The wind whipping past Rainbow “Future Wonderbolt” Dash’s ears drowned out everything else around her as she let the speed do as it always did: Take her away. Not away from any particular location; she rather liked Ponyville and she’d never leave her friends. That said, she did find herself on the far side of town in short order, and a casual glance below revealed Fluttershy engaged in an intense staring contest with...
...a bush?
Okay, time out, everypony. Gotta find out what’s going on here or it’s gonna bother me for the rest of the week. With that thought, Rainbow flared her wings slightly and banked, slowing down and making half a spiral downward before simply letting herself free-fall, relishing the moments of weightlessness. Perhaps a breath away from the ground, she extended her wings fully and landed as light as one of her stray feathers.
“Hey, Fluttershy. What’s going on?”
The yellow pegasus, so intensely focused on the shrubbery, let out a soft squeak as she realized she had company. She calmed down almost instantly upon identifying it as her oldest friend. “Oh, it’s simply awful,” she started, her voice still as soft as ever. “Angel Bunny simply refuses to take his cold medicine, no matter how much I plead with him!”
Rainbow’s head tilted to the side, a few strands of her multicolored mane sweeping out of her eyes. “Rabbits get colds, huh?” she asked skeptically. She didn’t doubt the fact, but truthfully she’d never paid much attention to non-pony life on the ground before Tank.
As if on cue, the bush shook with a loud and raucous coughing that one might have expected from a stallion.
“I stand educated,” she replied flatly, but with a smirk playing at the edge of her mouth. “Well, keep at it, Fluttershy. I’m sure you can get him to do what’s best for him. Hey, at least you can talk with him.” The blue pegasus paused as an idea crept up unbidden. “...huh. Hey, do you, uh...think you could ever teach another pony to talk with animals? Or even just one?”
Fluttershy considered this, turning away from the bush for the first time in several minutes. “I, um...don’t really know. Sometimes it’s not even really talking. You just have to pay really close attention to everything they do,” she explained to her friend, oblivious to the white paw extending from the bush in an incredibly rude gesture. “I’m not even sure how I would really teach that. I-I’m sorry I’m not much help...”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I just wonder sometimes what’s on Tank’s mind. He does seem pretty happy, though.”
“Oh, he is happy, Rainbow Dash,” she assured her, practically gushing now. “You just need to look at how he smiles when he gets to fly with you. I’m glad you get along with him so well.”
“Yeah,” chuckled Rainbow. “Twilight did a heck of a job with that...flying...hey, that’s it!” she shouted in sudden elation. “I’d bet my future Wonderbolts fame that she could fix me or him up with something that’d let us talk! Fluttershy, you’re a genius! Thanks for the idea, I gotta scram!”
“Oh, um...y-you’re welcome, and...um...” She looked around. “You’re...already gone.” She smiled with no offense taken; she’d known Rainbow Dash long enough to know that this was simply how she was. Back to more important matters, now. “Alright, Angel Bunny. It’s time for you to...” She stared at the bush. It was no longer moving, or coughing, and a subtle rustle from another shrubbery behind it was heard. “Where did you get off to now, mister?”
Another deep and hacking cough betrayed his position, and in an instant, intense teal eyes once more peered into the thick of his hiding spot. His eye twitched. He inhaled deeply. “Ffff--”
“--luttershy kinda gave me the idea.”
“Huh,” remarked Twilight Sparkle. “Well, it is an idea,” she said, looking distant for a moment. Rainbow Dash could practically see her doing research inside her head. “As far as I know, no unicorn has ever made any sort of translation spell for animals. It’s always been other species.”
“Aren’t animals ‘other species’ though?” asked Rainbow, giving a glance to Tank who waited patiently--a quality she herself would never possess if she had anything to say of it--at her side. He sure looked like a different species.
“Well, aside from foreign ponies,” began the purple unicorn, turning to a shelf and beginning to look across the spines of various books, “mostly just sentient species. Something about focus on verbal communications helps a translation spell along with a minimal of effort from the unicorn casting or maintaining it.”
