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Freeze Frame

by ToixStory

Chapter 2: Episode 1: Serenity

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“Good morning, sleepy head!”

I woke up to a smiling, light brown donkey laying on top of me, her face less than a hoof away from my own. Lesson learned: look into buying an alarm clock.

“Uh, good morning to you too, Joya,” I slurred. She seemed to accept that as a sign I was getting up and rolled off of me. I sat up and realized I was somewhere that definitely wasn't my old room.

“Where am I?” I asked groggily.

“Why, you’re in your new room, silly!” Joya replied while walking over to the nearby window. “You practically collapsed after you came in last night; I had to put you to bed myself!”

“Ugh, I barely remember last night,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Almost ten!” Joya said giddily as she let up the blinds. I screamed and fell back onto the floor while desperately trying to shield my eyes from the bright sunlight.

“Warn a pony when you’re going to do that,” I moaned. Joya didn’t seem to hear me and instead hopped out of the room. The searing pain in my eyes gone, I slowly picked myself off the floor and looked around the room. There wasn’t much to see, the interior being decidedly bare; the only other furniture being a side table by the bed, a mirrored dresser opposite the bed, and a bookshelf shoved in the corner away from the window.

By far the best part of the room was the bed; white, hoof-stitched sheets and pillows with what felt like real down inside. To my dismay, yesterday’s collected grime had managed to turn the white sheets into a light gray color; I’d need to do something about that. Stretching, I trotted off to find a bathroom.

* * *

Joya was making her bed when I passed by her room, stopping to ask her about a bath. “Hey Joya, is there any place I could-”

“Shh,” she said, holding out a hoof in front of my face. She had gathered all the sheets and pillows into a big pile and rolled them into a ball. Before I could ask her what exactly she thought she was doing, Joya tossed the ball up into the air. Instead of coming down everywhere, the laundry somehow managed to come down on the bed in perfect order, making the bed.

“How did you-?” I began, but stopped myself. Better not to ask.

“Did you need something?” Joya asked, putting a few finishing touches on the bed.

“Oh, well, yes...do you have a place where somepony can take a bath?” She looked at me curiously, her head tilted to one side.

“You’ve only been in the city for one day, what do you need a bath for?”

“You mean- the ponies here don’t take a bath every day?” I asked, recoiling in horror. Joya laughed like it was the funniest thing ever.

“Of course not, silly! Water isn’t cheap, and we don’t get that dirty; most ponies only wash once a week.” My dusty coat would beg to differ, but I held my tongue. “I guess you could use some of the leftover water if you wanted,” Joya continued.

“Th-That would be great, thanks,” I stuttered, trying to smile.

“Bathroom’s second door on your right,” Joya told me as I walked out of the room. I was almost at the end of the rather large hallway when she called back, “Be careful, the water might be a little cold!”

* * *

One freezing bath later, I was downstairs in the kitchen area behind the store’s main floor. Walking in, I saw Joya hunched over the room’s small, wood-burning stove, eyes fixed on two eggs in a skillet.

“You know watching the eggs won’t make them cook faster?” I said. She looked curiously at me before going back to the one-sided staring contest. Rolling my eyes, I explored the rest of the kitchen. It wasn’t very big, but was nice in a simple way; it contained a stove, an oven, a big sink in the middle of a long counter, and another one of those weird, self-cooling iceboxes. The best part of the kitchen at the moment, however, was the large basket of freshly-baked muffins sitting on the counter.

“Did you make these?” I asked, sniffing them. My stomach rumbled at their smell.

Not taking her eyes off the eggs, Joya replied, “Marshmallow brought them by earlier along with the stuff you left at her library.” My eyes snapped to a familiar carpet bag leaning against the kitchen’s far wall. I trotted over happily to make sure everything was still intact.

They were, and inside was a note that said, “Try not to forget this next time! -Marshmallow.” A crash behind me made me jump and turn around, and then I couldn’t stop giggling.

“Eggs are, uh, ready,” Joya said sheepishly, her coat covered in egg white.

Still laughing, I suggested, “Let’s just have some of those muffins.” Joya nodded enthusiastically at the notion.

* * *

“Have you heard from Grapevine today?” I asked over a plate filled with crumbs, the only remains of a once-mighty tower of muffins.

“Marshmallow said something about her going to meet Ornate,” Joya said, her plate equally empty. I sighed and got up from the cushion I had lounging on; we had decided to eat in the corner nook of the kitchen, despite the lack of a table.

“I don’t suppose she said anything about me?”

Joya grinned and patted me on the head. “Don’t worry, she said that Grapevine was stopping by after she got done with the boss.” I pushed her hoof away and smiled her same infectious grin. I was going to ask her how she knew Grapevine anyhow when the bell over her front door tinkled.

