//------------------------------// // True Pegasus XII // Story: Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego // by MagicS //------------------------------// The day after her battle, Rainbow Dash found herself somewhere new. Although with some familiar faces. She stood in a large room in the administration building with East and West Wind guarding the door behind her and Commander Blizzard staring out the window at the city below. She could appreciate a pony doing something just for the sake of dramatics but it was getting a little tiresome with her just standing around and waiting for him to finally tell her why he summoned her. “This meeting is one that should have happened earlier,” the Commander said without turning around. Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at him and blew an angry puff of air out of her nose. “Okay, so what’s it about? Why’d you have me brought up here?” Commander Blizzard stood silently for a minute longer at the window, pretty much getting Rainbow Dash’s anger and impatience to boil over, before he finally turned around and fixed her with a hard stare. “I wanted to finally get some information out of you. Things that may be important. And I suppose to see how you are adjusting to your new home.” “If you want to know something then just ask and I can hurry up and get out of here,” Rainbow Dash impertinently glanced away from him, folding her hooves over her chest. “Your attitude is unfitting for a mare here but for a soldier I suppose it’s fine. Unfortunately I can’t have it both ways with the path I’ve chosen for you,” he glowered at her. “Well that’s your problem, not mine.” The Commander stared down hard at her while she continued to look away. No way was she going to lose this stubborn contest. He tried to get on her nerves? Well then let him have a taste of his own medicine. Not to mention she was still angry at him for so many other things. She didn’t care about him glaring at her whatsoever, unless he forced her to or spoke up first she wasn’t going to look him in the eye. He seemed to only care about strength and power, well then right here she’d make him respect her by not giving in to him. Both of them had their patience wearing thin but the Commander was likely far busier than Rainbow Dash and eventually the Equestrian’s stubbornness won out. Commander Blizzard snorted and turned around, walking back to his window. “How did you defeat the Ice Sentinel?” He asked with his wings tightly folded behind him as he stared out at the city again. “Is that it?” Rainbow Dash turned her head to glare at the back of his head, with his black and white mane billowing down his neck. “That’s the first question. Now answer it,” he sternly replied. There was no more room for Rainbow Dash to be insubordinate. She could tell that from his tone. This was a pony that was not used to being ignored, disrespected, or disagreed with. In a lot of ways he was just like herself, she belatedly and disgustingly realized. Except he was bad and horribly selfish, as if the worst parts of her were taken without all of the good to balance it out. And everything new she learned and heard about him just made him worse. Rainbow Dash knew she could be a braggart, obnoxious, difficult to get along with, and a glory hog who hated not being at the center of attention, she knew she had her whale-sized ego, but no one was a better friend than her either. She was awesome in all sorts of ways. Blizzard wasn’t like that. Rainbow Dash sighed as she answered his first question, thinking back to her multiple fights with the ice monster that tried to kill her. “I froze it.” Blizzard glanced over his shoulder at her, an eyebrow raised and confusion plain on his face. “Excuse me?” “Can’t blame you for being confused but yeah, that’s what I did,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Explain.” “It’s pretty much exactly what I said. I poured water over it, it froze, and then the light in its eye sockets or whatever went out,” she rolled her eyes. “I smashed it to pieces before that too but it just remade itself. Everything else I did to it didn’t work.” “You poured water over it?” He fully turned around to face. “I used storm clouds. I squeezed all the water out of them so it was like dumping a huge bucket of water on your ice monster. The water froze like another skin of ice over it and it couldn’t move anymore. Then it died or whatever,” she told him. His brow furrowed and it looked like he was thinking about something for a moment. “That’s certainly not a weakness I was expecting them to have. In all seven hundred years since their creation not a single one has been lost. And to learn that something like that can put them out of commission...” Rainbow Dash didn’t elaborate on how difficult that was for her to do, nor tell him that most ponies would never be able to do such a thing or last nearly as long as she had against the Sentinel. Let him deal with that and stew over it. Blizzard finally stopped muttering to himself and flexed his wings. “Fine. I held off on sending a patrol to check the status of that particular Sentinel due to the possible danger, but now I’ll send one to check if you’re telling the truth. Without a control crystal its status doesn’t really