//------------------------------//
// Faster. 
// Story: Night Drive 
// by Julia 
//------------------------------//

Get in the car.

Rainbow could only think to herself as she ran out of the house. It was far too late to try to fix this. Or too soon. The time never mattered had that been the case. She could never fix things with her. Not after what had happened. She dusted the broken glass off of her jacket and nearly slipped down the stairs of the porch on the fresh puddles of water from the fiercely pouring spring rain of the night. Thunder boomed like the deep bass of a massive truck, the lightning flashed like its headlights. The pain of her eyes and ears from the acts of God which beat at her body with the rain, bringing her down more as the pain in her heart at the thought of leaving her behind was like being cornered at gun point. She could not move her legs to go farther down the stairs, but the blood trickling down from her lips and nose begged to differ.

She wanted the most of all the world to just stay and depend on a miracle to fix it, but it was futile. The rain spoke on behalf of probability's not wanting to bend fate to her favor tonight. She stared back the door which lead literally into her past, and to this dangerous open world, full of unknown wonders. Things to pleasure and please her, things to hurt her, things to kill her. 

Run.

Rainbow knew she always ran from the things that hurt her this badly. That was why she left Cloudsdale, why she vowed to never show her face there again lest she came back with something to be proud of. Until then, the pain prevented her from even facing in its direction most of the time. It was truly painful. Similarly now, Rainbow went through the same exact dilemma. Shall she go back to her past? As she knows exactly how her life will be if she continues life on that path? Or shall she look ahead to her present and future? Unsure of what will happen?

Rainbow took chances. She looked back once again, and though she was about to stand to turn back, the lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and she sprinted off the porch and down to the gate. She fell against it, catching herself on the hexagonal holes in the gate, beginning to cry loudly, hoping to God that her cries were not as loud as the rain. She found herself unable to stand up once again, having now scraped her knee against the ground as she had fallen low enough.

"DAMMIT!!!" she yelped. Not from the pain of her knee, but of her shattered heart. "Why me?! Why now?....why?...."

She closed her eyes and tried to squeeze back her loud sobs. She felt weaker than she ever had before. Unable to cope with what was happening, Rainbow reached into her pocket and decided to call Sunset, Fluttershy, anyone who could come pick her up. Her car was right in front of her, and yet she felt too weak to bring herself up to drive it. The stress was literally intoxicating her beyond her comprehension. More stress flooded her nerves and electrocuted at her relentlessly, causing her to shake along with the trembling from the frigidity of the ferocious winds and piercingly frozen bulleting pellets of rain of the dark and thundering clouds.

"Rainbow! Stop, please! Just... just listen!!" 

Rainbow dared herself to not look back, but at this rate, she could not afford to just sit here and let her past catch up to her. This was officially a race against time. She wanted so badly to outrun it, so she dared herself to. She stood up, seemingly with no trouble, and opened the gate, not even turning to close it. She swung it shut, but it did not manage to completely close, as it slowly drifted back open.

Applejack, in shambles, and also a bit beaten and bloody from the skirmish with Rainbow, fell at the pillar of the porch and merely onto the stairs, hanging on the railing and screaming for Rainbow, by her name again and again, repeatedly to come back. 

Rainbow did not turn back, she jammed her phone into one pocket as she pulled her car keys out of another. Saying nothing, she opened the car door and turned to get in. She caught a glimpse of Applejack's face. She had to pause for how so it haunted her. Applejack's tears flowing with the rain, she was biting her lip to stop to coughs and gasps which would make out to embarrass her had anyone saw her in this state. How Applejack was hanging onto the railing made Rainbow think she was departing from an island in the only available boat, sailing off to a bright future and a happy life off of this island of suffering, but Applejack could not fit in the boat, so she had no place made for her in the future. The thought shot into Dash like a rifle blasting rows and rows of bullets into her being. The pain and pity nearly prompted her to run back to Applejack, and she nearly did until Rarity walked out of the front door.

Unscathed, unharmed, in the same black and pink lingerie she was wearing. Her mascara running from the crying, which she had been doing more than anyone there. She crouched over Applejack and hugged her from behind, burying her face in Applejack's shoulder and hair.

Rainbow stopped in her tracks. "We... we were all friends... so why?.... Why would Rarity do something like this?..." she choked, not loud enough for either Applejack nor Rarity to hear. She covered her mouth and sunk against the side of the car, balling up her fist and clenching it so hard her nails dug into her palm and caused them to bleed. The pain sent her into a raving frenzy, granting her an uncontrollable anger with which she just wanted to wail out on both Applejack and Rarity simultaneously, despite Applejack being stronger, and Rarity being a rather dirty fighter. She wanted to, but her anger was calmed by her care for her friends, but the vision of seeing Applejack and Rarity in bed with one another sent her over the edge. She wanted to punch through the window, but she managed to curve her fist to plant a terribly obvious dent into the flank of the car.

Reeling back the fist in pain, Rainbow could not even bare to stand looking at them anymore. 

Fuck them... Just run away from them. They can't catch you in the car. Get in the car and drive. Just drive.

Rainbow obeyed her impulses and sunk down into the car, stabbing the keys in and rolling them to crank the engine and get it running. She stepped on the gas and sped off into the narrow streets, drifting around a corner and now onto the night city streets. Usually these streets were full of vehicles and life in the light hours, but as it was dark, Rainbow found herself alone. That was exactly how she felt ahead of all of what had just happened. Alone. Applejack was out of her life, and as Rarity played a part in it, so was she. This would surely destroy the friendship collectively between the six, and Rainbow was unsure if the otherworldly Twilight and Sunset could fix a problem like this.

