“I’m so awesome,” thought Rainbow Dash as she sat in the cafeteria juggling a pair of apples from her hands, then rolling them down her arms and shoulders before catching them in her hands again. “Nothing’s gonna put a damper on my awesomeness today.”
“You seem very carefree, Rainbow,” Fluttershy said. “You’re not at all worried about today’s presentation? I know I am.”
“Yeah, nothing worries Rainbow- wait, what presentation?” She sat back upright in a flash.
“Ms. Cheerilee’s History presentations.” Fluttershy put a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear. Did you forget about it?”
“What? No, I never forget anything.” Rainbow played it off and made a strange crooked smile on her face. “I was just… testing you. You passed, Fluttershy. Congrats.”
“Did you really do your homework, Dash?” Applejack asked.
Rainbow blew a sharp whistle. “Nah.”
Applejack’s expressioned turned sour. More sour. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
“Which part of ‘nah’ didn’t you get?” Rainbow pulled out a bunch of blank sheets of paper from her bag and tossed them across the table. “Well, I getter bet working on this.”
“Did you just have a stroke?” Sunset covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“What? I didn’t say anything weird.” She pulled out her laptop and began tapping away at the keyboards almost comically like she was in a cartoon TV show, then her other hand shot across the blank papers, scribbling on them with a pen.
“We better leave her to it.” Sunset packed up her empty tray and stood. “She’s got six minutes before class starts.”
“Good luck, Rainbow.” Fluttershy left along with the others, leaving the blue girl spreading her papers everywhere as her hands flew faster than she’d ever seen before.
She already had four demerit points for late homework and one more meant she would no longer be the captain of every team. She would get to keep a majority of them, at least until she fouled up again, but she couldn’t bear to lose even one team captain position. She loved sports and she was so good at every spot that it was impossible for her not to be a captain. She had to finish this, whatever it took.
“If you don’t know something, improvise, Dash. Then adapt and overcome. Simple,” she said to herself.
Just when she thought she would have enough time, the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and the start of their downtime to get to class.
“No! I need more time. Ah, screw this, I’ll really have to improvise…” She packed up her belongings and dashed out of the cafeteria. She had searched up anything she could on Canterlot and she would just have to throw it together and hope it works out in her favor.
She dropped a bunch of her stuff along the way from not having zipped her backpack, but there would be time later to retrace her steps and pick it all up. It wasn’t going to be hard to follow, after all.
Rainbow Dash arrived in class just as the bell rang, dropping all her stuff down on the table as she spun around and threw herself in her seat, grinning madly from ear to ear as she let out a low bout of laughter.
“Almost late again, Rainbow Dash,” Ms. Cheerilee said. “Try not to live so dangerously all the time. And yes, I know. Danger Dash.”
“That’s my name,” Rainbow said. “I have my presentation all prepped out, Ms. Cheerilee.”
“Oh, very good. You’ll go first then.” Her teacher smiled.
“Wait, what?”
Cheerilee motioned to the front of the class. “The stage is yours, Danger. Show us what you’ve learnt.”
“Ummm…” Rainbow shuffled her loose sheets of paper and put them all together, some of which were upside down. “R-Right. Ok. Sure.”
She coughed and stood as she gathered the rest of what she needed. Her classmates watched her go and muttered amongst themselves. Rainbow plugged her laptop into the projector and brought up her slides, the cover of which was just a blank white slide with black words in the center, reading: The History of Canterlot - By Rainbow Dash. In comic sans.
Someone in the back stuck his tongue out in disgust.
“This should be good,” Rarity said to Fluttershy quietly.
“Anyway,” Rainbow continued. “The history of Canterlot began when Canterlot was established in the year 1981, which was when the Canterlot Cavaliers won their first world tour, therefore making the mayor name the city after them.”
“That doesn’t sound right, Dash…” Applejack whispered over to Sunset.
