H. Rainbow Dash—Equestria, Flight Camp Principal’s Office. Later afternoon of Day One.
Spitfire said nothing on the trip up into the clouds, which ended at a large building with a solid floor like Tarbell’s camp office. “Good bye, you two,” she said coldly as she unhitched herself. “I look forward to seeing the real pair of pegasi when you come back.” She then flew off without looking back.
Dr. Tarbell shrugged at the strangeness of the comment. “You two stay here while I get everything arranged inside.”
Rainbow Dash looked nervously down from the edge of the pavement at the sheer drop she had just experienced only a couple of hours before.
“Did you know a Spitfire back on Earth?” Fluttershy asked her.
“Not as friends,” said Rainbow Dash. “She’s a jet pilot in the Navy, and used to be a top soccer player at Crystal Prep and in college. I was basing my career off of her, even talked her into letting me fly with her about a billion times and…I’m dropping out of Crystal Prep on Monday. …Assuming everything gets back to normal by Monday.”
“So Spitfire was that one celebrity on your wall?” Fluttershy asked, looking in the direction of the departing pegasus. “And wait…you’re dropping out! Why?! Going to Crystal Prep was your entire life!”
“Yeah,” said Rainbow, wrapping a wing around Fluttershy’s withers. “And look where it got you.”
“I’m not important,” mumbled Fluttershy.
“Yes you are!” Rainbow assured her. “You have a great future ahead of you…as a veterinarian, probably. And besides, I’m awesome enough that I could rise to the top anywhere. …Even Canterlot High.”
Fluttershy’s whole face lit up. “You want us to go to Canterlot High?! That’s wonderful! Everybody was so nice there!”
“Yeah, I know,” Rainbow told her. “It’s where we belong.”
A short distance away, Gilda sat on the pavement and took in the entire conversation. She was now certain that this wasn’t her Rainbow Dash. But who was she?
Both pairs of parents agreed to allow their daughters to travel with Dr. Tarbell to Canterlot. Rainbow Dash’s parents in particular agreed to take the whole group in their large carriage, and furthermore to pay for everypony (and everygriffon). It turned out that pony Windy Whistles’ occupation as a supervisor in the Weather Factory paid a lot more than human Windy Whistles’ job in the Post Office.
The bedroom of pony Rainbow Dash had a bunk bed, not because the pony version had any siblings, but because Fluttershy came over for sleepovers slumber parties so often. This didn’t stop Gilda from claiming the top bunk.
“That’s alright,” Fluttershy said, putting a hoof on a rolled up sleeping bag. “I’ll be sleeping in the living room with this.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Rainbow said.
Fluttershy emphatically shook her head. “First, there’s no way Gilda will fit in this without tearing it up with her claws.”
“She’s absolutely right about that,” Gilda observed.
“And second, you two really need to talk.” She picked up the sleeping bag with her teeth and walked out of the room before anyone could say anything, closing the door with a hind hoof along the way.
“I don’t know what to talk about,” Rainbow Dash said after a pregnant pause.
“I’m not much for talking,” Gilda said, ruffling up her feathers and sitting back against the wall that was behind her top bunk.
“Ooo kay,” Rainbow said. “I’m going to have a look around.”
Gilda quietly watched as Rainbow started going through her own belongings like they weren’t hers, particularly spending time with a large notebook that was mostly diagrams of new aerial stunts, interspersed by occasional diary entries. The entries in particular infuriated her.
“That’s it,” she said to nobody in particular. “I thought I was the main character in this story, that I was being taken here to learn some sort of lesson. But I was wrong. She’s the main character, and it’s my job to get her on the right track!” She flipped the notebook to a new page, and then looked around a bit before finding the most-primitive ballpoint pen she had ever laid eyes on. She popped the cap off with some difficulty, and after trying in vain to lift the pen with her feathers like she had seen Bow Hothoof do over dinner, she picked it up with her mouth and tried to write with it.
She failed completely, which was rather amusing to Gilda.
Rainbow dropped the pen onto the book, then picked it up with her mouth and walked it over to Gilda, who took them. “Look, could you write something in there for me? It’s important.”
Gilda said nothing for a moment. “Yeah, alright,” she said, picking up the pen in her claw. “What do you want me to write?”
“Dear Rainbow Dash, This is me, the Rainbow Dash who involuntarily occupied your body for a few days.” She stopped and looked sheepishly up at Gilda.
Gilda looked down at her impassively. She had long since given up on trying to understand pony magic, so she had no idea how weird a pony would see this scenario. Besides, she had yet to see any evidence that whatever was running around in her friend’s body meant her any harm, and the “involuntary” part had been a gut feeling from the very beginning. “Go on,” she prompted.
