“If Rainbow Dash Can, So Can We.”
“And then we do a wing roll and the two of us will have enough speed to glide all the way over Hope Hollow, and we can pull up by the windmill.”
“Maybe.” Barley looked down from the cloud the two of them were perched on. “I dunno, it’s a long way.”
“Rainbow Dash could do it.”
“She’s bigger than us. And has had more practice.”
Pickle huffed out a breath, a half-snort. “We gotta do something to bring the color back.”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t.” Barley rolled on her back, fluffing her wings against the cloud. “But let’s not be too ambitious. I don’t think I can glide that far.”
“That’s why we’ve got to practice. We know all her moves.”
“And we can’t do them.”
“Not yet,” Pickle said. “But we can almost do them, and maybe almost is gonna be good enough to bring the colors back.” He surveyed the gray landscape and slumped down on the cloud. “Do you think that everywhere has lost its color?”
“It must have.” She sighed. “Remember sunsets?” She rolled on her stomach and stood up, puffing out her chest. “You’re right, we’ve got to do it. We’ve go to try. All the adult ponies are constantly grumbling and not doing anything about it. I just don’t know if the routine’s going to be good enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Rainbow did her first sonic rainboom at flight camp when she was about our size and that made a rainbow across the whole sky. Rainbows have all the colors in them, so that’s obviously what it’s going to take to fix things. But she’s fast–maybe it’s not about how intricate the pattern is, but how fast you fly.”
“Rainbow was flying an obstacle course,” Pickle reminded her. “So it would have been intricate.”
“But then she did her second rescuing some of the Wonderbolts and Rarity,” Barley said, “And she was flying almost straight down.”
Pickle nodded. “We could do that. Find a high cloud, lots higher than this one. As high as we can fly. And then go straight down and pull out when we get to the bottom.” He looked in the direction of Hope Hollow. “Straight down Main Street, we’ll Rainboom the whole town. That’ll bring the colors back.”
•••
The twins sat on the edge of a cloud, the highest one they could find. Pickle paced around, stretching out his wings, while Barley calculated the necessary angles. The wind was slowly pushing their cloud along, adding to the challenge.
“Just needs to drift a little further, and then it should be in line. If we target the windmill, fly straight to it, and then pull out when we’re at the sails, we should go right over main street with a Sonic Rainboom right behind us.”
“Yeah,” Barley looked over the edge of the cloud one last time, lining up her angles. “You think we should practice before we try it for real?”
[CHOICE]
>Yes, practicing it is a good idea (Hero)
>No, it’s flying straight down and then turning, what could go wrong? (Villain)
>We should do stunts, too. (Chaos)
[CHOICE A: Hero]
“Yeah, of course we should. We’re going to be doing it for real at the Rainbow Festival, remember? This is just a trial run.”
“Oh yeah.” Barley looked over at her brother. “Tell you what, let’s fly away from town.”
“You worried something might go wrong?”
She was, but didn’t want to admit it. “No, just . . . we don’t want to show our routine before we’re got it perfected.”
“That’s smart thinking.” Pickle over to the other side of the cloud, and looked down for once. “Wow, we’re a long way up. How fast do you think we’ll get going?”
“I don’t know. Fast.” Barley fluffed her wings and then stretched them out. “Lets pull up quicker, and work our way down–we can pull out, end in a big loop and get most of our momentum back to fly up to the cloud again.”
“On three, then.”
The pair galloped to the edge of the cloud in unison, then leapt off. Angling straight down went against both their instincts–that was something birds did to dive for fish, not something a pegasus should do.
But it was fast and getting faster. As they beat their wings, they could feel the air sart to push back against them.
They both shifted their hooves around and tucked their heads down, trying to find the best position, and then sooner than they would have imagined, they were passing the lowest layer of clouds.
“I can feel something!”
“I think it’s working!”
“We’re getting low!”
“Pull up!”
Pulling out of the dive was agonizingly slow; Pickle brushed his belly against the crown of a pine tree as he finally bottomed out and started climbing again.
The pair fought their way back to the cloud and landed, wings sore but hearts full of inspiration. They hadn’t done it yet, but they were on the right path. A few more practice runs, and then they’d do a Sonic Rainboom and bring the colors back to Hope Hollow.
[CHOICE 2: Villain]
“Practice? We spent most of our energy getting up here,” Pickle objected. “We’re flying straight down and then turning, that’s simple.”
“You’re right.”
“Last one down’s a rotten egg,” he taunted as he jumped off the top of the cloud.
“As if it’ll be you.” Barley followed, nosing over and beating her wings furiously.
Both of them were neck-and-neck as they powered towards the ground, the windmill getting larger and larger as they rushed towards it.
Making the turn required at the bottom was beyond their abilities. As they’d agreed, the windmill was the target to pull out of the dive. At their speed, that had no chance of working; both of them split formation as they worked out the lowest ground or softest place to land.
Barley, more the realist set her eyes on a boggy depression. She cratered into the swamp sending cattails and frogs flying in every direction, painting the trout pony in mud and bogwater.
Pickle, meanwhile, theorized that the springs on the cabbage wagon he aimed for would absorb some of the impact and he was correct: they did absorb some of the impact, and then the wagon bounced free of its drop chain and started rolling in the direction of Hope Hollow.
It didn’t make it very far; the tongue caught and spun the wagon sideways. It tipped over, launching Pickle and the entire load of cabbages down the road.
He struggled back to his hooves and then looked around for Pickle. He spotted her coming out of the swamp just as an anguished stallion yelled out “My cabbages!”
[CHOICE: Chaos]
“It took most of our energy to get up here,” Pickle observed. “I don’t think I could fly back up for a second attempt. Besides, it’s easy enough. Just fall off a cloud, basically.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Too easy. It’ll never make a Rainboom. We need to punch it up.”
Barley wrinkled her muzzle. “Punch it up? How? Do stunts, too?”
“Yes, that’s it! Do stunts on the way down. Just like we’ve practiced.”
“We’ve never really done them right.”
“We’ve never flown so high or so fast. It’s going to be epic.” Pickle looked over the edge of the cloud. “On three: one, two—”
•••
It was epic. The two ponies shot out of the sky like a meteor, twisting in a fairly decent recreation of the Wonderbolts as they plummeted to Earth. Ponies in town started looking up at the sky, especially as the sparks and crackles began, as the mach cone tightened around the two fliers.
They suddenly got in sync, as if possessed by Harmony—and a previously undemonstrated flying ability. With an audible crack, they actually did produce a Sonic Rainboom.
“It’s working!” Pickle shouted.
“I know it’s working! Pull up!”
The pair was dangerously close to the ground as they pulled out of their dive, rippling the grass as they skimmed the Earth . . . and then their wingtips touched.
The Rainboom split as Pickle went right and Barley went left. For a moment, the bifurcated bow continued along the main street, but then the filly crossed the worn fence and slammed into Moody Root’s apricot orchard, tearing through trees and fruits alike until she finally slid to a stop against the side of his house.
Pickle wasn’t so lucky as his sister; he slammed into the side of the inn, smashing through the wall and pinballing his way through the interior before he came out the other side, scraped and bruised.
The inn collapsed behind him.
For a moment, the rainbow lingered on, painting the town with colors long forgotten, and then it faded, leaving behind nothing but monochrome destruction.