Grounded: The Ballad of Greased Lightning

by Green Akers

You Can't Run Forever

"Uhhh..." Greased Lightning opened his eyes to find himself lying on a bed inside a brightly-lit room with bland beige walls and a matching ceiling. He lifted a hoof to shield his eyes. "Where... Where am I?"

"Glad to have you back with us, Mr. Lightning." Lightning turned to see a green unicorn wearing a doctor's coat standing by the bed, writing some notes on a chart hanging on the wall. "Tell me," the doctor asked, "how are you feeling?"

"Like I got run over by a chariot," Lightning groaned. "What... What happened?"

"From what I'm told," the doctor replied, "you were on the business end of a magic blast from one of the most powerful unicorns in Ponyville." The doctor used her magic to raise an ophthalmoscope to her face and looked into Lightning's eyes. "Your pupils are still a little dilated, so you're probably still feeling the effects of that blast. Still, you're in remarkably good condition for a pony that's supposed to be dead."

Lightning smiled weakly. "I owe it all to clean living."

"Uh-huh." The doctor rolled her eyes. "A couple aspirin and a good night's rest should cure what ails you, though I would avoid operating any heavy machinery for a few days." She turned and headed for the door. "You're also free to have visitors, if you feel you're up to it. I know there's at least one little filly who'd—"

"Oh geez, the kid!" Greased Lightning's eyes snapped wide open. "What happened to her? Is she hurt?"

"She's fine," the doctor assured Lightning. "Her sister was a little hot under the yoke about the whole ordeal, but I think she's feeling better now. Shall I send them in?"

"Yes, please!" Lightning nodded enthusiastically.

The doctor disappeared through the doorway, and within seconds Apple Bloom came barreling into the room. "Mr. Lightnin'!" she squealed. "Are you okay?"

"More or less, I guess," Lightning replied.

"Great!" Apple Bloom reached back into her saddle bag and pulled out her notepad and pencil. "You hit your head pretty hard on the floor when you landed—I was afraid you'd lose your memory or somethin'!"

"Land sakes, Apple Bloom!" Applejack chided her sister as she walked into the room. "The guy just woke up from gettin' blasted by Twilight, and you're already pesterin' him about that story of yours!"

"Of course!" Apple Bloom shot back. "How am I ever goin' to get my writin' cutie mark if the pony I'm writin' about forgets the story halfway through?"

Applejack sighed. "I'm awful sorry about that bump on your head," she said, gesturing to a large bump visible just above Lightning's right ear. "We were all worried about somethin' hurtin' Apple Bloom, and... I kind of told Twilight to shoot first and ask questions later."

"No biggie," Greased Lightning assured Applejack. "I'm used to hard landings by now. That one didn't even crack my personal top ten."

"Ahem!" Apple Bloom shot her older sister a you're-stealin'-my-thunder glare, then turned back to Greased Lightning and started flipping through her notebook. "You said that Rainbow Dash was the reason you were out there in the forest," she reminded her interviewee. "What makes you say that?"

"Right. That's where we left off, isn't it?" Lightning sighed and paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. "Well, like I said... You know how quiet Rainbow can be, and how she tends to keep to herself and never tell anypony how she's thinking?"

Apple Bloom scrunched up her face and looked at Lightning suspiciously. "No."

Lightning chuckled. "Me neither. From day one, Rainbow let the world know that she was the fastest pony in the sky, and I was just a scaredy-pony who didn't have the ba—Er, fortitude to take her on. She never wavered from that position, and she never let up, even after the accident."

"Wait... So you went into hidin' just because Rainbow called you a couple names?" Applejack shook her head and frowned at Greased Lightning. "That ain't no way to deal with a mouthy pony! You just have to ignore them and go about your business. Remember what I said about those bullies at your school, Apple Bloom?"

Apple Bloom sighed. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," she repeated in a rhythmic-yet-uninspired tone.

"Exactly!" Applejack said. "Why, Rainbow's called me more names than a speckled rooster, and I just let them roll off my back!"

"When Rarity calls you names, on the other hand..." Apple Bloom mumbled to herself.

