The Moon Also Rises

by Nicroburst

Twenty-Eight

Do not think me selfish. I do not envy my sister. She has earned her place time and time again. It is not for me that I lay these words down.

For what bitterness could I hold, granted the opportunity to see them once more? To again rise with the dawn, approach my window, and watch them wake from the slumber we once feared would be our last—it is better than any celebration. Life needs no acknowledgement to have power.

Twenty-Eight

RAINBOW SPED THROUGH THE AIR. Warm currents wrapped around her, caressing her as she tore past them, scattered the gentle wind into a confused cacophony of air-streams in her wake. Behind her, a rainbow contrail extended in a gentle arc, tracing her path around the stadium. Here, she felt at once rested and energised, brought to the fullest extremes of life by the thrill surrounding her. Each beat of her wings was effortless; each pounding pulse of blood carried more adrenaline to her heart and soul.

She’d suggested this arena for practice. The Wonderbolts used it often, both as an open space to go over their routines and as a venue for performances, when in Canterlot. It was, indisputably, the second best aerial stadium in Equestria—second, of course, to the Wonderdome in Cloudsdale, and the Wonderbolts had priority access to it during the hoofball off-season.

Of course, word had gotten out that the Captain of the Wonderbolts had booked the stadium exclusively for several weeks straight. Rumours immediately began circulating about some new trick, bigger and better than anything that had been conceived of before. Journalists and general fanatics began trying to sneak their way into the stands, looking for an inside scoop. Rainbow had put a stop to that pretty quickly. She was no stranger to failure—especially not failure in practice. As far as she was concerned, one couldn’t learn a new trick without screwing it up a few times. But over the years, she’d attained a near-legendary status in the public’s eye, of an infallible, utterly fearless flyer. She had no desire to disprove that now.

“This isn’t working,” she called. Luna was standing below her, in the centre of the grounds. “There’s too much resistance.”

“Irrelevant,” Luna said. Rainbow could hear her words as if the Princess were beside her, whispering into her ear, though she didn’t bother to raise her voice. “We aren’t trying to push through air, Rainbow.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Rainbow grumbled. Luna had tried to go over the basic theory with her. But even with years of living with Twilight under her belt, on top of a long-denied maturity, seriousness, and appreciation for knowledge, some things would never change, and Rainbow had been left even more confused than when she’d started.

It wasn’t so much that she didn’t get what she needed to do. Luna had been pretty clear—Stormchasers had developed time travel as a natural extension of their abilities—and it sounded good. Instead of flying through space, she needed to break into the temporal stream. Luna visualised it as making an abrupt turn, ninety degrees away from every direction, all at the same time. If one considered time as a progressive quantity; a river, flowing in one direction, she needed to move upstream. If one considered time a series of points, both distinct and consecutive, she needed to render two points to be the same, and step from one to the other.

So far, so good. Rainbow didn’t really need to understand what was going on in those scenarios in order to draw an objective from them. What was frustrating, then, was how, exactly, she was supposed to translate that to reality.

Rainbow had always been an instinctive flier. Others calculated trajectories and angular velocities, worked out, for example, exactly how much force was needed to generate the perfect ratio of lift and thrust, in order to improve their flight patterns. Rainbow had always just known, with years upon years of experience in the air, precisely how to maximise her effort, how to handle her body, how to read and manipulate the air. She was in sync, totally, with everything she felt, responding without thought. That didn’t help with what Luna was asking.

“Faster, Rainbow,” Luna said, drawing a grunt.

Alright, then. Faster.

Rainbow sped up suddenly, pouring her frustration into each wing-stroke. She powered forward, circling the ground, air melting before her to reform into solid chunks of pressure beneath her wings. In a matter of seconds, she broke the sound barrier, the familiar, deafening sound of the sonic Rainboom reaching her only as she flew back through the centre of the explosion on the next lap.

Faster.

This was what she’d always lived for. This was the freedom that the skies promised. This was where she felt most at peace, moving so fast she couldn’t think, could barely feel, instead glorying in the instinctive, honed responses of her body, making minute adjustments to correct her path. She grinned, forcing down the giddy laughter that bubbled in her chest and throat, and poured yet more into her flight, sinking in all her love and intoxicating joy into the endeavour.

