• Published 20th Mar 2012
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Via Equestria - CouchCrusader



Twilight and her friends participate in a race dating back to ancient pony times.

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Prologue | Ponyville

“Isn’t this exciting? Are you excited? ‘Cause I’m excited! I’ve never been so excited! Well, except for the time I—”

“Hey, R.D. Tone it down a lil’, will ya?”

Rainbow Dash’s gaze fell from the pre-dawn stars to the five ponies sitting on the grass below her. What was up with all of them? They were giving her the kind of look you’d give a pony with an extra head.

… Had she grown an extra head? She checked. Nope. She was still the one and only Rainbow Dash in Equestria with one noggin.

“What’s the big deal, Applejack?” The cyan-coated pegasus backstroked through the air as if it were a pool. “You’ve been talking about this day as much as I have. It’s gonna be the biggest race of the year!”

Applejack doffed a well-worn stetson with a resigned smirk on her face. “Well sure, sugar. I can’t wait to hit the road myself. Y’all just need to conduct yourself with a mite more grace ‘n’ discretion instead of struttin' around like an overfed rooster." The orange earth pony let her eyes drift apart as she bobbed her head back and forth, her ponytail bouncing beneath her chin like a straw-colored wattle. “All I’m hearin’ is a bunch of cluckin’. Bawk bawk, bawk bawk!”

“Hey, who’re you calling overfed?”

While the rest of her friends lapsed into a round of giggling, Rainbow held a hoof to her mouth to conceal the huge smile spreading across her face. She couldn’t help it, though. The only reason they were all there, together, in the pre-morning meadows just outside of Ponyville, was her, no bragging at all.

She’d known Applejack would be on board from the start when the first posters for the Summer Solstice Steeplechase appeared in Ponyville’s main square. One of the most athletic earth ponies Equestria had ever seen, Applejack had dominated last year’s Running of the Leaves with Rainbow (so long as nopony counted the very end of the race). So it only made sense that the applebucker’d be interested in being a worthy racing partner to Ponyville’s Iron Pony-in-residence. No sooner did Rainbow blaze her way to Sweet Apple Acres with the rolled-up poster in her teeth did Applejack sign on for the long haul.

Twilight Sparkle had gotten into it by surprise—the lavender unicorn had been helping Applejack graft a few limbs in the eastern orchard when Rainbow came along. All you had to do was throw that straight-maned egghead the slightest hint of travelling along Equestria’s oldest road, and the rest took care of itself. Rainbow felt her mind melt every time the unicorn rambled about visiting ancient pony ruins or piped up with some historical tidbit about the Equestrian Way, but Twilight was still a friend. Things just went better with more friends.

That, and she was good at racing, too. Fifth place out of a pool of fifty in her first contest ever? Rainbow had to respect her effort.

Going around to the rest of her friends, Rainbow had no trouble getting Pinkie Pie to join up —that girl would take any excuse to hang with the Dash. The big surprises, however, came from Rarity and Fluttershy—the former, stifled and shut-in by her girly boutique, decided a tour of the country would revitalize her creative drive, and the latter, friend to all living things and scared of even more, thought she could pick up a few hard-to-find medicines for the animals she tended to at her cottage.

Gathering medicine. In a race. Seriously. Rainbow Dash didn’t know any other pegasus who missed the whole point of racing as badly as that. But of all the friends she had, Fluttershy had been hers the longest. She’d sooner give up a month of flying than to go without her best friend from summer flight camp. Well... maybe she’d only go a week... or three days...

“I’ve got a great feeling about this,” she said, her rose eyes moving between each of her friends. “We’re all gonna do amazing out there, I know it.”

“Because I came up with everypony’s workout schedules and routines.” Twilight raised a hoof to her chest, smug satisfaction crossing her features. Then she pointed at Rainbow. “But you didn’t even keep to yours.”

“Hello?” Rainbow protested amid the subsequent snickering. “Do you even know who you’re talking to?”

