Rainbow Dash opened the door to the Boutique at 11:50 am. The little bell above the frame rung harshly in her ears, and the internal lighting burned her corneas. The Boutique was back to its old, fabulously clean self: the shelves were stocked with perfectly rolled fabric; the floor was spic, span, and most importantly, free of needles; the mannequins were off to the side, dressed in fashionable outfits; and the sewing machine was nowhere in sight.
Rarity’s voice came from the stairs. “Rainbow Dash? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” said Rainbow, shutting her eyes tight. “Can you turn down the lights in here?”
“I’m afraid my lights are binary, Rainbow Dash,” said Rarity, trotting down the steps. Behind her followed an elaborate black metal wire table, two matching chairs and a complete alabaster tea set, tinted blue in her magic. “It’s pitch black in here with no light, so I’ve… are you alright, Rainbow?”
“I uh, haven’t slept. Nerves, I guess,” Rainbow said, rubbing her eyebags. “Had to fly here blind and everything. Not that that was hard at all.”
“Goodness… you didn’t have to force yourself to come here like this.” Rarity set down her furniture and arranged the white china in the middle of her workroom. “Are you sure you don’t want to reschedule?” She said “reschedule” funny, without the “k” sound.
“Nah, I’m” —Rainbow yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth— “fine. I’ll just make up for it later.”
The ponies sat, and Rarity poured them both a steaming cup of matcha green tea. “Here,” she said, floating one to her. “Should help you wake up a little.”
Rainbow downed it in a single gulp. It was faster than sipping at the thing, and it burned just as bad. "Aah. That’s the stuff. So, how’d it go with Twilight earlier?”
Rarity savored her cup much more delicately. “It didn’t,” she said. “I was refused at the door, by Spike, no less.”
“Ouch. Was he—”
“Furious? Oh most definitely. He was spitting fire every other word. Literally.” She set her cup down. “I should have realized hurting Twilight meant hurting him, too. Hurting for both her and myself.”
“I guess I should wait then, before… you know.”
“No no, you must go. As soon as we’re finished here, you’re to head over there and do it.”
“W-what? But she’s upset right now; don’t you think—”
“Exactly. You’ll be there to cheer her up.”
“Wouldn’t it be a little… insensitive?”
“It won’t, if you can take my teachings to heart. Speaking of, let’s begin. Lesson one…”
Five hours later, Rainbow Dash was at the doors of the Castle of Friendship. In the late afternoon sun, the shadows twisted its silhouette into an ominous tower of dark crystal. She’d had to walk there, much to her dismay. But Rarity had been clear: show up clean and well-groomed. Rainbow had managed to at least keep that first item checked.
“Twilight?” she called. The golden doors were loose in their hinges; they rattled with every knock. “Twilight, you in there?”
But no one came.
Rainbow’s nerves were catching up to her. If she stood here any longer, she’d end up pulling a Fluttershy and flying home.
Were they out of town? It wouldn’t have been out of the question. Twilight has family in both Canterlot and the Crystal Empire; both too far away to drop by for a quick visit. That, and it’d be a bit creepy if Rainbow showed up without notice.
How about just out? Rainbow thought it unlikely. Twilight was an isolationist at heart, despite her role and title. There was also the possibility of running into Rarity, since she and the rest of the girls tended to frequent the same places to hang, so she was doubly likely to stay indoors.
In town or not, she wasn’t answering the door.
Maybe I’ll just ask her out… whenever I see her, I guess.
“Hey Rainbow Dash!” said Spike.
Rainbow’s skeleton damn near flew out of her skin. The rest of her had apparently tried to catch it, as she was now hovering at a good twelve feet above the ground, covering her face with her forehooves.
The purple-scaled dragon, paper bags of groceries in each claw, stared up at the startled pegasus and giggled. A short one, but it was enough to make Rainbow go monochromatic with rage.
She was on him in half a second; her glare nearly point blank with his gaze. “What’re you laughing at?”