Another burst of light exploded from her body, streaming backwards from her wings. The characteristic concentric rainbow that was knew so well disappeared instantly, sucked up behind her by the tremendous force of her passage. Below her, unheard and unseen, Luna clapped her hooves together, eyes lit by the spectacle unfolding around her: a giant cyclone, rising from the stadium, emblazoned with the colours of a rainbow, spinning and spinning, tearing up grass, growing until it threatened to lift the entire stadium into the air.

Rainbow lost control. She couldn’t have guessed how fast she was going—in this place, she could barely feel anything beyond her body, as if all her skin had gone numb at once. Her eyes, peeled wide open, found no air to make them water, and she breathed with ease, where she should have strained to sip before the air was ripped behind her. But her wings trembled in each, rapid beat, and her body rocked back and forth, buffeted by unseen forces. If she crashed like this, she wouldn’t walk away, and Coromancy be damned.

With a gasp, she pulled upwards, shooting from the top of the cyclone, streaming a spectral rainbow behind her, and stopped flapping. Instantly, air solidified before her, hitting her like a brick wall. She clenched her eyes shut, bit down on her tongue gently, but firmly, and soared up, tracing an arc over the city.

So much for staying under the radar.

Slowly, she slowed, until she unfurled her wings and brought herself to a stop, still high in the air above Canterlot. She took several deep breaths, savouring, for once, the stillness, before flying back down to where Luna was waiting. In the absence of both anger and joy, she felt curiously blank, an exhausted nothing that robbed her of what surely would have been a victorious grin, stretching from one ear to the other. There was only one word to describe that stunt.

Awesome.

As she descended, she took stock of the stadium. Her whirlwind had caused a rather large amount of damage. Chairs—benches, really—had been ripped from their brackets, tossed haphazardly around the stands. The grass itself was torn to shreds, practically erasing the lines painstakingly measured and drawn onto it, and filling the air with the scent of a freshly mown lawn. Princess Luna stood unharmed in the centre of a twilight void: a bubble of magic that dissipated once she caught sight of Rainbow’s descent.

“Most excellent, Rainbow,” Luna said. “But you pulled away early.”

“I can’t control myself at that speed, Princess. I can barely react to what happens. If something went wrong . . .”

Luna made a sound not unlike a non-committal grunt. “I was not expecting caution from you, of all ponies.”

“Hey!” Rainbow said, stalking forward until her nose was nearly pressing against Luna’s. “I was not expecting you, of all ponies, to judge me on a foolish past.”

If Princess Celestia had heard that sentence, she would have winced, and looked away. Twilight might have shaken her head, preparing to defend the speaker from Luna’s wrath. Pinkie might have materialised a bucket of popcorn, and a pair of tinted shades, so as to properly enjoy the spectacular fallout.

When Rainbow’s ears caught up with her tongue, she flinched, once, shrinking back onto her hooves marginally, no more than an inch or two, and then aggressively jutted her head forward, practically daring Luna to take offense. She didn’t know where that little outburst had come from, in light of her lightheaded blankness of a moment before. She supposed she was a little touchy, a little raw, right now.

Instead, Luna turned aside, and hung her head. “Of course. I am . . . sorry, Rainbow. I have had much to think about, of late.”

Rainbow took a moment to collect herself. “It’s fine, Princess, really,” she said. “I get it. But, I still can’t handle that speed.”

“You must go faster,” Luna said, quietly, to herself. To Rainbow, “You could not handle the Sonic Rainboom, at first, could you?”

“It took me ten years before I could do it on cue,” Rainbow said. “But . . . once I’m through the barrier, it’s even easier to control than normal flight. Everything just dissolves away, all resistance, all doubt.”

“Let us work on the assumption that the same is true here,” Luna said, massaging a temple with a hoof. “I noticed a second explosion. If the first was a Sonic Rainboom . . .”

Rainbow grinned. “You couldn’t have missed it,” she smirked. “I’ve hit that one a few times before, but never in the middle of a cyclone. I didn’t think it would do this.” She waved a hoof around herself, gesturing at the destruction, swallowing as she did so. It hadn’t really registered earlier.

The benches weren’t just swept around the edges; they’d also been lifted up by the massive surge generated by Rainbow’s abrupt ascent. As a result, they’d literally rained down over the stadium, scoring huge gashes in the ground. Several entrances had collapsed, the concrete slabs insufficient against the tremendous force of her cyclone. The roof, though—mostly opened for their practice, but still with thin edges peeking over the stands—had been shredded, the claw-like remains, jutting from the edges of the walls, sparked intermittently.

