or ideal. It was personal. He, Mach One, wasn't just some social agitator anymore. It wasn't a question of "Somebody ought to," it was a question of "Will I?"
It was a bigger, scarier headrush than the first time he did the Kessel Run.
The music rose to a crescendo. The six ponies fluttered together, forming a pony tower, ribbons forming a spinning cloud around them. With a boost from Velvet Slipper, Scootaloo performed an aerial tumble and leapt, wings fluttering, to the peak of the formation. Their flying ribbons dissolved in a shower of sparks as the music ended.
The stadium roared.
The free-floating platforms were shaped into a ramp and floated down to the performer's entrance. Scootaloo pranced down the ramp with the others, waving at the cheering crowd. She'd never felt so euphoric. She made a beeline for the locker room, where several of the mares made a huge fuss over her, praising her performance. She shucked her sparkly leotard and carefully put it away in her panniers for safekeeping. It didn't matter that her whole part in the show wasn't even five minutes long; she was going to save that costume forever.
A quick shower, and she slapped on her panniers and winged hat, grabbed her scooter, and zoomed off to find Rainbow Dash. Didn't she say she'd be up in that fancy observation lounge right now...? She zipped past a couple of maintenance workers pushing a trolley, nearly bowling them over in her haste. "Sorry-!" he shouted an apology over her shoulder, but they were already picking themselves up and fussing over their cart's spilled contents. More of those water globe lamps all over the place, it looked like.
There was something familiar about them, she thought idly. They were both wearing baggy coveralls and hats; one was a green mare with dreadlocks, the other was a skinny looking orange stallion. Where'd she seen somepony like them before? Whatever, she thought. In the next moment she had other things on her mind, as she nearly collided headlong with Rainbow Dash, Mach One and Harshwhinny going the other way. Dash snagged her in her forelimbs, bringing her to a sudden halt.
"Whoa, Squirt, where's the fire?" Dash teased.
"Didja see me, Rainbow Dash? Didja see me?" the little pegasus' glee at her debut practically lit her up from within.
"Sure did," Dash said, giving her a noogie through her winged hat. "Opening number, no less. Pretty cool. C'mon, we're headed out to the Royal Box. I bet Prince Ajax wants to congratulate you too."
"Shouldn't you be getting ready?" Scootaloo said.
"Right now? C'mon, the show's almost three hours long, and I don't come out till the finale. Anyway, I gotta do the Princess thing, spend some time up in the catbird seat, doing the Princess Wave-" She sat back and did a little hoof-wave, a dopey grin plastered on her face. Scootaloo laughed. "Let's go grab you a tub of popcorn and..." she paused suddenly and shuddered. "Ugh, woof."
"What is it?" Scootaloo asked.
Dash looked around, puzzled. Everything seemed to pause for a moment. There wasn't anything to see; just a couple of maintenance ponies mucking around with a cart full of lighting equipment. She frowned, but the feeling was gone. The tableau broke; the guards shuffled, the workponies resumed picking up their spilled cargo and trundling down the hall. "Dunno, felt like a goose walked over my grave," she muttered. "Never mind; let's go."
"Uh, gimme a minute, I'll catch up," Mach One said suddenly. ."Oh relax, Gung Ho," he said as the guards started to look disapproving. "I ain't gonna bolt on you. I kinda got to hit the facilities." He nodded at a pair of doors labeled "Colts" and "Fillies."(2)
"Relax, guys, he's a guest, not a prisoner," Dash said. She gave Mach a look. "We'll be in the top seats in the royal box. Don't keep us waiting too long." With that they trotted off.
Mach availed himself of the facilities. On his way out the door his hoof clipped something; he looked down. One of the glass globes that had spilled out of the maintenance ponies' trolley had apparently rolled down the hall and bumped against the washroom door. He picked softly glowing light up, curious. Liquid sloshed around inside. No, wait a minute; this isn't a glass globe... the liquid inside is... bubbly . And there's...a ball of ice inside? He shook it experimentally.