Spike giggled again, then said, “Well, I didn’t know you spooked so easily. That, and you’re as red as a tomato!”
“I wasn’t spooked! I was just… I have amazing reflexes, ya know? If you were a grown up dragon breathing fire at me I would have TOTALLY dodged it.”
“Right. You’re cool and awesome, yadda yadda yadda. I get it. Anyways, what’re you doing here?"
“Looking for Twilight.”
“Oh.”
Spike crouched down and unloaded both paper bags on the floor. He motioned for Rainbow to step away, with a “shoo-ing” gesture. She moved aside to let him pass, and he picked up the bags again and strolled on through. He slammed the door with his foot.
“Hey!” yelled Rainbow.
“Sorry,” said Spike, voice muffled through the bulk of the door, “but Twilight doesn’t wanna see ANYPONY right now.”
“Her deal is with Rarity, not me!”
She couldn’t see his face, but she could tell he was scowling. “Oh, so you know about it?” he growled.
“Yeah. I was there. I talked to Rare; she just wants to apologize over tea!”
No response. He’d already walked away.
Rainbow bucked the door, screaming something unintelligible.
This wasn’t fair. Maybe she could have accepted this if Twilight herself had turned her away, but to not even see the mare?
I’m coming in, whether you like it or not!
Rainbow took to the air and circled the castle. With her honed senses, it didn’t take her long to find a window that was just slightly ajar.
She crept in quietly, closing the window behind her. She was in a hallway. Purple crystal walls, green crystal windows, red carpet. There wasn’t much more to it than that, since all the hallways in the castle were identical.
Rainbow opened her mouth to call for Twilight, but decided against it. Spike might find her first, and she wasn’t sure if he would try to evict her by force. She didn’t wanna hurt the little guy.
“Stealth it is,” she whispered to herself. Rainbow backflipped into inverse flight and landed on the ceiling. Her wings buzzed faster, and she was able to crawl along the surface. She scoured the halls for signs of the princess…
Twilight knew that she shouldn’t read by hornlight in the near pitch blackness. Bad for her eyesight. But this was HER book fort, and she made the rules in her book fort.
The fort, composed of all the hardcovers she could find, stood at a towering ten feet tall, in a seven by seven foot square, bearing a passing resemblance to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Arranged mainly by color; stacked by dimensions; each tower a different genre… it had taken Twilight two hours to enclose herself within her Fortress of Bookitude.
She’d been perusing Free Greymane’s autobiography, A Monologue About Life, when a pair of green eyes peeked in at her through the narrow slit that connected her to the outside world.
“You ready to come out yet?” said Spike.
She shook her head. The dragon sighed, and his eyes vanished from her sight, replaced by the dim glow of the ambient sunlight reflecting off the castle’s interior.
Twilight wished he’d stayed, but she knew Spike would only get frustrated. He didn’t like sitting around feeling useless, unable to help, and she didn’t like talking about… situations like this.
She turned back to her book. Free Greymane had been a “philosopher" who lived about fifty years ago. Twilight thought the word “blasphemer” was more appropriate. Free, in works and person both, had dared question the authority of the princess; questions that a less forgiving ruler would have beheaded her for.
It was pure, gut-busting irony, then, that their lives were so similar. Unicorns from Canterlot, alumni of Celestia’s School of Gifted Unicorns, residents of a small town nearby; the autobiography even mentions several ponies who were awfully similar to some of her friends.
Free was relatable, and at the same time, not. Quick to anger, and even quicker to doubt, she was as neurotic as Twilight on a bad day, every day. But the thing that stuck out to the princess was Free’s approach to criticism.
Naturally, Free had many detractors; even her own publisher had reportedly been seen selling copies of her most controversial piece, Iron Hoof Full of Sunlight, at a public book burning in Canterlot. But she was not deterred. When she found out what her publisher had done, she dropped him, and when no other would take her, she bought her own printing press and sold the books herself.