"I tried to ignore Rainbow, believe me," Greased Lightning insisted, "and I would have been alright if it was just her. The problem was, the more popular and successful Rainbow got, the more ponies started to listen to her, and the more times she said I wasn't worth the air I was breathing... The more other ponies started to say it too."

"So you ignore them too!" Applejack declared.

"That's like asking me to ignore clouds!" Lightning countered. "I couldn't have avoided them even if I wanted to, and believe me, I wanted to! No matter where I went—the grocery store, the movie theater, the—"

"The bar?" Apple Bloom interrupted.

Greased Lightning sighed. "Especially the bars."

"So why did you go anywhere at all?" Apple Bloom asked. "Couldn't you have just stayed home?"

"They came after me there too," Lightning revealed. "I got a million letters from ponies, and even a few from griffins, calling me a coward and either asking or demanding that I face Rainbow Dash. And you could forget reading the newspaper—every day brought a new story about the new favorite, with a new quote ridiculing the old favorite." He shook his head. "Everypony and their mother—heck, everypony and my mother—had an opinion, and they usually weren't flattering."

"So if all these folks were chatterin' about you not facin' Rainbow Dash," Applejack challenged, "then why didn't you just face her?"

"Applejack!" Apple Bloom glared over at her sister. "This is my interview, not yours!"

"Well, I just don't understand it!" Applejack admitted, stomping a front hoof for emphasis. "I mean, ignorin' ponies is one thing, but if I really had a problem with Rainbow, I'd hunt her down, tell her exactly how I felt, and we'd settle it pony-to-pony!" She looked back over at Greased Lightning. "If she bothered you so much, why didn't you just take it up with her?"

Lightning hung his head and looked away from Applejack and Apple Bloom. "At the time, I didn't think it would matter."

"Really? Why not?" Apple Bloom asked.

"It wouldn't have settled anything," Lightning explained. "Dash and I are cloud chasers, not marathon runners. I mean, sure, we could have run across Equestria and back, or swam, or crawled, or rode donkeys, or done just about anything, but it wouldn't have been the same. No matter who won, all it would have done is make ponies waste a little more of the world's oxygen saying that if it had been in the air, it would have been different."

"Maybe so, but at least you would've shown everypony that you weren't afraid of Rainbow, and gotten them off your back!" Applejack pointed out.

Apple Bloom spit her pencil onto the floor in disgust. "I thought you wanted me to stop pesterin' Lightnin'," she reminded Applejack. "Now you're the one pesterin' him!"

"She's right, though," Greased Lightning admitted. "She's also smarter than I was—it took me a long time to figure that out myself."

"Is that when you arranged to race Rainbow at the Canterlot Marathon?" Apple Bloom asked.

Lightning nodded. "I'd finally reached my breaking point with all the negativity, and decided that one way or another, I had to put this coward talk to rest. I reached out to Rainbow, we went back and forth a few times on the logistics, and finally agreed to compete in the marathon." A smile spread across Lightning's face as he spoke. "If it wasn't the smartest decision I ever made, it was certainly in the top five," he posited. "As soon as word got out about the race, the conversation changed from 'What's wrong with Greased Lightning?' to 'Will Dash or Lightning prevail?' The hate mail dried up—mostly—and a few ponies even started wishing me good luck, telling me that they knew I wasn't a scaredy-pony all along."

"Of course they did," Apple Bloom said as she rolled her eyes.

"Hey, beggars can't be choosers," Lighting proclaimed. "As far as I was concerned, there was plenty of space for them on my bandwagon."

"So what happened?" Apple Bloom inquired.

"I made one mistake," Greased Lighting explained. "I decided to visit a few old friends before the race, and—"

"What do you mean, 'old friends?'" Applejack interrupted. "I thought you said you lost all of your—whoa!" She ducked as a notebook suddenly sailed over her head.

"Ain't you got anythin' better to do than interrupt us?" Apple Bloom snapped at her sister.

"Fine, fine. If it's that important to you, I'll leave you be." With that, Applejack turned and walked out of the room.

"Finally!" Apple Bloom breathed a sigh of relief as she walked over to pick up her notebook. "Now then, what were you sayin' about old friends? I thought you said everypony hated you."

