“Listen up, Elements! We have a great opportunity to bolster our reputation as problem solvers tomorrow. As you all know, tomorrow is the annual Winter Wrap Up. Ponyville has failed, year after year, to complete the season ending cleaning process on time. This year, we’re taking charge of the event. We’ll be leading six teams, with Twilight serving as overarching coordinator. If your team has a problem that needs to be addressed by another team, go to Twilight. She’ll be stationed in front of town hall. Spike will be with her to deliver any messages that need to be sent.”

Spike saluted me as I mentioned him, and Twilight started to go into a little speech about what an honor it was or something, but I cut her off. Now wasn’t the time.

“Loyalty, you’ll lead the town’s pegasi in clearing the cloud cover. Miss Sparkle has prepared a schedule for you to prioritize the areas that most impact the situation on the ground, without wasting your time flying back and forth more than necessary. Study it. Memorize it. Keep it on hand, and consult it if necessary tomorrow.”

Rainbow Dash kept a neutral expression as she saluted. “We’ll make you proud,” she assured, though there was a hint of strain in her voice. It’d been several weeks since we’d broken up, and the awkwardness was still slowly fading, but at least she had proven she could still be professional when she needed to be.

“Laughter, you’re leading the team on the ground to score the ice in the lakes, then plow the remaining snow off the roads. Miss Sparkle has prepared a set of diagrams showing an optimal pattern for breaking up the ice. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Okie dokie loki,” Pinkie Pie responded with a pronk. She checked over the drawing Twilight handed her before raising a hoof. “First question, can we make it less boring looking?” She showed the first diagram, showing a reasonably accurate outline of one of the lakes scored by what was predominantly a simple grid, aside from the paths arcing around near the edges to get from one grid line to the next.

“You may add a few flourishes of your own, during and after creating the specified overall pattern,” I compromised. Pinkie thought on it a moment before nodding and giving a cheerful “Okay!”

“Kindness, you’ll lead the team to bring back the migratory birds from the south. You’ll have a small team of pegasi with you to help keep the group together, but I’m counting on your empathy with the animals and your knowledge of their habits to find them and lead them safely back to Ponyville.”

Fluttershy said something that started out affirmative, but included something of a doubt.

“Speak up, Kindness.”
She started to speak too quietly again, but at my stern look brought the volume up high enough we could hear her with our undivided attention. “Who is going to wake the animals from hibernation?”

“I will be leading that team. I’m the most familiar with the woods around Ponyville other than yourself, and I’ll have a team with experience working with you from past years. If any of the animals wake in a bad mood, I’ll be able to keep anypony from getting hurt.

“Generosity, thank you for the team vests to help coordinate everypony. You and your team will be assembling nests for the birds. While Kindness is not the fastest flier, and it will take her some time to gather them, you need to have the nests completed and deployed by the time she gets back. Understood?”

“Thank you, Cloud. Sorry, Magic. I assure you they will be the most fabulous avian abodes in all of Equestria,” Rarity boasted. “And we won’t keep the little darlings waiting.”

“And lastly, Honesty, you and your team will be using the snow plows to clear the fields for planting.”

“You know, aside from the big fancy meetin’, this ain’t that different from how we usually do it,” Applejack stated.

“You’ve got years of experience doing this, and in general you’ve been doing it right. Hopefully, Miss Sparkle’s suggestions can help streamline the process a bit so we can hit the scheduled time this year, but we’re not going to just throw out everything that’s been mostly working without a good reason.”

We were expecting a crowd gathered in front of town hall in the morning when we arrived, adorned with the variously colored vests that Rarity had designed. What we weren’t expecting was that Trixie Lulamoon would be standing on the top of the steps, stirring up the crowd. I lead the way up to her with Twilight close behind and the other Elements arrayed behind us.

“Miss Lulamoon, what seems to be the issue?” I asked.

“Ah, Cloud Strife, by greatest rival,” Trixie greeted. “The Great And Powerful Trixie has come to defeat you once again in a contest of skill, power, and constructive activity. It has come to Trixie’s attention that your town’s oppressive traditions forbid her people’s use of magic on this most labor intensive of holidays! Trixie wishes to challenge this status quo. Will you join Trixie in this, or stand against freedom and progress?”

I took a moment to try to read the situation, though I wasn’t the best judge of these things. “What do you propose then, Miss Lulamoon?”

“The Great And Powerful Trixie will lead the unicorns to clean up half of the town using our Great And Powerful magics, while the earth ponies and anypony else who wishes to stand against us cleans the other half by hoof. The pegasi can be the judges, and tell everypony who did the best. If we win, the ban on magic during Winter Wrap Up is lifted forever.”

“And when we win?” Applejack inquired.

“Then I suppose your ban can stand until another generation realizes the injustice and rises up against you once more,” Trixie allowed.

