Excess

by Twinkletail

Fealty

Rainbow Dash stared, unbelieving, at the blood on her hoof. She took a deep breath, momentarily wondering exactly where everything had gone wrong.

Things had been just fine before and during the picnic yesterday. Everypony had a great time, the food and company were the best she could ask for, Pinkie was being her usual adorable self. It was all awesome, and awesome is what Rainbow Dash strived for, in herself and in everything she did.

Heck, even the time immediately after the picnic's culmination was pretty decent. Sure, she hadn't exactly planned on going pranking with Pinkie all afternoon. The next Wonderbolt audition was a scant couple of weeks away, and she'd had every intent of spending the afternoon practicing. As perfect as her executions were, they could always stand to be...perfecter?

For some reason, though, she had found herself utterly unable to turn down Pinkie's request. Granted, when Pinkie Pie wanted her to do something, she'd more often than not end up doing just that. When it came to something really important like training for a Wonderbolt audition, though, responsibilities came first, and Pinkie was usually understanding enough to let it be. Pinkie knew when no meant no, and in a situation like that, no certainly meant no.

Of course, if no no was given, then there was no no to mean no, and just like no meant no, no no meant no no. And thus, Rainbow found herself going pranking with Pinkie for a good few hours. They had a fine time for the most part, but a little piece of Rainbow's brain kept reminding her to tell Pinkie that the prank they'd just finished was their last. Each time Pinkie asked her to pull another, though, she couldn't help but go along with it. She'd tried to convince herself that it was just because she couldn't resist Pinkie's happy smile and infectious, albeit oddly persistent, laughter. The more she acquiesced, though, the more she started to believe that something might have been up.

Thankfully, the pranking did eventually end, but even that was a problem. Pinkie had come up with a master plan to paint a door on the side of the wall and try to get ponies to try to enter it with the promise of free churros. In all honesty, it was a pretty good prank in theory. Rainbow was looking forward to watching ponies try to turn the doorknob and realize their error. Everything went wrong, however, when an over-eager Bon-Bon barreled straight into the wall instead of attempting to open the "door" like a normal pony. Rainbow had been having fun, but the fun quickly ended as she ran over to see if Bon-Bon was okay.

As Rainbow helped Bon-Bon up, she heard a sound that she couldn't believe. Pinkie Pie had followed her over and was actually laughing at the poor mare. It was totally unlike her, and Rainbow was about to say something about it when Bon-Bon did instead.

Rainbow had initially agreed with Bon-Bon; laughing at her pain was wrong, there was no doubt about it. But when the candy shop owner's words began to adopt a bit of a sting, Rainbow felt a rage burning in her heart. This was Pinkie Pie Bon-Bon was insulting, and she would not stand for it no matter what Pinkie had done wrong. Before she knew what was going on, Rainbow found herself shouting at the poor, startled, injured pony. It only took a few loud words for Bon-Bon to quiet down, apologize, and remove herself from the situation. Rainbow couldn't believe what she'd done; Bon-Bon was the one wronged here, and she had just scared her off to defend her marefriend, who was laughing at her pain. The two ponies looked at each other for a moment, before deciding that perhaps that was enough pranking for the day.

Rainbow sighed as she headed home to eat. Not only was her mind heavy with the incident from before, but her entire afternoon had been spent. She still needed to have dinner, and by the time she finished with that, it would be a bit dark to practice her tricks safely. With an utter lack of anything interesting to do, Rainbow decided to finally get to cleaning her room. It had gotten rather messy recently, and now seemed like as good a time as any to take care of it. Bit by bit, she sorted through the things in her room, trying to figure out what could be thrown away.

As it would turn out, the majority of the items strewn about Rainbow's room were silly little gifts that Pinkie had given her. Some of them had legitimate sentimental value, but the vast majority were pointless things, like a newspaper clipping with the word "rainbow" highlighted or a balloon whose shade of green happened to exactly match that of her mane. Rainbow had thrown away plenty of things like that in the past (though she didn't dare tell Pinkie), but as she looked at each one today, she couldn't bear to discard them. Pinkie would be sad if she found out that her Dashie had thrown away a gift from her, and Rainbow just couldn't bring herself to think of hurting Pinkie's feelings. By the time her room tidying had finished, the garbage bag she'd brought in barely had a thing in it. Frustrated with yet another bizarre occurrence that resulted in a complete lack of progress, Rainbow decided to go to sleep.

After breakfast the next morning, Rainbow decided to go for a stroll to clear her head. Yesterday's oddities were still very fresh in her mind, and she had come to the conclusion that something was wrong. Making Pinkie happy shouldn't have made her feel wrong in any way, but the strong nagging feeling that something just wasn't right just wouldn't go away.

Rainbow's thought patterns were suddenly interrupted by a giggling pink streak. She watched, dumbfounded, as Pinkie bolted in the opposite direction, looking worried while laughing all the while. The other townsponies watched as well, all a befuddled audience to this oddity. Rainbow was about to follow after her when a pony's voice made her stop.

"There is something wrong with that pony," a light brown stallion, who Rainbow recognized as Caramel, said.

Rainbow felt a sudden rush of anger. Sure, Pinkie was a little...unique...but Caramel had no business saying that about her. She turned and stepped right up to him, sneering.

"Don't you dare say that about Pinkie Pie," Rainbow growled. Caramel raised a brow in response, then rolled his eyes.

"I'm just telling the truth!" he responded. "Running through town laughing like a madmare? That's looney-bin behavior."

Rainbow's hoof swung out before she could even think about what she was doing. A collective gasp from the other townsfolk cut through the anger in her head, and she looked down at her hoof, noticing the blood on it. It took a few moments of disbelief before she looked to Caramel. The stunned stallion stared at her, blood dripping from his nose, almost as startled as she was.

"I...I'm so sorry..." Rainbow stammered out, gaze darting back and forth between Caramel and her hoof. Caramel looked at Rainbow in fear, a scared stare that burned itself into Rainbow's memory, before taking off.

"I'M SORRY!" Rainbow shouted desperately after the fleeing pony. She then looked around at the other ponies around her. Their faces showed a healthy mix of shock and disdain.

"...I'm sorry..." the confused Rainbow whimpered. Then she took off, quick as a flash, towards the library.

Comments

[Cold Spike]

Well, there's the dark tag...

[Starlight Shadow]

And here's where the Dark tag happens.

[Lars]

Frankly, we all knew this was coming sooner or later.
Doesn't mean it didn't shock the hell out of us.

[Themaskedferret]

Yikes....This just keeps getting more and more gripping.

[Personifire]

Is that really dark tag worthy? Punching someone in the face and getting a bit of blood?

I'm still waiting for the dark tag.

Oh, and perhaps it isn't all going to go down in the library. Darn.