Episode 1
And along came a Spider...Part 4
Rainbow's first swing
On the roof of the building Spike and Twilight lived in at the moment, the two of them were now patiently waiting for Rainbow Dash to show up.
It had been a couple of hours since Twilight finished the new wrist-mounted prototype 'Web-shooters' and tested that they worked in a controlled environment. Now they just needed to test them out for real.
However, just before they could get started, Rainbow decided to run back home and grab something without specifying what it was, leaving the other two there to wait for her until she got back.
With nothing better to do until then, Spike decided to use this opportunity to ask his sister about who she secretly had a crush on. With Dash out of earshot, she could now speak freely about it for the first time since...well ever basically.
Spike was fairly sure he knew who it was though...until she then told him that it was someone else entirely.
"Wait, really?!" He asked in clear surprise when she finally revealed who she was interested in.
After hesitating a bit, Twilight confirmed, "Yes...really, Spike."
"But...if that's who you have a crush on...then why is everyone so sure you have a thing for that Flash Sentry guy?"
The question made her let out a frustrated groan, "Look, just because I bumped into him more than once does not mean I'm dating him. Okay, I guess he did ask me out that one time, but I said no! I mean, I think he's a nice guy and all, but I just don't see him that way...and he's also Sunset's ex! That just makes it weird."
"Yeah, I see your point," Spike conceded. "Still, I never would have guessed you had a thing for-"
Though just before he could say Twilight's mystery crush's name out loud, Rainbow Dash jumped up on the roof next to them and shouted, "I'm back!", startling both of them in the process.
Spike and Twilight both sharply turned around to look at her...in what was a very interesting get-up.
It was a skin-tight blue bodysuit decorated with yellow lightning bolts all over it, and even came with a mask that had openings for the eyes, mouth, and Dash's long rainbow hair. Also, a pair of flight goggles rested on her forehead.
Seeing her rather unusual fashion choice, Spike wondered, "Uh...Dash, what's with the get-up?"
"...And wouldn't it be easier to just take the stairs instead of climbing up the wall?" Twilight added.
"Already told you I don't like stairs," Rainbow reminded. "As for the outfit, well...it's my mom's old flight suit from back when she was one of the Wonderbolts. It's actually a rather out-dated version. With the speed most fighter pilots these days are flying, they needed something to keep their blood from gathering in their legs and instead go back to the brain. The new uniforms can make the pilot take a few more Gs than the old ones, but they don't look as badass. Though since I doubt I'll be breaking the sound barrier today, even though that would be super awesome, I think this will do for now."
"...I'm surprised you knew all that." Twilight confessed, a bit dumbfounded.
"Just because I'm not an egghead doesn't mean I'm an idiot. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes I actually do pay attention in class."
"That's...good to hear, actually. So what exactly was the reason for spending the last few hours running home to get an old Wonderbolt uniform, again?"
"Are you kidding? Of course I'm gonna wear a Wonderbolt uniform for this moment!"
"'This moment'?"
"The first time I get to fly for real, duh!"
"You know we're testing web-shooters, not wings, right?"
"Well, obviously! But with those web-shooters, I can bet I can swing from building to building like Tarzan or something, and it will be super awesome!"
To be frank, Twilight hadn't really thought about what Rainbow would use those web-shooters for, but after hearing that...she honestly wasn't surprised. "I guess they could work that way, but your timing and aim will have be absolutely perfect or else you'll...well..."
Noticing Twilight's hesitation at finishing that sentence, Dash urged, "Well...what?"
Before she could answer, Spike decided to bluntly answer for her, "You'll probably die or at least break every bone in your body."
"Well...basically," Twilight concurred.
"Huh, that all?" Rainbow noted sarcastically. "And here I thought I might be putting myself in danger or something."
"Rainbow Dash," Twilight said in a steady tone, making sure she looked her friend right in the eye when she reiterated, "This is serious. You can actually die if you don't treat it as such."
Rainbow held her gaze for all of five seconds before she broke the tension with a small chuckle, "Hehe, don't worry, Smarty Pants, I totally got this. I just ran from home to here while jumping from rooftop to rooftop, this..." she blew a raspberry "...will be a piece of cake."