Greased Lightning chuckled at Apple Bloom's plagiarism. "Careful—the last pony that asked that question got tossed out of here," he joked. "I guess if I'm completely honest, there were a few ponies that stayed in my corner until the end, mostly family members and a few diehard fans."

"So why was visitin' them a mistake?" Apple Bloom asked. "Seeing my friends and family always makes me happy!"

"Oh, it made me happy too!" Lightning clarified. "It just wasn't really what I needed at the time."

"What do you mean?"

Lightning sighed. "Let's just say that feting a drunk by giving him a round is, well, counterproductive."

"Is that what happened at 'the end?'"

Greased Lightning looked down at the bed and nodded. "Three days before the marathon, I went to see my cousin Blue Chip at his place near the Whitetail Woods. Chippy had finally come into a little bit of money after spending a decade working on the Canterlot Exchange, and he invited me out to check out his new home and celebrate the start of better times for both of us."

"And this celebration involved alcohol?" Apple Bloom guessed.

"Uh huh," Lightning confirmed. "Chippy enjoyed a stiff drink almost as much as I did, and his newfound wealth meant he could afford some really good stuff."

"So you got drunk again, and..." Apple Bloom gestured with her front hoof for Greased Lightning to finish the sentence.

"Honestly, I have no idea." Lightning shook his head, and pointed a hoof towards the window. "I woke up four days later in a ditch right here in Ponyville, with nopony else around and no idea how I got there."

"Four days?" Apple Bloom's jaw hit the floor at the length of Lightning's bender. Half of her brain started screaming at her to take a vow of teetotalism right then and there, while the other half urged her to get the name of the liquor he had drank for use in future controlled experiments.

"Yep. Four days." Lightning shook his head. "Which, if you do the math, means I was a day late and a couple of bits short as far as running the Canterlot Marathon."

"And Rainbow didn't buy your excuse, did she?"

"I didn't tell her," Greased Lightning admitted. "I didn't have to. I knew what was coming next. It didn't matter why I'd missed the marathon; all that mattered to everypony was the fact that I'd missed it. It just reinforced what they had all said before: Greased Lightning wasn't pony enough to run against Rainbow Dash. He was..." Lightning began to choke up as he spoke, and a few tears began running down his cheek. "He was too afraid," he finally said. "He was a coward."

"And that's why you were out in the forest," Apple Bloom concluded.

"Yeah. I knew that all the hatred and anger I'd dodged for a past few months was going to come back at me even stronger than before, and... I just couldn't face it." Lightning lifted his blanket up to his face to dry his eyes. "I just kind of snapped, and I turned tail and took off running. I didn't really mean to end up in the forest; it just happened to be in the direction that I was going. All I could think of at the time was that I had to get away. I had to escape."

Apple Bloom's hooves started to tremble. "Did you ever... Ever think of..."

Lightning nodded knowingly. "You can't run forever, literally or metaphorically. Eventually, something happened—a leg gave out, I tripped over a rock, I don't really remember now—and I wound up face down in the dirt. At that point, I decided I didn't want to get up anymore, so... Yeah. I just closed my eyes and waited to die."

"What... What happened next?"

Greased Lightning smiled a weak smile. "I woke up a couple hours later in that darn zebra's hut," he said. "Apparently she found me in a mudhole, dragged me over to her place, and patched me up a little."

"Well, of course she did!" Apple Bloom exclaimed. "Zecora's the best!"

"No argument there," Lightning conceded. "I was a little miffed about it at the time, though. I told her she should have left me out there. She said—well, technically, she rhymed that I would have died had she done that. I, of course, told her—"

"'That's kind of the point.'" Apple Bloom finished Lightning's sentence. "Just like I told you."

"Pretty much. Anyway, without missing a beat, she comes back and says that I didn't really want to die—I just wanted my life to end."

"Huh?" Apple Bloom looked up from her notebook and eyed Greased Lightning quizzically.

"It confused me too," Lightning went on. "But somehow, she made it all make sense." He scratched his chin and stared up at the ceiling. "How did she put it..."

"When you find that your life does not satisfy you, cast it aside and start it anew." A familiar voice drew Lightning and Apple Bloom's attention back to the doorway just as Zecora stepped into the room. "A life can be found when another is lost," Zecora continued, "but death is a line that cannot be re-crossed."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Lightning said.

