Rainbow Dash woke up surprisingly early the next day, though her head did still pound a little from the many drinks from the previous evening. Still, it was more than manageable enough so she quickly found herself sitting at the training grounds, waiting for the others to arrive. She could already tell that the day was going to be a late start, with most of the Wonderbolts still in their hotel rooms sleeping off a massive hangover.
She impatiently waited only a few minutes before starting on her morning stretches. Her mind was already starting to make its worries known, and she hoped that a bit of physical exertion would drown it out. So she started on a proper canter around the field, her heart slowly beginning it’s ramp up as she got back into the groove.
However she had barely managed to complete a second lap before she spotted another team member make their appearance, though still arriving far later than Spitfire would ever normally allow. Rainbow Dash was dismayed to see that it was Fleetfoot. Judging by the shades on her face she had not fully handled the previous night. It filled Rainbow Dash with a small amount of mirth to know that Fleetfoot was suffering after sending her home. Though that feeling was quickly swallowed up in guilt that she had wished misery on a teammate.
“It’s about time you turned up,” Rainbow Dash good naturedly teased, as she slowed to a stop next to Fleetfoot, “I was starting to wonder if I was the only pony that would make it in today.”
“That’s what happens when you’re a grown up pony,” Fleetfoot responded, her voice still hoarse from the previous night. A sign that she had been yelling over club music for most of the evening. “We can handle our drink better in the moment, but can’t quite handle the next morning.”
Rainbow Dash was tempted to complain about Fleetfoot’s tone, but decided to let it be. Fleetfoot was already rather ticked off, and Rainbow didn’t want to make the mare’s bad mood any worse.
“So, you up for some laps?”
“Oh, joy,” Fleetfoot groaned back, making no effort to sound happy about it.
Together they began their trott around the track, switching to a proper canter by the first corner. Rainbow Dash made sure to match her speed to Fleetfoot as best as she could, but she could tell that the other mare was clearly not running at her peak that morning. It was almost impossible to keep her canter at a slow enough rate to keep back with Fleetfoot’s pace. Eventually she gave up and switched to a fast trot.
“So, how did the rest of the night go?” Rainbow Dash queried carefully.
“It went fine” Fleetfoot’s terse response wasn’t surprising.
“Did karaoke go well?”
“It went fine.” Fleetfoot didn’t even bother to look over at Rainbow Dash, instead focusing on her own hooves as she wobbled slightly around the curve.
Rainbow Dash was getting sick of the non-answers. “Come on, you can give me more than that!”
“Okay, fine!” Fleetfoot stopped with a huff, glaring at Rainbow Dash. “The night went great, Soarin got completely trashed, as did the rest of the team. However the good news was that a certain young pony wasn’t there to try and worm her blue rear into Soarin’s bed.”
“Wait, what?” Rainbow Dash couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open at Fleetfoot’s accusation. “What in Celestia’s massive rear makes you think that I would do that?”
“I saw you with him last night, letting him hang off of you.” Fleetfoot was angry, and Rainbow Dash couldn’t help wincing as she felt specs of saliva hit her face. “You didn’t control yourself at all last night. Soarin should know better, but you shouldn’t be trying to get in between him and Spitfire anyway. It’s not okay, do you understand that at least?”
“I wasn’t doing anything!”
“Yes you were! Do you really think that I am so blind to not see what you are doing?” Fleetfoot has trotted straight up to Rainbow Dash again, rage was seething under the surface of her every word. “You’re the youngest on our team, and I know that we are meant to do our best to make sure that no pony tries to do anything inappropriate, but last night was pushing that.”
“All I did was talk to Soarin a bit?” Rainbow Dash tried to defend herself, but Fleetfoot cut her off.
“You spent an hour hitting on him. Every time I turned to look you had your hooves all over him. When you weren’t, you were making him put a foreleg on you, or letting him lean against you.”
“It’s just a hug?” Rainbow Dash complained, “I hug heaps of ponies.”
“Oh, you call it hugging, do you?”
“Yes, I didn’t expect the second degree for hugging a friend.”
“You wouldn’t get the second degree from me if you weren’t trying to ‘hug’ all of the hottest ponies in the Wonderbolts.” Fleetfoot poked Rainbow Dash in the chest with her hoof, pushing her off balance. “When you joined, Spitfire gave us all this stupid speech about making sure that there was no funny business with any of the stallions of mares hitting on you. We had to make sure we put our best hoof forward to make sure that you never felt pressured to do anything you didn’t want to do. She wanted you to not have to deal with any of the rubbish the rest of us had to deal with.”
