Rainbow Dash had time to think about what she would say when Night Rain returned from his hastily-scheduled doctor’s visit. She didn’t have much of a plan, either for what she was about to ask him, or for what would happen after that… but if there was one thing Rainbow Dash was good at (other than flying, being awesome, and lots of other things, of course!), it was working “on the fly.” But when she spotted the rainy blue stallion walking down the hall towards the entrance, she felt that a bit more time would have helped her. The alcohol had begun to wear off (not that it had affected her that much in the first place, of course!) and it left behind an unwelcome feeling of uncertainty.
Night Rain raised an eyebrow as he spotted her, but said nothing as he walked towards her. Rainbow just flashed him a grin. “Surprised to see me?” The question was really just a delay on her part, but it was still worth asking, she felt.
“A little. Kind of. I mean…” He reached a hoof up and rubbed the back of his neck. “You didn’t need to wait for me.”
“Well, I…” Rainbow glanced aside. “I really do want to make sure you’re okay.” While Rainbow Dash had her ego and loved being seen as a hero, she really did have a sense of justice and concern for other ponies. At least, that was what she told herself. Also, it would be quite a(nother) blow to her pride if she were to seriously injure a pony while practicing. She looked back at Night Rain. “So, how is it?”
“Nothing broke, thankfully. There's just some heavy bruising…” He sighed. “But I figured I’d be fine. It might feel like I broke half my ribs on that side, but I just have very low pain tolerance.”
He seemed to blush very slightly, but Rainbow paid it no mind. She wasn’t interested in whether or not he was as tough as her. She was used to interacting with ponies who were less durable than her - she was just so sturdy that few could match her in toughness. No, she had something less physical in mind..
She glanced at his cutie mark again, just to make sure it was the same as she remembered - two sheets of paper being rained on, one with writing, one with a drawing of a planet. That could have meant a number of things... but if she was right, she might have just found a solution to both her fanfiction problem and her Twilight-as-editor problem. She just needed to figure out how to ask him if he could help her without actually revealing what the issue was… in case he thought it was uncool.
“Are you a writer?” Rainbow asked.
“Huh?” Night Rain followed her gaze to his cutie mark. “Oh… kind of? I mean, I like to write, I want to be a good writer, but that’s not actually what my cutie mark means…”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Rainbow said. Coulda’ just said yes or no, but I can work with that. “...What kind of writing do you do?” She glanced towards the hospital receptionist - who, thankfully, was busy with paperwork and not paying attention - before turning and walking towards the exit, not wanting to talk about such things in public.
Night Rain smiled as he followed, trotting up alongside her as he responded cheerfully. “Oh, all sorts of things, but I like adventure stories the most… stories about epic journeys to fight evil or just explore the unknown…” He cleared his throat. “That sort of thing.”
Sounds good so far! Once they were outside the hospital, Rainbow offered her next question. “You wouldn’t happen to like the Daring Do series, would you?”
Night Rain smiled, eyes staring ahead almost wistfully. “Ah, I do… used to read them a lot when I was younger, I really enjoyed them… I still do, I just haven’t been as… up-to-date as I used to be.”
Rainbow frowned. His dedication obviously didn’t match hers - but this impromptu job interview wasn’t over yet, and there was still hope for him. “How not-up-to-date are you?”
“Well, I actually have the last book, but I haven't finished it, and...“ He sighed. “I forgot to bring it with me on this trip, I brought a few books to read on the train ride, but I left out Daring Do...”
Rainbow scowled, turning away so he wouldn’t see her expression, and thought for a moment. Forgetting Daring Do for any reason was a crime, but not an unforgivable one. He was still a candidate to help her with her Daring Do fanfic, but she needed to interrogate him further. Not something she could do on a casual walk…
Thankfully, Rainbow could work on the fly, and not just in the literal sense. “Hey, why don’t I lend you my copy? I’ve got all the books at my house.” She grinned at him. “You can read it, and we talk about some other things!”
Night Rain’s eyes widened - an expression Rainbow Dash was used to whenever she did something nice for a fan of hers, and his next words were also the kind of thing she'd heard before. “R-really? You’d really do that?”