“That isn’t much of a prize, seeing as that’s how it is already,” Applejack stated.

“Then… the Great And Powerful Trixie will acknowledge your own greatness before everypony in town?” the unicorn offered uncertainly.

The farm mare shrugged and offered a hoof. “Yer on.”

“What’s wrong Twilight?” I asked, noticing the librarian looked to be on the verge of tears.

“My plans… they're all ruined. Or at least half-ruined. It’s already time to get started and we need a whole new set of maps outlining which team is responsible for which areas, updated timetables for the weather team, and-”

“Team Trixie shall clean everything East of Town Hall!” the unicorn proclaimed, before beginning to lead the other unicorns away.

“Generosity,” I called. “Rarity! Where are you going?”

“I’m a unicorn, darling, I’m on Miss Lulamoon’s team. Using my horn will make it ever so much easier to knit all of those sticks into nests.”

I sighed, but nodded. “Alright. Keep an eye on them, though, and let us know if they do anything dangerous. What about you, Miss Sparkle?”

“Oh, I’ll stay on the earth pony’s side, if you’ll have me. I want to experience Ponyville’s traditions, not remove them,” the librarian said.

“Good to have you. So we still have team leaders for everything that needs doing on our half, except the nest building. Anypony willing to take the lead on that?”

When none of the ponies immediately volunteered, spike stepped forward. “I know just the fillies,” he said. Fillies?

Waking the animals from hibernation was a disaster. Fluttershy was the best pony for the job, but I had given her another task; retrieving the birds from the south. The mail mare with the bubble cutie mark, whose name I could never keep straight, had done it the last few years… but her sense of direction was notoriously bad, and she had ended up flying in complete wrong directions time and time again. So I had set Fluttershy on the task, trusting her to accomplish it easily and efficiently.

It wasn’t just that our best pony was missing, however. The unicorns had been over represented on the animal oriented teams, meaning a lot of our experienced animal wakers were on Trixie’s team, either doing the job on their half of the area or working on one of the teams that had been almost exclusively earth pony in years past.

A few earth ponies joined us, but they were new to the job and unfamiliar with the risks and hazards. One pony was scared off by snakes, another by bats. One managed to knock a beehive on himself, and another got herself sprayed by skunks. At least the damage was spread out; I could scarcely imagine what would happen if one pony had suffered all of those misfortunes.

I found myself wishing it was monsters we were dealing with instead of animals; monsters I could deal with easily. I had my sword if I needed it, and a good mix of materia. The 2x Cut materia alone would make short work of many monsters. And I had Diamond Dust’s summon materia as well.

“You know it’s kind of ironic. In nature, winter is the most peaceful season, with so many creatures hibernating. Among the animal kingdom, our powers tended to put a halt on strife,” she commented as I oversaw my team’s progress. “Not that it mattered much to us. We couldn’t eat the violence of animalkind. Only the hatred of ponies and other magical creatures.”

A familiar roar rang out from the distance, from Trixie’s side of the woods. I slapped my face, indulging in a moment of wishful thinking that it was their problem to deal with before I started running toward the noise.

“Think those powers of yours can get an ursa major back to sleep?”

“Cloud! You need to get to the hospital!” Twilight exclaimed as I approached. She had a point, I was bloodied in more than one place, and avoided limping only from sheer stubbornness.

“What’s the Sense materia tell you about my ‘hit points’?” I asked her.

“Well you have almost half,” she admitted after a short delay to activate the yellow bauble. “But that’s still pretty serious!”

“I’ll be fine until we get through the day. How are things with the other teams?”

“Well…” Twilight began.

A nearby mare sobbed out at me. “That unicorn’s a real slave driver.”

“Twilight?!” I asked. The mare looked up at me confused a moment then shook her head. “No. Sweetie Belle!”

“No slacking, ladies!” the filly’s voice called out as she rounded a corner and came back into view. She actually had a leather riding crop in her mouth and cracked it noisily as she went. “You’re working for the Elements here, and I won’t have you losing to a wandering showmare. We’ll show everypony the best birds nests to ever grace Equestria!”

The words and the demeanor seemed vaguely familiar, but it took a while to recognize. It was me, driving the Element Bearers through training, but distorted somehow. Sweetie never came to our sessions, so it must have been her interpretation of how Rarity described me. I wondered if the older unicorn had described me as ‘cracking the whip’ on more than one occasion, even though I didn’t actually possess such a thing.

“Sweetie Belle, don’t you think you’re being a tad over-zealous?” I asked.

“If the Elements of Greatness are going to do something, we’re going to do it… greatly,” the unicorn filly said. “Besides, we’ve managed to get over a hundred nests ready already!”