“Right,” said Rainbow Dash, steeling herself for the really important part. “Write this: You are not stupid. Don’t believe anybody who tells you that. You are absolutely brilliant—just take a look at some of your old flight diagrams if you ever start forgetting that. What you are is different. You—and I—have something called Attention Deficit Disorder. But despite the name, that’s not a disease—it’s our super power! It means we can keep track of tons of things at the same time. It’s why I’m going to be a great pilot someday, and why you’re sure to get into this Wonderbolts group you have a creepy number of posters for. So here’s the important thing, the secret I learned from my therapist: you do everything better when multi-tasking. The more things you do, the better you get. See, didn’t I tell you that it was a superpower? So the next time you need to study for a test, don’t sit down at a desk and stare at the text until your eyes bleed, read it while jogging! Or flying. Or flying backwards or upside down. Find somebody studying for the same test, and practice judo with them while asking each other potential test questions! I think you get the idea by now. You and I are destined for great things, Rainbow Dash, and everything that happens to us is important! I know for sure that visiting this little fantasy world of yours is going to change me. And I hope this note will change you! So have a great life, and sorry for taking your body without permission for a couple of days. Oh, and assuming she hasn’t blown herself to bits, you ought to seek out a mad scientist named Twilight Sparkle and thank her. Because this is probably all her fault. Signed…” She looked over at Gilda, happy to see that the griffon had managed to keep up with her manic dictation. “Just leave a space for my hoofprint, or however they sign stuff on this world. Oh! and add this P.S.: Don’t worry about Fluttershy. Us Rainbow Dashes all take care of our Fluttershys. Do you think that last bit was weird?”
Gilda spent the time to carefully read over the entry she had just taken down, adding a little “Transcribed for the little dweeb by Gilda the Griffon,” followed by the date and approximate time. “No. So how old are you anyway?” she asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Well the old Rainbow Dash was ten, so keep that in mind and hold back on the swearing.”
“Will do.”
Gilda rolled over so she was face down on the mattress. She put her beak in her claws and looked down at Rainbow. “So I guess you sort of know the future, given what you put in that entry.”
“Sort of.”
“What happens to us?” Gilda asked, with a hint of steel in her voice. “What lessons did you learn thanks to what happened to us on your world?”
Rainbow looked like she had just bit into a lemon. “Look, if there’s one thing I know about kids, and I definitely include myself in that category, is that we don’t take advice from anybody. We just live our lives, and learn from our mistakes the hard way.”
“Then why did you even bother with this?” Gilda asked, gesturing to the book.
“Because she’s about to throw her life away,” Rainbow explained. “She was probably going to get her fourth ‘F’ today, and five…”
“…Gets you expelled. I know, Rainbow. Why do you think I haven’t bothered going to any classes for the past week?”
“You got expelled?” Rainbow asked, despairing. She saw history already repeating itself.
“I dropped out before I could be expelled. Probably the same as would have happened to my Rainbow Dash if you hadn’t showed up. Your race, you…humans…you don’t have any magic, do you?”
“How did you know?”
“The way you looked at things, especially any time one of us flew or Dr. Tarbell levitated something. You got used to a new body almost instantly. But seeing magic, that was something you had trouble wrapping your brain around. And if you hadn’t showed up with your lack of magic, I’m willing to bet that my Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have lost her magic when she got her cutie mark. Because I think that cutie mark is the mark for a sonic rainboom, and she’ll be able to do them in her sleep from now on.” She glided down to look Rainbow Dash in the eye, the pegasus rapidly backpedaling to avoid having the descending griffon land on her. “And without that ‘no-magic’ proof, she would have dropped out, because that’s what I would have encouraged her to do. Her confidence would have been broken, she never would have been able to pull off another rainboom, and she would have ended her life as a failure.” Just like I will. “So cheer up, Human Rainbow Dash! You fixed her entire life already, even if she never reads that entry.”
Rainbow Dash sat there, a dumb smile spreading slowly across her face. It was suddenly interrupted by a poke to her chest by Gilda’s claw.
“Now tell me what happened to our friendship in a world where you had clever humans to turn your life around.”
Rainbow sighed. “Well you see, that’s the thing with ‘young people don’t learn anything from being told’”. (Gilda guessed the meaning of “people” from context.) “What happened to us was your fault.”
Gilda glared at her.
