3.3
“Focus—focus.” Scootaloo intoned steadily, sitting in front of Rainbow Dash. The evening breeze was picking up, ruffling her mane steadily as the skies darkened above them and the stars appeared one by one.
Dash’s breaths shook as she stretched out her wings and balanced in place carefully. The strain was making her balance go out of whack and she felt like she was in two places at once. “This is making my head fuzzy. Er.”
Her eyes snapping open, Scootaloo looked up to Dash’s face. That fuzzy feeling was almost certainly what she was looking for. Trying to make sense of the scruntched features upon the pegasi’s face she tried to remember if she looked like that shortly before her own first launch. “That’s got to be it, Dash! Hang onto it!” Their platform wobbled beneath their hooves as Scootaloo hopped; the poor mare indignant that she now had two pegasi on her back.
Each feather upon Dash’s wings twitched in turn as strange feelings crawled down her spine and spiraled around her legs to buzz her hooves like a fizzing soda. The last rays of the sun slid away from her face and left her cold even as the ball of strangeness within her head grew and turned stormy. She didn’t dare open her eyes lest the gathering energy escape her. Each breath whistled between her lips faster and faster, ever faster with the weakness of the unfamiliar strain.
“Can you push it into your chest?” Scootaloo asked as she backed up a little further.
Grumbling, Sunbeam adjusted her stance for the movement on her back. “Do you two have to do this on me?”
“Yes. Sush. You’re sticking around just in case.” Scootaloo answered Sunbeam.
Lightning roared within Dash, filling her chest as the ball of power in her head slowly tricked down. The power collecting in her head boiled. The boiling in her heart seeped into her wings. Her wings buzzed with motion as the molten heat touched their tips. Spreading, her wings extended to their greatest extent; flowing, the fiery river ran from her head to her heart, and out her sides. Dash’s uneven breaths slowed and steadied into solid, longing lung-fulls as the boiling warmth touched every part of her body and left her feeling lighter than she ever had before. Her wings rose unconsciously with the need to soar, rising and shaking as she needed to go with every fiber of her being.
“Dash, wait, don’t!”
Dash did—with a single wingbeat she was gone in a concussive corona of rainbow force firing upwards into the skies.
Scootaloo and Sunbeam looked up with horror, staring up to the column of rainbow lightning disappearing into the night skies. “That’s why!” Scootaloo shouted after recovering from her chokehold around Sunbeam’s neck. “We’ve got to catch her!”
Freed from most of the weight upon her back, Sunbeam crouched for her own takeoff. “Hang on!” She pumped her wings and launched after Dash.
Storming into the skies, the pair took off after the wayward Pegasus. Against the gathering dark of the night, her rainbow trail blazingly stood tall and shone as brightly as a Las Pegas neon sign. Scootaloo clung to Sunbeam’s neck as they climbed vertically; the filly only hung on thanks to ropes of cloud lashed and wrapped around the mighty mare’s barrel. There was no telling how fast Dash was ascending; only a seemingly endless column of light vanishing into the skies above.
So they climbed after her, chasing the Pegasus at the end of the rainbow. They climbed and climbed even as the moon began to rise and the trail disappeared into a cloud. Bracing, they ploughed through the doughy vapor with brute force. They cleared through it with all the power in Sunbeam’s wings—their breakthrough at the top gave no relief, however, only the blank and starry skies as far as they could see. No sign of the trail remained, and even the remaining glow within the cloud faded away into darkness. No Dash, no trail, only the darkness.
Scootaloo leapt from Sunbeam’s back; she ran for the edge of the buffeted cloud in horror to look below them. The curling updrafts pelted her face with ice crystals as she looked down and cried out with panic. “Dash! Dash!” Her head darted from side to side, looking for anything, her ears burning lightly from the cold that permeated the ever-present high altitude winds.. “Oh, no! If she falls from this height, if she can’t get control back she’ll die!”
Another joined her looking down over the edge of the curling cliff of cloud. Scratching herself behind her mane, the smaller mare hummed in agreement. “Yeah, it would hurt a lot more than hitting a cloud at the speed of a sonic rainboom.”
Scootaloo snapped at the jokester at her side, looking up to scowl at her. “This isn’t the time for jokes, Rainbow Dash! Dash is probably falling to her d- wait a second.”
“No, no. Go ahead. I’ll be right here, you know. Busy trying to find where I threw up my lungs to, and all of that.” Dash dismissed, clutching her bruised chest with a wing. She checked off in her mental notes ‘hit a cloud at Sonic Rainboom’—no need to punish herself like that again; gravity punished her more than enough.
An orange and purple blur tackled her to the surface of the ice crystal cloud; the worried filly bawling into Dash’s chest in relief. Pinning Dash in place, Scootaloo rubbed her head against the downy fur between the older pegasi’s forelegs. “Don’t do that to me! I thought I was going to lose you!”
“Wasn’t my plan. Oh my—“
“Seriously, what were you thinking flying straight up like that?” Scootaloo accused, looking up from her perch to glare at Dash in her eyes as the moonlight softly filled the air.