All of which, Rainbow was responsible for. Even if she hadn’t been the one to cause all this damage, the stadium was reserved in her name, and she’d be the one paying for whatever happened on her watch.

Besides. She liked this stadium. The Wonderbolts had been performing here for years, and it was certainly much closer to home than the one up in Cloudsdale.

As if to confirm her words, a shout drew Rainbow’s attention.

“Hey, Cap’n. You okay down there?”

She recognised Blaze by the shock of fiery red mane clinging to the back of his head as he alighted on the edge of the stadium, high above them. Rainbow grimaced. She’d told her squad to take the day’s practice off, and provide some measure of privacy as she worked out the kinks in a new stunt. Some, whose dedication was only eclipsed by their ego, would have taken Rainbow’s orders rather literally, racing each other around the outside while keeping a hawk eye out for approaching media or fans. But most of them would have taken the opportunity to relax, no uniforms, no schedule, no pressure. Rainbow expected that—she hadn’t been the most attentive captain, this last week, and there was bound to be some confusion, particularly with a show upcoming.

But she hadn’t counted on causing quite so much of a spectacle. Other Wonderbolts joined Blaze, peering in curiously. The sight of Princess Luna almost immediately sparked gossip, and they flew down to the pair, bowing to Luna before surrounding Rainbow excitedly, gushing over the cyclone. Blaze was particularly impressed with the collateral damage.

There was a flash of light. Startled, Rainbow shielded her eyes with a hoof, looking up at its source. Sure enough, hovering a few feet above the northern wall was a pegasus pony, holding a camera. Rainbow growled, bending her legs. The Wonderbolts glanced at her, and followed her lead.

Luna placed a hoof on her shoulder, forestalling her, and lit her horn. “Calm, Rainbow,” she said. “I will handle this.”

With a burst of midnight light, the pegasus appeared before them. His camera was held before his eyes, clearly zoomed in as far as it would go, and the sudden appearance, from his perspective, of an extreme close-up of the Princess’s chest caused him to fall over himself backwards. Luna caught the camera before it hit the ground, held it before the pegasus as he rose to his feet, trembling.

“H-hey,” the pegasus said. “That’s mine.”

“Your name?” Luna asked.

“H-huh?”

“What is your name,” Luna said, hissing the words between closed teeth.

“S-snap Shot,” the pegasus said, shaking his head quickly, in an attempt to reorient himself. Abruptly, he sank into a low bow. “Snap Shot, your Highness.”

“Well, Snap Shot,” Luna said. “We hereby requisition your film, as per article seven of the Equestrian Defence Act.”

Snap Shot nodded his head fervently, until Rainbow thought he might’ve shaken loose every thought in there. She slung a hoof around his neck, bumping him with her shoulder. He shot her a nervous glance, which was spread around the rest of the Wonderbolts, to a pony keeping a grim glare fixed on him.

“Yes, yes, of course, your Highness.”

“You understand that we cannot allow you to speak of this,” Luna continued, ignoring Rainbow’s intervention. “The spectacle a few minutes ago is regrettable, but we cannot allow it to grace your paper, lest we reveal our preparations prematurely.”

“B-but-“

Luna cut him off with a sigh. “It would be foolish indeed, to attempt to cover up Rainbow’s stunt entirely. But might we persuade you to restrict your report to Rainbow Dash herself, so as to remove the possibility of unpleasant conclusions attached to our presence here? I assure you, you will be well compensated.” Luna threw the camera back to him, and jerked her head at Rainbow.

It took Rainbow a second to understand, but she swung Snap Shot around, took off, all but pulling him through the air, and escorted him to the edge of the stadium, throwing a hasty gesture of dismissal over her shoulder as she left—she’d fill them all in tomorrow, before the regularly scheduled practice . . . which might have to be moved, now, Rainbow realised, wincing inwardly. By the time they reached the walls, Snap Shot seemed to have gathered himself—he turned to throw Luna a quick salute before dropping back outside. Rainbow went with him, to offer a few words of context, and to seal the impression that her stunt was nothing more than that.

