Author's Notes:

I just found this idea to be funny and just rolled with it, but don't worry. This will have no bearing on the plot for the main story whatsoever and I am already hard at work for the next chapter. In any case, if you feel so inclined, feedback is always appreciated.

Thanks to Regreme for being my proofreader and editor. For without his guidance, I would have the Grammar Nazis on my doorstep en masse.

Canterlot was once again treated to another mild autumn day as the denizens of the fair city went about their daily lives. Though, the weather wouldn’t stay so enjoyable, as the Canterlot weather teams were hard at work, pushing rain filled clouds overtop of the city for the afternoon shower scheduled for that day. The ponies only spared a few glances up to the sky to check on how much time they would have before they would need to seek shelter from the rain. However, there was one being who not only was watching the pegasi as they worked, but wore an expression that was a cross between confusion and anxiety.

Samuel Reed, wire-conduit and an extraterrestrial to the lands of Equestria, was out in the royal gardens of Canterlot Castle observing the hardworking pegasi in the sky. Well, more like glaring at them and even moreso, the clouds. He had been like this for nearly thirty minutes, and the pegasi were nearing the completion of their task. Though something about the entire ordeal put Sam into an uncomfortable mood. No matter how many times he would look away, he would eventually be drawn back to the spectacle in the sky, and another spike of aggravation would flare up inside of him. He let out another groan of frustration and walked about the small patch of the garden he was in to avoid looking up.

“Sam, there you are!” Came a familiar voice from behind the conduit.

Welcoming the distraction, Sam turned on his heel and awaited the purple unicorn known as Twilight Sparkle to canter up to him.

She was among some of the scarce, few ponies that was made privy to Sam’s existence, and the one assigned by the Equestrian princesses themselves to aid Sam in his endeavour to find a way back to his home world. To be honest, the two had had a rough introduction when Twilight was first put to the task. However, after some time and a good long talk with each other, they were becoming good friends and learned from each other daily.

When Twilight stopped in front of Sam, he offered a small smile, “Sup, Twilight?”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she replied before gaining a slightly annoyed look, “Your escort guards said that they lost track of you, again. Why do you have to keep running off and leaving them behind?”

Sam held his hands up before him defensively, “Hey, I just like to see how good these guards are at their jobs. Don’t blame me if they can’t keep up. By the way, ‘B-’ for these three. They were pretty good, but I guess they weren’t trained to watch out for a slingshot feint out a window.”

“Sam, this isn’t funny. What do you think Captain Aegis Flare is going to say when he hears about this?” Twilight asked, her ears flicking back in concern.

Sam rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, “Cappy? Pfft, I wouldn’t worry about him. We’re practically like besties by now. If he seems angry, that’s just his way of saying that he misses me and wishes we could hang out more.”

A lavender hoof found its way to the unicorn’s forehead with an audible slap. Twilight wasn’t quite accustomed to Sam’s sense of humor, which left a lot to be desired in her opinion, but she was making progress to understand it nonetheless. With a deep sigh, she let the matter go and focused on another question to move herself along.

“Okay. Fine. What were you doing out here looking at the sky for anyways? You seemed a little… stressed out.”

At that, Sam’s good mood slipped away. He turned away from the purple unicorn and shot a scowl up at the sky once more.

“It’s nothing,” Sam answered plainly.

Twilight knew there was something up, especially since Sam didn’t add another one of his jokes to his reply. It actually made her worried. She knew how the conduit could get sometimes, and she would have to tread lightly if she didn’t want Sam to shut her out once more. Carefully as can be, Twilight walked around to Sam’s side and sat herself just a meter out from him. She slowly looked up to Sam and saw him glaring up at the sky while drumming his fingers against himself with his arms still crossed. She tried to eye the spot that Sam was looking at, but found nothing out of the ordinary. She was going to have to be more direct.

“Please, Sam,” Twilight said softly, “If there’s something wrong, you know you can talk to me, right?”

Sam gave a passing glance down to the unicorn. He could see that she was very much worried and scared as their eyes met. He let out a heavy sigh, knowing that he would eventually have to talk to someone about this. He uncrossed his arms and pointed up to the sky for Twilight to follow.

“What do you see?” Sam asked out loud.

Once more, Twilight tried to find where Sam was pointing to, but found nothing. So she pointed out everything in hopes of fumbling upon the answer.

“I see the pegasi weather teams.”

“And?” Sam asked.

“The clouds.”