Rainbow was uneasy, she wiped her tears with her left arm and took over the wheel with the same arm as her right was used to manipulate the radio. She turned to station after station, feeling interrupted by the sound of pouring rain as it tainted the pure flow of music from her speakers. She soon managed through and had found a peculiar sound through all of this; an ongoing bass behind a angelic voice in an R and B type of song. She surely knew this singer: Zecora. She rested her left arm against the driver's door which she used as an arm rest for her right arm to be used to drive. She let her seat back so that she could relax a bit, and get the stress off of her being, but it didn't work. As the song's melancholic sound eventually grew louder, she got too used to it and had to turn it up to it's max level. 

The loudness of the song along with her irritation of not being able to relax from all the stress in which she had just partaken of for today forced Rainbow to sit up from the seat, grip the wheel with both her hands, and speed up in the direction of the highway. Running the flashing red lights and the highway entrance lights, no cops were on her, she continued to drive, accelerating as the song too grew louder seemingly as it went on. At full volume, it would take a minute or two for Rainbow to get used to the loud banging of the bass and the lyrics as booming now as a Baptist church choir.

Entering the highway now, Rainbow felt relieved, as now she could accelerate to nearly seventy miles per hour, and no cops were in sight. Nit like it would matter; there were no other cars and she simply did not give a shit. But the relief was not enough, the memory still lingered. Rarity, with her arms and body wrapped around Applejack's, it simply enraged her to no ends.

Rainbow screamed. 

The song went on and she screamed.

Letting out her frustration as a yell of an attempt at gaining immediate relief did not help. Ahead of her a dark terrain and straight highway road of nothingness but rail-less roads and dense trees possibly harboring dumb wildlife looking to cross as the activity of the day had subsided. But there was an even more fierce beast out here tonight. Territorial and cheated, unable to act to gain her position as queen back, she scurried away to seek refuge in a new life. These wild animals needed to surely fear her, as she held a weapon faster and more dense than they. A hit meant certain death. Possibly for the wild animal and for the queen of beasts herself.

Rainbow silenced to listen to the words of the song.

"Run." 

She heard it over and over again in this song. As if it were made to play at this moment. As if the disc-jockey knew of her situation, but it may seem he or she always did. When she felt in love, a love song played; when she felt triumphant, a song of success played; but now, in her escapade to escape fate and time itself, the song too told her to run.

Maybe the fact that she was in a state of mind meant she was more aware of anything pertaining to that dame state of mind. Happiness notices happiness; sadness notices sadness. Perhaps there was another song about happiness on before this, and she had just not heard it. Of course she hadn't, as she still technically had just tuned in. This song was playing; it was the right song being played at the right time to the right person. Perfection got no better than this.

The song made Rainbow cry harder, as it was about a couple on the run, together. Away from all the hate they received from being together, they stuck together; despite the threat that faced them, they ran hand in hand. This song was either mocking her or complementing her situation, but she could not decipher which.

So she screamed. And she screamed. And she screamed.

She managed to catch sight of the buck caught within the gaze of her headlights, watching in pure terrorized horror concentrated by Rainbow's rage personified as a raging bull gaining further velocity and acceleration to rip right through a buck of that size like a sniper rifle's bullet through the head of an enemy. That easily.

But this bull was not ready to have the blood of an innocent on her hands. She whipped the car around the buck and tried to pull it back, but the loose friction led the car to spiral out of control. Rainbow steady tried to control it, and only so to have the car wander quickly away, off the road and into the muddy dirt leading her car straight down to a tree. Rainbow, in a split second checked to see if her seat belt had been on, and once realizing what was going to happen...

...She screamed.

The windshield shattered like it had been stomped by a giant, effortlessly as the tree barely moved against the pressure pushing from the car, which was totaled. Smashing her head against the wheel, triggering the horn, Rainbow was pushed back and crushed by the airbag against the seat. Her head now bleeding down her face, blood dripping from her chin, Rainbow felt the airbag deflate began to go unconscious immediately. She was not dead, at least.

Relief. Though, the fact she was half asleep in this falling consciousness left her unable to scream the rest of the pain out. Perhaps the one right before the crash did it for her. 

Rainbow laughed instead. Overjoyed to simply be alive to continue running, unaware of the full damage done to her car, she attempted to back out of the tree. The car was stuck in the tree, in the mud, in its own destruction. Now Rainbow too was stuck with the car. And within this car was a rushing river of her feelings; regrets, reliefs, pain, her anger and wrath, envy, her coveting of now just an easier life. All out of the door when Rainbow opened it and slouched out unable to fall on the ground as her seat belt was still locked in place.

But singularly managing to escape on its own was her phone, which was now ringing. It read Sunset Shimmer and her number, but Rainbow's doubling and blurring vision did not allow clear sight to that. She still, falling closer to an even deeper, more severe unconsciousness, picked up the phone and answered it. "H...hell--o....? Rain....bow--"

"Rainbow Dash?! Thank Celestia you're okay! Where are you?! Are you hurt?!"

...

Rainbow dropped the phone.

"Rainbow...? Rainbow!! RAAAINNNNBOOOOWWWW!!!!"

-_The End_-