The Rainbow Road
Fanfic by Englishwitch
Rarity lounged on her long couch, enjoying the comforts of her home away from home. Seriously, who brought a tent the size of a house camping?
Applejack was teaching Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom the best way to roast marshmallows over the camp fire.
Rainbow Dash arrived at the camp site in her usual modest fashion; flying up high into the air over the clearing and dropping the load of sticks and logs she’d been collecting for the fire. Then diving down, dodging around the falling lumber and stopping herself less than a foot away from the ground. Eyes closed and a smile on her face she stretched out her hooves and caught the wood down to the last twig. She then unceremoniously dropped her load onto the firewood pile.
Scootaloo beamed up at her idol, her eyes twinkling in the firelight. There weren’t words to describe the awesomeness she had just witnessed.
Everypony else hadn’t even glanced in Dash’s direction.
“Thanks Sugarcube,” Applejack didn’t even raise her eyes away from her browning marshmallow. “That should do for the night.” She took the bag of marshmallows in her hoof. “You wanna do some roastin’?”
Dash reached out to take the bag but then pulled her hoof back. Scootaloo noticed her face was slightly flushed. “In a sec.” Dash nodded. “I just gotta use the bushes.” She glided into the nearest bush and sat down behind it. Her head was still sticking up over the foliage.
Rarity cringed and bit her lip to stop a scream. “Rainbow!” She snapped. “It’s bad enough we don’t have proper facilities in this place but for the love of Celestia you should go further from camp.”
Rainbow cocked her head, an eyebrow raising up. “Why? One bush is like another out here.”
Applejack pulled her roasted marshmallow out of the flames and looked over to Dash. “I gotta agree with Rarity on this one. The outhouse shouldn’t be so close to where we’re sleepin’. Don’t matter if it’s number one or number two,” She had to pause for a second as the three fillies giggled loudly. “Come mornin’ it’ll all stink somthin’ terrible. Go find another bush Dash, a hundred paces at least.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “Fine, I-” She stopped suddenly and a blush rose up on her cheeks. “Too late.”
Over the crackle of the fire the ponies heard the quiet sound of liquid being poured onto the ground.
“Oh for goodness sake!” Rarity jumped off her sofa and ran into the tent, slamming the door behind her. How she managed to slam the cloth flap like a door nopony could figure out.
“And she’s never coming back.” Rainbow grinned sheepishly, hoping humour would break the awkwardness of the situation.
From within the tent came a grunt of frustration. “Barbarians! All of you!” the prissy pony screamed.
Rainbow finally finished relieving herself, wiped her plot on a couple of leaves and stepped back, using all the dignity that she had remaining.
Scootaloo’s attention was caught by movement in the corner of her eye. She glanced at the bush where rainbow had been peeing and saw a liquid tricking across the dirt. At least it was heading away from the camp. She wouldn’t have given urine —not even the urine of her idol— anything more than the briefest of glances, except something else had grabbed her attention.
“What the buck?” Everypony turned to see what had startled her. Even Rarity made an appearance on the balcony from the upper level of her tent.
The firelight had illuminated the stream of urine and everypony saw that it wasn’t the normal colour a golden shower was named for, but a bright shimmering mess of multi-coloured liquid. It looked like-
“Is that liquid rainbow?” Rarity asked from her balcony. She looked to Rainbow Dash, who was shrinking down on her haunches, her face bright pink with embarrassment.
Sweetie Belle looked to her friends and then to the adults. “Liquid rainbow?”
Scootaloo finally managed to tear herself away from the unusual polychromatic pee. “You know, what weather ponies use to make rainbows.”
Rarity shuddered, her lip quivered and her eye twitched. She was on the verge of a full-blown breakdown. “Rainbow....please tell me...rainbows are NOT made with Pegusi... urine.” she had to choke out the last words.
“My pee ain’t that colour...colours.” Scootaloo said, loud enough for Rarity to hear. The adult mare swayed dangerously as she felt light headed.
“they aren’t.” Rainbow mumbled too quietly for anypony to properly hear the words.
Applejack put a hoof behind her ear and leaned —ever so slightly— closer to Rainbow. “Say that again Sugarcube.”
