Epiphany
NinesTempest
"The last one!" Said Rainbow Dash, as she easily kicked away a cloud out of the sky. The blue-furred and rainbow-maned pegasus grinned at her friend, Fluttershy. With a yellow coat and wings and pink mane, she clapped as loud as she could. Rainbow Dash strained to hear it.
"Wow, that was faster than even 10 seconds!" She said, the excitement in her voice very clear, if anypony could hear her.
Rainbow looked around the sky. The sky was bright and blue, the warmth of the mid-afternoon sun flowing over all of Ponyville that afternoon. Rainbow Dash had just finished clearing the skies of all the clouds, leaving a clear day for the Ponyville below. She didn’t respond for almost a minute, lost in the beauty of the clear blue sky. She turned finally, nodding. "Well, duh, there were only like 8 clouds today. I didn't really try to do it fast because there was, you know, no reason to."
"Well, I don't know, I'd think you'd want to make the town look nice on Twilight's Birthday!" Fluttershy said. "She's been here for a bit over a year now!"
"I know how long she's been here, Fluttershy. I wish she had just told us she had her birthday so close to when she got here. I swear that pinkie almost cried when she heard we'd missed her firth birthday in Ponyville." She sighed. "Besides, I could have cleared the skies that day almost twice as fast!"
Twilight Sparkle, who had not been used to the idea of friends when she first arrived, hadn't ever thought of having a birthday party. The day came and went, and she never bothered mentioning it. By sheer coincidence, Applejack had asked her days later, and upon hearing the date, then told the rest of Twilight's friends about it. Since then, all of them had agreed to never mention it until the next year, to plan a surprise party for her.
"Oh, I know you could!" Said Fluttershy. Without warning, she felt something nudge her flank. She squeaked in meek fear and dashed up to and behind Rainbow Dash, looking down where she had felt something in the sky.
"... That's a cloud, Fluttershy." Indeed, a cloud had simply floated a little bit due to some wind, and nudged the timid pony.
She meeped, simply trembling in place.
"I think you know what clouds are, and why they can't hurt you. Hey, why don't you try and just break this one!" Rainbow darted off to the cloud and laid down on it. She was close to the edge, the body of the cloud exposed so that a moderately strong impact would easily dissipate it. "Come on, it'll be easy!" She swung down a hoof, patting the spot where Fluttershy should try to kick it.
Fluttershy hovered down slowly, landing on the cloud. She moved it around, as if looking inside of it for something. She patted the middle of the cloud a little, and hovered up a bit again. She took a deep breath, and dived at the cloud, back hooves first. She fell right through it, the cloud vanishing and leaving Rainbow to have to rely on her wings again to stay in the air. She stopped herself only after several long seconds, not getting anywhere near the ground, but definitely going farther than the cloud. She floated back up and gave Rainbow Dash a silly grin. "That was... cool." She said, her excitement once again hidden in the volume of her voice.
"Hehe." Chuckled Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy wasn't normally this energetic, and the fact that she decided to try and... 'attack' a cloud without protest meant her confidence was definitely building. She didn't seem like it, but getting a 'way to go' or a 'yay' out of her was more than Rainbow Dash had ever been expecting. Of course, she should realize that once the plane of their relationship changed, how she'd act would change too. "Okay Fluttershy, I'm going off now. I'm going to check in on Pinkie Pie about the party. Remember, we don't tell Twilight about it. As far as she knows, we don't even know her birthday is today! We'll meet up before the party at your place, right?"
Fluttershy nodded. She'd grown accustomed to the visits from Rainbow Dash, and even now looked forward to them. "That would be... nice." She smiled at her.
Rainbow Dash floated over to her, and rubbed her face in Fluttershy's mane, giggling. "Thank you." She gave Fluttershy a lazy smile.
Her small smile was comforting to Rainbow Dash as she pulled away slightly. "Oh, it's no problem Rainbow Dash." She started floating away in the direction of her home. "I'll see you later then!"
Rainbow Dash waved as she darted off toward Sugar Cube Corner, where Pinkie Pie lived and worked in her family bakery. Fluttershy, alone now, grew a somber expression as she slowly started to fly to her own home. She kept thinking about Rainbow Dash, and how every day they had met, she would say thank you when they were done hanging out, no matter what. She had been a lot nicer to her lately, especially since the Equestria's Best Young Fliers Competition at Cloudsdale, about a year previous.
