Applejack’s first thought upon seeing the bursts of light inside Twilight’s castle was that her friends were setting off fireworks. Between Pinkie Pie, Trixie, Starlight, and the general fatigue of her five-hour gallop back from the foothills of Mount Pinocchio, it occurred to her as a perfectly sensible and likely possibility.
Inside, the books had been moved to form a low impromptu barricade near the middle of the room, supported by a throne on either side. They provided some shielding from the spells being flung, but little protection from the irate shouting that accompanied them.
“If Celestia’s rule is so great, how come dozens of ponies came to my town, Twilight?” Starlight poked her head around the barricade and shot a bolt of magic. “They had everything they needed without any precious princess managing everything! They took care of themselves!”
“Weak analogy,” Spike cried from somewhere beneath the map-table.
“Quite right, Spike,” Twilight said, clearly self-satisfied. “Everyone knows that Celestia takes care of the sun! Unless you were moving a completely different sun on your own—”
She was cut off by a muffled burst from an air horn. “Tu Quoque.”
“That was for one day, Spike!” Twilight shrieked. “If you lower my score for that, so help me—”
“Argumentum ad Baculum!” he yelled in response.
“Speaking of score,” Starlight said, “what is it now? Spike?”
“Uh… ad Verecundiam?” Both participants were, by his scoreboard, deep into the negative ticks at this point.
“You tell her, Spike!” Twilight said. “It’ll be so much better to show her, once I’ve taken her apart once and for all! Her argument, I mean… Ah-ha! Listen to this, Starlight, from Selected Diaries of Heavy Burden, 680-715, page one hundred four: ‘Undoubtedly, were it not for the quick thinking of Her Majesty in the allocation of guards and relief supplies in the wake of the draconic deluge (of which I have previously recorded enough for a lifetime), an incalculable bulk of baked goods would have been soiled, plunging the land into absolute chaos.’ A centralized command structure with undeniable value. Take that, Starlight!” She punctuated that with a crack of magic, well high enough as to pose no threat to her precious books.
Applejack cantered in, skidding to a halt, wings wobbling. “Twilight! Twilight, I need—”
Starlight yelped in surprise, firing a wild burst of magic that ricocheted off the wall.
“Oh, hi there, Starlight! Have ya seen Twilight around?”
“What are you wearing?”
“Twilight?” Applejack shouted, completely oblivious to Starlight’s bewilderment.
“Back here, Applejack!” Twilight’s voice lilted over the makeshift barricade.
“Twilight, d’you got any more of them cloud walking spells?”
“Just a minute, Applejack…”
Starlight lifted Applejack in her magic and tumbled her around. This time, taped-on blue construction paper covered some of the more raggedy patches. She poked at the vestigial wings and eye protection. “What. On. Equestria….”
“Starlight,” Twilight called, “is Cantrips for the Practically-Minded over there in your wall?” Her magenta field began to lift several volumes from the pile.
Starlight immediately slung another spell around the side, forcing Twilight to throw up a shield and drop the books. Starlight’s aura seized the entire collection, pressing them firmly against the floor. “Don’t know and don’t care!” she yelled.
“Appeal to ignorance,” Spike shouted.
Starlight growled and hurled a book low across the floor. From under the table, there came a thud and a startled yelp, followed immediately by Spike running from the room, a broken corner of blackboard in one claw and a piece of chalk in the other, frantically yelling, “Ad Hominem! Ad Hominem!”
Applejack rolled back onto her hooves, ignoring the squeaking sound of sliding and bending cardboard wings underneath her. “So, uh, voodoo hooves, please?”
“Why?” Starlight yelled. “Why on Equestria do you—”
“I’m doing this from memory,” Twilight said unseen from the other side of the barricade, “so I’ll warn you now: May take up to ten minutes for maximum effect; re-apply once every two days; not intended for walking on fog banks or cirrus formations. For the duration of the spell, do not operate heavy machinery; do not operate light machinery; do not operate machinery made of light; do not submerge yourself in water, even partially; do not use for periods in excess of two weeks without a magus’ recommendation. If swallowed, do not induce vomiting. Report any nausea to your doctor immediately.”
