//------------------------------// // 22: Escape From Ponyville // Story: Space Captain Pinkie Pie // by terrycloth //------------------------------// From her cave near the mountain’s peak, high above Canterlot, Princess Luna watched over the night. The glittering domes of her little ponies’ frantic efforts to face the newest menace, phantom though it might be, dimmed her night-vision and made it hard for her to keep track of Celestia’s preparations to further sully her moon. But there – a falling star, over the Everfree. A ring of rainbow light spreading from its wake. An explosion of pastels, forming into a luminescent mushroom of titanic size… Her guards, previously content to stand silent behind her, launched into the air, heading towards the distant impact site. She knew better than to try to stop them. === Rainbow Dash woke up to some pony poking her in the belly. “Quit it,” she grumbled, curling up in a tighter ball. The hoof moved up to her wing, and spread it to full extension. Rainbow opened one eye, and saw one of Luna’s creepy night guards. “I’m fine!” she snapped, hopping to her feet and averting her gaze. This quickly turned into a look around – she was in a large, shallow crater of exposed dirt, surrounded by downed trees and shredded underbrush. “Pegasi are really fascinating,” said the night guard, her voice familiar somehow. “Do you know how fast you were going when you hit the ground?” “Derpy!” Rainbow Dash said, flying up into the air and looking around for other ponies, or craters, but it was still dark and she couldn’t see much. She looked down at the night guard. “Is she okay? And, um, those other guys that were with me?” “Only found you,” the night guard said, looking back up at her. She quickly averted her gaze. “Hey! What gives!” “Sorry,” Rainbow Dash said, looking away. “Twilight decided to ‘help’ me by giving me a gaze attack, and these goggles don’t do anything to block it.” She cautiously looked towards the night guard again. “Your voice seems familiar.” “I’m the girl of your dreams,” the night guard said, with a snort. “You know Chance, right? Did he ever mention Warp?” “Couple times,” Rainbow said. “You’re supposed to be dead.” “And you’re supposed to be consumed by hatred,” Warp retorted. “You said you had others with you, right? Derpy, and who else?” “Bunch o’ guards I charmed,” Rainbow said. “Ponyfeathers, I hope they just bounced off the compression wave. I don’t even know how fast we were coming in, it was just one second it’s a tiny planet way below us and the next second, boom. Rainboom.” “I’ll find them,” Warp said. “You go do… whatever you were planning to do.” “I’ve gotta make a big squishy pile of clouds for Twilight to land on,” Rainbow Dash said. “To land your ship on.” Warp paused, facing away from Rainbow. “That’s – you really don’t know how fast you were going, do you.” “Way too fast?” Rainbow Dash said. “We don’t have any better idea, and they can’t stay up there forever, not with the guards hassling them.” Warp closed her eyes, calculating. “The moon’s a thousand miles up… ponies are a bit tougher than baselines… 100 Gs should be survivable for a few seconds. You’ll want at least 10 miles of clouds. Thicker is better. Right up to the edge of the atmosphere if you can.” “10 miles? Thick?” Rainbow Dash said, dismayed. “I was just going to lay down a normal thunderhead. That’s, like, five miles.” Warp shook her head. “200 Gs is probably not survivable. You’ll need really dense clouds to give that much deceleration, too, not to mention surviving the shockwave from their atmospheric reentry. How are you planning on calibrating the cloud density?” “Cally-what?” “Let me use small words,” she said. “This plan of yours is not going to work, because you don’t know what you’re doing.” “Then tell me what to do!” Rainbow Dash demanded as the night guard flew off. “If you’re so smart,” she added quietly, to the darkness. === Warp wasn’t the only one looking for Rainbow Dash in the forest. Search parties of earth ponies and unicorns, mostly locals but led by Royal Guards, tramped through the forest, shooting magical lights up into the trees and beating the bushes with rakes and pitchforks. Fortunately for Rainbow Dash, their task was just about hopeless – this was the Everfree Forest, and the dense branches and scattered ravines and gullies made staying out of sight trivial, at least for a pegasus. “Can you believe Rainbow Dash is evil now?” asked one of the Ponyville locals as his party passed Rainbow’s latest hiding place. “She’s always been a bit off, you know?” another replied. “Remember that time she thought she was a superhero, and tried to take down Mare-Do-Well because she didn’t want competition? She’d do anything for attention. I’m surprised she didn’t plaster her cutie mark on the moon while she was up there.” “Well, she’s got all the attention in Equestria now,” the first said. “I hope she chokes on it.” Suddenly, Rainbow Dash’s plan of flying over to her friends’ houses and asking for help didn’t seem quite as sure-fire. Could