Through Loyalty and Love

by Damocles23


Chapter 5: And then the world turns...

Through Loyalty and Love

By Damocles23

Chapter 5: And then the world turns...

The great writer Appal Moore once said that life is made of different genres: It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're luck.

Rainbow Dash knew him from a couple of Daring Do short stories and a novel he penned, which she enjoyed of course but she deemed too dark and cerebral for her taste. Also, that huge amount of obscure references from Trottingham literature, which she could identify only half of it and only with the help of Twilight, was too much.

What did he wanted from his readers ,anyway. To read MORE books?

Nevertheless that quote seemed to describe that last portion of her life pretty well: Since she ever heard of that dumb excuse for a prank, everything was so crazy and a bit surreal, it had to be a comedy. Pinkie Pie role in it was just too perfect to be a coincidence. Every comedy requires a wacky trickster to set the plot in motion. The fact that she managed to keep the mystery of everything until the very end and the general enigmatic nature of that dirty affair made it a mystery novel, with the added twist of the detective unable to piece together the clues until it was too late. A pretty good twist in the land of fiction, she had to admit but unfortunately she lived in reality…

At least she still thought there were some clues, but you know how they say: if you look back on it everything seems easier.
The main event of the night was surely an epic chronicle of some earth-shattering disaster ,and let’s leave it at that, and the part in the forest…Yeah, Moore said that nothing is definite.

In the beginning Dash saw herself as the heroine of a tragedy: a moving, powerful story with a noble, selfless, beautiful and brave heroine (no applauses, please) willing to sacrifice everything for her well-intentioned but dangerously reckless friend, who honestly could not face the hardships of the life of a fugitive alone. Of course, the heroic virtues of every protagonist of a tragedy had to be her downfall and greatest weakness, with the cruel forces of Fate making the “friend” in question a total jerk, who really had to test her kindness and patience by making the both of them lost in one of the dangerous places of Equestria and surrounded by Celestia knows what (although she’d had to analyze that later), insulting her, being a general pain in the plot and making her remember past events that still made her suffer even if she didn’t show and being totally disrespectful of her sacrifice and good will and making her very confused about a lot of things because she pinned her to the ground (She didn’t saw it coming…Since when she could do that? Well, surely all those sweets she eats helped, she weighs far more than she appears...) and could’ve swore she was trying to kiss her, no question about that. Well actually there was one: why did Dash didn’t seem to mind that one thing? Even if the idea was preposterous (Where did that word even came from?!), she guessed the romantic part of the story was filled…Until the hero fell from the light and became just one of the villains…

“I wish I never met you”…

She really earned those bites.

Rainbow Dash didn’t know where those words came from, probably from the same twisted, nefarious, hidden part of her that considered abandoning Pinkie before earlier. Neither of them was in their right mind that night, alright, but it had to be something else, that didn’t came from her, it couldn’t be, it…just…couldn’t…


She didn’t believe her own crap for a minute, It was too easy to blame an unknown nameless force who lived inside her head. That is the stuff for the looney bin.

At least Pinkie had the courage to talk to her face, while Dash ,in her own mind before and those five little words who shall never mention again after, proved to be worse. Even though she couldn’t fully justify, and most of the time even understand, Pinkie for her actions before and after, at least she wasn’t THAT cruel to her friend until now. There were some lines that even in anger and shock couldn’t be crossed.

She did start all of this for her sake and, whatever degree of responsibility Pinkie had in all of this didn’t changed it. Not one bit.

Now that she mentioned it was this difficult to actually understand each other until this moment? Well, yeah…But most of the time it was in good fun. Pinkie Pie’s silliness amused her, until it became criminally dangerous , but this time, as her mind was focused she knew something just wasn’t right this time. Her big, scintillating eyes of hers right before the incident only confirmed this, there was a hint of something different in it, something that didn’t belong to the Pinkie she knew, not something that could be alien to her, but surely something that saw her totally unprepared once it was there. One more reason to help her, she thought.