She started the trip home, gliding over the Everfree Forest, and as she went, her thoughts drfited back to that day, two months ago where both her and Rainbow Dash's life changed.
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It was a bright day, the mid-summer sun keeping everything warm, almost sweltering. Rainbow Dash had decided to move some clouds over Ponyville as to cool it down, but still have plenty of sunshine on the city. Twilight was busy giving Rarity some magic lessons, and Applejack had been home with Pinkie Pie, teaching her about certain apple pasteries. The only who had been outside that day was Fluttershy, it was her voice that startled Rainbow Dash from a nap ontop of the clouds.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!" Fluttershy flew through the air right past Rainbow Dash like a missile, the shriek hitting her ears about a second later, the amazingly high pitch almost stunning her, leaving her with a headache. She shook it off, regained her composure, and looked to see what had caused her friend fry so frantically.
She saw a Dragon. It hadn't been as large as the adult dragon who wanted to take his sleep in Equestria, so close to Ponyville, but it was probably something close to a dragon who had just become an adult, or a teenager. He was almost twenty feet tall, his scales a dark green, and underbelly an almost golden yellow. He zoomed past Rainbow Dash, roaring after Fluttershy. That sound was so loud it actually destroyed the cloud Dash had been using as a bed. Without thinking twice, she darted after the dragon, soon passing it with ease and catching up to Fluttershy. She had no idea Fluttershy could fly so fast.
Fluttershy turned her head to see Rainbow Dash next to her, pumping her wings at a high speed to keep up with her. Fear was pronounced everywhere on Fluttershy's body, sweating profusely with a panicked look. Rainbow Dash knew this was tiring her out, and knew that if she delayed too long, she might freeze up out of fear. Fluttershy gave Rainbow Dash a pleading look, and Rainbow Dash's heart screamed at her. Stop the Dragon.
"I'll. Stop. Him!" Yelled Rainbow Dash. She signaled for Fluttershy to keep going straight, and the shy pegasus nodded. Dash veered up and started going about a 45 degree angle upwards, eventually falling behind both of them. When she had reached a height where she almost found breathing difficult, even for a pegasus, she dived straight at the dragon. She tried to anticipate where he'd be at his current trajectory, and aimed there. As long as the dragon didn't change altitude, hitting him should be fine.
Her wings pushed the air by her harder than she had thought possible, faster than she ever had before. The air pressure began to build up in front of her, but she didn't even notice. All she could think of was Fluttershy, and saving her. The air began to visibly bend in seconds, the mach cone slowly forming around her body, and before anypony even saw, she had preformed a Sonic Rainboom for the third time in the history of Equestria.
Her calculations had been off; the boost from the sonic boom wasn't something she had predicted. She could tell that she was about to go between the dragon and Fluttershy, so she tried to maneuver downwards a bit to make up for it. She lost all control at that speed, and instead of steepening her angle of descent, she went straight down on top of the dragon, forelegs first, hitting the dragon's back and bringing him down with her, before he even realized what was happening. I’m not stopping now! She thought. Fluttershy needs saving! Why it was after her, or why she had angered it somehow in the first place, didn't matter.
Their crash into the ground was spectacular. The cloud of dust, dirt, and even debris went into the air almost a hundred feet. Fluttershy had seen the flash of light from the Sonic Rainboom, and stopped to look behind her and see Rainbow Dash take the dragon to the ground. She was panting as she slowly floated to the ground; she had never flown so fast, but she had known that stopping probably would have cost her her life. The smoke cleared, and the scene almost made her squeal. The dragon lay unconscious on his stomach, a small crater having formed, and Rainbow Dash was just getting up, standing on his back just next to the spines. She wobbled a bit, and then fell over, sliding down the dragon's side to where Fluttershy had landed. She walked over, still trying to regain some strength, and grabbed at the tuff of skin on the back of Dash's neck, dragging her away from the dragon. Oh thank goodness, she's alive, thought Fluttershy, after a quick feel of her chest and neck. Then she noticed that her left foreleg was bent at a weird angle, one that Fluttershy didn't think was possible.
She started to panic, thinking about how to get back to Ponyville. We came from... the other side of the dragon, but how far did we fly? Rainbow Dash had gone for almost three to four seconds in the sonic boom before hitting the dragon, so there was no telling how far they had traveled. Many many miles, was all she could think.
