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// Chapter 3: Rainbow Reader 
// Story: Out of the Book Club 
// by ThatOneYellowPony 
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// Story: Out of the Book Club
// Chapter: Chapter 3: Rainbow Reader
// Author: ThatOneYellowPony
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You didn’t have to tell Rainbow Dash twice that flight school sucked. Well, half the time anyways. You see, while she loved the so-called ‘practical classes’ like P.E, Aerial Maneuvers 101, and Weather-Maker’s Workshops, she would often skip out on classes like Flight Theory, which would wedge her between a desk and seat so she could listen to somepony read to her from a textbook. Unfortunately when her parents found out that she was skipping out on several of the required courses for graduation, they cracked down on her hard. ‘We got you into the best school bits can buy’ they’d say ‘Wear your uniform! It’s a sign of your good breeding!’ they’d order. She struggled though her academics, passing with C minuses if at all, before being forced to downgrade to public flight school. Here she met Fluttershy-one of her oldest and best friends-and first learned that she could still get into the Wonderbolts Academy even with the poor academic grades she was achieving.
But, although here the classes were easier, in her mind there was still a sort of stigma associated with inside classes. A stigma that she could never do well at them, and that she was simply too dumb to understand the course content like the eggheads around her. They all looked down on her in their own subtle ways, with raised eyebrows, sneers, snorts of derision-that sort of thing. When the teacher asked if there were any questions everypony would look at her expectantly, but she would refuse to raise a hoof, although she usually did have questions. But none of those jerks were going to become a Wonderbolt like she. Yeah! She kicked tail at all the outdoors classes; none could match her agility, her daring, her style, not a one. Everypony knew her name and the coaches loved her. She was convinced that the only world she wanted to be a part of was the world of athletics. 
Last night she perhaps delved further into the world of reading than ever she had done before. Her friend Twilight Sparkle had introduced Dash to Daring Do not so long ago, and it quickly became the only thing she read. Now she was trying her best to read Animal Farm-a strange book featuring evil talking pigs-but just couldn’t do it. Every sentence was a struggle, but she valiantly continued to drag her eyes from left to right, down, left to right, down, left to right, down, until she realized she had lost track of what was happening. Then, frustrated with her short attention span, she would remain stringent, and take the paragraph from the top.
“Dash?” Squealer, one of the pigs, asked, or so that’s what Dash read.
“Huh? That’s my name!” said Rainbow Dash, tilting her head to one side and eying the text, which indeed had her name, all four letters, being spoken by the pig.
“What are you mumbling?” the book said Squealer asked.
Dash blinked. She was talking to a book! “Wh-what are you? A Demon Book?!”
Through prose the book described a chicken entering from the bushes.
“Eeew! She drools!” the text said the chicken said.
Wait a minute! She recognized that voice! Wait another minute! How could she hear a voice she was reading?
“Dash, come on, get up, it’s Twilight” The book said Squealer said, and she felt something nudge her forehead.
With a sticky pop her eyelids opened. Wherein her mind’s eye she had been imagining Squealer and the chicken were, stood Twilight and Scootaloo respectively.
A groggy Rainbow Dash removed her wet face from the pages of Animal Farm like a hoof from mud. 
“I’m a bit surprised to see you here, I locked up before I left” said Twilight Sparkle, deciding not to be overly mad that her friend broke into house somehow.
“zuh?” asked Rainbow Dash, who was too tired to remember most of her and Scootaloo’s plot to break in and read, as well of most of the plot of Animal Farm, now that she thought about it.
“Have you always drooled in your sleep?” asked Scootaloo, who was sickeningly chipper, no doubt from the full night’s rest she had.
Twilight noticed the book Dash had drenched in drool.
“You know, I like to read in bed too but couldn’t you read your Daring Do’s in your own bed, not mine?”
“I wasn’t reading a Daring Do” said Dash, getting up, blushing and showing her Animal Farm’s cover, depicting a barn.
Twilight, being a self-described “friendship expert” didn’t understand at first. It appeared that Rainbow and Scootaloo had broken into her home while she was out with Cherilee, to read books clearly outside their fields of interest. Scootaloo was all into romance-she said so herself-but hadn’t laid a hoof on her romantic fiction shelf, which contained some of the smuttiest stories ever smat out by the romance-fiction industry, not that a filly should lay a hoof on most of those. And, well, Dash reading Animal Farm? It didn’t even have spike traps, ancient treasures, or treacherous dungeons, which are the three things ever story worth its salt should have according to Rainbow Dash.
Downstairs there was a knock on the library door.
“It’s unlocked!” called Twilight, which prompted Cherilee to enter, ascend the stairs, and enter Twilight’s room with the three other ponies.
“Oh, hello everypony” said Cherilee, a little confused by the company surrounding her, but nevertheless cheerful.