matter anymore anyways but if they really can be destroyed by freezing I want to know. It’s impossible to tell what Weathervane might have been thinking when he made those things… perhaps this weakness was intentional?” He drifted off for a second before his eyes returned to Rainbow Dash. “Either way that’s no concern of yours, I have more questions for you.” “Ask away,” she did her best not to snort or roll her eyes at him. “What is the current state and capabilities of Equestria’s military?” This time Rainbow Dash failed and her wings shot out to her sides, a look of disbelief and anger on her face. “Huh? I’m not telling you that!” Behind her, East and West Wind both glanced nervously at each other, the two captains not too keen on Blizzard’s attitude if Rainbow Dash kept acting like this towards him. “Did you seriously think I would tell you anything about that, you nutjob?!” Rainbow Dash continued to angrily yell at him. I don’t even really know in the first place. She thought to herself. “You should be loyal to your tribe and help us,” he told her. “I’m loyal to my friends!” She stomped a hoof on the ground. It turned into a staring match between the two of them this time. One that Commander Blizzard knew he wouldn’t win. And resorting to hitting her would just be a different kind of loss. It annoyed him a lot to lose out to this mare’s stubbornness and determination, it bothered him to think a pony from Equestria dared to challenge and stand up to him like this. But very well. She hadn’t been here long enough to fully adapt or embrace their ways. He knew it would take some time. Eventually she would be his willing and loyal soldier and nothing else. That was his true belief. “So be it. For now,” he said. “But I’ll enjoy the day when you willingly tell me all I want to know.” “Yeah, whatever!” Rainbow Dash clicked her tongue. East and West Wind gulped. “I still have more to ask you,” the Commander said with a voice like ice. “I believe you remember your meeting with the council? I said your reasons for coming up here from Equestria were unimportant but I would like to hear your explanation personally. I don’t believe you were ordered to come up here, were you?” “Didn’t you already think I was some spy sent here?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Truthfully no. I said that because I knew it would make the others afraid and worried and I could use that to my advantage. And seeing your behavior and your reactions to our Empire I can’t imagine that even if you were an agent sent by Equestria that you knew about us.” “Well fine, I don’t mind telling you this, but I’m not on any mission, nobody told me to come up here, and I’m not some agent of the Princesses.” That last one was debatable but that was a whole nother can of worms that Rainbow Dash didn’t need to open up right now. She then frowned up at Blizzard. “Also good to know how you don’t care about messing with ponies to get your way.” His eyes narrowed. “You enjoy pushing your boundaries.” She returned his hard look with a confident grin. “It’s what I do.” “So then why are you here at all?” He asked. “Because,” she shrugged. “Because?” “Just because. I wanted to go on a cool adventure, I’ve been to a ton of other places already and done all kinds of stuff, so I decided to come up here where nobody from Equestria has been. Considering everything I think I was right about there being all sorts of adventure in the north. I haven’t gotten to do as much awesome stuff as I was hoping for so far but this is still the kind of stuff I was looking for,” she told him. “You’re rather petty.” Rainbow Dash frowned and flew up so she was face to face with the much taller stallion. “Hey, I’ve saved Equestria and the world a ton of times already. If I want to go on some awesome adventuring just for fun then what’s the big deal?” She closed her wings and fell back down to the floor. “Tch.” Commander Blizzard regarded her silently for a second. Dash was unsure what was going on in that head of his until he spoke again. “You said at the council meeting too that no one from Equestria knew about us. That’s the truth?” “Yeah,” she nodded. “Believe me, I’m friends with someone who knows basically everything and she didn’t know anything about the north. I seriously had no idea your Empire was up here. No one does.” Blizzard snorted as he began to pace around in front of her. “It’s certainly preferable to not be known but at the same time it’s rather damaging to our Empire’s pride… that we’re forgotten or perhaps were never acknowledged to begin with… how vexing.” “Why do you even care?” Rainbow Dash asked him. “I told you guys that the only thing Equestria would do if it knew about you was try to make friends.” What she didn’t tell them was that she knew just which purple Alicorn would spearhead that mission. If Blizzard started asking certain questions and got suspicious of just who Rainbow Dash was and how she knew some things he might realize that she had connections to the Princesses and was a very important pony and figure in Equestria in her own right. And then what he was doing with her might change. She suddenly might not find herself allowed so many freedoms up here in their Empire. “I wanted to know if Equestria would be prepared