He realized he'd shook it too hard when the little ball cracked. To his alarm, the globe filled with seething bubbles and began to shake. It only took him a split second to realize what it was. He and the Fools had used them for plenty of pranks... "Awww, crap, it's a mint-fizz bomb!" he said. He dropped it and backed away hastily, not wanting to get sprayed with sticky soda.
Every colt knew the gag; you dropped a mint candy into a bottle of soda water, and the soda would geyser out in a foaming fountain. He didn't know who came up with the idea of putting the mint inside an ice cube for a delayed reaction, but the Fools all agreed it was brilliant and used it every chance they got.(3) Now it looked like the gag was on him...
The globe cracked and foaming liquid gushed everywhere- and the globe disappeared in a cloud of steam. Mach blinked in surprise. What in Equestria? He crept forward and examined the spot it had been. There was a sloppy, melted hole through the floor where the globe had been. He looked in; he could see there was a hole through the floor below. And the one below that...
Holy crap. It wasn't just soda water. It was cloud solvent!
Pegasus clouds, especially cloudcrete, were laced together with pegasus magic. With enough applications, they could even be made firm enough to hold up non-pegasi. But one spritz of weather factory cloud solvent and the magic came unbound. Solid walls and floors became nothing more than water vapor again, not even strong enough to hold up a gnat.
Where were those two workponies? Mach looked around frantically. The two with the trolley had hightailed it, leaving behind a trail of spilled litter, empty cleaning bottles and rags. He could hear the echoes of their rattling trolley wheels as they ran for it. "Oh no you don't!" Mach snarled, galloping after them.
The two fake workponies almost made it to the exit when they were hit by a jet black thunderbolt. They were both knocked arse over teakettle and their trolley was upended once again. Before they could recover Mach had them hog-tied, bound up with a roll of gaffer's tape that had bounced out of the trolley. "All right you bum-wipes," he said, giving the skinny orange colt a shake by the collar. "What are you doing with these?" He held up one of the unbroken globes from the trolley.
The orange unicorn colt tried to act tough and gave him a sneer. It was like being intimidated by a gland condition. "Knocking one of the fake princesses off her high and mighty throne-" he said.
Mach skipped to the chase and beat him over the head a few times with a mop bucket. When the clanging ceased, his prisoner was much more cooperative."...shabotaging da Funderdome..." he lisped, head bobbling as his eyes crossed. "Make id aw faw down go boom, wee..."
"What?"
"That's right, royal sycophant," the dreadlocked mare taunted. "We planted solvent bombs. All over. This floating ego trip is going DOWN." She laughed, mocking. "The biggest one is right in front of her Royal Fakeness' throne. When they go off, that whole seating section will melt like marshmallow topping. She and all her cake-eating sycophants will be dumped out of her flying ego-palace on their gold-plated behinds in front of all Equestria. Humiliations galore."
"Down with Sequestria," the orange stallion said, head wobbling. "Pony to the Power... Pony... yay."
Mach One seethed. "You IDIOTS!" he yelled. "Half the ponies in this stadium can't fly!"
In a fury, he grabbed the remaining solvent bombs, three of them. There was a little ice tray with frozen "fuses." He cracked them underhoof, dropped them in the globes, shook them hard, and piled them around the two bound ponies. He took a moment to relish their looks of dawning horror. "What are you doing?" the mare screeched. "You primed them! They'll go off in minutes!"
"Then you'd better hope somepony finds you before the floor disappears from under you," Mach One snarled. He turned and ran as hard as he could, leaving the two saboteurs to slowly panic as the seconds ticked off.
He pounded up the hallway to the royal box. Guards blocked his way. He had no time; he somersaulted over them, hit the floor and kept running, ignoring the shouts behind him. He kicked the doors open- two more guards he had to tumble past, further shouts of "Halt!"- Rainbow Dash was sitting in her chair, Scootaloo next to her, both waving at the cheering ponies below. He hit the back of the throne in a flying kick, knocking it over and throwing both of them forward on her face. "Agh! What gives?" she shouted from the floor angrily.
There it was, right under the throne. It was the size of a basketball, more than enough to turn this entire half of the stadium to a slurry of water vapor. And it was already starting to boil. There was no time left. He snatched the globe up- he wasn't sure, he thought he managed to scream 'it's a bomb'- tucked it in the crook of his foreleg, dodged the claws and spears of the angry guards, sprang up onto the front rail of the royal box, and leapt.