“Aaaand?”

Twilight shook her head, “I’m sorry, Sam. I just don’t see it.”

“Really?!” Sam turned on the unicorn with a shocked, hysterical expression, “Nothing about that seems out of the ordinary?”

Twilight chanced one last look up into the air. Again, she found nothing that seemed to be out of place. Sam waited as Twilight looked, but it was becoming more obvious that the unicorn just couldn’t see it.

“The clouds, Twilight!” Sam hollered.

Twilight jumped from her spot after Sam’s shout. Though thanks to it, she refocused her gaze upon the objects of Sam’s mention. The clouds hung lazily in their spots after a pegasus pushed them into their place. The puffy, gray masses brimming with rain water were showing telltale signs of being ready to unleash their loads onto the earth below at any moment. Twilight squinted to take in every detail she could about the blanket of clouds above the city, but found nothing that seemed to be out of the ordinary.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Twilight shook her head in defeat, “I can’t find anything wrong with the clouds. Unless you have some extra sensory perception to see something beyond them. Wait, do conduits have ESP?”

The eager mare was buzzing with excitement at possibly adding new details to her records on humans and conduits. Ever since she and Sam had worked out their differences, their research sessions together had completely reshaped Twilight’s perspective of the world. Somewhere out beyond the stars was a world teeming with life that beat the cosmic odds and brought about the human race and all their brilliance. She wanted so badly to see such a world, especially after her interviews with Sam and his unbelievable stories of cities thriving on nothing but steel and concrete, wildlife that she had never even heard of, and most impressively a machine that reminded her of a horse drawn carriage but was powered by itself called an ‘automobile’. With all that she was learning about the human race in its entirety, she could publish a book on the fantastical world in no time, maybe two if she kept up the research.

Twilight halted her musings and shook her head to clear her thoughts. She needed to focus if she were to take in what Sam was about to say. She also had to remind herself to make a note later for her research.

Sam let out a tired sigh, “No, Twilight, conduits do not have ESP. At least, none of the ones I’ve ever met. Also, wait. You seriously don’t see the problem here right now?”

“Sam, all I see are the weather teams hard at work moving the clouds into place for this afternoon’s rain showers.”

Sam’s expression grew even more manic, his right eye even began to twitch, “What?! You can’t possibly tell me that ponies can push around clouds with their bare-, er, hooves and call that natural!”

Twilight’s head cocked to the side in confusion, “Why not? Pegasi have been in charge of weather maintenance since the the pre-unity tribal era. Not to mention, they’ve had a centralized organization for providing Equestria with its weather schedules since the third centennial of the celestial calendar.”

“Because that’s not how weather works!” Sam cried out while throwing his arms up into the air to punctuate his point.

Twilight was a little taken aback by Sam’s outburst. He seemed so sure of himself, even if his crazed expression said otherwise. Twilight thought about it for a moment, but couldn’t come up with a way to fully understand what the conduit was talking about. Pegasi controlled the weather, and that was a fact.

“I don’t understand,” Twilight tried to remain calm to soothe the situation, “Don’t humans control the weather on your world?”

Sam looked at Twilight like she had just grown a second head. The inquisitive unicorn shrunk under his gaze as more emotions raced across Sam’s face, most prominently being bafflement. The conduit sucked in a large breath of air before letting it out slowly in an attempt to calm himself down. It didn’t have the entire effect he was looking for and even less so when he saw out of the corner of his eye another pegasus pony pushing a cloud into place to fill in a patch of the blanket of clouds.

“Alright, fine,” Sam said desperately to get ahold of himself, “Riddle me this Sprinkles. How are clouds formed?”

“Sparkle,” Twilight automatically corrected, “And to answer your question; clouds are made at the numerous weather management facilities throughout the kingdom of Equestria through a process called ‘water coagulation’ with the help of weather factories. Pegasi are able to do the same thing on their own with their magic, but thanks to the innovation of the ‘water coagulation’ machine, the process is more streamlined and produces much higher yields.”

Twilight patted herself on the back for being able to recite the paraphrased knowledge for her curious friend. Although, she did not get the reaction she had been hoping for when Sam just looked at her like she had told him that the accurate numerical value for pi was three-point-one-three. Indeed, Sam was at a loss for words. Well, it would be more precise to say that he actually had a lot to say, but couldn’t really figure out where to begin. So, he just opted to sputter and wave his arms about for a few moments until he got himself under control once more.