What happened to them in all this time they knew each other?

What changed between the two friends that made Pinkie’s behavior even more erratic than it was before?

And why, for the love of Celestia, why Rainbow Dash has become such a JERK? Her motivation for helping Pinkie faltered THIS soon? And for what, for something that could’ve been fixed easily if they just took flight like she suggested to? She was better than that, she had to be.

She needed to apologize to her, to earn redemption, to be for Pinkie the friend she could always rely on as it should have been from the start. And, sadly, that too could be part of an interesting story…

And now, the horrifying part.

Everything happened so fast she almost forgot of that one. Sometimes in life, things can and will just go wrong.

The shadows were still surrounding the two ponies, extremely polite she had to admit since they waited until she finished her internal monologue, still snarling and staring at them, with a gaze that could pierce lesser hearts. As Pinkie and Dash looked at these monstrosities, they noticed something completely wrong with them: their appearance wasn’t full, they seemed to lack consistence, almost translucent, looking big piles of smoke with several fragments of their anatomy disappearing leaving square shaped holes in their bodies only for reappearing on different, equally empty places of them, as if they were constantly rearranging themselves to continue existing in a reality that just didn’t tolerate their very existence, shaped to look like a pony, several of them had even wings and she spotted one with an horn , although broken and incomplete, looking more like fleshy appendages than real body parts which she couldn’t figure if they were actually functional or not, as a mockery of pony races.

Maybe Changelings?

No, those monsters looked very real, these beings instead…they looked like a nightmare penetrating the world of the wake and struggling to continue this unnatural existence.

Pinkie immediately let Dash get up by basically jumping off from her friend, visibly disturbed by that sight. With a nod she signaled for Pinkie to go behind her, trying to appear fierce and confident, as always. To keep her cool, for Pinkie’ sake of course, she even wore a smirk and a look in her eyes that just screamed: “Come at me, you ugly jerks; you’re looking for trouble, well you got it. You don’t mess with the Dash”.

Yes, she could say a lot of things with look. So, what?

The two ponies stood opposite of each other, guarding each other’s plot while being circled silently by those…whatever the hell they were. Both of them had a determined look in their eyes, not even flinching. She didn’t know about Pinkie but , even though she needed the assistance of demonic creatures, she felt invigorated by this. The Pegasus she had to be: stronger than ever and faster than lightning. A bit of unnerved by her still silent opponents, Dash started to use the old and always useful art of quipping:

“Looks like some…whatever showed up at our date. Friends of yours, Pinks?”

“Nu-huh. My friends are much more colorful than that.”

“ Even that black unicorn?”

“Especially that black unicorn! And he’s named Graphite by the way. He’s nice!”

Dash rolled her eyes “Whatever. So if you guys don’t have anything better to do, why don’t you just go f…”

Before she could finish the sentence, one of them immediately lunged at Dash, screeching loudly with her maw fully opened. Dash immediately, turned herself and gave to the shadow a well-deserved kick to the jaw, right into its hellish mouth, who flung it backwards and pummeled on the ground with all fours flailing the air, spitting a couple of their teeth who immediately disappeared in a puff of smoke as they left its mouth. Exactly as planned. If she knew something about monsters, is that they weren’t so smart.

Dash felt the impact of her own blow resonating trough all of her hind-leg as if she just kicked a wall of bricks. Their appearance suggested otherwise but she didn’t expect them to be this tough. It didn’t matter.

The others started their assault too, focusing more on Dash than Pinkie, who managed to clumsily avoid the shadows, by jumping and moving seemingly at random, viciously lunging and jumping at her, trying to bite her as they tried with Dash. The Pegasus already started to flutter weakly, hitting some of them with her hooves as they tried to reach her to keep them at bay, with much less force than before obviously, she still needed all of her legs .She’ll have to bother with the pain later.