Without delay she buried her head into her beige saddlebag before removing a small brown package. It appeared to have some weight to it, was an inch in depth, and about as wide and tall as that photograph of Twilight and her five best friends kept by her bed.
“When you left my house this morning you didn’t wake me up, and you forgot this. Also I tried to wake Spike but he gets really cranky without his rest so I thought I’d let him sleep it off.”
“Oh, why thank you” said Twilight, her thoughts derailed.
“Well I’m sorry I can’t stay longer you three, I’ve got a class to teach, and speaking of which, you’ve got a class to attend!” said Cherilee, giving a concerned look to Scootaloo.
Before following Cherilee out the door Scootaloo looked back at Twilight and Rainbow Dash almost pleadingly. Neither of them seemed to notice.
“Bye you two”
The bedroom was silent and still until the door to Twilight’s library closed, and the two former book buddies were certain they were alone, alone for the first time since their fight.
Twilight carefully levitated the package Cherilee had left with her magic, and placed it by her prized photograph of the five friends she loved so dearly, displayed in a simple brass picture frame. She then propped herself onto her bed, sitting at Dash’s back hooves. Dash shimmied herself up so her back was propped against Twilight’s pillows and the back of her neck against the headboard, so she could look her friend in the eyes, even though her friend was staring fixedly towards the center of the room. Rainbow set Animal Farm down on the same table, neatly beside the package, and waited a few heavy moments for Twilight to speak.
“I felt bad I hadn’t read the latest Daring, so I started reading it yesterday. I finished it on the train ride to the concert. The farther the train traveled, the more we’d stop, and the more ponies, ponies going to the Cohoof concert too, would get on. Just as I was finishing it, somepony very special noticed what I was reading. Somepony I’ve always wanted to meet” said Twilight. The atmosphere in the room was different than Dash was used too with her purple friend. Each sentence was delivered with great thought, and there was something crushing about the long silences which punctuated her speech. She still hadn’t looked Dash in the eye.
“She was kind” described Twilight “she was brave, and outgoing, and loved her admirers, but not in any sort of bad way. She could pick a shy, awkward pony like me out of a crowd and show them that they’re worth something” at long last she looked at Dash “she was a lot like you”
Now it was Dash’s turn to look away, as though their eyes had locked too long “I’m sorry we fought. It’s just that I didn’t want to lose you” she dared to confess.
Twilight frowned down at Animal Farm “You didn’t like that book did you?”
“I hated it. I didn’t get the talking animals thing, and I still don’t know what a ‘human’ is supposed to look like” said Dash, with a small chuckle. The seriousness by which she tried to turn herself into an egghead was beginning to wash off. It wasn’t a part of her anymore, and she could watch it circle the drain and ‘schloop’ out of existence.
“Then why’d you read so much of it?” said Twilight. She suspected she knew, but wanted to be sure.
“I thought the only way I could keep you was by becoming an egghead too” said Dash, with a smile. The confessional atmosphere was at long last beginning to dissipate, now that each friend was starting to open up.
There was a small crinkling noise as dash lifted the package, and thrust it into the pegasus’s hooves.
“Here, I’m sorry too” said Twilight, gesturing that she should open it.
Curious, she ripped it open.
“Erma….gerd?” said Dash
“Ermanyangairu” corrected Twilight
Ermanyangairu indeed, in Dash’s hooves was Twilight’s copy of Daring Do and the Ermanyangairu Emerald, the 27th and most recent escapade of the fictitious adventurer, of which Dash already…owned…in hard cover…collector’s edition…
More than a little confused, she pretended to be grateful for the baffling present.
Twilight smiled sheepishly.
“Open it”
On the inside cover was a message written in blue ink, which confused her more. If Twilight wanted to write her a letter, surely she could find some plain parchment. The message was as follows:
‘Dear Rainbow Dash;
‘I had the pleasure of getting to know your friend Twilight Sparkle on the train ride to Baltimare, and if you’re anything like she described, then you’re exactly the kind of pony I’d love to call my friend. She said you were strong, loyal, adventurous, and open minded, and if it weren’t for that you wouldn’t even be a Daring fan. It reminded me of a friend I have, without whom I would never have been inspired to create Daring Do in the first place, which is why I’m happy I can take this opportunity to thank ponies like you and she. Never forget, the best friends we can ever hope for, are the ones who are brave enough to share their passions, and in the end it never really matters how different you were, just as long you had something special together. I truly hope you continue to enjoy Daring well into the future
‘Sincerely; Bravely Blue
‘P.S. Don’t give up on your dream to become a Wonderbolt, I never gave up on mine, and Daring’s bigger than ever!’
Dash was stunned, and for a while after she finished reading it, her eyes would linger on the crammed brick of text, taking it in. She looked at Bravely’s loopy signature one last time before looking back to her friend.
“I didn’t recognize her at first, but she was the author, she even told me a bit about the upcoming volume ‘Daring Do and the Lost Labrynth’” said Twilight
Without another word Dash hugged the unicorn tightly, completely unable to put her feelings into words.