Free even held public debates, challenging anypony who had the balls to try and match her in wit. Not many could, and those who did failed to make a convincing, objective argument. It was after the fifth of these debates that she was run out of the city by an angry mob armed with foodstuffs, and so settled in the nearby town of Sunny Hills, where she lived out the rest of her days.
Twilight admired her tenacity; she wished she’d had that sort of willpower when Rarity went off on her; but at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder if Free had been at least a little bit right.
Celestia was a strong leader, and Twilight felt —no, she was absolutely sure— that Free’s accusations held no merit against the elder princess… but they might against her. Sure, she’d earned her position, in a way, but it was bestowed upon her by a higher power, not the ponies of Equestria. They had no say in her coronation; it just happened. Did she have the right to authority? Was Rarity wrong to accuse her of abusing her position? Perhaps in that particular situation, but the thought still nagged at her. What about her failings as a supposed friend? Was Rarity right about that too?
Twilight tried to suppress the memory, but it came gushing forth, a geyser of emotion. Tears streamed down her face and onto the black and white pages of Free’s book, making little smudges where they landed. She closed it and hugged the tome to her chest, but the tears just found their way to the cover instead. This was how Rainbow Dash found her: sobbing silently in a dark space, a book her only source of comfort.
“Hey,” said the pair of pink eyes from the slit.
“Hey,” replied Twilight. She wished she hadn’t spoken; perhaps in this darkness, the pegasus might not have noticed that she was crying.
“I’m… sorry about yesterday.” Rainbow’s eyes looked away, then centered on her again. Sharp eyes, pegasi. “I came over to see how you were doing.”
Twilight said nothing. She had nothing on her mind but harsh ponies with harsh words.
“Can I come in?” asked Rainbow.
Twilight thought about it. Rainbow had been there; maybe talking about it… no, it wouldn’t help; she’d get even more upset; angry, even. She stood and walked to the set of books she’d designated as the entrance and set her back in front of them.
“That’d be a no, then. That’s fine. I can sit out here.” Twilight felt a pressure against her back, and scowled.
Don’t lean on my books… she thought.
“I uh, talked to Rarity. After you left.” The books reverberated ever so slightly in time with Rainbow’s voice. “She wanted to invite you over to tea today, to apologize for what she said.”
Twilight clenched her teeth. Apologize? So they could just put it all behind them? Absolve her of all guilt?
“Spike sent her packing though. Did you know that?”
She didn’t. Spike, Rarity’s “secret” admirer, telling off his crush, all to defend her? She managed to crack a smile.
“Speechless, amirite? I couldn’t believe it either.” Rainbow giggled, and the books between them giggled with her. “I wish he hadn’t, though. Maybe you would’ve gone.”
“No. I don’t think I would have.” Twilight surprised herself. She’d spoken without meaning to, with a hardness she hadn’t meant to use.
“Why not?”
Why? Did she really need to say it? “Because.”
“C’mon Twi. Single word answers are NOT you.”
“Look, Rainbow, I don’t wanna talk about it. I thought I made that pretty clear.”
“Fine. Don’t talk about it. But I don’t think staying in there is gonna help you get through this.”
She was right. But nothing could, really. Nothing but perhaps time.
“Come fly with me, Twilight,” Rainbow said.
A simple proposition, but to the princess, it felt loaded with pretense. Where would they go? Would Rainbow lead her around in circles to eventually land at Carousel Boutique? Bring her to some other friend to talk “sense” into her?
“Fly where, Rainbow?” she asked.
“Ah, just around the outskirts of Ponyville.” Rainbow finally stopped crushing literature against their backs and got up to stare at her through the slit. “We’ll go up high so no-one’ll bother us.”
Just the two of them, chatting, soaring over the clouds… feeling the wind in her mane…
Twilight turned to meet her gaze, hooves absentmindedly fixing the stack of books they’d been leaning on. “And that’s it? No place else?”
“Uh, yeah, unless you wanna go somewhere.” Rainbow slid out a book so that the whole of her face could be seen. Even in the shadow, Twilight could see her brilliant smile. “Do ya?”