“Wait here, customers!” Joya hissed before trotting into the front room. The smile that had been plastered on her face just seconds ago slipped away like snow on the first day of spring.

My old reporter instincts got the better of me and I peeked from the kitchen doorway. Inside the shop were two donkeys, one in a miner’s hat and the other in the uniform of a butler. They were checking some of the more practical “work wear.” Once Joya realized who they were, her usual giddyness returned and she hopped over to where they stood.

The three of them began chatting rapidly in a language I didn’t understand, other than that it wasn’t Equestrian or Germane. Something certainly seemed to light up in Joya’s eyes as she showed them around the shop, still chatting in that language. She expertly led them around the confusing twists and turns of the shop, stopping every few seconds to show off another ensemble. I thought I caught her looking in my direction a few times, but I wasn’t sure.

After buying a few utility uniforms, the couple left, and Joya deposited her newly-acquired bits into a shiny, silver cash register on the back counter. She sighed and gazed longingly at the front door. “Would you mind joining me in my work room?” she said without turning around.

No point in hiding now. I sheepishly followed her to a door under the stairs, and into a small room within. The walls inside were adorned not only with the usual fashion samples, but with other posters as well. One showed a brave-looking donkey diving out the way of an enraged manticore, red cape clutched in his mouth. Another was a picture of a dashing donkey dressed from head to toe in black, and standing in front of a wall with a large Z carved into it. A couple showed pictures of Fillydelphia, accompanied by urgent messages written in a different language.

“Well, what do you think?” Joya asked, turning my attention back to her. On a work bench sat my dress from yesterday, only not. The garment she showed me resembled my old dress in the same way a tree log resembled a carved table.

“It looks amazing, Joya,” I said. I ran my hooves over the soft fabric, newly-adorned with a few sprinkles of pearls. Wearing it, I wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Grand Galloping Gala. Not counting my actual looks, of course.

Joya sighed in relief and plopped down on a velvety cushion beside her sewing machine. “I started with just trying to fix it up, but well...” she said.

Clutching the farbric to my chest, I asked, “Can I put it on?”

Joya thought for a moment. “Well, it’s not really done yet,” she said. She paused and tapped her chin with one of her hooves. “Come to think of it, though, I could use a model.”

* * *

“So what were you and those donkeys talking about?” I said. Joya stopped circling around me for a second and shifted the pins in her mouth so she could speak.

“I don’t know, just stuff about home.” She tugged at the hem near my right leg. “Turn a little,” she said. I was standing on my hind legs so Joya could get a better look at the underside of the dress, so turning took some difficulty.

“You’re not from around here?” I said.

She used some scissors to cut off a section of loose fabric and pinned the rest back in place. “Nope; Maneican, born and raised,” she said.

“Then that language you were speaking was Maneican?” I said. I’d grown up speaking Equestrian and Germane, but I hadn’t heard anything like she had been speaking before.

Joya laughed. “Of course not, silly! Back in Maneico, we spoke Caballian.”

Right.

“Well, uh, why did you move to Equestria, and Fillydelphia of all places?” I asked. Not that I was one to talk, given the circumstances.

Joya gave a sort of noncommittal shrug as she fastened a few more pearls to my dress. “Not a lot of jobs for mares back in Maneico City, and it’s cheaper to get a business license in Fillydelphia.” She smiled. “Besides, Fillydelphia is super-duper fun, and back home is so boring!” The part about home I could sympathize with: if I never had to look at another crop of oats again, it would be too soon.

My back knees had started to wobble from prolonged standing, and I had to struggle to keep balance as Joya began to tug at the dress’s hemline. I recalled that my mother had once tried to enroll me in an etiquette class that taught this sort of thing, but I had refused on the grounds that being proper is boring. I straightened my spine and stopped pin-wheeling about like a rodeo clown if only to prove that she was still wrong.

“H-How much longer?” I asked.

“Just one more second, dear,” Joya said. She made a couple more snips and cuts before stepping back to admire her work. I couldn’t help but blush a little, having so little experience as the center of attention. She was interrupted by a knock on the door.

A voice came from the other side, “Joya, you in there? The sign outside said gone to lunch, but you never go to lunch so I thought-,” Joya threw the door open to reveal a startled Grapevine on the other side.

“Oh, so you're in,” she began, before her eyes got to me. “I see you found a new model?” Grapevine asked, smirking.

“She’s been so helpful!” Joya gushed while I did my best to not catch Grapevine’s eye. She looked like she was trying hard not to laugh as Joya showed off the ensemble she had trapped me in. She’d called it “Pega-chic,” or something like that. Whatever it was, it felt good to wear something that let my wings breathe a little.