“Right, right, Miss Best Young Flier of Equestria.” A magenta aura shimmered into being around Twilight’s horn, summoning a rolled-up sheet of parchment from her saddlebag. A small flick of her head scattered the dew from the grass before her, and there she laid the parchment flat.

A double portrait of the Equestrian Princesses spread across the top: Celestia, tall and regal, cast her gaze toward the stylized sun decorating the eastern limit, while Luna, dark and determined, looked to the crescent moon adorning the west. Between the length of their mutual vision lay the shape of the kingdom itself, crossed through with the points, shades, and lines representing the cities, natural domains, and the roads that bound the kingdom together.

One such road advertised itself with a gold line as it traversed the kingdom in a grand, wavy circle. The Old Road, the Evening Ring, Route Unity—it acquired names as often as it sloughed them off, yet the worn signposts still standing along its paving-stones continued to bear its true title.

“The Via Equestria.” Twilight’s voice was barely a whisper. “When I was a Canterlot filly, I always dreamed of walking along it someday.” She traced a part of its path with a reverent hoof, looked up, and smiled at the others. “And in less than a few hours, not only am I going to be racing on it, but I’m going to be racing on it with the best friends a pony could ever ask for.”

“Yee-haw!” “Aw, yeah!” “Whoo-hoo, haha!” “You’re too kind!” “Yay!”

“Looky here,” said Pinkie Pie, materializing over—no, onto—Twilight’s shoulder. The curly-maned mare pointed her hoof at a gold-and-purple stripe overlaid on the Equestrian Way. “We’re gonna be passing through the Brightshadow Hills. That’s right next to my family’s rock farm! It’ll be like visiting home!”

Applejack chuckled. “I dunno if we’ll have time to visit your folks, Pinkie.” She indicated a similar stripe passing over a caricature of a slate-colored mountain. “But I sure can’t wait to test my stuff against Starsweep Peak. My grand-pappy climbed it when he was my age.”

“I’m looking forward to visiting the Sable Shore Coast, myself,” said a demure voice. Everypony parted for Fluttershy as she stepped forward, her long, pink mane spilling over half of the map as she pointed to a third stripe on Equestria’s western boundary. “I’ve always lived in the east, and I hear the ocean on the other side of the kingdom is just lovely.”

“It’s a good thing we brought Princess Luna back, then,” Twilight concluded, bucking Pinkie off of her shoulder. “This is the first time the Princesses have organized this race in over a thousand years. My old professors back at the university are all chomping at the bit for anything I might collect for them along the way,” she quipped, rolling violet eyes in opposing directions.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes for a different reason. She hoped Twilight wouldn’t slow the rest of the group down if she had to stop and take notes along the race course.

The warm braying of brass horns played a fanfare in the aqueous, lightening air, accompanied by the thunder of snares and bass drums. Entranced by the melody, Rainbow Dash lifted her head and looked around her. Out there on the meadow, she and her friends were but a small pinch of colored confetti in a Manehattan New Year’s Eve party, and their competition all but carpeted the rolling hills as they all turned their heads to the north. A pale, crescent-shaped stage rose from the grass there, its posterior edge traced with high pennants of dark purple bordered by sparkling orange. Royal crimson curtains hung between the pennants, and pairs of gray-coated unicorn guards in golden armor stood before them on both arms of the stage.

The curtains in the center parted as spotlights were brought to bear upon them. Through the division stepped two ponies: one of them with a white coat tinged with the slightest hint of pink, while the other’s matched what remained of the night as it retreated from the impending dawn. Their manes undulated like clouds of pastel and inky ether respectively, their wings unfurled with fractal elegance, and the tips of their spiraling horns pointed up at the fading stars. The crowns upon their heads, the first golden, the other jet black, spoke for their role in Equestrian society.

“Princess Celestia! Princess Luna!”

