//------------------------------// // Chapter 9: Humor // Story: No Need for Rainbows // by terrycloth //------------------------------// The angry mare of darkness towered over Rainbow Dash, her syrupy, seductive voice tinged with frustration. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” “Stay back!” squeaked a tiny voice. Looking down, Rainbow saw Fluttershy’s yellow wings spread out in a futile attempt to shield her battered body from the vortex of stars and darkness that filled the now-empty room. Everypony else had fled. “I have no wish to harm you, but I cannot allow such defiance to go unpunished. Get out of my way!” Fluttershy cringed, but her wings stayed spread, and she didn’t move. “The rainbow one *kicked* me. No pony should have been able to hit me!” “I won’t let you take her away from me!” Fluttershy said, her wings quivering. Rainbow Dash tried to tell her to run, but she couldn’t speak. “Then you shall share her fate!” proclaimed Nightmare Moon, and the night swirled, and took them both. That fate was apparently to be imprisoned in a cage of enchanted ice at the top of a snowy mountain. Not for the first time, or even the twentieth, Fluttershy nursed Rainbow Dash back to health. From time to time, Nightmare Moon would swoop down upon them to shout about the world below, and rant about how it was ‘ruined’. Her old castle, in shambles. New techniques, customs, and terminology that were alien to her. The ‘blighted abomination’ that was the city of Manehattan. The last straw was when she found out that Celestia had been steadily delegating more and more of her authority to ministers, nobles, and business ponies of all kinds. “She passed a law that stated that the Alicorn in charge of Equestria had to raise the sun every day,” Nightmare Moon fumed. “The representative from Canterlot told me that they were *suing* me! I knew she was a tyrant, and a coward, but her pettiness is what always infuriated me the most!” “Tyrant?” Fluttershy asked, confused. “Coward?” Rainbow asked. “Are you nuts? Celestia isn’t afraid of anything!” She threw herself at the bars, but didn’t have enough room to get up any sort of speed, and the enchanted ice seemed completely invulnerable in any case. “If she was here she’d fight to protect us from bullies like you. What did you do with our princess!” Nightmare Moon laughed. “Is that how you think of her? You foals are so easy to fool. Celestia was afraid of everything – even her own shadow.” She whispered the last bit, fading to a black silhouette against the stars, with glowing blue eyes. “I did *nothing* to her. When she saw that I’d returned, she fled as far and as fast as she could manage.” “She’ll be back!” Rainbow said, defiantly. “No, she won’t,” Nightmare Moon said confidently, prowling around the cage. “Do you know why she ran? Do you know why she’s afraid to face me? It’s because she’d have to face the shame of having her thousand years of lies unmasked! To confess to betraying her own sister, and condemning her to a thousand lonely years of silence!” “She had a sister?” Fluttershy asked, eyes wide. “To admit that she’d erased me from the very histories, so that no pony would think to ask what had become of me!” Nightmare Moon wailed. “You’re her sister?” Fluttershy asked, eyes going wider. The Queen of Darkness stomped around angrily, trampling the snowcover beneath her metal-shod hooves. “And she blackened my name, so that when I finally return, after a thousand years, what do I find but an insulting reminder of her greatest betrayal, kicking me in the face!” Rainbow Dash fell back into a sitting position on the hard icy floor of the cage. “No way,” she said. “Yes,” Nightmare Moon said, settling into a calmer pose. She turned to look at Rainbow, and added, “Way,” after a few seconds, in case it was important. “I’m – I’m –“ Rainbow Dash stammered. “I’m so sorry!” “You’re a *joke*, little Rainbow,” Nightmare Moon said, calmly, but viciously. “Like the law against eternal night. Celestia planted you there, as a prank – a rainbow to the face.” Rainbow Dash shot out of the damp, clinging clouds into the clear night sky, and let the memories wash away like the lingering tufts of vapor. She stared at the bright, empty moon, then started looking around to orient herself towards Cloudsdale and the Weather Factory. And all those self-righteous, super-judgmental pegasi she’d grown up with, who’d kicked her to the curb just because she didn’t like following rules or showing up to work on time. This was going to suck. “Oh, what’s the point? Nightmare Moon said it, I’m a joke. She doesn’t need me anymore,” Rainbow Dash said. She picked a random direction, and headed off for the middle of anywhere but here. “And neither does Fluttershy.” That lasted for about ten minutes, before Rainbow Dash got bored. Imagining her new life in anywhere but here kept coming back around to the lack of sunlight, heat, food, friends, and Fluttershy. “No!” Rainbow said, stopping in midair. “To hay with that! So what if I’m a joke? I *like* jokes. Jokes are funny. HA HA HA HA HA!” Lightning crackled from the clouds beneath her. “I’ve been going about this all wrong, trying to ‘help’. I didn’t get my cutie mark for helping, that’s for sure.” The best part was that she didn’t even have to talk to those losers in Cloudsdale. All they’d know is how to help.