to go to war with us. That was the reason for my earlier question as well,” he said without stopping his pacing. “Obviously it seems they wouldn’t be. And with you prattling on about friendship and such silly nonsense I doubt they have much of a standing military at all. You may not have directly answered everything but you’ve unintentionally told me a good deal about Equestria with the way you act.” You don’t know anything about Equestria. Rainbow Dash silently fumed. “I remember what you said back in that meeting. But you don’t need to fight Equestria or try to rescue the other pegasi down there or anything like that!” “That’s my decision to make. Not yours,” he stopped and glared down at her again. “If I’m being honest I couldn’t care less about what you think. You’re the descendant of traitors and you’ve lived your entire life as a corrupted, ignorant, fool. Like every other pegasus in Equestria. I don’t care if they would be happy or not about us coming to show them the true way or if they’ve deluded themselves into being happy with their lives now just like you have. If I make the decision to go to Equestria nothing is going to stop me.” Rainbow Dash (much to her own surprise) didn’t explode. She sighed deeply and closed her eyes, her head drooping down to the floor for a second before she shook it and looked back up at Commander Blizzard with a sad frown. “Why are you so horrible?” Captain East Wind coughed behind her and he and West both stepped out of the office. It was silent for another moment between the two and Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure if she was going to get out of here without a black eye or not this time. Blizzard took a long inhalation through his nose and then exhaled back out, his eyes drifted up to look straight ahead as if he was staring at something far off in the distance. “We cannot become weak. I refuse to allow it.” “You’re-” Rainbow Dash didn’t know what to say. The way he was, the things she had recently learned about him and how he ran things here gnawed at her. It was easier when facing off against some evil monster where all she needed to do was punch first and ask questions later. He was wrong but she knew talking wouldn’t get her anywhere. Even Starlight had to be shown and Blizzard was worse and more selfish than she ever was. “I wanted to ask you about Flash Magnus too,” Blizzard interrupted her. “What about him?” “Was what you said about him still being alive true?” She nodded. He had reacted pretty poorly to what she said about Flash Magnus before so she was bracing herself for another outburst. “It’s true. He and Starswirl the Bearded and their friends were rescued from Limbo. They’re all having a pretty fun time in Equestria.” “So you say. I’m going to reiterate that you not speak of such things to others in this city,” his wings briefly shuffled about, obviously hearing such a thing about Flash Magnus unsettled things. Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Fine. But if you guys really liked and revered Flash Magnus so much how did you not know that he was friends with earth ponies and unicorns?” His black eyes dropped to her magenta ones. “It’s not something commonly taught. The legend of Flash Magnus stands well enough on its own. It wouldn’t be good for his or our image to teach such things about his friendships with non-pegasi here. It’s bad enough that you said he liked Equestria in front of the Elders and all those other onlookers.” “Well it’s your own fault for being that way. I’m not about to apologize for being honest,” Rainbow Dash defiantly stated. “I’m not going to ask you to. It’s better for this whole thing to be ignored and swept under the rug,” Blizzard paused for a second before speaking again. “How was your first time seeing a real pegasus battle yesterday?” A flash of anger shot through Rainbow Dash and her eye twitched, she clenched her jaw and bit her tongue to keep herself from exploding at him with all her pent up grievances. There were so many things she could tell him off about when it came to that battle, and the Ice Sentinels and several other things she had learned about the Empire. But doing that would be pointless right now and he wouldn’t care anyways. And it would probably be best if she didn’t let him know all the things she suspected or had heard from others. Better to let him think she did nothing more than enjoy their victory. Even with several questions she wanted to ask that were roiling around inside her head it would lead nowhere good if she asked them. “Well, I’m glad we won,” she finally ground out. He could tell there was a lot unspoken from her just under the surface but he didn’t push her. They’d both pushed each other enough for today. “Good. Perhaps I’ll make a real pegasus of you yet. Now leave, return to the base.” Blizzard turned around before she could muster any sort of response and silently walked back to the window. Rainbow Dash didn’t say anything, even though she was certainly petty and competitive enough to want to get the last word in, she decided to leave it and merely scowl at his back for a second before turning around. Stomping her hooves with possibly a bit more force than was necessary she walked to the door and opened it, letting herself out.