//------------------------------// // Chapter 3A: Main Character, Part 1 (H. Rainbow Dash) // Story: On the Fine Art of Giving Yourself Advice // by McPoodle //------------------------------// H. Rainbow Dash—Earth, Canterlot City. Late afternoon of Day One. The last Wednesday in September has been the date of Canterlot High School’s Freshman Fair for more than a decade. It had become quite popular in recent years. Therefore it should be no surprise that Principal Cinch of Crystal Prep Academy had devised a rival event for the very same day: the Crystal Prep Open House. The purpose of the Open House was for parents to see what their kids were up to—and how all the thousands of dollars paid to the school were being spent. The Junior Science Fair was the most-strongly promoted beforehand, as this was a primarily academic school, but nevertheless, the big draw was always the Junior Varsity soccer match, between the Crystal Prep Shadowbolts and the Griffonstone Raptors. There were five seconds left, with the game still scoreless. Shadowbolt Rainbow Dash had the ball, dodging easily around the much bigger athletes from Griffonstone High. Waiting between her and the goal was the only player that Rainbow thought had a chance of stopping her, her former friend Gilda. Just as Rainbow was the lone freshman among the Shadowbolts who outshone the sophomore players, so Gilda dominated the Raptors, and everybody knew it. Gilda came charging towards Rainbow, the steel of her cleats and the red of her eyes both catching the early afternoon sun. With a grim smile, Rainbow kept running right for her. At the critical moment, Gilda’s spiked foot shot out, not to take the ball, but to put Rainbow in the hospital. Rainbow looked straight at her, seeing exactly what she expected to see: a face full of fury. And then Rainbow effortlessly bent the ball around Gilda and straight into the goal, while spinning herself out of Gilda’s reach. The buzzer sounded. The Shadowbolts had won. For one brief moment, the two opposing players stood, isolated from the rest of the universe. Rainbow turned and looked impassively up at Gilda, waiting for a reaction. Would she declare her unending hate for Rainbow? Would she spit in her face? Or would she smile, say “Good move” in that gruff voice of hers, and reach out a hand to resume their friendship? Rainbow really hoped for the last one. When Gilda did nothing but stare coldly at her, Rainbow decided that the first move was up to her. “Gilda—” she started. Gilda turned and stomped away, making sure to do as much damage to the turf with her cleats with every step. Before Rainbow Dash had a chance to do anything else, she was picked up by some of her fellow players and carried aloft. They were soon joined by a sizable contingent of the home team spectators, crying out her name and that of the school. This moment was everything that Rainbow Dash ever wanted, her long-awaited vindication over the many students who had mocked her in the halls for having merely an average grade point average and I.Q. instead of the superior scores that they all boasted. Vindication over her fellow players, who had mocked her for her height, who had assured her again and again that her shorter leg length made her useless at soccer. Her decision to come here instead of Canterlot High, to a place known for its competitiveness, where she would have to work harder than she ever had before to shine as opposed to winning everything by default, had finally paid off. Thanks to her adrenaline rush, Rainbow’s world was in slow motion. Despite being bounced up and down by her new group of fans, she was still able to take in her surroundings, to see the defeated Raptors walking into their bus for the long ride home; Gilda not even looking back at her once. She looked around for Fluttershy, and saw her duck under the bleachers after giving Rainbow Dash a look. Not more than a second later, three bullies rounded a corner, looking around them and miming how they would beat their intended victim senseless. Rainbow Dash had seen them teasing Fluttershy during the entire half-time break, so she knew that Fluttershy was their intended target. Rainbow’s mind displayed a still image of Fluttershy’s farewell glance, so it had time to burn into her skull. It was a look of fear, of despair. But most of all, it was a look of