Rainbow had to cover her face with her hooves. She was burning up from embarrassment. “Rainbow’s aren’t made from Pegasus pee,” Rarity gave out a very relieved sigh. “and Pegusi pee isn’t that colour. Just mine.”
Many words flew at her from everypony, Rainbow didn’t know who said what but she managed to pick out three words.
“What?”
“How?”
“Why?”
There were other words too but they all revolved around the same theme.
Rainbow wished she could sink into the earth. How was she ever doing to live this down?”
Rarity emerged from her tent and took her seat at her sofa again. As horrendous as the subject was the sheer bizarreness of it had caught her curiosity. “Why darling? Is it some kind of medical condition?”
Dash continued to hide behind her hooves. “Well...kinda.”
She risked a peek and saw their all their eyes were fixated on her. There was no avoiding this. They wouldn’t leave her alone unless she explained. She had hoped never to tell this to anypony.
“Okay,” she grunted. “but you all have to Pinkie Promise never to tell anypony else without my say so.”
One by one the group of ponies performed the actions of the famous, unbreakable Pinkie Promise.
Rainbow sighed and stared into the fire. It was some moments before she spoke again. She’d never told this to anypony else, she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Well...” she said after some time. “have you ever wondered why my mane is rainbow?” She flicked her hair for emphasis. “Most ponies have one mane colour, some have two. I’m the only one with a multi coloured mane.”
“Hair dye.” Sweetie Belle said.
“Yep.” Agreed Apple Bloom.
Rarity shrugged her shoulders. “I always assumed it was just some very rare occurrence, something genetic. Princess Cadenza has three colours in her mane.”
“I thought it was just because you were so awesome.” Scootaloo said shamelessly. “Just one or two colours isn’t enough for Rainbow Dash, you had to have them all.”
Rainbow managed a smirk. “Well, you’re all wrong. It’s not hair dye and it’s not genetics. I wasn’t born with these mane and tail colours though. My mane...” She had to stop for a minute to try and remember. It had been so long. “There was an accident when I was little. I mean really little. I wasn’t a foal anymore but I was still too small for most ponies to think of me as a filly. Toddler, that’s the word.”
Her eyes widened as memories she hadn’t thought about in years started to surface. When some of them reared their heads she found herself wondering how she could have forgotten them.
“My name wasn’t Rainbow Dash back then...I chose that name for myself later...it was-
...***...
Dewdrop held onto her mother’s mane tightly. Even though they weren’t that far off the cloud-ground and their speed was perfectly average.
“Almost there honey.” Sunny Skies said to the little filly. She smiled and pointed. “Look, there’s the weather factory where mommy works.”
Dewdrop’s large eyes widened and a smile broke out on her face. Modelled out the clouds, many pillared towers and Parthenon-like buildings made of all the different types of clouds. On one side of the building were angry looking black storm clouds; charging the air with lightning, on the other wide of the building was the biggest rainbow Dewdrop had ever seen. It reached right into a building where something must happen to it because a river of liquid rainbow poured out of the other side.
“Pretty.” the little toddler gasped.
“Yes,” Sunny agreed with her daughter. “Very pretty.”
Sunny Skies banked her wings and flew away from the main complex of the weather factory. Dewdrop twisted her head, trying to keep the building in sight for as long as possible.
Sunny flew toward a large round tower; the main office complex of the weather factory’s admin block. There was always a shocking amount of paperwork attached to making weather.
Dewdrop didn’t like this building so much, it was boring compared to the one with the rain clouds and rainbows.
Sunny landed and trotted inside, greeted almost instantly by a pony with a light grey coat and a mane that was —only just— off white.
“Great Scott.” the mare nodded at him. “what’s going on?”
“It’s not great Ma’am.” Scott flustered. “One of the new prototype storm clouds – the ones with the in-built wind, got loose from the testing ground and crashed into the snowflake room. It sucked up all the ice and now it’s popping out huge hailstones.”
“How huge?” Sunny asked. She was half distracted by lifting Dewdrop off her back. Scott pointed to a tennis ball sized sphere of white ice on the floor next to him.
“About that huge.”
Sunny Skies nodded. “Now I see why you called me in on my day off.”