It was a slick piece of statemareship. The reference to the Equestrian Defence Act carried not only all the weight a loyal pony of Equestria would attribute to the defence of his or her homeland, but also the threat of harsh reply to any traitorous intent, while Rainbow’s olive branch—an exclusive, all but guaranteeing sales the likes of which Snap Shot’s paper had only ever imagined—was dangled before him, simultaneously providing a believable explanation for the cyclone to Canterlot, and drawing his attention away from the Princess’s presence.

From the outside, the stadium looked much healthier. There had been barely any structural damage, merely the odd chip, or crack now running vertically like a bolt of lightning. Rainbow shook her head, focusing, and pointedly ignored the small chunks of concrete, or remains of seats that she passed in the streets, flying Snap Shot to a local café. The Princess would take care of it, and she could use a break. Practice would just have to wait until tomorrow.

***

Luna hissed in irritation. She would have to remember to visit Snap Shot’s dreams tonight, to forestall any second thoughts he might have. She did not doubt Rainbow’s ability to complete the diversion, but neither did she trust the façade Snap Shot had presented her. No pony with the initiative and fortitude to evade her Guard—disguised, of course, and arranged around the stadium to ensure privacy, in addition to Rainbow’s Wonderbolts—in flying to his vantage point would have collapsed before her so easily.

No matter. Her presence here could be explained, though she would rather these sessions not become public knowledge. She would have to find somewhere more secluded. Casting a glance around the somewhat ruined stadium, she added somewhere safer to that thought.

To the Wonderbolts, she offered no more than a few vague assurances, and denied connection to Rainbow’s stunt. It was, she said, merely something the Captain wished to demonstrate, as proof of her prowess. With a smile, she confided that it was to do with the winning of a bet, causing the Wonderbolts to disperse with knowing grins of their own.

Finally alone, tossing her mane back, and using magic to peel the thin layer of dust from her coat, Luna summoned her Guard with a flicker of magic, no more than a spark, across the back of their necks. In moments, they assembled before her, bowing.

“Your Highness,” they intoned.

“Rise,” Luna said.

“I am left to wonder how exactly a camera-pony managed to evade all of you. Captain,” Luna gestured at Argent Sheen. “The matter has been resolved, but I trust you will conduct an investigation into the Guard’s failure here.”

Argent Shield bowed again, pressing his muzzle to the ground. “Of course, your Highness.”

“I must pay a visit to Rarity and Twilight Sparkle. Until such time as I call you, you are to assist and oversee the reconstruction of this building. Do so while maintaining your guises.”

“Yes, your Highness.”

“Dismissed.”

The Guard broke ranks, mares and stallions reporting left and right as they quickly organised themselves into smaller work groups, and began cleaning up Rainbow’s mess. Unicorns set about repairing small damage to the walls and tunnels circling the stadium, while earth ponies cleared the grounds, and pegasi scouted the area, charting sites of damage. One boon of the peculiar armour ‘Tia had created for her, which was responsible for the distinctive look of the Night Guard was that a disguise was as simple as taking it off. Even had these ponies been known to work for Luna, their presence here would draw no more attention than any other Good Samaritan, lending a helping hoof in his or her time off.

Luna found a shadow, and faded away before the pegasi team dispatched to bring in more experienced workers returned. Rainbow would likely want the rest of the day off, and Luna was inclined to allow her to recover. In the meantime, she could check on Rarity’s progress, and Twilight’s condition. She hadn’t been spending enough time with Twilight as it was, and if she was serious about turning her attention to Cadance soon, she needed to make sure Twilight was recovering. Luna still felt guilty about creating the predicament.

The front hall of the Agency materialised around her. Luna was becoming familiar with this place, more so than she had expected. She poked her head into the room set aside for Rarity, and was pleased to note that the bathtub was empty, unoccupied by both water and pony.

Further down the hall, towards the back of the building, Luna found Twilight’s bedroom. As she approached, she could hear chatter, excited murmurs emanating towards her. Luna pricked her ears and slowed her step. It was, perhaps, unkind to eavesdrop, but she hadn’t seen Twilight awake since that day on the plains outside Canterlot, and she didn’t want to burst in at a bad moment.

“So then he says, ‘I’ll just take the pie,’ and turns back around,” Rarity said. “Of course, by the time he’d done that, the other shelf had been cleaned out as well!”

“Poor thing,” twilight said, chuckling. “Everypony’s always gotta learn that the hard way.”

