//------------------------------//
// Bonus: Valor 
// Story: Letters to the Sun 
// by Horizon Runner 
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	Excerpt from Memoirs from the Spear’s Tip by Zone Lock.

I know that I said earlier I didn’t care much for the Fleet's brass, and I know I said I wouldn’t go into much detail about any of that. Well, there’s a single exception to both counts, and her name is Rainbow Dash.

Yeah, the Element Bearer. Big damn hero. Immortal. Looks like she popped right out of a foal’s cartoon. Same mare.

See, there’s a part of her long and illustrious career she doesn’t brag about. Everypony’s heard of the Wonderbolts—they made a damn movie out of that story—and everypony knows about all the stuff the Element Bearers have ended up doing, all the one-shot KO’s that they’re famous for, blah blah blah. She played it all up so much that it’s hard to tell fact from fiction anymore, and I’m guessing that’s exactly how she likes it. Under most circumstances, she’s everything I don’t like. Flashy, arrogant, reckless… the kind of pony who turns a perfectly planned OP into a grade-A Charlie Fox just by being on the field.

But I’m not here to talk about what she’s like most of the time—or I guess was like, but I’ll get back to that in a moment. I’m here to talk about what she was like one very specific day.

You all know the one. First contact. Zero hour. The First—and Celestia being merciful, Last—Battle of Epona. Bet you didn’t know she was there. Like I said, it’s one of the things she doesn’t talk about. If I had to guess, I'd say she'd beat me senseless for telling this story.

Well, screw that. I think this story deserves to be told. I think it’s one of the few stories about her that really paints her like she is. She can beat the crap out of me later.

I was a gunnery officer on the bridge of the Solaire. She was the captain. There was a lot of grumbling about it through the lower ranks, like there always is when the Elements get involved. Even when they’re doing the right things, they’re so damned perfect, you can’t help but feel jealous. It's like being on the crew with a freaking superhero. I’m still not sure exactly how she landed that post, but in this one case I just don’t care. She earned that damned chair well enough.

Everypony knows about the Battle of Epona—which I’m just gonna call “The Frag,” like we did at the time. They don't always know just how screwed we were. Everything on those ships was kludged together from stuff that had been mothballed back when the Gryphon Empire was still planetside. Honestly? It’s a miracle the stuff even worked, much less won us the day.

But it goes beyond just the tech stuff. See there weren't any veterans in that battle, not a single one. All rooks, as far as the field was concerned. Guard, Long Patrol, REF, didn't matter. I was a Seargeant in the 22nd Spellcaster Battalion, and I had no idea what I was doing ninety percent of the time. You'll find guys like that damned General Stormfeather who claim that it was all some grand plan, but you know what? Stormfeather was crapping himself along with the rest of us. I knew guys that served on his ship, and that son of a flank was not “bravely leading the charge” like he claims in his autobiography (and if the honorably retired general finds himself offended by any such allegations, he can kiss my damn cutie mark).

The point is, we were all confused, fumbling, and utterly terrified through the whole thing, including Rainbow Dash. Especially Rainbow Dash. I remember it in the way she freaking stood, how damn tense she looked. I also know a bit about why, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

So the Fraggers (I refuse to call them “Unknown Alien Aggressors;” it doesn’t even form a good acronym) flew straight at us. Swarm tactics, just like the textbooks say not to use. First wave hit us hard, but we lived. I don't think even one of our ships went down. Second wave wasn’t so generous.

Everypony knows how the battle played out, but there’s one point that’s crucial to my story today. I can still picture it on the back of my eyelids. Right as the second wave smashes into us, this big wave of green light hits the bridge. There was this one colt, named Babble Brook, manning the helm. He used to deal Appleoosa Hold’em every Friday night. Didn’t talk much, but always dealt fair and brought cider to share. He was one of those guys who never seemed to stop smiling, even when things were rough. He’d just say a quiet little prayer and look out towards the sky—sun, moon, even the stars seemed to be enough to give him peace.

The beam blasted through the bridge armor and hit him square on. Nothing left of the poor bastard but a hole in the deck. We probably would have reacted stupidly with a bunch of crying and screaming, except the beam also blew a giant hole in the bridge. The air rapidly began the process of leaving the room, and we didn’t have much choice but to follow.