“Oh tree, oh sun, I’m gonna die?” Dash offered, knowing that Scootaloo probably wouldn’t take her answer.
“I’m serious!” The filly punched the blue mare in the chest and knocked the air out of her sensitive and bruised body.
After a few gasps of relief, Dash picked up where she left off, “So am I! I was doing what you said, and this uncontrollable urge to flap took me. The next thing I know, I’m flying upwards so fast that I felt like I sucked my eyeballs through my head and out of my hooves.” Dash explained as she lazily flopped out like a dead pony. Her sore wings smoked and sparked to either side from the residual magic that still spouted from her like a font. Soreness permeated her whole body, leaving her wings feeling like jelly and her legs like noodles. She’d never exerted herself so hard in her entire life. “Next to how fast I was going there at the end, I’ve never even tried before! But it was like one of those ‘rocket’ thingies they play with down on the coast.”
“Really? No control at all?” Scootaloo asked, suspecting that Dash’s problems were the same as her own after that little revelation. Her hoof wandered to her ears, trying to keep them warm against the cold they were in that was soaking into every bit of herself. Even winter wasn't so bad; and her breaths felt funny.
“Nope. All straight lines.”
Letting her head fall back to Dash’s chest heavily, Scootaloo pondered what that could mean. Poor Rainbow Dash grunted as the weight squeezed the air out of her once more. Twitching her mouth, the filly tried to make sense of it. “Yeah, I kind of have the same problem, too. I can sort of change course, but it’s really, really hard. No control at all? I thought you’d be able to—“
“We’re missing something. I don’t know what yet. What’s so different about it from normal flight?”
“Darn.” Scootaloo said before rolling off of Dash and kicking a cloud with a fore-hoof while atop Dash’s hot wing. She looked up, trying to find where their assistant had run off to. “Sunbeam, what did you do to solve—where’d she go!?” Scrambling to her hooves, Scootaloo turned around and round, but there was no trace of the wayward teacher.
“Really?” Dash slowly and painfully sat up. “She really left us? Right. I’ll have to do something about that later.” She grumbled, flexing her wings painfully as she rolled forward onto her hooves. What kind of a teacher left like that? “Great. Well, do you have an idea on how to control this?”
“Me? No!” Scootaloo protested, stomping a hoof into the clouds. “If I did, I’d be flying already.”
“Right. Good point, I’m stupid.” Dash admitted before tapping her chin weakly in thought. There had to be a way to see what was going on with the whole ‘conscious Pegasus magic’ thing. She wasn’t particularly looking to go take a look at the top of the world again like she just had, once was quite enough. It wasn’t like they had a way to just look at somepony’s brain easy.
Oh, wait. She really was pretty stupid, because she had a friend just like that. Or maybe she needed to get her head checked. She did hit that cloud pretty hard. Bopping her head time and time again, she wondered how many more screw-ups she was going to make. She picked up Scootaloo; looking left and right before squeaking her nose against the fillies’ own. “Twilight! She’ll have the stuff to figure this out, and she’s got her big freaky brain to help us figure out how to figure it out!”
Her eyes widening, the little filly realized just how right her old mentor was. “Yeah!” Oh, right. There was one slight issue. “Well, she’s got the stuff, anyway. She’s kind of busy with Sweetie Belle making sure she doesn’t accidentally make two plus two equal fish.” She explained.
Cocking an eyebrow, Dash wondered what exactly that was supposed to mean. “Right. Two plus two equals fish?”
“She’s got some kind of crazy control over that heart music stuff that makes ponies break out in song. And stuff.” Scootaloo pointed out, shivering against the biting cold once more. “Not that I do that, of course.”
“If you say so, Squirt. I’ve done it too, you know.”
Scootaloo frowned and pouted slightly. She didn’t do that girly stuff. “Totally don’t.”
Rainbow Dash smiled.
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“Like this?” Dash pulled Scootaloo in close again and started rubbing noses again, eliciting giggles from the little filly as she kicked.
“Gah, no! Heeeeeelp!”
“Nopony shall save you now!”
“But how am I supposed to get home toni-i-ight!?” Scootaloo squeaked as she tried to brace herself against Dash and push away from the nose tickling her in all the worst spots.
Dash let her and held the filly out at leg’s length. Smiling, she pondered aloud. “Well, I’d take you home since your ‘teacher’ ran off, but you don’t like ‘girlyness’, and since I’ve kind of gotten a little girly over the years…”
“Can I get a ride down?” Scootaloo asked as she calmed from her laughter.
Nodding, Dash tossed her up into the air a little and caught the filly on her back with a bit of experienced movement. The little weight drove her down a little and got a grunt out of her as the sore area between her wings ached from the impact. “Good thing I was planning on it! Seriously, though, nothing wrong with being a little girly.”
Scootaloo flew a raspberry at her idol at her last statement, rolling her eyes at Dash. The older pegasi braced for a tight squeeze, only to be pleasantly surprised at the light touches around her back as clouds rose up from their launch pad to weave dense ropes around her neck and Scootaloo. When Dash raised her eyebrow again, Scootaloo defended herself lightly. “What? Did you expect me to get all clingy and squeeze the life out of you like I was looking for the best spots to shave your mane for a wig again?”
