Thirty Minute Pony Stories

The morning fog had already given way to a blue sky. Pegusai gathered and placed armfuls of cloud on a snowcloud. The sky was crowded with ponies, rather than the usual overcast of grey.

 The change in weather needed to happen in an instance; volunteer pegusai were pulled from their jobs to blanket the town with a fleet of cumulonimbus clouds. According to the weather calendar, it needed to snow by the end of the work day.

Flights of pegusai flew around the cloud. They circled it, creating wisps of white and grey to swirl around and stick to the cloud.

Rainbow Dash and her supervisor observed the growing cloud. Within one hour the cloud’s width had doubled. There were no mistakes, a first.

“At this rate, we won’t need the volunteers.” her supervisor remarked as she recorded the cloud’s growth in a journal. “Tell them to stop and go back to work before they make the cloud too big.”

———

“It hasn’t even been an hour yet.” the long-haired stallion noted as he pushed a piece of cloud into a gap.

“Well, you can go back to work. We can take it from here.” Rainbow Dash said.

“You don’t have to fillysit me like Derpy, you know.”

“She knows when to stop, at least.”

“I’ll stop when I stop.” the stallion said, cramming a large clod of cloud into a small gap.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and let the stallion alone.

Rainbow Dash glanced at the cloud above. There were no gaps within the cloud.

A bad sign.

———

“I told you that you can leave!” the supervisor roared. He slammed his hooves at the cloud. The surface felt dense, heavy with ice.  His hooves felt the sensation of hard rime growing at the edges of the cloud.

“When we weather ponies tell you to leave, you leave. You didn’t make a snowcloud, you made a hailcloud.”

The pegusai winced at her words. Before the supervisor could lecture them about the complexities of her job, they darted from her sight.

She gave a sharp stomp at the cloud. A satisfying crack sounded. She felt the ice below fragment. She gave another stomp. The ice broke into smaller fragments.

“Everything okay up there?” Rainbow Dash asked from the opposite end of the cloud.

“You tell Ditzy to come, it takes an hour to fix her and everypony else’s mistakes. Tell her not to come, and it takes two hours to fix everypony else’s mistakes.”

———[Time limit]———

Rainbow Dash let out a laugh.

The cloud shook slightly as the ice within loosened up. The north end felt like a snowcloud again, but there was still the east and south side to weaken. The snow would have to begin when everypony fell asleep, it seemed.

Rainbow Dash looked at the ground below. Half of it was covered in shadow. She spied a single pegasus saunter through the air. She could make out a yellow tint on the pegasus.

It was Derpy, most likely. She flew through the air, occasionally creating motes of ice and water with her wings. Rainbow Dash had become accustomed to scolding her for her reckless use of her wings, but kept her mouth shut as she watched her from above.

Rainbow Dash and the other weather ponies welcomed her clumsy wings, even if it made them work harder. Strangely, her clumsiness made their work go even faster.

—-

BSB Comments:

Heh. I liked the turn around of not calling in Derpy being what made the most trouble for everypony, and I liked the fact that the volunteer ponies didn’t do a good job at all. Derpy helping in her own little way at the end was great. Well done!