It was meant to be the coldest day on record for a Ponyville autumn, it was totally on purpose, and it was entirely Rainbow Dash's responsibility to make it work.

Normally, the Weather Bureau forecast for the day would have been -- well, normal: the same old boring sameness dictated by the stuffy standards of the settled zones. There would have been a little bit of chill in the morning, maybe a brisk breeze to remind everypony of the approaching winter while giving Rarity faint hopes of a scarf sale or two before the Sun was lowered. Then a slow warming trend throughout the morning -- very slow -- until, at just about two hours before sunset, there would be a single moment where ponies would feel totally comfortable, happy to be outside, warm and cozy in a haven of crisp air and seasonal scents -- before the temperature plummeted again. The kind of day where those few local ponies who favored clothing would claim they needed to leave their homes with sixteen different layers just to have any chance of comfort -- then spend the entire day shedding and re-donning, which meant they never got much of anything else done. (Rarity had confessed to Rainbow that it was the period she most dreaded designing for, as there was almost no way to make that many garments coordinate without blending into monochrome -- and given that, a truly brisk fall could lock the designer into the Boutique with a confining force equal to six bad mane days.) A little over three moons' worth of autumn to create the weather for, and at least a third of the days within would be just like that. Rainbow could set up the conditions for one in her sleep, and often had.

But this day... well, it was an emergency, one which had been allowed to go on for far too long, and the forecast had been altered to finally clean up the mess. They were halfway through autumn and the consequences of summer were still lingering about Ponyville. They were generally to be found in pony coats. Within the ears was an equally popular location. Or worse. 'Worse' was something Rainbow really didn't want to think about. She'd had two 'worse' so far and this day was the only means of preventing a third.

Summer had created a parasite invasion. Rainbow wasn't sure the loss of the P and R made any real difference in the resulting suffering.

Somehow -- and Rainbow took no responsibility for any of it, she typically got her almanac schedule from the central Bureau and followed it to the overly-precise letter right up until the moment it started looking extra-stupid -- the warmest moons had led to an explosion in the flea and tick population. Ponyville had been swarmed. It wasn't just the tall grass which bore the danger: it was the shorter blades plus the bases of trees, most of the lowest branches, and you couldn't even stick your snout into a flower without having something waiting within the pistils to latch on. Generally, standard grooming and a few special soaps were enough to keep everypony's coat insect-free throughout the season and prevent the squirming, open rolling around on the ground, and biting at one's own flanks which indicated a personal hygiene standard that wasn't quite up to the rest of the population. And it had continued to do so -- right up until the increased demand had led to the shops periodically running out of the soaps. Ponyville had turned into a twitching, snapping, totally-infested zone of bite-covered residents who forced themselves down the streets one jittery hoofstep at a time while trying not to openly rub up against every building wall. Some dunked themselves in the central fountain in hopes of temporary cool relief. Others stayed there.

Lotus and Aloe had converted the spa to a mainly-grooming facility, which meant they spent most of their time getting bitten: the steamy conditions of the sauna meant personal protection wore off six times a day. They'd never completely given up, they hadn't resorted to barricading the place --- something which would have been the final requirement for an incredibly itchy Rarity's ultimate nervous breakdown -- but they'd been overbooked to the point where even their most loyal customer had to schedule two weeks in advance and couldn't be let in more than once per day. Both Applejack and Fluttershy had nearly been driven into collapses of their own: one desperately trying to keep her tenants free of the infestation lest they take the price for their lessened living conditions off their rent, the other spending nearly every waking hour scrubbing down her friends and trying to find some form of protection which wouldn't wear off or wash away under rain. Most of the protective soap in town had ultimately wound up at the cottage (after the animal caretaker had emptied the fringe of the herbs which would substitute -- and not for long enough), which had the twin side effects of driving Fluttershy that much closer to the bankruptcy she was forever a single bad moon away from and making the town residents consider raiding the place to get some of it for themselves. (Nopony had gone that far. Several had gotten together to Make Plans -- but then somepony had remembered the bear.) Pinkie had developed so many itchy twitches as to nearly lose track of the ones from her Pinkie Sense: unfortunately, those watching her couldn't tell the difference between a bout of scratch suppression and the sequence which indicated multiple large falling objects about to impact everypony around her, which had certainly added a certain screaming, diving-for-cover something to the epidemic. And Twilight had labored mightily until the librarian had been convinced she'd created a spell which would locally extinct both insect species in a one-gallop radius, taken it out into the field for testing -- and now Ponyville didn't have a daffodil to its name, although Twilight had a few dozen angry complaint scrolls to hers. It hadn't been much in the way of compensation, especially once the small-claims lawsuits began coming in.

