Blue Bolt was cold. One of only 3 weather-trained ponies in the tiny northern town of Cropton, he often found himself "volunteered" for clearing the more dangerous storms that other ponies were scared to tackle. He didn't want to do this one. It was late, and it was cold and it was a blizzard and no decent pony should have to go out in a blizzard. Of course, life couldn't be that simple. The only reason for a town to exist this far north was the borealis, and they quite simply needed a clear sky to be seen. Nopony wants to spend a fortune in bits on the equipment needed to get up here in the first place only to enjoy the delightful view of a solid white snow cloud for a week. And this WAS his special talent, after all. A bright yellow lightning bolt cutting through a cloud on his navy-coloured flank were proof enough that he could handle himself in any weather.

He sighed. At least he wasn't completely alone. Looking back, he squinted and tried to see his cabin through the blizzard. No luck; he didn't expect to, it was a whole ten minutes flight away. He waved anyway, knowing that Shimmering Sparkle, his wife, was watching his progress through the window, as she always did maybe she would sense it. Shimmering Sparkle. The name became more and more magical every time he thought of it. She'd been pregnant for a long time, and should be popping their first child out any week now, something he was very much looking forward to. Turning back towards the cloud he had been tasked to split up, he began to laugh.
"This is the best part about doing solo missions, Blue Bolt!" He said to nopony in particular. "Oh really, why is that, Blue Bolt?" he replied in a silly voice. "Well, it's quite simple," he explained, as if to a child. "When you're doing a solo mission, you can talk to yourself and do stupid manoeuvres that are against the rules!" and with that said and done, he blasted off to do what he did best.

Even as he was approaching the eye of the storm, he was formulating a plan in his mind. Reaching the hole in the centre of the clouds, he began to skirt around the edges anti-clockwise, picking up speed and causing the cloud around him to begin flowing with him. Pushing himself faster and faster, he cocked up his right wing slightly and began to slowly rise, still flying in circles so fast that any observer would simply note a solid wall of colour. Behind him, the clouds began to follow, giving the curious impression that a tornado had gotten confused and started to rise up instead of down.

Blue grinned. This was his best trick. He broke out of his circle, pumping his wings as hard as he could, and went higher. Behind him, the tornado he had manufactured did exactly the same thing. Much of the cloud was engulfed in this spinning tunnel now, eagerly following the self-proclaimed "weather master of the north" as he headed straight up, easily outstripping the cloud's speed.

Soon, Blue sensed that he could go no further. Long after any other pegasus would have swerved back down out of fear of exhaustion and death, he threw his wings out to their full span to slow his progress down. This was the crucial time, and any mistake here could cost him the trick. He began to spin around in a tight roll, faster and faster. Far below him, the tube began to collapse back into itself, forming a pyramid shape. Blue pulled out of his spin, using the momentum to slingshot down to meet the cloud much faster than he could have propelled himself otherwise. The two forces collided, and for a moment they were locked in a struggle for dominance. The cloud lost. It exploded into a million pieces.

Blue Bolt grinned and pulled up, pleased with himself. Small pieces of cloud hovered about the air with him, pulsing in a light blue, the same colour as his mane and tail. These tiny glowing pieces of cloud, each no bigger than a snowflake, would soon settle all over the snow for miles and miles around, a wondrous sight to see. His so-called 'SparkleBolt' trick always wowed the tourists, but he refused to do it when prompted by ponies who merely wanted to gawp at pretty lights; it was meant for one pony and one pony only. It was with that pony in mind he turned around and flew towards his little cabin in the snow.

He landed a little early and trotted the last few metres to his door. He noticed with some trepidation that Shimmering Sparkle wasn't looking out of the window for him after all, but that might just be on account of her condition. Being 9 months pregnant can't be easy.

"I'm home!" he yelled, stepping across the border and stamping the snow off his hooves.

He trotted into the main room of his cabin. It wasn't big, but it was home, and much more luxurious than his wage could have bought elsewhere. The noise, or rather lack-of, made him focus, suspicious. It wasn't normal to hear nothing at all. He walked cautiously into the kitchen.

The sight of his wife stopped him short. She was covered in blood, curled up on the floor, snuggling up to the pastel blue newborn that was snoozing quietly next to her, gurgling in her sleep. She turned her indigo-coloured eyes to her husband, and gave him a hazy grin.

Blue paced back-and-forth in the hospital waiting room. He had never flown as fast as he did to the ambulance yard when Shimmer passed out, and he probably would never fly that fast again. They wouldn't tell him what was wrong with her, but it had been obvious enough to the unicorn paramedic that he had actually transported her straight to the medical centre, along with the young one. He gulped; he hadn't even been able to get a decent look at it before it was whisked away with its mother. Was it a boy or a girl? He was considering going to the desk to complain when he heard the loudspeaker above the big doors to the treatment rooms sound on, the cheap electronic gadget distorting the voice of the pony who was speaking into the microphone.