disappointment. Disappointment that Rainbow Dash had dragged her here instead of to the more welcoming environment of Canterlot High School. Rainbow had seen Fluttershy being tormented during the break, and had done nothing, because leaving the detailed strategy session during the break to help her best friend would have gotten her suspended from the team. Crystal Prep was very competitive, and that extended to the coaches using their big brains to try and think their way to victory. Rainbow Dash looked around her once more in her slow-motion world. She saw how few people actually made up the crowd that were holding her aloft: the freshman players in her team, some of their parents and the younger siblings of the players, and that one orange kid from Mustangia Junior High who was way too obsessed with every one of her stats. The rest held themselves aloof. Crystal Prep had won the game, but that didn’t matter to them, because the only highlight of the game was not performed by any of them. There was no team spirit at Crystal Prep. At Crystal Prep, only individual accomplishment mattered, because only individual accomplishment would propel you to a prestigious college and a lucrative carrier of exploiting poor people like Rainbow Dash’s parents. They were disappointed that she had chosen Crystal Prep over their own alma mater, Canterlot High, she was sure of it, although of course they would never say such a thing out loud. And now she was expected to go over to that TV crew over there and regurgitate the speech that Principal Cinch had fed her, about how sports at Crystal Prep prepared students like herself for a career as a future CEO, CFO or CIO of a Fortune 500 company. Rainbow Dash, at her moment of greatest triumph, suddenly felt the sweet taste of victory turn to ashes in her mouth as she turned from the impatient face of Principal Cinch to peer into the inky darkness under the bleachers, where the shuddering shadow of Fluttershy hid with no one but her animals to comfort her, and at that moment she made up her mind: First thing Monday morning, she and Fluttershy were going to transfer to— Rainbow Dash was falling to her death. There was absolutely no transition. She went from being lightly tossed into the air, to being tens of thousands of feet in the air, with nothing to stand on. Like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, Rainbow had been suspended for a moment of utter disbelief, and then she started to fall. Rainbow flailed her limbs uselessly. She looked around, and saw only clouds right above her head, and a pleasant looking field far below, with absolutely nothing she could grab on to. She absolutely was not wearing a parachute. As she tumbled, screaming her lungs out, something feathery kept hitting her in the head and against her torso. She soon realized that they were wings. Having no time to question where they had come from, Rainbow shook her shoulder blades around, feeling them flop from side to side. Now Rainbow Dash had always dreamed about flying, and she had exhausted a lot of her parents’ meager earnings for chances to experience flying, in single-engine planes, gliding and parachuting—all with proper supervision, of course. As a result, she knew how to maneuver her body to stop it tumbling, and this freed her to try to position her useless wings to slow her fall. Over time, they became not so useless—she could feel how they were being pulled and twisted, making her aware of new muscles that she could flex. Soon she could control her wings, but it didn’t do her any good: these wings were too small to possibly support her weight. If she had had the time, Rainbow would have cursed the Goddess for putting her in such an absurd and useless situation. As the ground came rushing towards her, faster and faster, she closed her eyes. And then she was suddenly and violently caught around her arms and legs. Her momentum stopped, and then she was gently lowered to the ground. Rainbow Dash lay there, face down, panting. She opened her eyes, to look upon a meadow of wild flowers. It really was a pleasant looking field. She turned her head to look over her shoulder. There were indeed a pair of wings growing out of her back. But that was not all: She was naked, and furred. “Are you alright, Rainbow Dash?” a raspy voice asked. “Did you break any bones?” Rainbow rose to a sitting