He could not fly. But even with only one wing, he could manage a few brief wingbeats, hanging air the other colts called it, literally flinging himself forward through the air on the power of his pegasus magic and the sheer strength of his one good wing. One wingbeat, he was twenty feet out from the seats, two wingbeats, now it was fifty, three wingbeats, nothing but sheer force of will- he was hanging in the sky over the lip of the storm chasm, a thousand pony faces staring up at him slack jawed in surprise-
He took the crackling, boiling ball in both hooves and, whipping his spine around like he was snapping a whip, flung it out into open space. It sailed out over the chasm another fifty feet, then at the peak of its arc it exploded with a bang. Ponies close enough to hear it screamed. The foaming liquid sprayed everywhere- and fell harmlessly down into the empty sky below.
He felt hooves grab him as he started to plummet after him. A couple of the performers had caught him on pure instinct. It was the oldest rule in the sky: it doesn't matter why, catch them if they fall. "Whoa, we gotcha-" The three ponies that grabbed him hastily pulled him back and lowered him into the seats below the royal box.
Already, in mere seconds, ponies were catching the gist of what had just happened. "A bomb?"
"Did he say a bomb?"
"Guards!"
"Some sort of explosive-"
For a brief irrational second Mach One dared to think he'd saved the day. Then a stuttering volley of cracks and bangs reached his ears. The screams of panic resumed as the scores of solvent bombs scattered throughout the Thunderdome went off. "No," he protested weakly as all around them the massive cloud structure shifted. With an ominous rumble, the leviathan cloudiseum began to come apart.
He looked around. The stadium was dotted with bursting clouds of water vapor where the bombs had gone off. Ominous rumbling came from within as the massive ring of cloudcrete began to break apart into segments, ponies frantically scrambling to avoid the growing gaps. "Buck and Pluck," Mach swore. "They didn't just sabotage it, they made a pizza out of it!"
He looked up the slope through the panicking ponies. The observation tower was slumping like a tallow candle left out in the sun; the royal box and its guest seats were coming apart like a slow-motion stack of toy blocks. Every Wonderbolt had dropped what they were doing and were flying to the rescue, catching those who were falling, depositing them on larger chunks of cloud for temporary safety. But it was chaos and the chaos was growing fast.
He saw his Fools scrambling, some looking down over the rail to him, fear on their faces. But further up, crying in fear, were the crippled kids from the Clinic...
He stood up on the backs of the bleachers. "HEADS UP, KNUCKLEHEADS!" Mach bellowed. "WHO ARE WE?" It was the old slogan, one the Fools had been shouting since before Mach had even been a member. They heard him over the growing noise, and turned to look down at him. He had to get them moving or they were dead. "I SAID WHO ARE WE!"
"Nobody's Fools," the scattered shout came back.
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU! WHO ARE WE?"
"NOBODY'S FOOLS!" More of them joined in the shout.
AND WHAT'S RULE NUMBER ONE IF YOU'RE NOBODY'S FOOL?"
The shout came back with defiance. "NOBODY FALLS!"
"WHAT'S THAT?"
"NOBODY'S FOOLS! NOBODY FALLS!"
"YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!" He pointed up at the frightened Clinic kids. "WE GOT SOME SPARROWS(4) UP THERE THAT NEED OUR HELP! GET UP THERE AND HELP THOSE KIDS!" That was all it took. He had it hammered into him, he'd hammered it into them; you didn't wait for somepony else to save you, or to save somepony else. You were your brother's keeper out there. And if the Maker's eye was on the sparrow, then yours damn well better be too.
They were on their hooves and moving; those with wings were airborne, those without began parkouring up the collapsing stands to where the kids were clinging for dear life. Seconds after they started moving, their astonished families realized what was going on and began moving too. The fools reached the kids and began pulling whatever gear they had in their panniers out to secure them.