“...and I used extra-light fabrics so she could move normally; Pegasi bones are hollow and extra light, don’t ya know?” Joya was saying, seemingly never stopping to breathe. Finally, thankfully, Grapevine held up a hoof in Joya’s face to stop the stream of chatter.

“This is great Joya, really great, but Ornate gave me and Minty a new assignment and we can’t be late!” Joya’s odd, pink eyes lit up.

“Mr. Ornate finally gave you another assignment? Don’t let me keep you here, you need to go!” As agonizingly slowly as it was put on, Joya had no trouble pulling the dress back off me and scooting us out the door. I remembered to grab my camera before Grapevine and I were deposited outside the bouncy mare’s store.

* * *

I blinked harshly in the daylight and tried to look away; the sun hadn’t gotten any darker since I woke up. Grapevine eyebrows rose when I turned away and looked at her.

“What’s with you?” I asked.

“Your mane, it’s, uh-” She stopped and just giggled a little. I tentatively reached a hoof and felt my hair. My eyes widened when I realized I must look like I’d just jumped off the ugly tree and hit my hair on every branch on the way down. I shook my head back and forth, but it only helped a little. It almost made me envy her short-cropped, dark magenta mane. Almost.

“Satisfied?” I said.

Grapevine snorted and started walking toward the middle of the city. “C’mon,” she said. “We have an airship to catch.”

Hurrying to catch up, I panted, “Airship? Where are we going?” Grapevine gave me that funny look, again, and pointed a hoof at the sky over downtown Fillydelphia.

It was hard to see through the haze and smoke of the factories, but there was indeed something up there. My heart skipped a beat when the clouds parted and revealed what Grapevine was pointing at. High above the cement and glass towers of the steel barons and railroad kings was an airship. Not just an airship, though, more like a flying city.

Sure I’d seen Cloudsdale on holiday in Canterlot before (Derbyshire being too small to warrant a Pegasus city above it to manage weather), but this was nothing like the famous Pegasi city. Instead of riding on captured clouds, the metropolis sat atop numerous gasbags from dirigibles, all strapped and welded together. That wasn’t the only difference, either: the thing was big, easily a couple times larger than Cloudsdale. All around it, I could make out the tiny shapes of transport balloons, cargo airships, and passenger dirigibles flitting around the city like bees around a hive.

Taking my eyes off it, I asked, “Any reason why that wasn’t there yesterday?”

“Serenity stays above cloud level most of the time,” Grapevine said. “They only come down on days like today to suck up some pollution from the financial and business districts.”

“Serenity? What kind of a name is that?” I said.

Grapevine shrugged. “It was just the name of the first airship they started building on.”

“Oh,” I said, looking up at the city one more time. “And we’re going to go up there today?” Grapevine nodded.

* * *

We made it to the airport without incident; well, other than Grapevine telling a loud-mouthed street vendor exactly where she could put her boiled carrots. The airfield was set close to downtown, and the skyscrapers of the center city towered above us as we walked into the main terminal. Ornate had already given her tickets, so we skipped the lines and headed onto the concrete airfield. It seemed so strange to me to have such a wide open space in the middle of a city, though the field certainly wasn’t empty: airships of all sizes, from balloons to dirigibles, were moored at docking towers or sitting on the tarmac.

“Whoa,” I said, gazing up at the nearest dirigible; a big, gray monster with a crimson stripe running its length, under which was written, “Wind Chaser.

“Never seen one of the big ones?” Grapevine asked.

I shook my head. “I took a balloon ride, once, when I was little. Derbyshire never had anything like this.”

Grapevine shook her head and led me over to a waiting airship sitting on the concrete causeway. To my untrained eye, the ship looked like a smaller version of the dirigibles moored all around us, though Grapevine informed me that our airship was a blimp, not a zeppelin. Apparently since zeppelins were invented in Germaneigh, I was supposed to know all about them.

At any rate, our blimp was called the Jenny Haviner, whatever that meant. The cabin of the Jenny was small, with two rows of seats designed to fit twelve ponies. Somehow, the airship had managed to take on twenty. Grapevine and I sat at the back, squeezed into our seats by two, er, hefty mares standing in the aisle. The ship groaned from the added weight it took, though it didn’t break, thank Celestia.

“So,” Grapevine said, eyeing my wings, “Why don’t you just fly up to Serenity?”

“I thought that we should, um, stay together,” I lied. Currently, I was focused on trying to keep my camera from being crushed between the seat in front of me and my chest.