Zecora walked over to Apple Bloom. "Your midnight run gave us quite a fright," she noted. "I'm relieved to find that you are all right."

Apple Bloom looked down at the floor. "I'm sorry about runnin' off like that. It' just... I had to find out what happened. I needed to know the truth."

Zecora smiled. "I know that this tale is important to you." She looked over at Greased Lightning. "Forgive my intrusion. Please, continue."

Lightning shrugged. "Heck, from here on out you can probably tell the story as well as I can. But, if you insist... Zecora here suggested that I hang out in the Everfree Forest for a while, and see if that helped me feel better. After all, trees and bushes don't care how well you fly, don't call you a chicken on a daily basis, and don't pick fights with you over who they think is the best racer."

"Plus they give you things like apples!" Apple Bloom added.

"That too," Greased Lightning agreed. "I was kind of skeptical at first—despite all the racing, I never considered myself an 'outdoorsy' type of pony—but Zecora promised to help me with the adjustment, and more importantly, she promised not to tell anypony where I was. I finally figured 'what the heck, it's not like my life can get any worse,' so I agreed to give it a shot."

Apple Bloom nodded. "And you've been there ever since."

"Pretty much," Lightning confirmed. "I spent my first few days rattling around Zecora's hut suffering from alcohol withdrawal and being bored out of my skull, so she showed me an old cave deep in that cavern that I could fix up. I spent the next few days after that rattling around the cave suffering from alcohol withdrawal and being bored out of my skull, so Zecora suggested I take up gardening to give myself something to do. It was a pain at first, but eventually the cider cravings went away, and I stopped thinking about what other ponies were saying about me and started thinking about how to keep those pesky timberwolves out of my garden. The rest, I guess, is history. Until you showed up, that is."

Apple Bloom finished writing down her notes. "So that's it," she whispered as she turned towards Zecora. "He's alive, and he's alive because you saved him!"

"He saved himself, to tell the truth," Zecora declared. "I merely lent a helping hoof."

"No, she's right," Lightning objected. "When you found me, I was drowning in a sea of depression and hard cider, and I'd lost my will to fight. Without you, this story would have ended years ago in the Everfree mud." He paused for a few moments, and wiped a tear from his eye. "You know," he realized, "as often as we've spoken over the years, I've never thanked you for that, so—"

"No need for all that mushy stuff. To see this day is thanks enough." Zecora placed a front leg across Apple Bloom's shoulders. "Your road has teamed with potholes and curves, but I knew that you still had a purpose to serve."

Greased Lightning smiled. "You are one amazing woman, and not just because of your freaky rhyming skills." He looked back over at Apple Bloom. "Well, that's pretty much my story, kid," he declared. "You got any other questions for me?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." Apple Bloom flipped to a fresh page of her notebook. "First of all... Why pumpkins? My sister says that apples are the greatest gift nature ever gave us—"

"I didn't just say that, I know that!" Applejack shouted from outside the room.

"Mind your own beeswax!" Apple Bloom shouted back before clearing her throat and turning back to Greased Lightning. "So, given that, why would you ever grow anything else?"

"Well, for one thing, apples are really hard to grow when you don't have any apple trees," Lightning replied. "Mostly I stuck with things that I could grow in a single season. The first year I was there, I tried planting darn near every kind of vegetable in Equestria, and while most of the stuff didn't come up at all, pumpkins took to the place like fish to water! I guess the conditions were just right for them."

"Perfect conditions are one thing," Apple Bloom pressed, "but how'd you make them so big?"

"Trial, error, and luck," Lightning explained. "They grew pretty big to begin with, but I experimented with fertilizers, put together an irrigation system, and most importantly, I set up some traps and established an understanding with the local wildlife that I wasn't serving a community dinner. You'd be surprised how big things grow when other things aren't actively trying to eat them."

"Makes sense, I guess," Apple Bloom admitted, "but what about the headstone? And the whole Pumpkin Pie act?"

"That was a recent development," Greased Lightning revealed. "For the most part, I figured I was deep enough in the forest that nopony would ever bother me. Then one night, there was this huge ruckus at that old castle not too far from my place. From the sound of it, a bunch of ponies got together and threw a party or something."

