Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS


True Pegasus I

Seven armor-wearing pegasi flew through the clouds in a V-formation. Each one had a stern look about them, these were the kinds of ponies that would be stoic and stone faced at the best of times. Currently what they were doing could not be said to be a normal flight or exercise. Knowledge had come that something was coming in from the south and it had somehow gotten past one of their protective Ice Sentinels. There were hardly any breaks in their routine lives nowadays and suddenly something that has never happened before since the Ice Sentinels were created had thrown a wrench into those routine lives. It was discomforting. It was a foreboding something that put them all ill at ease. Considering their station absolutely nothing should frighten them and yet they couldn’t help but be worried. Either way it was their mission to find what had done it. Anything they came across that seemed abnormal, these seven pegasi would interrogate it or figure out somehow what was responsible for the destruction of their Sentinel.

The pegasus at front and center dipped down slightly and the others perfectly followed suit like a flock of birds following their leader. The seven of them went through a large cloud and came out the other side lightly misted. They were still high in the sky, between several layers of cloud, with the ground far below. Despite the reason for being out here being unusual this was still an area of the sky and True North they knew well. Nothing that didn’t have knowledge of these lands and skies as good as they did would be able to slip past them.

“Keep your eyes peeled for anything,” the pegasus at the center said with a voice far softer and even than one would expect from looking at him. His body was slim and he was fairly tall, with a light purple coat and a fiery orange mane and tail. The Cutie Mark on his flank was currently obscured by the armor he wore, along with all the others.

“Yes, Captain!” The wingpony immediately to his right said while the others stayed quiet.

The seven pegasi continued to charge through the sky, maneuvering around clouds and following their leader’s movements the whole way. Each pegasus kept one eye on what was below them while the Captain stared forward and kept his focus on doing the correct flight path. Depending on if whatever got past the Sentinel could fly they needed to do things very thoroughly, they couldn’t just fly around wherever and hope they came across the responsible party. So the Captain kept them going on their path south where they could comb the skies efficiently.

He dove suddenly, steeply through the clouds and bringing the other six with him, pushing through the low layer of stratus clouds and coming out with nothing but the ground below them this time. Like this it was easy to very briefly get a wide view of the ground and anything that might be walking or flying. The seven pegasi searched but still saw nothing yet so the Captain brought them up again into the clouds.

“Nothing yet,” he whispered to himself before shouting to his squad. “If you see anything at all, don’t hesitate to tell me! We must find this thing.”

“Yes, Captain!” Again his wingpony responded while the others nodded.


Rainbow Dash lackadaisically flew up and down in the sky, going in and out of the clouds as she made her journey north. She had found that somehow she had gone off course a bit earlier when she was sick and was now a bit more westward than she wanted to be. Currently she was making an adjustment to that and slightly flying northeast. It was a very cloudy day out and she could hardly see anything but at least they weren’t storm clouds. If the pegasus wanted she could probably clear a large amount of what was around her but she doubted there was anything to see further. She could always fly below the clouds and although that wouldn’t give her the prime altitude for looking ahead it was decent. Mostly though she just wanted to keep flying until she was back to going purely north.

Depending on how far this cloud coverage went it could provide some useful material for making a bed whenever night fell. Rainbow Dash hadn’t gotten to sleep on clouds that much lately, her body sorely missed them. Any cloud was better than some cold rock or half-buried in the snow. A cotton candy cloud or one shooting off lightning was better than that. She normally liked napping a lot more too but being too busy looking for adventure or doing something else had eaten into that pleasure of hers. Now here she was with all these clouds around and she was preoccupied with flying and getting out of here to make up for lost time.

She’d get a good nap someday. She promised herself that.

Rainbow Dash flapped her wings a little harder than she had been to see if they were totally back after being so sore this morning. With no resistance or sluggishness from them it seemed like they were okay. Her hesitancy to push them immediately was why she was still going so slow by her standards right now though. That led to her basically just floating and gliding on her wings, letting herself fall slightly and then putting in the minimal amount of energy needed to rise up again and then dip back down.

