”So yeah, that’s that.” Said Rainbow as the process had been completed. “Don’t worry if you don’t remember it, it’s a side effect or something.” She mumbled as she started to walk towards Sweet Apple Acres once more. She looked back at Mac who hadn’t moved an inch, “are you coming or what?” This broke the trance the stallion had ended up in as he nodded towards her.
As they walked, nothing happened, they didn’t say anything, the wind blew and the trees were whistling. She never said it to her friends and she never could, because it would break her awesomeness level, but she really liked the whistling of the wind, it was calming in a way. Especially now, considering what had happened in the last group of days. She sighed, she was relived, nothing had happened since the whole Marshall incident and that was two days ago. She knew that was a weird statement to make, but it was true. Ever since she had become a vampony, things had kind of exploded, in a sense. The only calm time that had appeared during the last group of days had been when she was knocked out cold! But it was hard for her to measure those days, especially considering that she wasn’t awake.
Rainbow’s calm time stopped as they arrived at the farm. She smiled to herself, not that she really knew why, she just felt like smiling. She nodded at Big Mac, who nodded back and she flew the last short bit to the house. She knocked on the door and was met by Applejack. “Rainbow? What are you doing here?” She asked, not that she minded her friend being here, she was simply curious.
Rainbow made a small laugh and replied, “Nothing much, really. I was going around town and I met your brother.” She made a small gesture towards the stallion who walking down the road towards the farm. “And I decided to follow him here to visit you. You know, ‘cause I felt like it.” She said with a small shrug.
Applejack raised an eyebrow as waved to her brother, who waved back. “I see, good thing too, I wanted to propose something. Or rather, make a suggestion.” Rainbow tilted her head to the side in confusion and looked at Applejack. “Not now, I feel like doing something else first. How about another opportunity at beating me in The Running of the Leaves? Since you missed the real one.” She finished with a smirk.
Rainbow made a small laugh as she nodded in determination. At that moment they had almost made a silent agreement that Rainbow wouldn’t use her newly gained abilities, since it would be extreme cheating. And of course, there would be no foul play, since they were only doing this for fun.
A knock was heard on the library, this was immediately head by Twilight Sparkle who rushed to open it. In front of her stood the magnificent Princess Celestia. Twilight made a weak gesture for her to walk inside. The Princess made an order to her guards to simply guard the door; they would simply be an annoyance if they stayed on the inside. Celestia took a seat as she looked at Twilight, who still stood up and looked rather nervous. “Calm down my student, I am simply here to answer your questions. I don’t understand what you’re so nervous about.” Twilight quickly caught this and sat down in a chair and tried to make herself look just a little bit less nervous.
“I’m sorry; I’m just a little bit jumpy right now. When I sent the letter, I had just seen a very disturbing sight, don’t worry, I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about.” She said as she took a large breath. “I wanted to talk to you about Clover. You apparently know her, how come I haven’t come to know this before now?” Twilight realized that that had sounded really harsh, without meaning to do so; she just hoped her teacher wouldn’t yell at her for it.
Celestia made a small smile as she spoke up, “Yes, I did know Clover; I thought she died a long time ago. But when Luna returned I learned that she was still around during Nightmare Moon. What surprised me the most was what she was doing. She was helping Nightmare Moon. I’ve never got to ask her why. She never seemed to be one who would go against Equestria, if anything; she’s the reason this country even still exists. For, as I said in my letter, she helped me and my sister defeat Discord all those years ago. She’s never mentioned in the stories people have about the event. Our telling simply tells us about how Luna and I came from nowhere and blasted him to stone. This isn’t true. My sister and I came from rather humble beginnings. We were like any other pony in our time. We didn’t even know who Discord was when we were born. Heh, which reminds me, Clover, if she was still alive, would be older than us.” Celestia decided to take a small break to allow Twilight some breathing space.
Twilight simply sat there, amazed at what her mentor was telling her. Clover was older than Celestia? How was that even possible? It seemed like the most absurd notion. Even if Clover was a ghost, it still seemed utterly ridiculous. Twilight blinked. “I have no reason to doubt you, at all, I would never doubt you. But these things are unbelievable, how come you’ve never told anyone about this before?”
Celestia smiled as she closed her eyes, which she quickly opened again. “My dear student, Twilight, I have told someone else about this, with that, I mean Cadence, she needed to know, for obvious reasons.” Twilight nodded as she motioned for the Princess to go on with her story. “Clover was born about eighteen years before us. She lived a peaceful life until a certain thing happened which made her flee from her home. I’m not going to tell you her story; you have to find that out yourself. The next time she came in contact with civilization was through a magic outburst from her horn. It killed her father. The one who found her after that was Star Swirl. Yes, I do mean Star Swirl the Bearded. He had noticed the whole event and decided to train the filly under him. She had showed amazing magic capabilities. Almost like you did before you became my student.