“What kind of others are there spells for? Would any of those help with me talking to Tank?”
“Well, remember the rough way the Diamond Dogs had of speaking?”
Rainbow nodded with a grimace. Their voices and broken language had grated on her nerves the entire time they’d been down there looking for Rarity. Fortunately, the fashionista’s voice had the same effect on the Diamond Dogs.
“Well, Equestrian isn’t their native language, but by their nature as slavers, they picked up enough to give orders. Their actual language--one there is a well-known spell to translate--is very similar to native Draconic, which makes sense because they were one of the first and only species that the Dragons didn’t hunt down for being too close to their territory. They could mine, or have mined for them, the one resource the Dragons could possibly want: Gems!” As she continued her explanation, a pile of books began to form on the nearest surface, stacked neatly. “Anyway, just after the unification of the three pony tribes, Clover the Clever went on a diplomatic mission...”
“...which is most of the reason why there’s a Royal Guard in the first place!” she announced, her accumulated research material now having built a wall between her and the oddly quiet pegasus. “Um...Rainbow?” She leaned out to peer around the bulwark of books.
Rainbow was sitting upright but fully unconscious, snoring lightly. All around her there was a perfect circle worn into the floor from where Tank had been pacing. Twilight cleared her throat loudly.
The pegasus responded with a jolt. “Yaah! No, Spitfire, I swear I didn’t know it was your tail!” Rainbow then seemed to focus, look around, and then wake up in that order. Realizing she was still at the library, she exhaled, though a bit flushed as she wondered how much of that vivid dream she’d given voice to. “Sorry, Twi. So, uh...you think you could, I dunno, adapt any of that for Tank here?”
“Well, it’ll be a challenge, for sure,” Twilight said, looking at the stacks in front of her. Slowly, a most unsettling and determined smile spread across her face. “Fortunately for you two, I like challenges!”
If only understanding Pinkie Pie were this easy! she thought as she looked over her handiwork. Built right into the same harness as his gyro, Tank now sported a remarkably small addition with a large round button in the center. The tortoise looked as pleased as Twilight did with the result, and neither of them seemed to be able to wait to show Rainbow Dash how the project had ended up.
She ascended the steps to the main level of the library, Tank hovering behind her with a fine control of his flying harness. As soon as the door creaked open, Rainbow instantly shut the Daring Do book she was revisiting and rushed over to meet them. “How’d it go, doc? Did it work?”
“It’s done,” replied Twilight Sparkle as Tank set himself down on the floor between the two ponies. “I couldn’t use a simple spell alone to do it, so I improvised.”
“What the hay is all that?” asked Rainbow, looking curiously at the extra baggage Tank now carried on his shell. He’d seemed able to fly still, so it certainly wouldn’t be a bother--after all, this was the same little guy who’d carried her out of a bucking gorge! It looked odd, though.
“It’s my Turtle-slash-Tortoise Translater, or T3 for short,” explained Twilight, sitting on the floor and entering what Rainbow Dash first mistook for another episode of ‘full Twilight Sparkle lecture mode’. “It mixes the best of magic and science to effect a translation that should let you communicate with Tank flawlessly!” Nope, this was a demeanor Rainbow had only witnessed before when this same unicorn reported to Princess Celestia about a major lesson learned. Twice the exuberance, but fortunately, half the duration.
Before it could approach its true form, Rainbow held up a hoof to cut her off and ask the simplest form of the question. “So, you’re saying...Tank can talk now?”
“Technically, yes. It will require your full attention on him to work, though. I haven’t tested it yet, either, I thought I’d let you have that honor. He is your pet, after all,” Twilight reasoned. “All you have to do to turn the T3 on is to push that button on his shell.”
Without delay, Rainbow Dash pressed the button with a hoof. “Hey there, Tank!”
Tank looked up with a smile and replied, in an unnaturally falsetto voice. “Hello!”
The miracle of magic and science that was the ‘T3’ then attempted to translate and re-translate Tank’s simple, singular spoken word, and the resulting feedback loop caused the device to overload.
The resulting explosion leveled the library.