Rainbow Dash was worried. Well, ‘worried’ wasn’t the right word. She was too confident to be ‘worried’. ‘Confused’ was better.
She was confused because she’d expected Scootaloo to excitably come and tell her about her result from Twilight’s test. She’d get it if Scoots’ results had shown she wasn’t an Element of Harmony at all. She’d even prepared a speech along the lines of ‘you’re still awesome even if you can’t wield an Element!’, because she knew that even after all this time she was still worried about being ‘not enough’.
When Scootaloo didn’t show up to tell her, that’s what she thought had happened, so Rainbow went looking for her. But on the way she ran into her friends. They said that Scootaloo was an Element, though they don’t know which one.
If that were true, why’d she not show up? She pushed the thought away. She’d know why as soon as she found her. Though it was proving difficult.
It used to be that Rainbow could just soar a few feet over the rooftops to search. But Scootaloo’s flying lessons had paid off. Sure, she probably wouldn’t be a Wonderbolt, and both her speed and endurance weren’t ever going to get any better, but she could fly well enough to make it to the clouds. Unfortunately, that meant she could be hanging out on clouds above the town.
There was a flash of orange on a cloud, and she circled around it once before settling down.
“Hey kid, how’re you doing?” Rainbow asked.
“Great,” Scootaloo replied.
She was smiling. Rainbow wasn’t the best as telling when someone was lying about how they felt. Stars know it’s gotten her in trouble before. Still, she knew it would be better to address it sooner.
“So, I ran into Sweetie Bell earlier,” Rainbow said. “She said you guys went and took Twilight’s Test.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess we did,” Scootaloo admitted, deflating somewhat.
“So how’d you do?” she asked. “I mean, It’s cool to be an Element and all, but it doesn’t make anyone worse for not being one, you know?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “But I, I did get an Element.”
“Nice!” she said, trying to sound surprised. “So why aren’t you jumping for joy and all that?”
Scootaloo mumbled something. She didn’t meet her gaze. Rainbow wanted to ask again, but if she’d learned anything from Applejack, waiting in silence was the best way to get somepony to talk.
“I- got Kindness,” Scootaloo muttered.
“Nice,” Rainbow grinned. “So, why aren’t you happy about it?”
“It-it’s Kindness,” she grimaced as she said it. “Out of all of them, it’s the easiest.”
“What do you mean?” she wondered.
“It’s easy,” she said, tears welling up. “You’ve always talked about the difficulties of Loyalty, what to do when the Ponies you’re loyal to are against each other. Honesty’s problem is that lying for a good reason is tempting. Generosity, well, you only have so much to give. And Laughter? It’s all about making ponies smile, but not every pony smiles at the same things. And Magic is a combination of the rest of the Elements, so it also has their problems. But how hard is it to be nice?”
Rainbow didn’t have a quick answer. She paced the cloud, trying to think. A few times she thought she had an answer and opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again.
“Kindness has its problems too,” Rainbow said.
“How?” Scootaloo demanded. “It’s just a basic thing of society! Be nice! Treat others how you want to be treated and all that!”
“But so are the other Elements,” she countered. “Be nice, always tell the truth, don’t cheat on your wife, etcetera. You can choose whether or not to follow it. And Kindness has its problems too. The problem Fluttershy runs into is being too kind.”
“That’s not really a problem,” she said.
“You haven’t seen how bad it can get,” she said. “Ponies like him, overly kind, they get taken advantage of. Like, okay I know this is mean, but up until the last few years he was a complete doormat. Stars, I’m terrified to imagine what could’ve happened to him if I wasn’t around to keep him from being pressured into things.
“Point is,” she went on. “Kindness has its own problems. It’s not easy.”
“Yeah, well ‘don’t be a doormat’ isn’t a problem for me,” she retorted.
“No,” she agreed. “But your problem isn’t that. It’s the question of ‘who do you show Kindness to?’.”