"Er... I don't think they were havin' a party that night," Apple Bloom commented.

"I decided that if ponies were going that deep into the forest," Lightning continued, "then eventually they were going to stumble onto my place, so I'd better be ready for when they did. That's when I came up with the whole Pumpkin Pie shtick, and dug up that stone to use as my cover. I had to have Zecora take it into town to get it engraved, though." He smiled down at Apple Bloom. "I thought I was prepared for everypony, but I never thought I'd be dealing with a filly like you."

"That's the mark of a good investigative journalist!" Apple Bloom proclaimed. She cast a quick glance at her flank as she spoke, hoping her statement was literally true, but there was still no cutie mark to be found. Darn, she thought to herself. I guess it's gonna depend on how good our article is.

"Anything else?" Lightning asked.

Apple Bloom scratched her chin with her hoof for a moment, then shook her head. "Nope, that's all I got right now."

Greased Lightning took a deep breath and looked back over at Zecora. "So, now what?" he asked. "I guess the cat's out of the bag now. For better or worse, I'm back amongst the living."

Zecora nodded. "The time has come to free your mind, and rejoin the ranks of ponykind. You shall rise above your tragic crash, and... You will start by meeting Rainbow Dash."

Lightning winced at the sound of Rainbow's name. "Couldn't we, maybe, you know, save her for later?" he suggested. "My psyche is still pretty fragile right now. I'm not sure I'm—"

"Recall that all the pain you faced," Zecora reminded the pegasus, "stemmed from giving Rainbow too much space. Face her now, pass this test, and finally lay your past to rest."

Greased Lightning stared back at Zecora with a furrowed brow and a pouty face. "Do you have to be right all the time?"

Zecora smiled as Greased Lightning pulled his covers off and rolled out of bed. "Come, young filly, we must make haste," she told Apple Bloom. "Your friends await at Twilight's place."

"The doctor says I should get a full night's sleep, you know," Lightning remarked as Zecora and Apple Bloom headed for the door. "Aw, what the heck," he finally decided. "It's not the first time I've ignored a doctor's orders. Of course, it's also not the first time I've done something this late at night that I've regretted."

---

Back at the library, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle stared attentively out in the window in the direction of Ponyville's urgent care center, despite it being well past their bedtimes. "I still don't see anypony!" Scootaloo finally shouted. She pulled back from the window and looked over at Twilight, who was passing the time by re-reading some of her library books. "What's taking Apple Bloom so long? Maybe we should go—"

"She's just waiting for the pony that saved her," Twilight insisted. She knew exactly who had saved Apple Bloom, of course—the filly had explained the whole situation at least three times on the way out of the forest—but she had decided to let Apple Bloom be the one to give her friends the exciting news. "She should be along any minute now."

"Wait! Wait! I see something!" Sweetie Belle cried out, pointing a hoof towards a darkness. "A pony! No, wait—one, two, three... Four ponies?"

Scootaloo rejoined Sweetie Belle at her windowside post. "You're right! It's Apple Bloom! She's okay!"

The two fillies raced to the library front door, nearly running over a half-asleep Rainbow Dash as the rainbow-maned pegasus stumbled into the room. "Hey, watch it!" she protested. "Some ponies are trying to sleep around here!"

"Sorry, Rainbow Dash!" Scootaloo apologized, without breaking stride.

"Yeah, sorry!" Sweetie Belle chimed in.

Rainbow Dash sighed and walked over to where Twilight was sitting. "I guess that means Apple Bloom's here, huh?"

"Yes," Twilight said with a nod.

"Great. Can I go home now?" Rainbow yawned and stretched out her wings. "I need all the rest I can get if I'm gonna make up all the time I lost taking those two to Baltimare today."

"Zecora said specifically that she needed you here," Twilight replied.

Rainbow groaned. "Well, she'd better have a good reason for this," she muttered.

Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo crouched in front of the library's front door ready to strike, their tails twitching like cats in anticipation of their prey. As soon as the door swung open, the pair let loose with a shrill cry of "Apple Bloom!" and launched themselves through the doorway. Unfortunately, Apple Bloom was not the one opening the door, and Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo ended up doing matching faceplants into Applejack's front legs.