Ponyville really turn on her that easily? A few dozen square miles of glassed desert, one defaced celestial body, and a proclamation from Princess Celestia, and suddenly she was the bad guy? Well, there was one pony she knew would be there for her no matter what. === “Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash said quietly, tapping on the quiet pegasus’ bedroom window. She didn’t want to startle her. “Fluttershy, wake up. I need your help – do you still have that old Mare-Do-Well costume? And, um, maybe a bandage for this cut, I’m feeling a little dizzy.” There was no answer, so she carefully opened the window and floated inside. The bed was empty. “Oh, ponyfeathers. They couldn’t have recruited Fluttershy,” she complained, kicking a pillow across the room. She turned to check the closet, and the pillow flew back across the room and hit her on the back of the head. “Hey!” she snapped, turning to face… that. Bunny. She narrowed her eyes. “Angel.” Angel glowered back at her, tossing a deadly-looking carrot in one paw, getting ready to throw… and then his eyes rolled up into his head, and were replaced by tiny pink hearts. “Ha!” Rainbow Dash said, turning back to the closet. Sure enough, there was Fluttershy’s Mare-Do-Well costume. Since three different ponies had been masquerading as the mysterious superhero, it was designed to completely obscure the pony that wore it. It was perfect! No pony would know who she was in that. She grabbed the hanger in her mouth, and – something grabbed on to her hind leg, and she yelped as she was flung roughly onto the bed. She sat up, only to find herself slammed back onto the matress by a small white rabbit landing on her chest. “Angel, stop it!” Rainbow Dash said. “Aren’t you supposed to do what I -- ow!” A carrot slapped her face harder than she would have expected from a creature Angel’s size. “What are you – ow!” The carrot slapped her other cheek. “You little vermin! I’m going to mmmph!” This time, her rant was interrupted by Angel flinging himself at her muzzle and pressing his tiny rabbit mouth onto hers. The plaster of the wall cracked as the rabbit slammed into it at high speed. “No means – eep!” Rainbow tossed the superhero costume at the white blur heading right for her face, and vanished out the window without looking to see if it hit. === Rainbow’s cloud-house was a lost cause. Some pony had dragged it down to the ground, and three local ponies wearing the same half-assed military uniform as the ponies in the search parties were probably supposed to be guarding it, although they were really just kind of standing around chatting. One of them was Sparkler, though, who’d never really liked her, and had the sort of flashy magic that would definitely attract the attention of the Royal Guards if she spotted Rainbow creeping about. …unless she took Sparkler out first. Right. Because it totally made sense to knock out three of her neighbors just so she could pick up a first-aid kit and some sunglasses. She limped over to Rarity’s place instead, only to find it occupied by an army of amateur seamstresses sewing giant parachutes or something. What. The. Hay? She was desperate enough to grab some scraps of cloth from the edge of the lit area and tie them around herself as a bandage, though. Bucking guards, using real, sharpened spears. What were they thinking? Were they trying to kill her? She closed her eyes and replayed the ‘fight’ in her mind. At the time, she hadn’t really been thinking about anything – if she wasn’t ‘in the zone’ she never would have been able to thread that maze. But the guard who’d scratched her, yeah. He’d moved his spear to try to get her to impale herself. She would have died. And then what would Twilight have done? Derpy couldn’t even manage to land properly. And those search parties, beating the Everfree? Even in force, going into the Everfree was dangerous. Some pony was going to get hurt. “Raindrops,” Rainbow Dash muttered to herself as she skulked through the alleyways. “I just need to find Raindrops, and get this damn double-tall super-dense thunderstorm built, and then I can go talk to Celestia and get her to stop putting ponies at risk for no reason.” Somehow, she found herself back at her grounded cloud-house. Well. There was one way to get the search parties out of the Everfree Forest. She stepped forwards, towards the ‘guards’. Time Turner looked up, and just sort of stared at her stupidly, and Sparkler, whose back was turned, was so busy talking about how to match gemstones for earrings that she didn’t even notice. Ugh. Rainbow Dash reached for her lightning spear, but the holster was empty, Nightmare take it. Oh well, it wouldn’t be as awesome as knocking out her companions before they could react, but it’d get the job done. “Hey, Sparkler!” All three guards turned to stare at her. “What did you do to my house?” Rainbow Dash complained, limping towards them, with her eyes slitted mostly shut and pointed at the ground. “If you get dirt in the rainbow pools I’ll have to rebuild them from