//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 // Story: Just Dropping In // by Gunsmith //------------------------------// The first of my senses that returns to me today is smell. I can smell something cooking, something like biscuits, or pancakes. Yes, pancakes. I can smell pancakes cooking. Cooking a little too much. A slight tinge of burning has worked its way into my nose; not enough to be alarming, though. I can hear the sounds of cooking, too. There is a soft sizzle coming from below me, along with a few pops signifying burned batter. "Aww, hay!" I hear a scratchy female voice say somewhat quietly. I smile in recognition of the voice, and a thought crosses my mind. Is Rainbow Dash trying to cook? I chuckle a little to myself at this thought, knowing whatever she's trying to make isn't going to end up very pretty. It still smells alright, though. Burned pancakes are better than no pancakes. My stomach gurgles at the thought of food. I open my eyes. The room is bright, the windows (which are really just holes in the cloud house) letting in the morning sun's light. My eyes don't feel tired or heavy, as they had for the past week or so. I must have slept pretty good. I think about it, my sleep, for a moment. I realize that I didn't have any dreams, at all. No memories relived again and again in my head. No good dreams, either, but I feel that's beside the point. I am happy that my sleep was true sleep, not interrupted by asteroids, or falling, or surprise and fear. Or guilt. I think back to the previous night. I remember Rainbow Dash tackling me in anger, anger at how I seemed to know too much about her life, and at how I seemed to not know anything at all about normal things. I told her everything, summed up, because everything-everything would have taken far too long to recount and would have likely made her lose her sanity. I remember her leaving, probably needing to just get away and think things over for a while. I fell asleep for some time, and found her back at where I was, asking me to return to her home like I hadn't said anything at all. But I had, and I knew she knew I had. Did she look at me differently, now? Probably. But is that bad, or good? I don't know. My conscience feels fairly clear at this point. I've told Rainbow Dash the truth. But, that doesn't fully eliminate the fact that I lied to her in the first place, and a little twinge of guilt still remains. Why did I even lie? I again question myself. Maybe to attempt to create a sense of normalcy? I know that that is how the human mind works. It is always attempting to make itself feel normal. That's why people follow others, whether intentions are good or bad; to fit in, to be normal. Or why insane people think they are normal, functioning humans. The mind compensates, telling itself it is normal; for if it is not, then it loses itself. I still should have used better judgment, though. Maybe my slip-ups that led to her confrontation of me were a sign from my brain, a warning? I shake my head a little, clearing the dry-erase board of my thoughts. I may as well see how Rainbow Dash is doing today. Maybe she was in too much shock yesterday. Should I really be in her house, lying on her couch...? Either way I ought to get off the couch. I turn my head and tilt it up to look at the rest of my body on the couch. I'm lying on my right side. My left wing sits exposed on my side, tucked in neatly and compactly. My right wing likely looks the same under my matte black body. My rear legs are sprawled out on the couch; my right leg is hanging off of the edge of the couch. A sideways anvil with a hammer raised above it paint my left flank. My tail sits on the armrest opposite the one my head was lying on, the hair composing it spread out; it makes the two shades of gray composing it blend together unevenly. Having a tail is kind of odd, too, I realize. It's not a long tail, like a dog's or cat's, but is a tail nonetheless. It just feels like part of my back, and it's hard to notice that it's even there. I snap it a little from my lying position, watching it raise a few inches off the couch before flopping back down upon it. I'm getting too distracted by this... I roll off the couch and land on my hooves. Not having hands is odd, really odd. I can't feel that they aren't there twenty-four/seven, but if I think about wanting to do something like, I don't know, pick something up, or crack my knuckles, then I can feel it. It's like having permanent fists, that are twice as hard as normal fists, and where you can't feel the fingers all clustered together to form the fist. I think about how weird