Great Scott nodded but he wasn’t listening. His attention was drawn to the little toddler on the cloud floor. She had a sky blue coat, big magenta eyes and a mane of rich sky blue with stripes of light ice blue, almost white. “Is this little Dewdrop? My she’s grown.” He smiled at the little filly, who was turning shy and trying to hide behind her mothers foreleg. “You probably don’t remember me little one. I saw you a few days after you were born. When your mummy was showing you off around the office.” He looked up at Sunny Skies. “She’s adorable.”
Sunny managed a smile. “Yes, she is. But we need to focus and deal with this hailstorm before we have to cancel winter.” She scooped up Dewdrop again and carried the little filly on her wing. “We’ll have to put her in my office for now.” She smiled down at her little one and gave her a loving kiss on the forehead. “You’ll be okay for a few minutes won’t you Dewy?”
“Yes mama.” The foal beamed up at her.
The two ponies and one filly hurried through the building to Sunny Skies office.
The office was a testament to function over form. Sunny had little in the way of personal effects except a framed photograph of her family on the desk. The desk was long and wooden, enchanted by unicorn magic to stop it sinking through the clouds. The photo was almost lost among two huge piles of paperwork, one sitting on the IN tray, the other in the OUT tray. One whole wall was dominated by a rank of filing cabinets. There were a couple of chairs for visitors but the place was otherwise empty.
Sunny placed Rainbow on the floor. It wasn’t ideal for a filly, there was nothing for her to do or to play with. Why hadn’t she at least grabbed a colouring book for her daughter before rushing here? She trotted over to the desk, grabbed several sheets of paper and a couple of pencils. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing.
“You be a good girl for mommy, Dewdrop. Draw me a nice picture okay?”
The tiny pegasus beamed up at her. “ ‘kay mommy.”
“I’ll be back soon.” Sunny trotted out of the door. “Okay, Scott, what we need to do it-” then the door closed and Dewdrop couldn’t hear her mother any more.
The toddler scribbled a messy portrait of her mother onto the paper. Her mom had asked for a picture and she wanted to do as she was asked.
Quickly though her resolve faded. The pencil made a boring monochrome picture and she had no crayons to make it look better. Even one crayon would have added some pleasing colour to the dark scribble.
With a huff of frustration Dewdrop tossed the pencil aside and decided to look around the office for something more interesting. The room was huge and full of things out of her reach. Her wings fluttered; buzzing like a bees, but they weren’t strong enough to lift her. Some deep instinct she wasn’t mature enough to understand told her she used to be able to fly back when she was a little foal, smaller, lighter and her wings had been large compared to her body size.
She tried to climb into one of the big chairs in front of the desk. She managed to get onto her back hooves but then overbalanced and fell backwards onto the cloud floor. Rolling back onto her front Dewdrop came to the conclusion that this room was no fun. She wanted to go home where all her toys were. She needed to find her mommy, then she could go home.
There was just one problem, the door was closed and the door-handle was far out of her reach. Dewdrop tried jumping up and fluttering her wings, she tried pushing on the door, perhaps hoping that it would just open for her, she searched every corner of the room hoping that there might be another exit somewhere. But there wasn’t and she finally had to admit she was stuck there until mommy came back and that could be, like, forever.
Dewdrop leaned against the wall, feeling the soft cloud tickle the feathers of her wing. Soft cloud? “Silly Dewdrop.” She laughed at herself. She pushed herself against the cloud wall, it gave. She pushed harder and the clouds parted for her, making a small opening into the corridor. She had no idea where her mother could be in this huge place. She would have to search for her. “Imma essplorer.” She laughed to herself as she trotted off in a randomly chosen direction.
...***...
The whole building was boring. The few rooms she managed to look in because their doors weren’t closed were full of ponies doing boring paperwork. There was no sign of her mommy yet.
There were interesting noises coming ahead, through an archway. Interesting could mean fun. Dewdrop sped her pace.