"Hey, I don't make the history. Other people do." Rainbow Dash clicked to the next slide, it showed a beaver chewing on some wood.
“The first major crisis in Canterlot’s history was when there was a shortage of wood because of the beavers. Due to the treaty with the next city over, whose name I can’t remember, Canterlot was short on wood for over a year. We call this the Great Canterlot Wood Famine. It meant that wooden things like baseball bats and popsicle sticks were in short supply and therefore expensive. It’s estimated a single popsicle cost up to a thousand dollars in the famine. So in order to get wood, people had to trade for it and the cost of wood was now one wood per wood and to get wood, people wanted to receive more wood.”
“What.” Twilight said flatly.
“I know, it was a terrible trading system and it failed in two days. Eventually Canterlot used its great sports teams to duel the other city in an epic battle royale to see if we could have wood,” Rainbow said confidently. “And that’s how the Wood Famine was solved.”
Rainbow clicked to the next slide. This one had a picture of Canterlot High on it as well as a black and white photo of an old man.
“This old geezer is Oliver Clothesoff,” Rainbow pointed with her finger. “He founded Canterlot High, but ruled it with an iron fist as the principal. He made everyone wear uniforms, but there was a revolt against him by the students of the time.”
“I’m sorry, when was this?” Pinkie raised her hand. “I know everyone in Canterlot, even people who are long dead and I don’t know this person.”
“It was the year… uh, that Canterlot High was founded. 1527. Yeah, that,” Rainbow stammered. “Anyway, after hanging Clothesoff from the flagpole, the uniforms were abolished and we are now allowed to wear whatever we want to school.”
Sunset raised a hand. “So this was in 1527. Before the founding of Canterlot?”
“Yes. It was 1527. Canterlot has a very complicated history,” Rainbow said. “It takes a lot of research and, uh, people of intelligence to understand it.”
Ms. Cheerilee, who had been sitting at her desk listening to Rainbow’s presentation, put a hand over her mouth as the corners of her mouth tilted up.
“Where was I?” Rainbow scratched her head as she looked at her next slide, which was a picture of a flying saucer against the night sky.
“You were talking about 1527,” Fluttershy said.
“1527… What was next…” Rainbow looked between her papers and her presentation screen. “Ah, yes. And then it came time to decide the first mayor of Canterlot and our first mayor was actually an alien. She went under the name of Doris Yestin and for many years she pretended to be one of us while secretly abducting citizens to use in her experiments. We eventually caught her though, and then we found out she was a commie spy.”
“You know… She’s almost right on that one, actually,” Twilight said.
“Then the aliens declared war on Canterlot, but because they lived on the sun, they would only come out at night. So the people of Canterlot waged gorilla warfare on them to save the Earth from their control.”
“You mean ‘guerrilla’?” Sandalwood asked.
“That’s what I said, gorilla warfare,” Rainbow nodded. “Pay more attention next time.”
Rainbow clicked to the next slide. This one had a picture of a chef wearing a tall white hat twirling his moustache.
“For the last decade, this man has been the greatest threat to the free world,” Rainbow said seriously. “He was self-taught by old school European chefs before he came to Canterlot, learned in the ways of terrorism and anarchy-making.”
“Isn’t that just a picture of celebrity chef Gustave le Grand with a moustache stuck on his face?” Pinkie pointed out.
“You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” Rainbow declared. “In reality, nobody knows what he really looks like. This is just a police recreation of his face based on eyewitness accounts. He could be anywhere, anyone. He could be you, he could be me, he could even be-”
“Focus, Miss Dash,” Cheerilee told her.
“Right. Thanks for pulling me off topic, Pinkie. Anyway…” Rainbow rubbed her hands together, Chef Gustave- I mean world renowned terrorist and chef, Gustavo de Grando, creator of the world infamous terrorist cel, El Quesada, is actually one of Canterlot’s most wanted. The military has been deployed to stop him, but many fear that it is too late.”
