The Foals of Harmony: Equestrian Rhapsody

by Rainy Meadows

Chapter 10 - Papa Don't Preach

Pinkie Pie stared down at the chequered board in front of her, massaging her head with her hooves. Her face wore an expression which was a mixture of confusion, disbelief and complete and utter bamboozlement.

“But it doesn’t make any sense!” she cried. “And that’s me talking! How is this even possible?”

“I think I told you as soon as you suggested this, Pinkie,” Hex said smugly, “I haven’t lost a game of chess since I was seven.”

Pinkie didn’t know how to respond. She looked first at the veritable swarm of white pieces on Hex’s side of the board, and then at the single black pawn on her side. Then she examined the board itself: all she had left was her king and a pawn, both of whom looked rather lonely and positively terrified in the expansive ghetto of black.

Hex tauntingly nudged a bishop one space closer to Pinkie’s lone pawn.

“Your move,” he said, and then sat back on his haunches in smug satisfaction.

Nervous sweat poured off the party pony’s face in buckets, but then she noticed something the inventor had apparently missed. A wide grin split her face as she used her pawn to take one of Hex’s rooks.

“Ha!” she cheered triumphantly. “What now, Science Guy? I don’t suppose you’re about to admit... defeat...”

She looked on blankly as the brown unicorn, without so much as glancing at the board, replaced her pawn with his queen and the white pawn joined his fallen comrades.

The normally hyperactive party planner was stunned into silence. But... she could still win this! He still had to take her king, and she was sure as hay he wasn’t about to do that in a hurry!

She pushed the white piece to the left, but Hex shook his head and pointed out that if she made that move, it would be directly in line with one of his bishops.

So Pinkie moved it right instead, and her bespectacled friend shook his head again and indicated the pawn that was now threatening it. No matter what direction she moved the king Hex would always remind her that the board was swarming with his own troops.

Eventually she admitted defeat, and reached out a bubblegum pink hoof and tipped the ivory-painted wood carving onto its side, where it rolled around rather despondently and only stopped when it bumped into one of its black counterparts.

“OH YEAH!” Hex shouted as he leapt into the air, hooves thrown up above his head in celebration. “Who’s the chess champion of Equestria? Haydon Arthur Smegging Baxter, that’s who!” He launched into a victory jig, completely ignoring the other ponies that had been milling around the park, going about their daily lives, and were now staring at him in shock and perplexity.

Despite her landslide of a defeat, Pinkie Pie couldn’t help but laugh. ‘This guy might even be able to out-random me!’ she thought. ‘I wonder if I could beat him at-’

She cut herself off in mid-thought as a mass of shivers ran through her body from her nose to her back hooves and the very tip of her tail, shaking her clean out of her seat.

Hex stopped dancing, and this time it was his turn to stare.

“What the smeg was that?” he asked. “You need a jacket or something? ‘Coz I’ve got-”

“Oh, no no no no no,” Pinkie said. “That was just my Pinkie Sense, and it’s telling me that there’s going to be a major doozy!” She stopped talking as she was once again apparently gripped by a large case of the shivers.

“At it’s gonna happen... at the Library!” she declared. “We gotta get there fast!”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hex said. He telekinetically grabbed her tail and stopped her from speeding away, in order to say “What?!”

“What do you mean, what?” asked Pinkie, giving him a cute quizzical smile.

Hex searched for the right words. ‘What the smeg are you going on about’ seemed inappropriate, as did ‘What the smeg is Pinkie Sense’ and ‘How does that make any smeg-buggering sense’. So instead he just settled for “Pinkie Sense? What’s that?”

“Oh, nopony told you?” asked Pinkie, just before she gave another massive shudder, and when that was over she said “It works like this: I get different twitches and shudders and they tell me stuff’s going to happen. Like, if my tail’s twitching, it means stuff’s gonna start falling, and if my shoulder’s achy, it means there’s an alligator in the bathtub.”

Hex raised an eyebrow and gawked at her.

“Precognitive muscle spasms?” he said. “That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!”