It wasn’t too windy right now and what wind there was was blowing with her, making things a lot easier. The clouds were only drifting about very slowly in the sky because of that too. Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure how long they stretched but she’d probably end up leaving them at some point over the next day even if she didn’t go any faster than she was. And naturally she planned to go much faster.

“I’m so booooored,” she couldn’t help but say. It was true after all what with the lack of anything going on for her. And she couldn’t even go fast right now or do any fancy airborne maneuvers with her wings still maybe not the best.

She was getting very close to just going all out and blasting through the sky to kill her boredom and get through here already. Good idea or bad idea she really wanted to do it. It would be nice to get that high up again, so far into the sky where it felt like she was closer to the sun above than the clouds below. Rainbow Dash loved flying like that.

The pegasus grinned to herself. Yeah, once she was sure things were back in order she’d fly as high as she possibly could and really look out over the True North. Higher than any clouds or mountains could reach. She tentatively flexed her wings and was pleased again when they felt fine. After going like this for maybe another hour she could really let loose. Her cold was basically completely gone and with the weather being as good as it was she was pretty excited to be able to fly as freely as she wished soon. It would really be her first time doing that in the True North.

Rainbow Dash went low again, going through the bottom of the clouds and coming out so she could skim right below them. A glance down showed a surprisingly greener tundra than what she was used to with some lakes and rivers that weren’t even totally frozen over. Somehow it seemed she was going into a more temperate part of the True North. As little sense as that made unless there was something else affecting the weather.

“Halt!” A voice rang out from the clouds right over Rainbow Dash’s head.

Shocked, she came to a stop just in time for seven figures to come out of the clouds and form a circle surrounding her. Her eyes narrowed and glanced between the seven newcomers, wondering who they were. Rainbow Dash’s mind vaguely registered that these were the first intelligent creatures she had ran into up here. And the first proof of civilization and more.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” She asked, realizing that all seven of the fliers were pegasi just like her.

“I could ask you the same question,” the light purple pegasus directly in front of Rainbow Dash said, an eyebrow raised in confusion. “I wasn’t expecting this… are you a runaway?”

Rainbow Dash snorted and crossed her hooves over her chest. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, dude.”

Now that she really looked at him and the others though… she noticed something else about them. They were wearing armor that was just like the armor Flash Magnus wore, and that she had worn back when they all put on the Hearthswarming play. What was up with that? It was that ancient pegasi armor right? Before the unification.

“Very well,” the light purple pegasus cut her thoughts short. “I don’t know who you are or where you’ve come from. You’re certainly an oddity. For your information though I am Captain East Wind of the Eternal Pegasus Empire.”

“Huh?” Rainbow Dash tilted her head.

The other pegasi floating around her were confused at the situation as well. They never expected to find one of their own (or so they thought) while looking for whatever was responsible for the Sentinel’s destruction. And now she was apparently some pegasus that wasn’t from their home and had no knowledge of it.

“She must be playing dumb, Captain,” the wingpony whispered to East Wind.

Rainbow Dash heard him with her sharp ears though and glared at the offending pony. “Hey! I heard that and I’m not lying or whatever. I seriously don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

Captain East Wind bit his lip for a second and then asked the question that was eating away at him. “Are you… could you possibly be the one responsible for the destruction of our Ice Sentinel?”

“That’s impossible!” The whispering pony immediately interjected. “The Sentinels were made to deal with all creatures of flesh and blood. No pony could overcome or escape from one of them.”

“Pff!” Rainbow Dash blew an unimpressed breath of air past her lips. “Maybe no normal pony but I doubt you’ve ever met anyone as awesome as me. I don’t really believe in the word impossible and that thing was a cinch!” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Wait. You guys made that thing?”

