Rainbow Dash swept up the last bit of dust and breathed a sigh of relief. Despite her superior stamina, agility, and overall physical conditioning, cleaning up not only a fairgrounds but also the Wonderbolt’s barracks took it out of a pony.
The worst part was definitely the cotton candy. She didn’t know how the poor pony had made so much, but she had found him buried under a pile of the stuff. It was just lucky she had gotten him to the Canterlot General Hospital, or Pinkie Pie might have been charged with Negligent Homicide.
Again.
As she stowed the broom and dustpan away in a closet, Rainbow Dash sensed that she wasn’t alone in the barracks. She turned, and saw Spitfire leaning against one bed in her classic resting pose.
“Nice work, Rainbow Crash,” the Captain of the Wonderbolts said. “Good to know that you can clean up all the things you knock over.”
Dash grinned and flew over to Spitfire. Together, the two ponies trotted out of the barracks. “Hey, if you’re going to make a mess, go big or fly home is what I say.”
Spitfire laughed, and Dash laughed with her. It felt good to finally stop worrying about her stupid nickname – Dash actually thought she enjoyed it now that she knew everyone else had their own story of messing up.
“Well, at least no pony got hurt,” Spitfire said, “which is the main reason you’re not in that much trouble. If you had hit another pony, well, let’s just say not even your ability would have saved you from some serious punishment.”
Rainbow Dash shuddered at the thought. “I’m just glad I learned that it’s fine not standing out,” she commented. “If I hadn’t learned that, well, I’d hate to think of somepony getting hurt because I messed up.”
“That’s the kind of thinking I like in a Wonderbolt.” Spitfire slung one hoof around Dash’s shoulders and Rainbow Dash tried not to freak out. Play it cool, play it cool. “But you gotta admit, hitting that trashcan was a pretty embarrassing display. I think you set another academy record for being the fastest goof-up as a new Wonderbolt. Heck, you even beat my time!”
“Well, what can I say?” Rainbow Dash scratched her head as a thought struck her. “I just never knew that the Wonderbolts had trashcans this high up. I always thought you guys chucked everything over the edge like everypony else. I guess that’s Wonderbolt rule number fifty three or something, huh?”
Spitfire halted mid-step and looked at Rainbow Dash. “Wait a second. You’re right. We don’t have trashcans up this high.”
Rainbow Dash stared at Spitfire. Now that they were outside, she could see that Spitfire was right. There were no trashcans in sight, and now that she remembered, the barracks hadn’t had any trashcans either. She’d just dumped the dust off the side of the island without thinking about it. But…
“You don’t have trashcans?”
“No, why would we?” Spitfire frowned. “I mean, on the ground trashcans are useful since we can use trash-carts to empty them every week, but how would you do that in the air? Flying garbage-carts? I don’t think so.”
Now Rainbow Dash was really confused. She pointed to the runway and said, “but I hit a trashcan when I was dodging those two Wonderbolts. Where did it come from and,” her eyes widened in surprise, “where did it go?”
Spitfire looked around. The trashcan that had caused Rainbow Dash so much humiliation was in fact, missing from the Wonderbolt’s training grounds. Her eyes narrowed, and without a word, Spitfire shot into the air.
Rainbow Dash flew after her as Spitfire did a quick search of the entire island. When she landed, the Wonderbolt’s Captain was wearing a familiar scowl on her face.
“You’re right, the trashcan is gone,” Spitfire said to Rainbow Dash. “And don’t remember seeing it after you ran into it, either.”
“Is that a bad thing?” Rainbow Dash scratched her head. “I mean, it was embarrassing, and smelly, sure, but what’s wrong with a missing trashcan?”
“What’s wrong is that it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Spitfire began pacing back and forth in front of Rainbow Dash. “You were right – we haven’t used trashcans in Cloudsdale ever. We just toss the stuff to the ground and have a team pick it up every night. You’re on that duty as well, by the way. But even if that were the case, why would a trashcan suddenly appear – right next to the Wonderbolts runway where it could make fliers taking off and landing crash into it and break a wing – and why is it gone, right after it coincidentally happened to get in your way? I smell a rat.”
