//------------------------------// // Chapter II: Reflections // Story: The Harder They Fall // by DJ Leftwing //------------------------------// Morning in Rainbow Dash’s house was always a sight to behold. The morning mist rising from the clouds would refract the golden sunlight, causing millions of miniature rainbows to fill the rooms. Rainbow was of course used to this by now, and took no notice of the spectacle as she got up and shook the dew out of her mane. She yawned and rubbed her eyes with her hooves. She felt grateful that she had finally been able to get some sleep without being haunted by memories of her filly-hood. All those other ponies, laughing at her and calling her names like Rainbow Crash and Lame-o Dash. She hated nightmares like those, ones that she knew actually had happened in her past. The worst ones though had nothing to do with the bullies at camp, but rather the one filly that actually had been her friend. Her nightmares involving Fluttershy were not what most ponies would consider nightmares, most would consider them fantasies. Ever since her first year of summer flight camp, Rainbow had felt a stronger attraction to mares than to colts. At the time, she hadn’t realized it was anything different, and had just led her life as if it were a perfectly normal way to think. One day though, some of the older campers had seen her talking with another filly, and we’ll just say that Dash wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding her true feelings for the other mare. Before she knew what had happened, the whole of camp was gossiping about how the mare with the rainbow mane was a filly-fooler, a faggot, a queer. Dash learned that day that society looks down on mares who like mares, so she started work on her façade, her mask of a tough filly that was not to be messed with. By her third year at camp, RD had almost perfected her alter ego, right down to the ‘I don’t give a buck what you think’ attitude to go with it. It had been hard work, but she had done it, and now none of the other ponies at camp would dare to challenge her sexual orientation again. The drawback to her deception though, was that nopony wanted to hang out with the ego-centric, ‘I’m better than you’ Rainbow Dash; they would much rather avoid her, or make fun of her for her many failed attempts at breaking the speed records. To summarize…Rainbow Dash had no friends. The dreams that Rainbow was having though were not about those first three years of camp, they were about the fourth, when a certain yellow furred, pink maned pegasus attended camp for the first time. Her name was Fluttershy, and she was older than most of the fourth year fliers, but was obviously weaker than most of the sixth years. That first day of camp when Rainbow Dash saw that pony, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, for she knew that this underdeveloped filly was going to be picked on to no end, much like herself. She swore on that day that she would try her best to help this pegasus against the camp bullies as best she could. If she had known that this self-made promise would start to erode her disguise, she would have stayed as far away from Fluttershy as possible. --- The preliminary trials for camp were well on their way, and Rainbow Dash was sitting on a cloud bank above the rings section of the course. She liked to watch the first year students fly the course to see who might actually be at a threat to her later on in the year. This year, she had a second purpose, and that was to do her own evaluation of the new shy pegasus that she had decided to help. ‘It’s almost her turn,’ Rainbow thought, looking down at the cloud at the start of the course. ‘I hope she does well. Maybe she won’t be so bad and I won’t actually have to keep the bullies away from her. Maybe she’ll actually be good enough that we could hang out as flying buddies, which would be cool; I’d actually have a friend. It’s her turn now, I hope she does well.’ Fluttershy jumped into the air and started flapping her wings, only to give into gravity and fall right back onto the cloud. ‘That doesn’t look good, but it was kinda cute.’ Rainbow shook her head, trying to get that last thought out of her head. ‘No, no, no, no, no Rainbow; you’ve got to stop thinking like that,’ she scolded herself, ‘Ponies don’t like ponies who think like that, just focus on the trials.’ She looked back at the course, but couldn’t find Fluttershy. She swiveled her head frantically, looking for any sign of the yellow pony, and finally found her on a cloud at the very bottom of the course, being bullied by the two idiots that she had never bothered to learn the names of. She hopped off her cloud bank and swooped down to the site of the confrontation, and interfered just in time to be challenged to a race. ‘Great, a race, now I’m just going to have to show Fluttershy how much better than her I actually am; she’ll never want to hang out with me after this. But I can’t decline, because that would just ruin my entire image…which one should I do?’ She accepted the challenge, and the next day the race was underway. --- Rainbow snapped out of her daydream when she heard a knock at her door. ‘Probably Cloudchaser coming to ask if I’m coming to work today,’ she thought. She looked down at the breakfast that she had been preparing, and saw a bowl with a piece of bread floating in milk, and a plate with some cereal, which appeared to be toasted. ‘I really need to stop daydreaming while fixing breakfast,’ she noted as she walked over to the door to answer it.