The Captain did not bother to answer her question. “Whoever you are and whether that’s the truth or not you’ll be coming with us now.”

He motioned to the other pegasi and they moved in on Rainbow Dash, slowly tightening the noose around her.

Well she wasn’t about to take that sitting down.

“Oh, you guys are making a big mistake.” The rainbow pegasus smugly grinned and unfolded her hooves.

One of the pegasi behind and to the right of her suddenly lunged forward in an attempt to grab and subdue her immediately. His hooves grasped nothing but air as she vanished in a rainbow blur. The soldier pegasus barely had the time to be shocked as he felt a strong hoof crack against his chin and send him careening away. Two more pegasi came rushing at her from both sides but Rainbow Dash quickly ducked below them and had to hold back a laugh as the two smacked into each other.

The whispering pony then charged at her at full speed, which wasn’t even half of what Rainbow Dash could do, so she side-stepped him in the air and kicked him in the back of his helmeted head as he flew by. That probably got his ears ringing.

The last two besides Captain East Wind just came at her from the front. One of them going high and the other going low. Rainbow Dash yawned. She wanted to show off so now these pegasi were going to learn just how outmatched they were. She zipped around them before they could even react and kept flying around them in a circle, creating a dizzying rainbow cyclone surrounding the two pegasi as she allowed herself to let loose. She already planned on doing something like this before running into these jerks and they gave her the excuse so why not? Her wings felt great, better even, as if they were grateful to Rainbow Dash for using them to their fullest. Rainbow Dash shortly slowed down and the cyclone dissipated, revealing two deeply disoriented and green-faced pegasi.

East Wind looked on hesitantly, considering whether to attack her or wait for the others to get back together.

“Hah!” Rainbow Dash laughed and flew up above their now broken circle, her assailants trying to form back up. “You guys are clowns! I could beat you with my wings tied behind my back!”

“Is that so?”

A powerful gust of wind blew away the clouds above them, knocking back Rainbow Dash until she managed to stop herself and look up at the source of the voice. The wind was still blowing in her face so she had to raise a hoof up to her face and squint her eyes while her mane and tail blew about. But she was able to see the newcomer.

A large pegasus descended in the sky, the clouds now circling around him. And large was putting it lightly. He had a huge muscular body that would’ve put any stallion’s shy of Rockhoof’s to shame and with a wingspan matching Princess Celestia’s. Like the others he wore the same kind of ancient pegasus armor but his helmet had a large golden spike atop it as well. The huge stallion’s coat was a dark blue while his mane was white with black stripes. Coal-black eyes impassively looked down on her under the helmet’s brim.

Rainbow Dash’s cocky smile turned into a frown. This guy… seemed a little different from the others.

“Commander!” Captain East Wind said with no small measure of shock, instantly saluting.

The other six pegasi, even the ones who were still hurting, also immediately snapped to attention and saluted him.

The Commander gave the smallest of nods to the seven others and put them at ease, never taking his eyes off Rainbow Dash. “I reconsidered and decided to come see what had gotten past one of our Sentinels personally. It was this pegasus mare?”

Before the Captain could respond to him, Rainbow Dash cut in.

“That’s right! That stupid thing wouldn’t leave me alone. Why’d you guys make something like that?” She angrily confronted him, flying up to glare at him on the same level. She had had enough of being looked down on. “And who even are you?”

“I see no need to answer the questions of an inferior, traitorous, pegasus such as yourself,” the Commander coldly responded.

“Trai-?!” Rainbow Dash couldn’t even finish the word. His attitude and what else he said was bad enough, but being called that, as confusing as it was, was even worse to her. Her blood boiled and a vein threatened to burst on her forehead. Rainbow Dash growled and clenched her teeth, shooting forth at the Commander and aiming to punch him right in his big face.

His head moved to the side with lightning fast reflexes.

Rainbow Dash’s jaw had just enough time to drop before his wing came around towards her face.

And then everything was black.