“Sure!” Rainbow waved a hoof. “It’s not problem for a fellow Daring Do fan. Besides, I have a few other things I need to ask you…” She glanced around, checking to make sure nopony was listening in, before continuing in a soft voice, “And maybe there’s something you can help me with…”
Night Rain lit up - but then raised an eyebrow, glancing around the pair of them in confusion before looking back at Rainbow. She couldn’t blame him - her insistence on secrecy was bound to look weird. She gave him a reassuring smile and said, “I’ll explain when we get to my house. It’s not something I want to talk about in public. I don’t want to make anypony jealous - not everypony gets to help me with a project like this!”
“Ah, I see...” Night Rain nodded, smiling. “Well… I think I’m up for it! Where’s your house, and when you do want to meet?”
“My house is right up there!” She pointed to her cloud villa in the sky above, smirking as Night’s face grew pale. “And I was thinking, ‘right now’ would be perfect!”
“But how a-” The acrophobic stallion was interrupted as some air was knocked out of him, as Rainbow abruptly took flight, grabbed his barrel from above, and lifted him into the air. “Not again!” he wailed.
“Have you forgotten who I am?” Rainbow laughed as she quickly ascended, flying towards her house. As she approached, she noticed Night had closed his eyes. “Come on, the view is great from up here!” She sighed as he shook his head violently. “All right, maybe next time.”
While it might seem odd to others for Rainbow to be taking home a stallion she just met, without even a night out first, realistically anypony she chose as her editor who wasn’t Twilight would be somepony she didn’t really know. She couldn’t think of anypony in Ponyville who was good at writing and liked Daring Do. At least, if they were, they hadn’t told her about it.
Besides, she had a good reason for bringing him to her cloud villa - up here, they’d be safely out of earshot of anypony who might overhear and spread rumors. While the whole town probably knew about her love of Daring Do by this point, it would not do to have anypony know about her attempts at writing fanfiction… and not just because she didn’t have a good product yet. Meanwhile, she could interrogate him in much more detail, for as long as she needed. He may have been a writer (sort of), and he may have liked Daring Do… but she needed someone who really liked Daring Do. Maybe not as much as her, but he had to at least understand how much Daring Do meant to her. He needed to understand why Daring Do could drive her, a radical athlete, to do egghead stuff like writing.
Of course, since he was obviously an egghead himself, maybe he just wouldn’t find it odd that she wanted to write, or perhaps he’d even approve like Twilight had when it became clear just how much Rainbow Dash had gotten into the series… Whatever, Rainbow thought, I’ll see whether or not he’s up to the job!
Rainbow carried Night over the clouds that made up the front “yard,” over the threshold of her home, and into an impressive hallway patterned after Cloudsdale’s architecture, complete with cloud pillars - and a solid grey floor, which Rainbow gently set Night upon. His eyes widened, and he tapped the floor with his hoof. “A solid surface in a floating house made of clouds. Interesting.”
“Well, yeah,” Rainbow said. “Pegasi cloud-sculptors can make clouds that support solid objects. Pretty important if you want furniture.” Rainbow chuckled. “I like being able to keep my Daring Do collection in my own house. Besides, Tank needs a place to walk.”
“Ah yes, I should have known-” Night looked over at Rainbow, brow furrowed. “Tank?”
“My tortoise!” Rainbow grinned. “You can meet him later, right now we have an interview to get through!”
Rainbow trotted further into the house, though Night hesitated for just a moment. “...A tortoise?” He shrugged and then followed Rainbow, through her house into a living room of sorts. It was really more like a place where Rainbow crashed after a hard day of work, rather than a room she spent her waking hours in. There was a well-used couch and a newer-looking recliner, with a small table between them. Rainbow quickly took the recliner, settling into it while Night found a spot on the couch.
I should have broken this in by now, Rainbow thought, shifting awkwardly in the recliner. Also, I should have ponies over more often.
Rainbow cleared her throat, sitting up straight. The recliner’s seat was slightly higher than the seat of the couch, and that along with Night’s slouching posture meant she towered above him… or at least, she hoped she did, for the effect it would have. “All right, Night Rain… I have a very important job for you, and I need to find out if you’re up for it!”
