The hurricane that was currently tearing its way through Manehatten was a tragedy. It overturned everyponies lives in a cruel act of nature that nopony could have predicted and would have ramifications for decades. Ten years from now there would still be ponies trying to put the last bits of their lives back together, thousands of them. Even the ones who had evacuated had probably lost almost everything to the whims of the torrential rain, lightning, and wind. All of this was present in Rainbow Dash's' mind somewhere and yet despite the horror and tragedy of the storm she had never felt more alive. Time had lost all meaning for the cyan pegasus as she blew through the sky, where a thunderhead reared up she was there to disperse it, where a bank of clouds rich with rainwater began to move in she would puncture it to allow the potential floodwater to drain harmlessly into the river. Amidst the gale and rain the Element of Loyalty rode the winds of the greatest super-storm to strike the eastern coastline in over two hundred years and she couldn't have been happier.

Of course sharing the skies with her heroes, the Wonderbolts, along the most elite weather teams to ever fly out of Cloudsdale Flight School didn't hurt matters. Currently she was sharing an updraft with none other than the vice captain of the Wonderbolts himself, Soarin.

“Dash!” he called out over the noise, “Thunderhead at two o' clock, thirty degrees up!”

Adrenaline flew through her veins as she twitched a wing and rode the wind down, she saw it, a huge one forming, riding in from the ocean. Rainbow Dash knew that if that thing hit land it could cause some serious damage. Strokes of lightning were already arcing out from it and it wasn't even fully formed.

“We can't let it hit land!” Rainbow screamed, “We have to punch through it!”

“You're insane!” came Soarins' reply, even with his goggles on and the storm obscuring most sound she knew he was laughing.

“I have a plan!” Rainbow replied with a cocksure grin, “I need you to barrel roll around me to break up the drafts so I can build up some speed!”

“What?! Why?!” yelled Soarin, even as he began moving into position to follow her lead. Soarin was the cocky maverick of the Wonderbolts, a perfect counterpart to the brilliance of his captain, Spitfire. As such she was pretty much the only pony he listened to. Until he met Rainbow Dash, that is. She was like a storm all her own, she rode the gale-force winds like one of the legendary sylphs of myth, she wasn't even intimidated by them. No more than that, she was one of them. A force of nature that belonged in the skies the way earth ponies belonged on the ground. Even now as he spun around her and she built up speed, pulling ahead of him, Soarin was in awe. Through the wind and rain he could hear her laughing.

Then he saw it, and understood her plan.

A barrier began to form around Rainbow Dash as she pushed forward, more and more she drew speed and strength from impossible reservoir's. Just as she was about to breach the wall of the building cumulonimbus cloud, the barrier broke. With a clap of sound that was as much a tangible force as an aural entity Rainbow Dash lived her name as she tore through the thunderhead in a streak of polychromatic light. The force of the Sonic Rainboom shattered the cloud formation with ease and left Soarin tumbling backwards in a stunned manner that was as much due to the maneuver as it was to the sheer audacity of shattering a massive thunderhead by breaking the sound barrier. With some effort he traced the streak of light and found her, she was high in the sky and coming down fast.

Too fast. Soarin had been a Wonderbolt for years and he knew a free-fall when he saw one.

“Rainbow!” Soarin roared in terror as he spread his wings, caught the wind and lived up to his own name as he soared through the air at speeds just behind Rainbow Dashs' own secret technique. It was going to be close, either he'd catch her or she would end up a smear on the pavement. He pushed himself just a little harder, drawing out a tiny fraction of extra speed, and that was when he felt it. What Rainbow had always talked about. The barrier. The wall of force that felt like a tangible structure just in front of him.

Then she was in his arms, snatched from death by a few seconds. Soarin pulled up, narrowly avoiding a high-rise as he adjusted for the new weight of the unconscious mare in his arms. He was surprised at how heavy she was, for all her slight stature and unbelievable speed she was probably pure muscle. Probably in better shape than he was, Soarin thought as he landed awkwardly, but safely, on the designated 'safe rooftop' that the weather teams kept secure for just these situations. Soarin carried Rainbow Dash to one of the hastily constructed lean-to's and placed her on the heavy-duty sleeping bag. Rainbow Dash had been working this end of Manehatten when Soarin's shift had come up. Now it was nearly the end of his shift and she was still here. He hadn't asked her how long she'd been working but he had a feeling he already knew.