Mach felt his heart swell with pride. He shook it off; time for touchy-feely crap later, this was some serious trouble. He started barking at the ponies around them. Rule Number One in a crisis, you didn't wait for someone to 'do something,' you told them what to do. "You! Any of you with wings, grab anypony near you who doesn't and get to one of the larger chunks of cloud! If you've got a horn, help the rescue crews pull the orphan clouds back in- there are gonna be a lot of ponies grabbing on to stray puffs and drifting free if we don't. Stay together, stay in the center of the cloud masses, and stay calm!" He pulled a length of parachute cord out of his pocket, anchored it to the rail, and jumped to a rapidly dissolving clump of cloud with a panicking pair of colts on it.
He cast around frantically as he towed them, hoof over hoof, back to the larger lump of cloud. Where was the Princess-?
A flash of light high above answered his unspoken question. Princess Rainbow Dash was up and in the fight.
It hadn't taken a moment for Dash to realize what was happening and get airborne. "Get the civilians to safety," she yelled. "I'll try and hold things together- Scootaloo! What are you-"
"I gotta do this Dash! Nobody's Fools, NOBODY FALLS!" The filly didn't even look up; she snapped open her glider-scooter and ollied off the rail, swooping down to snag a tumbling filly out of midair. She lost altitude fast under the extra weight, but still managed to get the filly back to safety. She went airborne again, heading for another pony in distress.
"That's my girl," Dash couldn't help saying. She rocketed skyward, her horn blazing. She cursed mentally; she still barely knew the littlest dribs and drabs of how to use alicorn magic- for lack of any other options, she pointed her horn at the splitting clouds below and willed. A ribbon of cyan light leapt from the end of her horn and lanced down into the clouds. It began looping back and forth, literally stitching the two halves of the cloud back together. But even as she pulled the gap closed, others began to widen.
She knew what was happening; she wished she didn't. The Thunderdome wasn't just an oversized cloud castle; it was so large it was an entire weather system in itself. The cloud pillars, lightning veins, and rainbow girders that laced the interior kept it in stasis, balancing the forces inside and keeping it from spiraling out of control. But whoever had sabotaged it had used cloud solvent (she'd caught a whiff of that unmistakable grass-after-a-rain scent), which had sliced through the stabilizing interior structures like boiling water through spun sugar.
Now it was unleashed. Dash could feel the air currents with her pegasus magic, feel the updrafts and downdrafts starting to churn like a massive turbine. Her dread blossomed; if they didn't stabilize it was going to become not merely a storm but a superstorm... a tornado nearly a mile across that would tear through Lee Valley below, destroying everything in its path. And she didn't think there were enough skyworthy pegasi in Windy City to stop what had just started. It was taking every airborne pony available just to rescue the nonfliers.
Slowly, ominously, the battered Thunderdome began to rotate.
The Nobody's Fools and their families were busier than a handful of fleas on a hot skillet. Softy was doing his best to comfort some frightened foals as his father and Crackerjack's father stood on opposite sides of a split in the clouds, trying to pull it together with a tow-rope in a tug of war. Presto was laying down fresh clouds with a fire extinguisher(5) and spraying bottled star spider silk to tie it down, while his parents struggled to neutralize the last of the cloud solvent with their magic. The entire Banana clan had taken flight to lend aid(6). Flute was using telekinesis to fling rope, extension cords, parachute cords from the skate rat's kits, anything to help tie down and tie together, daisy chaining the ponies together for as much saftety as possible.
Fledge and his parents had flown down and were trying to airlift a hysterical donkey family to a more stable area. The two older gryphons had reached an area the Wonderbolts had cordoned as a safe zone, but Fledge was struggling to stay aloft with the young jenny clinging to him. "C'mon, just a bit further," he grunted, flapping for all he was worth.
"Need a talon?" the thunder of wings came from above. Fledge looked up; three enormous leonine shapes were descending on him from above. Two were armed gryphon guards, the third one, wearing a cocky smile and offering an outstretched talon, was-
"PRINCE AJAX?" Fledge screeched.
"One and the same," he said, taking the donkey foal from him. "Boy looks like he could use a lift, Peregrine," he said. The guard on his left grabbed the exhausted Fledge and tossed him onto his own back. "Bravely done, young gryph," Ajax said to him. "Let's get you two back to your parents." He turned and wheeled, flapping for where his parents were perched with the rest of the donkey family.
