“Rainbow Dash!”
“Huh?”
Rainbow Dash turns in surprise. She freezes. She looks into my eyes, her magenta irises striking mine.
“Sc…?”
“You let my friends go or I’ll open this valve!” I scream, ready to kick the pipe open any moment.
Dash doesn’t speak. She’s fixated on me, her body trembling and her mouth agape.
A red pegasus stallion steps up next to her. I remember him. Atmosphere, his name was.
“N-now, you won’t do that,” he begins, his voice shaking. “There’s no point, you see. You’ll take us out, yes, but your friends with us. And without Dash or myself, you’ll never be able to get out of this factory! So, what now, you foolish filly? What could you possibly hope to do?”
I ignore him. He doesn’t know what I’m planning to do. I don’t plan on escaping.
I want to fly.
Dash’s eyes are still staring into mine, and I glare back. There was a time when I thought they belonged to my sister who loved me. Someone who would give me everything.
Now? They belong to somepony who had taken all I had from me. And I’m taking everything away from her.
I glance at my friends, tied up to the conveyor belt and the maw of the Device looming before them. I turn back to the grayish cyan pegasus before me. Cloud Cover and Corona… They’ve done more for me than anypony has done for, for… I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. They gave me hope, something to work towards. Cloud told me that I could have my own life out there beyond those walls, that I could fly through the skies freely.
Well, I don’t care about life anymore. I just want to fly.
“I killed you! You’re dead!”
Rainbow Dash screams, finally out of her trance. She clutches the side of her head with a hoof, something I’ve seen many times back when we were… We still were…
“I killed the failure that let me down! I know it, I remember it so clearly… How can you be alive?”
Failure. The word I have been branded with.
“You didn’t just fail yourself. You didn’t just fail Cloudsdale. You failed me. You failed ME! And that’s the worst thing you could have done…”
Failure.
“You’re all already hopeless as it is, any more so and even we couldn’t use you…”
Failure.
“You goddamn worthless ponies can hardly call yourself ‘pegasi’…”
Failure.
Well, they were wrong.
“I’m not the failure, Rainbow Dash.” I position my hooves. My voice is clearer than it has been in twenty years, and I steady myself as I prepare for what I will do. “I’m not the one who let you down. I’m your sister, Dash.”
“Sister…”
“Rainbow, don’t listen to her! She’s just a crazy ma—”
“Shut up, Hide! Shut up with your cool voice!” Rainbow Dash screams, pointing a hoof. “You can’t handle every situation! You don’t know! I’m tired of your constant attempts to wrestle control of this factory from me! I swore I’d protect Cloudsdale Weather! It’s all I have. Only the CWC and…”
Dash falters.
“And my sister.” She turns to me. There are tears in her eyes. The dim light glints off her eyes, ones I would have venerated if things hadn’t come to this. “My beautiful little sister…”
Too late now.
I harden my glare, boring my gaze into her. “I’m not your sister.”
Dash freezes, mouth open.
“I… what?”
“I’m not your sister. I’m the failure that let you down.”
“But… but you just said—”
“Rainbow Dash, I am two ponies.” And I am both of them at the same time.
Dash kicks the floor before bucking the air. “Well then who are you, then?!”
“I am the failure that you wanted to kill, and your sister you could never harm.”
“But—!”
“And I am here to take both of them away from you.”
I kick the valve open. I close my eyes. Liquid crashes into my fur, then electricity floods my body. A pain more intense than anything I have experienced knocks out all of my senses. All my muscles spasm as my neurons jolt, burning away before shutting down entirely. With the last bit of control, I spread my wings wide open and topple over the ledge.
The cloud floor cools my body, washing it with moisture. I fall through layer after layer, each cloud covering me in shorter intervals before…
I punch through the bottom, and I’m thrown out into open skies.
I feel the wind whipping at my fur. It blasts through my feathers. They’re numb, but they’re twitching, and I can feel the motions they’re trying to make along with the wind. My eyes are closed, but I can hear the air ripping through my mane. I shudder in excitement. The sensation I’m feeling is nothing like I had ever felt.
I internally scream in delight as I continue to scythe through the air. The ground must be getting closer, but I don’t care. I can’t care. Not when I’m experiencing the best sensation I’ve felt in decades.
The air is whizzing past me, just like it used to when I flew.
It’s perfect. This is perfect. The wind ripping past my ears, my mane being tugged back by the air, the la… lamin… whatever flow brushing my feathers in the gentlest way possible, it’s all so perfect.
This. I’ve wanted this for so long. This perfect balance of every sense, this is flying. It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten.
This isn’t so bad, is it?
I take in a final breath. The wind changes. The air seems to tighten up in front of me.
Too late, though. Any moment now, I’ll plummet into the ground at three hundred miles per hour. That will kill me for sure.
Don’t care about dying, though. I got to fly for one last time. Sure, it was falling, but it’s the same as flying, right? I mean, what’s the diffe—