A young filly ran across the street. Her terrified eyes were filled with tears. Behind her, a faint multicolored trail was visible. In her mouth she had a shining red apple. Behind her, three colts. "Stop! Thief!" One of the colts took off and flew towards her. Just as he reached out, she turned hard left. A loud bang was heard as the colt flew into a market stand. Melons fell down, through the clouds down to their certain destruction.
One down, two to go. The other two colts were now also flying, and started to catch up. She could not fly yet herself, but her wings did allow her to glide fairly quickly. She jumped onto the back of a bypasser, and from there to one of the market stalls. One more jump and she would be on the rooftops. She spread her wings, and jumped. As quickly as she could she started flapping them. But it was not enough. The cloud wall came closer and closer, and she was not gaining altitude. Come on, just a bit higher... Come on stupid wings, FLY!
Just as she was about to hit the wall, a tingling feeling went down her spine, and into her wings. The wings, first just a couple small feathers, grew quickly in size, transforming into real wings capable of flying. All right!
She flapped her wings two more times, and was already far above the rooftop. The two colts following her were still closing in, though. She extended her legs in front of her, and flew up as quickly as she could, the two colts still right on her tail. Above her, there was a small cloud. As a pegasus, she knew flying through one of those at this speed would be like running into a brick wall, unless you did it just right.
The two colts were now almost next to her, and started to come closer towards her. One leg extended in front of her, the other just behind it. Now all that was needed to get through the cloud was to spin her front hoof clockwise a bit. Or was it counter-clockwise? At full speed she flew into the cloud. Eyes closed, all she could do was hope she did it right.
Bam! A loud bang confirmed her fears, it was counter-clockwise, and not clockwise... The cloud had refused to give way and the two colts grabbed her. "You ain't going nowhere, Rainbow Crash. Filthy thief you are." The pain in her head started to get worse, and she lost consciousness.
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A white light shone,bright enough to hide the rest of the room from sight. The headache was unbearable, especially with that light flooding the room. All she wanted now was a bit of darkness to relax, and some food. "As if it isn't Rainbow Dash," a colt spoke. "Try not to move. You crashed yourself pretty badly this time. Crashing into a cloud at those speeds is not really that good for new wings, you know."
Finally her eyes began to adjust to the light. Around the light there was a white ceiling. Around the ceiling were four walls, two of them white, and two with curtains in front of windows. At the end of her bed there was a stallion dressed in a white doctor's robe. To her left a heart monitor attached to her left front leg. Her right front leg was tied to the bed. Some small tubes ran from a needle in her left front leg to a bag suspended by an iron pole.
The headache became worse and worse again, and darkness filled the room again as she fell back out of consciousness.
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Slowly the darkness started to turn lighter again. From pitch-black the inside of her eyelids slowly turned to a soft gray, and then to a faint red color. Voices echoed through her head. "She'll need a long bed rest, but we can't keep her. Does she have a family she could go to?" The voice was one of a concerned adult mare. They were not spoken words though, mere some kind of echo, some kind of memory that seemed to replay inside her head. It sounded hollow, and started.to fade away as it kept playing over and over in her head. A different voice started to gain volume. This one sounded a bit familiar, though this one was hollow as well. The words were not clear enough to make a full sentence. Only three words were clear enough for her to pick up. No. Father. News.
Slowly a horizontal white line started to appear in the middle of the red. The light from outside her head penetrated through it, into the front of her eyes directly into her head, causing the headache to come up again and her eyes to close in reflex. Father. The word echoed through her head, gaining more and more volume. Her father, there was something about him. All her life she had been a street filly, or at least ever since he had disappeared. Never had she been able to figure out why he had disappeared.
In the streets, life was hard. Every waking minute she had spent finding something to silence her rumbling stomach, often resourcing to garbage bins and other sources of thrash, that contained some of the leftovers of other ponies. Usually she could find something to eat in those.