Sadly, she couldn’t discern their exact number, six or seven where there but it was absolutely possible that a whole army of them was waiting patiently in the darkness of the forest. With their luck, it could be even more…

A couple of them had Pegasus wings and tried to attack her with the very same appendages, holding them horizontal and fully stretched. If their wings were just as hard as their ugly faces, that was a feasible strategy. For all she knew, at that speed they could slice her in half.

Ouch.

Luckily for Dash they were too clumsy too use their speed effectively and their attack pattern resulted painfully predictable. She only had to keep her momentum and just keep dodging. Piece of Cake.

The deadly dance continued, until finally the twisted pegasi were far enough from them after Dash avoided their latest assault and were trying to reassert themselves.

She tried to look for Pinkie, but in the chaos she somehow lost the sight of her. She frantically turned her head searching for her friend. A lot of brown, some black and some green but not a trace of pink.

She started to worry, it’s not she was that distant from her. How could she…?

She had an horrible feeling. From the start of everything she had the feeling that those creatures were capable of far more than they let out, and she had seen her fair share of crazy magic, enough for a lifetime, and it wasn’t over yet. A lot of horrible thoughts began to invade her head, her eyesight started to falter. She was already tired, maybe?

A scream behind her. Pinkie’s scream. Was it too late?

She quickly turned and swooped toward the voice a top speed, ready to do battle, only to see… Pinkie gasping and raging, holding a saddlebag in her teeth, looking semi-opened, in which she barely see a big brown envelope in it and more scarily the earth ponies version of the shadows looked unconscious, at least for a few moments, a couple of them thanks to Pinkie of all ponies, who, when she wasn’t looking managed to brutally subdue the two and were lying on the ground with their forelegs at each other’s side of their neck, laying on their shoulders, as in some kind of clumsy embrace. She tried to not snicker at that grotesque image.

But that wasn’t the time to laugh, even if beating those monsters seemed strangely cathartic. With a quick nod she signaled to Pinkie to follow her and both ponies began to run deeper in the forest, possibly away from whoever it may be hiding in there. Fortunately the only shrieking she heard came from the opposite direction. A shrieking so horrible to be almost painful.

Just what the hay are those things?

While leading the way, Dash needed to know one thing, an idea was slowly forming in her mind that could be the key for saving their lives:

“Pinkie, how did you do that?”

“Do what?” she retorted, confused.

“That! That…I don’t know how you did that! ”

“Oh, you mean that? I just kicked their plot. Wasn’t that difficult, honestly. Those ugly things wanted to hurt us, right? They had it coming!”

Dash was frankly scared by that sentence. She honestly never knew that side of Pinkie and hoped to never see it again…At least not directed at her as her little tantrum before proved.

In a truly bizarre turn of events, the arrival of those things actually spared her sorry plot from the rage of something she would began to call “Angry Pie”. And the award of “Strangest Bucking Day of Her Entire Life” goes to…

“Can’t you just tell me how?” Dash meekly asked.

Pinkie smirked and giggled: “It’s Pinkie Sense, silly! Those meanies can’t touch me if I don’t want to! I just know if they want to hurt me!”

Gotta love Pinkie Sense. Nopony knows how that works but it works and frankly she didn’t care. And with that the last piece of the puzzle feel right into her hooves. At least she had to try.

In a clever twist of irony of the most unexplainable things ever , could be the most logical approach. Too bad Twilight wasn’t there. For once she would shut up about her being too reckless to think logically. Then she realized that it was for the best, because if she really was there she still had a lot of explaining to do for that little shenanigan…Best not think about that for now.

With new resolution, Dash suddenly stopped, trying not to make Pinkie crash into her. Then she quickly offered her rump to the pink mare.

Yes, for an outside observer the gesture could seem very ambiguous. So ambiguous that even Pinkie stopped abruptly and started blushing furiously, looking extremely embarrassed and totally caught off guard. Surely that wasn’t Dash’ intended reaction…

“Hop in.” Dash said sternly, turning her head toward her friend and looking right in her eyes with her serious tone. And that choice of word wasn’t helping. A lot of stories need an awkward misunderstanding…She always hated that cliché!