position. She caught a couple of impossibilities in the corners of her eyes, but she chose to ignore them for now, in favor of a self-examination. Her rainbow hair hung down over one eye, and her new fur was the color of her old skin. Oh, and she had hooves now. “I have hooves?” she asked incredulously. “Yup, four of them,” a very familiar voice pleasantly quipped. It was a tone of voice that Rainbow had wanted to hear for a very long time. “Gilda?” Rainbow asked with a broad grin. She looked over at the source of the voice and froze in shock. Thanks to recently reading some Harry Potter—nowhere near as good as Daring Do—she actually knew what she was looking at. “You’re a griffon?” Gilda looked over at the other figure. “I know we caught her in time, but do you think that the sudden stop scrambled her brains?” she asked. “Nah, she’s probably in shock. Should be fine in an hour or two.” Rainbow looked at the other figure. She was a pegasus, with yellow fur and a fiery mane, but a really cute, tiny pegasus. Which, come to think of it, was exactly what Rainbow herself was now. “Who are you?” she asked. “Spitfire,” the pegasus said patiently. “Really?!” “The one and only. And you’re Rainbow Dash.” “I know that!” Rainbow exclaimed. She tried to stand upright, but that wasn’t working out, so she resorted to standing on her hooves like Spitfire was. “Do you think you can fly up to camp?” Spitfire asked, pointing up at the clouds. Rainbow looked at the “impossibilities”, and was astonished to see that some of the clouds had been carved into the shapes of buildings and fields. It actually was a camp…in the sky. She looked back at her wings and moved them. She still didn’t have complete control over them. She experimentally flapped them, as hard as she could, but failed to move upward. “Ah…these things don’t work,” she said sheepishly. “Great,” said Spitfire with a roll of her eyes. “Wait here.” She then took off and flew towards a group of trees. Rainbow Dash watched her in wonder. Her knowledge of aerodynamics told her that those wings absolutely shouldn’t work, but yet they did. Gilda interrupted her thoughts by clearing her throat. “So, that explosion thing just now—was that you?” “Huh?” asked Rainbow Dash. She certainly didn’t remember an explosion tied to the start of…whatever in Tartarus this was. “Yeah, I didn’t get a good look at it, but it was loud and I got a glimpse of something rainbow-colored, so I figured it was more of your weird pony magic.” “Pony. Magic,” Rainbow repeated. The first was admittedly a valid label for what she was. As for magic…she was a frickin’ pegasus right now, so sure. Magic. Whatever. “Oh, and you got your cutie mark,” Gilda added in an affected voice of boredom, pointing at Rainbow’s ass. Rainbow looked, and was startled for a moment that she could in fact look at her own rear end using only her head and neck, before realizing that ponies had long necks. There did indeed appear to be a symbol there, one on each side, depicting a rainbow-colored lightning bolt emerging from a cloud. “Oh.” She shrugged, before looking back at Gilda. Gilda raised an eyebrow. “Wow, I thought cutie marks were a big deal among ponies. Isn’t it, like, realizing your special purpose in life or something?” Rainbow’s eyes went wide. “Wait, so it’s like my mark?” She took another good look at it, and imagined it on a marking plate. “Awesome!” And then, a couple of seconds later: “Any idea what it means?” Gilda rolled her eyes. “It means that you’re meant to do awesome things, obviously. I mean, that’s one of the most radical butt tattoos I’ve ever seen.” Rainbow Dash, suddenly feeling awkward, moved a forehoof around in the dirt a bit. “So, Gilda…you’re taking this pretty well.” “Taking what pretty well?” “Turning into a griffon.” Gilda got to exercise her eyebrow-raising muscle again. “I’ve always been a griffon, dweeb.” “And we’re friends, right?” Rainbow asked cautiously. Gilda made a raspberry, although Rainbow wasn’t able to figure out how she did that with a beak. “Of course we’re friends, Dashie.” “Mom, stop calling me Dashie in public!” Rainbow blurted instinctually. There was a moment of silence before both of them burst out laughing. That was the moment when Spitfire flew back, carrying a yellow pegasus with long pink hair in her forearms. The newcomer, upon being lowered to the ground, looked