By most accounts, Rainbow Dash had a rather large house. From the perspective of just Ponyville, it was the second-largest residence in town, smaller only than the Rich manor. For a brief time, it had been the largest in town, but that only lasted until the cloud house had been spotted by Mrs. Rich, who, by sheer coincidence, suddenly felt it very important to convince her husband that their home absolutely needed a new solarium and indoor pool.
But Rainbow Dash's house was not large due to vanity or wealth, but simply because it could be. When you have three dimensions to build in, a near limitless supply of building material, and a town whose earth pony zoning laws had never been updated with cloud houses in mind, you had the perfect recipe for unregulated architectural expression.
She was very proud of her house. Having been spoiled by her doting parents for most of her life, building her house was the first real substantial thing she'd done on her own. That being said, it was a little impractical. There were many more rooms than she actually used and a good portion of the exterior designs were, at best, extraneous whimsy. Though she did not regret the miniature rainbow fountains. They'd cost her a pretty bit (as well as a favor from an old flight school buddy who now worked in the weather factory) but they looked awesome. The way they caught the sunlight and cast rainbow refractions on the surrounding landscape was better than any mailbox or nameplate. A pony could guess who lived there at two hundred paces.
It was to such a beacon that she now headed. The one downside of her home, as she was now realizing, was just how far into the outskirts of town it was. Normally, when she could outfly the wind itself, this was no problem. But it was a different story when her max speed seemed to be capped at a steady trot; a practically glacial pace for the speedster. At first Rainbow Dash had thought that shedding so much weight (that is, all of it) would have allowed her to fly infinitely faster. Much to her dismay, this had been proven false rather quickly.
But still, her home beckoned her from a distance; a glowing rainbow beacon from the porchlight she'd forgotten to turn off before leaving over a week before. Yet despite flapping her wings quick enough to make a hummingbird envious, they failed to push any air, leaving her sailing along at no quicker a pace.
Finally, after what felt like months of laborious travel (though in reality was half an hour at best) she at least reached her house's anchor.
"Ah, home sweet home," she sighed as she approached it. Never before had it looked so inviting. Ignoring the door entirely, she gave a few instinctive (but ultimately ineffectual) flaps and began to rise up straight through the floor without a second thought or moment of hesitation.
Due to lingering traces of a primitive flock instinct, compared to ponies of the other tribes, the average pegasus has a rather underdeveloped sense of personal space and private property. A pegasus wouldn't think twice about flying through the walls of several cloud houses in their way to a destination. This was doubly true if they actually intended to visit the house they were passing through. Though it annoyed the few unicorn and earth pony immigrants to no end, pegasi just took it for granted that doors were really more of a recommendation than a requirement.
It is because of this that Rainbow Dash had absolutely no problem getting into her house, straight up through the floor.
As predicted, she'd risen roughly in her living room. Continuing to rise, she ascended through the ceiling there to arrive in her bedroom. The room was what one might charitably call 'disorganized'. Ponies who aren't Rarity, however, would probably just call it messy. Though the Wonderbolts was a quasi-military institution, one thing which they did not put as much emphasis on was drilling into their recruits the importance of neatness and keeping an organized living space.
Dash took a deep inhale and let it out with a satisfied sigh and a smile. She couldn't smell anything, but she could imagine it. The acrid tang of open tins of wing balm scattered on the dresser. The pungent scent of sweat soaked into every surface. The slightly musty undertones beholden of any house with a pet in it. It smelt of hard work and hard play.
It smelt of home.
The first thing Rainbow Dash did, as was usual after coming home from a long adventure-and-or-friendship-quest, was to take a running jump onto her bed. The second thing she did was realize why this was a bad idea. She caught herself halfway through the living room floor and sheepishly flew back up to the bedroom.
"Right," she muttered, "Can't touch stuff. Gonna have to remember that one."
Suddenly, she found her brief introspection interrupted by a movement in the corner of her eye.