A swirl of magic whirlpooled around Applejack’s hooves and up her legs: she shivered. “Ooh, that’s tingly in my britches. Could you get me back to the Wonderbolts while you’re at it?”
“Sure thing!” Twilight let her magical aura surround the rest of Applejack.
“And maybe could you teleport me this—”
It took only a thought to launch her, once again, far to the north.
“That works too…” came the fading cry.
“Twilight,” said Starlight, audibly nonplussed, “she’s still wearing that… I don’t even know what it is, and now you’re doing complex magic on her from memory? What is wrong with you!”
“Hey, I’m the friendship expert here, and don’t you try changing the subject! I’ll have you know that in the time I saved by you not letting me find the spell book, I found something else that might interest you….” Twilight cleared her throat and recited, “‘So urged by the mass protests of the Union For Perenniality, Princess Celestia set in motion the first executive redistribution of capital ownership in the industrial sector’.”
Starlight poked her head out excitedly from the safety of her barricade. “Wait, really? What are you reading—”
A book held in a magenta field shot forward, striking Starlight in the head. She crumpled against the floor.
“A book heavy enough to get through your thick skull,” Twilight said. “Now we’re even! Ha!”
Silence boomed from the other half of the room.
“Starlight?”
“Oh, look at the curves on you, you juicy thing.” Soarin was working himself into a nigh-frothing frenzy over a gorgeous little tart on page thirty six of one of his more… exciting magazines. “And that skin, so smooth and golden… what I wouldn’t give to eat that… come to papa, baby….”
A blueberry tart, to be precise, with the recipe to the side. It called for cinnamon in the crust, for the right balance of tastes.
“The crust, so flaky… the juices thick and sweet!” He gasped with pleasure, his forehooves occupied below his waist. “Oh yes, I’m gonna finish any second!”
Ding! The timer above his Cloudy-Bake oven went off, and he opened the door to see a perfect replica of the photo recreated inside. “Finished!” He pulled on oven mitts and pulled it out to let it cool. “And plenty of time to….” He allowed himself a salacious laugh. “Enjoy myself before the cadets return—”
“Gangway!”
Soarin frantically turned in the direction of the noise, and recognized the rapidly-approaching figure with two thin, powerful, brownish wings like twin blades of bronze—well, fraternal twins. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shoved the magazine and his mitts in the oven and turned its temperature up to eleven hundred, setting them on fire within seconds. Not a single soul could ever know of his forbidden passion.
Taking her past experiences to heart, Applejack heeded the suggestion to bend her knees for impact. Unfortunately, this tactic served of little gain to her developing situation: instead of the solid surface of the Thundersteel-brand tarmac, her trajectory landed her firmly on the standard-issue megacloud. The puffy substance caught her momentum, bringing her to a halt at the bottom of a pony-shaped hole, only her hat and one of her cardboard wingtips protruding above the surface. “Private Apple... Flying… reporting for duty,” she mumbled.
“Private Applefly!” a shocked Soarin bellowed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m lookin’ for Rainbow—er….” she stammered, crawling out of the hole and checking her wings. “Uh, that is, I’m back, ma’am. From the marathon, ma’am. Sir?” She decided to hedge her bets. “Ma’amsir.”
“You’re back,” he said.
“Yes, ma’amsir.”
“In….” He checked the stopwatch. “Five hours and twenty one minutes.”
“Yes, ma’amsir.”
“From a marathon which you had ten hours to complete, and which should have taken you eight at the absolute minimum.”
“Um,” she said, finally turning her attention to him instead of looking for a maybe-lurking-nearby Rainbow Dash. “Right. That thing you just said.”
He advanced upon her, stopping with his snout inches from her own. “You know what we call pegasi who say things like that?”
“Uhh… definitely not liars, I’m hoping—”
“Absolute damned prodigies!”
He grabbed her hoof and pumped hard enough that Applejack felt confident she would fly back to Ponyville if he let go. “Congratulations, Private Applefly, you’ve just set the new academy record for marathon speed! Those other rookies are gonna have to pick up the pace, and might I just say it is an honor to have you on my squadron.”
