Awakening Fluttershy's Dark Sky

by Misty Shadow

Ghost Rainbow Dash

"It was a bright and starry night." Maud Pie began the story of the ghost of Rainbow Dash. "Pinkie Pie had offered to play a game with one of her best friends, Rainbow Dash. It was a game involving making cupcakes. Rainbow Dash didn't want to play. She left to practice her flying moves at Ghastly Gorge instead. However, she got careless. A Quarray Eel ripped her to shreds and ate her. She died. Her soul left the remnants of her body. She haunts not the gorge, but the universe and everywhere she goes to this day."

Pinkie Pie and Applejack were astonished upon hearing this tale, while Rainbow Dash laughed.

"Are you even being serious?" she asked with a cocky grin on her face. "That obviously didn't happen! I'm alive! I'm sitting right here with a body that ain't dead and buried! I do find it cute though that you made me the ghost, that would be…"

Rainbow Dash paused, and as she thought things over, her smile faded.

"So like me to…" Rainbow Dash continued. "Not let death stop me…"

Pinkie and Applejack looked over at Rainbow in puzzlement, then turned back to Maud, who had her own smug grin plastered on her face.

"My story isn't over yet…" Maud said. "I'm only at the part where things get good…"

With that, a mist familiar to Rainbow began to flood the room, and a memory erased from her mind, but not from her heart, was stirred…

"Why am I remembering this?!" Rainbow bellowed in her thoughts as memories of being killed by the Quarray Eel, performing with the Dark Sky and Fluttershy, and fighting alongside the Dark Sky against robot alicorns and a shadow dragon were awakened in her mind. "This...NONE OF THIS HAPPENED! IT COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAVE HAPPENED! I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING BEFORE..."

Rainbow Dash put her hooves up to her head and screamed.

"Rainbow, are you okay?" Applejack asked with concern, coming closer to Dash.

"Maud, what are you doing?" Pinkie asked. "You don't need to summon them to prove yourself!"

"But I like proving myself." Maud replied. "After all, I'm only what you think of me before I prove myself…"

Following that, Maud began muttering the following words to herself…

"Dark Sky...Body, Mind, Soul...Assemble."

It was then that the shroud of mist surrounding the living room materialized into the Dark Sky members, Dumb-bell, Hoops, Score, Ghost Rainbow Dash, and Derpy Hooves. They all began looking around the room curiously.

"So we're in Boss' story now…" Dumb-bell said. "This feels weird."

"Hey," remarked Hoops, "it's not like it's our first time being characters in a tale written by the Powers That Be."

"..." Score recapped all the other times silently.

"Woah," said Ghost Rainbow Dash, "too much information, bro. I don't even remember that one where Hoops was a British gangster."

"No way…" Rainbow Dash thought. "This feeling I'm getting from her too...her essence...she is me…"

"I don't even remember breakfast." Derpy said with a sigh.

"Well to be fair," replied Dumb-bell, "that's perfectly natural because we didn't order breakfast in that one tale where we were at the diner."

"How do you remember things like that?" G.R.D. asked. "I can barely recall the last time I breathed."

"That's…" Dumb-bell said with a pause as he took G.R.D.'s ghostly state into account. "...also perfectly natural."

Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash were...marveled by these mysterious entities, to put it mildly. Like you'd expect, it didn't take long for the Dark Sky members to take note of them.

"So you're the guys Myra-a-ah..." Dumb-bell paused and stuttered before correcting himself. "I mean, Maud Pie told us about."

"Allow him to introduce ourselves." Hoops said, pointing to Score.

"..." Score silently established their names and the essential parts of their backstories to the trio.

"So yeah, that's the story." G.R.D. concluded the exposition, happy to have it over with. "I hope it didn't turn your worlds upside-down or anything."

"Our worlds?" Rainbow asked. "What about our lives? If what you say is true, that means I'm dead! What, are you a magic clone of me? A parallel counterpart of me from another world? Tell me!"

G.R.D., hating having to explain things and having been told not to reveal certain details, became frustrated.

"So this poser is the incarnation of me Boss wrote…" Ghost Rainbow Dash said to the still shocked Rainbow Dash, whom she perceived as acting emo. "I'm not impressed. You don't even look anything like me! You look like Mr. Blue Sky after he ate too many Tropical Starbursts!"