However, Wednesdays were not really that forgiving. Then the garbage was collected to be brought to the dumps on the ground, piled up high into the air slowly disintegrating so the earth ponies could use it to fertilize the ground. Or at least, that was what she had heard. It seemed strange to her, throwing garbage on fields to make food grow quicker and bigger. But right now, figuring out what happened to garbage was the least of her concerns. There was something those ponies knew about her father that she didn't.
Once again the white line appeared. This time though, her eyes did not slam shut again. The white line grew, and other colors started to appear as well. She was still in the same hospital room, but the other ponies had gone. However, a golden figure started to appear in the corner. Her eyes were still adjusting to the light, but the shape grew sharper, and slowly transformed from a golden glow into a golden harness. Inside the harness, a white colt. His face did not show any emotions. He was one of the guards, a high one. She had seen guards way too often before, especially when locked away for stealing, but none of them looked like this one. Usually the armor was just iron, the higher guards sometimes had a different color. But gold was rare. It was reserved for the highest order of guards. The Royal Guards.
Her eyes sprung open in surprise. What was a royal guard doing in the hospital, in her room? "Slowly, Rainbow Dash. We don't want you to slip away again. Allow me to introduce myself." She tried to interrupt the guard, to start explaining that she had not stolen that apple. That it had rolled off the table or something. But as she tried to open her mouth, she found herself unable to do so. Of course, paralyzed. It was a trick they used to keep ponies from escaping from the hospital. It was quite common for criminals to have to visit the hospital before being brought to the guard, and they tended to think that escaping from the hospital was easier than to escape from a building filled with guards. Therefore there was always one unicorn in the hospital, to paralyze those patients.
"My name is Golden Knife. I am an investigator of the Royal Guard. My job is to investigate crimes so we can prevent them in the future. Right now, I am investigating a series of murders. You are one of the key witnesses, even though you might not even know about the murders. But right now I can not go into detail. We are not allowed to discuss these matters at public locations. As for that apple, it has been paid." Golden Knife stood up and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
After a couple seconds, the door opened again. This time, a white unicorn entered the room. "Okay now Rainbow, I am going to release you from my spell. Please try to move as little as possible, you will need your rest." The white mare closed her eyes, and her horn started to glow. Instantly a freezing feeling surged from her head down her spine, followed by a warm glow. The spell had been canceled, and Rainbow was able to move again slowly she raised her head to take a better look at the mare, who had already turned around. "The doctor will be with you shortly." The sound of her hooves echoed around the chamber as it once again filled with silence.
Even though the spell had only locked her body in place, her mind seemed to be locked as well. A lot of thoughts were racing randomly through her head trying to make sense of themselves. Why would a crime investigator visit her? What could she have witnessed? And those echoes, about her father? What was going on with that? Did he have something to do with those crimes?
As her thoughts raged on the doctor entered the room again. His face was in a frown. It was not really a frown though, more a look of disappointment. Or more worrying, or a combination of those three. He checked off a couple boxes on a paper at the end of the bed, and let out a sigh. “Look, Rainbow Dash, we have got a bit of a problem here. I’m not sure how to tell you this.”
A long silence followed. Still working his way through some papers, the doctor walked around the room. He moved the chair from the corner next to the bed, and sat down. Rainbow could not bear it any more. “Well, what is it? What’s the problem? And what was up with that guard guy? And how -” The doctor raised a hoof to stop her.
“We can not keep you here very long. The hospital is too small and we need the beds. But you will need a lot of rest, so we would usually send you home.”
Her head raised up a bit and a smile formed on her face. “So I can go home now?”
“No... Rainbow Dash, I don’t think you can ever go home again.”
The smile slowly turned into confusion. The doctor did not make any sense. Going home was simple, she knew the way from here. She could walk, or fly, it with her eyes closed. Many times before she had walked that road. “Why not? I know the way.”
“Look Rainbow Dash. You don’t have a home any more. Nor a father.”
Tears started to form on her cheeks. What the hay was going on? No father? No home? “What do you mean?”
Slowly the doctor started to talk. His eyes were showing pain. He did not want to tell her this, but she had to know. “There has been an accident in your house. Apparently a gas leak. There has been an explosion, and your dad is no longer with us. That is all I know.” The doctor stood up, and walked out of the room.