For Rainbow's part... well, it was a sad truth of pegasus existence: you had to touch down sometime. And even when she hadn't, it was truly amazing just how high some of those fleas could jump. Plus the things she cras -- inadvertently came to unscheduled stops against were almost guaranteed to have their share of crawlies and while they just fell through her floor once she got home and scrubbed them off, short sharp showers of ticks had won her and the rest of the pegasi population no friends, along with several field-boosted deliveries back to cloud level.

Ultimately, there had been only one cure: an early hard freeze. Get the entire town scrubbed, make everypony as insect-free as possible -- then set up a single full day of conditions which would put ice crystals in every local tail, open all the windows, huddle beneath as many layers as possible (which still hadn't done much for Rarity's sales, as most had chosen blankets), and wait. Twenty-four hours of early winter, just enough to kill every biting and blood-sucking leech in the area. But in order for it to truly work, the weather team had needed to cover not just Ponyville, but the fringe of the wild zones around it -- and beyond. Conditions had been set up in the Everfree (with Zecora's blessing, as she'd been just as sick of the infestation as everypony else), which had been no fun whatsoever for anypony involved and nearly wound up bringing back things worse than mere fleas and ticks. A truly ridiculous amount of heat had been shifted, and they'd needed to find places where they could shift all of it to. And Rainbow had been responsible for every last moment of it...

...but now the setup was almost over. It was down to her, a few last lingering early morning clouds, and the thick boots around her hooves to go with the fluff-filled merry red feather-fringed vest Rarity had custom-fitted to her torso. (She'd left the matching earmuffs behind. Hearing was more important than warmth, plus she had to have some standards.)

The temperature was well below freezing. Applejack and the other farmers had wrapped up the last of the late harvests for everything which had been fully-grown in time: anything still above ground was being sacrificed, anything below didn't stand much chance of making it through -- but the earth ponies had agreed to those losses as part of the necessary price to pay. Fluttershy had been (repeatedly) calmed and was ready to make rounds of her own, telling those friends subject to hibernation that this was not the time to get an early start. The rest of the weather team, exhausted, had scrubbed down one last time and retreated to their homes for their blanket-buried rest. Rainbow was personally clearing out the last of the clouds above Ponyville because cloud cover insulated the ground and they couldn't afford to keep a single degree. And besides, she'd personally overseen far too much of the process, struggled through the labors required to set up the unseasonal conditions as an all-at-once necessity instead of the slow seasonal trend, especially given that heat-shifting had never been her strong point and even working with the team to move so much of it...

She was seeing the process out just to make sure it was gone. And after one day, it would all have to be reversed.

Fun. In the really sarcastic sense.

With the last cloud dispelled, she flew down to ground level, near the library-- and didn't quite touch down. It hadn't been cold long enough yet.

Look at this place. It's like I'm the only pony in the world...

The streets were completely empty. Nopony was peeking out their windows, as doing so just put them that much closer to the flow of cold air. Not a single pet roamed through the town: they were huddled next to their companions -- at least, after they'd been given one last scrubbing. She had Ponyville all to herself. A Ponyville which might as well never have had anypony living there, a Ponyville which almost seemed as if nopony would ever occupy it again. It was the sort of image which led a pony to deep thoughts.

I could set up like a thousand pranks right now, totally out in the open, with nopony around to stop me.

As deep thoughts went, it was -- encouraging. She was tired, she'd labored all night under Moon in order to direct the last of the arrangements -- but with that kind of opportunity openly waving a hoof at her and inviting her in for wake-up juice, she wasn't that tired. Just how many traps could she rig within a few hours? All those ponies had to emerge from their homes sometime, right?

So something should totally be waiting to greet them. Say, over their doors. Buckets of water -- no, that won't work, it's gonna freeze and dumping ice blocks on pony heads is kind of leaving casual fun behind, not to mention any other part of the continent which isn't behind bars: the police chief swore if she thought I'd crossed the line one more time... I should totally set something up by her place first. Except that she'd know it was me: who else is still out here? Which means I need -- what did that one passage in Canon #12 call it? -- oh, right! An alibi! Tank can totally cover for me and say I was home the whole time! Except he's all curled up in that little pocket of heat Thunderlane set up for him and he can't set one foot outside it without going all the way into his shell and falling asleep. So in his story, I'd have to be next to that sphere the whole time. Well, at least it'll be warm. So warm that I should just go next to him once I get home and scrub off for the last time in this stupid infestation, just stay there and let him warm me up until I fall asleep -- no, I've got to do something with this! A whole town of ponies who'll never see me getting ready to prank them and --

-- nopony around to prank.