“No, nowhere. I’m… okay with just that.” Twilight removed another book, and together the barrier between them was neatly put away in two stacks by their sides.
“Awesome. I’ve been DYING to hear all the deets about your thesis.” Rainbow stepped aside to let her pass, and the two walked side by side as they talked.
“You WANT me to talk about my highly rigorous, three-hundred page thesis?”
“Well, I DID help you out on it when you first started. And it happens to be about something I know a lot about. Sorta.”
“True enough. Oh, hey Spike!”
The two mares encountered the little dragon in… a hallway; Twilight was never sure which one. His groceries were gone from his claws, replaced by a hoof-cranked egg beater and a box of eggs.
“What the—?!” exclaimed Spike.
“Yo.” Rainbow saluted him.
“How’d you… never mind.” He turned to Twilight. “Glad to see you’re up and about, though.”
“Yeah. I’m going out.”
Spike made a quizzical glance at the intruding pegasus. “With Rainbow?”
“Uh, of course with me,” said the pony in question. “Just going out for a fly. And talk and stuff.”
"Huh.” Spike had this sort of look on his face, as if he were the concerned parent, not Twilight. After a slightly uncomfortable silence, he shrugged and continued past them in the direction he was going. “Don’t stay out too long,” he called over his shoulder.
Twilight and Rainbow watched him go, and as soon as he turned the corner, Rainbow nudged the princess in the ribs. “Gee, I hope your DAD won’t kill me later.”
“Don’t worry, I can stay out as long as I like,” said Twilight. “He’ll be out like a light by nine.”
Rainbow’s grin disappeared behind pressed lips. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“I-it’s nothing. Just… wouldn’t want to fly in the dark, ya know? Let’s get out of here.”
When Rainbow said that they’d go up high, Twilight was expecting just a little higher than Town Hall. Here, they were riding the updraft, floating motionless against the ceiling of the troposphere, nothing but cotton white beneath them. “Dear Celestia… are we even above Ponyville anymore?”
Rainbow was floating belly up, forelegs behind her head. “No idea. Besides, you don’t wanna think about Ponyville right now, or who’s in it, do ya?”
Twilight grumbled at the reminder. Still, Rainbow was right. Not seeing the town did ease her mind a little.
“Thought so.” Rainbow started backstroking in circles around her. “I won’t bring it up if you won’t. Anyway, your thesis. Didja get an award or anything?”
“Actually… I’m still not finished.”
“Three HUNDRED pages, and it’s not finished?”
“I’ve sent it in for review multiple times, but it’s always been sent back due to insufficient data.”
“Insufficient? How?”
“Well, for one thing, there are still too many variables: the wavelengths of light used, the width of the openings, the distance between them; the major flaw, stated in the last review, was the design of the cannon. The fluctuations in the voltage due to it being pedal powered were considered beyond the margin of error. I put in an order for a generator that could handle the load, but as it turns out, none of the commercially available ones were powerful enough and the ones built for factories are too strong, not to mention way over budget. The only option left to me was—”
“Lightning jars.” Rainbow flipped back over and settled next to her, their wingtips almost touching. “Tons of power, and measured down to the last watt. Smart.”
Smart. When they’d first met, Twilight would have never thought to use the word “smart” with the words “Rainbow Dash” in the same sentence, unless it also happened to use the word “ass.” Now here the pegasus was practically reading her mind.
“Yes, lightning jars,” replied Twilight. “The only problem is modifying my device to use them. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” She looked expectantly at Rainbow.
“Hehe, don’t get the wrong idea. All the stuff I know is from my one year in the factory. I’m not really educated like you, Twi.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I never learned this stuff.”
Rainbow scoffed, and rolled under to Twilight’s other side. “With the library you had at Canterlot? Knowing you, you probably read every single book in there.”
“That’s actually physically impossible. I did the math, and it would have taken me at least thirty years to do that.”
“You sure as hell tried though, right?”