"Can Mr Blue Bolt please go on to room 3, please? That's Blue Bolt to room 3, thank you."

Finally! He trotted through the doors and past two nearly-identical green doors, reaching the one with the big 3 on it. Before going through, he took a moment to compose himself he didn't want to worry her, after all. Satisfied that he was calm and collected, he slowly pushed the door open with his nose.

The first thing he saw was his wife lying in a bed, covered in tubing and electrodes. The second thing he saw was a grim-faced doctor standing by the side of the bed, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

"Mr Bolt, I'm Medic Emerald, I treated your wife today. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but she'd lost a lot of blood when she came in and... "

The rest of the doctor's words faded into static and mumbling as Blue's mind filled with cotton wool. A loud whistle filled Blue's ears as he lost his sense of balance and dropped to his knees. It was an otherworldly, pained, horrible sound, a sound which he soon realised he was making himself. The doctor, unaccustomed to death in such a small and new community, put a hoof on Blue's shoulder and mumbled apologies, but Blue didn't hear them. He didn't hear anything for a while. It would be almost sunrise before he looked anywhere but her face.

A laughing split the silence. Blue looked up towards a cot he hadn't before noticed, tucked away in the corner. Ah, his daughter. Shimmer's last gift to him. Blinking the tears out of his eyes, Blue stumbled over to the cot and looked over the top.

Rose-coloured eyes stared back. Blue drank in the sight of his daughter, who looked almost exactly like her mother, except for one thing.

He found himself smiling as he looked at it. Multi-coloured hair was a rare enough thing amongst pegasus ponies, but 6 different colours? Nopony had ever heard of such a thing. She was beautiful. There was only one thing to do now. A while ago, when he and Shimmer were choosing a name, they had decided to name the child after its colours and our hopes for its future. Everypony else in the family had a special talent for athletics, so they decided the second name should be 'Dash'. A fast name. A name fitting the most athletic pony in Equestria. She had hoped for 'Aqua Dash', whilst he found himself hoping for 'Lemon Dash' at the time.

Several years passed by, and, like other pegasi, Rainbow Dash grew taller. However, it was soon obvious to everypony that Rainbow Dash was not like other pegasi. The doctors called it "impeded development", but the locals around town had another word for her; 'runt'. At an age when most pegasi had begun to learn the intricacies of flight, Rainbow Dash had yet to so much as flap her wings. It was partly due to this and partly due to a fear of her being bullied that Blue Bolt refused to let her go to school, opting instead to teach her at home. It was rather easy; he had moved to a town much further south after his wife died, and his storm-busting expertise wasn't needed as often as it did in Cropton, which left him with a lot of free time and a curious filly to fill it with. Despite having seemingly no interest in flight herself, she loved to listen to his boasts and demonstrations, often begging him to perform his Buccaneer Blaze over and over again until he was out-of-breath and could do it no more. He found himself in one of those situations now.

"Oh, come on, dad! Once more before we leave!" she begged, grasping onto his dark blue legs.

Blue laughed, calling her by the nickname he had given her when she had passed the average age for first flight with nothing to show. "No, come on, Wonderbolt. We have to get home!" He shook her off his leg as he started to trot back to their cottage as she collected her books. She had been reading a lot lately, which didn't surprise him - what else was there for her to do? Of course, he would have preferred somepony to fly with and teach tricks, but that's not what he got and he had to be happy with that. He knew what everypony said about her, which is why he kept her out of school, but he didn't care a damn for their message. Almost on cue, the light blue filly trotted up beside him, eyes wide with confusion.

"What's a warth luss ront?" She replied, gurning her face to imitate some foreign dialect she'd heard.

"It's something idiots say. Who said that to you?" He was going to have some words tonight. Nopony can outrun him on foot, not even with forty minutes head-start.

"Just some fat ponies on the path down there. Are they laughing at me because I can't fly?"

Blue cringed. She was too observant for her own good. He stopped and lowered himself down to her eye level.

"Listen to me, Rainbow Dash. The true worth of a pony isn't in their wings or their magic or their strength or anything like that, OK? It comes from the heart, and that can't be faked. You don't listen to anypony who says different, you understand?"

Rainbow Dash looked at the ground, and then back up with a grin that took Blue by surprise.

He smiled as they hugged. Rainbow Dash was going to turn out alright. He had a sense about these things.

