They'd been her best friends, the closest thing to family that she'd had in Ponyville, and then they turned on her. All of them had conspired against her. Even Applejack, the most honest pony in town. Even Fluttershy, the kindest pony she'd ever heard of. They'd humiliated her in front of the entire town not once, not twice, but four times. And when she confronted them, they'd said they were doing her a favor. How was she supposed to respond to that?
She'd run away. What else could she have done? There was no way she would ever let them see her cry. She'd galloped and flown away from the treacherous ponies she'd once thought of as her best friends, and didn't stop until she was inside her cloud home. That was four hours ago, and she hadn't left her bed since.
"How could they do this to me?" she mumbled into the wet pillow beneath her head. "How could they...."
Twilight and Applejack's words still rang in her mind. "Celebrating your accomplishments is natural but— rubbing them in everypony's face is not."
And yet that was exactly what they'd done to Rainbow. Not only did they show her up, but then they had the audacity to loudly praise their own accomplishments as the masked mare. Then they tried to give her a lesson about how bad pride was? They'd bragged their tails off about what they had done as Mare Do Well, and then they had laughed at her when she expressed her jealous discontent. They didn't even try to stop her from making a fool of herself at the parade.
"What kind of pony does that to a friend?!" Rainbow shouted to nopony, tears slipping from her narrowed eyes and matting the fur on her face. "What kind of friends...." Dash sat up, gritting her teeth. "No. Not anymore. They're not gonna have me to laugh at. They're not my friends anymore."
Rainbow paused a moment as that sank in, the truth of the statement worming its way through her mind. What else could the past actions of those five mean? "They're not my friends anymore," she repeated solemnly, collapsing back onto her bed. She wrapped her forelegs around a pillow and held it tight, desperate for something, anything to hold onto as her world fell apart around her. If only the purple cushion could hold her back.
Her muzzle pressed to the pillow, she slowly slid into darkness.
* * * *
Rainbow's eyelids slid open. She had to blink a few times to clear away the lingering blur that her groggy eyes cast over the world. She groaned, turning over and rubbing at the crust on her eyelids a little. She wasn't sure when she'd fallen asleep, but it seemed to be morning already. It took her a moment to remember why there was a wet pillow pressed to her chest, and she simply sighed when she did.
She rolled onto her back to stare at her ceiling, but didn't get much deep contemplation done before her stomach started protesting its lack of food. Dash slid off the bed with a groan and trotted down to her kitchen. She groaned even louder upon opening her cabinets and finding only a few apples and a box of cookies. She checked her refrigerator, but all it had was a prepackaged salad and a tub of ice cream. It looked like she had some shopping to do.
Rainbow paused at her front doors, trying to remember if today would be a market day for Applejack. Dash wasn't quite ready to see any of her ex-friends just yet, so she hoped that AJ would be kicking her stupid trees or something instead. Her stomach growled again as she walked out, and she growled right back as she hopped off her front porch and spread her wings.
Her mind wandered back to a potential encounter with AJ as she made her way toward Ponyville. What would she do if the farm pony was at the marketplace? Ignore her? That seemed like a good idea. She didn't feel like yelling at her quite as much as she did the previous night. In fact, she felt almost foolish now that she'd calmed down. Perhaps she'd overreacted a bit. After all, her friends said they were trying to help her, and she might have let the whole superhero thing go to her head a bit.
And so what if they'd made fun of her for being jealous while praising themselves? So what if they'd lied to her and made her cry, which is totally not cool and not something that Rainbow ever does. She supposed that it also wasn't entirely their fault that she'd been completely humiliated in front of the whole town so many times and that they were so much better than her at being a hero in almost every way possible. So what if they'd made her miserable?
Dash became aware that she'd been clenching her teeth when her jaw started to ache, and she tried to relax a bit as she touched down in Ponyville's marketplace. She tried to focus on other things, like the drab color of the dirt roads, the absurd amount of carrots for sale, and the fact that nearby ponies fell silent as she trotted past. Anypony she turned toward looked away, all of them refusing to make eye contact with her as the silence turned to murmurs and mutters among the crowd. Dash thought it a bit odd, but Ponyville could be an odd place sometimes. She brushed it off and looked around for a quick snack to munch on as she did her shopping.