“You know, it’s funny,” said Pinkie, “that’s almost exactly what Twilight said, only I got a completely new kind of Pinkie Sense *shudder* that one, actually, and I knew it was going to be a major doozy, but when we got to Froggy Bottom Bog to see if Fluttershy was alright we all got chased by a great big hydra, but that wasn’t the doozy: the real doozy was when Twilight said she believed in the Pinkie Sense!” After finishing this particular spout of talking, she looked at Hex with a massive grin and expected to see some kind of comprehension.

He just said “What?!” again.

Pinkie Pie growled in frustration.

“Just follow me!” she almost shouted. “There’s gonna be a major doozy and it’s gonna happen at the library!” She started shuddering again, and Hex was forced to push her several feet forward before she regained control of her legs.

Rainbow Dash looked up from her book for just long enough to let out a small grunt, as if of pain.

“You okay, Rainbow Dash?” asked Spike, from his position precariously balanced on top of a ladder with a stack of books in one claw.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Rainbow Dash. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She then returned to her book – a particularly immersive tome she had borrowed from Hex entitled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Normally Dash wasn’t one for reading anything that didn’t involve treasure hunters, but this one contained action-packed stories about all kinds of different alien races from a place the brown unicorn had claimed was real, although she had cringed at one particular section of poetry.

It had to be the most... uh, let’s just say “unusual” piece of writing the vibrant-maned speedster had ever read.

‘I just hope Pinkie never gets her hooves on this,’ Dash thought to herself, ‘I think even Twilight won’t be able to shut her up.’ She could just picture it – the eternally energetic baker jumping around endlessly chanting such words as Oolon Colluphid and Babel Fish (as if the whole “chimicherrychanga” ordeal hadn’t been enough).

And that was only the third worst poetry in the universe.

“Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning,” she whispered to herself, and giggled internally.

She found her thoughts wandering away from the Hitchhiker’s Guide and to Canterlot, where the stallion of her dreams and the father of her foal was taking part in his final derby before finalising his resignation from the Wonderbolts.

She remembered the almost indecipherable mix of emotions she had felt when Soarin’ had returned to her: relief that she wouldn’t have to search anymore; joy, obviously, because of his return; anger and resentment, obviously, because he had left her...

...and then she had learnt why, and all she had felt was gratitude, and sympathy, and guilt which stained her conscience like a glass of red wine.

“Watcha reading, Dashie?”

‘Uh-oh,’ thought Dash.

“Pinkie,” she said, “I know what you’re thinking, but please, please don’t read that out loud!”

“Why?” asked Hex inquisitively. “What book is iiiOOOOHH NO PINKIE PIE DON’T READ IT ALOUD!”

“Oh, what harm could it do, party pooper?” asked Pinkie Pie. She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and started to read.

“Oh freddled gruntbuggly! Thy micturations are to me-”

Dash clamped her hooves over her head and rolled into a foetal position.

“As plurdled gabbleblotchits in a lurgid bee-”

“Findahappyplacefindahappyplacefindahappyplace-” Hex was chanting over and over.

“Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes-”

Spike teetered dangerously and toppled off the ladder, landing amidst a heap of books, virtually tearing his ears off and moaning “MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!” But unfortunately, the party pony didn’t seem to hear.

“And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindle werdles-”

Dash rocked back and forth, desperately humming to herself in a fruitless attempt to block out the terrible noise.

“For otherwise I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with-”

Hex started rhythmically banging his forehead against the nearest wall, punctuating each bang with a quiet “ow”.

“My blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t.”

Trembling in trepidation, Spike slowly lowered his claws away from his burning ears.

“Is it...” He struggled to get the words out. “Is it over?”

“Hmm,” said Pinkie Pie. “Well that’s not a very nice thing to do to somepony. Dashie, would you rend somepony in the gobberwarts with a blurglecruncheon?”

Dash flinched and cried out again. “Pinkie!” she exclaimed.

It was at that moment that a certain other unicorn started to descend the library stairs, and stopped when she saw the carnage.

“Whoa,” she said, “What’s been going on down here?”

“I’ve been reading Dashie’s book!” Pinkie said. “Wanna hear? Ahem. Oh freddled-”

“NO!” Dash yelled, and slammed a hoof into her excitable friend’s muzzle. “Pinkie, just-just DON’T, okay?”

“Okay!” Pinkie squeaked through a mouthful of hoof.

“Um...”