She let the statement sink in a bit. Scootaloo’s wings dropped, hanging at her sides. Rainbow hesitated a moment before reaching her own wing around her.
“You’ve told me a lot about your life,” Rainbow said. “You have a lot of reasons to keep from being nice to anyone, but you still do. Even if they haven’t exactly deserved it. I mean, look at your friend Diamond.”
“Hey, Diamond’s nice now!” Scootaloo defended. “And it was her mom’s fault she wasn’t before.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know that,” she said. “She was just the brat that bullied you and your friends over every little thing for no reason. You know what I did when somepony tried to do that to me or Flutters?”
“What?” she wondered.
“Bucked him right in the freaking face!” she answered proudly. “Mess with me and mine, you get hurt! And I’ve kept it up a bit. I tried to fight Nightmare Moon when she attacked, went to punch Discord in the face multiple times, and only twice after his reformation, and if I’d have gotten the chance to get a hit on Chrysalis or Sombra, I would’ve taken it! Though I still have a chance to hit Chrysalis, so who knows.”
“Get to the point,” she laughed.
"That was the point,” she said. “Despite all Diamond did to you, you were still civil about it. And when you saw she wanted to be a better pony, you welcomed her as if she’d been a friend the whole time.”
“You did that too,” she said.
“Not really,” she rolled her eyes. “I was skeptical of Luna and avoided her on Nightmare Night, I didn’t trust Discord until fairly recently, I was grumpy to Gilda after our friendship busted, passive-aggressive to Starlight, and the less I say about Sunset the better.”
“But you still gave them a chance,” she insisted.
“Again, no,” she corrected. “My friends gave them a chance. Twilight, Flutters, and Pinkie were the ones to reach out without fear, because they’re them. Then AJ and Rares, well, ‘Generosity’ includes giving second chances, and AJ’s ‘Honsety’ stuff works as some sort of lie detector, so they were quick to forgive.
“But another fault of Loyalty is that it takes a lot to fix it,” she continued. “Yeah, I eventually made friends with them, but it strained some friendships along the way. Like, one of the few times Flutters has actually been mad at me was when I was still passive aggressive at Discord.”
“Hard to imagine Fluttershy being mad at someone,” she said.
“It takes a lot,” she nodded. “But back to you and Kindness, well, as Twi would say, ‘let’s test a hypothetical’. What would you do if, for whatever reason, you ended up in a situation where the pony you had to work with to fix a major problem was your dad.”
Scootaloo’s face darkened at the thought. Truly, Rainbow’s did as well, remembering that encounter. But it was the best example she could think of.
“I-I’d help,” Scootaloo said carefully. “I wouldn’t get along with him, and I’d be passive aggressive at best, but I’d help.”
“See, there’s the Kindness,” Rainbow said. “I’d just tell him to fuck off.”
Scootaloo laughed in surprise.
“See what I mean?” Rainbow chuckled, bumping her with her wing. “Kindness has its problems to balance, just like all of us. Though why you want a difficult Element, I don’t know.”
“I didn’t,” Scootaloo said. “It just didn’t feel like it deserved to be an Element, because it was so easy already.”
“Maybe it’s easy because it’s your Element,” she replied.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “It makes sense, seeing my friend’s Elements. Sweetie’s always been brutally honest, and Bloom’s a lot like you. You should’ve heard the stuff they said when I told them about my dad.”
“I have a feeling Rares and Aj would agree but have to punish for profanity?” she said.
“Yep,” she said.
“So,” Rainbow got up and stretched her wings. “Want to go get something to eat? I’m betting you haven’t told your brother about your test results yet.”
“No,” she said. “And I probably won’t tonight. Flash is ‘otherwise occupied’.”
“Hot date?” she laughed.
“Well, he’s technically with Twilight,” she shrugged. “It’s his turn to make sure she doesn’t overexaust herself.”
“Glad it’s not my turn,” she said. “If you think Aj and I are stubborn…”