at them incredulously. “Rainbow Dash? And Gilda?” Rainbow was amazed to recognize the voice. “Fluttershy?” The two of them rushed into a hug. “I thought I’d never see you again!” they exclaimed in unison. “Oh hey, you got your cutie mark, too,” Spitfire observed, pointing at Fluttershy’s rear. Rainbow looked over at Fluttershy, seeing a trio of pink butterflies. “You got your mark? That’s awesome!” she exclaimed. “Yours looks good, too,” Fluttershy replied. “It’s very…you.” “I bet yours means you’re good with animals,” said Rainbow Dash. “That’s been obvious for years.” Gilda opened her beak to observe that she had not once observed Fluttershy interacting with a single bird back at the camp, but decided in the end to say nothing. “Alright, you two stay here, OK?” Spitfire told the pair. “I need to go up and get Doc and the ambulance so he can take a look at both of you.” She turned to Gilda. “Could you stay here and make sure neither of them wanders off?” “Why would they wander off?” Gilda asked. “Oh, because of the shock. Right.” She looked over at Fluttershy. “I assume that means that you fell and hit your head, too?” Fluttershy nodded. “I also can’t fly.” “Fluttershy, flying was never your strong suit,” Gilda said with a sort of gentle sarcasm. The trio watched as Spitfire took off again, this time flying up towards the sky camp. Rainbow Dash turned to Fluttershy. “OK, first question: am I talking to a pegasus, or a human?” “I’m a human,” Fluttershy said slowly. “Or at least, I was until a few minutes ago.” “Good,” said Rainbow Dash. “I just wanted to be sure.” Gilda sat down and watched the conversation. She was completely used to being tuned out by Rainbow Dash the moment Fluttershy showed up. It was one of the reasons why she had stayed out of Rainbow’s sight the past few days. But this…this was weird. There was something…off about Rainbow Dash, something the griffon couldn’t put a claw on. It wasn’t the gibberish she was spouting, but something in the pony’s attitude that seemed off. The gibberish meant nothing, both because of the “shock” and because ponies regularly spouted gibberish at each other, in Gilda’s opinion. Especially when the subject of their cutie marks came up. “Hmm…I don’t know,” Fluttershy said, probably in response to something Rainbow had asked that Gilda had missed. “Some kind of freak cosmic accident. Another part of a meaningless universe.” Rainbow frowned. “Now don’t be like that, Flutters. I’m sure that there’s a reason, and once I figure it out I can get us both back to normal.” “A reason revolving around you, right?” Fluttershy asked, with far more cynicism that Gilda had yet observed in a non-griffon. “Well…yeah! Narratively, at least. Of course now that I think about it, it’s obvious that this is all Twilight Sparkle’s fault.” “Oooh,” Fluttershy said in sudden realization. “Yeah, it was probably her.” “The team had a betting pool on how long it would take the girl genius to destroy part of the school. Too bad I didn’t put anything down on the ‘send the two of us to another universe and turn us into ponies’ pool, or I’d be stinking rich now.” She put on her “thinking” pose, at least as well as she could as a quadruped. “Now, if I was the main character in a fantasy/sci-fi novel that started like this, what would the plot be?” Gilda had to stop herself from laughing out loud at how ridiculous this all was. She looked around, and then up. “Uh, gals,” she said. “We’ve got company.” Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy looked to see several pegasi landing around them. “Rainbow Dash!” exclaimed an off-white female pony with green and magenta striped hair. “That stunt at the end of the race was amazing! What do you call it?” A tan pony with brown hair landed right next to Rainbow and poked her in the chest. “You cheated, Rainbow Dash!” he proclaimed. “That was supposed to be a flying race, not a rocket race!” A dark brown colt with gray hair landed on Rainbow’s other side. “Yeah,” he chimed in, “it’s not a rocket race!” He looked Rainbow over. “Where did you hide that rocket, anyway?” A Persian blue filly with a pink bow in her opal-colored hair pulled the tan pony out of Rainbow’s personal space. “Hey, she won that race fair and square, we all saw it!” “Yeah, and she did a sonic magi-boom!” a filly with darker Persian blue fur than the other pony