//------------------------------// // 5. Egg Hunt // Story: Suited for a Challenge // by Mocha Star //------------------------------// Rainbow looked around the room and just started walking to the nearest door at the front right of the class, then slipped on a pencil and landed softly on her barrel. “Ha, didn’t even feel a thing,” she foolishly said. A normal pencil fell on her padded head, then another, and another. She glanced up quickly, sneaking a peek at where they were coming from, and saw three pencil sharpeners reverse shredding pencils and dropping them from the ceiling. Worse, was she got a pencil, eraser first, in her left eye. With a customary yelp in surprise and pain, she moved her forehoof to her eye and rubbed it. After blinking to make sure it was alright, she noticed that there were more and more pencils raining on her now and a glance above her, with a foreleg as a guard, let her count that there were now seven. “Great, it’s raining lead.” She carefully stepped through, over, and on pencils as they started to cover the floor. A loud thump startled her and she took a look behind her. She yelped and flapped her wings, then started flying from the scroll that’d appeared at the back of class and started tumbling towards her. She reached the door; pulled, tugged, yanked for all she was worth, but it wouldn’t budge. The scroll was as tall as the ceiling and as long as the room itself. The windows didn’t push out when she tried and she finally resorted to hiding under the teacher’s desk for cover as it crushed the desks under its roll. She felt it press against the teacher’s desk and clenched her eyes. Nothing happened. She got up and looked over the desk at the scroll. “Hi, Misses Rainbow Dash,” a class of smiling unicorn foals said in unison. All foals, except for one adult purple unicorn in the back that sat with wide eyes that held an embarrassed fear as she finished the statement. “Twilight!” Rainbow was in her face in an instant and the mare flinched back and fell out of her seat. “C’mon, let’s go,” she turned and started fly away. “B-b-but, wh-what’d I do?!” Twilight called back loudly as she got to her hooves and looked completely ashamed and her classmates made an ‘ooo’ sound in unison. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry and I’ll stay after class, please don’t take me to Princess Principal Celestia.” Rainbow held a forehoof up in a placating manner. “Woah, look, I don’t know what’s got you so worked up, but we have to go, Twilight, now.” Twilight backed to the wall and shrank as low as her adult body would let her. “Please, I’ll study harder, I’ll read more, I’ll stop playing with other ponies and Spike… just don’t take me out of school.” Rainbow’s ears drooped and she looked at the foals around her. All unicorns, all nervously looking between her and the cowering mare that was behaving like one of them, and she understood everything in that moment. She sat and looked at Twilight, “I’m sorry, Twilight, I didn’t mean to sound so mean. “Look, uh, I’m not really good at talking to foals and being soft, it’s not my style, so… can you just walk with me and we can talk about this. Princess Celestia won’t know, even. It’ll be between just you and me, alright?” she rubbed a foreleg against the other and realized she’d been looking at the floor. She looked at Twilight again and saw the mare hesitantly stand up and take a slow step closer, then another. “You mean it? I’m not in trouble?” “Psh, you can’t get in trouble at school if you tried,” Rainbow beamed and the class groaned while Twilight perked up a bit. “I mean, I’ve never known a pony that’s as smart as you. You’re Princess Celestia’s student, for Celestia’s sake,” she blinked at what she’d said, then shook her head, “you’re the most powerful magic user in Equestria, why would you think seeing Princess-” “Princess Principal Celestia.” “Yeah,” Rainbow rolled her eyes, “her. C’mon, egghead, let’s get out of this place.” Rainbow draped a wing over Twilight and led her through the door and into the hall, where they immediately hiccupped and felt themselves fly apart. Twilight fell down while Rainbow went up in an uncontrolled fall through the school hallway, both felt gravity under their hooves and in the shock of a couple seconds they both landed, separated again, only Rainbow didn’t stop at the far wall with a soft pillow to cushion her; she fell through a window made from royal icing and splatted into a bathtub full of sweet whipped cream. A shower nozzle squeaked when she broke the surface and inhaled a breath of air, and she winced and yelped, then trudged through the topping to escape the butterscotch candies that were raining on her. “Darn it, Discord! What the hay? I had her right under my wing,” Rainbow tried to move her wings, but they weighed too much and she quickly realized she couldn’t even lift them over her head from the weight of the cream. Rainbow shuddered along her back from tail to her neck as Discord slithered under her bodysuit, the thought of him popping out and doing something he thought was funny at that moment almost sickened her, so she wasn’t expecting a gummy worm to rear up from below her and roar audibly, spittle of chocolate cream filled cookie crumbles covering her exposed body. She gulped and smiled awkwardly at it. “Uh, nice worm?” She tried to turn and run, swim, fly, all to no avail as the worm chomped down on her and lifted the screaming mare into the air. It tipped its head back and in a moment of sheer terror, Rainbow whinnied and thrashed as the deepest instincts of her kind took over her mind. She didn’t say another word, she couldn’t, not as its gummy mouth forced her into its body and she got to see the whipped cream cover her again, only this time she couldn’t breathe, barely move, and it was pitch black. A bright flash of red light changed the color of the worm for a split second, just before it exploded and Rainbow hovered in the air above a pock mark of cream. She nickered, looked around in a panic, and then reared and kicked the air as she flew up and back into the hallway. She landed in front of a surprised Discord, who was standing by a doorway and talking to somepony. He pulled the door closed, folded it