She emerged on a viewing gantry on the edge of a huge room. She had found her way into the Rainbow Production room. It was a circular amphitheatre with many columns and a large hole in the roof. In the middle of the floor was a big circular pool full of pure liquid rainbow. The bright colours swam and mixed together in a never ending, almost living, explosion of colour. Dewdrop stared, leaning over the edge of the gantry to get a better look at the shimmering pool. There was a channel running out of the pool which flowed to the other end of the amphitheatre to a second, smaller, pool, in the centre of which sat a large glass crystal. The liquid which pooled around the crystal rose up as a rainbow coloured steam, which condensed over the crystal and formed a rainbow stream; the type of rainbow which every pony knew so well. The stream flowed upwards, out of a wide opening in the wall and out of sight.
Teams of Pegasus ponies in white coats and hard hats were flying around the large open skylight, moving fluffy white clouds into position. The clouds, already the brightest, purest white Dewdrop had ever seen, seemed to glow even brighter as they absorbed the sunlight. The pegusi would then squeeze the cloud, wringing it out like one would wring out a damp cloth. What poured out of squeezed cloud was pure sunlight mixed and diffused with water; concentrated liquid rainbow.
Dewdrop leaned closer to see the polychromatic liquid drip down into the pool. Drip was the right word for it. From a cloud the size of a pony a pegasus could only extract about a glass of liquid rainbow. Six ounces at best. All these drips and drops pooled and collected in the central pool and flowed down to the crystal and became a true rainbow, flowing off to somewhere. She leaned over a little bit more, trying to see where the pegusi were getting the beautiful white clouds from.
Dewdrop felt her hooves slip from under her as she overbalanced. She screamed as she fell from the gantry. Her wings fluttered faster than they ever had before but they didn’t even slow her down. Pegusi flinched, frozen in place with shock and surprise as this tiny filly had appeared from nowhere and was falling down through the air.
SPLASH
Dewdrop landed in the rainbow pool. It as much deeper than it had looked from above and she couldn’t swim. She screamed and cried, her limbs thrashing insanely, her wings fluttering uselessly. Her mad movements kept her head above the liquid, but only just, too often she dipped beneath the surface, accidentally swallowing the foul tasting liquid as she continued to scream. It burned her whole body as she swallowed.
The flow caught her and she was rushing down the channel toward the prism. One pony snapped to his senses and flew after her but it was too late. As Dewdrop reached the prism she found herself rising up out of the liquid, riding on the rainbow stream. She felt it brush over her, even tickling her body. Her sobs eased for a second...then she got caught in the rainbow stream.
The pegasus who’d flown to her rescue found his hooves grabbing at thin air as the little filly shot off at high speed along the stream.
Dewdrop wailed as she flew through the air, soaring on the beam of coloured light.
Had she been in a calmer state of mind she would have noticed the many amazing things in her surroundings. Like the whole of the weather factory below her, she may have even noticed the snowflake room where her mother was battling with the rogue cloud. She would have seen the colours of the rainbow around her brighten and strengthen as they absorbed more sunlight on their way to their destination.
Dewdrop noticed none of these things, she was too busy being terrified.
Another building was ahead of her. She recognised it as the main building of the weather factory her mother had shown her as they had arrived. There had been rain clouds on one side of the building and a rainbow on the other. She was flying on that rainbow now. She was heading to the rainbow factory where the rainbows were finished and stored before they were used across Equestria. She was going to be turned into rainbows!
Her screams grew louder as the course of the river dove downwards and her speed increased. She felt the wind distorting her tiny face as she moved faster than she ever had in her life. She was racing toward a wall, a solid cloud wall. She covered her eyes. She couldn’t watch.
She didn’t see her tiny form fly through an opening in the wall, following the rainbow stream.
SPLASH
She was under the surface of a rainbow pool again. Dewdrop felt the burning sensation throughout her tiny body again as more of the liquid rushed down her throat. She had been screaming, now she was inhaling.
Her head popped above the surface again, she caught the briefest of glances of a shocked looking pegasus, her jaw agape. The Dewdrop was pulled over a tiny waterfall —or whatever you would call a fall of liquid rainbow— and she fell a second pool below.
In the main rainbow factory room the rainbow stream was condensed again into a liquid, churned by falls through seven pools, then stored in huge cloud vats until it was needed.
The tiny filly kicked, her wings fluttered, her forelegs waved in all directions as she moved through the second pool, the flow of the liquid already pulling her to the second waterfall. A paddle was thrust into the liquid, perhaps a pegasus had done so in the hope Dewdrop would grab it and be pulled free. Instead what happened was the paddle cracked her over the back of the head and she fell down the second fall in a daze.