“You know you can still catch your Wonderbolts thing right?”
######

“There’s more where this came from, so just give me a little shout if you want s’more!” said Pinkie Pie, sliding a tray of hot chocolate and cookies off her head and onto a small table positioned in the center of the Ponyville Reader Club’s semi-circle.
As she hopped to her bedroom’s exit door, she stopped to assure that a moderate or gargantuan shout would be fine as well.
“Sure thing Pinkie” said Mrs. Cake.
“I’d like to take this opurtunity to welcome the Reader Club’s newest member: Miss Cherilee” said Twilight Sparkle, pointing to the schoolteacher who sat beside Dash on Pinkie’s bed.
“Hello everypony! Twilight’s told me all about you, but I thought you said the Mayor was also a member” said Cherilee, craning her neck about as though the town’s mayor were hiding behind the waste paper basket.
“I’ve been told she opened her Fifty Manes of Grey book and hasn’t been seen since.” said Mrs. Cake.
“Her loss” said Dash, who was flipping her way through a comic book. Twilight had the idea to introduce Dash to things more action-packed, that way they could talk about more than just Daring, and Dash could have more in common with her enigmatic pal. She had shown her sci-fis, epic fantasies, zombie literature, manga, and comedy adventures, with varied results, but nothing stuck quite like comic-books. She particularly liked Batmare, which she was now absent-mindedly paging through, a comic superhero whose only superpower was a seemingly endless supply of wealth with which to make bat-themed gadgets.
“It certainly is, shall we go around the circle?” asked Twilight looking expectantly at Sweetie Belle “How’s your reading of Daring been going?”
“Oh um, I kinda put the whole Daring thing on hold” admitted the filly sheepishly.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, Scootaloo didn’t want that Saddle Up! romance you gave her so I kinda…yeah…it was good” she blushed
“Good?! You couldn’t put it down!” blurted out Scootaloo, flipping through her own Batmare comic.
Sweetie responded only by blushing and letting her mane cover one eye like she’d learned from Fluttershy.
“For school I wrote a story about it…” said Sweetie eventually
“You mean like a Fanfiction? That’s wonderful, how was it?” said Twilight looking at Cherilee.
“It was, you know, like…” she clicked her toungue a few times awkwardly. In truth it was a strange little story pairing two ponies not interested in each other in the book’s canon. “…well I haven’t had a chance to really…mark it yet, you know” At this she stopped speaking, deciding she’d accept that as successfully averting the topic.
Twilight got the message and moved on to the Cakes, both of whom had barely progressed in their books, with maybe 60 pages read between them.
Next Cherilee explained how she’d gotten her hooves on 1001 Books to Read before you Die, and has started on number one, Aesop’s Fables.
Last up was Rainbow Dash, who had listened attentively to Cherilee, determined to give the mare more respect than she had been, and had now stood up, and wiped some hot chocolate residue off her lips with her hoof. Without hesitating, she pulled out her autographed Daring Do volume, and began to read aloud Bravely’s message. Only Sweetie Belle, a fellow Daring fan was star struck that Dash had an authentic personal message from Bravely Blue, everypony else seemed either confused or indifferent. Only Twilight blushed.
When she finished she tossed the book to her seat beside her Batmare.
“When I joined this club” confessed Rainbow to her club-mates “I only planned on reading Daring, talking about Daring, and stuff like that. If it weren’t for Twi here, I wouldn’t have found Daring in the first place. I forgot that she did that for me, and I didn’t want to try new things. Now she’s shown me some of the coolest stories ever, and now I’d like to share them with you. Course I still love Daring, cuz she’s awesome, but check this chick out!”
She quickly picked up her comic and thrust it forth like she was presenting the new lion king to Africa. On the cover was a gritty looking caped pony, brooding over the edge of a really tall building. Evidently this was Batmare. The pegasus had no problem describing at great lengths how cool Batmare was, mostly just pointing at the illustrations and sputtering words like ‘awesome’ and ‘epic’ like she was a malfunctioning faucet.
And so, for the first time, the Ponyville Readers Club had a meeting not spent just talking about Daring Do. Instead there were enough comics to go around so that everypony got one. Even Cherilee, tentative at first, got into it, and at last she and Dash started to warm to each other. The schoolteacher was surprised at how much depth and complexity Batmare had to offer, and even decided that Batmare could be an effective way to encourage her students to read.
Twilight couldn’t help but smile, sure her club hadn’t exactly turned out the way she first planned it four weeks ago, but from that moment on there was a charm to their gatherings. Each week, instead of all reading their own books, they would move as a group from franchise to franchise. It started to become a blast, Cherilee became a dedicated cosplayer, as did they all, and the group grew with more and more ponies, all wanting to come together and share an experience; ponies that had nothing in common with one another, sharing something special together.

THE END