it is that, though ponies do have hooves in Equestria, they are not clearly defined. Where the black hoof should be is just colored fur, just like the rest of the pony. Damn it, breakfast! Go get breakfast, go see Dash. I can't tell whether it's my brain or my stomach that's angrily shouting at me internally. Whichever one it is, they're right. I maneuver around the cloud coffee table that sits in the center of the three couches of the same material, and trot for the stairs. I make my way down and trot a few steps into the kitchen. A burnt smell is more dominant now, but there is still a hint of pancake in the air. I see Rainbow Dash over at what I thought to be a counter, but what appears to be an oven. I decide not to try and think about how an oven is even possible when everything is made of condensed water droplets. Her wings are extended, and she is flapping her right one to fan some smoke away from the cloud oven. She leans down and grabs something in her mouth; I can't see what because she is in front of what she has picked up. Rainbow turns around carefully, and I see that the item she picked up was a frying pan, which contains a very brown pancake. At least, I think it's a pancake. She spots me, standing in the doorway leading to the stairs. I can see her eyes brighten, and I think she attempts a smile, but the pan in her mouth prevents it. "Haah, Erruh!" she says incoherently. I assume she's greeting me, and reply, "Hey, Rainbow Dash." She trots slowly to the table in the middle of the room, then tilts her head over top of a plate, letting the decrepit pancake fall onto it with a pat. She turns around and walks back to the cloud-oven-counter-thing, setting the pan down before turning around, again. She looks down at the pancake she just placed on the plate. I see that there are a few others underneath it; some are the same color as the pancake, some are darker, and some are very light, oozing raw batter a little. A very similar looking plate full of pancakes, overcooked and undercooked, sits across from the plate. "I, uhh...tried...to make pancakes," she says, frowning at her creations. I smile, close to laughing. "They look...tasty?" I half-lie, half-ask. She stares at them a little while longer, still frowning. "They suck," Dash observes. "No, really, they look good," I say, still smiling. I'm probably not too convincing. "Pancakes are pancakes, let's try them out before we judge them." I try to sound as reassuring as I can without laughing. Those poor pancakes need to be put out of their misery, anyways. I trot over to the table and sit down in front of the plate nearest to me. Rainbow Dash does the same, eyeballing her plate of pancakes as she trots up to them, as if they're going to start growling. I hope that they don't. I lean forward and down and grab a burnt pancake in my mouth, wriggling my head a little to bite my piece of pancake fully off. It tastes like a burnt pancake, all right. The pancake part is pretty tasty, but the burnt isn't very welcome. The pancake is chewy and is a little hard to swallow. As it goes down, I let out a small cough, though I try to refrain from doing so. I put on a smile and look at her. "Mmm, pretty g-" "They suck, don't they?" she repeats, cutting my off. I give a small smile and nod once to her. "I'm not very awesome at cooking," Rainbow states. I smile a bit larger now. "I know," I say. I wonder if I shouldn't say things like that, hinting that I know quite a bit about her. Does it freak her out? I make note to try as hard as I can not to say these things, when I can remember not to. "You've got to practice to get better at cooking, and this is practice," I tell Dash, hoping it will reassure her. "Yeah, I guess." She smiles a little bashfully at me, then looks down at her pancakes. She leans in and takes a bite out of her own burnt pancake. I watch as her face contorts into a look of mild disgust as she chews the pancake, then swallows. "Ugh..." she moans. I laugh, then hesitantly go in for another piece of pancake. The taste eventually gets to be manageable. The burnt pancakes are pretty rough going down. I actually enjoy the undercooked ones that are basically just thickened batter; the only problem is trying to eat them, as they're not really solid. After a few failed attempts at biting the oozing pancakes, I begin to lick them up instead. Rainbow Dash laughs at my actions, but soon does the same when she comes across one of her own undercooked pancakes. By the time we've finished off our individual stacks of poorly-made pancakes, the table is a mess. Parts of pancake and burnt chips lay around our plates, and