There were six of us still alive, including me and Rainbow Dash. All of us were outside the ship without suits. If you only know spaceflight from movies, you’d probably assume we’d die instantly, but that’s not quite how it works. Lots of nasty things happen to the body in zero-pressure, but exploding and freezing aren’t two of them. Long story short: You’re out of the ship, you’ve got one minute before you start really dying.

But see, there’s something most ponies don’t know about pegasi, and it’s that they can fly without air. Being a cornhead myself (and proud) I never gave the idea of pegasus magic much thought, but it turns out that when you’ve got wings and the kind of ridiculous magical power that comes with being Rainbow Dash, you can move with a pretty damn good pace, even if you don't have air to push against. I was made aware of this fact when she slammed into me, shoving me back into the bridge and through the still-closing bulkhead. She got four of us through like that, making sure we were holding onto something sturdy and grabbing as much air as she could each time. (Don’t ask me why the air pressure didn’t do anything to her lungs. Either her organs are indestructible, or she just tanked the pain.)

When it got to the last guy, though, she came back to a closed bulkhead. The four of us crowded around the little window. The guy in her hooves was passed out. Could have been dead. No way to tell. I made eye contact with her for a split second, and the way her eyes looked still makes me shake every time I think about it. Absolute terror, compressed to a critical point. Knowing what I know about her now, knowing what she probably thought was going to happen to her, I can’t blame her. She took off after that, and I lost her. The next time I saw her, she was refusing a medal at the reward ceremonies, right before giving that speech everypony remembers about how she wasn't gonna be serving in the navy anymore.

I don’t know what happened exactly, but from the reports of a few other ponies the best I can figure is that she supermared her way through some part of the ship's hull and got that colt to the medbay by carrying him on her back. Just to be completely damn clear: Poor Brook aside, she didn’t let a single one of us die. In fact, I’m pretty sure the rest of the ponies from that bridge crew are still kicking today.

But remember how I said I knew why she was scared? Well, let me explain something about the Rainbow Dash. See, there was an incident way, way back that I heard of through a friend of a friend. Apparently, back when those six fillies were still finding out about the Elements’ abilities, Rainbow Dash ended up caught in a wild hurricane and tossed into the ocean. Total fluke, and, again, something she doesn’t talk about, but there’s more to it than just a dunk in the big lake.  She stayed under for two days, and when she washed up she apparently looked so much like a corpse that they almost sent her to the coroner before she started talking.

What this friend told me was that apparently Element Bearers still need to breathe, and they need it just as bad as the rest of us. Oh sure, asphyxiation doesn’t kill them, and it doesn’t cause brain damage or any of that other nasty stuff, but in some ways I’d say it’s worse. Dying’s one thing, but the Element Bearers just aren’t going to get  that luxury. They suffer, and it just never stops.

Try not breathing for ten damn minutes sometime. Now imagine that burning in your lungs, getting worse and worse for forty-eight hours.

I don’t think she’d forgotten that. I mean, really, who the hell could? When she was looking out at space like, I bet she was imagining what it would be like to be stuck in vacuum, gasping for air that didn’t exist. If we’d lost that battle? She could have been stuck out there for years. Or, you know, assuming she didn’t get too exhausted (which the Element Bearers can still have happen, the last time I checked) she could have tried to do re-entry… bare-skinned. I’ll let your imagination do that one for you, since we also know that they can still feel pain.

And to top it all off, she willingly spent her precious time grabbing me and tossing my dumb flank to safety, then did it again. Four times. And when her luck finally ran out and the doors were closed, she made sure the guy in her arms made it straight to the medical bay. She did all of this while a battle was raging just outside—a battle, mind you, which was threatening everything she'd ever known. She spent her time saving five ponies who didn't count for squat, just because they were part of her crew.

If that doesn't count as Loyalty, then I'm a five-tongued rattlesnake.

And you know what? She never even gave me the chance to thank her. We’ve never had a single conversation.

So let me just say this: Rainbow Dash, on the off-chance you end up reading this…

Thank you. I know that the battle changed you, that you’ve stopped with the speeches and the bragging, and that you’re out there somewhere among the stars doing things that matter. I respect that. Hell, I respect you more than ninety percent of the admirals running the navy nowadays, and I’d gladly get back on a ship to serve under you. You’re one of the bravest damn mares I’ve ever met, and you deserve that damned Element. I hope your travels are as grand as the stories you told, Rainbow Dash.

…

Well, now that that’s over with, let me tell you about the time I stopped every train in Equestria…