Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure how long much time she spent raging in the privacy of her room, uncaring about the potential gripes of any other ponies in the private wing. Right now, she needed to vent and by Celestia she was going to vent. It felt like hours to her, pummeling her pillow, hurling it across the room and outright breaking a chair. At last, she started to calm down enough to focus on deep breaths. It was at around that same time that a knock came to her door.
“Go away!” Dash shouted at the door, her wings flaring up aggressively from the disturbance. The door clicked and slowly swung open, revealing Princess Celestia on the other side, looking at Rainbow Dash worriedly.
“Rainbow Dash?” she said carefully before closing the door behind her.
“Oh… sorry…” Rainbow shrunk down and closed her eyes, tilting them down to face the floor.
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, Rainbow Dash,” Celestia frowned before setting herself down next to Rainbow, draping a wing over her comfortingly. “What happened?”
“I… I don’t know how to describe it…” Rainbow mumbled, her anger gradually slipping away to more melancholy emotions.
“Do your best. I have all the time in the world right now.” Celestia urged her on gingerly.
“Okay. Um… That other filly. Twilight was her name, right?” Rainbow asked for clarification, sniffling afterwards and wiping a foreleg across her face to dispel the tears starting to slide down her cheeks.
“Yes. Twilight Sparkle, my personal student. What happened between you two?” Celestia asked in barely a whisper.
“She… I’ve seen her before. About two months ago, I think?” Rainbow mumbled, laying her head down on her forelegs and closing her eyes.
“Go on…”
“It was the day I got my cutie mark…”
Twilight had been expecting to lay down for some sleep when the sun set. Instead, she was called to the room just across the hall from her by Princess Celestia to go over what happened with Rainbow Dash earlier. Tired and anxious as she was, however, Twilight was unable to even think of ignoring the summons. She eyed the door timidly as she approached, not at all wanting to have anymore interactions with that crazy pegasus filly if she could help it.
She opened the door after a moment with her magic and slipped inside, half expecting to have to dodge a lamp being chucked at her head. Thankfully, the room was almost silent when she entered. Rainbow Dash was sitting on a cushion directly to Princess Celestia’s right, looking at the floor as if it were all that existed. There was another cushion directly across from where Celestia and Dash were, and the alicorn princess gestured to it. “Please, Twilight, sit.”
Twilight did as instructed, looking awkwardly between Celestia and the now timid Rainbow Dash. She assumed it was going to be one of those two to break the silence. For almost a minute, they all sat there in silence. Finally, Twilight opened her mouth. “So… uh, why am I here?”
“I’m sorry.” Rainbow Dash suddenly blurted out through clenched teeth.
“Huh?” Twilight blinked and leaned back slightly in confusion.
“I got angry at you earlier and, well… I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry. I made a mistake.” Rainbow admitted after a heavy sigh. Celestia smiled and gave her a gentle, reassuring pat on the back.
“Oh. Uh, apology accepted I suppose,” Twilight looked at Celestia curiously before returning her attention to Dash. “But… can I ask what it was that made you so angry to begin with?”
Rainbow flinched and looked up at Celestia. Celestia smiled sympathetically and draped a wing comfortingly over dash. “Say only what you are ready to, Rainbow,” she said softly.
“Right… okay,” Rainbow looked back at Twilight and took a deep breath. “Where do I start… okay, see, there was this race happening. Impromptu, unorganized, whatever you wanna call it. I was racing against some bullies at the Cloudsdale flight school. They’d been picking on Fluttershy, a friend of mine and I was sick of it.
“We were having a race. I won pretty easily. Not to toot my own horn, but I even pulled off a sonic rainboom; easily the most awesome thing I’ve ever done,” Rainbow got this proud look in her eyes before a gentle nudge from Celestia got her back on topic. “Anyway, during the race… I noticed two ponies who hadn’t been there a little bit ago. One of them was a bright purple unicorn standing on the clouds, already not something I’m used to. The other one was…”
Twilight tilted her head when Rainbow hesitated. “Was…? Was who?”
“Not who, but what,” Rainbow corrected Twilight a bit more sharply than intended. She paused and took a moment to collect herself before continuing. “It was an alicorn. Wings, horns, the whole kit n kaboodle.”
Twilight’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped in shock. “Whah… you sure about that? An Alicorn?!”
“Let her tell her story, Twilight,” Celestia silenced Twilight softly, shooting her a frown. “There will be time for questions later.”
Twilight nodded and clamped her mouth shut. Rainbow kept going.
“The alicorn looked just like you, actually,” Rainbow pointed out with a slight hoof gesture. “Same cutie mark, same mane color, tail color… You- sorry, she was even carrying around a baby dragon, like yours.”
Twilight opened her mouth to ask more questions, but a stern look from Celestia silenced her again.
“So… I guess I was confused,” Rainbow continued. “I knew about Princess Cadance and Princess Celestia. Those are the big two, right?” Twilight and Celestia both nodded. “”Kay, so I got curious. It actually started distracting me from a lot of what I was supposed to be doing. My flight school performance dropped, as did my grades. I even asked a few of my classmates if they knew anything and they just called me insane…
“Then… a month ago…” Rainbow closed her eyes tightly and a shiver passed through her. “My parents and I were on our way to a performance being put on by the Wonderbolts in Baltimare. We… never got there.”