“Uh, thanks!” Applejack pulled her hoof free, but he kept shaking empty air. “Granny always says to give two hundred percent, at least when the dementia hits real bad and she don’t remember how percents work so good. Say, y’all got a place I can sit? I’d be fine with that oven over there.”
“Oven?” Soarin laughed, cantering over to what was clearly an oven. Trying (and failing horribly) to appear nonchalant, he started shoving it through the cloud layer with all of his might. “That’s not an oven, why would that be an oven? An oven up here? I don’t cook, and certainly not in public!”
Not a single soul.
“Oh,” Applejack said. She looked around. “So, we’ve got, uh, what, three hours at least before anyone shows up?”
“Huh?” Soarin looked up from pounding down the last vestiges of the box. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Applejack looked around. The spot where the definitely-not-an-oven had been sitting now featured a perfect square hole, the east waterfall of Mount Pinocchio visible on the other side. At least she wasn’t falling through the cloud this time, so there was that.
“Nice… weather,” she offered.
“Made it myself, thanks.” Soarin smiled, nodding.
“Really?”
“You know it!”
“Huh.”
Still nodding long past the point of sensibility, he let out a redundant, “Yup.”
She twiddled her hooves, which is really difficult without any sort of smaller appendages on the ends.
An idea seeming to occur to him, Soarin sidled closer. “You know….” he said, voice low and husky.
“Mm? I mean, mm, ma’am… sir?”
“Since it’s just the two of us….” He stepped closer still.
“Sir?”
“How about you and I—” his breath was on her cheek as he whispered “—do something really special together….”
Rainbow Dash knew, in the final stretch of the marathon, that she could afford to take it easy. She’d left even the fastest other fliers behind hours ago. She also knew that she wasn’t gonna.
The sunset had just begun when she burst from a cloudbank nearby the landing strip, flying straight up at such speed that tears flung themselves from her eyes like driving rain. She rose hundreds of feet above the runway, then pivoted and executed a perfect vertical split-S, so that she faced the runway directly. She grinned and focused: this was gonna be awesome.
The Atomic Rainbomb was a variant of her signature Sonic Rainboom, one she’d been working on in semi-secrecy for years. She’d practiced again and again by volunteering to demolish old buildings—some of which had been asked for, others the owners would have asked for if they had any sense so what was the problem anyway? Besides, now she had it down to an art. Or a science. Whichever was more precise.
The moment of impact with the runway was perfectly timed with the instant of the Sonic Rainboom. The air snapped, twisting in the Unspeakable Plane; shock waves bounced off one another until finally breaking free once again into reality as a tremendous explosion. The very precise position of her body meant that all of the blast force was not directed outward, but vertically. She felt the surge of raindiation blow past her body, and looked up to see it firing into the sky like a scintillating prismatic spear of hope and mild tackiness.
Something caught the corner of her eye, and she glanced over to see a rainbow sliver that hadn’t gone up with the rest, but instead flew toward the horizon like a spear of… slightly less hope. She frowned—there must have been a hoof out of place—but then shrugged. So what? It didn’t matter. No way that little jet of rainbow could do any harm.
Soarin offered Applejack a sliver of pie on a platter with one hoof, an elegant spittoon in the other. "Now here's a real treat for you - a '78 peach pie, with fruit grown just outside Fillydelphia. Wonderfully aged, gives it the perfect bitter taste.” Applejack’s contorted expression went completely unnoticed. “Go on, taste…” He set his nose over his own slice, inhaled deeply, and took a bite. “Test…” He chewed, catching Applejack doing something like the same in the corner of his eye. “And spit...."
His own polite exhumation was overpowered by a thick retching sound from his partner. Again.
“Well, maybe it isn’t for everyone. Ah, but this beauty, I’m sure—”
A flash and a crack of overpressure from behind launched him into action.
“Alarm!” he cried out, slapping the insignia on his uniform and screaming to anyone who might listen (i.e., no one), “Hiyassekyte is under attack! Massive explosion on the runway! Activate the air cannons! Contingency four! Green group, stay close to holding vector fifty-seven!”