“It’s true! I know I come off as cocky and self-absorbed, but I have a clear grasp of my own flaws, so I know what I need to do to improve myself. My reactions at the time could have been better, but the primary fault lay with you in my world.”
With a visible effort, Gilda was able to calm herself. “Alright, I’ll listen to your explanation. But like you said, I’m probably not going to accept it.”
“Fair enough,” Rainbow said with a sigh. She got up and started to pace back and forth as she thought back. “See the problem was, human Gilda and I came from two different worlds: The Heights, and Cloudsdale Terrace. We both came from poor families, but the attitudes we were taught pitted us against each other. My family taught me that I could do anything if I worked hard enough for it. While your…Gilda’s family taught her that the days of greatness were gone forever, and the current system was rigged against them. So there was no reason to try. The only thing the people in the Heights had left was pride, and that pride was everything! My Gilda and I met thanks to a one-time lottery system, a publicity stunt designed to get the governor reelected. The two of us never should have met. And my Gilda was exposed to a world she never could have imagined. At first, she was treated just like me, like she could in fact be whatever she wanted to be.”
Rainbow stopped for a moment to take in Gilda’s reaction. It looked like the griffon’s situation at least partially lined up with what her ex-friend had gone through, so she continued. “But she was alone in this new world, and beyond the emotionless words of teachers who meant well, the only person who really cared about her was me. And I had a lot going on in my life. I wanted to be her friend full-time, but I had to deal with my learning problems. And then there was Fluttershy.” Rainbow looked wistfully at the door the yellow-hued pegasus had left through. “That girl is going to change the world someday, probably even more than me,” she said. “And I would do anything for her.” She looked Gilda in the eye. “That doesn’t mean that your Rainbow Dash doesn’t care about what you’re going through. It means that she thinks you’re strong enough to survive a while without her, while she…” She gestured at the door. “She needs me, Gilda. At least for now, she needs me more than anything. And you’re thinking, ‘if I can’t have Rainbow Dash exclusively, why do I have to put up with this crazy pony world any longer?’ Because that’s the thing, right? This place is called Equestria, not Griffonia, so I’m betting you’re just as alone as my Gilda, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to go back,” Gilda said quietly. “I don’t want to go back to that…dump where everygriff has given up, and they just want the satisfaction of hurting each other all the time. When I’m here, I see how hopeful all of you ponies are. And you actually have a good reason for it! No creature would dare to attack Equestria, and the history they had me read says that you haven’t been to war in more than two hundred years!” She looked down at her claws. “But…I’m never allowed to forget what I am. Equestria might be perfect compared to Griffonstone, but it sure isn’t 100%. Grandpa Gruff may be a jerk, but he sent me here hoping that I’d come back, that I’d bring something to make things better for all griffons. And I’m sorry, but hope and friendship are not exportable resources.”
Rainbow Dash flopped herself down on the special carpet that had been rolled over the cloud floors in all of the rooms, enchanted to support her weight. “I’m sorry, Gilda, but I don’t have all the answers. The best advice I can give you, the advice that would have saved my friendship back home, is going to suck.”
Gilda sat down before her like a sphinx. “Lay it on me,” she said.
“Never go home,” Dash said simply.
She got the expected glare in return.
“I’ve seen what happened when another version of you went home after being disappointed by me and the way I run my life, and the result wasn’t pretty,” Rainbow told Gilda. “Maybe somebody else from the Heights would have done better, but human you didn’t. So that’s my advice: never go home. You were sent here to find a way to make life better for griffons, and you haven’t. So stay. And maybe try making more friends, so you don’t feel so lonely all the time. Maybe even write Grandpa Gruff and convince him to send one of your griffon friends over—I can probably talk my parents into paying for it before I leave this body. They like you.”
Gilda sat and thought it over. “That advice does kinda suck,” she said. “Where would I get a job once camp is out? The Weather Factory sure won’t hire me—I hear that all of their equipment is calibrated for the individual pegasi working them, but I’m pretty sure they can’t push that equipment out to griffon levels.”
Rainbow Dash wing-shrugged. At least these wings are useful for something, she thought.
“I know, I know, you told me the advice would suck,” Gilda said, getting up. “And just telling me ‘don’t be lonely’ doesn’t really do anything for what I feel when you two keep ignoring me.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Rainbow Dash said, rising to join her. “My Fluttershy seems a lot tougher than pony Fluttershy, according to that journal. She probably wouldn’t have a panic attack just hanging with the two of us.”
Gilda smiled—still very weird on a beak, thought Rainbow Dash—and wrapped her arm around Rainbow’s. “Deal! What do you know…alien possession has a silver lining after all!” She suddenly leaned forward to stare into Rainbow’s left eye. “Do you think my Rainbow Dash is trapped in the back of your head?” she asked.
