“You’ve heard this story before, haven’t you?”
The filly squirmed awkwardly on the storyteller’s lap, who in turn was sat upon a park bench overlooking a small pond. Blood and heat rushed to her cheeks, turning orange into a bright pink to match the coat of the pony whose knee she was perched upon. She was a small filly for her age, with stocky limbs and small wings protruding out of her back. A mop of messy red hair sat upon her head, obscuring her bright gold eyes. She looked up to her relative, who gave a wide smile. If one saw her in a photograph, one would guess the pink pony was a hundred, but in motion she had so much pent up energy and joy that she looked not a day over fifty.
“I just really like the story, Granny Pie,” the young filly said with a mix of embarrassment and affection. She pawed at her elder’s chest, who smiled at this motion. “I especially like the way that you tell it.” The older pony’s smile grew that few millimetres more, with a somewhat smug satisfaction at that statement.
“You think I’m good? You should’ve heard my mom’s version; she actually knew The Dash,” she said, voice singing with pride. The young filly knew this already, but every time it was mentioned it was as exciting as the first. To think, her Granny Pie was related to someone who had actually met The Dash. That practically made Granny Pie a princess.
“Did you ever meet her? What was she like? What was your mommy like?”
“One at a time, Appleseed, one at a time,” the older pony insisted. “I’m quick but I’m not that quick! Yes, I did meet The Dash, but it was so long ago now.” She put a hoof to her lips in thought. “I know the books were pretty close, but they got some things wrong. She wasn’t nearly as tall as I thought, for example.”
“L-like in the first two films!” Appleseed cheered to this. “The books say that she had three colours in her hair, but the films have four!”
“Oh! Her hair!” The older pony suddenly began to laugh to a particularly personal memory. “When my mom read about her hair, she tore the book in half! I’d never seen her so angry; she looked like I had just taken cookies out of the cookie jar and used the jar to smash a family heirloom! Even her hair deflated, like a balloon! She had to bake, like, a million cupcakes to calm down, and they were all the colours of the rainbow. It was actually kind of scary.”
“Why? What was The Dash’s hair like?”
“… I think it had six colours. I heard her being called Rainbow once or twice, it must have been a nickname or something.” Then the old pony suddenly looked to Appleseed with a mock frown. “You silly filly, you’ve gotten me off track again!”
“Oh… umm, sorry, Granny Pie.”
“Don’t be apologising. Just remind me where we are.” To this, the little orange filly’s brow furrowed and her nose crinkled, before she looked up once more with a look of realisation.
“She was at Cloudsdale! To save her pet tortoise Tank before he…”
“… before the hibernation began, I remember now,” Granny Pie finished the little filly’s sentence. “Now, the weather factory was an imposing place, even for those who had worked there all their lives…"
Blank austere walls of the blackest clouds ran around the building, towering over all other structures. The only thing in Cloudsdale the factory walls didn’t dwarf was the factory itself; a virtual fortress with a shape and size terrifying to behold. The central block was a huge dome, sitting in the sky like a black sun, and from this dome many minarets climbed upwards, stabbing the sky like spears and gracing even the stars. From every direction, queues of pegasi snaked away from the walls, one line miserably marching inward for yet another day of slave-like work and the next exhaustedly floating away, the only thing causing them not to collapse being the vague hope of reaching their home for just that bit of respite. Atop the walls stood two guards, their bodies obscured by the sheer black uniform of the guards. They stood a short distance apart from one another, their eyes trained on the sky above; the clouds up above were as numerous as drops in an ocean, in preparation for the coming winter. However, amongst the dark grey mass, one of the guards noticed a dot of colour in the distance. Her eyes narrowed in a squint, before widening again.
“Open Skies!” She shouted in terror, her head whipping to her fellow guard. The guard merely looked up casually.
“Nah, I’d say it was overcast,” he said. Then a blur the colour of the sky slammed into him, and he was gone. The remaining Pegasus reached for her walkie-talkie and brought it to her lips.
“Intruder alert, we have a…”
“Actually, this is Red Alert. Hold on, I’ll get Intruder on the line for you,” was the response. The Pegasus blinked, a confused look painting itself across her face.
“Wait, what?” She asked, not noticing a blue pony quietly approaching from behind. It was only when she felt something pinch on her neck that she realised something was wrong, but rather than call for help she simply collapsed.