The whole time.

That last 'Boom had probably taken absolutely everything she had left. Soarin just shook his head and sat down next to her, he was already beat.

“Hey Soarin, everything ok?” a pegasus with a rich orange mane came out of the roof exit and made is way over to the two ponies.

“Oh, 'sup Firestreak, yeah we're fine, barely, this one is insane,” Soarin said gesturing to the now-gently-snoozing Rainbow Dash.

“Yeah, no joke, me and Fleetfoot saw it from the windows, we thought she was a goner for sure,” Firestreak had a pleasant voice, strong and confident without the cocky edge that Soarin perpetually had. “So is she...?”

“She's fine, like I said, barely,” replied Soarin as he carefully lifted Rainbow's head and snuck a pillow beneath it. The exhausted pegasus didn't even twitch in her sleep. “Think you can help me get her downstairs? I want to ask her friend, the quiet one, to take a look at her, just to make sure.”

Firestreak nodded, “Hold on, I'm sure there's a slat or something we can lift her onto, thank Celestia the generators are still working, getting her down the stairs would be a pain in the pinions.”

“No joke,” was Soarins reply as he stood up and stretched some of the kinks from his muscles. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off he was feeling the weight of all the work he'd been doing.

Soon enough his fellow Wonderbolt had brought a large enough slat of wood that looked like it had been part of a shelving unit of some kind. They moved the sleeping pegasus through the small aperture of the roof exit. From there it was easy thanks to the rather spacious elevators. When they reached them however, Firestreak excused himself.

“Time for me to go man, if you're going down then I gotta go up,” he pointed to the ceiling with his free hoof. “Look after the little star there, she's a shoe-in for a Wonderbolt in my opinion.”

“Heh, yeah I guess she is,” Soarin replied thoughtfully before shaking himself out of the oncoming fugue and wishing his friend and teammate good luck, “and be careful out there Fire!” Soarin shouted as the elevator closed, Firestreak waved a hoof reassuringly and vanished up the stairs to begin his shift.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first thing Rainbow Dash heard was voices, one voice in particular was low and soft. Familiar too, it sounded like...

“Fluttershy?” Rainbow muttered almost unintelligibly, smothered as her words were with exhaustion and too many pillows. As soon as she spoke Fluttershy was by her side, her face uncharacteristically serious.

“Rainbow, I need you open your eyes,” her words had a commanding tone in them that Rainbow Dash wasn't feeling quite strong enough to ignore so she obeyed and was rewarded by a piercing light being shone directly into her eyeballs.

“Ow ow ow ow, motherbuuu...” Rainbow cut off her oncoming stream of expletives as Fluttershy pulled the small light away from her and glowered. Rainbow hadn't known that Fluttershy, Fluttershy of all ponies, even could glower. Rainbow finally took in her surroundings, she was on a medical cot in the Library where Twilight had set up a refugee center. There was a small fire burning nearby for warmth and about a half-dozen ponies of all types around her, most of them asleep. She saw Soarin snoozing by a crate on a discarded sleeping bag. “How did I get here...” Rainbow asked rhetorically before trailing off. The last thing she remembered was the massive thunderhead and... Oh.

“You are very very lucky Dash, very...” she started before her lip began to tremble “V-very...” And then the dam broke. With a choked sob Fluttershy began to cry. Tears rolled down her face as she stopped trying to talk and wrapped her hooves around her friend and just cried. Rainbow Dash hugged Fluttershy close, she remembered performing the Sonic Rainboom, the rest became a blur; the cloud broke up, she flew around intending to meet up with Soarin again, then she felt tired and... Rainbow Dash felt her blood run cold. She must have lost consciousness somewhere between breaking through the thunderhead and heading back to rendezvous with Soarin who probably was the one who saved her. No wonder Fluttershy was so upset, Soarin probably told her the whole story meaning that Fluttershy knew that she had nearly lost one of her oldest and closest friends for good.