“Just how are we supposed to sit in these chairs?” I grumbled, shifting myself, again. The chairs seemed to want us to sit on our hindquarters, with our backs straight against the seat. “Who invented these things anyway?”

Grapevine, comfortably settled back in hers, answered, “Somepony in Ponyville invented them; they’re supposed to be space-saving.” I muttered a very sarcastic thanks to that pony and tried to stop my fidgeting. Grapevine rolled her eyes and looked out the window to her right, her saddlebag safe on her lap.

We both kept quiet for a few minutes, despite being squeezed practically nose-to-nose. It looked like she was almost afraid to say anything.

I decided to speak first. “Grapevine, about last night…”

She held up a hoof before I could say anything else. “Look, we’re partners: you’re the camerapony and I’m the reporter. Let’s just keep it that way.”

I don’t know if I was expecting an apology or for her to break down and tell me her whole life story right then and there, but her quick dismissal stung. “That’s just what I was thinking,” I said with a huff. We didn’t talk for the rest of the trip.

* * *

“Oh, there’s the city!” shouted somepony a few minutes later. I strained my neck to look past Grapevine out the window. At first I couldn’t see anything, but gradually the entirety of Serenity revealed itself from behind cloud cover. A far larger number of airships buzzed around it than were visible from the ground.

“Is it always this busy?” I asked, finally breaking the ongoing silence.

“Only around this time of year, due to the Summer Sun Celebration and all,” Grapevine replied. Either she didn’t know I had been giving her the silent treatment, or didn’t care. I also didn’t bother to tell her I’d completely forget about the Celebration, and opted instead to watch the city all the way in until the Jenny clamped onto a mooring jutting from the side of the floating city.

“Everypony out!” came the call, sounding strangely similar to yesterday’s. Being in the last row, Grapevine and I were the final ponies out, and we watched as the Jenny unclasped from the mooring tower and dropped back below the cloud cover, presumably to look for more customers. The tower wasn’t very large, and Grapevine and I quickly descended the ramp and were down into the city proper.

* * *

Serenity City spread out before us, a strange mishmash of businesses and homes squeezed between docking areas for the heavier-than-air ships constantly coming and going.

“Where are we going again?” I asked Grapevine. Her horn emitting a fuchsia glow, Grapevine levitated a note out of her saddlebag and stared at the words written on the page.

“It says we’re to meet Lightning Sprint at the offices of the Fillydelphia Weather Corps.”

“I’m guessing it’s that building,” I said, pointing to the half-steel, half-cloud tower in the middle of the city.

“I think you may be on to something, Minty,” Grapevine snarked. While Serenity City wasn’t even a quarter as big as Fillydelphia’s downtown, its size was nothing to sneeze at either. It took Grapevine and I a good fifteen minutes to walk all the way to the center tower. Along the way, the only ponies we passed were earth ponies.

“If this city is a Pegasi city, where exactly are all the Pegasuses?” I asked as we passed yet another group of non-flying ponies. They were crowding around a brightly-painted sign advertising tickets to the Summer Sun Festival Ball.

“What makes you think this is a Pegasi city?” Grapevine asked, not bothering to stop walking. Our hooves made a strange sound walking on the city’s streets, a mixture of metal and wood themselves. Here and there, I could see flashes of canvas peeking through a few worryingly-large holes in the walkway.

“The fact that we’re on a floating city?” I suggested helpfully. Grapevine laughed and shook her head, reminding me of my old schoolteacher.

“Just because it’s a floating city doesn’t mean the Pegasi own it. Sure, most of the city’s flying citizens live here, but there just aren’t many of them.” She swept her hoof around, indicating the many candy-colored earth ponies walking around. “This city isn’t for weather control like Cloudsdale; what you’re standing on is the largest airborne trading outpost in all of Equestria.”

“Oh,” I said. Looking around, I could see she was right. The constant stream of airships going to and fro were all helmed by earth ponies and unicorns, and the crews they let out were the same. Not for the first time that day, I felt a little bit more alone among these ponies.

* * *

The sign above the door to the tower read, “Fillydelphia Weather Corps - Serenity City Offices.” The “tower” itself wasn’t very tall, maybe three stories at the most. In fact, presumably due to wind, all the buildings in the city were at most two stories tall. The mooring stations were a bit taller, but were made purely from steel, allowing them to stand tall without fear of toppling over.

The interior of the Weather Corps offices was conservatively decorated; containing only a wooden secretary’s desk and a couple maple chairs. A stallion was idly flipping through reports at the desk, and didn’t bother to look up when we walked in.

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked. Grapevine levitated a press pass from her saddlebag and held it out in front of him.