Twilight giggled. “I sure did. The night I came up with that result, I managed to get through forty books in less than five hours.”
“That’s insane. Were they all kiddie stories with like, ten pages each?”
Now it was Twilight’s turn to scoff. “You wound me Rainbow! Of course not. I actually went ahead and got the largest tomes I could levitate back then. A few of them were to help me develop my speed reading spell.”
“Aha! You used magic!”
“Naturally. If I subtract the time developing the spell from my total, it was really more like thirty books in two hours.”
“Doesn’t count.”
“What?” Twilight paddled (at least, that’s what it looked like) to hover in front of Rainbow, who grinned at her shoddy maneuver. “It does too count,” she insisted.
Rainbow booped her nose, sliding the alicorn back a few feet. “Does not.”
With surprising speed, Twilight closed the distance and booped her back. “Does too.”
Boop. “Does not.”
Boop. “Does too!”
The two ponies went back and forth, figuratively AND literally, tittering like a pair of schoolfillies, until Rainbow’s aim went a little too high and booped Twilight right on the horn.
The pretty purple princess plummeted, and in her panic, forgot how to stop plummeting. Rainbow would save her, right? She tried to look up to see if a blue and prismatic blur was coming, except that up wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and kept changing every few seconds. Only now did Twilight manage to scream.
Said scream was promptly knocked out of her, along with the rest of her breath, when she landed in Rainbow’s outstretched forelegs.
“Geez, are you okay?” asked her savior. “That was totally an accident, I swear.”
For a second, Twilight thought that she’d gone blind from the g-forces, realized that 1 G wasn’t going to blind anypony, and opened her eyes to a face that was way too close.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Rainbow said back. Her breath tickled; it smelled like vanilla, for some reason. “Soooo… you okay?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Good!” Then Rainbow dropped her.
Twilight would have screamed again, except that between the first “A” and the second, some cloud rudely jammed itself into her open mouth. And face. Make that the entire front portion of her body.
“Rainbow Dash!” she spat, along with some cloud.
“You’re FINE. Said so yourself.” The mare landed with effortless grace next to her. “’Sides, we’re so high up, Fluttershy could’ve caught you if she really tried.”
Twilight got to her hooves.
“Even if I didn’t catch you (FYI, an impossibility of one hund-er-ed percent), this cumulonimbus is so thick that—” was as far as Rainbow got before Twilight tackled her to the cloud.
“For the crime of—” Twilight pinned down her forelegs “—mild assault and psychological—” she pinned down her wings “—damage to a Princess of Equestria, I hearby sentence you to—” Rainbow managed to get her hindlegs on Twilight’s shoulders, but the alicorn countered by grabbing her behind the neck and hugging her nice and tight; “death by tickling!”
She released Rainbow’s wings, and before the pegasus could defend herself, fluttered her primaries along her sides.
Rainbow spasmed and shrieked as purple feathers ran along her body. But Twilight had made a fatal mistake; with the pegasus’s own wings free to retaliate, she grabbed Twilight’s horn with both and stroked.
It took only one; the shock to her system blew a fuse in her brain, and Twilight collapsed into a twitching heap on Rainbow’s belly.
“Gah…g-gotcha,” said Rainbow, breathing heavily. She pulled herself out from under the alicorn and lay close to her head; Twilight could feel her hair brushing her horn.
“T-that was dirty!” she said, her voice shuddering.
“Haha, yeah. Still… gotcha.” Rainbow reached over and cupped Twilight’s cheeks in her hooves. “Oh, and by the way…” She pulled in close to Twilight’s ear. “Does not,” she whispered.
“Does TOO!” The raging royal grabbed Rainbow’s head, and soon they were flipping and rolling through the cotton white, squealing and yelling and laughing all over again.
It ended with Rainbow laying on top of Twilight, right at the brink of the cloud.
“Does not,” she said.
“Okay, okay! Whatever, you win!” Twilight pushed her off. “Phew… I’m beat.”