A sky-raising cheer erupted from the meadow. Rainbow Dash and her friends stomped their hooves and let their happiness bolster their cries—even Fluttershy was pumping her forelegs up and down in the air.

The Princesses paused on stage with regal composure while the cheer continued before they acknowledged their welcome with perfectly measured and synchronized nods. Urged on by her sister, Princess Luna stepped to the front of the stage, taking a moment to survey the field before her. She smiled in satisfaction, then drew herself up to her full height and spoke.

Citizens of Equestria! We would like to extend you—”

The dissonance of the Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice scourged the ears like the bellowing of an out-of-tune pipe organ on fire, but it ceased amid a scattering of strangling noises in the crowd. Several ponies close to the stage had actually fainted. Rainbow Dash glanced at her friends, and, except for Fluttershy, who was quaking behind her wings, they were all giving Princess Luna the same two-headed pony look she’d gotten not minutes earlier.

“Wha—? Again?” The princess was heard consulting with her older sibling in a state of confusion. She seemed to catch on soon afterward—her ears flattened with her shoulders. She cast out an apologetic expression and cleared her throat. “We would like to extend you our warmest welcome,” she continued, the deranged organ overtones absent from her voice this time, “to the first modern Summer Solstice Steeplechase!”

The Princess’s new words coaxed a round of applause from the audience as another blast of fanfare issued into the air. Sincere as the pounding of hooves on the earth was, everypony could tell the second wave lacked the same spirit as the first. But nopony had fled in panic, and there was a reasonable chance that the Princess had stopped doing that weird thing where she referred to herself as more than one pony. All in all? She wasn’t doing half bad.

“Greatly does it gladden our hearts to see you before us this day,” she said as she paced the stage in front of her sister. “The undertaking you face over the coming week is a hallowed tradition dating back to the earliest years of our reign. Long ago, we had just secured the paths of the sun and moon in the sky, your forerunners laid down these roads so their children, and their children’s children, could enjoy safe and speedy transit throughout the kingdom.”

Princess Luna’s words gained volume with confidence as she spoke, and her wings crept by degrees from her sides in the increase of her fervor. “Your Princesses found great delight in the resourcefulness of their endeavors. In honor of their tireless toil, we decreed that on the last week of spring, any pony who wished to do so should race over those splendid roads, and prove their athletic spirit to the entire kingdom.

“Though my absence forced this wonderful tradition into a brief hiatus, today, you shall return to its proud roots! Today, you shall prove yourselves to the world! Today, you shall rekindle this great legacy of yours, and shine it into the dark and mysterious strands of the future for all of your children to cherish!”

Princess Luna had become quite airborne by that point, her forelegs thrown upward while grumbling banks of thunderheads covered the sky. Suddenly and achingly aware of the silence, she cast one blue eye down at her subjects, beholding little else but petrified cringes on their faces.

Rainbow Dash couldn’t see it from this distance, but the way Princess Luna’s body sagged suggested that she had a hay of a blush on her cheeks. With a flick of her head, she dismissed the clouds to the opposite ends of the earth, and she lowered herself back down on the stage to a smattering of cowed applause.

The younger Princess wilted, and no pony was sure of what to do until she started back up again. The next words to emerge from her mouth sounded as if they came from a mare not that much older than Rainbow. “Or...” She put on the kind of smile such a mare would make if she were caught break-dancing to a polka record. “We could all just run a good race and have... fun?”

“You said it, Princess!”

Pow!

A rousing cheer exploded from the field of ponies following Pinkie Pie’s solo outburst. In the instant it took Rainbow to turn her head toward her friend, Ponyville’s blue-eyed party pony was already hard at work firing poppers and fluorescent balloons high into the air. Where she got them from, or how she hid them until she deemed the time was right, Rainbow would never kn—

Oh, wait a second. Pinkie simply pulled them out of her humongously poofy mane. Boy, that had to be convenient.