“You don’t mess with Pinkie’s pies!” they chorused, before breaking down into little giggles.

Luna pushed the door open, smiling. It was good to hear the two of them merry, they had more than earnt their respite. And it certainly sounded like Twilight was recovering excellently.

The two paused at Luna’s entrance. Twilight was the first to speak. “Princess!” she said, welcoming Luna in. “How are you?”

“I am well,” Luna replied. “And you?”

There was more than pleasantry to the question. Luna had experience enough to detect the undercurrents in Twilight’s posture and tone.

Predictably, Twilight’s face fell. “I’m . . . okay,” she said. Luna was unconvinced.

Part of the problem lay in the outcome of Luna’s interference. Grief took many forms, ranging from crushing sadness, to full-blown rage, to a weary melancholy. Twilight, along with Cadance, had divested themselves of sorrow in the instant of their loss, shaking Canterlot to its foundations. To follow that exertion with a descent into rage-filled madness—spurred by Luna’s interference—could not help but take a toll.

The predicted trajectory for Twilight’s emotional health was rocky. As she rested, sorrow would return to her, quite possibly as raw and powerful as her original hurt. It was this that Luna saw in her now, lining her backbone and gleaming in the partially-dried tracks on her cheeks. It would pass, in time, but Coromantic exertion could not help her deal with it.

The anger she had spent hounding Trixie would follow. Not to its previous extent, not without access to Nightmare Moon’s regalia, but anger nonetheless. As difficult to cope with as sorrow, in its own right, and no less important. That step—that moment, when Twilight cast about for Somepony to blame, be it Trixie, or fate, or herself—that was what Luna was waiting for.

For now, Luna bided her time. “You have my sympathies, Twilight, and my deepest regret,” she said, stepping forward to lay a comforting hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Rest well, and heal. The world has not heard the last of you yet.”

Twilight’s face contorted, and she turned away. Luna caught Rarity’s eye, and left the room to await her in the hall.

It took Rarity a few minutes to emerge, and when she did, she was furious. Moving with precise, controlled steps, she stormed down the hall, disappearing from Luna’s view into another room. Luna followed at a more sedate pace.

“What was that?” Rarity nearly screamed as Luna stepped in, closing the door behind her. “I don’t care how royal you are, you don’t speak to Twilight like that!”

“T’was not our intention to give offense,” Luna said, refusing to be baited. “We—I—chose my words rather carefully.”

“Tell me, Princess,” Rarity said. “Why exactly was it necessary for you to not only fix Shining Armour in the forefront of Twilight’s mind—when I had just gotten her to smile again, no less!—and then turn around and practically order her to get over it and get back to work!”

“Your interpretation seems . . . extreme,” Luna said. She paused a beat, gauging Rarity’s reaction carefully. “Do you truly think Twilight took my words as such?”

“How else was she to take them?”

“I had meant merely to comfort her as I may, and provide some small encouragement.”

“Well, she’s crying. Again.”

“Good. How else shall she express her grief?”

Rarity frowned. “Excuse me for hating to see a friend in pain.”

Luna shook her head. “It is unpleasant, but necessary. We cannot change what happened to Shining Armour. Twilight needs to be allowed to grieve, and to heal. Distracting her is no more conducive to that end than her eruption last week.” Luna reached forward, lifting Rarity’s chin. “There will be a funeral in the next few days. Tell me, Rarity. How does Twilight handle it?”

“I . . . I’m not ready,” Rarity said, still thinking, stumbling over her words The abrupt switch in topic had caught her off-guard, and her eyes were growing red, now. Though she hadn’t agreed with Luna outright, she wasn’t protesting either.

“You do not need your crutches,” Luna said. “If you cannot See, now, as you are, how will you be able to direct Rainbow from within the time-stream? I cannot imagine it being more peaceful there.”

“This again?” Rarity asked, shaking her head free of Luna’s hoof. “No offense, Princess, but there is a time and a place for everything. I can’t spend all day practicing my Sight. Twilight needs me.”

“Rainbow will be returning shortly, I imagine,” Luna said. “They will want privacy.”