Rainbow Dash quickly backed away. Based on the words of Spitfire earlier, that theory was a definite possibility. “Maybe,” she said, “but I haven’t heard a peep out of her if so. Maybe I’ll dream about her tonight.”
“I guess I’ll just have to accept that,” Gilda said, getting back to her bunk with a single flap that left Rainbow reeling. “We can just spend the night telling each other about our worlds.”
“I sure wish I could fly,” Rainbow Dash said with a pout. “Too bad that I’ll probably be sent back to my body before Dr. Tarbell has a chance to give me my own magic to fly with. How do you do it?”
“Do what?” Gilda asked with a mysterious smile, leaning down to look upside down at Rainbow as she climbed into her lower bunk.
“Fly. How do you use your magic to fly?”
Gilda tilted her head in a way that seemed very birdlike to Rainbow Dash. “According to Dr. Tarbell, griffons don’t have any magic.”
“Did he bother to test you?” Rainbow asked.
“No!” Gilda replied.
“Well trust me, you use magic to fly,” Rainbow told her. “I’ve studied aerodynamics all my life, and I know for a fact that a creature of your mass and wingspan could never have reached that bunk the same way you do.”
“My wings are bigger than yours,” Gilda countered.
“But not big enough.”
Gilda laughed. “Yeah, that’s the same thing that my Rainbow and I figured out my first week at camp. If you could fly we could compare how we do it, same as my Rainbow and I did then. For example, if you flew up to the top bunk, it wouldn’t disturb any of the papers and posters, while when I did it…”
“Ah, man…” Rainbow said, as she saw that all of the posters had been blown askew, and various books were either knocked over or blown open.
“Griffon magic is wind magic, and pegasi magic is anti-gravity based,” Gilda explained. “At least, that’s what we figured.”
Rainbow Dash thought about it for a bit and then nodded. “I guess that explains how pegasi can pull carts and trucks. I thought they were enchanted to float.”
“They aren’t. Pegasi just spread their magic field out when they’re harnessed, without even thinking about it. The real proof is when the pony version of you managed to float for a few seconds in mid-air without flapping your wings. You passed out right after that, though, so I guess that’s the reason why all pegasi aren’t taught that little trick.”
“Huh,” said Rainbow Dash. She laid back in her bunk, being a little surprised that a little horse was limber enough to lie on her back without her limbs sticking straight up.
“By the way,” Gilda said from above, “who else are you planning to tell that you’re human?”
“Well, I haven’t come out and said ‘I’m a human’ to anybody aside from you. And Spitfire had a really negative reaction when she figured it out. I’m afraid of telling Dr. Tarbell.”
“Why is that?”
“That pony is only interested in himself,” Rainbow told Gilda. “I could tell that the moment I met him. If he found out I was human, that would ruin the book he wants to write. I’m guessing that humans are supposed to be a secret, so he wouldn’t be able to write a book about that. And without a book, why would he help Fluttershy and I to get to Canterlot?”
“That’s almost griffon levels of cynicism,” Gilda commented. “And also completely justified. I’ve known the Doc a lot longer than you, and he absolutely is only in it for himself. Do you even need him to get switched back?”
“Well that depends,” Rainbow answered. “Spitfire told me that the Princess is supposed to have a way to track humans.”
“Well her detector spell must be broken, because she should have been at the clinic with her guards before we left. Princess Celestia can be a very hooves-on ruler when she wants to be. She welcomed me to the school in pony.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” said Rainbow. “So if for some reason she can’t detect us, then we have to go over there ourselves, and somehow get an audience with her without telling ponies what we are.”
“Because humans are supposed to be this big secret,” said Gilda.
“Right. So I think we need Tarbell to get us that audience. And it’s not...a lie, right? The pony version of me actually did that rainboom thing, and it would be good for her to get credit for it. It’s just that us being here delays that recognition for a few days.”
“So you can’t tell Tarbell that you’re a human,” Gilda concluded. “Are you going to tell your pony parents?”
“If I can get to them away from Tarbell,” said Rainbow. “Now, since I can’t talk to my parents now, and I’m not tired, so let me tell you about jets…”
Their conversation went on long into the night.
H. Fluttershy. Equestria, Cloudsdale. Late evening of Day One.
Fluttershy was still trying to fall asleep, hampered both by her alien body and the tight sleeping bag, when she heard a knock at the front door. She walked over and opened the door. She would have turned on the lights, but she could neither operate the magically-activated lights nor light a wall-mounted candelabra. She was careful not to step beyond the bounds of the house, where substances she could safely stand on gave way to clouds. “Hello?” she asked, peering into the darkness. “Is anybody there?”