there is pancake slime splattered in various drops around the cloud surface. We observe our mess and laugh about it for a moment. We stand and observe each other to check for pancake mess; we're both clean, though. The table took the brunt of the pancake onslaught. Dash trots over to one of the counters, leans down, and opens a door I did not know existed on the face of the counter. She pulls out two dishcloths, holding them in her mouth; one is orange, the other is purple. I assume she has every color of dishcloth in that cabinet below the counter. She jerks her head up at me, motioning for me to come and grab a dishcloth. I make my way around the table over to her, stopping a few feet from her. I crane my neck downwards to grab one of the cloths; she's even tilting her head up and I have to reach down fairly far, around a foot down to her. I turn my head sideways as I near the orange cloth, which I have decided to choose for wiping off the pancake-covered table. I open my mouth and grip on to the cloth; it brushes against my tongue, and tastes odd, a stale, cloth-y taste. As I am about to pull away from her, cloth in my teeth, I happen to be inhaling in my cycle of breathing, right next to her. For just a moment, I can smell a scent of...oxygen. I had smelled it before when dealing with it in a pure form in in a chemistry class. It doesn't smell like air, like nothing, when pure; it's like how laughing gas smells, just without the sweetness of laughing gas. The scent doesn't smell like a chemical, as pure oxygen normally does, but rather like a small amount of oxygen, just enough to make it distinguishable from normal air. It's like the smell of the air at the peak of a mountain. There is another scent that I can detect, barely. It smells like...peppers? Yes, hot peppers, like jalapeno peppers, or a hot sauce of some sort. Like the odor of oxygen, this scent is not overwhelming or too intense. It has a warm smell, and I have no doubt in my mind that if this scent were to become a sauce, it would have the perfect heat in one's mouth. The spicy smell is a lot more faint, though. I have a hunch it is being generated from Rainbow Dash's mane. It's also possible I've read too many fan fictions, and that this scent was also picked up on her fur. I wonder if the spicy smell is natural, while the oxygen smell has been picked up from flying at a high altitude. Either way, the combination of the purest of air and a perfect spice is...intoxicating. In fact, I feel like smashing my face into Rainbow's neck and inhaling as deep as I can. Luckily, common sense is still in control, and I remember what I'm doing. I pull away from her, tugging a little on the orange dishcloth, and she opens her mouth a little to release her grip on it. I smile at her, cloth in my teeth, hoping I don't look too dazed. She smiles back, and turns to head for a sink. It looks like a faucet is above the sink, but I see no handles to release any water into the sink. Rainbow Dash brings up a foreleg and lightly smacks the faucet, and water begins to pour out. I watch in a degree of amazement, wondering how she had done that. I remember that pegasi can manipulate clouds to create rain; did the same logic apply here? She tilts her head under the faucet to wet the dishcloth; when she moves away, I do the same, some droplets of water spraying my face as I hold the cloth under it. I pull away and stare at the running faucet for a moment. I lift a foreleg and move it to the faucet, tapping it with my hoof. The water stays on. I frown, losing the battle against the cloud faucet. I tap it a bit harder, actually putting some force behind my outstretched foreleg, and the water begins to thin until all that is left of the previously running stream is a few drops of water, falling into the sink. I smile to myself and turn around, facing the table. I see Dash release the darkened purple cloth from her mouth, and it lands with a splat on the short cloud table. I take a few steps forward, approaching the table, and do the same on the opposite side of the table. I'm a bit slow on what to do next. I look at Rainbow Dash, and see she is placing her hoof on her cloth, moving it around the table. Oh, duh. I place a hoof on the less-bright orange piece of cloth and begin wiping the batter splatter off the table. After a few minutes of wiping and a little scrubbing, the short little table is clean. I pick up my cloth again, tasting a little pancake, and drop it off in the sink. Rainbow follows me, turning the water back on to wash off the cloths before tossing them back into the cabinet below the counter top nearby. She