I'll have to wait for them to come out. In the cold. And I can't be everywhere at once. The first one will go off, and I probably won't be there to see it, so I'll hear it and rush over, which means I'll miss the second, and lose the third while I'm tracking that...

...maybe curling up and sleeping next to Tank's heat pocket really is the best idea...

Rainbow sighed. No, the pranks wouldn't work out. It was just a perfect day of solitude -- which meant there was nopony around to watch her show off. To compliment her. To see how awesome she was, in the event that she came up with something awesome. A day with nopony around sucked. What was the point of being a performer when there was no audience?

Fine. Whatever. Go home and sleep it is --

"-- hey, stupid! I've been calling you like, ten times! Don't those stupid pony ears ever hear anything, or are they just good for sitting on top of your head and twisting around to catch anything those pie plates you call eyes miss? Come on, dummy, I'm talking to you here!"

Rainbow maintained the hover as she spun around, got her wings and hooves into a fighting position because anypony who talked to her like that was just begging for a beatdown and that was just the sort of activity which would warm her up --

-- but the speaker wasn't a pony at all.

And Rainbow knew him.

Red scales across the majority of his body, but with a few lighter spots on the face which would pass for freckles on many other species. (The color of those spots could have been called 'pink' by anything which had an immediate and overpowering desire to become a lump of charcoal.) Taller than she was -- the hover put them more or less on eye level -- nearly twice her own height and significantly taller than Spike, even more so than before: he was clearly in the middle of a growth spurt, and his limbs were rendered oddly slim-looking by it. Front fangs and side ones protruding from his mouth on strange angles which had only gotten worse since their last encounter: he looked as if he could start eating something a full hoof width before it reached his actual mouth. Wings huddled far too tightly against his back, almost as if they were trying to burrow within. Orange crest seeming half-wilted. Yellow eyes (matching the scales of his chest) under thick clusters of narrow black spiky protrusions which would have been eyebrows on just about anything else. Angry yellow eyes.

The last time Rainbow had seen him, he'd been chasing her, and those slightly-less-protruding fangs had been trying to snap at her tail with intent to --

-- but his friends weren't with him this time. It was just the teenager, her, and an empty Ponyville.

Which meant it was the perfect time to start making up for the insult of having had to run.

"You're talking to me?" she challenged. "You really think you can just walk into town and start talking to me?"

"I must be talking to you!" he yelled back. "I don't see any other stupid pony here! Where are all you freaks today, anyway? And why --" he started to shiver, realized it, stopped himself through a visible surge of will "-- is it so cold here? It's fall! I know you wimps can do tricks with the weather, so why is this cluster of future fireballs an icebox? I should light a few places up just to make it habitable! Or hospitable. A dragon, a noble dragon, the highest of the races, drops by this collection of wusses, honoring you with his mere presence, and you can't even be bothered to make the place homey for him! Look, I called you, like, twenty times! Or maybe twice! Just tell me what I want to know so I can get out of this stupid place?"

Rainbow blinked.

He -- didn't know her.

He didn't remember her.

Admittedly, for most of the time she'd been around him, she'd been hiding within the world's most ridiculously gem-encrusted dragon costume (or so she'd thought until she'd seen the actual dragon who matched the thing, it turned out Rarity had been consulting a few books on the side and spotted that rare subspecies lurking near an index), and once she'd come out -- well, it had been a fairly dark night, most of his view would have been of her tail and while that sight was fairly distinctive, this dragon had struck her as having most of his brains in his claws.

But still... it was just one more insult.

I could have taken you! If it wasn't for Spike running and everypony else going right behind him, we couldn't just let him go off by himself -- and how dare you forget me! I oughta --

-- he -- wanted to know something.

And then he would leave.

Rainbow forced herself to take a slow breath. "What do you want?"

He ignored nearly all of the tone. "Good. That's how a namby-pamby pony should act. All cooperative and junk. I'll keep it simple so your puny little herbivore brain can keep up with me, okay? There's this cave. Cay-veh. Somewhere outside this stupid town. Up a mountain? And there used to be a dragon living there. A big one. Not even you idiots could have missed him, not with that asthma making him blow smoke in his sleep all the time... Stupid weak doofus of a -- anyway, I need to know how to get there. There's some stuff I've got to do. So tell me how to get there already so I can get out of this iceberg!"

The -- cave?

Oh, Rainbow remembered that cave. Speaking of places where she'd had to run...

...but that one had been a little more justified.

"Dragon Mountain?"