“I didn’t see any of them when I was clearing out the barracks,” Rainbow Dash said, “but do you mean some pony was pranking me?”
“It sure looks like it,” Spitfire said grimly. “I’m not against pranks in the Wonderbolts in general, but that’s going too far. You were a rookie, so you’re easy game, but a trashcan could seriously hurt someone if they hit it at speed. Have you ever seen what a few pounds of metal does to a pony going over a hundred miles an hour?”
Rainbow Dash winced. “So uh, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to keep my ears open, and look into the matter,” Spitfire said. “Privately.” She clapped Rainbow Dash on the shoulder, causing the younger pegasus to stagger. “Good eyes, rookie. Don’t worry about the culprit. I’m sure it was just an overzealous prankster, and I’ll give them a few weeks of sweeping out the barracks when I catch them. Still, all’s well that ends well, right?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash looked at the empty patch of ground where the trashcan had been. Her eyes narrowed slowly. “Right.”
----
Trashcans. Rainbow Dash hadn’t even payed much attention to them before. What was the point? You tossed your garbage wherever, and if Tank didn’t eat it, somepony else would pick it up. Maybe they yelled at you for a while, but hey, at least you weren’t the one who had to deal with it.
But now Rainbow Dash thought of it, really thought of it, she realized that trashcans had played a pretty important role in her life. Twice now, they’d embarrassed her in front of ponies she’d really wanted to impress. And both times, they’d turned up right at the exact moment when they were needed, then they’d disappeared just as fast.
It was as Spitfire had said. You don’t use trashcans in the clouds. They’re too heavy, and they’re a danger to fliers. Moreover, why had a trashcan been right next to a runway and right smack-dab in the middle of flight training camp? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put them by a building instead?
No, the more Rainbow Dash thought about it, the more sinister the trashcans seemed to become. Both times she’d landed in them, they’d been filled to the brim with disgusting slop as well. Like, unnaturally full. With her keen memory, Rainbow Dash remembered rolling through several moldy apples, rotten pears, and even bits of half-eaten mushrooms. And a lot of brown stuff. The same as when she’d been in Flight School. In fact, even the smell was hauntingly familiar.
Rainbow Dash didn’t know a lot about trash, but she wondered why in a trashcan where everypony tossed everything, how it had miraculously not contained anything sharp or dangerous. And also, for that matter, what the brown stuff had been. Dirt? Why would you put dirt in a trashcan? And if it wasn’t dirt, there was only one thing it could be, and Rainbow Dash didn’t want to even think about that. She thought about some of the brown stuff she’d swallowed by accident, and her stomach rolled.
But now was not the time to throw up. Rainbow Dash flew through the sky, searching for the location which would help her out. Spitfire had assured her she’d look into the prank, but Rainbow Dash wanted to know who’d played that prank on her, and she wanted to know now.
So how did you find a prankster? Well, the logical conclusion was to find out where the trashcan had come from. Rainbow Dash had investigated—well, she had asked Twilight to look it up—and there was only one place in Equestria that dealt with trash and trashcans.
The company in charge of trash management for all of Equestria was based in Manehatten. On the outskirts of the city. On the far outskirts of the city, in fact. It was so far outside of the city that Rainbow Dash wondered how bad the place smelled.
Her answer hit her in the nose as Dash flew closer to the massive grey building. She gagged, fell out of the air, and barely managed to pull out of a nosedive in time. Dash landed on the ground, coughing and gagging. The smell was…beyond heinous. She had no words for how terrible it smelled, but she imagined that if an Ursa Major ate ten thousand hayburgers, had massive diarrhea, and then puked all over the resulting mess, it would still smell ten times better than the smell invading her poor nose right now.
Dash briefly debated turning back, but she’d come too far now to stop. And besides, she really wanted to know who’d played that prank on her. It might not solve her earlier childhood trauma, but at least she could get a bit of revenge on prankster who’d given her that nickname.