All eyes fell upon a lightning-flanked scientist who lay with his forehead against the wall, propped up on his hind legs with his messy brown tail sticking up into the air.

“Can somepony come over here and give me a tug?” he asked, trying and failing to keep the shame out of his voice. “It’s just that I was, um, banging my head against the wall to try and escape the universe’s third worst poetry and, uh, it’s really embarrassing, Twilight, but... well, I um, seem to have er, embedded my horn in your wall.”

There was a moment of silence as everypony took in what Hex had just said, and the current predicament he had gotten himself into.

That silence was shattered by deafening laughter.

“Ha ha, very funny guys,” said Hex sarcastically. He propped his hooves against the woodwork and tried to prise himself out, but much to the further amusement of the three gathered ponies and the baby dragon, he only wore himself out and got a splinter in his left hoof, which he pulled out with his teeth.

Luckily for him Spike managed to calm himself for long enough to say “Sorry! Here, let me help!” And between sniggers he started to dig away at the wood surrounding Hex’s embedded appendage.

The terracotta unicorn again tried to pull himself free, and his strength combined with a telekinetic tug on his tail from Twilight resulted in him flying out like a cork from a champagne bottle and crashing into a bookcase, shaking several free, which then landed on top of his head.

“Just so everypony knows,” said Hex, with several pages impaled on his horn, “that – and this – are the single most humiliating things ever to have happened to me.” The flatness of his voice, combined with the seriousness of his expression, only served to increase the hilarity further, right up to the point where Pinkie Pie gave another violent shudder.

“Okay, would somepony care to explain that to me?” asked Hex, indicating the shivering confectioner. “Pinkie is under the impression that she possesses extrasensory bodily functions.”

He was met with two blank stares and one of comprehension.

“You mean Pinkie Sense?” asked Twilight. “Word of advice: don’t try to analyse it.” She held out a hoof and helped the confused inventor upright.

“Why the smeg not?” he demanded. “It makes about as much smeg-buggering sense as an artificial intelligence being somehow become sapient and rambling non-stop about wanting to go into space!”

“Trying to work it out will just drive you crazy,” said Rainbow Dash. “It did for Twilight when she first heard about it!”

Unfortunately, the brown unicorn had grabbed hold of a thread and wasn’t abandoning it for love nor money.

“A twitchy tail means things will start falling? Achy shoulder means there’s an alligator in the bath? Full body shudder means a doozy? I’ve seen a lot of ridiculous things in my time (not to mention some rather smegging awesome things as well) but this just takes the cake.”

“Uh, Hex?” Spike ventured.

“In fact, you know what? This doesn’t take the cake! The cake is a lie! This takes the entire bakery! That’s the bread, the buns, the fruitcake, the pudding, the cookies, the muffins, the cupcakes, the brownies, the lamingtons, the pies, the pasties and the hedgehog slice-”

“He-ex!” Pinkie tried, but saying his name in a sing-song voice didn’t make any difference.

“This has to be the most unheard-of thing I’ve ever heard of! What next, an itchy hooves means the sky’s about to fall on our heads, or-or it’s about to start raining herring or that ponies are going to die out and the ants are going to take over as the dominant species?”

“Hex!” Twilight tried to interject, while Pinkie thought to herself: ‘He’s so wrong: itchy hoof means a baby filly’s just been born.’

“You know, I remember when I actually got a proper look around at some of the planets in dimension 64, and it turns out some of them really were just disconnected blocks floating around in space, but you know what? That doesn’t even come close to comparing to this!”

‘Okay, this is getting old,’ Rainbow Dash decided. She cast a quick glance at her friends, who were all apparently thinking the same thing as she was. Twilight cast a cursory look around, and then mouthed “Three, two, one...”

“HEX!”

Dash’s groan of pain was drowned out by the shout.

Hex looked at the three mares and the baby dragon and asked “What?” at which point the laughter resumed, albeit at a slightly softer level than before. The bespectacled inventor blushed.

“Sorry,” he said. “I tend to gush like that when I’m angry.”

“That’s nothing!” said Spike. “You should have seen Twilight when she first found out about Pinkie Sense!”

“Oh, I can’t have been that bad,” said Twilight.