After a few seconds of scanning the stalls, she just shrugged and trotted over to a flower stand. She pointed a hoof at an arrangement of lilies, but something tapped her on the shoulder before she could speak. A short turn of her head revealed it to be Flitter, one of her co-workers on the weather team. Rainbow just stared dully as Flitter shuffled a hoof in the dirt.
"Uh, what happened to Mare Do Well?" she asked.
Rainbow just rolled her eyes and turned back to the flower stand.
Flitter glanced back at Cloudchaser, who waved a hoof toward her encouragingly. She tried again. "What happened to Ponyville's hero?"
Rainbow groaned. "Why don't you go ask her yourself?" She pointed at the flowers again.
The pony running the flower stand cut her off this time. "We don't know where she went. Last I saw, you were chasing her away from the parade. So, where'd she go?"
Rainbow looked up at the cream-colored mare with the red mane. What's her name? Rose? Yeah, Rose. "Look, if she went somewhere, I dunno about it, okay? I just want some food, so can I get three—"
"You did something to her, didn't you?"
Rainbow cocked an eyebrow at Rose. "Huh? I didn't do anything to her."
"Oh, of course not," Merry May said, dragging the words out mockingly as she approached her fellow weather pony. "You just chase Mare Do Well away from her own parade and then she never comes back. Must just be a coincidence, huh?"
Rainbow shook her head and tried to speak, but Flitter interrupted her, a worried expression on her face. "You didn't really chase her off, right Rainbow?"
Rainbow scoffed. "Of course I didn't—"
"I'll bet she didn't just chase her away from the parade, she probably ran her right out of town!" Rose huffed, glaring at Rainbow.
"I'll bet she was jealous of Mare Do Well," added another pony, "she just drove her away so she could be the hero instead."
Rainbow stepped back from the flower stand, shaking her head. "What? I didn't drive her away!"
"Well, until you bring Ponyville's hero back, you can forget about getting any flowers from me," Rose spat, slapping down a "CLOSED" sign on her flower stand.
"Hey, wait a minute," Dash started, but other voices spoke up from the marketplace.
"Yeah, you can't have my flowers, either!" said Daisy from her own stand.
"She's a menace, that's what she is!" Cherry Berry chimed in.
"A fiend!"
"A villain!"
Dash stepped back, thoroughly confused by the gathering mob. It was as if ponies were just appearing out of nowhere to jeer at her. Cloudchaser stepped up next to Flitter to add her own accusations. Flitter just backed away from the group, biting her lower lip and glancing around at the cluster of angry ponies. A few others hung back from the crowd as well, looking as perplexed as Rainbow felt. Try as she might, she just couldn't quite make sense of what was happening around her, but it was anything but good.
As if to drive the point home, a hoof was driven into Rainbow's face. Several ponies outside the crowd gasped. "Lyra!" she heard somepony shout from just outside the crowd.
Rainbow turned, slightly dazed, and caught sight of the mint-colored hoof coming at her again. She leaned back to dodge the blow before lunging forward and clocking her assailant across the face, sending the unicorn stumbling sideways. The green unicorn cocked a hoof back again, but a cream-colored mare grabbed onto it before she could strike.
"Lyra, what is wrong with you?" the other mare asked.
Rainbow held a hoof to her bleeding nose for a moment before pointing it at Lyra. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped as the angry mob started closing in on her. She didn't like where this was going.
Cherry Berry raised a hoof, but Rainbow hopped up and kicked off Cherry's chest before she could swing at her. Dash flew up past the few pegasi nearby, having to push an incensed-looking Derpy and a perplexed-looking Thunderlane out of her way before she rocketed off over the rooftops and away from the marketplace. She flew straight home, completely forgetting why she had left the house in the first place. One thing had been made exceptionally clear by the gathering mass of accusing glares: Rainbow Dash was no longer welcome in Ponyville.