"You named it after him? How could you -- okay, fine, yeah, Dragon Mountain, okay?" What passed for lips on his face pursed, and he blew a thin stream of fire across vicious-looking claws: it took Rainbow a second to realize he was trying to keep them warm. "You know how to get there or what?"

Rainbow tried not to openly groan. It was happening again. Even with a dragon, it was happening...

On her better days, she told herself it was a side effect from being so confident. She gave off an aura which dominated whatever setting she found herself in (or so she could very easily convince herself), and so everypony automatically assumed she belonged there. And if she belonged in a particular location -- then naturally she had to know her way around it.

Rainbow had Direction-Face.

There was no cure.

Out of all her friends, only Pinkie truly understood, for Pinkie had Retail-Face. With the exception of Canterlot's super-high-end establishments -- and not always even then -- ponies who ran into Pinkie in practically any kind of shop would often assume she worked there and treat her accordingly: queries on prices, checking on sales, orders to head into the back room and fetch something for them from reserve stock. And Pinkie, being an accommodating sort of pony, would often do her best to help them -- no matter what it took. She had taken stores apart in her quests to find that one right piece which would make her non-customer happy while satisfying her not-boss as to the quality of her non-employment so she might one day get a not-raise in her never-salary. Ponyville's residents had, over the course of several years, picked up on the painful lesson: Pinkie works at the bakery. Do not assume anything else. But when the Bearers traveled to a settled zone which was considerably less familiar with the group -- well, Pinkie had nearly found herself selling grooming wares for crystal coats. What had worried Twilight was that the baker had almost managed to pull it off.

With Direction-Face... ponies would pick Rainbow out of a crowd, any crowd of any size, and ask her how to get -- anywhere. It could happen within ten seconds of her flying into a new settled zone for the first time. It had happened in Appleloosa, and the pegasus population in town had been a very temporary two. And for those areas she knew, she would internally groan, sigh, lash her tail twice, and then attempt to help those ponies --

-- but having Direction-Face didn't make her any good at giving the things.

Rainbow navigated Ponyville's streets more or less on instinct. She never thought about how she was steering: she simply turned as she needed to and let the landscape flash by below her. She generally didn't pay attention to what she was overflying. Sometimes she barely gave any notice to what was ahead of her, and new construction frequently registered in her memory at the exact moment the first wooden beam made its presence known against her skull. She knew how to get everywhere: by flying there. Reviewing the process was like thinking about flying itself: a strictly unnecessary exercise which just ruined the entire experience.

She would try, though. If somepony seemed truly lost -- and with all the new residents who had seemed to follow Twilight into town, ponies still arriving virtually every moon, there were a lot of ponies to get lost -- Rainbow would search her mind as best she could in a desperate attempt to translate instinct into stupid thought. She would then try to give directions. And for two-thirds of the population, those directions were ultimately useless, because giving instructions to unicorns and earth ponies along the lines of "...and just keep going forward through that perpetual west flow, the one with the slightly higher humidity, I can't ever get permission to do anything about it and the Bureau reverted it back the last five times I -- anyway, go forward through that, never mind what it does to your coat, and when you get the first hint of that one stupid thermal that's always coming off Flankington's, I swear I don't know what he's doing in there to make that happen and I don't want to, orient on the cold surge from that part of the troposphere, you can't miss the thing, and head right for it..." came across as being oddly uninformative. Even other pegasi would glare at her as she cross-referenced atmospheric events with local gossip and threw in tidbits on just what part she'd played in making those stories happen, which frequently led to recounting the entire story.

But they almost never gave up on her. Hardly anypony sought out a new talking, flapping map. They persisted. Because if Rainbow couldn't tell them how to get there (and it was so clear that she knew), she could just take them. Through leading them there.

Flying just a little bit ahead.

A tiny amount off the ground.

Very.

Slowly.

Twilight refused to believe in the condition without study and Rainbow wasn't about to let the librarian set up the testing grounds. Every painful story of excruciatingly-slow flight just made Rarity giggle all the harder. Applejack rolled her eyes. Fluttershy shivered and made open thanks that it wasn't her. Pinkie had advised her to just carry maps with her at all times, which was clearly stupid due to a reason Rainbow hadn't thought of yet but when she did, stupid would be proven. And ponies just kept asking her for directions everywhere she went.

Ponies -- and one dragon.

It gets him out of town... There was one very good reason for doing that extremely quickly. And as directions went, this grouping almost couldn't be simpler.

"Fine," Rainbow forced out. "Happy to help. Follow the west road out of town --"

"-- which way's west?"