“Can’t have been that bad? Your mane and tail turned into fire, your coat went white and your eyes were like rubies!” The purple reptile started to drool involuntarily at the mention of rubies as Pinkie shuddered again.

“See, that’s exactly what I was talking about,” said Hex, and silenced himself before he launched into a second stream of successive complaints.

“That one means there’s gonna be a doozy,” Dash explained.

“And my Pinkie Sense is telling me it’s gonna happen right here!” Pinkie cried. “In the library!”

“Pfft,” said Spike dismissively. “As if anything exciting could ever happen in library, of all places.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Twilight, recalling the very first time she had set foot in Ponyville’s library... and was greeted with a montage of streamers, confetti, cupcakes and one particular pony that would not shut up.

“I remember the first time I found out about Pinkie Sense,” said Dash. “I was practising some stunts, you know, just being – ngh – being awesome, and then I lost control and crashed outside Sugarcube Corner. Then Pinkie came along and told me her Pinkie Sense – agh – had predicted I was going to-”

“Rainbow, are you alright?” asked Hex. “You kinda sound like you’re in pain.”

“What do you mean?” said Dash. “I’m perfectly- GAH!” Her shrill scream coincided with her wrapping a foreleg around her stomach and clutching it tightly.

“Oh my gosh!” cried Spike. “Oh my gosh! OH MY GOSH!”

“I think I just figured out what the doozy is!” Pinkie squeaked.

“When did it start?” Hex asked, supporting her on his shoulder. “Rainbow Dash, when did it start?”

“I-I don’t know!” Dash was breaking out in a cold, fearful sweat. “A-a couple of hours ago?”

“Then there’s no time to get you to the hospital,” said Hex. “We’ll just have to do it here.”

“WHAT?!” Twilight shouted. “Hex, this is a library, not a delivery room!”

“Would you rather it became a morgue?” asked Hex. “What other choice do we have?”

Twilight sighed.

“You’re right,” she said. “Pinkie, I need you to find us as many towels as you can, and plenty of hot water.”

“Got it!” said Pinkie with a salute, and she charged off to... wherever Pinkie charges off to, I don’t know.

“Spike, send a message to everypony to let them know what’s happening,” Twilight commanded.

“Will do!” said Spike, and he picked up a quill and a piece of parchment.

“But-but where’s Soarin’?” asked Dash. “He should be here.”

“Make Soarin’ top priority, Spike,” said Hex. “And try not to make it sound too panicky.”

“Not too panicky. Got it,” said Spike.

He dipped the quill into a nearby inkwell and wrote:

Soarin’,

RAINBOW DASH IS HAVING THE BABY RIGHT NOW!!!

Spike.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think that should do it.”

He rolled it up and incinerated it with a familiar green flame, and the message whooshed out of the window and into the sky. The sender then rushed at top speed out of the library in search of everypony else.

“Are you sure about this, Hex?” asked Twilight, as she and he helped Dash up the stairs to the upper level of the library. “Delivering a baby isn’t like fixing one of your broken gadgets-”

“Why the sudden lack of trust?” said Hex. “Believe it or not, I actually helped deliver my cousin Emily. Aunt Saskia wasn’t too happy about the midwife being unable to keep away from morphine for a few seconds at a time. Mind you, I was a little nervous, but how hard can it be, right?”

“Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” Dash said sarcastically, and yelped again as her body was hit by the painful shockwaves of another contraction.

“Just relax, Rainbow,” said Hex. “We’re gonna get you through this.”

In the capital city of Canterlot, an older pegasus stallion, blissfully unaware of the events transpiring in Ponyville’s library, was sucking on the straw of a strawberry smoothie with a frown fixed on his pale blue face.

To say that Soarin’ had a bad morning would have been the understatement of the century. The derby had gone off without a hitch – he had finished fourth, but that was beside the point – and afterwards he had said his farewells to the rest of the team and spent half an hour sitting on a cloud overhead, trying to figure out what to do next; would he have time to go and grab a pie before the next train back to Ponyville?

He decided to check the timetable, and found that there wouldn’t be a train until four o’clock in the afternoon, so he decided to go and get a bite to eat.

Upon arrival at his favourite bakery, he had found it was in the process of being robbed.

Buck that.