"I sincerely hope you're right about that," Twilight said, still sounding a bit uneasy about this whole thing.
"Of course I'm right!" Rainbow declared, not showing even the slightest bit of fear or even apprehension in her tone, facial expression or body language. "Now let's stop wasting time and hand over those web-shooters already!"
With a sigh, Twilight muttered, "Gee, sorry for caring if you live or die..." while she reached her hand into the pocket of the hoodie she was currently wearing.
She took out a pair of small devices strapped to a pair of bracelets that looked quite advanced for technically being home-made.
The back-end of the devices could be opened in order to insert a tiny web-capsule into it, and even though there was only room for one at a time, it would take a lot of usage before it ran out. The cobweb was that tightly packed. The front end had an opening that the webbing could be shot out of, as well as an in-built scissor to cut the thread at the push of a button if the user ever needed to. There was also a small extension, also at the front of it, that had a button at the end. Once that button was pressed, the device would fire a sling of webbing similarly to the webgun prototypes it was based on. Depending on how long it was pressed, one could also decide exactly how much web was to come out of it.
Twilight had told Rainbow all this already though, so instead of explaining all of it again, she just handed them over to her.
After a few failed attempts to put them on...including one where the shooter ended up facing the wrong direction, and another when the bracelet wasn't strapped down to her wrist securely enough...she eventually got them just right. Strapped tightly to her wrists, triggers positioned at the palm of her hands, shooters aimed forward; she was ready for the test run.
"Okay, I think they're good. What now?" Dash wondered, sounding very eager to get started.
"Well, I think all you really have to do is to find a desired target, aim your wrist at it, and press down your middle-fingers on the trigger at the palm of your hand," Twilight explained, step-by-step...though before her friend could get any funny ideas, she soon added. "Oh, and just to be one-hundred-percent crystal clear, I am not a desired target."
Rainbow smirked a bit mischievously at that. "That right?" she asked, sounding like she was up to something. "So you don't want me to be doing..." she then aimed her right web-shooter right in Twilight's face while making a move to pull the trigger. "...THIS!?"
Twilight let out a short high-pitched scream while she held her arms up defensively and ducked under the incoming webbing.
Only...Dash never actually pressed the button.
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAAH! Got ya!" she teased, barely able to contain herself from falling on the floor with laughter.
Not particularly amused, Twilight stood up straight and crossed her arms while giving her friend a very well-deserved glare. "That wasn't funny."
"Heheh, lighten up, egghead! It was kinda funny."
"No it wasn't," Twilight insisted. "And trust me, I know funny."
Spike and Rainbow Dash both rolled their eyes at that statement. The memory of what happened when she attempted to perform stand-up comedy was still very fresh in their minds.
Twilight's response to their deadpan expressions was a simple confused uttering of "...What?"
Rainbow shook her head a bit, then turned away to look around for something to test her shooters on.
The building she was standing on had to be at least twenty stories tall and was surrounded by buildings that were far bigger than that. Though strangely enough, there weren't that many people out right now...at least not by central Canterlot standards. The reason for that may be the slightly chilly and cloudy weather...or the fact that it was a Sunday morning still.
However, given that it was still in the middle of a metropolis, fewer than average still didn't mean it was exactly empty.
Rainbow noted this as she was scouting for locations. After all, what's the point in being awesome if no one's there to see it?
Having already picked out several promising places to test her webs out on, Rainbow walked casually along the ledges of the roof as she pondered over which one she would go for, not bothered in the least by how high up she was standing as she did so.
Eventually, she stopped pacing and set her eyes on a pretty tall building across the street from the one she was on...then she looked down at the distance between herself and the ground, as well as the distance between the two buildings, and realised that, spider-powers or no, nobody could survive a fall from that height.
Yet, when she realised that fact, she simply licked her lips and smirked as a single thought went through her head. 'Perfect.'
After slipping the flight goggles over her eyes and carefully aiming her right web-shooter at the highest point of the building in front of her, Rainbow pressed her fingers down on the trigger and released a long thread of sticky cobweb that quickly attached itself to the building's roof. She then took a firm grip on the thread with both hands and prepared herself for what she was about to attempt.
"Wait!" Twilight protested after she realised what Dash was about to do. "Wouldn't it be better to try them out on something a little less...life-threatening?"