Rainbow Dash tackled him over the table in her enthusiasm, and they tumbled over each other twice. “Ohmygosh, wasn’t that awesome? First place, with a Rainbomb at the finish line…” She leapt off of him and began pumping her foreleg. “Aww yeah, aww yeah!”
“Uh… stand down alert status. False alarm.”
“So what was my time, huh? What was my time? I had to have set some kinda record!”
Soarin plucked a stopwatch and clipboard from a pie tin. “Eight hours, eight minutes, Private Dash,” he said. “Very impressive.”
“I totally won, right? Did I set a record? Please say I set a record or something!”
“Actually…” He paused, giving Rainbow time to squish her face in anticipation. “The record was broken by Private Apple Applefly!”
“What?” She turned in shock to follow his pointing hoof. Surrounded by dozens of pies, Applejack sat retching horribly into a flamboyant spittoon.
“Five hours and twenty-one minutes! I’ve never heard of anything like it!”
“Five? No. No, nononono…” She darted over, ears burning. “Hey! What’s the big idea, Applepie?”
Applejack gave one final heave before looking up. “Rainbow, you’re glowing…”
Among the manifold aftereffects of an Atomic Rainbomb, the resulting electro-magical pulse interacts with high-energy particles near the Sun and Moon, resulting in a glowing field of multihued light high above Equestria. From Applejack’s near-prone position, Rainbow Dash’s head was surrounded by a dancing aurora which, even suffering the gastro-intestinal plight of consuming decade-old slices of pie, was quite spectacular.
Applejack reached up reverently with a hoof. “You’re beautiful…”
Rainbow swatted it away, oblivious. “I said, what’s the big idea! I’m the fastest pony in Equestria! Did you win Best Young Flier? No! Did you kick a dragon in the face? No! I did! I—wait. That hat…” She stopped, taken aback. “I’d recognize that hat anywhere.”
Applejack’s heart hitched into her throat, which was a welcome change from the myriad other things which had hitched up there recently. “You mean, you recognize—”
“I told you the score before the race started! Nopony upstages Rainbow Dash!” She smashed her brow against Applejack’s, folding the brim of Applejack’s hat back against the impromptu flight goggles. Her snout was close enough to lick. “No. Pony.”
Applejack spun away, madly grabbing for the spittoon, and heaved again.
Rainbow took a cautious step back. She fought with herself, anger and sympathy engaged in a vicious duel of tic-tac-toe for dominance. “Uh… Are you okay?” Her ears swiveled away to catch Soarin arguing into his uniform. “…N-not that I care or anything. Cheater.”
Applejack straightened up, wiping at her mouth, and offered a shaky, “Sorry.”
Biting back a bitter retort, Rainbow looked away. “Yeah, sure. I mean, I guess you can’t help it.”
“I mean it, Rainbow.” Applejack took a cautious step forward. “Not the throwing up, the… the race. You deserved to win. You did win.”
Rainbow’s wings flared, instantly furious. “Ponyfeathers! Soarin said you got a time of five hours! That’s impossible! I was ahead of everypony by miles, and here you are. You didn’t complete the race, you’re—”
“Consarn it, Rainbow, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, I didn’t! It’s me! Applejack! I’m here for you, Rainbow.”
Rainbow squinted. “I have a friend named Applejack, but she isn’t a pegasus.” She pointed accusingly at the cardboard shapes on Applejack’s back.
“Rainbow, they’re cardboard. I fell through the clouds when the race started, got saved by a rope-dangling cloud, and Twilight tossed me back here after putting that cloud-walking spell on me again. I didn’t win the race, and it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters…. Rainbow, all that matters is that I’m here with you. D’you understand? I need you to understand, Rainbow. All these years I’ve been saving Equestria with you, or competing against you, and finally it all came together like one of Granny’s Apple-Lemon soufflés that I needed you to understand how much I need you, Rainbow. I need your brashness, your resolve, your flair and… ‘awesomeness’. I need your heart and your mind and your wings. I… I love you, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow snapped her attention back to Applejack’s face. “Huh? What? Sorry, but your wings are in, like, awful shape.”