So he had trailed all over Canterlot in search of a place to get a decent pie, and maybe something to-

No, he’d sworn off drinking ever since Dashie had rescued him.

Dashie. It was hard to believe that such a generally weird pony had come up with such an adorable nickname. Soarin’ loved it: she blushed every time he used it on her, and she was unbelievably cute when she was blushing.

However, by this time it was lunchtime, and almost every eatery in Canterlot was fresh out of pie. The only ones left were the ones he didn’t like – stuff like rhubarb and vegetables. Who in their right mind puts vegetables in a pie, for buck’s sake?

So instead he had settled for a smoothie, and again a rather thickly built pony made an attempt on his money, and again Soarin’ had given him a solid talking to which had ended with the pony running off in terror.

Then, on his way through the streets, a window cleaner had dropped his bucket on Soarin’s head.

He hadn’t complained, even though he seriously wanted to.

In the end he had settled for a strawberry smoothie at a cheap cafe uptown. Every now and then a posh pony with his or her nose in the air would pause, look at him, and then walk away muttering something in disapproval. At one point, a unicorn couple – he a grey bloke with a dark mane, glasses and casual but fancy looking clothes, she a yellow lady with a mound of purple mane and equally fancy clothes – had stopped and stared at him in utter disgust until he had asked them what the buck they were looking at, at which point they had walked away with their snouts to the sky, occasionally uttering some stupid complaint or other.

After that, Soarin’ had just gone back to his smoothie.

He had grown to be thankful of Rarity’s impromptu grooming, unnecessary as it had felt at the time because as well as the clothing one of the easiest ways to recognise a Wonderbolt was by their manestyles, which all had the look of a beehive in a tornado. Certainly, none of them ever wore it limp on their faces during a show...

...but that wasn’t important right now.

It was the waiting. It was killing him.

Rainbow Dash could go into labour any day now. He wanted to be there when his kid was born. It wasn’t that he still felt like he owed her for leaving her alone for four months, it was just-just one of those things, you know? One of those things where you HAD to be there.

And the next train to Ponyville didn’t get in until four in the afternoon.

It was maddening!

He sucked, depressed, on his rattling straw as it probed the bottom of the glass for the last dregs of smoothie. So what if the noise made all the posh ponies stare in distaste? All of them – every single one of them – they needed to lighten the buck up!

So Soarin’ sat there in front of his once again empty smoothie glass, occasionally despondently fiddling with his mane or goggles.

“Yo waiter,” he said eventually, “could you get me another smoothie?”

The waiter looked from him to the glass, and back again several times.

“Did I bucking stutter?” Soarin’ demanded, slamming a hoof on the table. “I said another smoothie! I’m paying for them, aren’t I?” And to the ponies in the street who had stopped and stared he yelled “And what the buck are you all staring at?” and they suddenly lost interest.

As the waiter deposited a fresh smoothie in front of him, Soarin’ was hit on the head by a scroll which had materialised above him and let gravity take control.

“What’s this?” he said quietly to nopony in particular.

He laid the parchment on the table and read it.

Then he reread it.

After that he turned it over, but there was nothing on the other side.

Right... now?!

“Holy buck,” he swore quietly.

Without another word, the pale pegasus darted into the air. He almost forgot to pay for the smoothies, but he was in a hurry, so he upended his bag of bits over the cafe and yelled “KEEP THE CHANGE!”

The waiter started gathering up the coins, and then somepony said “Hey, everypony! Free money!”

Up above, Soarin’ pulled his goggles down over his eyes.

“I’m comin’ for you, Rainbow,” he said, and made like a bullet in the direction of Ponyville.

*knock knock knock*

“It’s open!”

The door of the library was pushed wide open and the Element of Generosity entered the building. She looked worried, considering the circumstances, but also uncharacteristically flustered.

“I came as soon as I got word,” she said, “although obviously I left time to gather a few supplies first. Heaven knows how long this should take.”

“Have you spit yer bit or somethin’?” Applejack demanded. “Or best friend is in the middle of havin’ a baby, and all you c’n think ‘bout is how yer mane’s gonna look?”

“Oh no, it’s not for me!” Rarity insisted as she set her saddlebags in a corner. “Foalbirth can be an extremely exhausting experience! I don’t want Rainbow Dash to come out of it looking like she’s been through a war, the poor thing!”