In the darkness, a small shape was hovering. Eventually, Fluttershy made out a sort of basket or cradle, made out of vines and leaves, held aloft by a whole flock of birds of different species. Inside the basket was a small white object, which then suddenly leapt out of the basket and onto Fluttershy’s back.
“Oh!” Fluttershy said, suddenly recognizing the rabbit which had come all this way from the forest grove. She looked over at the birds. “Thank you,” she said experimentally. She was surprised when the birds dropped the basket—which dropped through the cloud—and flew away.
Fluttershy closed the door and walked over to where the living room’s lone candle was still burning. “It’s OK,” she instructed the bunny. “You can stand here.”
The rabbit hopped down, faced her, and then went into a long and impassioned speech.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she exclaimed, waving a hoof to get the rabbit to stop. “I still don’t understand you.”
The rabbit stopped, and gestured to her to bring her face close. Fluttershy did so, and the bunny looked deep into her eyes before sighing.
“Yes, I’m still the other Fluttershy,” she explained. “And I still can’t understand you, although you obviously understand me. That’s probably what these butterflies in my mark mean. Rainbow Dash got hers for something the pony version of her did before she took over.”
The rabbit said something, gesturing around him at the house.
“This is her family’s house. The pony version of her, that is.” Fluttershy sat down on top of her sleeping bag. “Are you still mad at me?” she asked.
The bunny nodded.
“And you can’t do anything about it, because you don’t want to hurt this body?”
The bunny reluctantly nodded a second time.
“Well, I’ve thought it over, and I decided that I am going back after all. I realized that the pony version of me is a lot younger than I am, and she’s living in this perfect little world, where the dominant species is far more in tune with Nature than we humans are, and where even your bullies are pushovers.” She glared down at the rabbit, who tried and failed to match the glare. “See? I totally could do whatever I wanted here, if I wanted to.” She looked away, to a photo of a younger and gleeful Rainbow Dash playing with both of her parents. “But if I stayed, that would mean that the Fluttershy you miss would never come back. She’d either be stuck in the back of my head in an eternal sleep that would only end with my death, or else she’s in my body on Earth. And I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.” She looked back at the rabbit. “So we’re going to Canterlot tomorrow, where one way or another, this world’s Fluttershy is getting her body back. Do you want to come?”
The bunny nodded.
“You’re quite loyal, you know that?”
The bunny nodded.
“Either that, or you’re waiting for Pushover Fluttershy to come back so you can dominate her, as part of your nefarious plan to use her communication powers to take over Equestria.”
The bunny tried to look innocent. Emphasis on “tried”.
“I’m going to keep calling you ‘Angel’,” Fluttershy said with a smirk. “Just like you went to so much trouble to pantomime to me. The irony appeals to my black heart.” She sighed, a bit of her true personality leaking back as her smirk turned bitter, and slowly into a skeptical frown.
It felt almost routine to her. A feeling of something going wrong, the bullies closing in, Rainbow turning away, and then one by one she could tell herself just how pointless all her hopes and dreams were. Her parents called it “depression”. She called it “fear”.
“And besides, Rainbow Dash promised me we were going to transfer to Canterlot High when we get back. I…I just hope I can keep her to that promise when I get back to…society.” She said that word the way an older generation used to say the word “cancer”.
“I’ve got an Angel in my world, too,” she admitted. “Probably not as smart as you, not being in a fairy tale world and all. But maybe when I look at him I can think of you, and that will inspire me to be more assertive.”
Fluttershy lay down on top of the sleeping bag. Thanks to her pelt, she really didn’t need to get into the bag to be warm. She pulled Angel Bunny closer with her stubby little arm and yawned. “I’m…I’m a lot more assertive when I’m by myself, or with people I trust,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t have told anyone else that. Funny that I already trust you, after less than an hour.” She yawned once more, and tried to find a comfortable position on the sleeping bag. “I’m sure Rainbow Dash and the others will let me take you along, just so long as you behave yourself. So please…don’t bite anyone. …Except my brother.”
Fluttershy was asleep after that.
Angel Bunny still had his doubts about this “human” interloper. But he never for a moment wavered in his certainty that he was meant to be part of the destiny of the true Fluttershy, so he saw no other choice but to stick close by this highly-suspicious creature currently controlling her body.
He was the last inhabitant of the house to fall asleep that night.