//------------------------------//
// Fade in, Fade Out 
// Story: Appledashery 
// by Just Essay 
//------------------------------//

	The alarm went off.

Rainbow Dash sat up, blinking blearily.

She gave her clock a dispassionate stare, and it wasn't until two loud minutes had limped by that she finally summoned the strength to switch the blaring thing off.

Not even bothering to stand up, Rainbow flapped her wings and hovered loosely across her home.





Breakfast was a dull thing.

Rainbow munched through her bowl of oats as if it was cement.

She was't even halfway finished with the meal when she went to wash it out in the kitchen basin.

By then, it was getting difficult to turn simple faucet knobs.

So, with a defeated sigh, she fluttered back into her room, pulled a pill from the container, and took her first dose fo the day.

Gargling water, she swallowed the medicine down and fluttered over to where she kept her saddlebag and things.





Flying out of her house, Rainbow stopped just above the stoop, staring out onto Ponyville in the bright morning sunlight.

Squinting, she glanced aside.

The "For Lease" sign stabbed at her vision.

She sighed, flapped her wings harder, and shot for the cloud high above the slowly waking village.





"Nnngh!"  Rainbow kicked cloud after cloud, dissolving them to puffy trails that evaporated swiftly in the air.

She heard laughter.

Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted Thunderlane and Candy Mane pausing in their work to share a joke with two other pegasi.

The winged ponies giggled merrily, their faces turning red and warm in the noonday sun.

Rainbow sighed out her nostrils, turned back to her work, and gave the next row of clouds a murderously savage kick.





Rainbow glided through the air, twirling about as her wings made vapor trails against a lonely cloudbank.

She backflipped, performed a cork-screw, and dove down towards the earth.

Pulling up with inches to spare, Rainbow found herself gliding over the surface of a pond.

She looked into her reflection and the reflection stared back.

She couldn't tell which pony needed a hug more.

A frown ran through her muzzle and she punched the lake's surface.

It barely made a ripple.

Wincing, Rainbow glanced at the end of her hoof, then flexed the forelimb numbly.

She rolled her eyes, spun about, and beat her wings so heavily that it distorted the entire surface of the lake.

Light danced off the massacred surface as she pulled up, spun through the sky, and climbed towards the warmer heights of Ponyville's airspace.





Rainbow sat on a lone cloud, hugging her legs as the sunset melted before her.

Sweet Apple Acres loomed below, its orchards and silos casting long shadows over the lush farmscape.

At the entrance to one barn, Big Mac and Applejack returned home from a long day of work, their cart full of glossy fruit.

Two other equines trotted out of the farmhouse to greet them.

Granny Smith said something with a smirk, and Apple Bloom giggled, followed soon by Applejack's guffaws and Big Mac's chuckles.

Rainbow hugged herself tighter.

Her face tightened, and moisture lined the edges of her eyes.

Then, with gritting teeth, she kicked off the cloud, twirled about, and glided eastward.





When her hooves landed on the dirt road towards the north edge of town, she managed to keep her balance.

With a soft breath into the night, she trotted forward, approaching a lone building that stood two blocks from the next nearest Ponyvillean structure.

In flickering neon lights, a group of Equestrian words read "The Navel" just above a pair of swinging doors.