“We’re here to see Lightning Sprint,” she said, her journalist’s tone returning. The secretary gave the pass a quick glance and then pointed to a door marked “Stairs.”

“Ms. Sprint’s office is on the third floor, you won’t miss it,” he mumbled, eyes returning to the papers in front of him. Grapevine quickly trekked to the stairs while I gave a hurried thanks.

* * *

Out of breath from the stair climb, we emerged into Ms. Sprint’s office to find a griffin poring over a massive overhead map of Fillydelphia.

“Hello, we're from-” I began,trying to act professional. As usual, Grapevine balled up those pretenses and threw them out the nearest window.

“You’re Lightning Sprint?” she asked. The female griffin turned and walked across the office to where we were standing, her eagle eyes never straying from us. Razor-sharp talons clattered on the stone tile as she strode up to us.

“I am she,” she answered. I gulped; I never realized quite how big griffins could get.

“They let a griffin be in charge of the Weather Corps?” Grapevine asked, incredulous. I had to restrain myself from kneeing her in the ribs. Lightning Sprint hunched down until her eyes were level with Grapevine’s. Her accent was like a guttural version of Grapevine’s, but her tone was icy.

“They don’t let anyone be in charge.” Grapevine didn’t seem much fazed by the griffin, or at least didn’t show it. I, however, had never quite forgotten the stories about griffons descending from the mountains to snatch away bad little colts and fillies in the middle of the night.

Lightning turned to me, her voice a warmer tone. “It has been a while since I’ve seen a new Pegasus in town. Tell me, what is your name, flier?”

“Oh, uh, Minty Flower, ma’am,” I hastily answered.

“Minty,” she said, letting the words roll around on her tongue. “Have you registered with the Corps yet, Minty?”

“I have to register?” I asked.

“She doesn’t know,” Grapevine called from across the room, where she was hastily copying notes from the Fillydelphia sky map on the wall. Notes were tacked to seemingly-random locations all across the map. Pictures of different types of clouds were similarly attached to the wall above.

“Every Pegasus in Fillydelphia is required to register with the Weather Corps so that they may be called upon to serve the city in times of distress,” Lightning recited, rising to her full height.

“Why?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. The griffin sighed and shifted her wings, a movement I knew to be annoyance; mostly because I did the same thing.

“There aren’t enough Pegasi in the city to support a fully-staffed Weather Corps, and few of them even want to work in the Corps full time. So instead, our staff keeps watch on the clouds, and only controls them for big storms.”

“You mean, the clouds are wild?!” I asked, flustered. Even in Derbyshire the clouds were kept tightly controlled: this was practically barbarism.

“Why do you think the air’s only clean down Broad Street?” Grapevine snarked, her hooves scrounging inside Lightning’s desk. The elder griffin glared at her before reaching over and slamming the desk drawer shut; Grapevine barely getting her hooves out in time.

“As I said, we don’t have the resources to control the weather over the entire city; we keep watch over all Fillydelphia and control the essential areas.” Lightning turned back to me. “You will need an escort to show you how we operate in Serenity City?”

It wasn’t really much of a question.

“Yes, ma’am,” I squeaked.

Lightning, with something on her beak that passed for a smile, reached over and grabbed a blue card from her desk. “It’s unwise to go alone, take this and present it to the stallion at the front desk, he will call someone to escort you,” she said, handing the pass to me. The little card had a string to loop around my neck, and it hung down with my camera.

“What about Grapevine?” I asked. Grapevine gave me an odd look.

“What did you think we’re here for? I’m here to interview Miss Sprint-y here,” she said, ignoring the griffin’s death glare. She levitated her notebook in front of my nose, rolling her eyes. “This story’s not all about you, you know.”

* * *

I walked out of the office, retracing my steps back to the secretary on the bottom floor. When I reached his desk, I used a hoof to hold out my pass, which seemed to finally get his attention. He walked back into a hallway behind his desk and spoke on a shiny new telephone. I’d seen a few of them around Fillydelphia, but hadn’t actually seen anypony use the monsters, so much bigger than the magical counterparts in Canterlot. The stallion finished his call and walked back to his desk, resuming his shunning of me.

What is it with secretaries in this town, anyways?

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long, as after a few minutes another green pony came down the stairs. Except, unlike the secretary stallion, this mare’s coat was less green and more a deep teal. In contrast, her short-cut mane was a bright pink; an accented, winged horseshoe cutie mark completed the look. My eyes, however, remained transfixed on one particular area of the new mare.

She was definitely Pegasi, if about a hoof shorter than me, but her wings were far from normal. The base of her wings was the same as mine, but everything else was mechanical. A metal frame supported overly-large feathers. Pieces of machinery and what looked like wires ran from her mechanical appendages down into her body.

