Roughly a decade ago...
Young Gilda had not been very different from her older self. Rather quick to anger and less than pleasant around those she saw as annoying, the Junior Speedsters Flight Camp had been the last place she should have been placed.
Consisting largely of ponies, with a few griffons for appearances sake, the Camp was a brothel of annoying fillies and colts, all pegasi, who sought the chance to learn how to fly, as if that did not come natural to them.
It was a bright sunny day up in the clouds (as it usually is at this part of the atmosphere), with small cloud cabins set up all over the area blanket of clouds that formed the ground above ground of Camp. Cloudsdale was hardly a day's travel away, but adult pegasi and griffons alike patrolled the area for any stray campers. After all, at this stage, falling off the cloud was the number one cause of mortality, or so the statistics suggested.
That didn't stop supervisors from having this camp so high up though, and as Gilda noted as she passed through the center of the cabins, all aligned in a perfect circle with a well in the middle, it did not seem to deter them from leaving the young campers to themselves either.
The well was more of a visual gimmick than an actual well. Gilda took a look down the well and noticed that it was a straight drop down to the ground. She could hear the sound of beating wings, a sure sign that someone was keeping an eye on this spot. Just in case one of the campers got overly curious.
A group of fillies began to approach the square, all of them the same relatively monotone set of colors. Grey, dark blue, obsidian, and ooh, there was even a red one among them! Gilda assumed that the gray one, who was the center of the attention, was about to prepare to announce their ambitions of being the best flyer in all of Equestria, or some corny speech to that effect.
Contrary to that, the filly instead pointed towards one of the cabins. With a nod, the group marched straight into the cabin. Curious, and having nothing better to do, Gilda decided to follow, intent on finding out what was so funny about an empty cabin.
Or supposedly empty cabin, that is. When Gilda walked up the steps and followed the fillies inside just short of the door (which they had not thought to close behind them), she soon noticed a few sleeping griffons; the fillies had a megaphone on standby, no doubt preparing for a rude awakening, and then a quick scampering outside where they were out of reach.
Gilda cawed rather loudly, awakening the sleeping griffons. The fillies turned rather ghostly as the none too happy griffons saw and understood the imminent prank they were about to fall prey to. Gilda smiled, slammed the door, and latched it from the outside. Screeching and screaming could be heard inside, along with the sound of the megaphone amplifying the lion's roar of angry griffons.
Gilda snickered, feeling rather satisfied with how that went. She always thought it foolish to have a latch on the outside, but now she could see the usefulness of trapping residents inside. Three griffons vs six fillies should have been an easy match, but Gilda reasoned that the fillies would not have the mob mentality to gang up on the griffons nearly twice their size.
Walking away whistling, Gilda found herself nose to nose with a cyan pony with a rainbow mane; a young Rainbow Dash. Blank flank, typical of ponies this age, she also had a sneer, as if she knew something that Gilda did not.
"You got a staring problem pony?" Gilda practically growled the words. Most ponies would have already started backing off, but not this one. Rainbow Dash, from the get-go, had been quite different from most of the ponies she met on a regular basis.
"No, stalking is clearly a problem you have." Rainbow took one of her tiny hooves and pressed it against Gilda's beak, in a mock scolding, " It is rude to follow other ponies on their pranks and ruin them."
"Oh yeah?" Gilda swiped the hoof away and glared at the young pegasus. "Look who's talking. What are you, the miniature version of Captain Hurricane? Begone before I throttled ya."
Rainbow snickered and got on her hind hooves, prancing around while batting her hooves forward, punching the air between the two. Her tiny wings were flared outward, and the cocky pegasus declared, " A future Wonderbolt isn't scared of some bully too afraid to do a prank of her own. How about you put your talon where your-"
Rainbow would never finish that sentence, as already Gilda had connected her balled up fist to the young pony's jaw. The force sent her tumbling down the stairs in a comical fashion. Gilda strode downwards, stepping over the down pony with flare rivaled only by her better trained royal counterparts back home.
"Future Wonderbolt my tail feathers. Better get back home to Mommy before you get real hurt-Aaaaeeee!"
As fate would have it, Gilda had turned her back to the wrong pony. Rainbow had chomped down on her tail, and though her incisors were hardly anything to bat an eye at, the pony's molars were made for grinding. When Rainbow began trying to grind at her tail, Gilda hopped and screeched into the air, running about in circles in the square with Rainbow still attached.
