//------------------------------// // Viva La Dash Mania // Story: Ofolrodi // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// Metal and flesh fingers raked the air. "Do not... they stare... not knowing..." Wildcard gestured, among other things. Ariel instantly responded in mid-glide. "Logan and Flynn are just trying to look after us, is all." Wildcard's fingers sliced through the twilight once again. The words "Gaze" and "buttocks" graced the spectrum. Ariel giggled. "Yeah, well, I think that's physically impossible, Wildcard. Heeheehee..." "... ... ..." Rainbow stared blankly at the two. Ariel's ears perked up. "What?" "Nothing. Just..." Rainbow fidgeted in mid-flight. She continued ascending the mountain at a casual speed. "Not used to catching up one hundred percent of the conversation. Well... more like sixty-six percent." Wildcard gestured again, slower this time: "I. Thought. You. Stayed. At. Only. Twenty. Percent." Twilight Sparkle giggled. The other ghostly mares looked confused. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand he's got a sense of humor, apparently." Rainbow bore a dull smirk as she gazed ahead. "Terrific." Ariel stifled another chuckle. "What? All this time you just thought he was an edgy silent badass in dark shades?" "Well, isn't he?" Wildcard's talons interrupted the two mares. "The mountain side." "Right." Rainbow nodded. "Let's get this over with. Rarity???" "Com-iiiing!" The pale fashionista zipped into view. "Sense anything yet?" "I'm... afraid not, Rainbow, darling," Rarity replied. "It's still a vacant space of unknown... erm... sp-space." Rainbow looked at Twilight Sparkle. "And you, Twilight? Likewise blank?" "Yes. Although..." Twilight rubbed her two fetlocks nervously together. "...I'm pretty sure that the other side of the mountain is where the magic went." "What if..." Fluttershy bit her lip. "...some mysterious creature is responsible for swallowing all of the magical enchantments?" "Well, that depends?" Applejack looked at her. "Are ya sensin' any life out there, Sugarcube?" "Yes. But... no less than what's behind us." "Okay..." Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. "Sooooooooo... we're flying straight into an unknown space where both Rarity and Twilight sense nothing and Fluttershy senses nothing special." She shrugged. "I hate to say it, but I don't miss the days of flying before I 'foaled yesterday.'" "What's the matter, Rainbow?" Twilight waggled her eyebrows. "You don't like a challenge?" "Not when the Herald's safety is involved." "Well..." Applejack gestured aside. "We've still got Pinkie Pie! Her eyelashes haven't stopped square-dancin' across her head." "Willllll someponyyyyy stoppppp alllllll thhhhhhe strobinggggg?!" Pinkie begged, blinking rapidly against her will. "Is it intensifying, Pinkie?" Twilight asked. Pinkie tilted her head in Twilight's direction. "Is what intensifying?" "Your eye-twitch!" "My eyes are twitching???" "Yes! They're... guh...." "Twilight, is that you? I hear my lavender unicorn friend but I can'ttttttt seeeeee herrrrrrrr!" "Pinkie, honestly!" Rarity frowned. "This simply isn't the time for horsing around—" Then—with an audible pop(!), Pinkie's eyes flashed wide open. "Oh, hey! There's the sky!" Her blue pupils reflected a dark object high above them. "Oh! Look! A meteorite?" "Huh?" Rainbow looked up, and she saw the intense shadow too. "Whoah—!" "Look out!" Ariel shrieked. Swooooosh! Wildcard instantly flew up above the mares. Spreading his wings, he shoved the three of them onto the mountain-top below. There, he shielded them with their bodies, staring up with his goggles. Seconds passed... One quarter of a minute... ... Slowly, the two mares peeked out from underneath their Desperado protector. The three souls observed the rock looming above them. More in particular—they observed how it wasn't falling. "That... that's a cloud?" Applejack stammered. "It most certainly is not," Rarity said. "That's pure stone!" "Rarity, stone can't float," Twilight droned. "I may not be able to sense what's above us with my ghostly powers, but I know a rock when I see one! That—up there—is none other than a levitating solid!" "But..." Applejack grimaced. "How is that possible?" "Uhhhhhhhhh..." Rainbow leaned her head closer to Ariel and Wildcard. "You two see what I'm seeing?" "I... was about to ask if you and your friends were doing the same," Ariel stammered. "They're both freaked out and clueless right now. That's why I asked you." "Wildcard?" Ariel breathed. "What do you make out of this?" Wildcard—gulping—performed a gesture Rainbow didn't recognize. Ariel retorted, "That only floats in a toilet!" "Is... it being carried by a creature?" Twilight asked. "It sure as hay is purdy dang still up there," Applejack said, craning her neck until her freckles disappeared. "When have you ever seen a bird carryin' something that