Darkness.
Cold.
Heartbreak.
These are the things that surrounded a small, lost pegasus on the outskirts of town. There she wept by a small pond, shaded by a tree. Though it was summer, the breeze coming off the pond made Rainbow Dash's fur stand on end. She was freezing.
… But she didn't care.
All she cared about was the answer to one question:
“Where did it all go wrong?”
One week earlier…
Calm. The ideal word to describe the late spring/early summer morn that Ponyville happened to be enjoying. That is, it WAS the ideal word.
Exactly ten seconds ago, the calm had been decimated by a cyan missile headed for a predetermined destination: Golden Oaks Public Library.
The mood of said missile was debatable. It was quite possible she was excited, judging by the speed which she was traveling at. She could also have been nervous, that was evident in the erratic manner in which she flew. And if you could get close enough to her without being run down, you could hear grumbling, and you could also have said she was angry. Any of these guesses would have been correct.
"Geez, I'm late! Of all the stupid, stinking, little… GGRRRR!! I can't BELIEVE I got up so late!" she thought to herself. ‘I'm usually good with schedules, ESPECIALLY when it comes to sleep! But NOW, when I really need to be on time, not only do I get up late, I also hit my head getting up, break the cap on the shampoo bottle in the shower, wasting the shampoo AND GETTING IT IN MY EYES, and then, when I finally think it's over, I have to spend 15 minutes taking care of Tank before leaving! And that was before I nearly forgot my saddlebags! Can anything else go wrong?!’
Oh Dash, don't you know not to invoke Murphy like that?
Not a minute later, 6 ponies carrying an industrial-sized fan came walking across the street, the fan itself plugged in and running full blast. Why this was was not important to Dash at the moment, what WAS important was getting out of the way. Unfortunately, at the speed she was going, turning was not likely. Fortunately, however, the fan was running at such speeds that her own speed was offset by it, and she ended up flying in place, mane and tail billowing behind her.
“AAAHHH!! Tuuuurrrrnn iiiittt oooooffff!!!” she screamed. The ponies on the ground heard her, and within seconds, they had turned it off. With the fan now powerless, Rainbow Dash rocketed forth again, barely missing a blade as she went through the fan.
Disaster averted, she continued toward her destination, but Murphy wasn't done with her yet. When she turned the next corner, a mirror was being moved from one side of the street to the other.
Rainbow grimaced. “Why me?” she said.
Losing no time, she quickly shouted out to them so they would get out of the road. The two stallions moving it heard her, barely, and shoved the mirror to the side as fast as they could. They were just fast enough so that Rainbow could pass without breaking it, and as she did, she took a look at herself.
"Huh, not bad."
The ponies she passed thought the same. One of them gave a low whistle, while the other was even more impressed by the fact that the mirror was still in one piece, and made to say so, when, out of nowhere, a grey, cross-eyed pegasus came and crashed into the mirror, shattering it.
“Oops, my bad!” said Derpy.
“Again?” said one of the movers.
“Afraid so, buddy,” said his companion.
“TWILIGHT! Twilight, ya here?! I got a return! Can i make an exchange?! Tell me I'm not late!”
Rainbow dash had just entered the library and was frantically searching for her unicorn friend. As of yet, her search had been fruitless. “Where is she?”
“I think I can help,” spoke a voice from the back.
From the kitchen emerged a small purple creature, a dragon to be exact, named Spike. This dragon was the assistant of Twilight Sparkle, the resident librarian, who was still missing.
“Hey Spike,” she said. “Where's Twilight? She's supposed to be here!” Rainbow was in no mood for hide-and-seek.
“Uh, she's at the farmer's market getting groceries. Why? What's wrong? Heh, need an Ursa banished to the Everfree?” Spike certainly was in a good mood.
Rainbow wasn't. “Look, enough jokes, I need help! I'm not late, am I? Oh, PLEASE tell me I'm not late!!” She was begging at this point, which made Spike nervous.
“Late? Late for what?” he asked.
“The release!! I'm not late, am I?”
At this, Spike was utterly confused. “Release? What do you mean-.” And then realization hit. The release. She meant the release date for-
“Yea, Spike the release date for the new Daring Do book!”
Did she just read his mind?
“Please tell me you're not sold out! I even brought back the last one to, I don't know, exchange it or something!” The cyan mare may or may not have been hyperventilating at this point, but that didn't stop the drake in front of her to start deadpanning.
“The release date isn't till next Friday, and it's Sunday, Dash.”
“…I knew that…” A now-blushing rainbow-maned pegasus then started to creep her way, backwards, to the door, hoping to escape with at least a shred of dignity, when a scaled hand shot up to stop her progress.
“As long as you're here,” said Spike, “I don't guess it would hurt if you returned the book you brought, I mean, I'm completely capable of doing returns while Twilight's gone!”
Rainbow stopped in her tracks. “Oh,” she muttered, “I didn't think of that. Thanks.” As her blush receded, she reached into her saddlebags, pulling out the book she had brought. Amazingly enough, they hadn't fallen off during her wild ride, nor had she lost any of her cargo.
As she held the hardback out for Spike to take, the whelp took pause and looked at the mare in front of him. Something was… off. Something was different, but, for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what it was. But whatever it was, he liked it.
When his claws finally grabbed it he spoke in a curious tone, and asked, “Hey, Dash, did you do something different with your mane?”
Rainbow was stunned for a moment. She didn't know what to say. It wasn't as if ponies normally noticed her manedo, but now that someone had, she was unsure how to respond. She chose to tell the truth.