Rainbow turned around to look Twilight right in the eye with a confident grin on her face.
"Twilight Sparkle...sometimes you must run before you can even walk."
Then, without a second glance, Rainbow jumped right off the ledge of the building, allowing herself a few seconds of free-falling before the thin (yet still remarkably strong) line of webbing she was holding onto began to halt her descent and swing her towards the structure on the other side of the gap...all while she shouted, "Oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh!"
Twilight and Spike both ran over to the ledge to get a closer look, and Spike even pulled out a pair of binoculars from his pocket to get a better view.
However...in truth, Rainbow hadn't actually thought this move through all that much...and she realised a bit too late that her swing was sending her on a collision course with the building.
Inside her apartment, a very reclusive and studious woman named Moondancer was fully absorbed in her book on Professor Starswirl's theories on cross-species genetics.
She had spent most of the day having tons of crazy (according to her) people constantly trying to befriend her, and they simply never gave her a break. She didn't need any friends, or parties or...whatever else everyone kept saying she needed. All she needed (still according to her) was some privacy where she could study in peace and not be disturbed...and she knew that nobody would ever disturb her in her own home.
At least that's what she thought.
Needing to rest her eyes for just a moment, Moondancer put down her book, took off her thick-rimmed glasses, rubbed the base of her nose a bit and chanced a peak out the window.
That was when a girl dressed in a skin-tight blue and yellow outfit suddenly slammed straight into her window, nearly making her jump out of her skin as she let out a startled scream.
Spike and Twilight winced at the sight.
"That got to hurt," Spike commented while he took his eyes away from his binoculars.
Rainbow Dash let out a pained groan in response to her hurting shoulder that had the misfortune of impacting with the surprisingly tough glass of the window. The fact that she hadn't broken anything was a miracle...and probably a result of the increased durability she got from the spider-bite.
Still, it would be fair to say that things didn't turn out quite how she imagined it.
She dropped the thread she was holding onto and used her hands and feet to attach herself to the window. She then tried her best to ignore the pain and glanced back at the roof where Spike and Twilight had witnessed her failed stunt and gave them both a single thumbs up to let them know she was okay.
Moondancer then opened the window next to her and gave Rainbow an peeved look while letting out an "Ahem!"
Dash gave the girl an awkward smile and said, "Uh...I can explain."
However, Moondancer really didn't care for whatever explanation Rainbow could cook up, and instead let out an annoyed groan and demanded, "Whatever stunt you're trying to perform, please do it somewhere else. I am trying to study!"
"Oh, uh...sorry about that. Just give me a second and I'll be out of your hair."
"You better..." Moondancer warned with a bit of venom in her voice before she closed the window rather soundly to emphasise her point. Immediately after she'd done that though, she simply walked back to her comfy chair, picked up her book and started to read it again, no longer paying the strange visitor any mind.
"And I thought only Twilight could get so obsessed with studying..." Rainbow muttered under her breath, then decided to do the same and put the encounter out of her mind while she started to consider what she was going to do next.
While the first try at web-slinging may have not been so successful, Rainbow Dash didn't believe in giving up so soon.
The second attempt began pretty much the same as the first one: she sent a new line of webbing and attached it to a high point on another building nearby and then detached herself from Moondancer's window, allowing gravity to propel her forward.
This time though, she had learned from her past mistake and just before she was about to receive another painful impact with another wall, she used her left web-shooter to attach a sling to a third building and let go of the thread she was already holding. This way, she narrowly avoided the impact and kept herself in the air.
Using this method, Rainbow soon managed to swing from building to building almost as if she was flying.
It was exhilarating.
As Dash soared through the air with each swing, she could feel the winds hit her at high speed, she could feel the adrenaline flow through her blood at a level that she hadn't come close to experiencing before, and most important of all, she felt...free. She felt like she could do literally anything and everything, and there wouldn't be a thing that could stop her...and that was one of the greatest feelings she had ever had.
All her life she had wanted to fly, to soar through the air, to look down upon the world below, and to be freed from the confines of the ground...and this was the closest she had ever gotten to that goal. As she used her swings to launch herself between the massive skyscrapers around her faster than a human would ever normally be able to move, a smile of utter joy formed itself on her lips.