The Dash pocketed the unconscious pony’s keys, a slightly regretful look on her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in a raspy voice. “You don’t deserve it, but I need to do this. Trust me, it’s for the best.” With that, she spread her magnificent wings, and in one movement took off. Speed being her watchword, she zipped from one piece of cover to the next. She was coming ever closer to her intended point of entry, the door into the kitchen. No pony seemed to notice her, as she knew they wouldn’t; as long as she kept her body low to the ground, and went from cover to cover as fast as possible, no one would spot her.
Unless…
“Hey, boy, what’s wrong?”
The Dash audibly hissed when she heard that. Her back was to a small wall by the kitchen door, making it hard to see, but she soon heard the tell-tale HONK HONK HONK and the panicked flutter of wings!
“Of course,” she thought to herself. “Guard goose! Just my luck!” She could hear the approaching bird as it struggled against its master’s grip. Her eyes looked to and fro for a place to hide, as the repeated honking got closer, and closer, and closer.
“Hey!” The guard shouted, turning the corner. The goose had turned the corner before him already, and he yanked desperately on the leash to control the bird. His eyes shot to the wall, and his brow furrowed. “Oh, come on,” he sighed irritably, walking over to the breadcrumbs that were sat on the fluffy ground. The goose ran over, eagerly digging into the small crumbs, and neither it nor its master noticed a cyan blur whipping to the kitchen door. The blue pony opened it and gingerly crawled in.
The Dash immediately had to hold in a yelp of shock; she couldn’t have been more than an inch away from the cook, a huge bull that was easily twice the size of Big Macintosh. She was so close that she could hear his breathing, and had to hold in hers to make sure he couldn’t hear her either. In a reflection from a hanging pan, she could see the beast peeling an onion carefully, before setting it on the cloudy counter. As soon as his hoof left the onion, it was gone, and there was just an onion-sized hole on the counter where it had been.
“Damn it!” He shouted in rage. “Would it kill these ponies to use real materials?!” Then he heard a quiet ‘fwumph’ behind him, and whipped around. The grill from the vent was sinking through the floor, and immediately his eyes shot up to see a rainbow tail pulling away. “HEY! GET BACK HERE!” He shouted, running over to grab the tail. His hoof met thin air, and he dropped through the hole in the floor the grill had made, with only the beginning of a yelp escaping his lips before he fell away.
The Dash crawled into the vent, the only thing guiding her onwards being her mental map of the factory. It was a huge maze of pipes, and even her limber form struggled to fit, but she knew where she was headed, and her raw determination carried her forward. She knew that she had to stop the winter, at all costs, and mere discomfort wouldn’t come close to stopping her. She only stopped when she saw a dim yellow light coming from one of the shafts. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers.
“Not too late,” she whispered, the faintest hint of relief in her voice. “Thank Celestia!” With renewed vigour, she pulled herself to the grate, and with one well-placed punch snapped it loose of its hold. The clank echoed throughout the huge room that The Dash now found herself in. It was all bathed in a golden shroud, the many pipes all leading to a huge tank of water in the centre of the room. However, The Dash’s eyes immediately focused on one shape far unlike the others. A cage, fit for a bird, but the animal trapped within was no bird and struggled for space.
“Tank!” The Dash let out a raspy hiss, floating down. The tortoise’s gaze slowly turned, before the corners of his green lips curled upwards. The Dash was usually embarrassed to show emotion, but she had tears in her eyes as her forelegs wrapped around the cage. “I thought I’d never see you again! I’m so glad to see you! Now, I just have to get you out, and then we can…”
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere, my little pony!” Boomed a loud voice, deep as the ocean and just as imposing. The Dash looked around, hearing the CRANK CRANK of gears. Before she could stop it, her pet was yanked away from her, the cage zipping away. It went to the centre of the room, the green tortoise becoming a black silhouette in front of the yellow tank of water. There was a second silhouette; a large, round figure, with half of what appeared to be a snout illuminated in the gold light. The Dash’s eyes narrowed, the ruby orbs that were once filled with relief and love now becoming cold.
“Well, well, Porcina,” The Dash spat venomously, a bitter smirk coming to her face. “What happened? Ran out of fudge and decided to take over the world?”
The figure stood closer to The Dash, with the shadows falling away to reveal the rotund pig who stood before her. She dwarfed The Dash, even on legs a mere fraction of the size they should’ve been, and was as wide as she was tall. Sitting atop the pink circle of a body, with no neck truly visible dividing head from body, was a face wearing a smug grin, her lips dividing her face just underneath her large snout. Cold ink-dot eyes peered at The Dash, an oversized crown obscuring the pig’s hair. The only other colour on the pig that wasn’t pink was her sash that wrapped around her belly, with the hilt of a sword facing The Dash.