"Prince Ajax said I was brave," Fledge whispered. "OmigoshomigoshomiGOSHomigoooosh!"
Spritz landed next to Mach One. It was getting dangerous to fly; The winds were whipping up; down in the depths of the chasm the lightning was flaring almost constantly. "Why aren't we getting these groundpounders down to earth?" he shouted over the wind and thunder. The stadium lights began to blow out and go dark, their poles cracking and falling. Ponies screamed.
"It wouldn't do any good," Mach shouted back. "We'd be dead meat before we reached the ground!"
"Why?" Spritz shouted, baffled. Storm was in sky, not on ground, ground safer, went his thinking.
"Th-this isn't just a storm," Wheezer shouted. He was curled up on floor next to them, clinging to the rails and to his mother for dear life. "In a c-c-cloud formation this s-si-size catas-stro-strophic failure leads to-"
"Small words, weather nerd!" Spritz yelled, exasperated.
"Chain reaction!" Wheezer yelped. "It's not just a storm, it's a supercell! It's going to turn into the biggest cyclone you've ever seen in your life! We try and air-lift ponies down now, we'd be torn apart!"
"What do we do?" Spritz said, panicking.
"We hang on," Mach said, looking up to where Dash was wrestling with the entire storm alone with her magic."And we better pray our Princess is half as awesome as she thinks she is!"
Rainbow Dash strained with all her might. Her horn blazed like a firebrand; lightning crackled off her wingtips as she threw both her unicorn magic and her pegasus weather powers into trying to tame the growing storm. It was a losing fight and she knew it; Celestia herself couldn't tame a supercell on her own, and Rainbow Dash was no Celestia. But still she fought on.
Spitfire powered her way to where the Princess hovered, wings churning against the wind to bring her close. Stray ribbons of St. Elmo's fire singed her wings. "It's no use, Dash!" she shouted. "You can't stop it alone!"
"Then- we need- t-to wrangle it!" Dash shouted back, teeth gritting against the backlash feeding through her magic from the storm. "Get a team, start a counter-rotation-"
"There's not enough ponies in the whole stadium for that!"
"Try it anyway! It's all we got!" Dash ordered. "DO IT!" Spitfire saluted, wheeled and dove, letting the wind carry her away. In minutes Dash saw her leading as many wings as she could find, a flight of gnats against a whirlwind, diving down through the eye of the storm to reach the lower layers and start flying counter-clockwise, trying to unwind the forces aligning against them.
A pegasus foal was ripped free from the cloud surface by a torrent of wind, his wings buzzing frantically as he tried to change his fate. Scootaloo's glider, shaking in the crosswinds, dove and snatched the tiny colt out of the air. She had just tossed him back to safety when her luck finally ran out; one of the stadium lights, ripped loose by the wind, fell from the sky and struck her a glancing blow on the head. Stunned, she and her glider went tumbling out into the void.
"Scootaloo! NOOOO!" Dash had seen it. But she couldn't do a thing! If she broke her spell and dove to save her, the storm would surge out of control-
She wasn't the only one who saw. Mach stared in horror as the gutsy little rookie went tumbling like a leaf down into the maw of the storm. He looked up. Dash's anguished eyes met his own.
"Nobody falls," he muttered. He snapped his one good wing tight to his side... and leaped.
When Scootaloo came to, she was tumbling over and over, all alone in a wind torn void. She struggled to right herself, managed for a brief moment, looked up through the funnel cloud and realized where she was. She was in the storm. She was falling! She screamed in terror, legs flailing, wings buzzing-
High above, a tiny black dot began approaching. The dot grew till it was Mach One, diving muzzle first through the air like a jet black arrow. In moments he had closed distance with her and had wrapped his hooves around her. "What are you doing? Now we're both gonna go splat!" she screeched.
"Well then," he shouted back. "I guess one of us better learn to fly really quick!"
High above the storm, Dash was in anguish. She'd just watched as first her little honorary sister, then the brave colt that had befriended her, had fallen into the vortex of the storm. And she was helpless to stop it!