several times, then ate it with a loud gulp. “My, Rainbow Dash, you seem to have-” She flew into him, tackling him to the floor and before he could form a witty remark she landed a solid slap with the wall of her hoof across his face. Discord shattered into ten thousand and two candy pieces that coated the floor when she struck him and she didn’t waste a second; she started stomping on the candies shouting curses and promises of terrible things she’d do to him until she slipped and fall onto her side, panting. Discord walked through a locker wearing a school uniform that focused on Twilight’s purple scheme and looked down at her. “Feel better after going feral for a moment?” Rainbow lifted her head and then the rest of her followed as she hovered eye level with him. “Stop this right now, Discord. It’s not fun or funny to have me eaten!” “Oh? I thought nothing scared you, most daring pony,” he widened his eyes and images of her challenging Applejack to feats of ability flashed inside his pupils. “Now,” he said from behind her and placing an arm over her back to hold her in place, “there’s your friend, Twilight Sparkle,” the other Discord pointed down the hall and Twilight looked up, from her perspective, down the hall to them. He snapped his fingers and the lockers opened, books and all manner of school supplies floated across and down the hall in an unorganized pattern. “I can’t take your element away, but it doesn’t seem you know it’s true power consciously, so I don’t need to worry about it. Just, go get your friend and we’ll have a nice long talk after,” he finished by shoving her into the Discord she first saw. They tumbled over each other with Rainbow ending on top, she raised a hoof to slap him again; luckily stopping as a high pitched scream assaulted her ears. She hopped up and back, apologizing to the colt who replied with more screams as he ran past her and jumped through the window. She watched as the window swirled after him and shrank to nothing with a very unique whoop sound. She shook her head and looked down the hall. Her wings flexed, she shifted inside the bodysuit, and she bent her knees. “Here I come, Twi.” Rainbow bound forward and under the first set of stuff and things flying between lockers, then over, around, then between notebooks, folders, and through a loopty hoop that spun slowly. She came to a sudden stop when the obstacles began to gather and fill the hallway, barring her passage. “Whatever you think you’re gonna do, it isn’t gonna work!” She leaned into a more aerodynamic stance and launched at the the wall, slamming into it and bouncing back to the ground with an oof. “I’ve knocked down stacks of rocks that were harder than you,” she spat on the floor when she was standing again and repeated the action three more times before she finally landed and held her head between her hooves. That was when she looked behind her and noticed the path was clear all the way back to the windowless wall she’d been through. She rocketed towards the wall and landed with her hooves against it, looking down the hall at the obstruction. “Try and stop this,” she said and launched herself into a rainboom that shattered the reality Discord created when it erupted. She saw the reality shatter like a photograph torn to shreds and let blow into the wind, except her friend that she caught and held onto as they struck the darkness and appeared on the stage. She heard a roar of applause, the crowd had grown by hundreds and the stage had proper lighting, a red curtain backdrop, and a podium with microphone. Discord picked her and Twilight up into a tight hug that both mares struggled in. “What fortuitous chances in your favor, dearest Rainbow Dash,” his arms left his body and new ones grew in their place so he could clap. “I didn’t expect you to get so much out of that one, and so fast, too. You really are the fastest mare,” he winked, “is that in every capacity?” Rainbow bucked at him from the hold his hovering pawed arm had across her while starting to blush. “Stuff it, let us go so I can get onto the next whatever and save my friends.” She looked over at Twilight and stopped struggling when she saw the awkward look she was getting. “Smarty Pants? You’re really here?! Oh my gosh,” Twilight giggled and was released from the draconic arm at the same time as Rainbow was. She caught Rainbow in her magic and brought her in for a big hug and nuzzle that Rainbow didn’t stop right away. “I’m so glad you’re here, you can help me think of a way to stop big bad Discord.” “Okay, that’s enough,” Rainbow pushed Twilight back as Fluttershy and Pinkie came from behind the curtain, “look, there’s our friends, go get sappy on them.” She looked at her foreleg and then the rest of her, dressed as Twilight’s doll she’d seen a glance of once. Discord clicked a camera, the flash getting her attention as the camera rolled onto itself and formed a complete picture of Rainbow in a very tight fitting bodysuit, this time she had a visual when he held the picture so she could see. Stitched eyes and black rope dangled in her view when she moved her head. Discord crumbled the picture into a ball and tossed it aside where a wheel of cheese splashed from the floor and rolled around and to Discord. He hopped onto it and rocked side to side. “Great! Well, now that you’ve found friend number three, you’re feeling more complete, aren’t you?” he asked as Rainbow hair fell into her eyes. Rainbow grinned and brushed her hoof across her mane from forelocks to the base of her neck. “Much better, three more? Piece of cake.” Pinkie’s face appeared between Rainbow’s front legs and the pink mare’s grin unnerved Rainbow more than usual, being so close and out of nowhere. “Cake? Can I have some?!” Rainbow took to the air and backed away from Pinkie and noticed Discord had a raised eyebrow at her. “No cake, Pinkie. Go plan a saved friends party, we’ll have cake then.” Pinkie saluted with a smile. “Okie dokie lokie!” Discord lifted his paw and winked. “I want cinnamon icing,” he snapped his fingers and Rainbow saw the world flash white, then blue. Carousel boutique blue, and she face hooved. “Great, dresses,” she said looking at dozens of ponyquinnes wearing all manner of dresses of all colors.