“I think you need to go back to school, Twilight,” Sam said.

Twilight was now the one looking confused again, “What are you talking about? I just told you how clouds are made, and I did learn that in my cross-tribal extracurricular studies course.”

“First off, I asked how clouds are formed,” Sam pointed out before continuing his argument, “Second of all, who would believe something as stupid as ‘water coagulation’. It’s called a precipitation cycle. Water evaporates from lakes, oceans, and what not. Then, the water vapor rises into the atmosphere, since it’s lighter than air at that point. From there, all the little bits of water vapor come together and condense til they’re so packed together that they form clouds in the air. Once there’s too much of that water vapor in one spot, all the vapor condenses even more til water droplets form and become too heavy to hang in the air and fall. That’s how you get clouds, and that’s how it rains. Plus, all those clouds just move on their own, like on wind currents.”

Sam crossed his arms again in finality at the end of his little impromptu lecture. All the while looking rather smug in his confidence for his explanation and teaching the purple wonder some real science.

“Sam, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Or maybe not.

“Although... that last part sounds eerily much like the Everfree Forest phenomenon,” Twilight added, a hoof to her chin in ponderance.

“Wait, what forest?” Sam chimed in.

Twilight’s eyes brightened at the chance to educate her peer, “The Everfree Forest is one of Equestria’s four chaotic anomalies. There’s also the Crystal Caverns underneath Canterlot, The Emerald Snow Plains north of Vanhoover, and the Labyrinth Peaks at the edge of Equestria’s south-western border. Each one of these areas exhibit strange and chaotic natures that have yet to be fully explained, even by today’s greatest minds. The Everfree Forest in particular is known to be home to exotic fauna and flora that don’t usually thrive in the surrounding areas’ natural ecology and could only be found in areas outside the Equestrian border. As for the weather, the meteorological patterns of the forest’s atmosphere are unaffected by even the most powerful pegasi magic. Storms and other weather patterns form at random above in the forest’s atmosphere without any guidance whatsoever. Thus, as you mentioned before, clouds seem to move all on their own with no outside force to be seen.”

“Hold on. Back up a sec,” Sam said as he massaged his temple to soften the incoming headache, “You’re telling me that weather that just moves on its own is considered to be unnatural?”

“Yes?” Twilight replied with another tilt of her head, “Isn’t it an unnatural phenomenon on your world?”

Sam just gaped at the unicorn before him. How could a society not know about how simple weather works? Sure, their immortal princesses could move celestial bodies in the sky like it was child’s play, but a simple rain cycle eluded them? He wanted to say something, anything that would make this whole thing not sound like a fevered drug trip and make more sense, but nothing came to mind. It just so happens that he also made the mistake to look back up at the clouds overhead, now fully covering the city in a hazy shadow. But there was a clear cut off where the mass of rain-filled bodies did not span over the cities borders. It looked way too precise to be natural weather, and yet to these ponies, that’s all it was. Hell, even the unicorn beside him was now looking at him like he was the crazy one.

Though before Sam could add any further input, he caught a bit of movement at the center of the mass and could barely make out the outlines of flapping wings, a pegasus. Though it was what this pegasus did next that made the conduit want to throw himself off the side of the mountain to preserve what sanity he had left. With a kick from the pegasus’ back legs to the cloud above, a low rumble sounded across the city and rain came falling from the point of impact. Then, like a ripple of water on a lake, the rain fell from the clouds adjacent to the epicenter. Soon, all the clouds were releasing their payload onto the earth below from the same ripple and left a certain conduit to stare in disbelief at what he just saw.

His right eye twitched, the headache he tried to avoid came back with a vengeance, and a certain miniature version of himself had finally climbed his way out of the depths of the mental pit he threw him into. Mini Sam smirked at himself with a devious glint in his eyes and conjured a mental image of the words ‘Fuckin’ Magic Beeyatch!’ within the conduit’s mind. The little version of Sam was swifty punted right back into the pit from whence he came for his overt snarkiness, all the while cackling at the top of his lungs.

“I REGRET NOTHIIINNNGGGGGGGGG!!”

Outside Sam’s vivid imagination, said conduit turned on his heel and headed back for the castle with the most neutral expression he could muster.

“Fuck this, I’m done for the day.”

Right behind him, a shocked Twilight swung her head back and forth between the rainy city and the conduit who had just stormed off. She was unsure why Sam had reacted the way he did, but she resolved herself to find out.

“Sam, Wait up!”