"Whoa! Careful, y'all!" Applejack called out a few beats too late, as the fillies slid down her front legs onto the ground.

Apple Bloom covered her mouth to hide a giggle, and patted Applejack on the leg. "I'm sorry, sister," she offered in as serious a tone as she could muster without laughing. "Those shots were meant for me."

Sweetie Belle picked her head up, shook the stars from her vision, and hurried over to the real Apple Bloom. "Thank goodness you're okay! We thought you were lost in the Everfree Forest forever!"

"And just when we made a major breakthrough on the story, too!" Scootaloo added. "We went over and tightened the screws on Turbo Jet until he cracked and told us the truth about what happened!"

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. "She means that his wife made him tell us."

"That's cool," Apple Bloom replied. "but he probably said it was an honest accident, didn't he?"

Scootaloo looked down and scuffed the ground with her hoof. "Yeah."

"So what about you?" Sweetie Belle asked Apple Bloom. "Did you find anything interesting in those newspapers?"

"No, but I did find something interesting in the forest!" Apple Bloom motioned for everypony to follow her into the library. "Come on, I'll show you!"

All of the ponies (and Zecora) made their way into the library entryway, where Apple Bloom revealed her discovery. "Check it out!" she declared, pointing her front hooves at Greased Lightning. "Introducing... Greased Lightning!"

"Um... Hi, kids." Lightning smiled sheepishly and waved a hoof at the fillies.

"Whoa... For real?" Scootaloo stared up the missing pegasus, her eyes wide open. "You're Greased Lightning?"

Lightning sighed. "I kinda hate to admit it, but... Yeah, that's me."

"What were you doing in the Everfree Forest?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"It's a long story." Apple Bloom pulled her notebook out of her saddle bag, and held it high in the air. "But we're going to put it in the next edition of the Foal Free Press!"

"And it's going to be the best story ever!" Scootaloo predicted.

"And it's going to get us our cutie marks!" Sweetie Belle squealed.

"Yay! Cutie Mark Crusaders Copy Conquerers!" The three fillies shouted as they exchanged a high-hoof.

Greased Lightning looked over at Zecora. "Excitable bunch, aren't they?"

At that moment, Rainbow Dash and Twilight came stepped around the corner and approached the others. "Geez, you three have way too much energy for this time of—" Rainbow stopped short as she locked eyes with her old nemesis Greased Lightning. Her eyes narrowed, her ears flattened against her head, and the smile disappeared from her face. "You."

Lightning gulped, and took a step forward. "Er, yeah, me," he acknowledged. "Look, I know—"

"You've got a lot of nerve showing your ugly mug around here," Rainbow interrupted. "I was hoping the worms had finished feasting on your flank by now, and the girls here could just tell me where your grave was so I could go dance on it."

"Rainbow Dash!" Applejack stepped in front of her pegasus friend. "That is no way to talk to somepony who just saved—"

"Out of my way!" Rainbow shoved her way past Applejack and went nose-to-nose with Greased Lightning. "I've got nothing to say to a punk coward like you," she growled, "but if you'd like to step outside, there are a few things I'd like to do to you."

A cold sweat started dripping down Lightning's forehead as he stared into Rainbow's eyes. "Now... Now hold on just a minute—"

"No!" Suddenly, a magical aura surrounded Rainbow Dash and pulled her away from Greased Lightning. "I will not have you two fighting outside my house and setting a poor example for these fillies!" Twilight declared. "If you have a problem, you will use your words and discuss it like civilized ponies."

"Rats. I wanted to see Rainbow kick some tail," Scootaloo whispered, drawing disapproving looks from Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.

Rainbow Dash mumbled something under her breath, and went back to glaring at Greased Lightning. "Do you have any idea what I've had to deal with since you ran off?" she demanded. "Do you have any idea what you've put me through?"

"Huh?" Lightning stared blankly back at Rainbow Dash, confused by her accusation.

