//------------------------------// // Shop 'til it Drops (part 8) // Story: The Sunshine Chronicles // by TwilightUCrazy //------------------------------// “DON’T LET THEM ESCAPE!” shouted the fierce voice of Rarity somewhere behind them. Neither Applejack nor herself were brave enough to look back and see how close they were. They dodged around trash cans and leapt fences, trying to buy some distance between themselves and their pursuers. Applejack gave her a panicked look. “Rainbow! C’mon! Fly!” “I’m trying!” she shouted, furiously flailing her left wing to try and shake the peacock feathers loose, but they clung stubbornly to her, weighing down her appendage. As the pair bolted out of the alley, Rainbow veered left sharply, pushing her mate to turn with her. “Where the hay are we goin’?!” she demanded mid-run. “Mane Street’s back—” “Just trust me!” Rainbow shouted, her hooves carrying her faster and faster. “I’ve got an idea!” “What did we agree on about you and ideas?!” her wife yelled as they thundered down the boulevard. “I just need to buy a little time!” she squeaked. “I sure hope you know what you're doin’ darlin’!” Applejack exclaimed, looking back with wide eyes. “’Cause we got company!” Rainbow braved a single glimpse back and saw Twilight and Fluttershy angrily bearing down on them from above. ”Horseapples!” she squeaked. Rainbow Dash felt a surge of adrenaline carry her forward, and Applejack began falling behind. Her eyes began skimming various stands as the opened up to an open air market. Her magenta eyes caught off the glint of something red ahead. The pegasus beat her hooves against the cobblestone walkways even as her legs screamed at her brain for a break. “Applejack!” she snapped behind her. She watched her wife perk up. “Think fast!” She snatched an apple stem in her teeth and tossed it over her withers despite the salespony’s protests. Her mate’s eyes glinted green off the reflecting sunlight, catching the soaring apple in her sight. She darted ahead and raised her hindlegs. The apple went flying straight and quickly as an arrow, virtually turning to mush mid-flight at the force of her wife’s kick. The weaponized glop of fruit flew straight into Twilight’s muzzle, barely giving the princess time to gasp in surprise much less maneuver out of the way. It covered her face with what was left of it and blinded her. She was only destabilized in flight for a moment, but it was enough for her to smash into Fluttershy’s side, and send them both careening into another stand in a shower of goods, dust and shattered wood pieces. Applejack winced. The look of regret lasted only a moment as Rainbow grabbed her by the fetlock and the two rocketed from the scene, bolting up an alleyway, the single path forked off into three. “Which way?!” shouted Applejack earnestly. “Umm…” Rainbow’s eyes darted between the three choices. “Eenie, meanie, miney…” Her eyes locked on the left path. “MO! Take mo!” The two turned hard and bolted up the path… Right into another wall of guards. Applejack grabbed Rainbow’s tail and dropped her rump, yanking both of them to an abrupt halt. “Stop right there, criminal scum!” the unicorn captain demanded gruffly. ”MINEY! GO MINEY!” Rainbow whipped around and hauled them back in the direction they came. Reaching the fork, Rainbow instinctively threw her gaze back down the corridor they had come from, only for the group of guards that had been tailing them before to burst into the fork. The shrieking duo just barreled past the unfortunate lead guard of the group. He and his fellow soldiers found themselves mobbed by the squad that had just taken up the case. The two groups merged chaotic crash of clattering armor and shouts of surprise. The noise dissipated behind them as the pair blew out the corridor and into the street. Flicking her eyes back, Rainbow still saw a small group of stallions bearing down on them. Cursing to herself, the two zig-zagged down bustling Mane Street, diving into the thick of a dense crowd. Rainbow ducked with Applejack down another alleyway and emerged the next street over. Hanging a hard right into a building, she led the two of them up a spiraling staircase to a higher street level. Five blocks from the scene, the two finally found a moment to breathe on a ledge overlooking the market district. Rainbow reached over and began obsessively gnawing at the peacock feathers entangled in her restrained wing. “C’mon, C’MON!” she growled through her teeth. Applejack pulled her closer. “Rainbow, hold still for a