“I’d show more respect if I were you,” Porcina said coldly, her hooves behind her back. They didn’t look long enough to reach around and meet, and her tiny legs struggled to support her weight, her trotters giving a loud, threatening CLICK with every step. “You’re talking to Equestria’s new princess, after all!”
“Not if I can help it!”
“Trust me, you can’t,” Porcina pointed out, a sneer coming to her face. “With all the tortoises going into hibernation for the winter, there will be nothing that can stop me turning Equestria into glass!”
“But why?” The Dash spat, her wings flaring in indignant rage. Then a look of confusion came across her face as a realisation came to her. “Actually, yeah, why? What in Celestia’s name does turning all of Equestria into inedible, easily breakable glass actually do for you? Also, how are you going about this when tortoises of all things are a major threat to your operation? That doesn’t even begin to make sense.”
There was a pregnant pause, before Porcina spoke up.
“There will be nothing that can stop me turning Equestria into glass,” Porcina repeated herself, hoping that if she ignored the question entirely it wouldn’t come up again. She walked over to a nearby screen and began to input commands idly with her trotter, her gaze still focused on The Dash. “So feel free to flutter away, you little crash-prone irritant, and prepare for next week’s coronation. I’ll want everyone wearing the best.”
“The only thing you’ll be wearing next week is chains,” The Dash spat, rising to her hind legs. She reached to her side and curled her hoof around a lead pipe. She brought it towards her and swung it like a sword, before pointing it threateningly at Porcina. The pig snorted in derision, before tapping her own sword.
“I know you’re an idiot, but even you must know that it would be pointless to fight me. Besides, in your horseshoes, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look up.”
The Dash was suspicious, but her eyes did look up to the ceiling. When they did, her heart leapt to her throat. “You fiend!” She shouted in anger, teeth gritting at the sight of her five best friends in the world hanging from the ceiling in similar cages to Tank’s. This included size, with none of them able to fit in properly. Applejack’s limbs were a tangled mess within her cage. Rarity occasionally made squeaks of pain as her hair somehow coiled itself around her hooves and the bars of the cage. Pinkie Pie’s face was pressed painfully against the wiring. Fluttershy’s canary legs hung awkwardly out of the cage. Twilight Sparkle was struggling to wiggle her horn out of its awkward position on the bars, a deep-set frown on her face. The Dash looked back down to behold the particularly smug pig.
“You don’t think I’d risk kidnapping your pet without some insurance, do you?” She asked. “So why don’t you just walk away, and maybe I’ll let them leave this place alive.”
“Don’t do it, Dash!” Applejack shouted. “It’s a trick! Think of Equestria!”
“Yurr! Jurst furt urr!” Pinkie Pie joined in, though her cheeks being pressed up against the bars meant that every word came with a slur and a torrent of spit raining onto an apoplectic Rarity. The Dash thought for a second, before smiling.
“You know, Porcina,” The Dash began, suddenly sounding quite uninterested in the state of her friends, “I would’ve thought you’d at least attempt a fight. Though I guess you always were a bit of a coward.” To this, the pig seemed indignantly shocked.
“What? But I… oh, I see what you’re doing,” Porcina chuckled. “Trying to goad me into a fight won’t work, featherbrain; I’m no fool. You can’t appeal to my vanity that easily.”
“Also, Porcina, even by pig standards, you’re morbidly obese.”
“YOU’VE JUST SIGNED YOUR OWN DEATH WARRANT!” Porcina shrieked, her face contorting into a bestial rage as she drew her sword. The Dash laughed to this.
“Oh, ok,” she said, a nasty smirk coming to her face. “I didn’t know they gave out fencing lessons at the ice cream factory. What are you going to do? Sit on me? I don’t thi- WOAAAAH!”
The Dash had to very quickly bring her pipe up, just meeting Porcina’s blade mere inches away from her face. The moment the two metals met, Porcina was swinging again, this time with a swipe at the pony’s belly. The Dash only just found time to back off, with Porcina somersaulting with almost balletic grace before landing a kick to the Dash’s forehead. The blue pony was forced away, groaning in pain and bleeding from a cut on her forehead, and the pig smiled dangerously.
“Don’t let my size fool you, runt,” she spat. “Your name might be Dash, but compared to me, you’re just a slug! A slug that I will stamp out!” The Dash now rushed forward, with pipe and sword meeting with a ferocious CLANG! Porcina was knocked back a little, before surging and forcing The Dash back onto the defensive. All the while, they exchanged strikes that came with every blink of the eye. Porcina aimed a chop at The Dash’s head, but very suddenly the Pegasus dove under her legs and rolled under her. The pig let out a yelp of pain as the metal bar crashed into the back of her leg and forced her to one knee, before an elbow slammed into her back. She saw The Dash’s pipe swing towards her snout, but she rolled backwards, tumbling heels over head once and twice before she flipped, landing back on her feet. She looked to the lead-wielding pony; although her head was still bleeding and her chest heaved with every pant, she wore a triumphant smirk.