As the last flakes of confetti drifted out of her vision, Rainbow Dash turned back in time to watch Princess Celestia take to the stage. The cheering redoubled, even from Rainbow and the rest of their friends. Seeing the solar royal in person—well, Rainbow always had a little poetry within her, and she’d describe the experience as if she were witnessing the sunrise. It filled her with warmth and good feelings, which was why she compared Princess Celestia to the sun.

There. Poetry. To think most ponies struggled to come up with it.

Princess Celestia won the audience’s silence by raising her gold-shod hoof off of the stage. The quiet she commanded was absolute—the morningjays paused their twittering; the very breeze swirled to a stop. Who dared preempt the Regent of the Sun when she desired to speak?

Princess Celestia cleared her throat with a slight smile and closed her eyes. The sight of it pasted the most ridiculous grin of anticipation across Rainbow’s face, and she gestured spasmodically at her friends—this is happening! This is totally going on!

My little ponies! Luna and I are most blessed by your presence today!”

Somewhere behind the meadows, a tree heard Princess Celestia speak. It tore itself free of the grass and tumbled backward over the hills. For the ponies, only their utmost love for their Princess kept them rooted where they were. Luna’s speech was one thing. This—this—

Well, anything that could stun Pinkie Pie into gaping, wide-eyed silence worked on a different level.

Only one pony appeared to have enjoyed the spectacle, though the exaggerated diameter of her eyes suggested she had been caught just as much off guard as the rest. But when Princess Celestia looked back toward her little sister, a quivering smile was creeping across her face, and she stood a little taller. Her relief radiated from her like ripples in a golden pond that washed over the assembly, calming their fright as quickly it had risen.

Princess Celestia, for that matter, carried on without the Royal Voice as if it had never existed in the first place. “As this is the first Summer Solstice Steeplechase in well over a thousand years,” she said, “Luna and I decided to take you to the places of our past, back before our ascent to the throne. The stages that lie before you all carry our memories in the stones that lie along them—but we hope that you’ll find your own memories to take with you, too. Perhaps they may even bring you closer with your own ancestors.

“Furthermore—for those of you who have done your research—”

Somepony squealed next to Rainbow Dash. The pegasus wasn’t going to name names, but if a certain violet-eyed unicorn ever found a way to join the Wonderbolts -- well, there was always the Cloudsdale Speed Chess Cavalry.

“—you will know that the Steeplechase only ran stages during the day.” Princess Celestia nodded at her sister. “So, in honor of Princess Luna’s return to Equestria, we are introducing night phases for the first time in the history of the Run. I think this brings some long-overdue balance to the whole race, and I think those ponies who signed up to be their teams’ night racers will enjoy Equestria under quite the different light.

“You all know the rest. I wish you all the best of luck, and look forward to witnessing your speed, agility—”

“And intestinal fortitude!”

“Ponies these days say ‘guts,’ little sister.”

“Egads—they do?”

“We look forward—” said Princess Celestia, struggling to maintain her composure, “—to witnessing all of those things out there on the stages. Those of you who are racing in today’s day phase, please make your final preparations and gather by the starting line. The Summer Solstice Steeplechase begins in just a few minutes!”

“Yeee-haw! It’s on, girls!” Applejack whipped off her stetson as she bounded into the air, her exclamation but one in a sea of hundreds as the Princesses retreated behind the stage. Rainbow Dash hadn’t been surprised that her friend had signed up to carry the first stage of the race. The only challenges the farmpony didn’t charge into head-first were those beyond her ability to handle—and even that didn’t always stop her from trying.

“Indeed it is, Applejack,” said Rarity, ducking a wild swing of the earth pony’s hat. “But do be a dear and save your energy for when we’re out on the course today, will you?”

Applejack replaced her hat and turned to the unicorn. “O’ course, sugarcube. I gotta admit I’ve been lookin’ forward to runnin’ with you since our little switcheroo at the Social.” Suddenly, the earth pony arched an eyebrow. “If you don’t mind me askin’, though—when’d you change into that whole get-up?”