“What do you mean?”
Fleetfoot ignored Rainbow Dash’s question. “You took Spitfire’s efforts and trampled all over there. You hit on her partner, you talk up Thunderlane despite knowing he is also taken, and then you tried to pull that same thing with me.”
“I... what?” Rainbow Dash was speechless. “I didn’t do any of that. I was just being friendly.”
“Seriously, we’re trying to protect you,” Fleetfoot growled, “and yet here you are doing your best to make it impossible by being ‘friendly’. Pull your head in before you do something we can’t protect yourself. If this keeps up, you’re going to ruin this opportunity for yourself.”
“Ruin this?” Rainbow Dash arched up, shoving Fleetfoot back from her. “I’m training my butt off to be good enough for this team by flying every second I can. I don’t know what all this other stupid stuff you are talking about is, but I am not trying to mess this up.”
“Then stop trying to sleep with Soarin!” Fleetfoot yelled at her.
“I’m not!” Rainbow Dash yelled back. “I’m joining you all for drinks because Spitfire asked me. I’m talking to Soarin because I like talking to ponies, and I am out here training because I want to keep up with you all. But that’s not enough is it!”
“Stop pretending. You know what you are doing!” Fleetfoot shot back, stepping closer to Rainbow Dash again.
“I’m not!” Rainbow Dash shoved Fleetfoot back onto her rump. “I joined the team because I wanted to prove that I could be the best Wonderbolt who had ever flown. I am here to prove myself with a team that would respect me and be loyal, but that is apparently not going to happen. I can’t exactly pull off a twin barrel roll with a team member that I can’t trust. Spitfire wanted me to fly with you in the next show, but I guess that is not happening now. It’s pretty clear however that one of us is not being all that trustworthy, and it isn’t me.”
“Dash!”
“Just zip it, Fleetfoot”
“Dash, I just wanted you to stop what you were doing.” Fleetfoot’s tone had become worried, but Rainbow Dash didn’t find it in herself to care. “I’m trying to help.”
“Well, I wanted to make it clear that I am not doing anything,” Dash shot back, angrily. “If you feel like you can force yourself to actually trust me in the air, then maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
There was a silence as they stared at each other, neither mare really wanting to be the next to say anything. Eventually Rainbow Dash broke the silence.
“Look, I need to clear my head.” Rainbow Dash groaned, her gaze turned away from Fleetfoot. “I’ll be back, just I need to think, okay?”
Fleetfoot just gave a weak smile, but Rainbow Dash gave her little attention. She trotted off, staying silent to avoid blowing up again at Fleetfoot. Leaving the field was not behaviour that Spitfire would normally allow, but seeing that no pony else of the team was there Rainbow Dash knew that there was little chance of Spitfire getting annoyed.
Still, Rainbow Dash didn’t like outright skipping practice. She knew that there were still a few manoeuvres that desperately needed to be worked out that Spitfire wanted to have ready for the show in a few days. So she couldn’t just storm off back to Ponyville for a day. Instead she needed to sort out herself and get back before the team woke up.
Rainbow Dash didn’t turn back. She knew that she couldn’t go back with her current headspace, but there was something else gnawing at her mind. Fleetfoot had been utterly convinced that Rainbow Dash had been sending signals to the others showing her apparent interest in them. However she had definitely been doing nothing of the sort, she hoped. Right?
She shoved her way into the locker rooms of the training facility that the Wonderbolts had hired out for the next few days. The locker room was empty, with not even the maintenance ponies in there, giving her a brief chance to privately calm herself. However her peace was short lived as her mind once again ran through Fleetfoot’s words. Rainbow Dash couldn’t hide the frown that seemed to have etched its way onto her muzzle. Groaning, she sat down on one of the rough wooden benches, resting her head on her forelegs as she tried to work herself mentally through Fleetfoot’s words.
“Just because I like being friendly doesn’t make me a flirty filly, '' Rainbow Dash muttered to herself bitterly. As soon as the words passed through her muzzle she knew that they were more than just idle complaints. She knew that there was likely some truth to them, “maybe if Fleetfoot thought that it was flirty, then she wasn’t the only one.”
That sour thought hit Rainbow Dash hard.
“If Fleetfoot saw it, then maybe the others saw it the same way,” She muttered to herself, every word feeling sour as soon as it was spoken, “maybe it wasn’t just the team.”