"Let go of my tail you-"
Again Gilda was interrupted, this time by the inconveniently placed well earlier mentioned. Over the side both she and Rainbow went, tumbling down the narrow well until both bodies became wedged in tight near the bottom. The dizzying drop alone almost made Gilda's head spin, but the discomfort of having her outstretched arms and legs supporting both her and Rainbow put a strain on her.
Not to mention Rainbow now was directly on top of her wings, making it all the more difficult to attempt to get the leverage in order to escape the well.
"Well damnit, will you let go of my tail now?!" Gilda shrieked, much less concerned about the agonizing pain in her tail, and more concerned about a tumbling fall from the clouds.
"Mro!"' Rainbow protested, biting down even harder, eyes closed and hooves wrapped around Gilda's frame. "Mum mem mo!"
Her arms and legs were beginning to wobble, and combined with the incredible weight on her shoulders, Gilda could tell that this would not end well. In her lament, she shouted aloud, "Why could they not have had this camp on the ground?"
Luna laughed aloud, in the kind of way that made one question what the joke was in the first place. Gilda had not been joking, and her confused expression brought the point across quite well that she had missed it. Sunset snickered a bit as well, for no other reason than the thought of one of Equestria's greatest current fliers clinging to a griffon for dear life near the bottom of a well in the sky.
Then again, it was crazy enough to might actually be true.
"What's so funny?" Gilda demanded.
Luna wiped an imaginary tear from her eye using a wing, composing herself just long enough to answer, "The image of Rainbow Dash clinging to you to keep from falling out of the sky is what is so funny. Other than that, I don't see a major hole in your story."
Gilda huffed, her earlier mood having been rocked by this accusation. "Hole? It is the truth!"
"Maybe we should find Rainbow Dash in order to verify this," Sunset added, "Even I have to admit, that is a pretty difficult concept to wrap your head around."
"Whatever." Gilda turned from both ponies, indignant that her story amused them due to potential accuracy issues. "If you want to hear the rest of it, I am going to demand an apology first."
"Well then, that means a shortening of the time before your extradition to Griffia." Luna had become serious again.
Gilda mused it over for a few seconds before folding her arms in surrender. "Point taken."
So there they were, wedged between a tough space and the seemingly endless drop down when Gilda roughly shifted Rainbow in an attempt to free her wings. "I can't hold us both much longer! Use your wings!"
Rainbow flapped once, and sure enough, Gilda could feel the weight beginning to lighten off her shoulder. Before she could sigh in relief, her paws slipped, sending both tumbling from the well and into the open air. Gilda screeched in terror, flapping her arms and wings in an attempt to start to get leverage.
While her wings caught some air, they seemed uncomfortably damp, and didn't seem to be doing their job properly. Before Gilda could attempt to figure out why, she hit a cloud with a thump, feeling Rainbow slam into her back, teeth still gripping her tail.
Though in more pain than she dared to recall, the griffon took her foretalons and pried the cyan pegasus from her injured tail. Holding her by the wings, Gilda might would have tossed her over the cloud had the pegasus not been laughing at her at this point.
"What's so funny?" Gilda demanded, "You almost got us both killed!"
Rainbow seemed more amused than ever, laughing even harder. Gilda threateningly held Rainbow over the side of the cloud, very far from amused. When Rainbow realized that she was literally dangling by her wings over the edge of the cloud, she regained her composure. "It was supposed to be a pretty cool joke, prank, but then we fell in the well and I kind of panicked and lost control..."
Gilda would have let go right then and there had she not taken a moment to digest the full meaning of the sentence. Gilda, startled by this, eyed Rainbow with some scrutiny. "Were you set up to do this?"
Rainbow shook her head and folded her arms. "No, it's fun to watch other creatures' reactions. I think you tipped the scale by falling into the well though."
As it sank in the intent, Gilda removed one of her talons from Rainbow' wings, the remaining one firmly gripping the pegasus. Rainbow looked down, looked at Gilda, and understand what was at stake.
"Alright, I get it, messing with your tail and taking a piss on you might have been a little far, but you did leave those fillies in a locked room with griffons bigger than them."
Rainbow spoke as if endangering her very life evened the score somehow. Gilda would have snapped had a mare not descended upon them at that very moment. A pegasus, of course, nearly twice their own size with an orange coat and a dark purple mane. Her aqua eyes seemed to be trying to take in the information.
"Girls, we put that well there for aesthetics and practice; the two of you should not be horseplaying around there."
Gilda would have protested, but Rainbow beat her to the punch. "Ms. Whippe, to be fair, that well is very easy to fall into. It is just our height."
Ms. Whippe rolled her eyes and began directing the cloud back towards the camp, pushing it along as sh econtinued her scolding "Had you two not been horseplaying in the first place you would have noticed the well and not fallen in like you did and scared yourselves pissless."