“And you would know this... how?” asked Applejack.

Rarity’s voice transmuted from one of haughty insistence to one of shock.

“I don’t much care for what you’re insinuating, Applejack,” she said.

“Um, girls?” Fluttershy murmured. “Do you really think this is a good time to be arguing?”

As soon as she had finished talking, another scream pierced the afternoon air and made everypony in the library cringe in discomfort.

“I just wish there was something else I could do,” Spike complained. “I feel so useless.”

“Oh, don’t be so sad, Spikey-wikey!” said Pinkie, giving the baby dragon a noogie, “I feel useless as well, but I’m not letting that get me down!”

Suddenly, she dropped him, and he landed on his head, spines embedded in the wooden floor.

“Why the hay did you just drop me?” he demanded.

“My hooves are burning, my hooves are burning!” she cried.

“Well, c’mon! What does that mean?” asked Applejack.

“I don’t know,” said Pinkie. “The only other time my hooves were burning was during the Best Young Flier’s Competition, when Rarity was falling and Dashie was about to do a Sonic Rain-”

BOOM.

A few minutes earlier...

Soarin’ had never flown so fast in all his life! The freedom was unlike anything he had ever experienced before! The intense speed, the adrenaline rush, and the wind whipping his mane into deadly dreadlocks... he liked it. A LOT.

Heck, he hadn’t even flown like this on the night he’d got his cutie mark! But of course, back then, he had been desperately loop-de-looping and darting around thunder clouds and lightning bolts in a frantic attempt to reach his home before the griffon that was attacking his parents could catch up with him and hurt him. It was what his cutie mark represented: flying like lightning.

Things were different now. That was ten years ago; he had been only nine years old at the time – exactly nine years old, in fact.

Uh oh...

It was his old enemy, the sound barrier. A vapour cone was forming around the hooves he had thrust forward to pierce the sky and increase his speed. If he lost momentum now, if he slowed down even in the slightest...

Rainbow Dash would never forgive him.

Even though they were covered by thick flight goggles, his eyes started watering uncontrollably. A crack ran across one of the lenses and clouded his vision. At this speed it would only be a matter of time before they shattered to smithereens.

Any second now. Any second the vapour cone was going to solidify and propel him all the way back to Canterlot. It was either that or- wait, what was going on? The cone was smoothing itself out, crackling with electricity and streaked with colours of the rainbow-

BOOM.

The sonic rainboom coincided with Soarin’s goggles finally giving way: they splintered into nothing and the elastic flew away to wherever Pinkie Pie kept her laws of physics, and he couldn’t do anything except shoot through the sky like a rocket powered bullet, screaming as he had never screamed before.

In the library, Pinkie was lifted off her haunches by the most violent tail-twitch she had ever experienced.

“Quick!” she cried. “Somepony open the door!”

Spike ran over to the library door and pulled it open, just for a blue blur to bowl him over and take in Pinkie Pie and Applejack on its route to the back wall of the library, where it smashed into the bookcase and ended up in a heap of pony and dragon.

“What in tarnation was that?” Applejack asked nervously once she was sure it was over. She picked up her hat and, with a shaking hoof, positioned it carefully atop her head.

“WHEEE that was FUN!” Pinkie shouted as she erupted from the heap of books. “Can we do that again?”

“Can we not?” asked Spike, almost falling out of the heap.

“Are you all okay?” asked Fluttershy. “That was quite a crash.”

“Yes, it most certainly was,” said Rarity, and she started placing the books back on the shelves. “One would almost think it was- Soarin’?!”

“Hi girls,” said Soarin’ weakly. He had dark imprints on his face where his goggles had pressed into his skin, and a small cut on his muzzle from out-of-control elastic.

“Hey!”

“And guy. What’s...? What’s goin’ on?”

From upstairs, there came a torrent of enraged shouting.

“No, YOU listen! If you hadn’t given me that medical stuff I wouldn’t have been able to get him better and he WOULDN’T have gotten me pregnant! No! No, get off me, Twilight! Let me GO! I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna tear his guts out and wear them as a scarf! I’m gonna tear his cutie mark off and bake his blood into cupcakes! Let me go! LET ME GO!!” This was followed by another scream of pain.