Magenta eyes blinked. The Sun's been raised... Admittedly, it wasn't doing much except showing east and west for anypo -- anyone who cared to look, but it was certainly doing that. She flared a wing in the proper direction.

"Okay, fine," the dragon said. "West. What happens after that?"

"There's going to be a mountain ahead of you on that road," Rainbow gritted out. "It'll twist and turn a little, but it'll skirt the edges. When it feels like you're about to swerve away from it, you'll see a side path. Leave the road and follow that: it'll take you to the base. Then fly straight up to the cave. It's near the top. It'll look like a big dark hole in the rock. Bye." She watched him carefully, just to make sure he left.

The teenager's head turned slightly, just enough to let him glance over his left shoulder at the huddled wings. Back to Rainbow. "Yeah, I'm never gonna remember all that. You're gonna take me."

Her exposed ears, which hadn't missed an unbelievable word, did something her eyes couldn't manage: went straight back. "Not remember? It's a mountain! You can't miss it! It's the big rock thing that's gonna be right in front of you! How can you miss a --"

"-- can't be bothered," the dragon rudely cut her off. "Words coming out of a pony mouth -- you should be honored that I'm even stooping so low as to talk to one of you pegawusses at all. You're all so short, that's bent over double just to start!"

Each letter was forced out between her teeth as a single strained unit. "Pegasus."

More fangs were displayed, which required some small opening of the mouth. "No."

It felt as if the air was becoming warmer in the space between their eyes. Ticks near death might be flocking to the spot just to take advantage. "It's a mountain. You can find it on your own. I'm not taking you."

The yellow eyes became brighter. Rainbow could see the first flickers of fire at the back of his throat, which were easy to pick up on because the serrated mouth was just that far open now. Scales were angling up, and the edges looked more than a little jagged, much more so than Spike's even ones...

But she didn't move. She never gave up sky unless it was absolutely well beyond what other ponies would see as necessary, and that applied to ground as well. She didn't back off.

Just try something, you stupid -- when it's just you and me --

-- he didn't blink. He just shrugged.

"Fine," and another shrug. "Whatever. I'm sure there's some pony in this dumb flammable town who's just barely smart enough to realizing helping a noble dragon might be, you know, one of those good ideas? I'll just start knocking on doors until I find one. Or breathing on them. Hey, maybe there's one in that big dumb vulnerable tree..."

He turned away and started walking towards the library.

The teenager hadn't remembered Rainbow, probably wouldn't recognize Rarity or Twilight either.

Rainbow didn't think he'd have any such problem when it came to Spike.

"Wait."

He stopped.

These letters emerged in pieces. "I'll -- take -- you."

The dragon turned back to face her. Grinned. It had to be a grin: only an attempt to consume would have shown off more fangs. "Guess you're not as dumb as you look," he told her. "Not that anything could be. So lead the way."

She flew towards the west road.

After a few seconds, she glanced back to see how the dragon was keeping up, expecting him -- based on what she was insisting had been an experience which wouldn't have counted on familiar territory under Sun out in the open -- to be right behind her.

He wasn't right behind her. He was at the very edge of her vision -- still standing in front of the library.

She flew back.

"Look," she said with the best diplomacy she could muster, "are we going or not?"

"We're going," he spat, and a glob of flame landed on his claws: he rubbed it across the scales until it went out. "But I'm not flying there. One flap and I'll be a full migration past the thing and you'll spend the rest of your stupid pony life wondering where I went. I'll walk. It's the only way your pitiful tail's ever gonna keep up."

In the time it took her to draw the next breath, forty truly offensive things which could emerge upon its exit flashed across her mind.

She rejected all of them.

Spike -- I have to keep him away from Spike, and that means getting him out of town. And if I don't get him all the way there, he could come back and look for somepony else...

"Whatever," she hissed, and began to fly just ahead of him.

Very.

Slowly.

Her wings ached from the lack of speed.

"Stupid Direction-Face..." she softly muttered to herself.

It wasn't soft enough. "Hey! Is that your name? Most dumb ponies are named after their stupid jobs, right? Well, you're stupid, you're giving me directions... yeah, that's you all over!" Laughing behind her, the slapping sounds of claws impacting knees. "Stupid Direction-Face!"

She spun around just in time to see him double over even further with mirth. "That's. Not. My. Name."

"Yeah, you're right," he admitted, wiping a thin trail of what appeared to be lava from the corner of his right eye. "Not even ponies are dumb enough to name their own kids 'Stupid'. So lead the way -- Direction-Face."

She fumed. She raged inside her skin. She thought of a thousand ways to bring the dragon down.

She turned back towards the road and led the way.