“Hiya, I’m Starshine Scamper,” she said. “I see you noticed the wings.”

“Oh, uh, what wings?” I stammered, flushing. She kept right on smiling, and I couldn’t help but do so too. It was almost off-putting, in a way.

“I’m supposed to help you until you can pass evaluation into the Weather Corps,” she said.

“What if I don’t pass?” Her wings made a very distinct metal-on-flesh sound when she laughed.

“Then you’ll be kicked off Serenity. Now follow me, I need to take you to the main area of operations.” I couldn’t decide how serious her last answer was.

* * *

We’d trekked through the bustling city to a wide open area at the northern edge of Serenity City. Most ponies on the street gave us odd looks until they noticed Starshine’s bright orange Weather Corps vest, after which they would return to their business. It was a nice enough trip, though Starshine seemed to think that silence was a mortal enemy that needed to be destroyed. That is, she didn’t stop talking. Her wings clanked when she moved, too, forcing her to talk louder to be heard over the noise. Lucky me.

“...and then I banked so low I almost hit a cabbage stand and all the ponies were like, ‘oooooh,’ and I was like, ‘yeah, that’s right,’ and then...” She paused when we reached the edge of the clearing. The clearing happened to be a grassy field, upon which various Pegasi milled about. Odd, considering the city’s base was made of metal, but I was rapidly learning not to question some things. Most of the gathered ponies had on similar bright orange vests. Unlike Starshine’s blank outfit, though, their vests had badges of rank or office sewn onto them.

“This is the staging area,” Starshine said, sweeping a hoof across my field of vision. “It’s where all the Weather Corps ponies gather to train and group for missions. Today we’ll use it for your training.”

“Training?” I asked, looking nervously at the bigger, tougher Pegasi scattered across the field.

“Well, I’m assuming you’ve never made weather before?” Starshine asked. I shook my head. Having two earth pony parents and living in a unicorn town will do that to a filly.

“Then today’s your first day,” she said. With that, she leaped into the air and beat her wings to gain altitude, and she was soon at cloud level. The unnatural wings didn’t seem to affect her flying, from what I could tell. I was still standing on the ground when she flew back, a puffy, white cloud in each forehoof.

“Come on, Minty! You have to be in the air to do this,” she called, eliciting looks from the other weather ponies around me. I laughed nervously and considered just running back to Grapevine. Under Starshine’s expectant stare, however, I reluctantly began to flap my wings.

I realized it probably would have been good to mention to her back in the city that I’m not all that great at flying. By not great, I mean I’m not sure I even know 100% how to fly. I just kind of get lucky sometimes and make it off the ground.

Somehow, my untrained wings managed to keep me aloft and I flew at a snail’s pace to the clouds on which Starshine now stood.

“You’re not much of a flier, are you?” she asked, pointing out the obvious once I was finally standing on the cloud next to her. I kept expecting the fluffy surface to break underneath me at any moment, but somehow it held.

“Not really...” I answered, shaking a little from exertion. Starshine shook her head.

“Well, it doesn’t matter; today you’re going to learn to make weather!” There was a conviction in her voice that frightened me, but I figured I had no choice in the matter anyway.

“Now, do as I do,” she said. I watched as she gathered herself and began to bounce up and down on the cloud. First one bounce, and then two. On her third she used her wings to gain altitude before snapping them shut and coming down hard on the cloud. Sure enough, the darkened puff let loose a torrent of rain onto the field below.

“Your turn.”

I gulped and checked to make sure the cloud still held my weight. Tentatively, I bounced once, then twice, then three times. Trying to emulate her, I used my wings a little to bring more weight down on my third try. Unlike Starshine, however, when I came down as hard as I could, the cloud remained fixed and rain-less.

“O-oops,” I said. “How was that?” Starshine smiled tenderly at me before answering.

“That was great, honey...” Suddenly, and unexpectedly, her voice picked up. “...if you were a little baby foal! You call yourself a Pegasus?!” I could only watch as the little mare with the mechanical wings screamed in my face louder than any stallion ever could.

“Now, you’re going to do it AGAIN. And you will keep doing it until you get it right! Do I make myself clear?!”

“Yes ma’am!” I shouted, already bouncing. Somehow, all the shouting had finally kicked my brain into gear. I kept bouncing, and Starshine kept hurling insults against me, my mental health, and my hygiene, but no rain came out of the cloud.

I wanted to take my camera off my neck, but Starshine had told me only little foals would let a camera stop them.

“Alright, here’s how it’s going to go this time,” she shouted after I failed yet again. “You are going to get it right on the next try, or I’m going to start practicing my lightning-making a few hooves above your head! Do I make myself clear?” She rattled her metal wings on her last sentence, for emphasis.