scratch!” “What have you done with Ditzy!” Time Turner demanded. “Um… she headed back days ago,” Rainbow Dash said, walking towards them slowly. “Is she still missing? I bet that featherbrain got lost again.” Or got creamed on re-entry, just like Derpy and the Royal Guards DEFINITELY HAD NOT BEEN because that’s not a thing that ever happened, darn it. “This is a trick,” Sparkler said, backing away from Rainbow. “She’s trying to distract us. You two, check around back!” Time Turner didn’t seem too happy about those orders, but soon it was just Sparkler and Rainbow. “What do you want?” Sparkler hissed, in a whisper. “And what are you thinking, showing yourself like this? I’m going to have to send up a flare or they’ll know I’m on your side.” “Um…” Rainbow Dash said, a bit taken aback. “I need to know where Raindrops is, so I can gather the weather team,” she whispered back. “And I need you to send up a flare so the search parties will get the buck out of the Everfree before some pony gets eaten by a manticore.” “All the pegasi are out at Sweet Apple Acres, along with a bunch of farmers and guard unicorns, making Jelly Jars to assault the moon,” Sparkler whispered. “It’s Royal Guard central! I know that’s not going to stop you, though.” Rainbow Dash grinned. “Just don’t go in the barn, okay?” Sparkler added. “What’s in the barn?” Sparkler grimaced. “Celestia’s secret weapon.” “I thought I was Celestia’s secret weapon,” Rainbow Dash replied, smirking. Sparkler shook her head. “Not anymore.” Rainbow Dash was a block away by the time the flares went up. By the time they burst into rainbow-colored fireworks, she was halfway to Sweet Apple Acres. === “Truth!” Cherry Berry said eagerly, almost bouncing off the ground. Trixie was going through the motions almost as awkwardly as Twilight herself would have, and Shining Armor was sullenly letting himself get sidelined, but the new element of laughter seemed to be doing her best to recapture Pinkie Pie’s energy. Even if all her jokes were terrible. Fluttershy, still picking bits of hay out of her mane from her last dare, looked at the ground for a bit, then said, quietly, as every pony leaned close, “Do you hate me?” “Why would I hate you?” Cherry Berry asked. “I mean, it’s not like you somehow have way more friends than I ever could, even though you do your best to avoid every pony, and without even trying you got your picture in all the magazines and went on tour as a model in Canterlot and Manehattan, got to go to the Grand Galloping Gala, and even performed at the royal wedding, while the only exposure I can get is amateur night at the Hoof and Tackle. It’s not like you and your friends pretended to work for cousin Jubilee and ruined two days’ harvest with your horseplay. Or do you mean the time you upended my wagon and covered me in garbage because you were too lazy to fly over the river?” “Um… mostly the last one,” Fluttershy said quietly, wilting before the cheerful pink and yellow pony, and looking like she was about to cry. “Naaah, I don’t hatecha,” Cherry Berry said, smiling. “You elements give me some of my best material.” “It’s us elements now, CeeBee,” Applejack said, giving her a friendly shove on her shoulder. “’We’ elements,” Rarity corrected. “I’m so glad,” Fluttershy said, smiling softly at Cherry. “I hurt so many ponies that day, I could never make it up to all of them, so I’ve just been trying to avoid them, and I don’t even remember every pony I was mean to, so I’ve mostly been avoiding every pony, and…” she trailed off into little squeaks, and it looked like she was about to cry again. Cherry Berry grinned at her, then turned to Trixie. “Trixie! Truth or Dare!” “The Great and Powerful Trixie chooses to perform a Dare! And furthermore, Trixie shall far exceed your specifications, no matter what task you set!” “You should dare her to speak in the first person,” Rarity said, one eye twitching. Cherry Berry imitated Trixie’s pose and diction, although her Manehattan accent kind of got in the way. “The Kind and Generous Cherry Berry dares the Great and Powerful Trixie to cover Fluttershy in garbage!” “A trivial task!” Trixie proclaimed, horn glowing as a rope uncoiled from the hayloft and wrapped itself around Fluttershy, pinning her wings and tying her legs, then lifting her off the ground. The pegasus started to squeal, only to have her muzzle tied shut as well. The rope swung back and forth, then unwound itself from around her as it tossed her through a window, her thin scream cutting off suddenly as she splashed down in the pig pen outside. There were squeals and grunts from the surprised pigs, and a soft whimpering from the shy pegasus. “Nice,” Cherry Berry said to Trixie. Then to the rest of them, “See? Now we’re even. No reason for her to be afraid of me anymore.” Applejack stared at the two of them. “I don’t think it works that way, sugarcube,” she said, heading for the door to go see if Fluttershy needed any help. “Rarity!” Trixie proclaimed, a huge smirk on her muzzle, and an evil glint in her eye. “Truth… or dare?”