She examined Rainbow Dash again. Her wings were okay, and her other legs seemed in order. It was only the left foreleg that had been broken, but that was still a problem. Flying quickly at all would hurt that leg way too much, and Fluttershy was sure that Rainbow Dash was not used to injuries this severe. She decided to try and grab the back of Rainbow Dash's neck and drag her to the nearby forest. They weren't anywhere near Everfree, but this place was still where rain and growth was totally natural, and animals thrived. She wasn't familiar with this specific part of the forest, but she had been to a similar area, on the opposite end of Ponyville from the Everfree Forest, and she knew it would be safe.
The moment she started to drag Rainbow Dash, she heard a moan. Her body went stiff as she looked to the dragon, who was staring to stir. He turned over on his back, almost yelling in pain as he did. He looked to Fluttershy, and huffed. He started to flap his wings, wincing with every firm swing downwards. He floated over them and then behind Fluttershy, leaving Rainbow Dash the furthest away from the Dragon.
Fluttershy could see that he was in pain, but she wasn't sure if kindness was the safest way to repay somepony who had tried to kill you. The Dragon smirked at her as she cowered, lowering her head and raising her flank in pure fear, trembling, her legs almost giving away to her petite weight. "You... do you remember me?"
Fluttershy nodded slowly, and sqeaked. She knew the Dragon indeed. Not by name though; she had known a relative.
"As soon as I knew it was you; playing with those birds, it could only have been you. You always loved animals. You even loved my brother." His voice was loud, as it threatened to rip Fluttershy from the ground she was cowering over. He looked at Rainbow Dash. He moaned in pain again as he did, and gave a look to Fluttershy that she could only describe as... appreciative. An almost relieved smile. "It's good to see that you have friends who can protect what you never could."
"I'm... imsosorry... I'm... sorry..." She got out. The Dragon looked at her inquisitively. She backed up, almost tripping over Rainbow Dash.
"It's been almost 17 years since I heard what happened, dear Fluttershy." He said. "I'd come to accept what happened. But today, I was... very angry seeing you in the clouds; I wasn’t thinking, clouded one moment by that... meager gift Your gift to me... a bouquet of flowers, felt insulting, trying to compare his death to something you hadn’t even intended for me. However, your friend's bravery seems to have pacified me, if the wounds he inflicted haven't-"
"Um... Rainbow Dash is a... she... eep." She said, still scared more than she ever had been before. She wasn't sure what had made her interrupt him.
"The females among your race are formidable." He said. "I must return to my path, for my destination is a great distance away." He looked at her soothingly, and that only scared her more. "Seeing you today... reminds me why I long since forgave you. It couldn’t have been your fault." His last statement had a haze of resentment, as he started to fly once again. He winced with each flap, as he eventually soared into the sky, flying back in the direction of what she figured was Ponyville.
She exhaled. Her body was soaking in sweat, her legs trembling. Her fear subsided as the adrenaline in her veins finally started fading. The entire time she had been ready to pick up Rainbow Dash and fly. Fly as fast and as far as she could, no matter how impossible it would have been for her to pick up a fully-grown mare and fly with her. She still felt like she had to, no matter the futility. Her legs buckled, as she fell down on top of Rainbow Dash. The miniature-crater was behind her, almost 20 feet away. The brick road was cracked everywhere, the grass flattened from the shockwave in the surrounding area. She was breathing heavily now, almost hyperventilating. Lying there, she closed her eyes, and tried to calm herself. She thought of Angel at home, of the other birds and animals in her house. She thought of her friends, and of Ponyville. Of the adventures they had had since Twilight Sparkle's arrival, and restoring Luna from her Mare in the Moon state. It all seemed surreal to think back on it. She had barely known many of the ponies in Ponyville, and really only interacted with them during the Winter Wrap Up and other yearly holidays. Before Twilight, she had only really known Rainbow Dash, from Cloudsdale, and the rest of their group, but only barely; even Rarity she didn’t interact with much. When Twilight arrived... she had gotten to know so many of the ponies in Ponyville, it made her realize how good her friends were.
Her breathing normalized now, she looked to Rainbow. The mare had not woken up yet, and it had been several minutes since the impact. With slightly more energy now, she started to drag Rainbow Dash to the forest. She hoped to set up a splint and find some water or medicine for her injured friend.