Her body was in almost as much agony as her heart. She was relying on brute force, not magical talent or know how, to try to wrangle the storm. If she'd gotten a little further in her studies, she might have understood the concept of thaumic backlash. As it was, she was starting to figure it out the hard way; if magic could be used to push raw power into material objects, then it only followed that pushing back would force raw power the other way. There were ways to avoid this... ways she had not learned. She was slowing the storm, but at the cost of massive amounts of power being forced into herself, making her magical reserves strain to hold it all in.
All that power had to go somewhere-
Why did he jump after her? Why did he look at her, like she knew what the crazy-
The crazy nascent alicorn...
Even with the fire in her veins the epiphany gave her goosebumps. "Oh Celestia I hope this works.." She looked up to the sky and poured all the backed-up power into her horn.
"From one to another, another to one.
From all of us together,
To each of us together,
and one shared by all without end-"
The two of them circled the vortex, wind carrying them helplessly. "Listen up, Rookie, this is the plan," Mach shouted. "I'm going to kick you towards the center of the vortex. There's an updraft there, it's strong enough to get you back up to the top!"
"But what about you?"
"I'll worry about myself! Now are you ready?" He curled his back legs up to his barrel, putting his back hooves against hers. "One- Two-"
Dash jabbed her horn straight down into the storm and released all the magic in her, all at once.
"THREE!" The two of them kicked. Scootaloo went sailing into the roaring updraft; Mach One went flying in the other direction, straight into the screaming winds of the stormwall. He disappeared.
"MACH! NO!" Scootaloo cried out. The storm caught her, and she began to sail upward. She looked up; the top of the funnel was so high... desperately she began flapping her wings, trying to boost herself higher. Even now she knew it wasn't enough... She struggled, she screamed and wept, for Mach, for herself, the frustration at her own weakness exploding out of the tiny pocket inside her where she kept it- she hated her weak, flightless body, she had to save him-
The spell Dash cast had been intended for Mach.
It missed.
Starswirl's spell, at its core, was meant to push ponies over their thresholds. There was another nascent in the vortex of the storm; a young filly who had been hanging on the edge of discovering her own special talent, on the edge of mastering the pegasus magic inside her, on the edge of having that ever-so -hungered-for breakthrough that would let her finally master her wings, so many thresholds she had been stuck on longer than anypony deserved. At that moment as she watched her friend disappear into the storm, her whole soul had cried out-
Please, I was so close-
And Starswirl's spell, with the force of a desperate alicorn channeling the power of a perfect storm behind it, had grounded out on her like a bolt of lightning.
Noone was there to see as the tiny filly, hanging suspended in space, surrounded by the raging storm, arched her back and blazed white. They would have been speechless if they had. There was a flash, and Scootaloo disappeared.
The storm was raging- then she was floating through an endless space filled with stars- the strings of the cosmos sang...
No.. I don't have time to hang around here! Scootaloo thought- and she was back in the heart of the storm, plummeting headfirst, straight down like a shooting star.
The catastrophe of the Thunderdome had not gone unnoticed by those on the ground. The donkeys, zebras, ponies, and zonkeys of Lee Valley hadn't needed any long explanations about what was happening when the winds began to rise and the enormous stadium shading their valley had suddenly begun to swell and roar with thunder. Every farmer worth two beans saw the vast funnel cloud slowly dropping down and had immediately headed for their storm shelters, dragging their panicking families behind them. It was still yet to touch down but nopony intended to stay around to see that.
So it so happened that only one donkey in the valley saw what happened next. Eli was the last one into his storm cellar; he stuck his head out one last time to make sure nopony was out there running for cover. At that precise moment a streak of golden-orange fire had come screaming down from the swirling black sky above. It halted mere meters above the ground and resolved itself into an orange alicorn filly, glowing, no blazing from within with unimaginable power. She hung there over Eli's fields, wings flapping steadily, pencil-thin ribbons of lightning trailing from the tips of her feathers, staring at him with burning lavender eyes- then rocketed back up into the sky, vanishing into the heart of the storm.
Eli closed and barred the cellar door. He went to join his family. "What was that light, Eli?" his wife asked fearfully.