“You were saying, slowpoke?”
Porcina snarled at the insolence of The Dash, her blood boiling, before their two weapons met again. Soon, a pattern in the fighting began to emerge, with Porcina easily having the power advantage and having agility to match Dash’s, but every time she had her cornered, the smaller pony would weave out of danger and land ferocious blows. All the while, the ponies above screamed encouragements to their friend.
“Knock her dome off, Dashie!”
“Ah believe in yah!”
“… woo hoo…”
“Take this ruffian down a notch, Rainbow!”
“Dash, her weakness is her arms, legs, body and head!”
SCHLIIIIIINK!
Suddenly, all five of the ponies above sharply inhaled as they heard that particularly ominous, awful sound. The Dash had stopped fighting, a look of shock on her face. Her forelegs dropped by her sides limply, her pipe falling to the ground. She could hear her own blood dripping onto the floor just a few inches behind her. Blood dripping from the sword that she was now impaled on, the blade hilt deep into her chest. Porcina was breathless, a bruise growing across her cheek, but her face still split with a wide toothy grin.
“… n-no!” Pinkie Pie shouted in distress, with Porcina stepping back to marvel at the death of her hated enemy. The Dash slowly looked up.
“Applejack…” she murmured quietly, all the prior energy becoming drained from her face. “Tell Fluttershy that I love her.”
“Dash, Ah… hold on, she’s right here!”
“Ok… Fluttershy, tell Applejack to tell Fluttershy that I love her,” The Dash corrected herself. “Oh, and Rarity?”
“Y-yes d-d-darling?” The white unicorn asked, tears in her eyes.
“I… I’ll need you do make me a scabbard.”
The grin on Porcina’s face shrank a little to this, one of her brows raising.
“What are you blabbering about?” The pig asked. The Dash looked to her, and the pig instantly knew that something was wrong. The look on her enemy’s face was completely devoid of fear or pain. Instead, she had a very unnerving look of victorious joy.
“A scabbard, Porcina. For my new sword,” The Dash repeated herself, her hoof coming to the sword’s hilt. To Porcina’s horror, the pony pulled the sword out of her, looking completely unfazed by this. When the steel blade had fully exited her body, the bloody wound had been replaced by a scarlet line as thin as a hair. Porcina rose a curled fist, realising what was happening, but it was too late. There was a SHWING! and The Dash was stood behind her. The pig looked across her body, checking for any cuts on her body. When she saw none, a grin came to her face.
“You completely missed!” She shouted mockingly. Then she remembered that she had seen a flash of white in her eyeline when she was checking herself. She looked back down to the floor, only to see it tumbling away from fifty feet under her. With that, she fell through the large hole that The Dash had cut. “I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, DAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”
With that last proclamation becoming quieter by the second until there was naught but silence, The Dash sighed in relief. The other five ponies cheered, with Dash hovering over to the smallest cage in the room. Tank was still in there, his black beady eyes holding an ocean of love, and the Dash looked back to her pet in kind.
“You’re safe now,” she said, before looking to the control panel Porcina had been using. Her hoof met a large, red button, and the dim gold light becoming a stunningly bright blue. “Good news, Equestria; this year’s winter is coming a little later.”
“HOORAY!” Came a chorus of voices, as suddenly a swarm of ponies collected around The Dash. The various weather factory workers, freed from their oppressive leader, lifted the blue pony over their heads. “LONG LIVE THE DASH, PRINCESS OF FRIENDSHIP!”
“Oh, it was nothing,” The Dash murmured humbly, the hint of a blush coming to her face. “I’m sure any pony would’ve done just the same.”
“Of course not!” Twilight Sparkle piped up. “You’re the Princess of Friendship, Equestria’s saviour and the captain of the Wonderbolts! Only you could’ve done it!”
“I didn’t do it alone, my dear friend,” The Dash said to the alicorn, which made the purple cheeks turn pink.
“Hey!” One of the ponies in the crowd shouted. “Let’s celebrate!”
“A parade!” Said another. The Dash rolled her eyes a little, though her expression was devoid of any serious objections.
“You’re all too kind to me,” she said. “Very well! I’m not one to turn down a party. I, The Dash, Princess of Friendship, declare this day…
… to be the National Dash Parade Day,” Granny Pie finished her story with a dramatic flourish and a twirl of her hoof. The little filly on her seat was struggling to sit still, and shuddered with excitement.