turns back to face me, smiling as I do. I let out a short sigh, more of a huff of breath, really. "Well...what do you want to do today? Have anything planned?" I ask, lacking imagination on how to spend the Sunday. She frowns a little in thought, eyes glancing up to the ceiling. After a moment of thought, she looks back at me, mouth upturned a little. "Nope." Dash looks off in the distance in thought again. I wait patiently, seeing if she has any ideas. "Well..." she begins, still somewhat in thought. Rainbow Dash returns her eyes to mine. "You haven't really seen anything other than my house, right?" I nod in agreement. "Wanna look around someplace, like Ponyville or Cloudsdale or something? I mean, you've probably seen them before, but I bet you've never actually really seen them, right?" "I've really only seen parts of them. Getting to see them for real sounds awesome," I agree. "Okay, so where do you want to go?" Rainbow asks. I twist my mouth up a little in thought. Where do I want to go? I notice that my wings start to twitch a little behind me. I want to fly. That narrowed my choice down pretty easily in itself. "Think we could take a look around Cloudsdale?" I reply. "Awesome! Every pegasus has to see the coolest city in the sky sometime. Come on, let's go!" she says cheerfully. Dash headbutts the door leading outside open, her wings already spreading. I quickly trot out the door behind her, and watch as she lifts off into the air, hovering in place and turning around to wait for me. I unfurl my wings and fully stretch them out, them pump them hard to propel myself into the air. We have to keep flapping our wings for a while to gain enough altitude to be level with Cloudsdale. As Rainbow Dash and I approach the cloud city, I start to see more and more detail. Cloudsdale is obviously heavily influenced by Greek architecture, or whatever the pony equivalent to Greek architecture was, judging by the cloud-made pillars, large steps, and relatively grand looking houses I can see all over the city. I see pegasi everywhere, like multicolored flocks of birds. Majority of them are flying above the buildings of the city, but I do see some trotting around on the clouds composing the city's floor. We are around one hundred feet outside of the city when Rainbow stops midair, hovering. I keep myself aloft beside her. I have an excellent view of the city, and can see nearly every building or area within it. "And this..." Dash gestures outward with her forelegs, "...is Cloudsdale." She begins pointing out various landmarks. "Uhh...over there, that's the city arena, where I did my second Sonic Rainboom, ever. That's the town hall. That big thing in the middle, with the rainbows coming out of it? That's the weather factory. I could probably give you a tour of that..." "That sounds good. Mind if we go and check it out?" I ask. "Let's do it," she replies, accelerating towards the giant factory. I strain a little to keep up with how fast Rainbow Dash is going; I'm lucky she's not going her usual speeds, though. I look down as I soar over Cloudsdale. There are medium-sized homes everywhere. They all look the same, but then again, they're all made of clouds and are white; it's hard to make out differences. As we near the factory, I can see more and more ponies on the cloud level and in the air with white hard hats on. Why would they need hard hats if clouds are so soft...? The logic eludes me. I suppose that clouds could be hard if impacted with enough force; I know that from experience. Rainbow lands softly outside the weather factory. There is a hard-hatted pegasus standing outside the building. A bin full of white hard hats sits beside him. Dash trots over to the bin, motioning for me to follow. As she puts her hat on, I rummage through the bin, attempting to pick up a hard hat. "Just going for a tour," she alerts the guard. I see him nod once in acknowledgment. I work my way into my plastic white hat and look at Rainbow Dash, smiling to show I'm ready to go in. "Alright, follow me," she tells me. I keep pace beside and slightly behind her as we push through the doors and into the factory. I look around the interior of the factory. Pegasi fly around everywhere. There are multiple stations, seemingly three in total, each doing something completely different from the last. As I trot forward next to Dash, I see the snow-making process first. There are pegasi in white labcoats looking through microscopes and using small needles and tweezers. I also get somewhat conscious of the fact that they are holding needles and tweezers without hands or fingers. How in the hell...? Rainbow