“You need to get out more.” Rainbow had sat herself on the edge, dangling her hooves out over open air. She patted a spot next to her with a hoof.
The sky before them stretched out into infinity, and the earth rose up to meet it. From here, Twilight could see the scars of railroad that cut into the swaths of emerald hills blackening in the shadow, the rivers like silver tears around them; from here, she saw Ponyville, with its little lights like stars in the dying day, her castle standing tall, a crown for the small village; Canterlot, to her right, looking more like a constellation than a city.
From here, she saw the setting sun, framed in a cradle of clouds, painting the sky with broad strokes of molten gold that bled into fuchsia, fading into the soft lavender around her.
Right here, beside her, a sigh. “Twilight sure is beautiful.”
“H-huh?” Twilight pricked her ears. Oh, she meant the sunset. Of course she did. Right?
But no; Rainbow Dash was looking right at her.
“O-oh. I-ah… I mean—” was as far as Twilight got before Rainbow leaned in close. Close enough to…
“But there’s something missing, don’t you think?” The scent of vanilla lingered in the air as they drew apart.
“What would that be?”
Rainbow didn’t answer her. She stood on two hooves, forelegs stretched out from wing to wing. As if in slow motion, she tipped backwards off the cloud. Twilight watched her fall; she could barely make out a blue speck before a streak of color cut through the shadows.
The streak rose in a gentle curve, up to the sun. Then it stopped, and sloped up left, then curved down right, made a loop, and…
“Oh my.”
A heart. Rainbow had drawn an iridescent heart, about three miles wide, four miles tall by Twilight’s estimate, around the sun.
But she wasn’t done yet.
The speck had stopped moving, smack dab in the center of the heart. Wait no, it was getting bigger. Given the distance between them, there was only one thing Rainbow could be trying to do.
With an eye-enhancement spell, Twilight zoomed in on the pegasus. She was right! There was a vapor cone already forming around Rainbow. Electricity coursed through Twilight’s veins, air held tight in her lungs, as she waited for the break.
Then Rainbow Dash flickered.
Confusion gave way to another lightning storm in Twilight’s blood as she watched Rainbow seemingly teleport from one position to another, her flight path an array of zigzags as she got closer and closer. This wasn’t just a Sonic Rainboom.
This was something new.
Rainbow flickered faster, faster, FASTER…
Hey Twi, Sonic Rainbooms are light, right?
Well, magically generated light, but yes, I suppose they are.
She was close now; sparks were pulsing through the vapor cone…
Could I, say, make this duh-frac-ton pattern with one?
Firstly, it's dih-frac-shun, and secondly, you'd need two, set off right next to each other. Seeing as you're the only pegasus in Equestria that can do one, I'd say it's next to impossible.
For a split second, Twilight thought she was seeing double.
Impossible? Don't you know who you're talking to?
She rubbed her eyes. There was just no way…
I'm Rainbow Dash, greatest flyer in all of Equestria!
But there she was… and over there, too. Rainbow was flickering so fast that she wasn’t. There were two pegasi in the sky.
And around them, two vapor cones, lightning arcing between them, took on every color of the rainbow.
Then they exploded.
The twin Rainbooms blew away the clouds around the sun, and dusk became dawn as they rolled into the heavens, the earth… and each other.
Twilight wasted no time; she dived off the edge, flying to the epicenter of the epic eruption. She wanted to see it— no, she needed to—
B O O M
The roar, the terrifying roar brought with it a hurricane of wind that threatened to toss her into the stratosphere. It tumbled her round, and Twilight looked on in awe as the sonic boom bucked the cumulonimbus so hard it burst apart, lightning bolts raining over the land and through the air.
She tumbled again, and she saw it. There, along the border between Ponyville and the Everfree, were alternating bands of light and darkness.
"I… I was right.” Twilight flapped in place, struggling against the wind. “I WAS RIGHT!”
Unfortunately for Twilight, her little victory jump cost her her balance, and the unforgiving gale blasted her away… and within the space of a few seconds, stop, and blasted her back the other way.