Rarity clenched her jaw. “Of course they will.” Frustrated, she turned on Luna. “Don’t you ever switch off? It’s only been a day since you dropped the whole time-travel thing on us. I spent last night and half my morning in Ponyville, trying to sort something out long-term with Sweetie Belle, so I could come back here to find Twilight beside herself. I haven’t had the time or the energy to even begin attempting Sight, and I don’t imagine I’ll begin until tomorrow.”

Luna cocked her head. “Have I not made the importance of this endeavour clear? There is . . . something very wrong in Equestria, Rarity. Something left over from Moon’s Fall. And you-“ she poked Rarity in the chest with a hoof, “-are essential to discovering what, precisely, it is. Rainbow has taken to her duty with enthusiasm. I expect you to do the same.”

“Yes, I saw Rainbow’s display. She isn’t . . .”

“It will be some time before she is ready,” Luna said. “But when she is, there must be no delay.”

Rarity thought for a moment. “I thought we had all the time we needed. It’s time-travel. Correct me if I am wrong, but surely it can’t hurt to take a few more days? After all, we’ll can just make up the time on the way back, no?”

Luna frowned. “My schedule does not conform so easily to your wishes. If I am to spend weeks aiding you in Canterlot, I will be unable to oversee other tasks befallen me.”

“I . . . see.”

“You ask me to relax. I wonder if you would recommend the same course, were you in my position.” Luna shook her head. “I cannot force you, Rarity. But I implore you, put this task above all others in your mind. I am quite sure that the fate of Equestria hangs on you and Rainbow Dash returning promptly, and with the truth.”

Rarity sighed, glancing away. “I just . . . it doesn’t feel right. I’m sorry, Luna. I’ll try harder.”

“See that you do.” Luna turned to leave.

Luna didn’t notice the venomous look Rarity shot her as she left the building, and she pretended not to hear Twilight’s sobs, echoing down the lonely hall.

***

Rainbow grinned. Across the field, Rainbow grinned back.

Nearly a week had passed since she’d begun. In that time, she’d been working on this almost exclusively. Her lieutenant in the Wonderbolts had been glad to manage the team for her, particularly when Rainbow promised a toned-down version of the second Rainboom for their upcoming show. The way it was arranged at the moment, Rainbow wouldn’t be involved in any group stunts, allowing the team to practice without her. Normally, that would've stung. But right now, Rainbow had bigger things in mind.

She’d also been able to spend a lot of time with Twilight. She had barely been able to understand what Twilight was going through, until Twilight had shown her. Rainbow wasn’t without empathy, but the sickening sense of loss and regret that she felt regarding Twilight in such a state paled in comparison to what she’d felt from within Twilight’s mind.

But a burden shared is a burden lightened. And she would go through far worse to bring a smile back to Twilight’s face. In this instance, all it took was her presence—the gentle reminder that she was not alone, and never would be. Spoken aloud, the words sounded sappy, and ultimately empty. But from within Twilight’s mind, spoken from consciousness to consciousness, they were simple images, and undeniable truths.

Following the near-disaster at the stadium, she’d gone looking for a better location. The current field—located at the bottom of a dip in the mountains north-west of Canterlot, had immediately struck her as near-perfect. The rising mountains surrounding it all but guaranteed isolation, and the thin river running along the southern side gave her somewhere a little softer to crash, should she need it. Diving into water vertically was a terrible way to shed momentum, but she knew that sliding in at a near-horizontal angle would shield her from any impact, and allow her to slow down over a moderate distance.

The valley itself was surprisingly lush, green grass growing over a gently rolling plain. There were a few trees, scattered here and there, but largely it was open to the sky, and shielded from the wind. A beautiful place for a picnic. Rainbow really would have to remember to bring Twilight here, in the future.

For now, she was preoccupied.

Her . . . double, she supposed, had just materialised out of thin air—had come screaming into existence not ten feet from where Rainbow stood, preparing herself for another go, and watching the dissipating energies of her previous attempt. There was a large crack, and a sudden wind strong enough to cause her to stumble, and through the air, in her wake, a rainbow contrail, outlined by fire. It was as if she’d somehow set air on fire.

So awesome.

Still grinning, she took wing over to where her double stood. It had taken her a few minutes to slow down, in which time she appeared to have also caught her breath.

“Hey, Rainbow!” she called, as she approached.

“Hey, yourself,” her double replied, seconds before Rainbow crashed into her. With an air of nonchalance, she sidestepped the tackle, turning to regard Rainbow with amusement.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ve already done this.”