When she fell into the third pool pegusi were fighting around each other to try and grab her. A pair of hooves managed to grip her but her dazed body was a soaked and limb dead weight in his hooves and she slipped right through.
The tiny filly fell through the air again as she went over the third falls.
One quick pegusi dove into place and grabbed Dewdrop before she landed in the fourth pool .
“Is she okay?”
“Where did she come from?”
“The poor filly.”
Dewdrop barely heard anything that the crowd was saying to her. She was burning up after swallowing what felt like a gallon of the burning liquid rainbow. The pegasis who’d caught her lay her down on the cool cloud floor. She lay there, doubled over in the foetal position as the fire continued to burn.
“Oh Celestia I think she swallowed some rainbow.”
Dewdrops eyes were screwed up tight with the pain. She didn’t see what the other ponies saw, her whole body was flashing different colours, sometimes solid single colours, then mixes of colours. Shifting, she was shimmering like the rainbow lake she’d been pulled out of.
Dewdrop was so out of it with the pain she barely even recognised the voice of Sunny Skies, her mother.
“Dewdrop. Dew? My little one. Oh dear Celestia, what happened? Somepony get HELP!”
Dewdrops eyes snapped open. The form of Sunny Skies came into focus before her. “Ma maaaaaagggggghhhhhhhh”
Dewdrop retched and vomited up a thick multi-coloured liquid all over her mothers hooves. The first wave passed but a second was close behind. If anything it was more painful than the first. Dewdrop started sobbing between her heaves.
A third wave of polychromatic vomit blew out of her and the tiny collapsed in a limp ball on the floor, covered in sweat, tears and brightly coloured chunks.
Sunny Skies wiped her hooves off on her own white coat and picked up her daughter. Tears of her own were flowing down her face. Her little Dewdrop was still shifting between colours they were fading, her own coat colour was starting to come through, but she was still shifting.
...***...
Rainbow Dash sighed.
“When I woke up in was in Cloudsdale central hospital. According to my mom I’d been out all night.” She looked around the group, her friends and fillies, they were staring with rapt attention. “They don’t know how much liquid rainbow I’d swallowed but it had...well, you can see the side effects. My mane and tail used to be midnight blue and ice blue, they changed to this and they never changed back. My coat used to be deep sky blue, it’s only a shade or two lighter now, but it’s noticeable. Even my eyes had changed. Mom says they were a bright magenta, now they’re a dark rose.
“Other things changed too, you saw my....urine,” she used the fancier word for Rarity’s benefit. “and I had a colt-friend in high school who said that when we kissed I always tasted spicy.” She started shuffling on her log seat uneasily. “And if I ever have kids, the doctors don’t know if they’ll turn out....tainted, like me.” She indicated her mane
An uneasy silence fell over them. The only sound was the noise of the slowly dying fire.
Rarity was the one to break it. “My word, Rai- Dewdrop?”
Rainbow shook her head. “When I was a little older, not long before I was going to start school, I decided to change my name.” She managed a smile as the nostalgia came over her.
“I guess I’d turned into a pretty awesome little filly by then. And I wanted my name to be as awesome, special and unique as I was. So before I went to school and everypony started knowing me as Dewdrop I sat up all night and thought up a new, more awesome, 20% cooler name. I had a Rainbow mane and I was awesomely fast, so I eventually came up with Rainbow Dash.
“I flat-out insisted that my parents call me that. I wouldn’t respond to anything else. I guess it was like a nickname at first but as soon as I was old enough I had it officially changed. My name is Rainbow Dash now.”
A second uneasy silence fell over the gang. Exactly how were you supposed to respond when your friend told you the story of how they gained their unique feature by way of an industrial accident.
Scootaloo seemed to have the answer, “Is your poop rainbow coloured too?”
Rarity jumped off her sofa again. “OH FOR THE LOVE OF CELESTIA!!!” She stormed off into her tent. Everypony else laughed loudly.
Rainbow Dash tossed more wood onto the fire. “Okay, enough of the reminiscing. Who’s up for an awesomely terrifying ghost story?”