“D-Dashie? You know, I was joking about the date thing…Maybe later if you want…” Pinkie covered her eyes with her fore-leg. The blushing was only aggravated by her own comment .

Dash just rolled her eyes, “Please, don’t start this again! Hop on my back, I have a plan!”

“Oh…” she sounded a bit disappointed by this. But she complied quickly, jumping on her friends’ back and locking her forelegs tightly around her neck.

“Now what?” she asked.

“ Hold me tight and tell me if you feel something funny! I have a plan.”

“Is it safe, Dashie?”

“No, in fact it’s completely insane.”Even Dash was surprised by this bout of brutal honesty, but the plan really was insane.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?”

“Not at all!”, she sounded almost enthusiastic, like masochistically enthusiastic.

“You don’t want to tell me what’s in your mind, right?”

“If I did that, you’d miss the surprise!” . Her tone was lulling and full of glee, very Pinkie-like. But that veneer of sarcasm was still visible, as in completely and painfully obvious.

Pinkie sighed a bit and giggled. Her little laugh was filled with relief, “Touche, Dashie! Guess I kinda deserved that one”.

“You can say that again!”, for once, she felt allowed to totally disregard tact.”Now hold me like your life depends on it!”

Pinkie gulped loudly, but she did as she was said and tightened her grip around the cyan Pegasus shoulders, burying her face deep in her fur. Dash felt a strange warmth from Pinkie, while the cold wind of the night began grazing her face. She stirred the muscles in her legs, one of them felt a little dull from the fight but that wouldn’t stop her.

“Pinkie, does your Pinkie Sense tells you when something is behind you, right?”

“Hu-uhu! But only when they’re reeeeeally close to me!

“Good, when you feel it, tell me right away.” Dash bit her lip, mustering the courage to say it, “Oh, and Pinkie…I know you have every reason not to…But, please, trust me”

Pinkie just kept staring in her eyes with admiration, those big blue eyes staring right into her made Dash a little nervous but she couldn’t afford it. A silent nod was the only answer she needed.

Sometimes, Pinkie’s silences meant a lot more than her torrent of words, it meant that no amount of silly rambling was necessary for her, even though she loved it. That for once the craziest pony she ever met showed her true heart .It meant she really had her trust, even though she was really mean to her. A sign of trust so simple and yet so powerful.

To add further irony, now Rainbow Dash was the one who came out with a crazy plan. She hoped that it didn’t end up like Pinkie’s. At least it didn’t have any long-term consequences.

Just a light case of a quick but likely painful death. Nothing special, really.

At least Pinkie was by her side…If anything, she didn’t want to go out with that regret.

Not without at least one friend to her side.

That small relief give her the last drop of strenght necessary to do one of the craziest stunt she ever tried.

As she spread her wings, ready to take off, she felt Pinkie once again clinging to her. She hoped it was enough. Inhaling loudly, she kicked off the ground , and finally propelled herself forward in the air…right toward one of the shadow pegasi.

She quickly passed him by, so fast that the monsters at first didn’t even notice her. Both of the ponies blowing a raspberry at him, that caught its attention. Looking irritated, it started snarling back at them and began chasing Dash and Pinkie. The cyan mare increasingly adjusted her speed, trying to be in sight of the monsters and trying to be careful and distance it too much, playing with the monsters expectation by sometimes let it come closer, within its grasp, to make it feel closer to victory only for one second….Only to accelerate and distance it even further than before .

She shouldn’t have enjoyed this sensation of control this much but she rationalized pretty quickly that those things would probably do worse to them if they ever fell into their hooves…Or whatever they had in place of hooves.

This continued for a while, until they both heard another familiar snarling. The other Pegasus was still searching patiently for them in the forest looking dumfounded, until those horrible, fiery, red eyes focused rather strongly on them. It stopped for a second before basically launching at two ponies, shrieking more than usual and its maw fully opened.

Dash just stopped. In mid air. Completely still.