“Well, I didn't TRY to do anything different, but I did use more shampoo than normal, dumb bottle.” The last part was whispered, but the message still got across.
“Well, whatever you did, I like it. It's better than your normal sweaty, dirty, ragged style… NOT THAT I DON'T LIKE IT EITHER! It's just, well… I like this style better is all… please don't hurt me…” Spike then resorted to using the arm that wasn't attached to a book as a shield.
Dash, on the other hoof, was probably more scared than he was. Sure, his compliment probably turned into an insult, but it was still a compliment. Ponies had given her praise on several occasions, but never before had somepony given her a compliment like THAT. It was new, but it also felt…well, she couldn't quite place the feeling off the top of her head, but she knew she liked it. It was somehow made better by the fact that the compliment came from him…
Rainbow Dash, unaware of her actions, had spaced out and started staring at Spike. He took notice of this, and tried to snap her out of it. “Dash? Yo, Dash, you alright?”
After a few tries, Spike was able to wake Dash from her stupor, with Dash looking confused.
“Huh?”
With her attention back on the room, Spike found it appropriate to draw her attention to something more specific. To be precise, the fact that she hadn't given him the book yet.
“You gonna let go of the book sometime soon?”
That was enough to get her attention, but it also made her blush in embarrassment. “Heh, sorry,” she said as she slowly removed her hoof from the book. “That was awkward…”
They then stood there in silence. It, like the previous situation, was in fact, quite awkward. Neither party knew what to say. Rainbow found it hard to take her gaze off of Spike, and she was growing worried. What was the matter? She gave him the book, but she wasn't leaving. Was it the compliment? Did IT have something to do with this?
Fortunately for the both of them, Spike spoke up. “Hey, don't you have to be somewhere later?”
As a matter of fact, she did. It was one of her workdays, and being a day on the weekend, Rainbow Dash saved a special spot for it in what hatred resided in her. Still, work was work, and meant pay.
She sighed and nodded, turning to leave while she had the motivation to do so. She picked up her head at the door, though, and uttered a small, “See ya,” before leaving.
As the door shut behind her, the cyan pegasus took off and headed to work, but she couldn't take her mind off of Spike. She shook the thoughts out of her head, not paying much attention to them, and in a few minutes, she was at the headquarters for the Ponyville Weather Team.
“It's probably just because I was disappointed about not getting the new book and everything else that happened, right? It'll go away… Right?” she thought to herself.
She thought wrong.
All day. All stinkin’ day. THAT'S how long Rainbow thought about Spike. Not only was it weird, it was distracting, and it interfered with her work the whole day. This made sure she was bone tired when she got home that evening.
“RRrrraaawwarrr!”
Of course, there were some things that needed to be taken care of first. Namely, her pet tortoise, Tank. He sat in a corner of the living room waiting patiently for his master to return home. Rainbow saw this, and in the privacy of her home, she allowed a smile to form on her face. Can't let her friends know she's soft, right? “Hey, buddy. How's it goin’?”
“Rrrrraaaarr!” he said slowly.
“That good, huh?” Dash went over to him and checked on his food and water before hooking him up to his magic-powered propeller pack.
It should be noted that Rainbow Dash, being a pegasus, found comfort in the sky, and as such, built herself a cloud home several years ago when she moved to Ponyville.
And she had a pet tortoise. This caused problems because, obviously, they can't walk on clouds. Flight was required for this, and even with the propeller pack, Tank couldn't land on the cloud. This, however, was remedied by a small section of enchanted hardwood floor that was gifted to Rainbow Dash by her friend, Twilight. It was just big enough to be considered roomy for the reptile, and with a few foal-proof safety gates, he was able to live in the house with his owner.
And it was from this flooring that Tank took off to meet Rainbow in her room. She flew up the stairs, pet in tow, and landed on her cloud bed.
“Ugh!” she groaned elegantly. “Why, Tank? Why can't I do it?”
Tank, being a shelled creature with limited mental capabilities at best, did what any other of his kind would have done. He tilted his head forty-five degrees as if to say, ‘What?’
“Ugh, I MEAN,” Dash said as she sat up, “Why can't I stop thinking about the egghead's helper?”
“Rawawr?”
“Yeah, Spike, who else?” Rainbow laid back and got comfortable. “I haven't got that lizard out of my head all afternoon. It's driving me nuts! I couldn't even focus on work because of him! It took me twenty seconds to clear the skies! TWENTY!! Twice as long as normal!”
“Mrraaaawwr?”
“What happened? Well, nothing really, I mean he gave me a compliment about my mane, but, that's nothing to get worked up over, right? I mean, I get compliments all the time!”
She was suddenly struck with an unsure look as she said, “But, what was that feeling? The one I got when he said it… GAH!” Throwing the covers onto her body, she got comfy and shut her eyes tight.
Sighing, she said, “Look, Tank, I feel horrible. I'm exhausted. I'm gonna hit the hay, alright? Don't stay up too late, alright?”
Her pet looked outside and saw it was still pretty early, but didn't question his master's sleeping schedule, and with a nod, he hovered back to his play area where he stayed until he fell asleep, propeller still running, keeping him floating in place all night.
Rainbow had a harder time sleeping than her pet, and ended up tossing and turning several times before finally giving in to sleep. However, even sleep proved a fruitless pursuit as her dreams became filled with images of a certain purple dragon…
End Act I