"Of course you can't go to Cloudsdale camp. You can't even fly! All this time and you still can't fly! It's not difficult, so why won't you do it? All you do is sit inside and daydream! Talk talk talk, not do, do, do! Maybe they were right when they said you were just a runt."

Rainbow Dash awoke with a start. She lifted her head up and looked out of the window. She had long ago learned to use the location of the moon as an indicator of the time, and it was telling her that the time was 3 in the morning.

Quickly, she trotted back to her bed and pulled out the bindle she had prepared earlier that day. She didn't know who her father thought he was, talking to her like that. "I'm eight years old", she muttered to herself, "And he still treats me like a baby because I can't fly. It's not like I can help it." She opened her bedroom window and skipped out, landing solidly on her feet.

"I'll show him. I'm Rainbow Dash, and I can do anything I want if I just put my mind to it! I'll go on adventures and learn to fly and sail and be real good at everything, and then he'll be sorry." She began trotting down the dirt path. She didn't know where she was going, but the only thing that mattered is that she wasn't staying. She started to walk and daydream about Cloudsdale camp and all the awesome activities she was missing out on because of her father. Soon, the first rays on sun crept over the horizon and glared into her eyes, which snapped her out of her fantasies.

Turning back, she looked for the last time at the cottage in which she grew up. "I hope I'm doing the right thing..." she mumbled to herself.

After a while, these insecurities vanished. It was a marvellously sunny day, and she felt herself whistling as she galloped up a hilly path. She closed her eyes and began to sing a walking ditty she had heard sometime long ago.

"It's a long, long time, but we've got the will! Follow me, boys, follow me! When we reach the top then it's all downhill. Until you drop, don't stop..." She crested the hill, opened her eyes and realised that she had come to the edge of a forest. The last words of the verse died on her lips.

She didn't see this place before. It looked dark and forbidding, almost evil. She moved back, glad she had chosen to look where she was going before she found herself inside this place.

Looking around, she spotted a pleasant-looking tree. She decided to rest for a few minutes before deciding where to head next, since she was now hopelessly lost and in a strange area. Besides, it was 5pm, chow time! Dropping her stuff and settling in the shade, she found it quite pleasant.

Her eyes flew open. It was pitch black, and she was freezing! "I wasn't supposed to fall asleep", she grumbled to herself, and was about to get up to grab her things when she heard something moving almost imperceptibly near her bindle. Slowly rising, she moved backwards, trying to be stealthy. She heard a snort as the thing in the gloom noticed her, and saw a bulk in the dark turn, and glowing beady eyes focus on her. The very last thing she heard before fleeing was an ear-splitting roar.

Rainbow Dash no longer cared about whether the forest was creepy. She galloped into it as fast as she could, brambles tearing at her and ripping her mane as she heard the thing behind her uproot everything in its path. Tears of fear were clogging up her eyes and obstructing her vision, and soon she lost her footing and slid down a hill. Scrambling up, she looked around to get her bearings. Disturbed fire flies illuminated her location enough to see where she was. She had fallen onto the edge of a riverbank, the water in front of her fast-flowing and swollen. There was no way she would be able to cross this, and she couldn't get back up the hill, meaning there was only one direction in which to go. A loud crash behind her caused her to look back, heart beating. The animal that had been chasing her came out of the gloom, giving Rainbow Dash her first real look at the predator.

It was a colossal bear, with fur so black it seemed to suck in all light around it, glaring at the cowering pony with eyes the colour of jet. Rainbow gasped as she recognised it to be a pulsar bear. She had read about these in storybooks when she was small, but she had no idea that they really existed!

The pulsar bear advanced slowly on her, confident that its meal had been cornered and wary for the same reason. Rainbow slowly moved backwards until she felt her back legs being splashed by the river, and having no other option, chose to curl up into a ball and pray for help.

Tears formed anew in her eyes as she began to weep, heavy wracking sobs piercing the night sky.

Silence held for a moment, and was quickly dispelled by the large CLOMP sound of a heavy-set pony landing near her head. She looked up to the person who had answered her call and was surprised to see a dark-blue pegasus standing between her and the pulsar.

The moment was spoiled by the angry roar of the pulsar bear. Blue tore his eyes away from Rainbow, facing the opponent.

"Run, Rainbow Dash! Run!" he shouted over his shoulder before blasting towards the bear with a flap of his wings. With the bear distracted, Rainbow ran down the narrow wedge of land which had previously been blocked off. Turning back, she saw her father locked in mortal combat with the monster. He zipped around the bear, trying to confuse it or get into a blind spot, before bucking its head as hard as he could.

"I'll come and find you!" she heard him yell as he narrowly avoided a swipe of those massive claws.