“H-hey, c'mon 'Shy, I'm way too tough to let one stupid storm take me down,” she murmured reassuringly to her friend as Fluttershy got all the tears out that she'd been holding in while she had treated Rainbow.

“Wuzz'appin? Huh?” a sleepy voice came from behind them as Fluttershy pulled away and dried her tears, sifting through her sparse medical supplies. Soarin got up unsteadily from where he'd fallen asleep after dragging Rainbow Dash to their makeshift infirmary-stroke-daycare. He noticed Rainbow sitting up which dispelled any sense of exhaustion from him as he scrambled over to her side. “Woah, hey there short-stuff, I thought you'd be out for at least a day the way you've been pushing yourself.”

Rainbow blushed and chuckled at the familiarity with which one of her heroes addressed her, “Aw c'mon, I'm the best there is! No way am I gonna stay out of the game!” Rainbow tried to stand up to prove it but only managed a sort of shift to the side that almost landed her face-first on cold marble if Fluttershy and Soarin hadn't caught her.

“No, not even a chance Rainbow Dash,” came the pastel pegasus' command.

“B-but Fluttershy, just give me a couple hours and I'll be-”

The Eyes.

Rainbow stopped arguing and meekly shifted beneath the scratchy covers of her medical cot. Even Soarin unconsciously huddled in on himself and flattened his ears to his skull and he was just caught on the periphery of the infamous Stare.

“Uhm, never mind, I'll stay here,” came Rainbow's reply, only slightly muffled by the pillows she was apparently trying to burrow into.

“Good, and you-” Fluttershy looked pointedly at Soarin who squeaked slightly, but instantly the authoritative presence faded as Fluttershy put her hoof down tried to vanish behind her pink bangs, “Uhm, thank you for, uhm, saving Rainbows' life...” she said in a voice so soft it wouldn't have ruffled velvet while she scuffed the floor lightly with one hoof.

The thoughts came unbidden to Soarin's mind, Wow, and here I thought Rainbow Dash was cute, as he stared. It vaguely occurred to him that her words required some kind of response but all his brain was giving him was mushy noises which probably would just scare her away. C'mon Soarin, say something. SAY. SOMETHING.

“Uhh.... Yeah.”

Smooth. Real Smooth, try again idiot-brain, Soarin had to bite his tongue to keep from chuckling as the voice of his Captain broke into his own thoughts. It calmed him though and he sat down, taking a deep breath.

“What I meant was, no problem, that's why we go out in pairs, or more if we can spare the ponypower,” Soarin said with considerably more grace. He looked over and sure enough Rainbow was asleep again. She couldn't have much left in her after battling the storm all day and night. Soarin looked around and felt his heart go heavy, he hadn't really been able to spend much time dirtside since the whole mess began but the suffering was as plain as day from where he was sitting now. “S-so you're a doctor?” Soarin asked, trying to steer the conversation somewhere.

“Oh, uhm... no, I'm just a caretaker for the animals in Ponyville,” replied Fluttershy almost inaudibly.

“Wait, wait-wait... you're a vet?” Soarin had seen his share of doctors. Simply put; basic to severe injuries, and even death once, happened in his line of work. Doing a trick at break-neck speeds was no joke. So that being established, Soarin knew a doctor when he saw one. Having watched Fluttershy move around the medical supplies with more expertise and surety than at least half of the quacks he'd personally been to see he'd have put her at an M.D, or at least an experienced nurse.

“Uhm.. not really, I just take care of the habitats,” seeing Soarin raise an eyebrow she went a little deeper. “I, uhm, I live on the edge of the Everfree so I can keep the animals on the borders in good health.”

One word stuck out as Soarin strained to hear her without trying to be obvious, 'Everfree'.

“Bullshiiiii...” he started to say reflexively before biting his tongue. His brain flailed for something else. “-shimoozle.”

Good one idiot-brain.

“So... uhm.. you live on the edge of that nightmare?” asked Soarin skeptically.