“Too late for what, exactly?” Rarity asked.
Rainbow shook her head ominously. “Let’s hope we never have to find out.”
“Is this even still about Canterlot’s history?” Applejack looked to Twilight. And all she could do was shrug.
She clicked to the next slide. This one simply had the world with the words, ‘When will Gustavo’s reign of terror end?’ on it in blood red letters.
“You haven’t even said what he’s done!” Sunset exclaimed. “You just said he’s evil!”
“There’s no time for that, Sunset,” Rainbow said. She clicked to the next slide, this one with a picture of people hiding in trenches with shovels and guns. ”And I’m giving the presentation. Questions can come after, alright?”
“The great Canterlot gold rush of 1888,” Rainbow announced. “This was when Canterlot was discovered to have veins of gold under its streets and people flocked from all over to dig it up and get rich. But the mayor of Canterlot wasn’t having it, so he organized a militia of Canterlotians to defend the city from scavengers and prospectors. Thus began the Gold Wars of ‘89.”
“Was this before or after the alien guerilla wars?” Applejack questioned, looking unimpressed.
“After, duh,” Rainbow held up her hands in exasperation. “That was in 13, no, 12, no. Uh… 1457. That’s right. After they found out Mayor Doris was a commie alien. Anyway, they found out that if they ate the gold, they would gain strength beyond that of normal humans. And so that was how Britilda Goldenface rose to prominence as one of Canterlot’s finest heroes of history. With their new found golden powers, they were able to fight the prospectors one to a thousand. But disaster struck when they were betrayed from within.”
“Betrayed by whom exactly?” Twilight asked.
“Nobody knows,” Rainbow Dash said mysteriously. “Trigonometrologists have studied this part of Canterlot History for years but no concrete answer has been found. What we know is that someone turned jackets and joined the prospectors, leading them through a tunnel only Canterlot knew.”
“Uh…”
“Anyway, Goldenface took three hundred troops to fight ten thousand prospectors at the Battle of Righteousness, but because of the traitor’s actions, they were defeated. And that’s why there’s no gold in Canterlot today.”
“This sounds a little familiar…” Flash Sentry scratched his cheek.
“So the… prospectors took all the gold and just left?” Applejack asked.
“Yes. They got what they came for and because of that.” Rainbow snapped her fingers together. “The lack of gold led Canterlot into the Povertical Decline of 1890. The cost of wood was now reduced to a wood, so to get money, they had to trade wood, which was now worth one wood.”
“Are we back to the wood again?” Sunset facepalmed.
“No, just to let you know the state of Canterlot’s economy,” Rainbow coughed. “So anyway, people were doing all they could for food now and because no one had money, it was getting harder and harder for even the richest man to have something to eat by the end of the day. And what did Canterlot do? Eventually they decided to make their own money. They started producing them with wood first, so our first Canterlot coins…” Rainbow clicked on her laptop and the screen shifted to wooden coins on a table. “They were made of wood.”
“Oh! Just like in the song!” Pinkie perked up. “Take some wooden nick-”
“Yeah, you can spare us the singing, Pinks. Come on, get your mojo working now, please.” Rainbow pressed on with her presentation. “Computers were invented in Canterlot by Comstock Puter after they recovered from the Povertical Decline with the wood coins, and he named it after himself of course.”
Steam came out of Twilight’s ears as she struggled to keep from exploding at this inaccuracy.
“It was here that we started getting technological advancements.” Rainbow tapped on her laptop and a face popped up. “Comstock Puter himself. He put together his very first computer in his garage and once people realized how useful they were, they started buying them from him and our government stuff and information and all that was going through computers instead of fax and mail. Email became a thing here.”
Rarity raised her hand to ask a question. “Isn’t that a picture of the acclaimed actor, Metal Fassender?”
“No,” Rainbow said, looking away. “It’s Comstock Puter. See, I wrote his name there under the picture.”