second.” “What? Why?” Applejack reached into the mass of feathers, ruffling through her wing and causing her to shiver and blush. “U-uhh… AJ? Not that I’d complain about you being all flirty, but I don’t think this is a really good time…” Applejack ignored her and dug deeper. After a moment, a series of snapping noises caught her ears, and she felt the weight that bore on her left wing fall away. She blinked and looked back as Applejack emerged from her feathers with a large, what-looked-like a belt in her teeth that the giant feathers were strung to. “Huh…” she mumbled, flexing the appendage. “You're welcome,” her wife said with a smirk. "Eheheh... thanks," Rainbow said with a smile. "So... uh... what's our story gonna be?" Applejack discarded the belt of feathers without a second thought and turned to look at her. "I mean, all we've got right now is that we're Rainbow Dash and Applejack's twin sisters on their honeymoon story..." "Seriously, you can't come up with something less harebrained than that?" She shrugged. "Meh..." “Can we please just get the hay out of here now? I’d rather not find out what we’re wanted for to begin with…” Rainbow grinned and enveloped the orange mare with her wings and forehooves, flexing her wings. "Maybe putting on perfume isn't allowed in Canterlot if you're too pretty," she said with a wink. "Quit suckin' up and fly." Smiling smugly, Rainbow wrapped herself around Applejack. “When did you stop being fun?“ “HALT!” The pegasus’s eyes widened. She looked up and saw a group of six pegasus guardsponies hovering in the air just in front of them. She slapped her forehead with her hoof. “Oh, give me a break, already…” she groaned. “Uhh… Rainbow?” Applejack said, looking at her nervously. “On it!” Rainbow Dash flung her hind legs around Applejack’s stomach, and the powerful farmpony crouched before launching them skyward. The guards only had time to gape as the powerful legs of the farmpony and muscular wings of her wife combined to turn them into a hurling comet of color. The couple whipped headlong through their number like a bowling ball through pins, knocking half of them out of the sky and sending the rest reeling through the air from Rainbow’s wake turbulence. The pair shot skyward in a rainbow-colored blur and turned back to bolt south and towards the open skies over the valley… …and into another crowd of spears and bad attitudes. “IS THE EQUESTRIAN LEGION CONVENTION TODAY, OR SOMETHING?!” The Royal Guard narrowed their eyes and snorted angrily, leveling their weapons at them. Gritting her teeth, Rainbow leaned in and squeezed her mate. “Hang on!” Applejack tensed and did as she was told, clutching at her forelegs and pressing herself as tightly as possible against her chest. The pegasus bellied-up and nose-dived straight towards the lower city below. The wind buffeted at her and carried Applejack’s nervous shouts back to her ears. Rainbow ignored her and flapped harder, the force of the whistling air peeling back her lips and eyelids. The ground rushed up to meet them. Applejack winced. The pegasus’s cyan wings blossomed like a like a late spring flower and caught the wind like a kite, slowing her speed massively and angling her upward. Rainbow Dash held her dive until the last possible moment. She hit the deck, diving to mere feet over the city streets and angling sharply around, above, and below merchants, bystanders, carts, and through alleys as they rushed by. Throwing her gaze to six o’clock high, she saw that the Princess’s guards had given up the dive several dozen meters overhead and continued to pursue them from above. Using her superior maneuverability, Rainbow hung a hard right through another alleyway, feeling Applejack kicking frantically outward to keep from being turned into an orange grease on the wall. She angled herself back to the right in the direction they’d come from and burst out into open air again. The guards followed close behind, though struggled to match her turning ability in their heavy armor. Applejack whimpered in her grasp, covering a sickly-green muzzle. “Okay. I’m ready to go to the dungeon now…” Ignoring her, Rainbow threw her eyes around frantically, using the guards’ slowness to think. Directly ahead, a low-lying cloud bank hung in the air, obscuring most of Canterlot’s skyline. It’d be risky, but it was the best shot she could imagine. She bit her lip and angled towards it, licking her lips and flapping harder. “Rainbow… what’re you doin’?” the farmpony asked nervously. Rainbow streamlined her body