“So . . . I get it.” Rainbow asked, pulling her muzzle out of the grass. She was still grinning madly.

“Yeah,” her double said, raising a hoof and buffing it on her chest. “Two more tries.”

“Sweet.”

“You’re almost there,” she said. “Just remember, on the last flap, you want to thrust yourself up.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll make sense. Go on, try. I want to see what happens from outside.”

Rainbow found the whole encounter surreal, like she was dreaming—though it was still ridiculously cool. Surreptitiously, she pinched herself, winced, and then gave her body a little shake all over, psyching herself up. “Okay, Rainbow, you got this.”

She took to the air, flapping hard as she circled, quickly approaching the sound barrier. With the memory of Twilight, waking up in tears again, in the middle of the night, she tore through that without really noticing it.

This was the tricky part. By now, she’d spent hours at this speed, learning the timings, the little movements, training her body to control itself so that she could focus on what she was trying. She was able to notice, for instance, that the wider arena she’d selected prohibited the cyclone from forming, and allowed the air currents to remain relatively stable. She hit the second barrier, and tore through it as well, pouring all that sorrow, that hollow nothingness into her wings. It felt good, to burn it off like this. It wa intoxicating.

The colours swirled around her, following her, a broken rainbow sucked along her wake. Air dissipated before her, reformed under her wings. Each stroke felt like it was pushing against water, and she sped up even further.

She could feel the world tremble. Time slowed, fractions of a second affording her plenty of time to think. With a gasp, remembering her double’s advice, she pulled up sharply, arching her back and bearing down with her wings as hard as she could manage.

The result was a spectacular backflip, followed by a miniature explosion as the colours caught her, buffeted her every which way, and eventually threw her to the side, their energy expended. Rainbow landed hard, sliding across the grass, and collided with her double’s outstretched hoof . . . who had flown over to stand before her, halting her slide before she hit the single tree in the field. Rainbow groaned.

“I said the last stroke, Rainbow,” Rainbow said. There wasn’t a trace of concern in her voice—but then, Rainbow thought, it might be pretty hard to be concerned for somepony if you were that pony, and you’d just lived through it.

“I . . . did,” she managed, rolling over onto her back. The sky was really blue today.

“No, you didn’t,” Rainbow said. “You aren’t trying to move through space with that thrust. Imagine, jumping from one thermal to the next, only they’re horizontal, not vertical. You still want to be moving forward, you just . . . do it a different way.”

“That makes . . . literally . . . no sense,” Rainbow said, getting to her hooves. She rolled her head, hearing several loud cracks as she did.

“Up,” her double said. “Forward.” She shooed her away with a hoof. “This is gonna be great.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Her wings were still a little sore, but she was surprisingly unharmed. She couldn’t really describe what being in the centre of the tumult had been like, but ultimately, the energy had acted like air currents. Until she collided with something, she couldn’t do all that much damage, and she’d had worse landings. She jumped into the air, hovered there for a few beats, assuring herself that she was alright, and then took off.

Back through the barriers, the first parting before her as easily as before, the second requiring more of a push—her glee at the mere thought of what she was about to pull off helping her through it. Again, the colours of the rainbow followed her, her contrail splitting into a revolving spiral, endlessly chasing her. Again, she felt the world tremble, slow down around her.

But this time, she tried to take her advice more literally. This time, she pushed down with her wings, jumping up, and shooting forward, and the image in her head—the image of herself, appearing out of a crack in time amidst a burst of glory and fire—drained into her wings. She was dimly aware of her body growing hot, cutie mark glowing like the sun itself, as sparks arced from her wings, dancing over her body and dissipating into the air before her. With a rapidly growing crescendo of noise—wind, static, the crack of tearing air—a hole, a void of nothing, enveloped her, encroaching on her vision as it spilled out from her wingtips. Trusting her gut instinct, Rainbow pelted forward, and then everything went black.

There was an instant of utter darkness, so complete that even her own radiance meant nothing to it, and then the world returned—bright splendour surrounding her, and the grimace of effort that had been transfixed on her lips transformed itself into a fierce grin of triumph.

Comments

[RTStephens]

The Back to the Future episode!

Interesting dynamics between Luna and all the ponies she's working with. I wonder who's being pushed harder.

And it looks like Rarity may be the weak link in all this planning.

Till next time!