It would take him some time to think of how to answer her.
It was too much for Rainbow Dash to take. That surge of raw magical power passing through her had left her devastated in its wake. It felt, in her own rather colorful terms, like she had just swallowed and then passed an entire watermelon whole-while sticking her tongue in a lightning jar. Her magic sputtered out and she staggered through the air to collapse on a perilously unstable scrap of cloud, her nerves twitching and her feathers smoking. She lay there panting, trying to pull herself together.
A chord strummed across the cosmic strings. Dash raised her head up. "...Scootaloo …?"
Scootaloo couldn't believe how alive she felt. AliveAliveAliveAlive. She was buzzing, vibrating with energy. And she could feel. She finally understood what all her flight instructors and doctors and everypony had been telling her about her pegasus wings. She could sense everything around her, her sense of touch in her wings extending seamlessly out in every direction. She could feel this storm, all of it, down to the last breeze, the last wisp of moisture in the clouds, the lightning streaking through it, and the looming power of lightning yet to come, caged up inside it waiting to spring- she understood this titanic thing of weather the way she understood the feel of her own feathers, the back of her own hoof...
She could feel the Other. The one still on the threshold like she had been- he was trapped in the storm, swept helplessly up in its circling winds. The spell that had transformed her was not finished; it was still inside her, a burgeoning static charge waiting to ground out. She knew what to do.
With a voice that buzzed and hummed with eldritch power, she spoke.
"From one to another, another to one.
From all of us together,
To each of us together,
and one shared by all without end-"
Like a bolt of lightning, the magical surge she had been containing leapt out, piercing into the howling stormwinds, and struck its mark.
Mach One awoke- he fell through darkness filled with stars...
No- The storm- they need me-
Then he was back, into the fury of the storm winds. Without a conscious thought, running on the pure instinct that had flowed into him with the magic, he spread his wings and flew.
He burst from the wall of the storm into its heart. He found himself circling, with Another circling opposite him. The magic still crackled high in both of them; what passed between them was without words.
The storm. We must stop it., She thought.
They are trying, He replied, already knowing of the Wonderbolts striving to unravel the storm, of the Princess trying to hold it back by sheer force.
She spread her wings, sensing, feeling. She could sense every aspect of the storm now, on a level that was literally pre-verbal... even the efforts of the Wonderbolts trying to turn the storm back.
No, that won't work! She said. In a flash she impressed on him what she had sensed. At its most primitive and simple, a cyclone, even a gigantic one, was easy to understand; an imbalance of forces, cold dry air pressing down on warm, moist air, till it finally broke through, forming a funnel and destroying everything in its path on the ground till the pressure finally eased. The funnel was how balance between the earth and sky was restored. They didn't need to make the funnel slow down- they needed to make it go faster.
Follow me. She began to fly not against, but with the wind. In wordless agreement he nodded, his eyes burning white. The two began to circle, flying with the wind, as fast as the wind, faster, faster still...
Lightning Dust considered herself lucky. She'd been been given a second chance with the Wonderbolts, a tentative, very tentative probationary period on the reserve roster- down at the end of the bench. When the call had come in for every active and reserve member to join up for the big new show the new Princess was running in Windy City, she thought her luck would never get better.
She was seriously debating on if she was really lucky at all at the moment. Some lunatics had sabotaged the new stadium, collapsing its stabilizers and setting off a chain reaction that had turned the oversized structure into a rapidly growing super-storm. Which she, along with every other oh-so-lucky idiot in the Wonderbolts, was trying to stop by flying against the circling winds. They had about as much chance of stopping a mile-wide cyclone like this as a flock of moths!
But she wouldn't quit. None of the others would either. The only other option was to stand back and let a killer storm rip through a valley full of innocent farmers and their families-
There was a flash to her left. Squinting against the storm even with her goggles, she looked over her shoulder to see what it was. Something... two somethings... were circling in the eye of the storm, flying clockwise with the wind, not against it, glowing too bright and too fast for her to see what they were. Then they were flying too fast to see, period- a ring of blazing light, a spiral, a pillar-
Holy crap, Lightning Dust realized. Whatever they were, they were forming a second funnel inside the first!