Fluttershy nodded, “Oh it's not all that bad, once you get used to the Manticores, but they're just like big kitties, uhm, then there are the Cockatrice but there's not very many of them and they live pretty deep in the forest.” Soarin's jaw hung open as she continued talking about horrible abominations that would've sent him screaming for the nearest cloudbank on sight as if they were pets. “...and then there's the Hydra, but he's just a big grump who never leaves the bog, and the giant spiders make the prettiest art with their webs too, I have a few examples in my cottage.”

Giant. Spiders.

“Wow, I uh... I have nothing to say to that,” was Soarin's honest answer as he moved in closer to the small fire.

“D-did I say something wrong?” Fluttershy asked fearfully, Soarin mentally face-hoofed and cursed his manners.

“No! No not at all, I just... never expected someone as uhm... pretty and nice as you to do such dangerous work for a living...” Soarin tried to explain without accidentally crucifying himself again. Spitfire never did forgive him for the last time he'd run his mouth off, they hadn't been back to that Fillydelphian bar since.

Fluttershy blushed furiously at his compliments and retreated behind her hair before squeaking out an inaudible “O-oh.”

A sudden stroke of thunder preceded by an alarmingly close bolt of lightning broke the silence. With the noise came Fluttershy who made a small choking bleat and fell rigid on the floor. Soarin rushed to her side and turned her upright as she recovered enough to retreat back behind her bangs to hide her embarrassment, she'd been working on not doing that anymore since the dragon incident.

“I-I'm so sorry, I... I don't handle loud and sudden noises very well...” Fluttershy explained, “Or... big flashes of light...”

“Hey don't sweat it, I don't handle Manticores and Giant Spiders very well so you've got me beat there,” came Soarin's quick reply, he smiled as he saw small glimmer of confidence in her eyes at his words. As he was trying to think up something else to talk about with this beautiful mare he realized how close he was to her. She smelled like fresh flowers after a rainstorm which, Soarin reflected, was oddly appropriate for the matter at hoof. Fluttershy hadn't seemed to notice, her attention turned back to her friend who was sleeping soundly once again, she took her temperature, checked her blood pressure, and made sure her pallor was good, then adjusted the blankets to keep her warm and let out a relieved sigh.

“I'm so glad she's ok, I... I don't know what I would have done if... if...” Soarin saw the waterworks on the way and moved in, if he knew one thing for sure it was that Fluttershy crying was no good.

“Hey, hey, she's fine, just fine,” said Soarin soothingly. He put a comforting foreleg around her and she leaned against him before finally getting her emotions under control. She sniffled softly as she rested her head against him, Soarin could feel how tired she was. In her own way she wasn't that different from Dash and the Wonderbolt would've bet his entire next paycheck that she hadn't slept a wink since this thing started either. He felt her take in a deep breath as she, reluctantly, pulled away, her face crimson.

“You ok there?” Soarin asked, his own face a little red as he thanked Celestia for all the PR training. He had a grade-A poker face.

“Mhm, sorry, I'm just... tired, I have some more work to do before I can sleep, thank you, Mister Wonderbolt, for-”

Soarin cut her off, “Woah there, I'm no Mister, call me Soarin.”

“O-oh, ok...” she said, he could tell she was fighting some internal battle, “Uhm, well... when's your next shift?”

Soarin checked the big clock on the wall, fortunately it was pure clockwork engineering and didn't need any electricity. “Looks like I've got about three more hours.”

“Ok, well, stay safe... ok S-Soarin?” she said, her face was still the most adorable shade of red.

Soarin puffed out his chest and gave her an exaggerated pose-and-grin, “No problem, I'm the maverick of the Wonderbolts!”

Fluttershy giggled, then her expression changed to one of determination as she stepped up and gave him a warm kiss right on the edge of his mouth, “G-good...” she murmured softly, barely meeting his eyes and trying to keep her embarrassment from turning terminal. “I've... uhm... I'll see you again, I hope,” with that Fluttershy made her way over to the foals, some of whom were starting to wake up and needed food.

Soarin deflated almost instantly as his mind blanked out after the small kiss. He had the feeling those weren't something she gave out to just anypony. He heard her say something about hoping to see him again before she left. When she was out of sight he let his knee's go out.

“Wow.”

Outside the storm still raged, but inside the Library a little slice of normality was kept alive by the ponies who refused to let nature destroy their spirits.