The unicorn took a step back in shock, sending peristaltic waves rippling through the expansive layers of fabric and gauze covering everything from her neck down. “What, this old thing? Just now. Why do you ask?”

“No offense, hon, but you look like Pinkie Pie tried to stuff you into a triple-decker cake on the way to the cotton candy machine. It’s a bit—”

“‘Frou-frou?’” Rarity’s lower lip protruded as she poked at the pink, billowy ruffle encircling her collar. She sighed. “There’s no telling how much business I’ll lose if I don’t advertise my wares out there, but I suppose you’re only trying to be practical.” Her horn emitted a periwinkle glow along with her outfit. Quick as breathing, the outfit levitated off of her body, folded itself into a neat rectangle, and disappeared into her saddlebag.

Rarity turned to her racing partner. “Satisfied?”

Applejack tilted her head and lifted a front hoof off the ground, sole up. “I reckon a track suit won’t do us any harm. Gosh if it ain’t yellower than a daffodil in spring, though.”

“Don’t forget about your numbers, girls,” said Twilight. As fast as an osprey diving in and out of a pond, she used her magic to affix two sheets of paper to both Applejack and Rarity’s haunches and stepped back.

“Oh, stars. Thank you, Twilight. Those poor timekeepers wouldn’t know how to score us otherwise.” Rarity looked over her shoulder, and smiled at what she saw. “Hm. Of course we’d be team number six.”

Rainbow Dash blew a raspberry with her lips. “I don’t care what number we have as long as we come in first place,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“This ain’t all about winnin’, partner,” said Applejack, flattening her brows.

“Sure it is.” Rainbow shifted her gaze between her friends. “We defeated Nightmare Moon ourselves when she threatened to plunge all of Equestria into eternal night. Who’s to say we can’t win a little race?”

“They’re not exactly the same thing,” Twilight observed, a look of caution darkening her features.

“Take it easy, all right?” Ponyfeathers, why was everyone jumping on her case so suddenly? “I guess I’m trying to say that I’m gonna be giving it my best when I’m racing out there, and I want everyone else here to do the same.”

A mass of poofy pink pony dropped onto her back as soon as she finished speaking. “Hahaha! Don’t you worry your pretty little mane off, Dashie! Of course everypony’s gonna be giving it their bestest effort out there.”

Rainbow grunted. Maybe her other friends weren’t as concerned with winning the race as she was, but then they weren’t concerned about joining the Wonderbolts. If she were part of the team that took home the first Run championship in over a thousand years, there’d be no way the greatest flying team in all of Equestria could pass her over as a candidate for initiation.

She let the matter go for the moment. Deep down inside, she knew Pinkie was right. None of her friends were quitters or do-halfway-ers.

“Group hug, everypony!” chirped Pinkie Pie, yanking all five of her friends in close. “Let’s all wish Applejack and Rarity good luck during the day!”

Rainbow, Twilight, and Fluttershy chimed in at once. “Tear ‘em up!” “Do your best!” “Be safe!”

“Good luck, you two!” finished Pinkie. “We’ll all see each other again when we get to Brindlebrook Valley.”

“And good luck to you and Fluttershy in tonight’s phase, Pinkie!” Applejack replied.

“Thanks, Applejack-attack!”

“Whuh?”

“All right, everypony, let’s leave these two to get ready.” Twilight squirmed her way out of the collective embrace and signaled the rest over toward the southern edge of the field, where an airship waited to shuttle non-racers to their next destinations.

“First place,” called Rainbow over her shoulder.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Applejack called back, making her way northeast.

Much to her surprise, Rainbow wasn’t. She’d seen firsthoof the chops both ponies possessed when they set about accomplishing something, whether it was harvesting whole orchards of apples in one week or making twelve dresses in just as much time. They couldn’t possibly start the race off on the wrong hoof. Grinning, she turned back around and followed her friends up the airship gangplank.