//------------------------------// // Chapter 49 // Story: To Serve Bronies // by Fuzzy Necromancer //------------------------------// “Oh my gosh oh my fucking gosh, I’m so sorry!” Rainbow Dash yelped as Fluttershy crashed onto a cloud. “Oh no of course I’m sorry it’s all my fault!” Fluttershy gasped out, hiding her face with her wings and scrambling on the edge of the small cumulus. Rainbow bit onto her friend’s tail and pulled her onto the stable surface. “I’m really, really sorry. Crap, I should have paid more attention,” Rainbow Dash added. When Fluttershy unfolded her wings and stopped hiding behind her hair, the fear and shame vanished from her eyes. “Oh. It’s you.” “Yeah, it’s me,” Dash said, chuckling nervously. That was the thing about Fluttershy. Most of the time she acted like a complete doormat, and she couldn’t stand up for herself to save her life, (like that time in Cloudsdale when she fell and nearly broke both left legs). Give her something else to stand up for, though, like a blind cat or a wounded cobra, and she turned as cold and hard as a thrown horseshoe. Now that she thought about it, Rainbow Dash didn’t remember if The Stare could work on other ponies. Was that what caused the hair on her back to rise up and her knees to knock together and her throat to dry up as if she’d just deep-throated a salt lick? Maybe it was just the cold cross-breezes at this altitude. Cross-breezes could be, like, really really annoying. Rainbow Dash definitely wasn’t afraid of Fluttershy. Absolutely. Positively. She was going to stand her ground and not take any bullshit from the least-intimidating person she knew. “So?” Rainbow Dash said, not stuttering, trying to match Fluttershy’s glassy, blank expression with a determined glare. She unconsciously pawed the cloud and spread out her wings to look bigger. “W-what are you doing out here? Come to accuse me of roasting baby bunnies alive?” Her voice didn’t end in a squeak. Fluttershy took a step back, and the hardness left her expression, then returned with double intensity. “Ha hah. Very funny. I’m here to look out for my new friend and make sure the omniscum unicorns don’t do anything they regret.” “They’re not doing anything right now,” Rainbow Dash said, defensively. “I’m actually going over to explain things to them for Applejack.” Fluttershy’s expression softened once again, and she went back to her usual self. “Oh, really? What is Applejack trying to do?” “To protect your new friend, the human, and that other human, and get Twilight and Rarity and Lemon Hearts and everypony else to hold their horses and chill out,” Dash said. “Oh, that’s alright then,” Fluttershy said. She gently preened her feathers. “Yeah,” Rainbow said, feeling relieved but still waiting for an apology. “I’m glad to hear it,” Fluttershy said. “I knew you’d see reason eventually.” Rainbow Dash’s eye twitched. “Oh?” Fluttershy smiled and took to the air. “I knew you wouldn’t side with ponycidal carnivores against your oldest friend. If you promise to give up meat forever I’ll be ready to accept your apology. Rainbow flapped her wings once. “You’re ready for me to say sorry now?” Fluttershy nodded solemnly. “If you promise to never ‘go fishing’ or do anything like that ever again.” Rainbow could feel an electric charge rising up from her hooves, like the start of a storm. Her good face-kicking hoof started to itch. “What about all those other times? I tried to say sorry before.” “Well, now it’s different, because you’re not encouraging dangerous and violent behavior against fellow sapient creatures or defending murderous unicorns trying to overrun the city and break a truce that has lasted for—” Fluttershy’s voice dissolved into a stream of big, long, boring words. Rainbow had never seen her so…smug, so scoffing, so sure of herself. It didn’t make her feel good. She wasn’t the one who’d assumed the worst of a friend, who shut them out, slammed the door in their face, and generally acted like a dick. Yeah, how did Fluttershy expect anyone to listen to her if she didn’t play ball and talk nice? Fuck that. “You sure you don’t want to apologize for anything?” Rainbow said, hovering over her. “Why would I do that?” Fluttershy honestly sounded confused. Since when were Rarity and Twilight “the unicorns”? And they hadn’t even done anything remotely ponycidal! The only ones acting ponycidal were Applejack and her war party. She tried to nudge some doubts and uncertainties to the back of her mind. She’d been bending over backwards to make her “friend” Fluttershy comfortable, to apologize for being a normal Pegasus, for eating a bucking trout, for pony’s sake, like she’d been caught in the middle of large-scale genocide. She gritted her teeth. “Go buy some apples and shove em up your ass!” Rainbow shouted. “You and Applejack don’t need my help anyway!” Fluttershy drifted down to the cloud, face frozen. “I’m tired of you playing the ‘oldest friend’ card when you sure don’t act like I’m your oldest friend!” She was spitting and foaming at the mouth. If there’d been ground under her, she would be ripping it up right now. Fluttershy wanted to treat her like the bad guy, then? Fine. She’d act like the bad guy. She didn’t notice the flurry of snow coming down from the cloud as she flew away. She was too busy hiding her tears. # “Who the hay did that?” Applejack shouted. A great deal of nervous shuffling and coughing broke out among the earth pony ranks. A gap widened in the ranks, leaving Granny shaking like a new-born foal. “Darnit, I told ya if you couldn’t behave you’d go straight back to the barn.” Granny Smith sucked her dentures defiantly. “That was not a hot pie or an onion bomb, or even a high-pressure beanbag. That was a jagged ROCK, Granny! I told everyone, I’m havin’ no first use of stone weapons in this w-, er, hopefully short-term localized peace-keepin’ conflict resolution.” There were a few snickers from the back of the herd. “You heard me Granny Smith. Big Mac?” Big Mac tried, without success, to hide behind Caramel. “Big brother, would you kindly escort our revered elder back to the barn and make sure she don’t get to thinking she’s still a spring chicken and starting rock-fights she can’t finish?” “Biggins Worthermeyer Macintosh, if you dare lay one restraining hoof on me I’ll give you such a tongue-lashing your unconceived grandchildren will wince from it!” Granny snarled. Sweat coated Big Mac’s flanks as he wavered between his grandmother and his sister. “Big Mac, you just get your granny out of trouble. You know the family would never forgive us if anything bad happened to her,” she gritted her teeth, “and I wouldn’t forgive myself if she Did Something She Gunna Regret.” Applejack and Granny Smith were now standing across from each other, less than a stone’s throw apart, while Big Mac tried to burrow into the untilled soil. His own sweat slick was thickened by a layer of spittle from his two relatives. All the attention was focused on them, and two colts started up a chant of “fight, fight, fight!” As a result, nopony saw who cast the Ray of Frost spell that split Granny’s lip.