"Oh hey Tank!" she greeted eagerly, "Sorry, did I wake you up?"
The tortoise blinked slowly and smiled. He was a solid fellow and it was going to take more than the ghost of his owner to shake him. He closed his eyes and began to retract his head, comforted that Rainbow Dash was finally home and also more than thankful for the additional peaceful sleep that such knowledge would provide.
Smiling back for a moment, Rainbow Dash backed out through the door into the hallway. Her recent fall had reminded her of the next step in the plan, and though she didn't know how loud golem-making was supposed to be, there were plenty of other rooms in which Tank wasn't sleeping.
It wasn't until she reached the main foyer that she encountered a problem. Through the whole journey down the hall from her room, she'd racked her brains to remember what Twilight had said about golem-making. Much to her concern, she realized she had nothing. Apparently, her innate skill at absorbing information while flying didn't cover boring lectures heard while floating. In fact, she was pretty sure she'd even fallen asleep at one point and it was only thanks to Fluttershy's occasional nudges that she's stayed with the group!
"You've gotta be kidding me!" she cried as she began to circle the room. "I have to remember something! There was... there was... something about mud, I think? Or was it clay? Were those optional? Cause they really don't sound like I'd be able to fly. What about Spike? There was that thing he said, something about... a personal connection? Essence whatchamacallits?"
She groaned and slumped into a puddle. "Well now what am I supposed to do? I can't show up later and be the only pony without a body. But it's not like there's anywhere else I can learn about golems-"
She shot bolted upright. "That's it!" With a speed limited only by her current form, she raced into a formerly unused room that had started to grow into a small library. And as with most private libraries, there was one particular stack on books placed closer to the reading chair than the others.
"Once again, Daring Doo comes in to save the day!" Rainbow Dash laughed. "Daring Doo and the Guardians of Heptoria should tell me everything I want to know!"
It did not. Though she found the book easily enough, finding the exact chapter and passage she wanted was much harder. On the upside, turning pages was good practice for manipulating things without a physical form. Over an hour later, and having practically read the whole book again, she shut it with a disappointed sigh.
"Well, that was a bust. I should have remembered; she never makes any golems. She just fights them. But if I ever need to destroy a golem, I guess I'm pretty set."
With a heavy heart, she floated back to the living room, the irony of which was lost on her.
"This sucks. I want to go fast again." She gazed across the room to her Wonderbolts flight suit. It was exactly where she'd left it; hanging off the back of the cloud sofa where she'd thrown it the moment after peeling it off at the end of her last practice session. Would she ever be able to wear it again? And even if she made a golem which could, would she be able to fly? Or would her lifelong dreams be snatched away such a short time after having finally accomplished them?
Death makes a pony wax poetic, even a pony like Rainbow Dash.
She ran a hoof across the material. She knew she wouldn't be able to feel it, no more than she could feel anything else, and it hurt to be so close yet so far from it and everything which the suit represented.
Much to her surprise, she could feel it. Not in the normal sense; it felt... crackly. Jittery. Like a cloud filled to bursting with lightning. And it felt familiar. Moreso than it should have. It was an intoxicating sensation, and one which Rainbow Dash quickly felt herself falling into. It felt of speed. The raw sensation of acceleration captured and imbued into a fabric. Images passed through her mind. Arcing twists and steep banks. Aileron rolls and barrel rolls. It was like the suit remembered every trick she'd ever pulled in it... and it wanted her to remember.
What was she doing?
Moping about? Just because some book didn't have the answer she needed? She was Rainbow Danger Miriam Dash! And something as small and slow as not having a body could never stand in her way of being the absolute best at everything she wanted to!
Her spirits rose with her determination as she felt the suit begin to grow warmer in her grip. She lifted it to her chest, pulling it closer... closer... within her...
*VWORP!!*
Rainbow Dash blinked woozily. She felt like she'd just stepped off the Dizzitron at high speed. She blinked a few more times to settle the shakiness of the room.