“W-what?”
“Seriously,” Rainbow said. “Do you even preen? They’re freaking me out just looking at em!”
“Rainbow, I… I….” The words wouldn’t come any more. She had lain her heart bare, and had been completely overlooked.
Another mare flew in, landing beside Rainbow. “Figures I’d lose to you, Rainbow Dash.” She placed a friendly hoof over Dash’s shoulders.
“Hello, Lightning Dust,” Rainbow said with clear distaste, shrugging off the hoof. “What do you want?”
Lightning huffed. “Maybe I wanted to congratulate you on second place, Rainbow.” She turned to Applejack with a suspicious glance. “And… congrats, prodigal mare.” She held her gaze far longer than Applejack was comfortable with, but at last she relented.
“Was there anything else you wanted?”
“Fine, I’m going!” Lightning took off, circling around the runway in languorous laps.
Soarin flew over, beaming. “First three all under the eight and a half hour mark! Astounding! I see Private Lightning is still warming down. Rainbow and Applefly, why don’t you two hit the showers and the mess?” Applejack stifled a gag. “A few regulars should be there and have everything in order for you. You’re in barracks D-4 and D-7, you two. Call is at sunrise tomorrow.”
He patted them each on the back before gliding back towards the runway and his clipboard. “Simply astounding.”
Rainbow’s eyes followed his departing figure, shuffling the wing he had touched. “Y’know, actually a warm shower sounds like a really good thing right now. But,” her tone took an edge, “I’m still angry about you beating me. Still, if those wings keep giving you trouble…. Stop by before I fall asleep. I’ll help you preen. Maybe you can tell me how you really won.”
“But… But I…” Applejack stammered to a departing Rainbow Dash. She could not help but notice the perfect azure rump and prismatic contrail, thoughts stalled. On one hoof, she had moments ago been completely crushed from being ignored. On the other, Rainbow had offered to preen her—not that she was particularly informed on the details of preening, or indeed what it was (she’d heard once that mouths were involved, and fervently hoped so), but the thought of being in the private company of Rainbow Dash was quite appealing.
“Private Rainbow,” Soarin called, “yours is third on the left. Private Lightning, that is the armory!”
“Whatever.”
Applejack looked down in frustration at her hooves, the pie tins, and the spittoon. “Horseapples!” She give the spittoon a solid kick, launching it far out into the clouds. It helped, a little.
She took a few steadying breaths, which mostly served to draw attention to the lightheadedness and minor headache she’d felt since arriving. Finally, she looked towards the barracks arrayed on the cloud ring above the runway. Above, away from, and nowhere attached. The gravity of the situation slowly fell upon her.
“I don’t know how to get up there.”
Applejack’s evening was consumed by efforts of increasing desperation to reach the barracks, until exhaustion overwhelmed her. Beneath the bright moon, the clouds of the barracks drifted tantalizingly just out of reach. She had tried jumping, throwing her lasso, and even throwing her lasso while jumping. Those few times the rope had reached the clouds, it had passed through the formation without care. Her wings, being made of cardboard, served her to no avail.
The futile exercise had given her plenty of time to think. It had been perfectly clear to her earlier in the day that she had to find Rainbow Dash, no question—even in the hours of returning to Ponyville on hoof, she had been filled with a simple, raw purpose. Once the sun had set, however, leaving Rainbow presumably slumbering out of reach, her mind had set to pondering why. They had been friends for years, and nothing like those thoughts had entered into her head before. At least, nothing so imperative.
The simple fact of it, she finally decided, was that Rainbow had been called away to another round of Wonderbolts training. When Rainbow joined the Wonderbolts—Applejack knew in her heart of hearts, and brain of brains, that there was no ‘if’—there would be something missing in her life. No more Rainbow in her orchard; no more tail-pulling to keep each other in check; no more pithy competitions where they played horseshoes or slathered each other in honey. She imagined regaling to Rainbow her crazy night of trying hour after hour to make it up to the barracks just overhead.
Only far into the night, when exhaustion had overwhelmed her, did she finally pass into a pathetic state of semi-unconsciousness.