Images of trying to dodge bolts of electricity while bouncing on a cloud danced in front of my vision. “Crystal, ma’am!”

I steeled myself and once again tried to feel the Pegasus magic inside me. The same magic that let us walk on clouds would let me make rain: I just had to focus it. Naturally, it had seemed easier when I read about it than now that I was actually trying it.

“Now bounce!” Starshine shouted. I did.

“ONE!” Maybe it was fear, but this time I could feel a flicker of...something.

“TWO!” That feeling grew; I could feel a tingling coursing through my body, strongest in my hooves.

“THREE!” I flapped my wings with all my might to gain a little bit more height, desperation fueling my efforts. I strained until I felt something pop, and then snapped them shut. Plummeting straight toward the cloud, I kept my hooves outstretched, trying to concentrate the magic within. As my hooves touched the puffy surface, I felt something kick in, and flow through me and into the cloud.

Rain poured from the cloud in rapid, small drops. Unfortunately, it seemed I had let out a little too much magic, as I poured through the cloud along with the downpour.

I screamed as I fell, my brain shutting off and forgetting the whole me-being-a-Pegasus thing. The ground grew rapidly to meet my flailing body. Suddenly, a green and pink streak blew by me and positioned itself below. I landed on my right side with a sickening thump on Starshine’s metal back. The force of my landing and me being a bit larger and heavier than her sent us both tumbling the last ten feet to the ground.

Coughing, Starshine stood up. “You okay?” she asked. Besides a few scratches, she looked fine. Her wings were dented in a couple places, but looked workable.

Looking across the grass field, I saw my camera hadn’t been so lucky. Sometime during my hundred-foot fall, the beautiful ebony-cased machine had slipped off and now lay on the ground, smashed into a thousand tiny pieces, with not a single picture of Fillydelphia on its film. If I hadn’t just been so close to death, I would have felt much worse. As it was, I lay curled up on the ground where I’d fallen. When Starshine addressed me this time, her angry demeanor from earlier was gone, replaced with authentic kindness.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “Can you move?” I looked down at myself. I was bruised in a couple places, but otherwise felt fine. Great even.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. Feeling a little light headed, I got to my feet. “Just a little woozy, that’s all.” When I turned around to show her that I was alright, she gasped.

“Minty, your right wing...I think it’s broken.”

“What? No it’s not,” I said quickly. Just to show her how wrong she was, I proudly spread both my wings. Oddly, her expression didn’t change. I looked back at my wings, and they were still folded up at odd angles. I tried again. Nothing.

“I think you’re going to need a doctor,” Starshine said.

Indignant, I said, “What are you talking about? I’m fine!” I took a few steps forward to get my bearings back. The first couple of steps were fine, but by the third my head was cloudy. I collapsed somewhere between the fourth and fifth.

* * *

I cracked one eye open to reveal a plain hospital room. The room was bare of any sort of magic-powered machinery, and only contained my bed and a chair. In said chair sat Grapevine, who had evidently nodded off. She snored softly and shifted her head a bit, giving me a good look at fresh worry lines.

The door swung open with a crash, revealing a tan mare dressed in a doctor’s coat.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” she said as she cantered to my bedside. She magicked a clipboard from the front of my bed and looked at it.

“Am I better now?” I slurred. My tongue hadn’t quite yet caught up to my brain, and seemed to be doing a dance of its own.

The doctor shook her head and pointed to my backside. Looking over my shoulder, I could see my entire midsection covered in one large bandage. Clearing her throat, the doctor said, “Our head physician is away, and we don’t have the facilities to treat a Pegasus in your, er, condition.”

“A flying city can’t fix a broken wing?” I asked.

“We can repair a wing,” the doctor said, “But we can’t restructure one that’s been shattered: that’s a job for a unicorn.”

“Where can I find one of those?” I said. She shrugged, and then quickly excused herself from the room. I figured she was afraid of my reaction, though I didn’t feel mad. To be honest, it felt like just another weary step on my journey since I’d gotten here.

Once she was sure the doctor was gone, Grapevine spoke up, having woken up sometime during the previous conversation. “I know somepony who can fix your wing right up,” she said.

“And you didn’t mention this before because…?” I said.

“He’s not exactly popular with the MedCorp hospitals: he does work for free,” she explained.

More information to store away, but I couldn’t focus at that moment. My stomach was rumbling, and when I looked out the window, it was night. “How long was I out?” I asked.

