Rainbow Dash, queen of quick exits, rocketed through the skies of Ponyville, her signature prismatic trail shining in her wake. Clouds disintegrated before her, and the wind spurred her ever upward. Only when her breath left her did she tuck in her wings and allow momentum to do the rest. At the peak of her climb the updrafts were strong enough for her to spread them again and coast on the breeze.
Ponyville was just a speck on the ground at this height.
Good, thought the speedster. Wouldn’t want anypony finding me here.
She banked, keeping a wide circle around the gust of warm air. Assured of her trajectory, Rainbow Dash allowed her mind to wander.
Why in TARTARUS did I leave like that? UGH. GRAAAH. RAAAAAAAHHH!
She nearly lost her path with her flailing about like a fish. Composing herself, she adjusted her position and resumed her pity party.
I should’ve stayed. I was finally hanging out with her like I wanted. But…
The air had been growing colder for a while now. Rainbow checked her altitude and direction. She could no longer see Ponyville, but determined that she was still, more or less, in the same part of Equestria.
I wussed out. I just gotta come out and say it.
“I wussed out,” she said. “Heh, and I’m supposed to be the brave one.”
Rainbow’s heart didn’t seem to be satisfied. It still felt heavy with regret and longing. It still had something to say.
I like Twilight. She dared not speak this aloud, even if she was more than forty thousand feet in the air.
She’s the coolest mare I’ve ever met. And I’ve met ME. Sure, she’s a total egghead, but the way she can just…do ANYTHING with her magic…that’s the sort of ability that’s just SO AWESOME! And everything she does, she does for the sake of doing just that. Magic. I’ve never seen that kind of passion in anypony else before. In a way, I guess she…would understand me better than anypony else.
Her short term memory, for once, failed to be so short term. Rainbow’s face flicked from “uguu Twilight-senpai” to “The eternal sorrow in my still beating heart aches to end in the everlasting lake of fire”.
And I just threw away my shot with her down the drain, huh. If that had ever existed in the first place. What kind of pony does she like anyway? How do I know she even likes mares? Or even athletes? What if she just wants to spend the rest of her life with a crummy, old boring SCIENTIST and read all day? If I can’t be what she wants, then…
The air, like her soul, was now deathly cold. This was where the updraft ended.
Time to get off this lazy ride…
Rainbow made a vertical half-loop upward, kicked the air with her whole body at the apex and D I V E D.
Hooves up, ears back, mane rushing out of her face like it was made of lightning…this is what she was born to do.
I may be many things, but I’m no liar. I do have a trick I need to practice. And once I have it, I’m gonna show her. Show Twilight what I’m made of.
Faster. Faster. FASTER went Rainbow Dash. A narrow cone of compressed air began to take shape around her.
Step 1: Sonic Rainboom.
Had she told anypony about her trick, they would have probably had her detained and put into solitary confinement. But she hadn’t, because
I made this for Twilight. She’s the only one who’d get it.
The cone began to crackle. Crackling became whirring; whirring into roaring. The lights began to split into a spectrum of off-white colors, then blossomed into their full glory.
B O O M.
With the air no longer pushing her back, Rainbow dashed to a velocity known only by one mare: herself. She couldn’t help but notice that Ponyville was visible again.
Heh, they won’t get to see the best part. Not yet. Step 2: Air Brake into 180 degree turn.
The sudden deceleration should kill her, but the universe had stopped caring long ago what ponies like Rainbow Dash could do. Rolling to face backward and kicking the air yet again, she went from hypersonic to zero…
And back again.
B O O M.
Haha YEAH, Double Rainboom, baby!
The effect was such that the twin prismatic shockwaves, a smidge longer than two ponies’ lengths apart, appeared to have happened almost simultaneously. If she had not been up so high, Rainbow Dash would have most likely leveled Ponyville.
Collateral damage was the last thing on her mind, however. Making a sharp 90 degree turn and then circling around the epicenter, Rainbow Dash slowed down to observe the Rainbooms propagating through the landscape.
Did it work? she thought, as if creating TWO Sonic Rainbooms mere milliseconds apart had not been enough.
Come on….Step 3: Work that Magic!
Aside from the sound just now getting to her eardrums (a sound not unlike a pair of magnums going off point blank one after the other), the dual explosions of pure, unleaded awesomeness dissipated, fading away into the blue, blue sky.
Rainbow Dash screamed so loudly, that she actually managed to hear herself over the deafening roar of her sky-shattering maneuver. Defeated, she lazily stopped flapping and allowed herself to enter free-fall.
With her back to the ground and her hooves limply dragging against the air, Rainbow held her pity after-party.
It’s useless. I’m no smarty pants like Twilight. I don’t know how to make it work.
She crossed both pairs of limbs across her body and straightened her back. Rainbow Dash was now falling headfirst.
I hate physics. Waves-schmaves. Whatever. I had enough trouble with just the air brake…it took me all of last week just to be able to stop, period.
It seemed as if the ground was a huge Dash fan: closing in on its idol quickly and wanting a personal memento signed on its body. Rainbow observed it with the indifferent devil-may-care attitude she reserved for all her adoring fans.
But…
One hundred meters.
I have to finish it. I have to do it right. I gotta prove to Twilight that I can be more than just her jock friend.
Thirty meters.
Even if I have to read all the textbooks in Equestria.
Like a true pro flyer, she twisted around into smooth glide ten meters from the ground.
Unlike a true pro flyer, she did so right into the branches of an apple tree, smacking her forehead into the thick bark and knocking herself out.