Wait. Blinked?
Confused but hopeful, she lifted a hoof. The front leg of her flight suit moved into her vision. She twisted her foreleg and it turned.
"Aw yeah!" She fist-pumped, the sudden motion throwing off her unfamiliar balance. "I knew I could do it! I invented a new kind of golem: a living flight suit! I bet that wasn't in Twilight's snorefest of a book. Oh! I gotta check myself out!"
Suddenly filled with excitement, she turned to go and view her new body in the hall mirror... and promptly tripped over her own hooves. She stood up with some difficulty and made her way to a mirror at a frustratingly slow speed.
Finally, at long last, she reached the hall mirror, turned to see herself and...
It was, to put it mildly, pretty horrifying.
While the suit did give her a generally pony-esque shape, it was far from perfect. Even animated by her spirit, the suit didn't want to stand up under its own weight. There were creases and bends where none should be and the whole torso just looked hollow. The overall aesthetic was also not helped by the giant gaping holes where her eyes and muzzle should have been, which were at the moment three pits gazing into a void. 'Nightmarish' might have been a better description.
She grabbed her flight goggles from around her neck (with some difficulty) and strapped them on. This fixed one problem but made her gaping maw all the more noticeable.
"Well," she said, her voice coming out flat and dead like a wet sock, "This is pretty lame." She grimaced a little as the muzzle hole moved when she spoke. Not unlike a giant pair of fish lips or maybe a particularly unsettling sock puppet. The motions only broadly correlated to what she was saying, and the disconnect between the sound and the movement added a whole other layer to her creepy factor.
This... was not going to work.
Walking slowly to avoid tangling her floppy legs, Rainbow Dash trudged back and collapsed onto the couch in a heap. She'd solved one problem but found another.
Idly, she picked at a corner of the couch that was coming loose and a small ball of cloudstuff came off in her hoof. She rolled it back and forth as she strained her brain for more ideas.
"Okay, so the suit's a good start, but I need something to fill it out. I don't want to weigh myself down, so it has to be something light. Paper maybe? I think I might have some old receipts somewhere." She shook her head. "Nah, it'd get crushed down too easily. Plus I'd crinkle all the time. So it also has to be stiff enough to hold me up and won't get squished down when I move."
Her concentration broke as the ball of couch escaped her hooves. She glanced down to find it had gotten caught on the zipper of her suit/stomach. An idea dawned like a new day. Curious, she pushed it in the rest of the way. It weighed practically nothing, and yet it held its shape under the weight of the fabric.
Rainbow Dash grinned. So long couch! She'd been meaning to get a new one anyway.
Twenty minutes later, Rainbow Dash flew in giddy circles around her atrium. The dismembered remains of her couch lay in pieces across the floor, along with the casings of two pillows she'd cannibalized for feathers (all her own, thanks to laziness masquerading as thriftiness). She coasted in for a landing, skidding along and bouncing off the floor as though she were on the moon. Though still not perfect, her newly stuffed body evoked much less of a sense of horror than before. The cloud filled out the suit well and let it stand up and bend naturally, though a general lack of stuffing skill had left a few places overpacked and a little stiff. Though her wings looked a bit scruffy and beat up (due to being made of old, discarded feathers) the raw pegasus magic flowing through them was enough to manage basic flight. The only real problems remaining with her look were her lack of a muzzle (temporarily hidden by a well-placed bandana) and her missing mane and tail.
But now that she could fly and finally felt somewhat like herself again, she could really get down to serious thinking. In fact, she already knew where she could score some rainbow hairpieces.
Scootaloo was soundly asleep in her bed.
Tick!
This was not unusual, as she'd had a late night of crusading the day before and even under normal circumstances often didn't wake up until either the advent of school or the arrival of her friends forced her hoof.
Tick!