“As years went on, Clover had to find a job to help Star Swirl with keeping their house. They were sharing one. This lead to Clover becoming the personal servant of Princess Platinum. Which, in turn, lead to the six heroes of Hearth's Warming eve to discover the land we now live in. That’s where our story begins. You see, Luna and I never lived before the joining of the tribes. We were born almost exactly after Equestria was born. Our parents had moved to the new capital. They were a unicorn and a pegasus, so they hadn’t exactly been accepted in any other society before. It was a sin to marry somepony of another race. So they moved to Equestria because the race equality had just been established and all the races lived equally.
“I was born a year after that and Luna followed me a year after that. We were your normal everyday ponies. I was a unicorn and Luna was a pegasus, it never bothered us, we were siblings, why would it bother us? When my tenth birthday arrived, our parents took us out to the city to find me something for the day. That’s when I first met Clover. She, out of nowhere came up to me and asked a question. She simply asked for the name of my sister and I, and of course, I replied. She only smiled and then she walked away. When my twelfth birthday arrived, nothing had happened but just the day after, the first sighting of Discord had been made. The incident slowly increased, and soon they started to happen every day. That’s when he took over. Almost as soon as he declared dominance over all ponies, somepony knocked on our door, it was Clover. She said she had a way to save Equestria from Discord and she needed our help. I asked her why, and she simply said to follow her. Our parents apprehended us just before we ran off and asked why we should follow her. She told us her full name and asked for our help. Our parents let us go to follow Clover. That was the last time I ever saw them.”
Celestia took a pause, she was getting slightly teary eyed as she remembered her parents. Twilight didn’t know what to say, she simply sat there with a gaping mouth and looked at Celestia. Of course, she quickly closed her mouth, trying not to disrespect her teacher.
Celestia smiled again, with a small chuckle. “I did promise to tell you everything, so I shall. Clover lead us out of the city and away from Equestria, when we asked her where we were going, she simply said something about seven distinct locations. Six of those would be the Elements of Harmony. I never got to know what happened inside the seventh shrine. Clover simply came out of it and seemed a lot more confident in our abilities to defeat Discord. After we had gotten our hooves on the Elements, our real mother contacted us. And by that, I mean Faust herself. Yes, she’s our real mother. I can’t explain it now, it would take far too long, just know that after we met her, and we became what we are today, as most ponies call it, Alicorns.” As Celestia finished her story, Twilight was unable to say anything, the whole story had come as a shock, and she could only understand that what the Princess had just said would soon lead to the defeat of Discord. “After we defeated him, we were heroes, everypony that saw us, called us heroes. This soon led to all ponies voicing for us to take the reins of the country. Of course, we couldn’t say no, it would have been cruel. And that leads us to now.”
Twilight could only muster up exactly one sentence, “I don’t know what to say…” The Princess made a laugh at her student as Celestia rose from her spot. She walked towards the door and turned towards her student and said one last thing before walking out.
“Most ponies don’t.” And with that, she walked outside. Twilight sat there on the couch for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only ten minutes. After the ten minutes had passed Twilight brought forth lots and lots of papers and started documenting everything she remembered of what the Princess had just said, this was vital information!
And then, there was another knock on the door. Twilight looked up and walked over to it, only to find… “Rainbow Dash?”
As Rainbow Dash and Applejack finished their race -it was a tie- they placed themselves beneath a tree and relaxed. “So what was it that you wanted to talk about?” Asked Rainbow with curiosity, she had been curious even since Applejack first had said something about it.
Applejack smile to herself as she let out a small sigh and spoke, “First, I need to know something, what are you feelings for Twilight?” Applejack could see what was happening between the two, at least around Twilight, it was incredibly hard around Rainbow, especially considering that she was as oblivious as she was.
Rainbow scrunched her face as she replied,”What do you mean, feelings for Twilight? She’s a very good friend that has saved my life many times already. What do you want me to say? I don’t understand.” Rainbow was annoyed, if this was what Applejack was going to talk about, she was soon leaving, and she didn’t want to talk about sappiness.
Applejack sighed to herself with a laugh. “Nah, I expected that to be your answer actually. NO, I simply thought that you should ask her out for dinner, to, you know, thank her for saving your life those times.” This was something Rainbow could! And it was true; she did want to say thanks to Twilight for being so nice to her and saving her life all those times. Twilight had even looked over her when she was in that coma, for the entire week. She practically had to thank her in some way for that help.
Rainbow thought for a second and then she replied, “How do you suppose I do that then? I don’t know how to make food, not good food at least. I’m also really bad at knowing what Twilight would like, I mean; we are not that much alike. The biggest thing between us has to be Daring Do, and there’s nothing I can do with that.” As Rainbow continued to mumble over what she could possible do for Twilight, Applejack made a chuckle.