Pinkie started to worry, loosening her grip a bit and opening wide her large blue eyes, looking directly at the monsters heading right toward them. She began to shake her friend beneath who still remained unflappable.

“Dashie! What are you doing?! Why you don’t swoosh anymore?! DO the swoosh-thinghy! Wasn’t this your plan?”

“Don’t worry, Pinkie. This IS the plan! I’m doing my part, now I’m waiting for your cue!”

“My what?”

“The Pinkie Sense, silly” she chuckled a bit, nervously. Somehow, she was sure she didn’t thought ahead of all of this. This sensation was becoming almost too familiar right now, so she scoffed the thought. “When you feel something funny, it’s gonna be quite a show!”

“If you say so, Dashie…”

Even if few second were passing, they seemed like an eternity. Time slowed down, the air in both their lungs seemed heavier than a brick, Dash couldn’t even feel the horrendous slicing sound made by the monster wings nor hear its terrible shriek, as both of them were completely focused on their respective tasks, their muscles more tense than they ever been.

No time for worrying or regretting or other complicated words that basically meant “whining” anymore.

It was all or nothing.

No pressure, honestly.

In those final instants, Dash concentration was mildly broken by the familiar voice of a certain pink pony. Only mildly. Was that the signal, already?

“Dashie” she sounded nervous, it was natural Dash thought, but there was an hint of…sadness? “If we...If we don’t make it, I wanted to tell you that I like…PINCY KNEE, PINCY TAIL,PINCY EVERYTHING! IT’S HERE!”

Rainbow was a bit startled by the pink pony on her back convulsing violently like that, but now it was the time. She didn’t get what she was babbling before, but at least she got the important part. She’ll ask later...If they survive, obviously. Always forgot about that tiny detail.

She couldn’t simply turn back to check if one of them was chasing her, precious seconds lost and only a second could mean everything, both monster had to be positioned like that, not a millimeter further. Everything was set, she needed only that one, infallible cue.

And with that, she stopped flapping. Her wings went limp and her body plummeted to the ground beneath, with the pink pony still clinging to her. The moment the two mares fell the monster behind realized a terrible thing, that could be read as a moment of dawning comprehension of a being who reached the end of its life: specifically, the moment it realized that it was going to crash at a fairly high speed with his companion heading in the opposite direction.

The two shadows collided into each other, exploding into a massive rain of slabs and black smoke. A final agonizing screeching followed them, even after their destruction.

Dash felt a bit strained after all of this, Pinkie using her a cushion to stop her fall didn’t help either. She knew there was something funny on having the same pony pining her to the ground two times in the same night. She would also punch anypony in the face who pointed this out and a couple of her ribs would approve.

Pinkie just looked stunned, watching at the remains of the shadow still floating in the air like some kind of demented fireworks, with her mouth still wide open. The light of Luna’s moon shining trough the branches surely helped to make them look like more evocative than they were. Stunning enough to make her get up from Dash to look at that. The Pegasus ribs thanked her most graciously but only for a little, as the pink pony embraced Dash enthusiastically.

“We did it, Dashie! You’re crazy! And awesome! Crazy Awesome” Her voice was filled with pure joy.

Dash didn’t seemed to mind. She was content that they survived and, all things aside, her friend enthusiasm always helped.

She couldn’t help to chuckle and returned the hug.

“Thank you” she simply said, “Thank you for believing in me”

Pinkie cooed and whispered in her ear “Always, Dashie…”

Sadly, that rare moment of quiet and relief was shattered: a black, glowing hue paralyzed the two ponies, grapping them, making them difficult to breath for both and slowly lifting them from the ground.

Dash body went limp but still tried to hold Pinkie, instinctively protecting her.

It’s the bucking unicorn…

Everything went dark soon. She still felt the warmth of the pink mare body.

Author’s Notes: Yep, another late chapter, sorry. Next one it’s already in the making and maybe you’ll see it a little earlier. Also, before you say anything, once again another cliffhanger.
Because I’m evil like that.