But the fact that she preferred to sleep in did not, in and of itself, mean that she was a particularly sound sleeper. Like most pegasi, she could go from deep delta wave sleep to full alert wakefulness in under a minute with the right stimulus. Such stimulus included the house being on fire, the schoolhouse bell ringing its five-minute warning, and anything involving the magical words "Rainbow Dash".
Tick!
What it did not include was the sound of pebbles hitting her window.
Thokk!
But it did include pebbles hitting her in the head.
"What-Who-Hey-What?!" she blurted incoherently, pegasus instincts not quite reacting fast enough to form a sentence. She tried to jump out of bed but got her hooves and wings tangled in sheets and hit the deck hard.
As she lay on the floor, thoroughly shook brains scrambling to remember which way was up, another small rock sailed through the tiny opening in her window and rapped her on the noggin.
Grumbling, but with her frustration tempered by curiosity, she untangled herself and opened the window fully.
The world outside her window was little more than a lumpy mass of shapes. The dark of night (or possibly morning?) muted all colors and blurred edges into one another.
"Applebloom? Sweetie Belle?" she whispered as loud as she dared, "Is that you?"
"Nah, it's me," a familiar raspy voice whispered back.
Scootaloo rocketed to full wakefulness. There was no mistaking that voice. Even if it did sound oddly muffled; like if she had put a ski mask on backward again. Which was a perfectly fine thing to do. As far as Scootaloo was concerned, her idol had the best eyesight in all Equestria and could see just fine whether or not her eyes were covered.
Still, the question remained. What was Rainbow Dash doing outside her house at super-early-o'clock in the morning? Early morning training? A secret mission that she could only accomplish with the help of her faithful follower Scootaloo? Or maybe, just maybe she'd come to invite her to a secret group of flyers, so good they made the Wonderbolts look like flight camp cadets, whose sole identifying mark of a potential member is stunted abilities during fillyhood!
"Scoots? You still there?" Rainbow Dash's voice carried through the shadows, "You went all quiet on me."
Scootaloo mentally slapped herself. She had to pull it together! You couldn't just zone out around Rainbow Dash; you might miss something awesome. "Yeah, I'm still here. Just... uh... just sleepy."
"Oh," came Dash's voice again, sounding both surprised and apologetic, "Sorry. I didn't think about waking you up."
Fool! Scootaloo again chastised herself. Now she'd gone and made Rainbow Dash feel bad! "No! No, it's okay! I was getting up anyway."
"Really? Okay then." She sounded upbeat again, thankfully. "Anyway, I need a favor."
So no secret, elite group of pegasi then. Her expression dropped, but only a little. The rational part of her brain admitted that it had been a long shot to start with. "What do you need?"
"You still have those fake Rainbow Dash manes and tails that you made for the fan club?"
"In four sizes from infant to adult, why?" She gasped. "Oh no! Did you lose your mane while fighting some horrible monster?"
There was a pause before she got a response. "Well... you're half right. Bit more than just the mane though. Can we talk inside?"
"So you're saying that your whole body just..."
"Yep. Poof."
"Even your wings?"
"Yes. That would be part of my whole body."
"And now you're a ghost."
Rainbow Dash's flightsuit shrugged. "More or less. Twilight's working on it, but I guess growing new bodies from scratch takes a while, even for an egghead like her."
Scootaloo found herself conflicted. On one hoof, her idol had died. On the other, her idol was also in her house, asking her for a personal favor. The conflict of emotions left her somewhere between distraught and giddy. She thought about thinking up a combination word for the emotion, but gave up. Wordplay was more Sweetie Belle's area of expertise anyway.
Still, seeing Rainbow Dash like this was quite a shock. It was clearly her, everything from her posture to her tone, and yet also not her in such a weird way. She doubted she'd ever be able to get used to seeing clouds inside somepony's mouth. Or in their eyesockets.
"So you need a new mane and tail for now?" Better to keep the conversation flowing before she got caught up in introspection again. She walked over to the closet where she kept her Rainbow Dash Fan Club supplies.