Lost in her euphoria, Rainbow Dash got even more daring and began to perform all sorts of tricks while she was swinging.
First, she began to hold onto the thread and press down on it until the very end of her swings so that when she eventually let go, she would use her existing momentum to propel herself even further up into the air...and once in the air, she flipped her whole body over and managed to perform several somersaults in quick succession before she suspended her fall with an emergency line.
Then, with even more bravado, she decided to swing as close to the ground as she dared. With a line of webbing attached to a high enough point on a building in front of her, she swung widely towards the street below, dipping so low that her feet nearly scratched the ground when she zipped right between an ambulance and a delivery truck, leaving the drivers of both cars wondering what the heck just flew past them.
...And at the end of that swing, she braced herself and landed the wall of the Empire Canterlot Building, the tallest man-made construction in the city.
'Okay, now for the big one...' she thought as she looked up to see just how high the building was. 'Piece of cake!'
She shot two lines of web as high upon the tower as she could reach...which barely reached a third of its massive height, then stood up straight on the wall and took a couple of steps back to increase the tension in the webbing as much as possible, and then...she detached herself from the wall and allowed the pent up energy to propel her straight up the side of the building like a slingshot.
Though as gravity eventually began to take effect and slow her ascent, Rainbow grabbed the wall and began to run straight to the top completely undeterred and without so much as a glance towards the ground below.
It took her a while, but she eventually reached the roof of the enormous structure. Though she didn't stop there, as she also felt the need to climb up on top of the huge antenna spire sitting atop of it as well, and thus, giving her a view from the single highest point in the entire city.
443 meters up into the air, Rainbow could see all of Canterlot and beyond from here. She could see the CelestiaCorp Tower on her left...and the rival Storm Tower (easily visible by its distinctive blue logo at its side) on her right. She could see the coast-line connected to the city a bit further out than that, as well as the prison island charmingly named Tartarus sitting just off its shores...a place that looked a bit too peaceful from here for being the home of some of the worst criminals and supervillains Canterlot's ever seen. Furthermore, from here she could also see the headquarters of the Daily Bugle, as well as that new 'F.E.A.S.T' shelter that just started up...and if she squinted her eyes at just the right spot, she could even see her own house.
It was a view that she could have only dream about until now...and a part of her was convinced that she was still dreaming.
All of this even: the powers, the experience, everything, was so unreal and out of the ordinary that she had trouble even grasping the fact that any of this was actually happening.
However, while sitting perched on top of the tallest building in the city may seem like a wonderful experience (and for all intents and purposes, it certainly was)...eventually though it was starting to get cold...and windy...and...it was actually a bit hard for her to breathe at this altitude.
As awesome as being up here was, she couldn't stay up there forever.
She had to get down sooner or later...the only question was how on earth she would do that?
She could of course climb all the way nice and steady, or find a way inside and take the elevator or something...but for Rainbow Dash, there really was only one option crazy enough for her right now.
'That's all it is, Dash...' she told herself as she peered over the edge and checked just how far down the ground was from here. '...it's just a leap of faith.'
After taking in a deep breath to curb her anxiety and prepare herself for what she was about to do...she jumped straight off the building and let gravity ferry her way back to the ground.
As she fell, her weight and building momentum gradually began to pick up more and more speed on the way down, with her eventually coming close to experiencing G-forces by the time she reached the height of the regular-sized buildings.
Precisely seven seconds before she would have hit the ground and most certainly died, she used one of the web-shooters to secure herself to a tall enough building and immediately stop her descent just in time.
Overcome with joy over the fact that she survived that fall, she swung out in a wide arc and shouted, "THIS IS SO AWESO-"
But was suddenly cut off when her unplanned swing trajectory sent her flying straight into the rich entrepreneur Rex Storm's smiling face on a roof-mounted billboard with the slogan 'Storm Tech, for a better future' printed on it.
At the speed she was travelling at, the impact was, needless to say...painful.
Rainbow Dash cursed whoever placed the sign at that particular spot, probably as much as she was going to curse the pain in her now bleeding nose.
Oh, and there was also now a sign of Rex Storm with a hole where his face was supposed to be.