As she trotted towards the featureless building, Rainbow Dash pondered who it could have been. Obviously, only a Wonderbolt would have known where Rainbow Dash would have been. It could be Spitfire, but Rainbow Dash doubted the Captain would have done something like that.
Was it Soarin? She wasn’t about to jump to conclusions. But if it was Soarin, she was going to kick his rear end all the way to Canterlot.
Rainbow Dash reached the building and looked around. The doors were closed, and she couldn’t see anypony in sight. Odd. It wasn’t too late in the evening, so she would have assumed the place would have been packed with working ponies collecting trash and…doing whatever they did to trash. Burn it? Bury it in the ground? Eat it? Whatever the case, no pony was doing it.
“Hello?” Rainbow Dash was reluctant to open her mouth and inhale any more of the foul scent, but no pony was coming to help her. “Is…any one here? Hello?”
No response. Rainbow Dash looked around, but there were no windows leading into the building, and no ways in apart from the one, solitary door. That was weird. Didn’t trash stink more when it was inside a confined space? Maybe it was so closed off so the smell wouldn’t escape? Rainbow Dash didn’t know, but the hairs all over her body were beginning to stick up.
Cautiously, Dash tried the door and found it was unlocked. The door opened with a loud creak that totally didn’t seem scary, and Rainbow Dash found herself looking into a very dark hallway. She gulped.
She could always turn back. No pony was watching her, so she could go away, and never come back. But no matter how creepy this abandoned building seemed, Rainbow Dash felt like she was at the precipice of learning something big. The stupid idea of the missing trashcan didn’t seem so stupid now, and if this company had records of any kind, they could help her pinpoint where the trashcan had come from, and maybe who had taken it.
All she had to do was walk through a dark hallway. Easy, right? Rainbow Dash stepped through the door and flinched as the total darkness enveloped her. Okay. Not so easy.
It took her eyes a few minutes to adjust, in which time Rainbow Dash had to try hard to avoid ruining her new Wonderbolts flight suit. But after a while, Rainbow Dash could make out the faint outlines of the hallway, and in the distance…
Light?
Rainbow Dash began to walk down the long, dark hallway. She glanced from side to side, but the faint light from the door behind her didn’t illuminate much. But what she could see only made Dash more and more confused.
This hallway was long, straight, and narrow, just wide enough for two ponies to walk next to each other. But what it didn’t have were such details Rainbow usually expected of hallways, like intersections, picture frames, weird potted plants or doors. The entire length of the hallways was unilluminated and unbroken, and that only made Rainbow Dash more and more uneasy.
She finally reached the end of the hallway and saw the light again. It was coming from underneath a door at the end of the corridor. Rainbow Dash walked quickly over to it, hyperventilating a tiny bit. Okay, now or never.
As her hoof touched the doorknob, the door at the entrance of the hallway suddenly slammed shut. Rainbow Dash jerked in alarm as she was plunged into near-complete blackness. Suddenly afraid, she fumbled at the door and found the doorknob after a few panicked moments. She yanked the door open and ran inside.
And stopped dead in her tracks.
The room was plain and empty, save for a single table and two chairs. A naked lightbulb was the only source of illumination. Rainbow Dash had seen lightbulbs before, but usually in streetlamps and never this…exposed. The light it cast was harsh and bright upon Dash’s dark-adjusted eyes. But that wasn’t the only feature of the room. No, Dash’s attention was immediately drawn to the being, or rather, pony that sat in the chair facing her. It was hard to make out the pony’s face or Cutie Mark as it sat in the shadows.
Warily, ready for any sudden movements, Rainbow Dash stepped forwards. She peered at the pony, but it was still in the shadows, unmoving. Another step and Rainbow Dash could barely make out the pony’s mane. Just as she realized the pony was female and not male, the pony moved forwards and into the light.
Rainbow Dash froze as the pony’s face came into view. No. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. But it was.
“Hello Rainbow Dash.” Starlight Glimmer said, calmly resting her hooves on top of the table. “Have a seat. Let’s talk.”