"I've run every race from here to the Crystal Empire!" Rainbow continued. "I've set speed records at zillions of tracks across Equestria! I've crushed the hopes and dreams of thousands of bush-league wannabe flyers under my hooves! I've come, I've seen, and I've taken no prisoners! But just because you were too much of a baby to face me, nopony gives me the respect I deserve! No matter what I do, they all keep saying that you were the faster pony!"

"Wait, what?" Lightning's eyes popped wide open at the revelation. "Really?"

"Yes!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "All my life, all I've ever wanted to be was the best flyer in Equestria, and all my life ponies have told me I was delusional, all because a certain somepony was too lily-livered to give me the chance to show I measured up!"

Greased Lightning stood in shocked silence for a moment as Rainbow's words washed over him. "Well I'll be grinched," he finally said. "Fate really does have a sense of irony, huh?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rainbow asked.

"Never mind." Greased Lightning shook his head, and took a step towards Rainbow Dash. "I came here because I thought I needed to apologize to you and admit that everything you've been saying about me all these years is true, but I see now that a simple mea culpa isn't going to be enough. I owe you a race, Rainbow Dash, and I'm finally here to give it to you!"

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Oh, so now you're ready to race, huh? Sorry to burst your bubble, pal, but that train left the station years ago."

"I disagree," Lightning declared. "I wasn't ready to face you back then, either physically or mentally. Now, thanks to Zecora and this little filly neighbor of yours, I think I'm finally ready to face my demons, which in this case means you. Plus, check this out!" He waved a muscular front leg in front of Rainbow Dash's face. "I'm in the best shape of my life!" he proudly proclaimed. "Seriously, you have no idea how much money I could have saved back in the day by dumping my trainer and just dragging two-hundred-pound pumpkins around."

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Get over yourself," she advised. "You couldn't beat me now even if you wanted to. I mean, look at you! You're older than the dirt on my hooves."

"Hey, don't go fitting me for a rocking chair just yet!" Lightning cautioned, flicking out his lone wing as he spoke. "I've got plenty of racing left in me—all I need is a chance to use it."

"Forget it," Rainbow insisted, turning away from Greased Lightning. "Beating you now doesn't mean anything anymore. You're an old, washed-up one-wing wonder, and everypony knows it."

Lightning opened his mouth to disagree, but Apple Bloom raised a hoof to stop him. "Gosh, Scootaloo," Apple Bloom said to her pegasus friend, "this isn't how I wanted our story to end at all. I wanted to say that Rainbow and Lightnin' settled their old grudge, not that Rainbow was too chicken to participate."

"Chicken?!" Rainbow spun around at the sound of the word, as her face flushed red and steam began rising from her head. "Who are you calling a chicken?" she demanded.

"Yeah, who are you calling a chicken?" Scootaloo parroted.

Apple Bloom shrugged. "Well, what are we supposed to say? We can try to be all nice about it and say that Rainbow declined Lightnin's challenge, but it's the same thing."

"True," Sweetie Belle agreed. "My sister always says that if it walks like a chicken, and sounds like a chicken, and acts like a—"

"I did not decline this dope's challenge!" Rainbow thundered. "I said there was no point in racing him!"

"Yeah!" Scootaloo added. "This Lightning guy isn't worth the effort! Rainbow Dash is ten times faster than him, I just know it!"

Greased Lightning smiled. "I don't know, Rainbow," he observed. "Looks like you and I still have a few critics out there to silence, and there's only one way that I know how to do it." He extended a hoof towards Rainbow. "I'm willing if you're are."

"Grrr..." Rainbow scowled at Lightning, and swatted his hoof away. "Fine!" she decided. "If you're itching to get your flank beat so badly, than I'll do it! I'll mop up every cloud in Cloudsdale with you mane!"

"Great!" Lightning smiled. "So... When and where should we do this?"

Apple Bloom looked up at the ceiling and scratched her chin for a moment. "I've got it!" she declared. "How about, say, three days from now, at high noon?"

"I think the ponies who are fixin' to race should decide when—" Applejack started to reply, but stopped upon seeing a mischievous grin spread across Apple Bloom's face. "All right, young'un, what're you up to?"

"You'll see!" Apple Bloom turned to Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle. "Meet me at the clubhouse at nine o'clock sharp tomorrow mornin'. I've got an idea!"

Comments

[-Brutus]

Race. Race. Race!