I pulled at the straps again. They held tight. “Twilight, help me with that.”
Twilight grabbed the oxygen mask in her hooves and suddenly pressed it to her chest. “…No.”
“Come on, Twilight, we talked about this.”
“This is suicide, Rainbow,” she said, with a hint of tears in her eyes. “You’re going to hurt yourself. I only helped you because I hoped you’d wise up along the way.”
I grinned. “Hello, have we met? I’m Rainbow Dash, the fastest flier in Equestria. Seriously, Twilight, drop it, I’m doing it and that’s final. I thought you knew me better than that.”
She sighed. “What if the engine explodes?”
“Pinkie made it,” I pointed out. “Her stuff only explodes when it’s funny. It wouldn’t be very funny if it exploded up there, and Pinkie wouldn’t be able to see it, so I think I’m good.”
“But what’s the point?” Twilight started, finally relenting and connecting the tube of the oxygen mask to the tank on my back, “We’ve been to the Moon already. There are much safer ways to get there. Hay, I could teleport you there if you wish to go again so much. I would need to make about fifteen jumps in quick succession, but I know I can do that, and we’d be there in a minute.”
I stared at her. “I’m not doing that to get to the moon, Twilight! I’m doing it to see if I can.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, checking the fuel level for the fifth time. I bet it’s the same as the first four times. If it isn’t, I have a leak, which would be very uncool. “But have you thought about how you are going to get back?” she asked. “If anything breaks down…”
I scanned the room for a certain napkin. Yes, I kept that napkin. I kept it all this time since you calculated it. You might have forgotten, but I kept it. “Here,” I said, fishing it out from between Applejack’s tools and Pinkie’s emergency candy box. “You wrote it yourself.”
Twilight stared. “Is that…”
“Yes, it’s your calculation of required delta V to reach an orbit around the Moon,” I confirmed. I didn’t even know what delta V was, back then, but the idea stuck. “The one that says that a pegasus should be able to do it, if they can fly fast enough. Well, tell you what, I can fly fast enough. I’m not good at the egghead stuff, but I’ve got you for this. I’m not good at tinkering, but I have Applejack and Pinkie and Rarity. They all doublechecked that. I learned every breathing exercise Fluttershy knew, I can hold my breath for ten minutes. I’ve got enough wing power. I didn’t, a month ago, but now I do. I can get home even if everything breaks.”
Twilight pulled the napkin out of my hoof with her magic and tried to stare a hole through it again.
“I’m an athlete, Twilight, I do stunts,” I said. “I might be reckless, but I’m not stupid. Yes, it’s risky. If it isn’t, what’s the point? I’ve covered every base you could think of.”
She sighed, but finally decided there was nothing else she could say. I actually felt bad for her a bit.
“If it makes you happier,” I said, zipping up the high altitude suit, “It will make me happier that I have a friend watching my back. Even if I never need the help.”
✶ ✶ ✶
The plan was simple.
That’s what I liked about it, it didn’t require much of anything I didn’t know already. Fly up as high as possible, which is why I needed the high altitude suit and the oxygen mask. Go as fast as possible. Up there, high above the clouds, where the air is thin, barely air at all, it’s only me and my wings, and I can accelerate much faster than the air will slow me down. Pegasi fly by magic, you know. We don’t really push against the air, we push against the magic in it. Bigger wings help, but really, it’s all in how you use them.
Once I’ve accelerated enough for compression heating to start – and that’s really, really fast – my trajectory is all that is holding me to the Earth, so I need a rocket engine to give me one last push out of the magic field. If I time it just right, if I get the angle just right, it should only take a few minutes to get captured by the gravity of the Moon and fall down. Wouldn’t want to spend more time in space than absolutely necessary. Pinkie said, that in space, nopony can hear you squee. We didn’t get to test that back then, and I’d rather not do it this time either.
And if I don’t miss the entry angle, I will glide down and land on the other side of the Moon.
I have trained for this. I even studied for this. I can do this.
Piece of cake.
There’s cake and a party waiting for me when I get back. I Pinkie promised I would show up.
I looked down at the Earth, into the cloud layer deep below me, and saw a purple spot following. As I kept accelerating, Twilight tried her best to keep up, she was even leaving a contrail. When I passed the sonic rainboom threshold, I saw that unmistakable pink glow of her magic behind the rainbow, as she tried to do something clever on the spot… Yes, blasting holes for herself in the air to fly faster, and you called me reckless.
But that wasn’t enough. She had to switch to teleporting, crossing miles with every jump, but even that wasn’t enough to keep up, and eventually, I lost sight of her.
My suit was getting hotter, but Rarity’s best work held fast. It’s almost time, the Moon is rising.
I gave it one last push, tilted upwards by gently twisting my wings, and pressed the button of the rocket engine to start the burn.
What remained of the air exploded.
Twilight once told me that the words “Sonic Rainboom” are actually nonsense. It’s not really sonic. Lots of things can go faster than sound, and they don’t make rainbows in the air. Only things that fly by magic do, because when you push magic into magic, magic pushes back. If you push really hard, which you’re not supposed to be able to do, magic goes splat all over your goggles and makes the pretty colors. “Magic Rainboom” would be a better term, but “Sonic” just sounds so much cooler.
That’s old news.
At the edge of the atmosphere, there’s a sharp boundary, like a water surface, where magic stops and space begins. And as I finally crossed it, I saw the infinite wave of rainbow spreading out in all directions, covering the entire Earth in my colors, from Crystal Empire to Badlands, from Griffonstone to Luna Sea, an endless ocean of chromatic light.
And that’s how I knew I was in orbit.
That’s how all my friends knew.