She pushed through her front doors a few minutes later. She stood just inside the doorway, breathing through clenched teeth for a few seconds before bucking the double doors shut. After everything she'd done around Ponyville, after the lives she'd saved, the townsponies had turned on her just like the other five. They wouldn't even sell her food. How was she supposed to eat?
She had assumed that somepony would have made some sort of announcement about Mare Do Well and how she was just a cheap trick to make Rainbow look bad. She then realized that, after what those five had done to her, it was stupid of her to assume that they'd be so kind as to tell the public the truth. No, they just cut the act without a word and let everypony think that Rainbow had run their new favorite hero out of town. Even when Rainbow had told them the truth, nopony had listened. She hadn't realized just how vicious those ponies could be.
What kind of friends would do that? Maybe Rainbow wasn't overreacting last night. If they were willing to just throw her away like an old saddle, maybe they really weren't her friends anymore. It was probably for the best, though. After all, ponies so horrible didn't deserve to be Rainbow's friends.
Dash made her way upstairs, sniffling as blood leaked from her nostrils, and collapsed onto a floor pillow. Forelegs on the edge of her desk, she tried to compose herself and calm the flurry of emotions inside her. She was somewhere in between flying into a rage and breaking down into another crying fit. She'd never felt so broken and alone before. She hated being alone.
Her eyes moved to the splatters of blood on her hooves, and then to the mirror across the room. Her salty tears had mixed with the red liquid leaking from her nose, and the fusion was dripping onto the desk. She grimaced at the pitiful mare she saw in the reflection, and turned away.
Dash jumped a little as she felt something tap against one of her hind legs, but she relaxed again when she realized it was just Tank. She looked down at the tortoise and patted a hoof against his head. At least she wasn't completely alone. It didn't make her feel that much better, though, since she was reminded of her friends every time she saw her pet.
What was up with them? Did the five think that she didn't learn her lesson hard enough, so they piled on even more punishment? At that point, it wouldn't have surprised Dash. Her nice and loyal friends had all changed into jerks, so there really was no telling what they'd do next. She'd normally just ignore them, but now they'd turned half the town against her, so that wasn't really much of an option anymore. At the rate things were going, she'd probably be better off just moving somewhere else. It would seem that Ponyville was no longer her home, after all.
Rainbow just sighed, rubbing a hoof across Tank's tough shell. Her eyes lazily wandered away from the tortoise, moving across the few spots of blood on the floor and up to the dress she'd worn at the Grand Galloping Gala. A dress made by somepony she'd once loved like family, even if she was prissy and melodramatic. She made a mental note to burn it later. She wiped her bloodied nose and let her eyes wander further across the wall until they caught sight of a bit of yellow and black fabric just inside her closet. Rainbow recognized it, but got up to have a closer look anyway in the hope that it might distract her.
She pushed the closet door open fully, and looked over the Shadowbolt costume she'd made for last Nightmare Night. A thought came to her slowly as she ran a hoof across the stretchy fabric. She pulled the outfit from its hangar and quickly slid herself into it, leaving the hood hanging loose around her neck. She looked herself over in the mirror, tugging on the costume in a few places to adjust the less-than-perfect fit. It was a nice outfit, sure, but the colors could be a little better. It could use some accessories, too.
The thought continued to nag at her, and she walked to a nearby window, gazing out at the town beyond the river. It was a terrible thought, an insane thought. Yet, as it pushed through the emotional storm in her mind, it became tainted and stained, battered by the echoes of the insults, accusations, and mean-spirited titles thrown at her by the angry townsponies. By the time the thought reached her lips, it sounded sane. Logical. Righteous, even.
Those five ponies had taken everything from her. They'd smashed her ego, destroyed her pride, ruined her reputation, and now they'd even taken her home from her. They'd already taken her friends away weeks ago, replacing them with back-stabbing monsters, so what was left for her now? A city that thought of her as a nuisance? A fiend? A villain?
"Ponyville thinks I'm a villain, huh?" Rainbow pulled the Shadowbolt hood up and over her face. "They haven't seen anything yet."