"Yeah, it feels super weird walking around without one."
"Weirder than everything else?"
Rainbow Dash laughed at the joke and Scootaloo's whole world lit up. "Yeah, I guess that's true," she replied as the filly returned with a mane and tail in adult size. "Thanks."
"N-No problem." Thanks. Genuine words of appreciation. This was the day she'd tell her grandfoals about.
With the mane attached, Rainbow Dash gave her head a swish. "Hey this thing is perfect! I feel twenty percent more like my old self!"
Scootaloo nodded proudly. "It should be. It's your hair after all." Immediately she bit her tongue at the unintentional slip, but luckily Rainbow Dash seemed to not have noticed and was too focused attaching her tail.
Rainbow Dash, looking much more herself than when she'd arrived, gave a few turns and a quick flight around the room. "Aw yeah! They're both perfect!" She landed alongside Scootaloo and mussed her mane. "Thanks squirt, you really helped me out of a jam here. You ever need anything, you just let me know, alright?"
And Scootaloo ceased to function. Could it really be true? Such an incredible opportunity...Her dream, this could be it! All the stars had aligned and the most impossible of circumstances come together. If this wasn't a message from the universe telling her to go for it, then she didn't know what was!
Though she still had to build up the courage to actually ask the question first.
"Actually... there is something."
Rainbow Dash's mouth hole attempted to make a grin. "Sure. Hit me."
Scootaloo took a deep breath. Could she really do this? Before her tiny shred of courage could escape she blurted: "Can... can I go inside you?"
Immediately after speaking she regretted the choice and backpedaled, shaking her head as if to rid her mind of the idea. "Nevermind, it was a stupid question. Forget I even said anything."
She found her vigorous head shaking stopped by a concerned hoof. She looked up to see Rainbow Dash looking at her with... well, emotions didn't come easy to her current face, but she didn't look angry. "No... no. I mean, yeah, that's not something you hear every day, but... explain."
Scootaloo's embarrassed blush deepened and her mouth moved uselessly for a moment. She sat down hard on the wooden floor. Her hooves tracing the edges of the floorboards as a heavy conflict of emotions warred across her face. Finally, like a monster rising from a well, a confession crawled out of her throat.
"It's just... You see..." She took a deep breath and tried again. "I've wanted to be like you for so long. You're the coolest, fastest, and bestest flyer in the whole world and I'm just... none of those things. I try, but it's never good enough. And I thought that, since you're hollow now, that this might be my one chance to really see what it's like to be Rainbow Dash. To see the world how you see it. To be the closest thing to actually being Rainbow Dash that I can possibly be."
Her heart poured out, she winced and waited for the coming rebuke. The verbal hurricane of how weird she was, how crazy, and what a terrible filly she was for even thinking she could ask something so personal of the fast and amazing Rainbow Da-
"Yeah I get that."
Scootaloo opened one eye and looked up. Surely her ears had misheard that.
"I mean, who wouldn't want to be me?"
Her mouth fell open in shock. It couldn't be. She actually agreed?! Impossible! And yet there Rainbow Dash stood, or rather, there she lay, unzipping the hole in her stomach like the gates of paradise.
"Alright," she beckoned, "Come on inside."
This had to be a dream. "R-really?"
"Yeah, it's cool. Just for a bit though. So you can get the full Rainbow Dash experience."
It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a dream! With a gleeful squeal, Scootaloo dived headfirst into Rainbow Dash's stomach, kicking out bits of cloud stuffing like a diamond dog burrowing through loamy soil.
"Oof, easy there kiddo." Rainbow Dash grunted as she was repeatedly kicked from the inside. "You're getting really ah- aaaah- aaaaaaaaah-"
"-Aaaaaw yeah! I'm in!" Scootaloo cheered as her muzzle pushed forward through the mouth hole. She lifted the goggles to give her purple eyes a clear view of the room. "I- I did it!" She broke into giggles. "I'm Rainbow Dash. I'm Rainbow Dash."