graceful like?" "And in one place!" Rarity exclaimed. "Okay..." Rainbow Dash's eyes narrowed on the object above as it blocked out more and more of the starlight. "Everypony just stay calm. There's gotta be a perfectly good explanation for—" She took a step forward—and slipped on loose gravel. Wildcard caught her. Both froze in each other's forelimbs—though—for their gazes were locked on the pebbles that Rainbow's clumsy fetlocks had unearthed. Instead of rattling to a stop, they lifted off with a noticeable bounce and hovered half-a-foot up the ground, rotating slightly. "Wat," Ariel wat'd. "Whewwww..." Pinkie Pie rubbed her aching skull. "This is too random. Even for me!" "Something..." Twilight's eyes narrowed. "Some force is making them resist gravity. But what?" "Uhm... girls?" Rainbow and her companions craned their necks. Fluttershy was floating ahead of them—just above the mountain's peak. The arid surface bent down into a steep slope just beyond her ghostly wings. "You may wish to come see this," she said. Twilight and the rest looked at Rainbow. Unhooking herself from Wildcard, Rainbow Dash bravely flapped her wings and drifted ahead. As she did so, the faint twilight of the cosmos above illuminated multiple sporadic mountain peaks—only they weren't mountain peaks at all. Instead, they were the round, globular summits of dozens... scores... hundreds of levitating rock formations. Boulders, shards, chunks of solid earth formed a floating array before and below them. The more they gazed at the phenomenon, the more and more levitating structures they saw... until they realize that they weren't standing on a mountain at all. The only mountain that ever existed in that part of the plane had evidently shattered epochs ago, and in its place there was left a levitating mess of shrapnel... forever falling... stuck in frozen time. One in every three piece rotated or drifted to some degree, but—for the most part—it was a frigid work of art with no motion or even punctuation. "Ooooooookay, Dark Side," Ariel wheezed, ears and wingtips drooping. "I'm so not in the mood for this." Wildcard gestured something, but Rainbow Dash was a bit too distracted to read him. Ariel responded: "Pffft. Don't pretend you're not pissing your downfeathers right now." "Just..." Rainbow clenched her teeth. "...how many...?" Sucking her breath in, she raised a hoof up to her lightning bolt pendant and rubbed it slightly. A harmonic glow shone through the air above them. Wildcard and Ariel watched as a lightning-shaped spotlight materialized against an enormous rock-face straight before them. Rainbow pivoted slightly, and the rippling light illuminated a boulder that stretched over fifty feet across. She pivoted even more, revealing curved natural monoliths, L-shaped chunks of earth, and hundreds if not thousands of infinitesimal pebbles hovering in between. "This... this can't even be possible!" Twilight Sparkle's voice cracked. Her muzzle didn't stop dropping. "What's making them float?!" "Twi..." Pinkie began. "Something must be making them float!" Twilight practically snarled. "I don't think this is anything you can just look up in an Equestrian Floating Rock Encyclopedia!" Pinkie squawked. "But... it must mean somethin'," Applejack said, rubbing her chin. "Reckon it's somehow connected to what happened to Flynn's wagon?" "That's what I was thinking!" Fluttershy said. "I... I don't know..." Rainbow shivered slightly, shining her beacon around. "I'm pretty sure this is all beyond us. Ariel? Wildcard? Maybe we should consider going around all—" FLASH! The ruby glow was sucked straight out of her pendant. "What—?" Twilight began, but said nothing else, for she had vanished. "Whoah nelly—!" "Oh my—!" "Dashie—!" Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie all vanished. Rainbow blinked. "Girls?" "Rainbow!" Rarity yelped, flying backwards. "The Vanilla Zone! It's—" And she was gone in a lavender blip. "Girls!" Rainbow shouted, spinning about with frenzied eyes. "So not cool! Where'd you go?" "What's happening?" Ariel exclaimed while Wildcard jerked in surprise. "What's the matter?" "The girls!" Rainbow hyperventilated. "They're... gone?" She looked down at her dull, cold pendant. "I can't see them! Oh Luna—!" "For some reason I can't explaaaaaain..." A voice sang like he meant it. "I know Celestia's spell's innnnn vain." Wildcard and Ariel didn't flinch. Rainbow, meanwhile— "!!!" She spun to face the singing figure. Discord hovered in place, fully visible—bright as day. "And I'll retuuuuuuurn once more, and then I'll ruuuule the worrrrrld." He noticed the petite pegasus looking at him. "Oh! You actually wanted to speak to me? Well, that's a smexy turn of events." He took one look at the rocks floating above him. "Saaaaaaaaaaaaay..." He pointed a talon at the phenomenon with a goofy grin. "I simply love what you've done with the place!"