Rainbow Dash, in response, put on a scowl as her confusion and dread turned to irritation.

"What does that even mean?!" Rainbow exclaimed angrily. "Who are you?!"

"Uh…" replied G.R.D. bemusedly, "Score just gave all of us an entire introduction and you rudely ask me who I am?! Dude...FAIL."

Rainbow Dash began to blow smoke out of her nose in rage.

"QUIT SMARTMOUTHING ME, YOU ECTOPLASM SACK WITH WINGS!" she bellowed furiously. "THIS IS SERIOUS! I WANT TO KNOW WHO I AM! AM I DEAD OR ALIVE?!"

"Woah," responded G.R.D., "just take it easy, man. You're alive. You may have the same body (or at least the same body I once had), mind, and soul as me, but we're not the exact same entity. It's as simple as that."

"...WHAT?!" Rainbow shrieked. "YOU DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE!"

"That's what they all say…" G.R.D. said with a sigh. "Don't worry, Boss herself wrote for you to be alive. Even Boss' superiors wanted you to be alive in this story."

"What do you mean, "wrote"?!" Rainbow shouted, still not satisfied. "Why do you keep saying that? Who is this "Boss"?"

"Someone you don't know, yet have always known," said Ghost Rainbow Dash, reading off of a card on top of a stack of cards, "that is the riddle I'm supposed to tell you. Can we please go home now, Maud?"

"Sure," replied Maud Pie, "you've done your part. I can tell that you really enjoyed playing a key role, Ghost Rainbow Dash."

G.R.D. just rolled her eyes as she put away her cards, knowing this wasn't something worth debating over. After Maud put her hooves together and made a chant, the Dark Sky members turned to mist and disappeared.

"Wai-" Rainbow Dash paused as she realized it was hopeless. They were gone.

"Maud, who in tarnation were those guys?!" Applejack yelled. "How did they know you? How much have you been hiding from us?!"

Maud was still grinning as she pulled out her sword, the cross on the end of it glowing again.

"I'm going to show you exactly how much…" she said sinisterly.

Applejack got a look of fear on her face, and soon realized what Maud meant by that when she stabbed her in the stomach with her saber. To Applejack's shock, the blade did not harm her. Instead, her mind became filled with Maud Pie's memories combined with her own mysteriously few memories as she felt like spirits were invading her soul. After a while, Maud pulled the sword out of her stomach, and the physically unwounded but mentally scarred Applejack looked at her and said…

"No...you're not…"

"Yes...you are…" Maud replied.

"...Am I?" Applejack thought. "My own memories...I don't remember anything from before learning about what happened to Fluttershy...I've just...always known that I'm Applejack and her and the others are my friends…could I...could we all...be like Maud?"

"Storytime is over now." Maud Pie said. "Did you guys like it?"

"I REALLY liked it!" Pinkie exclaimed happily. "I loved how much effort you put into giving Applejack and Rainbow Dash a good time! You know they don't get to see this kind of stuff nearly as often as I do!"

"Wha-what do these two do when they're together?!" Applejack thought.

"...Only nearly?" Rainbow thought about the context of that.

"It's too bad Twilight wasn't here for this." Maud said. "But I understand with her being busy...sleeping."

She knows...

"I'm retiring to my room now." Maud told the others as she walked away towards her bedroom. "But before I leave, I just want to tell you something…"

"?" the others went as Maud turned her head around and faced them.

"Pinkie Pie knew." Maud said. "I asked her to keep quiet so I could show you myself."

Applejack and Rainbow were slightly stunned by that as Maud Pie entered her bedroom. It's like she knew that the first thing they were going to do was ask Pinkie about why she had been mostly calm and quiet in the face of this bizarre event. That aside, Applejack and Rainbow Dash knew one thing for sure now…

They were on a journey with a Maud Pie completely different from the one they knew.

Comments

[DR-Fluffy]

What is this story about the description is too vague.

[Misty Shadow]

7257937

It is a supernatural mystery and a dark comedy in one, where Twilight Sparkle and her friends try to solve the mystery of Fluttershy's murder and end up involved in a huge, otherworldly conspiracy.

[wlam]

If that is the improved version, I don't want to know what the original was like.