It was hard to argue with success, and a quick inspection showed the pile was full of high quality bird nests, at least as far as I could judge such things. They at least looked like bird nests, if a bit more pleasantly decorated than they typically would be on Gaia. A second pile was more haphazardly dumped, and looked far less impressive in quality, as well as quantity.

“What happened over here,” I asked.

“Those are the ones Apple Bloom rejected,” Sweetie explained. “That filly has a good eye for bad rubbish.”

I watched quietly as Spike and an orange pegasus filly I didn’t recognize brought up a couple new piles of nests collected from their workforce to add to the pile. This was all quite horribly wrong, but I struggled to think of a way to describe why without simply coming off as a hypocrite. I did push the ponies under me hard to be prepared. We had nearly died fighting the dragon, to say nothing of the incidents with the ursas, and we needed to be ready to come out of the next fight alive, preferably without spending time in the hospital.

“Good work, ponies!” I said loudly, addressing the workers directly. “These are the best bird’s nests I’ve ever seen, and you’ve managed to make so many already. You’re doing great, keep it up!”

The ponies paused from their work, looking up at me, and up at the stack of nests, and started to murmur among themselves. But it was a good murmur, and I could see them getting back to work refreshed.

Sweetie started forward, brandishing the whip but I stopped her. “Lose the whip. These aren’t Elements, they’re civilians, you need to use a lighter touch, kinder words. Let them stay soft; they’re not the ones that are going to be facing monsters. But you need to make sure you don’t become one.”

She considered my words a moment before tossing away the offending strip of leather. “Okay! It was hurting my mouth a bit anyways. Do you think I could make one of those nests myself?”

“Of course. I bet you could make one better than Rarity’s. She’s just an Element of Harmony, you’re an Element of Greatness, right?”

The filly nodded firmly, before rushing off, calling on her friends. “Hay, maybe we’ll get our cutie marks in nest making!”

I watched as the three of them seemed suddenly a bit less grown up, a bit less harsh, and started actually having fun with it as they got to work on the nests themselves. I gave a sigh of relief from tension I had barely realized I had. The other ponies seemed to get more into it as well. It did leave me wondering, however, whether I was too hard on my own Elements.

“Hi Cloud! Got anything else for us to do?” Pinkie asked me as I approached. She and the others were taking off their skates, the lakes already crisscrossed into grids and starting to melt into smaller blocks of ice under the sunlight where Rainbow Dash’s crews had already cleared skies.

“It’s almost noon. You’ve already finished all of the lakes?”

“All the lakes on our side of the line,” she said. “It was easy peasy. What now?”

I looked around at the other ponies, hearing some stray mentions of hunger and food, and got an idea. “Are you up for some baking?”

“Always!”

I arrived at Sweet Apple Acres only to find Applejack and Trixie embroiled in an argument. One half of the farm was cleared of snow, plowed, and seeded, ready for spring. The other half was a mess, with unicorns trying to apply their magic to the problem in various ways that ranged from ineffectual to disastrous, with the few that seemed to do a decent job being swamped by the efforts of others.

“What’s the problem here?” I asked as I approached.

“This yokel is trying to interfere with the Great And Powerful Trixie’s amazing success at cleaning up winter!” Trixie accused.

“Well, this entertainer is trying to use magic to clean up my farm, and she’s just making a mess of it! Just get yer friends out of our way, and we’ll have it plowed clear and ready to go in two shakes of a hoof,” Applejack demanded.

“Applejack, I need you to give whatever supplies you can to Pinkie, any apples you can spare especially, but other tasty smelling fruits would work as well. If you could lend a hoof baking pies, that would help as well,” I requested.

“What about-?”

“I’ll handle it.”

“Well… alright then,” Applejack allowed, before heading off to scrounge up what she could.

“Excellent. Then the Great and Powerf-”

“-Trixie and her accomplices are trespassing on private property,” I pointed out. “Even after being explicitly asked to leave by the owner of that property. It won’t look good for your cause if you break the law to succeed and still manage to come up short.”

The look on her face was priceless. “B-but we can’t just leave this field as it is,” she tried.

“Plenty of earth ponies here ready to take care of it, just like they managed the first half. Meanwhile, your ponies need a helping hoof with your half of the lakes. Surely a first rate performer like you can manage a bit of ice skating?” I challenged.
“We will put on the greatest ice skating spectacular anypony has ever seen! Just watch that your own ponies don’t get so caught up in the spectacle they forget to do their own work!” she said.

I stopped by where Rarity was working feverishly, assembling a birds nest before passing it off to a unicorn, who trotted off with it in her power, only to be replaced by the next in line, waiting patiently for the seamstress to assemble the next.

“Generosity,” I greeted.

“Oh, Cloud! Can’t talk! Need to make nests,” she said, sounding stressed.

“Shouldn’t these other unicorns be helping you?” I asked.

