Your first mistake was totally your fault. You had foolishly forgotten this was not a pegasus town where most flew high in the air. No, most of this town was mostly earth ponies. This meant you were met with far too many obstacles as you zoomed only two inches from the ground, several times you lost track of your quarry and only caught up to her when she gave you a hint with a whistle, as to why she’d even give you that you were not sure. However out in the open you were not too skilled, you were bad with turns and usually made sharp cuts thanks to your hooves touching the ground or a cloud, something absent for the most part thanks to the local weather team. Going in a straight line no one, pony or griffin, could move faster than you besides Lightning Dust. It was how you remained the best at any local games of Turbulence Tag.
These ponies you had to avoid were becoming more numerous as you continued your pursuit. Did Rainbow realize why you stuck to the ground? Or was she just trying to force you to come at her in her own element? Either way you had to avoid it as long as possible as you dodged around a counter of some flower venders. Ponies staring at you as you zoomed past, one of which seemed to try to follow but was soon lost in the haze as you pushed faster to catch the still way ahead Mare.
She was trying to hide in a group of clouds. Perhaps this was where she originally planned to test you because unlike the rest of the town this area was covered in clouds to the point visible shadows were blacking out the ground. Slowly you could see the various grey shades of the multi colored mane and finally overtook Rainbow by just a moment as you eluded her sight.
So of course this was when your strategy fell completely apart as a pony came into your sight from the left. You did your best but it still caused a tumble, knocking the bags out of the unfortunate mare’s hooves. Not missing a beat you darted there and back grabbing the falling contents, the eggs first of course to avoid any breaking and then put them down quickly on the ground before turning back to look at your goal.
Rainbow looked out at your feat wide eyed. She couldn’t be that impressed with that display if she was that fast right? Well for whatever reason you took the chance to take to the sky, apologizing to the mare as you zoomed…and missed as Rainbow collected herself and barrel rolled out of the way.
The bottle was in your sight in an instant as you dove again. “Nope,” sang the mare’s voice as she rolled the bottle up her forelimb and dodged your attack. The ground came up fast after this, you pull out at the last minute and one eighty back at her. “Try again.” A quick front flip and another attempt, this time you did hit the dirt. “Three strikes and he’s out of there.”
You spat out the clump of dirt, it didn’t help get the shame out of your mouth. You had underestimated this mare far more than you really should have. Not only was she as fast as Lightning Dust, she seemed to know exactly how to dodge all of your attempts to grab her or the bottle. It was like this sort of thing was a regular occurrence at some point, like she was a master at an art you were only trying for the first time despite being used to such things.
However you were not going to underestimate her again. You were not the type to just sit back on this kind of thing. It wasn’t the first time a pegasus had played tag or made a similar bet, thinking that having one eye would make it easier to avoid you and win. But none of them, including Lightning Dust, were every able to escape your gaze when you locked on to them. The same was needed for this mare too it seemed.
“So I take it your done with the job interview huh?” asked a familiar voice. You winked and turned, Cheerilee stood there in at your side. She looked as lovely as ever, only of course much bigger and without the braces that had plagued her and has given you a painful, but memorable, first kiss of your life. “You should have told me you were already done. Here I am worrying about you, and you’re already hitting off with…” She trailed off as she noticed Rainbow in the sky and double taked. “Oh my.”
“Actually,” you say quickly to keep Cheerilee’s reaction out of Rainbow’s sight as she started to drop lower, likely curious about your sudden stop; “I’m still doing the interview. So if you’ll excuse me.” You started to move away, but you couldn’t avoid that ‘we are going to talk about this.’ Look that your ex-girlfriend was giving you. “We can catch up later,” you spout waving a hoof at her frantically. Cheerilee seemed to take this slowly, but eventually picked her bags back up and nodded. You shook off the panic about having to tell her what was going on later and got your head back in the game.
“What’s taking you so long?” sang Rainbow bouncing the bottle around, “You giving up already?” Perhaps it was a good thing she was busy doing a preemptive celebration to mock you as you zoned in on her position in a cloud twenty meters away from you. If she was really good enough to be a Wonderbolts candidate it meant she’d realize to not allow such a thing to happen were she paying attention to you. Time she paid the piper.
You were off once again, aiming straight and true for your target. “Sorry,” called Rainbow looping over you again. She giggled again as she put on another mocking tone, “Too slow.” You had missed her by a mile, good thing she wasn’t what you were aiming for.
Flipping again you struck true at a black cloud that obviously was meant as part of your original test idea and kicked off again. The bolts shooting out of the other side and heading for the ground and flashing upon impact, just the thing to distract a pegasus who wasn’t expecting you to even be able to get as close as you were now.
In her panic, Rainbow nearly dropped the bottle and had to grab the neck with her mouth as you tackled her stomach to get it back out. The sound of a pop confirmed your attack was a success and your wing instinctively snapped down and clenched the bottle as your feathers felt it start to pass through. This meant of course you and Rainbow tumbled and rolled on the ground for a moment head over hoof down the long hill.
Faster and faster the two of you spun, the dirt graining into your wings and mane. Finally there seemed to be a drop as nothing was felt and suddenly a pain in your back confirmed to two of you had jumped off a cliff into another dirt pit and finally broke off, with Rainbow flopping on top of you as it finally leveled out.
“That…was…” Rainbow started to say breathing heavily. It was then that you noticed how just for a moment, you thought you could see a flash of cyan that slowly faded as the pain in the back of your head dulled from the roll. Rainbow seemed to realize she was on top of you as she finished, blushing a bit as she did so. “…Awesome.”
You could have stayed like that forever, it certainly felt like that before Rainbow finally got off you and stared back at the trail the two of you had made. “Wow,” she said as you rose to your hooves. You looked over in that direction. Aside from a few shades of gray in the dirt that were darker than the normal road it didn’t seem that interesting. “I can’t believe we made something like that,” Rainbow comments. “It’s that the coolest thing you ever saw?”
“Yeah,” you say trying to seem impressed, “Cool.” Even if you could take off your patch now and not get this mare curious about why you would it wouldn’t help you see what she saw. You’d never get to see anything the same way as anypony else who could see both thing, detail and color instead of just one or the other. You glace back at the pegasus and just look at her. This time you repeat the word as you look upon her, a little more sincerity in your tone, “Really Cool.”