Hex appeared at the top of the stairs, saying “Whew, I need a breather.” Then he saw the new arrival.

“Soarin’!” he exclaimed. “Holy smeg, I can’t believe you made it here so quickly!”

“How’s Rainbow?” Soarin’ demanded. “I wanna see her!”

“Of-of course,” said Hex. “Come on. I think we’re getting close.”

He turned and disappeared back upstairs, and the pegasus stallion leapt to his hooves – wobbling slightly in dazed dizziness – and followed suit.

“Rainbow!” he cried when he saw her, and galloped over to where she lay, supported by Twilight.

“Soarin’!” she said joyfully. “Thank Celestia you made it!”

“Of course,” he said, taking her hoof in his, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world, I- I love you.”

Rainbow Dash smiled gratefully up at him, and locked her lips with his in a kiss which showed nothing but how deeply the two cared for one another, and when they broke apart all they did was gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes. This concentration of affection was broken when Dash once again winced in pain.

“Okay, Rainbow Dash, just relax, you’re doing fine,” said Twilight. “Just keep breathing.”

“You’re almost there,” said Hex, “now push!”

It was extremely discomforting for the four ponies and the dragon downstairs to hear their friend screaming, obviously in more pain than could ever have been imagined, and to know that there was nothing they could do about it.

“Oh my goodness,” Fluttershy said eventually, “I’m so worried!”

“Me too!” Pinkie squeaked. “Like, what if it gets stuck or something?”

“What?!” exclaimed Spike. “You mean like, stuck halfway so she’ll be a pony and a half?”

“She din’t say ‘pony and a half’,” Applejack pointed out.

“Well, you did!” said Spike. “You just did, just then!”

“Will you all please be quiet?” Rarity asked in a polite but firm voice. “All of us are frightened for Rainbow Dash. We should consider ourselves foolish if we were not. But-”

“Oh my gosh,” said Pinkie, “I think I feel a combo coming on!” Her back end shook violently as her tail twitched out of control, then her knees knocked together with alarming volume, followed by her ears flopping down over her eyes and back again. Spike took note of this and darted under a table.

“What the hay does that one mean?” he demanded.

Just then, an ear piercing wail split the tense atmosphere, and everypony turned their eyes towards the stairs.

“It’s the opposite of itchy hoof...” Pinkie said weakly.

NEXT TIME: Total Eclipse of the Heart

“Rainbow Dash was wondering if the rest of her honorary family would like to meet their newest member.”

“He’s perfect.”

“Oh my... gosh.”

“EEEEEE he’ssoadorable!”

“So... what should we call him?”

Author's Note: Eeyup, it's a boy! The next chapter will introduce the first of the Foals of Harmony-

[Hey! She said it!]

Yes, Mr Griffin, this series will be called The Foals of Harmony-

[Did you hear that? She said it again!]

...Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter - even though it may have felt a little rushed - and the next one is going to be a breather chapter; a little rest from the non-stop drama and action in this story. I'm just wondering if I could get this fic a recommendation on TV Tropes. Also, to all those reading this, do you think you could do a little advertising for me? Just mention it to a few friends, and let them know what you think of it. If you do, I will be most grateful.

Comments

[Rainy Meadows]

368412 Actually, the equine gestation period is 11 months, and since she was 4 1/2 months pregnant when Hex and Twilight disappeared... you can work it out for yourself.

Psst. New chapter!

[clap2times]

Finally got around to reading this, I've been procrastinating, in fact, I'm procrastinating right now, meant to be doing a critical review on Hitch-hikers guide. STOP REMINDING ME OF IT.

[Rainy Meadows]

423525 farm4.staticflickr.com/3234/5746300106_c72a60131f.jpg

[Morgie93]

A Barnyard reference? Wow.

[DotingGlow]

hello, I've been reading this story for the past few days and I love it. actually, so far I love everything I've read by you. I started with Rainbow's Lament. BUT ANYWAY not important. What's important is: I am a sort of amateur musician, still working on my craft, and I was wondering if you would mind me making a song based on this story, maybe primarily about Hex or Hex and twilight? I might wait until I get to One Free Stalion before I do it, but still, I was wondering if you would mind