"Uh, sorry," said a voice that came out from around her face, "You're currently in Rainbow Dash. But you do have the best seat in the house."
Scootaloo felt the stuffing around her legs tense and shift as they walked her towards the nearby mirrored dresser. She gasped as her reflection came into view. She was Rainbow Dash. Well, Rainbow Dash with an orange muzzle and slightly miscolored eyes, but still. Luckily, Rainbow Dash herself was still there to stop her from falling too far into a Narcissus-like hypnosis.
"This feels so weird," Rainbow Dash said. Scootaloo noticed that when she wasn't actively resisting, Rainbow Dash's muzzle hole tended to move her jaw and lips in just about to right way to mimic whatever Rainbow Dash said. "You're so warm. It's like I swallowed a hot water bottle."
"And you're so soft inside," Scootaloo commented back, locking up what she really wanted to say deep inside. "I've never been this tall before."
"I'll bet. You know, if it weren't for your coat color, I bet no one would even know that you weren't me."
Was the universe sending her another signal? The last one had worked, so Scootaloo decided to take a chance on this as well. "Bring me a little closer to the drawer. The left one."
When she did, Scootaloo wriggled and squished and pulled until her whole body up to the waist hung from Rainbow Dash's mouth. She tried not to think about how much it looked like she was being eaten.
"Ha. It almost looks like I'm eating you."
Ignoring it, Scootaloo opened the drawer. Within it was a small notebook, a quill, and a few odds and ends. She took out the notebook and quill, setting the book aside on the table. The quill she then inserted, point first, into the underside of the drawer. With a small *click!*, a false bottom was revealed. Beneath it was a strange contraption with a series of wires, a fire gem, and a bag of clearish liquid. What sat atop them, however, was the object of her search.
Several small jars, all tightly sealed, and a thicker and much more well-handled notebook. Scootaloo carefully extracted one jar and restored the false-bottomed drawer to its original state.
"Is that.. colored fur powder?"
"Coral blue No. 2," Scootaloo replied, "Your exact shade."
"Why do you have this?
"I-" Scootaloo's voice hitched as she remembered just who she was talking to. "...personal reasons."
Rainbow Dash nodded. So what if the filly played dress-up as her? It wasn't any of her business. You could even call it a compliment. A testament to just how much she wanted to be like her idol. And when it came to ponies wanting to be more awesome... what kind of Rainbow Dash would she be if she were to call them out on it?
While Rainbow Dash mused on whether the knowledge that Scootaloo dressed up as her was a step up or step down in strangeness compared to the fact that the filly was now inside of her like a baby kangaroo, Scootaloo got to work.
With an expert hoof, she popped the canister of dye open and removed the power puff within. She applied it delicately to her face with a technique that not even Rarity could have found flaw in. With a skill borne of clearly more practice than she had let on, she delicately applied the blue powder across her muzzle and face. Even her eyelids and the sensitive inner portions of her ears she dusted without hesitation.
Only when there was no longer a trace of orange from the neck up was she satisfied. "There!"
"You're surprisingly good at that," Dash observed.
"Thanks!" Scootaloo beamed. "Now I just wiggle back in and..." She squirmed back inside and after a bit of fiddling, realigned the mouth, eye, and ear holes. And suddenly, a completely normal-looking Rainbow Dash stood in the room alone without a trace of Scootaloo to be seen.
"Whoa," Rainbow Dash muttered, her mouth moving perfectly with the words. "It's like you're not even there."
"I know.." Scootaloo's reply came quietly yet with a sense of incredible awe. "Now, we are Rainbow Dash."
"Hey.. this gives me a great idea for a prank! You mind riding along a little longer?"
"Always!" came the giddy reply.
"Good." Rainbow Dash walked over to the window. "Then let's fly!"
And (with a little help) Scootaloo flew.