Grapevine looked up from a magazine that she had presumably procured from nowhere. “Oh, only 4 or 5 hours,” she said. My eyes felt like they were ready to bugger out of my head; the longest I had ever been unconscious was a few minutes after an incident involving a scooter and three barrels of molasses. My stomach growled again, louder this time.

“Does this place have anything to eat?” I asked.

“Actually, Lightning Sprint brought over some food just a little while ago,” Grapevine said, pointing to a bedside table I hadn’t seen behind her. On it were a couple bowls of noodles, both of them full. I eyed the food suspiciously, but my hungry tummy didn’t care whether they were from a crazy griffin or not.

* * *

Over dinner, I had Grapevine catch me up to speed on what had happened since I’d been out. She rambled on like usual, but at least seemed to lose more of her usual gruff tone with a little food in her.

She was saying, “Starshine brought you here on her back by herself; you should have seen it, it was quite a sight.”

“Is she okay?” I asked once my mouth was empty.

Grapevine nodded. “She’s fine, she’s actually in the next room; the doctor wanted her to sleep here overnight too.”

“I didn’t hurt her, did I?” I said.

Grapevine shook her head. “Nothing more than her pride at letting one of her trainees get hurt.” I couldn’t help but grin a little at that. A question formed in my mind as I looked longingly at my now-empty bowl.

“So how come Lightning brought us food? I thought she hated us.” Grapevine laughed a little and rolled her eyes.

“It’s Lightning and I that have issues. As far as I know, she’s probably happy to have a new Pegasus in town.”

“Sounds like you two know each other,” I observed. If Grapevine was always as snoopy as she acted, then I wouldn’t be surprised.

“We’ve met before,” Grapevine said. She got up and stretched a little bit, and placed the empty noodle bowls back onto their tray. I watched enviously from my hospital bed, suddenly aware of the bonds keeping me from moving my wings.

“What did you and her talk about anyway?” I asked.

She sighed and said, “I guess you should know what we’re doing at some point.” Grapevine walked over to her bag and pulled out a piece of stationary with the Fillydelphia Chronicler’s logo at the top.

“Ornate got a tip a few days ago about some dealings in Serenity City; apparently somepony has been paying the Weather Corps to keep certain areas of the city clear, and this pony recently increased their payments by quite a bit.” She raised a hoof to her chin. “I tried to talk to Lightning about it, but she denied knowing of any such thing.”

“Sounds suspicious,” I said. I handed the piece of paper back to her. It was a hastily-written report of amounts paid and when: the kind of dreary stuff only a reporter could appreciate.

Grapevine nodded. “It is, but I don’t really have anything to go on right now. It could be her, or she could be covering for a friend.”

“Or, you know, Lightning’s actually innocent,” I suggested.

“An investigative journalist never assumes anypony is telling the truth, Minty,” Grapevine said as she rolled her eyes.

“Wait, but aren’t we reporters?” I asked, confused. I had thought we were doing a story on the Summer Sun Celebration or something, not politics and corruption.

Grapevine sighed and placed a reassuring hoof on the side of my bed. “We are not here as reporters, because a report only tells an event as it happened. No, we are here to investigate, and to find out why a story happened.”

She used her magic to float the magazine she had been reading over to me. Grapevine pointed a hoof to the story printed on the front page. “Preparations Underway For Summer Sun Celebration,” it read.

“See, this is reporting,” Grapevine said. She snapped the magazine up, and looked at it briefly before tossing it away. “But we’re on assignment to find out why things don’t quite match up in the mayor’s office, not just give another boring story about how many cakes will be at the reception this year.”

“So that’s what we’re going around Fillydelphia for?” I asked. The whole business seemed dreadfully confusing to me, but I was determined to prove that I could handle real journalism just as well as Grapevine could.

Grapevine returned to her seat and casually leaned back, indifferent tone returning. “That’s about the size of it.”

I wanted to say more, but a yawn cleared all the words from my throat. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured it must have been whatever medicine they had given me doing its job. I tried to fight it. A second, longer yawn confirmed the inevitable.

“I can see you’re tired,” Grapevine said. I could only wearily nod, my eyelids starting to flutter. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” she promised, walking toward the door.

Maybe it was the medicine or the fright of my first injury away from home, but before I could stop myself, I asked, “Grapevine do you think you would- I mean- would you mind staying in here tonight?” I winced and felt like a little foal again for saying it, but I’d never slept in a hospital before, and these places gave me the creeps.

I was afraid she was going to say no, or worse, laugh; but instead she silently walked back to her chair and sat down without protest. I wanted to thank her, or at least say something, but instead I yawned again and let my eyelids slide down as I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Next Chapter: Episode 1: New Toys Estimated time remaining: 11 Hours, 47 Minutes
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