“I see it, but that’s Metal Fassender. I would know,” Rarity said proudly.
“Yeah, well, it’s not,” Rainbow replied. “Moving on, we are now moving towards the year 2000, when the most important person in the world was born in Canterlot. A.K. Yearling.”
A bunch of her fellow students groaned at the same time. They all knew about Rainbow’s fascination with the writer.
“Wasn’t Yearling born in the 1980’s?” Twilight managed at last.
Rainbow waved her hand dismissively. “I said nearing the year 2000. Not exactly the year 2000.”
Twilight declined to ask again.
“It was here that she started to pen down the inklings of a great novel series that would put Canterlot on the map for tourists and famous people.” Rainbow changed the slides and it showed the front cover of the first Daring Do book. “It took a year or so for her ideas to flow from that creative noggin’ of hers, but then this was born, a book that would change the loves of many a young kid. Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone was an instant hit.”
“At least this part’s historically accurate,” Applejack said to herself.
“Of course, Yearling had competition. In the year 1992 she got challenged to a write-off by the author Crispy Panini, who was still in high school at the time when he wrote some story about a punk peasant finding some dragon egg-book-thing and then it was glowing and he was like whoa dude, it’s glowing. That write-off led to Yearling writing the story of Barry Trotter, whose battle against the evil wizard Value Mart was just made into a movie this year!”
“That one doesn’t sound right.”
“Yeah, there’s already been eight movies,” Sunset said.
“Yes, this year they’re making Horrible Creatures and How to Avoid Them 3,” Rarity said accusingly. “The saga of Barry and Value Mart doesn’t happen in that movie, but it’s still part of the same world.”
Rainbow shrugged. “Well, I only saw the first movie yesterday. So as far as I’m concerned, that’s it. Anyway, this was the Age of Entertainment.” Rainbow clicked and put up an image of some woman reaching out for embers. “Canterlot started becoming the center for acclaimed authors, amazing movies, the birth place of amazing productions! Money was coming in more than ever and Canterlot rose into the top fifty world’s richest countries. But tragedy struck again when someone infected the hundred dollar notes with some green virus, I think it was called Green Virus. It made a lot of people sick and made the whole city’s economy collapse.”
“Wait. When did this happen?” Twilight looked aghast.
“Uh…” Rainbow began to sweat. She clicked to the next slide, which said ‘insert text here’. “It happened… later! Yeah. In the future.”
“That’s not part of history!” Sunset exclaimed.
“Sure it is!” Rainbow insisted.
“History is the past! If something happens in the future, it’s not history.”
“What if you take the theory of relativity into account?” Rainbow challenged, then bent down and slid her head forward. “Put that into your mouth. Every morning before you come to school. The Relativity of History.”
“Okay, quiet down,” Cheerilee ordered. “Is that the end of your presentation, Rainbow Dash?”
Rainbow clicked to the next slide, which was black. “I guess so, Ms. Cheerilee.”
Cheerilee nodded. “Before we move on to the next presentation, I have one question for you, Rainbow Dash.”
“Yes?” Rainbow asked innocently.
“Did you do any research at all?”
“Sure I did. Didn’t you see the… thing with the wood money and… Conman Petter? That was research. Hard research. Took me all lunch- I mean, all night- I mean, all week to do it.”
Cheerilee reached into her desk and took out a piece of paper which she wrote a few lines on. “Take this home to your parents. And report here after school today for a chat. We can talk about all your hard research, and why you have no works cited page.”
“Hey, at least I tried.” Rainbow shrugged and took the piece of paper. The class burst out in laughter as she frowned at the paper.
She returned to her seat and huffed. Then she looked down at the paper, intending to roll it up into a ball and chuck it through the nearest basketball hoop. But then the words on it caught her eyes and she leaned forward in her seat.
On it, it said, ‘Enough of this. They’re watching. You know too much. See me after school.’