He began to circle the bear, going faster and faster around it. The bear began to stumble, rendered dizzy by the annoying fly that it couldn't swat. Blasting into the sky, he flapped his wings as hard as he could. Long after any sensible pegasus would have swerved down out of fear, he began to spin around in a tight roll. Changing his wing position at the correct time, he used his momentum to slingshot him towards the ground much faster than he ever could have propelled himself, even ten years ago. Everything peripheral faded to a blur as he raced towards the bear, which was stood on its hind legs and was clearly preparing to bat him from the sky. He had one chance; to make a mistake now would cost him his daughter.

He pulled up at the last second so he was flying horizontally, and slammed into the bear's stomach, and for a moment they were locked in a struggle for dominance.

"Dad!" Rainbow Dash screamed, and before she knew what she was doing she was zipping over the water, looking for any trace of him. She looked downstream, and saw a small lump lying prone on the shore. She threw herself over there, her heart in her throat.

She landed next to him and fell to her knees, nudging his chest with her nose, willing him to move.

"Please wake up, please don't die, please wake up, please wake up, PLEASE WAKE UP!"

Her ears perked up her dad was alive! She threw her front legs over him, sobbing, weeping for forgiveness, but when she heard nothing back but silence, she looked up.

Tears came to her eyes as she realised that she had been doing just that it had come so naturally!

A groan caused her to pull her legs away, worried she might have hurt him. He buried his face in the dirt, clenching his eyes shut.

"That trick is called the ShimmerBolt. I invented it for your mother... of course, it works better with clouds than bears."

"Hey, you didn't answer my question," Rainbow Dash said with a frown. "What's wrong?"

"Let me tell you something a very dear friend once said to me. 'Blue Bolt,' he said, 'Blue Bolt, all the world's a stage, and every pony is an actor - and when it's your cue to come off, then it's your cue to come off.' I never understood what he meant by that, but now... Now I understand."

"But but I don't want you to leave the stage! I don't want to be alone... I'm so sorry for running away!" Tears were engulfing the little blue pony's eyes once again.

"Such is the way of the world, kiddo. Besides, I saw how you just flew. You can only have one greatest flier in Equestria at one time, right?"

Rainbow Dash sniffed. "Do do you really think I could be the greatest flier in Equestria?"

Blue Bolt shifted himself. He was being bathed in a warm, white light, and he quite liked it. "Goodness, no," he said to the little pony that was squeezing him hard. "I know you will be."

"Yeah, so anyway, that idiot Hoops, the one I was telling you about last month, he was picking on this one girl, Fluttershy, because she was a weak flier. It got me so mad, you know. Maybe it's because I can see a bit of the pony I was in her. But anyway, I challenged him to a race to shut him up, and I didn't only beat him, I found my very own trick! I call it the SONIC RAINBOOM! It's kind of like your ShimmerBolt thing, but only ooh, about 20% cooler."

Rainbow Dash was ten years old and was finishing up on the packed lunch she'd brought with her to the field. She considered telling her dad about getting kicked out of flight school for knocking Hoops out after he still wouldn't quit harassing Fluttershy, but decided to omit that part.

"So that's where THIS baby came from!" She stood up and presented her shiny new cutie mark. "Look, it's just like yours."

She looked at her cutie mark wistfully. It was the same shape as that yellow lightning bolt, with the same cloud. In fact, it was almost exactly identical, except for one thing - It was the colour of the rainbow.

"I finished my lunch, so now for the important news. I remember that you used to call me 'Wonderbolt' when I was smaller, and I really doubt that you didn't know there wasn't a performing squad with that name."

She stood up, looking at the magnificent view this hill at the edge of a forest gave her. If she squinted she could almost see her next goal in life.

"I'm going to Cloudsdale, dad," she said without turning around, "and I don't think I'm going to come back. I'm the only pony in the records to exceed the speed of sound, I'm sure to find somepony who wants to apprentice me in weather-control. At some point, the Wonderbolt Performance Team is going to roll into town, and I'm going to join them, and that's how I'm going to become the greatest flier in Equestria. What do you think?"

The sun broke through the overcast clouds that had dominated the day. Rainbow Dash smiled, put her leftovers in her saddlebag, and took off, bearing to the distant floating city of cloud. The sun was on her back, and her father was in her heart. She didn't need to look back.

The small slab of granite she'd been talking to glittered, the gleaming words sparkling in the sun as if they would never go out.

BLUE BOLT

THE WEATHER MASTER OF THE NORTH

A LOVING HUSBAND

A LOVED FATHER

THE TRUE WORTH OF A PONY IS IN THE MEASURE OF THEIR HEART.
BE BRAVE, BE BOLD, BE STRONG; BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL
BE TRUE TO YOURSELF.

A Bolt in the Dark

by TheOwlWBU

Chapter 01