and beat her wings ever faster to ascend and keep some distance between herself and their armored entourage. “Just hang on!” “But that way, there’s—!” “HANG ON!” she demanded, blasting through the air back towards the shopping district. She spared a glance back. The Guards were gaining. Applejack covered her mouth and quieted her arguments to a whimper. Her eyes shut tight and Rainbow felt her golden tail wrap around her own. The pair knifed into the cloud layer. Whooshing sounds of spires passing by on all sides at over a hundred miles an hour rang in their ears, and Rainbow narrowly avoided skewering the two of them on a weather vane. The shadow of another large spire loomed in the shroud ahead and she was headed right towards it. More screaming. As the pair dove closer, Rainbow flexed her wings, preparing to bank away. Something caught her eye though – an opening – and she beat her wings for more speed. The pegasus flipped sideways through an open window in the top dome of the spire. Screams and yelps of surprise exploded all around them as they flew through the sauna. A telescope and several potted plants were knocked over as the pair flew in one side of the steamy building and out the other without so much as slowing. The Guards, focused on capturing them, bottlenecked in the window and crashed into the tower with a series of heavy and painful-sounding thuds and shouts behind them. She glimpsed over her withers and guffawed loudly at their pursuer’s misfortune. “All this excitement can’t be good for the baby…” Applejack muttered dizzily, rubbing the side of her head. “Take it easy, babe. Let me just get us out of this fog bank and—” A distant and heavy rumble sounded over the whistling air. The heavy vibration grew nearer and with greater intensity, shaking Rainbow’s bones. “Uhhh…” “Rainbow, what the hay is that?” “Ummm…” A propeller-driven air yacht loomed out of the clouds moving at high speeds. “OH, LUNA FARTS!” she shrieked, spreading her wings to catch the wind. She squeezed her panicking wife closer as the rotating turbines sliced closer. She felt her feathers pulled at as the aircraft just shaved past. As soon as it had appeared, it was gone, banking sharply away to avoid splattering the two ponies against the forward decks. It was the trailing wind behind the yacht that pulled Rainbow off-balance. As she struggled to put air beneath her feathers again, a powerful gust tore at her wings, sending her reeling through the air. The pair spun, twisted, and were flung apart. Applejack yelled and went into a free-fall. Rainbow managed to reclaim some semblance of control and shook the cobwebs out of her spinning head. Half a second later, she nose-dived after her mate as she streaked down towards the city. She wasn’t difficult to spot mid-fall. There weren’t many things that her wife blended in with. She caught her a moment later. By then, the two were skimming low-lying rooftops. She flapped like she never had before. It felt as though she were trying to go from Sonic Rainboom-speeds to a dead stop, the way the air resistance tugged at her wings. She heard Applejack’s stomach lurch beneath her before she emptied their contents onto a crowd of posh ponies below. Struggling with her aching wings, Rainbow almost missed the high-rise apartment approaching out of the mists. She flapped. Not enough time… The white marble sidewalls loomed closer. Several unicorns below shouted in surprise as the pair blurred by. Rainbow clenched her teeth. This is gonna hurt… The walls loomed closer. A hundred feet. Fifty. Rainbow closed her eyes tightly, pulled herself vertical, retracted one wing and extended the other. The air resistance on one side caused the pair to twirl in mid-air, and the pegasus absorbed the impact for her wife. Applejack grunted as the pair crushed against the wall, forcing the air out of her lungs. Rainbow saw stars as her mate shakily dropped to the ground a few feet below, before turning back to look at her with those oceanic eyes. A low, pained groan escaped from somewhere – probably from her – as gravity peeled her out of the wall and brought her to the ground with a thud. Somepony nearby was shouting her name urgently, though it was lost in the white noise of her mind fading in and out of consciousness. Rainbow’s attention returned to the celestial bodies orbiting her vision. “Lookie… stars! Ready with the moon, Luna?” A dizzy chuckle was all she had left in her before the rain started and the world faded to spinning apples, rainbows and blackness.