“Oh, they are darling. They’re taking them out and distributing them in the trees as quickly as I can make them,” Rarity said. “These ponies just don’t have the knack for braiding twigs, but they’re good enough nestling them in trees with their magic.”

Distribution, right. We had a big pile of the things just sitting around near town hall. “Can I borrow a few of your unicorns in exchange for, say, fifty completed nests for the others to start distributing for you? Just don’t tell Trixie. And don’t forget to eat lunch.”

One thing about fresh apple pies that’s usually a bit of a nuisance; they can attract critters from all around.

One thing about animals that have just been hibernating all winter to conserve their energy. They’re even more easily attracted to fresh apple pies than usual. As quickly as we could bake them, we brought pies out to the surrounding wilderness. It did a much better job waking the animals than the little bells had, and woke them in a much better mood. Of course, the pies didn’t last long amidst the ravenous beasts, but they weren’t really meant to.

Pinkie, Applejack and I were just heading back from a rousing success at rousing the animals when we run into Trixie.

“You’re on my side,” she pointed out accusingly.

“We are,” I stated. “Your little contest is dividing the tribes, pitting unicorn against earth pony and pushing the pegasi off to the side. Don’t you know what happens when you divide the tribes? Especially in winter?”

Pinkie Pie gasped as she caught my meaning, and fled to hide behind a tree. Trixie barely paid her any attention, quickly returning her focus to me. “Is this supposed to be some Hearths Warming tail? Everypony knows windigos are an old mare’s tale.”

“What does that make you?” Diamond Dust asked from beside Trixie’s ear, blowing a little frost into her face. As the showmare jumped, then froze up in fear, the windigo continued. “I want… to…” she began, extra ominously, playing up her part.

Fluttershy glided to a halt in front of town hall, followed by the other members of her team. “Where is everypony?” she asked Twilight as she approached, the lone unicorn the only pony waiting for them in town. “We brought the birds back, and they were all so happy with their new nests, but there was nopony to be found.”

“Come on, we’re almost late for the show,” Twilight said, excitedly.

“Show? What show? What about Winter Wrap Up? Oh, I’m so confused…” Fluttershy complained even as she and the others followed Twilight in a tired trot out of town.

“There’s just one thing left to do, melting the ice on the largest lake, which we’ll be doing just after sundown… you’ll see!” Twilight said, as she lead the way.

“After sundown? How are you supposed to melt the ice after the sun goes down?”

As they came into view, they saw a massive wall of blankets held aloft by magic, separating a massive crowd of ponies from the large body of frozen water. The newcomers found a place to sit on the freshly cleared grass, just as the sun dropped below the horizon, replaced by an unscheduled full moon.

Trixie Lulamoon slipped through the curtain and loudly addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlecolts, to thank you all for all of your hard work wrapping up winter, the Great and Powerful Trixie would like to present to you, on behalf of the generous Elements of Harmony, the Ponyville Winter Wrap Up Grand Finale, Ice Skating Spectacular!” On cue, the curtain fell to the ground, revealing dozens of ponies with ice skates, who quickly began a choreographed dance number on the ice.

Chill winds speckled with massive snowflakes augmented the show at parts, while pyrotechnics and other light shows highlighted it in other ways. The singing kept everypony in sync while the dancing scored the ice deeply. Finally, with the ponies cleared out of the way, an almost blindingly brilliant fireworks display at ground level melted the ice to hoof sized chunks, and a massive swarm of parasprites appeared, devouring the cubes before vanishing themselves.

The audience erupted into applause, as the performers took their bows. Finally, the mayor came forward to give her little speech, thanking everypony for all their hard work, and congratulating the town for actually finishing on time for the first time in several years.

“Congratulations,” I offered Trixie when I found her after the show.

“I guess a little magic here and there during Winter Wrap Up isn’t so bad,” Applejack allowed. “Just not on my farm.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie… accepts your compromise,” she said, meeting Applejack in a hoof clop. “And she thanks you and your friends for their help in the show, and their suggestion of using the other lakes for much needed rehearsals. The other unicorns did very well today, but they are not showpony material.”

“I’m afraid we’ve only got the one of you,” I agreed. “At least as long as you’re in town.”

“Sadly, Trixie must move on, as her livelihood depends on going to where there is a fresh audience, eager to see her. And Trixie will not quickly be able to compete against her own recent success here. Fortunately, Trixie’s generous patron has made up for her lost opportunity in not being allowed to sell tickets for her own greatest show of the season.”

“Generous patron, huh?” Applejack said, eying me suspiciously. “Somehow I don’t think it was Rarity she was talking about.”

“I do try to learn from each of your virtues,” I answered smoothly.

“Is that going to include Honesty someday?” she teased. “You still haven’t told the other townsfolk about Zecora.”

“No promises.”