exclaimed. She had an upswept hairstyle, colored cerulean with white highlights. “We all have to be your slaves now!” The others all chose to ignore that last remark, because it was creepy. “There is no such thing as a sonic magi-boom,” proclaimed a pony unicorn as he exited the “ambulance”, a covered wagon harnessed to Spitfire. The unicorn was significantly taller than anybody else. “Now could you all please go back to your rooms while I look at my patients?” The other ponies made way for the doctor. A few of them took off to return to camp, but most of them stayed to see what would happen. The unicorn sighed as he removed some instruments from a saddlebag, including a reflector that sat on his head and very clearly identified him as a doctor. He quickly conducted an examination of both Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. “Did you see this alleged magi-boom, Spitfire?” he asked at one point. “Ah…no,” she admitted. “Like I told you, I followed Fluttershy after I saw her fall at the beginning of the…ah, when she fell. If there was a magi-boom, I must have missed it.” Most of the pegasi sighed in relief. The penalties for putting on an unauthorized race were quite severe. “You missed the magi-boom? Or did you not believe strongly enough?” the doctor asked mischievously. Spitfire decided to ignore the question. “By the way,” she asked Fluttershy. “How did you survive that fall? I was too high up to see it clearly, and it didn’t look like you used your wings.” “I fell?” Fluttershy asked. “I don’t remember that—maybe I blacked out.” “Or maybe it was before we showed up,” Rainbow Dash speculated. “Like this rain-boom thing.” “Hey, that’s a cool name,” Gilda said. “You should call it a rainboom instead of a magi-boom.” “The sonic rainboom,” Spitfire said, trying out the phrase. “I like it!” “Well, talk of magical impossibilities aside,” Dr. Tarbell said to his two patients, “you seem fine, physically. Congratulations on the cutie marks, by the way. As for mentally, the memory loss is troublesome…” He turned to Rainbow Dash. “Who’s the Princess of Equestria?” “The Princess of what now?” Rainbow asked. The doctor sighed. “Oh dear,” he said, “short and long term.” He quickly put his instruments away and looked at Fluttershy. “I don’t know who this princess person is, either,” she admitted. The teasing tan colt from earlier sidled up next to Fluttershy. “By the way, Clutzershy, what happened to you during the race? Rainbow Dash was only doing it for you, after all. Did you get so scared of all the excitement that you dropped through the clouds like a rock, you fake pegasus? You dirt pony!” “Yeah!” exclaimed the brown colt. “You dir—” He was silenced by Dr. Tarbell’s hoof. “I won’t have you uttering racial slurs in my presence,” he scolded the two colts. Rainbow Dash had been coldly watching the exchange. In particular, she noted that the doctor had no objection to the “fake pegasus” slur, only the “dirt pony” one. And he had not demanded that the bullies apologize. Fluttershy stood there impassively, refusing to give the pair the satisfaction of a response. “Rainbow Dash?” Rainbow focused on the doctor. “Yes?” she asked laconically. “Is it true that you can’t fly?” Rainbow tried again to use her wings to get off the ground, and failed. She noticed that the doctor didn’t bother asking Fluttershy about her own flying ability. “I’m going to take you both to my clinic in Rockville for a more thorough examination,” the doctor said. He turned to Spitfire and said, “Now that I’m on the ground, you have no obligation to help, but I have no idea how serious this is. Could you take us to my clinic?” “Sure, Doc,” Spitfire said, gesturing to show that she had never taken off the harness that connected her to the ambulance. The unicorn helped Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy into the ambulance. “You all can go now,” he said, to the griffon and several pegasi who were still standing there. When they did nothing he stepped into the front section of the vehicle. Spitfire took off and headed towards the nearest town, followed by the others. Gilda in particular flew right up to the back door of the ambulance. Soon, the door opened, and Gilda and the two pegasi started talking. The conversation lasted all the way until the cart finally landed outside the clinic. # # # “You have no