“Y-you mean that was the first National Dash Parade Day?” She asked.
“Yes, my dear. Precisely a hundred and four years ago, on this very day.”
To this, Appleseed squealed in amazement. She leapt up, standing on her hind legs “That was amazing!” She shouted. “I can see it now! Porcina all like, ‘Mwuh ha ha ha! I’m evil and bad!’ and The Dash is like ‘Oh no you don’t!’” The filly punctuated each of these with a wild swing of her forearm, before she mimed a sword fight with her empty hoof. “And Dash is swinging with a ‘Yaah! Yaah! Yaah!’”
“Appleseed!”
Appleseed halted in her actions to find that her hoof had met the hoof of her elder. The elder gestured to her right. “Be more careful. You almost hit that nice mare.” Appleseed’s eyes shifted to her left, to the bench behind their own. There was a purple pony she had failed to notice before sitting on it. It was difficult to see her, with a hooded jacket over her head and her face buried in her book. Granny Pie looked to this mare, who didn’t look back. “Forgive her, she’s very excitable.” Appleseed apologetically looked to the pony as well.
“Sorry, miss. I didn’t see you.”
“It’s fine,” came the blunt reply. Despite the words, she sounded like she was holding a wealth of emotion back.
“There we go,” Granny Pie said, smiling once again. She then looked down to Appleseed. “Come on; let’s go to the Dash Parade.”
“Yay!” Appleseed cheered, her spirits lifting again as she leapt off the bench. Granny Pie slowly followed her, a gentle smile on her face. Then it shifted as the old pony looked back to the purple mare.
“Excuse me, miss,” she said softly. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but don’t I recognise you?”
“No you don’t, Bubblegum,” came the very bitter reply. Granny Pie looked amazed at the mention of her first name, but the tone of the pony intimidated her enough not to press the issue. With a shrug of the shoulders, Granny Pie and her granddaughter began to walk away, leaving the purple mare to her thoughts. Neither of them saw another pony approaching the bench. A very tall pony, coat as white as chalk and her flowing hair showing all the colours of the rainbow, wearing an expression between a frown and a smirk and pointing it directly at the hooded mare. A pony who just by her enormity and her crown they would’ve recognised as Princess Celestia, though on this day she was wearing a The Dash brand cap instead of her regal crown.
“That was not very polite of you, my faithful student. Especially to the descendants of your best friends.”
Twilight Sparkle slammed the book she was reading down on the bench. Her hooves threatened to rip the book apart, so tightly she gripped it. When her head whipped around to meet Celestia’s gaze with her own, hood falling away, Celestia could see teeth gritted in rage and one of her eyes twitching.
“The stories get worse every damn year!” Twilight Sparkle shouted angrily. “How did we get to this point?! Rainbow Dash adds one little detail about the guard goose to Scootaloo, and a hundred years down the line, she’s got a whole parade based on complete fabrications! No, not a whole parade, an annual parade that’s occasionally broken up by the fifth film about her!”
“Twilight, you really need to lighten up,” Celestia said, taking a sip from her drink, naturally in a Rainbow Dash shaped cup. “It’s just a bit of harmless fun.”
“A bit of harmless fun?!” Twilight Sparkle squawked in protest. “You think misinformation on this scale is ‘a bit of harmless fun’?! Would you like it if we just published books calling Starswirl the Bearded… um… Stargirl the… the… Weirdo?! Huh?!” She crossed her forearms, her scowl showing no sign of shrinking. Then she looked up again. “It’s gotten to the point where some ponies even think that she was the Princess of Friendship!”
This prompted a look of confusion from Princess Celestia. “Wait, you mean she wasn’t?”
Twilight Sparkle’s jaw dropped at this. “… but… you…” she began, before having to stop herself. Then she breathed in. “You met her! In fact, not only did you meet her, but you’re the one who made me the Princess of Friendship!”
“You? What, no,” Princess Celestia said with a shake of her head. “I think I’d remember if I made you the Princess of Friendship. I think I made you the Princess of Books or something.”
“Princess Celestia, are you crazy? You don’t even remember I… hold on,” Twilight Sparkle stopped herself, a stunned look coming to her face. “There’s been an opening for Princess of Books this whole time… and you didn’t mention it to me?”
“Yes I did, Twilight,” Celestia pointed out triumphantly. “When I crowned you. Remember? It was just after The Dash completed the cutie mark spell. You don’t need me to tell you the story again, do you?”