She thought back to the many strange conversations she had been having with her friends over the last week about forming the herd. The other five had all seemed to be on the same page with getting together, and a lot of the time it had seemed like they knew what she wanted better than she did.
“Maybe they think I’ve been flirting with them too when we hug,” The idea worried Rainbow Dash at a deep level. The idea that she had been misleading her friends was not one that she wanted to entertain. But Fleetfoot was also clearly telling the truth. “I guess it explains why they were so eager for me to join them.”
She pulled herself back onto her hooves and walked over to the nearest mirror, peering down at the tired mare reflected back. She wasn’t surprised with what she saw, a stunt pony who stood shoulder beneath all of her friends. She knew perfectly well that she was not as much of a catch as any of her friends. Fluttershy was always the peak, but her other four friends all trailed very close behind, leaving Rainbow Dash with her short twiggy build trailing far behind.
Rainbow Dash shook her head to try and clear away the negative thoughts, but her mind kept on repeating the same inescapable truth. Rainbow Dash was an ace of a flyer, but that did little to help with the rest of her. She was not what any sane pony would call a good catch, but she knew that she had to make herself one. Was she letting down her friends by being too lazy to try and be good enough?
She wasn’t as attractive as the others, she was stuck out of town a lot of the time due to the Wonderbolts, and she was pretty sure that the others found her annoying a lot of the time. If you needed somepony to be an awesome flyer, Rainbow Dash was your mare. If you needed a herd mate, then it was harder to believe that she was a good option. Yet, they still asked her.
There was really only one reason she could believe that would make them want her in the herd, and what was because they thought that she wanted to be in it as well. Either she had no idea why they wanted her in the herd, or she had been accidentally tricking them by flirting with them a whole lot and they asked her to join under some sort of false pretence that she wanted it. Were they just trying to be good friends, mistaking her social ineptitude as her trying to hit on them? Were they really just trying to be nice by including her?
Rainbow Dash sighed as she realised that she honestly did not want to even know the answer. Either way, it made it clear to her that she needed to seriously rethink whether joining the herd was really such a good idea. She wanted to be close to her best friends and herding would definitely accomplish that, but it felt dishonest to keep up the charade. If they wanted the fake flirty Rainbow Dash that didn’t actually exist then she was betraying their trust to not be what they wanted. She couldn’t let them down, if that was what they wanted then maybe she could do it.
“Hey Rainbow Dash!” A familiar voice crashed through her mental worries, throwing her back into the present.
Blinking, Rainbow Dash spun around, wincing as she saw Spitfire’s face hovering a foot away from her own.
“Oh, um, hey!” Rainbow Dash backed away from the mirror. “I didn’t expect you to be here so soon.”
“Soarin has an amazing hangover cure,” Spitfire shrugged, “but, seriously, you look a bit annoyed. You okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m always fine.” Rainbow Dash quickly defended herself. “Just checking myself out, you know?”
Spitfire raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing a word. “Okay, I won’t ask. Just know that the captain thing is more than a title. If you need to talk about anything, I am somepony that is here to listen. It is literally my job to listen and help.”
“I know, it’s just friendship stuff, with my friends, and stuff...” Rainbow Dash trailed off. “I’m going to go and train.”
Rainbow Dash quickly pushed past Spitfire and headed out to the field, nearly hitting a canter as she rushed out. In her rush to leave she nearly collided with Fleetfoot who was waiting outside, however Rainbow Dash stepped around her without a word.
“Wait, Dash!” Fleetfoot reached out a hoof towards Rainbow Dash, but it was pushed away.
“Look,” Rainbow Dash turned back to Fleetfoot, blowing some of her mane out of her eyes so she could properly stare into Fleetfoot’s eyes with her best leer. “Let’s just pretend that the entire conversation never happened. We both said some things that we probably shouldn’t have said, even if it was mostly you. So we’re going to drop it and just get back to training.”
“I was going to apologise, but okay.” Fleetfoot didn’t have the heart to admit how adorable Rainbow Dash looked with the pout on her face. “So.... what did you want to practice?“
“What do you think of a Sonic Rainboom to end the next show?” Rainbow Dash turned back to the field with a smirk, ignoring the loud groan from Fleetfoot.
“Do you think you can avoid property damage this time?” Fleetfoot jokingly asked.
Rainbow Dash shrugged, a few shattered windows was a fine price to pay to experience pure awesomeness.