motions towards that lab-coated ponies and leans in, or more, up towards my ear. "Those guys are making snowflakes," she whispers. "Don't breath too hard or anything." I suck in my breath slowly and hold it in until we pass the sub-station. I continue to look at the factory goings-about as I move along. The next sub-station within the snow-making station seems to be much simpler. What looks like a snow machine spits out a flurry of tiny snowflakes into a tube leading away, out of the building it seems. "That's where they use the snowflakes the eggheads design and make a bunch of 'em to make snow," she explains. They really are just snow machines, then, except they don't create fake snow. There are a lot of the machines, and all of them seem to be running full-blast; it makes sense, being that it's the correct time of year. We move on to the second of the three stations. This one appear to be a cloud-making station. There are copies of a few different types of machines in this large station. The different kinds of machines appear to be color coded in some way. I can see about twenty machines painted a light blue color, ten painted a light gray, and five painted a dark gray. "Are the machines color coded?" I inquire to Rainbow Dash. "Yeah," she replies. "I think the blue ones make the big, white, fluffy clouds, the ones we pegasi use for making our houses, or for making clouds on a nice day. The light gray ones make normal rain clouds, that only make rain or snow, and the dark gray ones make storm clouds, with a lot of rain and thunder and lightning and stuff." "Ah, alright," I say, my question answered. Dash and I continue on to the final station. This station is a bit smaller than the other two. I can see some more pegasi in white lab coats. These ones are leaning over test tubes, mixing various-colored chemicals together. In the cloud floor of the factory are pools of...rainbow. Oh, yeah, the rainbow station. There are around five different pools filled with liquid rainbow that I can see. There is what looks like vacuuming equipment scattered in this area; I guess that that is how the rainbows are distributed in the air. Rainbow Dash turns to me and states, "This is my favorite part of the weather factory," smiling. I smile back. "I would never have guessed," I reply sarcastically. She gives me a playfully scornful look. "Want to taste one? A rainbow, I mean." "Sure," I say, smiling inwardly because I already know that rainbows are pretty goddamn tasty. Rainbow motions to a pool of the substance she was named after, dipping a hoof in. She sticks her rainbow-covered hoof in her mouth, pulling it back out clean as a whistle. "Mmm," she says, smiling. "Try it." I move closer to the pool of color and look in. It's not reflective at all, like water would be. I slowly dip my right hoof into the pool, feeling the smooth liquid on my hoof as I pull it out of its source. I look at it for a second, not out of hesitance to try the substance, but because of how odd the splash of multicolor looks on my plain black hoof. I lick my hoof a few times to rid it of its color. I feel the familiar warmth in my mouth and throat, the excellent spiciness of the rainbow and its equally enjoyable liquid consistency. A thought occurs to me: This is what Rainbow Dash's spicy smell would taste like. It seems fairly obvious to me now. I push the thoughts of how Rainbow Dash smells or possibly tastes out of my mind, returning my attention to her standing before me. "It's pretty tasty," I tell her sincerely, smiling. She smiles back. "Yeah, I think so, too." She glances around, then says, "Well, that's it for the weather factory. Pretty cool, huh?" "Definitely cool," I reply. We begin trotting towards the exit. "Anything else you want me to see in Cloudsdale?" I ask as I drop my hard hat into a bin beside the door leading back outside. "Hmm..." she thinks aloud. "Oh, I want to show you the arena. It's pretty cool. Really old, I guess. It's where they hold the Best Young Flier competition, which I won a little while back with a Sonic Rainboom. The Wonderbolts do their shows there when they come to Cloudsdale on a tour, too. Let's go!" She jumps off into the air outside the factory, speeding off. I jump off of the springy cloud ground and follow suit, accelerating fairly fast to catch up to her lead. As I do, I wonder how fast pegasi can actually go. I know Rainbow Dash would have to clock in at least at 760 MPH or so to create a sonic boom. But, then again, physics in Equestria seemed a lot different from those on Earth at some points. I decide to just assume pegasi can go pretty fast. We