Fall out, everypony fall out their wing lead signaled back. As one the Wonderbolts barrel rolled right, pulling out of the cloudwall and outside the storm. They flew back up through the cloudcover and emerged topside to regroup.
The second funnel stretched up out of the mouth of the first and up into the sky, a corkscrew of rainbow fire. It grew narrower and higher as they watched, and if Lightning Dust were any judge, was spinning even faster. The moan of the winds was being drowned out by the higher pitched whistle of the bizarre new whirlwind. "What are they doing? They're making it worse!" somepony shouted.
"No, no look," came the answer. "It's working- they're pulling the larger funnel in!" The speaker was right; the larger funnel cloud was constricting, growing narrower. They're bleeding it off, Lightning Dust realized. They're making it suck the warm air up from the ground faster, dispelling the storm's power at the source.
Whoever or whatever "they" are.
The howl of the wind rose to a scream. The outer funnel merged with the inner, pulling away from the remains of the stadium; the islands of clouds covered with desperate ponies slowed their circling. With a final earshattering thunderclap the funnel disappeared, the clouds left behind floating serene and still.
Far below, a gentle rain began to fall.
There was a breathless silence. Then ponies by the thousands began to cheer. The Wonderbolts began embracing and slapping each other on the back. "We did it, we did it!" somepony shouted.
"I don't think WE did anything," Lightning Dust heard Spitfire say. "Where's the Princess?"
For a miracle, many of the magical lamps that had lit the stadium were still functional. Some were even still standing on their poles. They lit up the cloudscape, revealing the Princess lying on a mere rag of cloud and looking seriously frazzled. The Wonderbolts flew to her aid. Ajax and his men did as well. "What in the name of all the tribes was that?" the gryphon prince said, amazed.
"Are you all right, Dash?" Spitfire said.
Dash sat up, looking around shakily. "Mach? Scootaloo?" she croaked.
Spitfire started to speak, then hesitated. But before she could get a word out, something burst up through the center of the cloud cover where the terrible stormfunnel had once been. The trailing clouds fell away to reveal an alicorn stallion soaring wide-winged up into the sky. He pulled a gentle loop and landed, three-hooved, a few strides away from where Rainbow Dash lay gathering her wits. "Mach ?" she said.
"The one and only," the grinning colt said. He hobbled forward, a sleeping Scootaloo cradled in his forelimb, her stubby horn resting against his collarbone. On her hip were a pair of white wings set within an overlapped circle and square and surrounded by a golden laurel. He chuckled. "Guess she's tuckered out," he said. "She's gonna flip her lid when she wakes up and sees that cutie mark..."
Dash stared. He was a couple of inches taller now, and still woefully lanky, with a fairly long, thin spiral horn rising from his forehead. His formerly short-cropped mane and tail had grown out and now hung in gently curling locks. He was pure jet black, coal black, INK black now rather than the dark grey-black he had been before. And he had two wings now, with which he was gently fanning the breeze. One was the same inky black as the rest of him.
The other was clear as crystal, and sparkled in the stadium light.
1)In ponies, the hooves, feathers, and horn are all magically conductive... and so is their hair. This is how, for instance, Applejack is able to use her tail as a prehensile appendage to manipulate a lasso, why Twilight's mane kinks and frizzes when she is stressed, and Pinkie Pie's mane can go from curly to limp and straight when she is depressed. When a pony speaks of being so frightened their hair stands on end, they're being far more literal than you think.
2)We don't know how plumbing and sewage work in cloud buildings, and we do not want to know. We are just thankful that it works.
3)Mayor Fussbudget still checked all the sodas in his fridge by poking them with a yardstick.
4)Skate Rat lingo for anyone wounded, stranded, or in danger.
5)Before you ask why a giant raincloud would have fire extinguishers on it, try to remember: this was Windy City, land of the busybody bureaucrat and home of the pointless safety regulation. This was the city first to put "warning: may contain nuts" on bags of pistachios.
6)Many ponies would recall with bemusement how they were carried to safety by a pegasus colt wearing an enormous day-glow tie, and carrying a filly on his back who repeatedly yelled "Banana Power!" with every rescue.