Dash wondered if it was too late to get a cloud for Scootaloo to ride down. “Again?”
Awkward silence stretched out. “Um, I kind of stopped doing that a few years ago?”
“Really?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time? It was right after your second rainboom. I didn’t really mean to take it all.” Scootaloo cringed as she spoke.
“That was you?!”
“I was eight and all, uh, impressionable! Yeah, that’s the word! I’ve got better, it was four years ago!”
“Rarity made me go super-frilly for a month! It was horrible!” Dash pouted aloud, frowning with disappointment as she trotted towards the edge of the cloud. The crazy, silly hats, the disturbing dresses, it was like some fashion purga—oh, right. She sighed as she couldn’t stay mad. She was supposed to set a good example for Scootaloo, she couldn’t get too mad at her for something that happened four years ago.
Thinking back, it was kind of funny having to go through all that craziness just to get a dyed wig to hide her baldness. At the time, she had even thought it had been Pinkie Pie getting her back for the One Scoop incident. But had she been any different when she was young? There was that time with Fleetheart and the Wonderbolts not long after Cloudsdale lost its bid that she was sure was the reason why she hadn’t been accepted to the ‘bolts yet, after all.
“Alright, so it was kind of annoying and uncool to do that, Scootaloo.” She admitted. “But if you never do it again, I would like to see that wig. Gotta make sure you got it just right.” Dash drawled, winking at Scootaloo over her shoulder.
“Well, duh. Of course I got it right!” Scootaloo waved her hoof, snorting at the mere thought that she had gotten Dash paraphernalia wrong. “We’re like, partners in awesome or something!”
“Let’s not go that far, yet. Study Buddies in Awesome. Maybe.” Angling her wings to easily glide on home, Dash let herself fall from the edge of the cloud and roll out into an easy descent through the whispering winds of the night skies. There really was something to the—whatever it was—that Scootaloo had. Granted, it made her feel like Big Macintosh had been bucking her back to Discord’s era over and over again, but there was something real to it.
Easing over, Dash pulled into a wide corkscrew to bleed off altitude on their way down. There was one thing, though. “We still need to find out how she flies. It’d go a long way to figuring this out. Why hasn’t she explained it to you?”
Pensively, Scootaloo pondered voicing her suspicions. It was crazy, and there was no way to know if she’d be believed or not. “Say, Dash. If I was to tell you something, would you Pinkie Promise not to reveal it?”
“It’s not bad, is it? ‘Cause if somepony could get seriously hurt from it, Pinkie makes an exception now.” Dash absentmindedly replied to her passenger as she rolled to her other side lazily to start corkscrewing in the other direction.
“No.” Scootaloo snapped worriedly. “Well, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s bad, but it’s more somepony doing things that will make other ponies not respect her much anymore. And, uh, not something that will get somepony hurt, I think.” She mumbled, tapping her hooves against Dash’s neck in a static beat of worry. Were they there yet? It was getting kind of late, and she felt like falling asleep where she laid. But hadn't the sun just set an hour before?
Leaning her head back to look over her shoulder, Dash asked the question on her mind as they swooped over the lake. “So, why would I need to Pinkie Prom-“
“The Crusaders and I think Sunbeam isn’t a Pegasus!”
“And now you’ve just lost me in a cloudbank.”
“We think she’s Princess Celestia!”
Dash wobbled as her concentration broke. Her glide faltered into a wobbling jig of movement as she tried to fit the princess into her image of Sunbeam and failed miserably. “What makes you say that? It’s kind of nuts, even for Ponyville. Even after the attack of those killer nuts, it’s nuts.”
“Lots of stuff.”
“Uh, not helping your case here—“
“Well, we don’t have any proof yet, but we’re kind of working on that?”
“Don’t you think you should get some before saying stuff like that?” Dash turned forward again as she smoothed out her glide. “Kind of rude to just go accusing somepony of stuff like that.”
“We’re working on it. But it explains how she could fly normally, and still do the wingy-magic stuff. And she made Sweetie Belle afraid to sing!”
“Whoa, uncool!”
“Yeah, I know! That whole ‘two plus two equals fish’ thing!”
Dash bit her lip, considering what to say. What could she say? Could Sunbeam be a problem, a problem which could cause others? Could she be the princess? If the Crusaders were right, it’d be huge. But if they were wrong, that’d be worse. And did they even have the right to reveal her if it was true? “So, if somehow you did kind of prove it, what would you do then? I’m just saying that having proof just means you have proof.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Yeah, some of my worst ideas have come from that. Gotta have a plan, Scootaloo. Gotta have a plan.”
Scootaloo didn’t know what she could say to that. Yet. She wished she was down on the ground again, or in her bed, though. So tired...
Above them, though, high above on a cloud floating serenely in the night, a white figure watched from beyond the sight of mortal eyes. Watching, waiting, wondering if Dash would be enough to handle the filly. There was much to do, and much to work on. They were out of her hearing, gliding away into the darkness of her sister’s night headed for home. Home like where she should be, getting ready for the madness of the next day. There was a filly to teach, soon.