Applejack shook her head as she spoke, “You don’t need to bring her any place fancy, bring her out here to the farm, I can fix the grub if that’s what’s worrying you, I can even get the two of you a separate table, if you want to, of course.” Applejack her Rainbow Dash moving as she leaned towards the tree.
Rainbow Dash smiled to herself as she looked at Applejack and spoke. “Yeah, I would like that, could you place the table on the hill? I like that spot.” Applejack could only nod with a smile as Rainbow made a smirk. “Well then, I’m going to ask her then, but first, I have to take a shower, I smell right now.” She said with a laugh that Applejack shared with her. And then, came something unexpected for Applejack, Rainbow hugged her, it was short, but it still happened. Rainbow turned away and took to the sky. Before zooming off, she turned to Applejack and said one thing. “Thanks Aj, I can always count on you, can’t I?” Applejack nodded as a smirk adorned her face, Rainbow also made a smirk as she zoomed off towards her house.
Oh, so you’re finally going to ask her out on a date? Isn’t that nice? I thought you would be too chicken to do something like that.
Oh please, not you again, I dislike talking to you, you should know that by now. Rainbow thought as she landed on the porch of her cloud house. She opened the door and quickly went for the shower.
I am being completely serious here, and yes, I know you dislike it, that’s why I’m doing it, wasn’t that obvious enough? I thought it was. Anyway, I just wanted to say congratulations for achieving some kind of normal social standing. What you had before could only be called boring and slow and maybe just a little bit egocentric.
And of course, you just had to use a word I have no idea what it means, thank you sooo much, you inconsiderate ghost. I don’t like you, please go. And no, this is not a date, it’s a cool meal between very good friends and one of them want to thank the other one for being there for her and saving her life at multiple occasions. Nothing more, nothing less, so please, shut up and go away. Rainbow thought aggressively as the hot water washed over her.
You know I can’t go away. Okay, I can, but I don’t want to, or rather, I have no good reason to go and do something else. It’s fun to sit here and annoy you to no end. I actually want to see this thing through. Even if I’m not going to talk when the whole thing plays out, I am still going to be here, watching, from both sides, so I will know what both of you are thinking, at the same time. How does that make you feel?
Rainbow put shampoo in mane as she replied. Bad, so very bad, I hate you, please go away… I know you won’t do that, but still. It makes me feel uncomfortable; of course, I have felt uncomfortable all the time since I first learned that you can practically walk through my mind without me being able to stop you, at all. So yeah, I hate you, that is my answer to that question. She thought as she grunted.
You are so colorful today with the insults aren’t you? I like that. Still though, I know you’re not angry at me, because you can’t be angry at me, I still find that funny. It’s like the annoyance part of you have completely taken over from where anger left. It’s fun to see you evolve, so to speak. But yeah, you are soon finished with your shower, therefore, I am going to shut up now and watch. Oh, and don’t forget, dangers are lurking behind every corner.
The water stopped and Rainbow cleaned herself with a towel as she started to yell into her mind. What are you talking about? What dangers? And why did you say it in such a weird way? Of course, there was no answer, which annoyed Rainbow to no end, Clover did say that she was going to leave, but it still angered her. Why was she even being so cryptic? What did she even mean by it? Or maybe, she was just trying to lure her to do something stupid? Yeah, that was probably what it was.
As Rainbow finished cleaning herself, she walked outside and took off towards the library. She let her mane blow in the air, it was this way that she usually styled her mane, it always made itself the same way that she wanted it to. Not that she really cared all that much about it; at least it looked better than what Rarity would have her have. She didn’t even want to think about the weird hair that pony could create. Especially not with Rainbow’s awesome rainbow mane and tail.
Rainbow landed in front of the library and took a large breath as she knocked on the door. It opened and Twilight looked at her and said, “Rainbow Dash? What are you doing here?”
Rainbow was surprised by the look of the unicorn, she looked incredibly stressed and Rainbow had no idea why, but she had to ignore it to ask the question. Rainbow glanced away as she started to talk. “I wanted to thank you for saving me all those times, so I wanted to ask if you wanted to have dinner with me.” Rainbow Dash didn’t get an oral reply, instead, Twilight just hugged her, for a really, really long time.
In a certain bakery, a certain white pegasus looked at a certain pink earth pony, who looked back. The two for them gasped as the pink one started to shout. “This is so exiting, my date senses are tingling, I wonder who it could be!” The pink one shouted with extreme enthusiasm.
The white one started yelling right after that. “I know! Mine is too!” And the two of them gasped even louder, and suddenly, without warning, the two of them were no longer in the same bakery.
Mr. Cake, who had overheard their little exchange of words, sighed to himself as he muttered, “I hope whoever’s going to that date is ready for what is about to happen.” He said as he walked up the stairs.