Night’s eyes widened. “A job? I… I’m afraid I don’t have all my info on me for a proper job application…”
Rainbow frowned. “Err… not actually a job. I mean, I can’t pay you. Not that much, anyway. But drinks and snacks are totally on me while you’re over here!”
He looked a little crestfallen at that, but responded with, “Well… if it’s important, I could probably do it anyway. I want to be able to help.” Night frowned. “But if it’s here, then… how long will it take? I live in Canterlot, and if we can’t do it in one stay I’ll have to keep coming back…”
Rainbow frowned as well. “Yeah, I hadn-” Rainbow stopped herself, instinctively avoiding having to admit a flaw. She needed to project an image of confidence and authority to him, after all! “...That could be a problem. I mean, I guess I could pay train fare… or something like that.”
“Is this really that important to you?” Night raised an eyebrow
Rainbow’s appearance of confidence quickly eroded away in a moment of silence.
Night looked away. “Well, if it’s that much of a problem…”
A switch flipped in Rainbow Dash’s mind. It wasn’t just the threat of losing a potential editor, it was the feeling that, somehow, this pony needed a little push, and not just in terms of getting him to edit her story… though that would of course be a bonus. She suddenly leaned forward. “You said you wanted to help, right?” She glared at Night. “Is it that important to you?”
Night Rain leaned back away from Rainbow. “Well, I…” He clenched his teeth and glanced aside, though it seemed this time he was thinking rather than actively avoiding her gaze. “I mean, I’m not really sure what you need my help for, and there are some complications in how exactly we’re going to arrange all this, but…” He looked back over to her, having that look of a pony determined to do something unpleasant - a look familiar to Rainbow, and one she was glad to see. “If it really is something you need my help for, I’ll help.”
Need. Well, he’d given Rainbow an easy hook to reel him in with… but it wasn’t an easy line to pull, for no other reason than pride. The idea of needing anypony’s help, even for writing, was still uncomfortable for Rainbow. She was supposed to be the best at anything she put herself up for, and while failure gnawed at her insides like nothing else, having to admit weakness was a tough pill to swallow. She’d asked for help before, but only when the need was great. And while this wasn’t quite on the level of being trapped in a gorge with a boulder on her wing, or trying to create a tornado to funnel water to Cloudsdale, it still mattered to her.
She needed his help, he needed his help to be needed. That was that, and there was nothing for Rainbow to do about it but swallow her pride. ...Besides, one flashback of an extremely tired Applejack trying to buck an orchard on her own was all she needed to think about to not try and do monumental tasks on her own.
“Well…” Rainbow’s face scrunched up. “...I wouldn’t normally ask for help with something like this, but… I tried doing it on my own, and that didn’t work out so well, so I need help with it.” She blushed a little. “This is embarrassing, but… this is important to me, and I can’t do it alone. So yeah, I need you, Night. Will you help me?” Her blush deepened.
“Well, of course!” Night smiled. “I don’t know how good of a job I’ll do… especially since you’ve kinda avoided telling me what it is…” His smile suddenly faded. “Is…” He gave a sidelong glance at her. “It’s not anything, um… personal is it?”
Rainbow scowled and looked away. “Yeah, it kind of is.”
Now he was blushing. “I, uh…” he looked down. “I’m really not the best stallion for this, but if you want me to do that with you, I…”
Rainbow stared at him for a long moment, then something clicked in her mind as she realized why he was being so bashful, and she snickered at the consequences of her vagueness. "Relax, Night. If I were going to do that with you, I'd buy you dinner first. I'm sure you like the idea, but get your mind out of the gutter."
“Oh!” Night chuckled nervously, looking back up at her. “I’m sorry, I really am, it’s just… I don’t really have much to go on for what you want me for. Other than… my writing skills, I think.”
“Yes!” Rainbow straightened herself up, deciding to take back her air of authority, as was only appropriate for her to have. “It does require your writing skills, and it is a personal thing. In fact, I want you to realize that this is top-secret. Nopony else can know about this, unless I tell them! Understood?”
Night nodded, face sternly serious.
Rainbow grinned. “Now, what I need your help for… is editing my fanfiction!”
Night Rain blinked, then stared. “What.”