Chapter IV: Stupid Cupid
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Flying thirty feet above the dirt roads of Ponyville, Rainbow Dash was not feeling like a happy camper at the moment. Not at all. In heat, in distress and unsure of what to do at speeds of fifty miles an hour, Dash was struggling to find a solution to her estrus issues before seven o’ clock tonight without embarrassing herself, without getting knocked up and without losing her sanity in a town full of excited, attractive and semi-attractive mares. She had learned a powerful lesson in empathy within the very back of her mind, now understanding what Twilight was going through during what the Ponyville Express called “The Smartypants Incident.”
Clock is ticking, Dash... She thought to herself, sweat flying off her body like water off duck’s arse. Clock...is...ticking!!
Rainbow Dash’s hormones were colliding against the coarse grain of repressed feelings, canceling each other out and creating a maelstrom of emotions, making her estrus abnormally powerful. The cool spring air whipping against her contours would’ve normally cooled down any mare in heat, but the veritable space heater inside of her would not die down, instead creating an uncomfortable mix of an internal inferno and an external cold snap, making the shadowed bottom of her stomach clench in a most uncomfortable way. As if that wasn’t enough, the hormonal storm inside Dash’s skull was doing a brain chemical tango all day long, starting with anxiety, then sadness and now panic.
Coincidentally, “Brain Chemical Tango” was the name of Vinyl “DJ PON-3” Scratch’s latest dance mix, in stores now.
Dash kept her eyes focused on the town below, quickly bolting from place to place looking for anypony she knew that would give her more advice on how to deal with her current predicament, scanning every street, alley and sign for friends and the places where they were usually found at.
Rainbow Dash was focusing so much on the task at hand in addition to converting her heat into extra energy to keep her concentrated, that she failed to detect a hard, solid something in mid-air above Carousel Boutique. Colliding with it headfirst, Dash reeled from the impact, her head throbbing with pain from the inside out like a wedding bell, eyesight clouded with blindingly bright stars and their bruise-purple afterimages. Landing straight into the ground like the thing she flew into, Rainbow Dash found herself with a face, body, wing and hoof full of dirt...
...and pain.
“Ooogh, my aching head...” Groaned Dash as she clutched her head, shaking stars out her eyesight. Were it not for the fact that there was a mattress somehow buried in the thick layers of clay and dirt to cushion her crash, the impact would’ve hurt a lot more. As she climbed out of the cartoonishly deep pit she left in the ground, her blood turned cold upon seeing a giant, animate mound of dirt rise out of the other crater ominously, casting a long, dark shadow above the cyan mare like a thing of mythology as its ochre limbs fumbled their way out of the pit. Dazed and confused, Rainbow Dash was left at the utterly muddy monstrosity’s mercy, briefly thinking that this may be her last moments on Earth until the abomination let loose its terrifying call:
“Mrrphrrphrr, Mrrphrurdurph?” The creature said in a muffled, vaguely midwestern lilt.
“Huh?!”
The creature’s outer hide of dried mud and cold, damp clay crumbled apart in thick slabs all at once to reveal its true, grey-coated final form, staring back at Rainbow Dash with piercing gold eyes.
“I said ‘are you okay, Rainbow Dash?’” Said the creature again.
Dash let out a heavy sigh of relief, wiping her brow. The eldritch soil golem that had loomed over her mere seconds ago turned out to be nothing more than Ponyville’s favorite esotropic postal worker, Derpy Hooves. The mailmare’s mane and coat, much like Rainbow Dash’s, was thoroughly soiled by soil and grass stains. Very tough to clean off, they were. Both climbing out of their respective craters, the two Pegasi stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before Dash decided to break the silence.
“Umm...Hey.” Said Rainbow Dash bashfully.
...
“Hi!” Said a cheerful Derpy.
...
“Say...do you have a minute of your time?”
“Sure, I do! I’d love to chat with you, Rainbow Dash.” The grey mare replied, her crooked eyes looking into Dash’s very soul with the happy-go-lucky innocence of an innocent, happy-go-lucky grey mare. It’s hard to compare somepony like Derpy to anything else, really. You may as well try comparing apples to oranges, or in Derpy’s case, wisdom teeth and African Land Snails.
“Well...*gulp*...it’s mating season and all, and I couldn’t help but notice that you and that one guy, Doctor Whooves, have sort of a...relationship going on.” Said Dash, on the verge of almost kind-of slightly forcing those words out of her mouth. “And was wondering...if you had any kind of advice on dating and relationships. You know, since...you two seem to be really...seem to work well with each other. And even though I don’t usually ask about anything romantic and that this question may sound a bit stupid, but...what exactly is love?” Rainbow Dash blushed; she couldn’t believe she was asking somepony these kinds of questions. She always made it a priority to be tough and look tough while being tough. She wasn’t the kind of girl to ask about any kind of namby-pamby dating advice, even though Namby-Pamby was a great dating advisor...
Derpy blushed, letting out a heart-warming chuckle. She smiled, scratching the back of her head with one hoof.
“Eheheh...I never thought you’d ask anything like that, Dashie.” Laughed the mare. “You’re in luck, since the boss let me off from work early today, so it’s a great time for us to talk! A lot of ponies think I’m kinda dumb, but I think I’m smarter than them for knowing things too basic for any of them to really know. I mean...I may not be a smart mare, but I do know what love is...”
“Well, I’m glad to know that you can...enlighten me on the subject...” Dash said sheepishly. Not in a thousand years would she see herself asking Thunderpeal “Derpy” Hooves of all ponies for advice. Just as the postpony was about to inhale the breath needed to give Rainbow Dash her response, the front door to Carousel Boutique, a building that looked like a Kremlin rotunda that got repainted by a 19th Century Circus performer, swung open to reveal a very flustered-looking Rarity. “Celestia H. Faust, how can anypony work with such noise going-- AAAHHH!!!” Rarity shrieked, nearly fainting from shock upon seeing two mud-caked Pegasi sitting in front of her destroyed front walk.
“Umm...hi?” Said Rainbow Dash, grinning as innocently as she could while bracing her ears for another one of Rarity’s trademark temper flares.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” Bellowed the posh Unicorn. “My front yard has been ruined, there’s topsoil and dirt everywhere and you two are just sitting there, engaged in idle chit-chat covered in filth like some peasant?! Get in here now, BOTH of you!! Wipe your hooves off at the doormat and carefully make your way to the bathroom for the scrubbing of a lifetime! Now MARCH!!”
Before they could react to Rarity’s brutal tongue lashing, Derpy and Dashie found themselves magically yanked into the doorway of the boutique like a couple of misbehaving children. The two were momentarily caught in the door while being brought in at the same time, leaving big dirty smears of dirty dirt onto the gaudy doorframe.
“And when I’m done with you two, I’ll make sure that both of you pay Big Macintosh for the refilling and reseeding of those holes you ruffians dug for yourselves! I mean, how in the world can I run such a dignified establishment with a trench out in front?! I have customers to serve, just like that gorgeous hunk of stallion, Big Macintosh... Ohh, he’s such a rebel, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, a real renegade...” Quipped Rainbow Dash after enduring another of the Unicorn’s blistering rants.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire...” She thought. “Or in this case, the bathtub...”