land, me a few seconds after her, in front of what appears to be a coliseum; in fact, it almost looks like the Colosseum in Rome, only made of clouds and wholly intact. A little Roman influence, too, I suppose. It looks enormous from the outside. I see Rainbow Dash jerk her head towards the entrance, motioning inside. I follow her into the giant cloud structure. On the inside, it is just as intimidating. It looks like it could seat hundreds of thousands of spectators. I spot the box for royalty, centered directly opposite the entrance into the arena. As I am inside the arena, I turn around and see the competitor preparation area, where I recall Rainbow Dash having an nervous breakdown. I frown; seeing Dash in panic, even in my memory, is not very uplifting, especially because of her brash and seemingly unbreakable personality. Or persona, really. I shake my head a little to focus, and spin around, taking in the massiveness of the entire stadium. It's got to be at least two American football fields long and wide in the middle, not including the seating. All I can say is, "Wow..." "Yeah, I know..." Rainbow agrees. "It was crazy having to fly in here, in front of all these ponies, even Princess Celestia," she says. I can see her pupils get a little smaller, likely in memory. She suddenly puffs her chest out a little and refocuses. "I wasn't even really nervous, though." I cock my head a little to one side and give her my best Yeah, whatever you say... look. "What?" She asks, looking and sounding like she's getting defensive. I smile and shake my head. "Nothing," I reply. "I can't even imagine having to perform in front of so many peo--ponies." Getting used to saying pony-related terms instead of human-related terms is hard, don't judge me. My statement about publicity reminds me of something I had been meaning to ask Rainbow Dash. "Oh, Rainbow Dash?" "Yeah, what's up?" I glance around the arena. It's dead silent, save for Rainbow and I. I lower my voice a little. "Have you told anyone about who, what, I really...uhh, was?" I feel the need to ask the question, whether it really matter or not. I seem to have caught her a little off guard with the question, but she recovers fairly quickly. "No, I haven't. Just me, you and Tank know. And Tank doesn't talk that much," she says, smiling with the last sentence. I smile a little at the joke, but mainly in relief. Dash is a good liar, but I had seen how I had thrown her for a loop there. Another part of me just automatically trusts her, but I suppose some paranoia had caused me to doubt her anyways. "Do you think we could keep it that way?" I ask her. "I won't tell anypony, Ferrum. They probably wouldn't believe me because they haven't met you, anyways." She makes a good point; my story would have sounded far-fetched to Rainbow if I wouldn't have slipped up or acted odd for a pegasus, or a pony in general. "Thanks. I appreciate that. I'd rather have everypony thinking that I'm just somepony from out of town, not an alien who got turned into a pony, y'know?" "Obviously," she says, chuckling. She glances into the sky; I do the same, and notice that the sun has dropped considerably from its late-morning point when we left her house. "C'mon, we'd better go check out the rest of Cloudsdale." I agree, and we head out of the coliseum. The next couple of hours is spent looking at various landmarks in Cloudsdale, like the original cumulus cloud that the city was built upon, or the town hall in all its grandeur. We eventually head home when the sky is beginning to gain an orange tint. My wings are starting to hurt a little from flying around most of the day. Over a dinner of apples, Rainbow Dash and I discuss Hearth's Warming Eve, which I realize is tomorrow after she brings it up. I ask her if she has anything planned, and she replies that her and five friends plan on having dinner together at Sugarcube Corner. She invites me to join them, and I refuse at first, stating that it's her night to have fun with her friends. However, she insists that I won't have anything else to do; Cloudsdale and Ponyville will be virtually empty by dinnertime, and that Hearth's Warming Eve was about being around other ponies and enjoying their company (and stuff). It seems she's set her mind, so I agree to go with her. I let Dash know I'll be trying to stay uninvolved because again, it is her dinner with her friends, and she says she is fine with that. We say our good night's and I head off to the living room's couch, the comfiest couch ever known to anyone. My wings are slightly cramping, and I fall asleep from more physical than mental tiredness.