magic,” Doctor Tarbell said incredulously, after checking the instrument multiple times. There was a collective gasp from the group of pegasi watching through the open window. “So I assume that’s a bad thing?” Rainbow Dash asked, trying to get a good look at the magimeter before the doctor put it away. “It’s a fairly common problem among unicorns, particularly those prone to surges. But it never happens to pegasi or earth ponies.” “You know why that happened, don’t you?” asked Cloud Chaser, the pony who had brought up the magi-boom earlier. “It’s because she used it all up in the sonic rainboom! That proves that we’re telling the truth!” This statement caused a lot of excited chatter among the pegasi, with only Hoops and Dumb-bell refusing to accept this—they were the two ponies who had apparently raced Rainbow Dash right before the current Rainbow Dash arrived on the scene, and neither of them had seen or heard the explosion. “Can it be?” the doctor asked himself incredulously. “I can’t think of any way to drain a pegasus of magic that doesn’t involve unicorn magic.” He dug another instrument out of a drawer, and waved that over Rainbow Dash. “And there isn’t a trace of that on you. So…it must have been a magi-boom.” He sat down hard on the ground as he thought things over. “Did you hear that, Rainbow Dash?” exclaimed Flitter. “You’re going down in history!” “Yeah, just like you bragged at the start of the race!” added Blossomforth. “Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash!” the pegasi outside started chanting. Rainbow looked helplessly over at Fluttershy, who shrugged her wings. Rainbow wondered if she had had a chance to figure out how to use hers to become airborne. “Quiet! Quiet!” the doctor said, standing back up. “You’re lucky I was able to observe your low magic level before it started to naturally replenish itself. Otherwise, things probably would have gotten ugly.” “Yeah,” chipped in Gilda. “Rainbow here would have insisted that the rainboom was real and then tried to tell the press, which considering her shaky status at the school almost certainly would have gotten her expelled.” She turned to Rainbow Dash. “Or maybe you’d drop out first, to save your pride. I can absolutely see you doing that.” For Rainbow Dash, the most concerning part of Gilda’s statement was the part about her poor school performance—it brought back bad memories. “I need to get you to Canterlot,” Dr. Tarbell continued, “the unicorn doctors there know how to recharge a pony’s magic. And then you can demonstrate your fabulous new trick before the Princess herself! We’ll even call it a ‘rainboom’ for the added publicity value. Yes! And I’ll write a book about it and finally become famous!” “Uh…demonstrate…?” Rainbow Dash said with sudden fear. “Before the Princess?” Fluttershy added, equally afraid. “Fillies! There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dr. Tarbell assured them. “Canterlot has assembled all of the brightest unicorn minds in the land!” He didn’t seem to notice that this statement in no way addressed either of the fillies’ fears. Even Gilda had had a reaction: ever since the word “Canterlot” had been spoken, she had gotten very, very still. “You mean the greatest mad scientists!” taunted Hoops. “Hey, maybe pony Twilight Sparkle is in this Canterlot place!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. “She ought to be able to get us back into our proper bodies!” Spitfire, who had been busy reading her magazine in the corner, suddenly put it down to give the pair a very suspicious glare. She then walked over to another window, the one facing Canterlot, and sat herself down to stare out of it, almost as if she expected to see somepony coming from that direction. “Well, maybe I don’t want to leave Equestria for Earth,” mumbled Fluttershy. “Rainbow Dash,” the doctor said, gathering his things, “we’ll need to contact the school to get a leave of absence, and then we’ll swing by your parents’ place to get their permission and a nice dress for you to pose in front of the cameras.” “Ugh!” Rainbow replied with a choking sound. “I’m pretty sure that no universe’s version of me has a dress worthy of a history book.” “I do hope that mental problem clears up soon,” Dr. Tarbell said to himself. “And what about Fluttershy?” Rainbow demanded. “She has to ask her parents too, right?” “What