The streets of Canterlot withdrew beneath her once again into a confusing maze of meandering lines, but this time she studied them carefully until she found what she wanted.
There was a small street that went from the palace to the Pony Express station. It was narrow, not much more than an alley really, and it went all over the place; but that just made it perfect for what she wanted. Even better, it was downhill all the way.
She might not be able to do a Sonic Rainboom right now, but Rainbow Dash wasn't just going to sit around on her plot. She had more than one trick up her sleeve, she was the best darn flyer in Equestria and she was going to prove it, even if it wasn't to anypony besides herself.
Never a pony to do something slow, she climbed hard and steep, pumping her wings like she was chasing a lightning bolt. Up and up she went. In less than a minute she found herself pulling past the peak of the mountain and out of its shadow. The entire world exploded into a burst of sunlight and she blinked her eyes rapidly to try and clear away the spots dancing in her vision so she could take in the view.
There was something that no earth pony or unicorn could ever understand, and even a lot of pegasi never ventured high enough to really figure out, but the sky was big. Really big. Those other ponies only ever saw it framed by the ground, with its trees and buildings and mountains right up in your face. Even in the boring empty places where there weren't any of those, the horizon was still way too close to really see the sky.
Those ponies never got to know the sky on its own terms. They were so used to thinking of things a mile or ten away as "far" and so to them, the sky was flat and empty because it was so much bigger than anything they were used to thinking about. It wasn't "pony you don't dare pick a fight with" big. Not "as big as a city" big. Not even "the biggest mountain in the world" big. The sky was a world of its own, and one completely different than its more solid neighbor down below. And it was one that was a whole lot cooler.
To Rainbow Dash, mountains were nothing. None but the very tallest in the whole world could touch the heights any average pegasus could fly, and even those weren't going to stop somepony like her. She laughed at mountains. She scoffed at oceans. Canterlot was right below her, that little street way too small to see now, though she still remembered exactly where it was.
The most important city in the world was down there, and it was nothing more than a dark splotch on the side of a slightly bigger dark splotch. The sun on the horizon lit up the mountains and valleys around her in a breathtaking panorama of golden yellows and blues and blacks as they stretched out forever into the distance, and Rainbow Dash couldn't do anything but laugh uncontrollably when she felt the warm glow of its light on the underside of her wings. She was probably high enough now. Without a second's hesitation, she dipped her left wing, rolling sideways and backwards into an inverted dive.
In no time at all, Rainbow Dash was streaking past the very tip of the mountain and down the cliff that made up the south face. By this point, she wasn't even trying to go any faster. Instead, she opened her wings just wide enough to maintain some maneuverability and lift, holding as close as possible to that dangerous precipice while keeping in the sweet spot between gliding and free-fall.
Up ahead, the side of the mountain transitioned from sheer cliff to dizzying slope. What that meant to Dash was that if she didn't change course real quick, the ground was going to jump up right in her face and give her a good pummeling. With a miniscule twitch of her leading edges, she pulled up and veered right just in time to keep from creaming herself against a boulder. And now the real fun was about to start.
The sky might be big, but that sometimes meant it was boring. There was no thrill of danger when you did stunts at high altitude, no risk, no fun. That was the first boulder, and not by a long shot was it going to be the last. She could have pulled up and flown over them, but that wasn't the point. She twisted to the left as another rock rocketed by and then dodged immediately right again.
The boulders whizzed by on either side, getting both more frequent and bigger, and the whole situation turned into a balancing act between opening her wings wide enough to give her the maneuverability and lift she needed while not so much that she lost all her speed. She started buzzing the rocks as closely as possible to minimize bleed-off from turning, and was rewarded for her efforts with the sensation of her primaries brushing up against granite.
Right in front of Dash, a line of rocks big enough to be mistaken for houses popped up, all close enough together that they might as well have been a wall, and a little pony in the back of her brain started screaming for her to pull up. But she wasn't going to pull up. Only wusses pulled up. Pulling up slowed you down.
In less time than it took to blink, she scanned the line for an opening, and her eyes alit on a small triangular hole where one rock had fallen and leaned against another. It was little, tiny in fact, but she could see clear sky on the other side, meaning that just beyond them, the mountainside dropped away. Probably another cliff.
At this point, Rainbow Dash wasn't thinking any more. Thinking took too much time. There were a lot of things that she would have thought if she did have the time though. She would have thought that the hole was too small for her to fly through. She would have thought that she could still make it if she snapped her wings closed at the exact right instant and let momentum take her through. She would have thought that a moment ago, she'd glimpsed Canterlot, and it was close enough that if she pulled up now she would either overshoot her approach to the city, or else she would have to bleed off a lot of speed in order to re-align herself. And she would have also thought how freaking awesome it would be when she pulled this off; an improvised stunt that was loads more dangerous and cool than what she had planned for her flight through the streets.
But she didn't have time to think. She saw. She surged forward. And she pulled her wings in.
Her right ear clipped one granite wall, and a few strands of her tail were yanked out when they brushed the other and got caught in a crack in the boulder, and for a split second, she felt her heart stop as she just barely missed disemboweling herself on a small rock sticking up from the bottom, and then she burst out into the open air, only to plummet down and away from the face of another cliff with her wings still folded and a rainbow trail behind her.
Rainbow Dash had missed the fact that she'd passed the palace already because it had been hidden behind a fold of ground, but now that she was clear of the mountain, she could see she was right above her target. The entrance to a little street. Instead of opening her wings to fine-tune her free-fall, she made minute twitches of her tail, using its drag as a rudder to steer her straight for the gap between two sparkling white buildings.
In less time than it took to blink, she was in the city, plummeting nearly straight down towards the cobblestones. Ten feet above the ground she snapped her wings open and did the Fantastic Filly Flash. In less than two feet, she pulled a ninety degree turn, going from a downward plunge to flying parallel to the ground while her rainbow trail burst into a bright flash of light. The strain felt like it was going to snap her wings, and she nearly blacked out, but she didn't. Instead, she went straight into her next trick, the Super Speed Strut.
The Super Speed Strut was one of those tricks that looked cool, unless you were a stunt flyer and knew what was going on, and then it was amazing. It was pretty much exactly what it sounded like, a combination of running and flying really really fast, and it was incredibly dangerous. Nopony wanted to risk tripping at a bazillion miles per hour even on flat ground, and this was cobblestone. In a narrow-winding street, that was littered with parked wagons and sharp turns.
Each time her hooves clopped down, the stones gave them a stinging smack, even though with her wings out she wasn't putting even close to her full weight on them. Up ahead, the first real turn loomed, curving off to her right. She was going way too fast to take the inside of the curve, and there was a closed-up fruit stand blocking her way on the outside. Above, the street was criss-crossed with laundry lines, making it suicide to pull up. Without missing a stride, she leapt up and twisted sideways to clear the stand, plant all four hooves on the wall of the building behind it, and push off in the new direction the street took.
Turn after twist, obstacle after straightaway, she owned that street. It was like a zen moment. No thought, no doubts, only action. And before she knew it, she found herself speeding up on the Pony Express station. With a burst of lightning, she pulled up to get above the building, did a tight loop and swooped down onto the pad, sticking the landing with a Buccaneer Blaze.
Rainbow Dash stood there panting, unwilling to break the moment. She just stood there with her eyes still down and fixed on the landing pad beneath her hooves. It took her a full thirty seconds to realize that there was another pony up there with her, clapping wildly.