Twilight felt her ears go flat against her head when a small sob racked Rainbow’s small body, making her suddenly seem so… fragile.
“There was an accident… I was lost in thought, thinking about that Alicorn I saw again… I… if I hadn’t been distracted by that... if I’d been focusing I could have…” Rainbow sniffled and could say no more. She turned slightly at Celestia’s behest, burying her face into the alabaster alicorn’s chest fur and openly crying. Celestia looked to Twilight solemnly.
“Rainbow Dash is an orphan, Twilight. She lost her parents and was removed from the scene by local authorities,” Celestia lowered her gaze to Rainbow in deep sympathy. “When she refused to come along willingly, those authorities took her from her parents by using magic.”
“Oh my gosh…” Twilight lifted a hoof to her chest with wide eys. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know, Rainbow Dash…”
“It’s o-okay… now you know.” Rainbow mumbled, her already tender voice becoming raw from her cries.
Twilight nodded despondently before looking to Celestia again. For a moment, there were no words. Then, however, Twilight’s eyes widened even more as a possibility occurred to her. “Wait… if Rainbow’s an orphan…” Twilight looked at the way Celestia was allowing Rainbow such physical closeness, the gentle assurances and the fact that Celestia herself was putting aside time specifically for the pegasus filly. “Did you…?”
Celestia nodded softly and gently pat Rainbow on the back. “I did, Twilight. Rainbow Dash is, by all legal standards, now my daughter. I adopted her.”
Twilight suddenly felt light headed. “Ohmygoshohmygosh, please don’t burn me at the stake, or banish me or throw me into the dungeons for how I acted towards her earlier!” She spewed in a rapid, panicked voice.
Celestia shot Twilight a firm look. “Twilight, please. Quiet.”
Twilight instantly clamped her jaw shut and nodded worriedly.
Rainbow slowly shifted away from Celestia’s embrace and trotted up to Twilight. They looked each other up and down for a few moments before Rainbow gingerly offered a hoof. “Let’s start over… I’m Rainbow Dash. It’s nice to meet you.”
Twilight looked at the hoof expectantly for a moment before smiling slightly and reaching out for a hoof-shake. What she got was a hoof-bump. She looked at the limb for a second, slightly befuddled, then smiled at Rainbow a bit more widely. “Nice to meet you, Rainbow Dash. I’m Twilight Sparkle.”
Rainbow smiled slightly and then sagged heavily, the exhaustion on her face immediately showing through. “Alright, I think I’m gonna hit the hay…” she sluggishly turned and shuffled towards the bed in the middle of the room before flopping atop the covers rather unceremoniously. Already, Celestia and Twilight could hear gentle snores coming from the filly.
Celestia giggled quietly and carefully guided Twilight from the room. Once outside and the door was closed, she looked to her student. “Now Twilight, I don’t want you to treat her as royalty. She may have that status by legal right, but that does not mean she truly wants anything to do with that kind of thing. She is an athlete at her core. Unless we are in some sort of formal setting where titles are expected, such as court, treat her as you would anypony else.”
Twilight frowned up at Celestia upon hearing that request. “But why? She’s royalty now! That comes with all sorts of expectations on everypony else, doesn’t it?”
Celestia leaned down and looked at Twilight seriously. “Because I promised her I wouldn't force her new status into her life. I will not go back on a promise; not to this filly. She values integrity and loyalty more than you know, my faithful student.”
Twilight nodded and then fell silent, trying to figure out how to word her next question. Celestia stood and waited patiently. Finally, Twilight looked up to her teacher uneasily. “So… who was this other Alicorn? The one that Rainbow Dash says she saw?” she asked, shifting on her hooves nervously.
Celestia went stiff for a moment, her frown deepening with thought. The shift in demeanor was concealed as swiftly as it had arrived however. “I do not know for sure, Twilight. I have a few theories, but nothing to prove any of them yet. I intend to find out, though.”
Twilight nodded softly before a small, cute yawn slipped from her. “Woah, heh. I’m used to being in bed by now.” she chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof.
Celestia giggled in amusement. “Then go ahead, Twilight. I don’t wish to keep you up any longer either. I have but a few small matters to attend to myself before I retire for the night.” she said before gently turning Twilight towards her room with a push of her wing. “Go get some rest.”
“Okay… good night, Princes.” Twilight yawned again before vanishing into her room and closing the door behind her.
Spike glanced up at her from his basket at the foot of her bed. “Aga bagga bwoo?” he babbled out, though Twilight still got the message. She gently pat Spike along his spines before climbing up into her bed.
“It’s alright, Spike. We got everything sorted out.” she told him before closing her eyes and preparing for a good night's sleep. Well, we got almost everything sorted out. She mentally corrected herself, her curious thoughts wandering back to that Alicorn look-alike of her. Her thoughts than drifted back to that dream she had had the night before. The white void, the spectral Alicorn talking to her.
She bit her lip when the next thought slowly drifted into her mind. Were those two somehow connected? If so, why was there an Alicorn that looked just like her, and where was this alicorn now? With these questions but no answers to be had as of yet, Twilight decided her best course of action for now would be to allow Princess Celestia to search for this newcomer herself.
That reassuring thought echoing in her mind, Twilight yawned one last time and then fell into a deep, restful slumber.