does Fluttershy have to do with this?” Tarbell asked. “She doesn’t have magic either!” Tarbell sighed and got out the magimeter for a quick scan of Fluttershy. “Rainbow Dash, you know that Fluttershy has never had a detectable amount of magic, at least with this primitive equipment. While you on the other hoof have usually boasted levels not seen in most unicorns.” Rainbow took a moment to think of a reason that worked with what she had observed about this world so far. “Well, if she gets a magic recharge, maybe she’ll finally be able to fly.” “You mean she’ll finally become an actual pegasus?” Hoops taunted. This earned a raucous laugh from Dumb-bell. “Ha! Good one!” he shouted. Tarbell sighed as he looked back and forth between the pair. “Well, alright, if her parents give their permission, sign a written leave of absence slip, and pay her way,” he said finally. “I can pay for you, Rainbow, but that’s it. I’m not made of bits.” “I’m coming too,” Gilda declared after what appeared to be a momentous decision. “And I can pay my own way, Dr. Tarbell.” “Really?” asked Spitfire. “Don’t you have to get permission from your…Grandpa Gruff, I think it was?” “Goddess above, you’re stuck with a Grandpa Gruff too?” Rainbow asked Gilda in exasperation. “No, because griffons don’t really have an ‘age of consent’,” Gilda explained to Spitfire. “If a griffon can do something, then there’s no law to stop them from doing it.” Under her breath she added, “no laws at all, if you get down to it.” Tarbell reluctantly agreed. “Due to the informal agreement between your guardian on behalf of the non-existent Griffon Kingdom and the school, you can go wherever you’d like, whenever you’d like. But if you cause any trouble, you’re out. Get it?” “Got it,” Gilda said simply. The unicorn turned to the crowded window. “And as for the rest of you, you really need to get back to the camp. They’re probably serving dinner right now without you.” That got some of them to scatter. “You’ll make another rainboom in Canterlot, I know it!” Cloud Chaser declared. “We all believe in you!” The remaining group—minus the two bullies—chanted “Rainbow Dash” as they flew up out of sight. “Come on, Spitfire,” Dr. Tarbell said as he gathered some belongings. “I need you to take us up to the camp HQ. I should be able to arrange a cab after that. Gilda, could you help me load up some things?” Gilda nodded mutely. “Sure thing, Doc,” Spitfire said tensely. She waited until the doctor and the griffon were busy outside packing the ambulance before advancing on the two pegasi. “Now listen here, you two,” she said menacingly. “You’re not fooling anypony, and the Princess is not going to let you get away with this. I wish I could go with you to see the look on your faces when you’re finally caught out, but I’ve got an audition planned for tomorrow. And don’t even think of trying to get out of going to Canterlot—the Princess has a spell to track you human freaks down!” Rainbow Dash’s eyes went wide. “You know about humans?” “Why shouldn’t I?” Spitfire said proudly. “I had one of those monsters possess me right after I got my cutie mark. The Princess herself cured me, and told me all about what the fake me was doing while I was out. And that’s what’s going to happen to you.” “Why haven’t you told anybody?” Fluttershy asked. Spitfire frowned. “Because the Princess swore me to secrecy. But I know for a fact that she has an alarm that goes off any time a pony is possessed by a human, so you ought to know that you’re already marked for a swift return back to your messed-up planet.” Rainbow Dash looked to Fluttershy in elation. Fluttershy looked to Rainbow Dash in desperation. “That’s great!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, not really noticing Fluttershy’s reaction, despite looking right at her. (She gets that a lot.) “What is?” asked Gilda, as she and Tarbell returned to the room to get a second load. Spitfire gave the two other pegasi a warning look of doom. “Going to Canterlot,” Rainbow said after a pause. “I’ve heard it’s a great place.” “Yeah. Sure,” mumbled Gilda. # # # Maud Pie watched as the ambulance took off, heading back to the pegasus sky camp. She had noticed the large number of pegasi watching whatever had been going on, and who had left chanting the name “Rainbow Dash”. “Huh,” she said out loud. “I wonder what that was about.”