Gilda was somewhat taken aback by the word choice, until she recalled that a certain pony had indeed lost control of herself back there. Thankfully there had not been any crap added ontop of that, or else the smell would have clued her in just early enough to have released Rainbow to the open air.
"And guess who is going to have to bathe the two of you when we get back to camp?" Whippe continued her rant, eyeing the two troublemakers with a scowl.
"You?" Rainbow, still held by her wings by Gilda, attempted to ease the still present tension.
"Oh Rainbow Dash, sometimes I really wish you paid that kind of attention in class."
Gilda snickered, despite everything. Although the pony had nearly made them both statistics, she had to admit in hindsight; it would have been humorous had she not ran into the well. Or better yet, if the pony had started the prank farther from the well. Setting Rainbow Dash down onto the cloud next to her, the two had their backs to Whippe, a small smile emerging on Gilda's lips.
Yeah, that last one on that list sounded like something she could correct. "Rainbow Dash is it? You realize that this means war between us?"
Rainbow looked to Gilda with a wide grin on her face. "Rainbow 1, griffon zip."
"It's Gilda, and you will find out the hard way why griffons don't play. Cause we play to win." Gilda leered down at the pony, who did not seem at all deterred by Gilda's slight height advantage.
This whole time Ms. Whippe seemed to be ignoring the two; either that or contemplating what she had done by inadvertently saving their lives.
"The ensuing prank war was history," Gilda concluded, "Took Ms. Whippe three days to get the smell of horse piss out of my coat, but it sure as hell had been worth it, till she traded me for the pink one."
Sunset had begun to nod off; not due to the length of the story, but simply due to the fact that she had grown somewhat bored, as she had heard a variant of this part of the story once before. Luna, on the other hand, remained wide awake, and upon noticing Sunset's drowsiness, commented on it.
"Well, while I am sure Rainbow would tell it a little differently, I'm sure it would not entertain Sunset Shimmer any greater. Now then, what did you do for a living before all of this Market and Legion nonsense?"
Gilda seemed taken aback, as if this question had caught her off guard. "For a living? Well, after Camp, it dawned on me that I needed a new source of income; things were getting rough back home, and they either wanted me home in the crosshairs and fed in their house, or not at all fed from their house. Pops objected, but his word only got so far when he was under the authority of Uncle Grackus."
Gilda sighed, rubbing her cheek fondly, as if that kindled memories. "Dash joined up with the weather team, but as a griffon instead of a pegasus, it was a little harder finding a job. After all, national security reasons made it unlikely for a foreigner to get to work in the weather factory, much less know Equestria's yearly weather forecast."
Luna nodded in understanding before Gilda continued. "So, I went with plan B and hustled some in the cloud filled streets of Cloudsdale. Stallions and mares alike couldn't keep anything to themselves, so there was plenty to sell and buy. Only issue is, couldn't report my income since it was a little less than on the legal side."
"Buying and selling Equestrian citizens, no matter your citizenship, is illegal," Luna pointed out, "Not to mention something I doubt would have been going on for very long."
"Yes well, thanks to legislation that Celestia made some time ago, I was soon out of that job too." Gilda closed her eyes and sighed again, her voice rising slightly in volume with each passing minute. "No job history I could report, a Griffia-Equestria dual resident, and a griffon, finding a job that didn't require me to drop my standards was quite difficult. Rainbow defriending me in my time of need did not exactly help either."
Gilda sniffed, wiping an imaginary tear from her eye, as if the upcoming part was painful to her. "It was hard at first, the only friend I have ever known no longer being a call away. I went from sad to angry to confused back to sad again in minutes. I get that I insulted her back then, but to outright disown me like that?"
Gilda spat off to the side with a scowl. "Took my anger out on the first moving thing that even remotely resembled Rainbow Dash. Didn't need the right color, just a set of wings and a cyan body. Funny thing is, when they found me beating up some random pegasus in the alley, rather than calling the guards, the Market decided that I would be replacing her in a fighting match."
Luna's ears twitched, the only sign that she had even a mild reaction to this monologue. "Fighting match? Celestia only recently permitted those again, with more strict regulations of course in order to keep it civil."
Gilda nodded with a coy smile, this time obviously preparing for a comment that she had been withholding for a very long time.
"Frankly my dear Princess, regulations didn't do a damn bit of good that evening. The evening several months later where the world got turned upside down; the evening where I would become a champion. And of course, some shit had to hit the fan when I wanted to bask in my own glory..."