Chapter 2
If the truth had to be told, there were quite a few ponies in Ponyville who were under the impression that Rainbow Dash was an idiot. Of those ponies, a not inconsiderable number were quite vocal about it, tossing about such terms as 'trouble-maker', 'jock' and 'insufferable winged midge that keeps breaking my windows with her stupid crashes'. Nopony ever bothered to correct their opinions. Because, sooner or later, they would find out first-hoof just how ingenious Dash could be.
For Rainbow Dash's talents were not in the areas of books, or equations, or social niceties. She excelled at what Twilight termed 'lateral thinking' and which Applejack termed 'downright rotten-sneakiness.' She could find a use for anything when setting up a prank, no matter how dubious, and had such an innate knack for predicting the behaviour of other ponies that she could quite easily set up five or six pranks to go off on one pony within twenty seconds of each other. She was surprisingly talented, and, more than once, Twilight had remarked that it was a waste that she didn't use that brain for anything more productive than dumping buckets of water on the heads of the unsuspecting townsponies. The average Ponyvillian, therefore, learned early on that it was not an uncommon thing to see Dash using things in ways delightfully unconnected with their original purpose.
So, when Applejack saw a sleeping pegasus being ferried around Sweet Apple Acres on the back of Tank the tortoise, she was not as surprised as perhaps she ought to be. Instead, she simply rolled her eyes, and, with a sharp kick, relieved the long suffering testudine of his burden.
Rainbow Dash's first sensations were pain, surprise, and the taste of mud. She'd become quite a connoisseur of mud. She could generally tell where she'd crashed just from the taste. It was a talent nopony else had, or even needed, and that made her feel pretty special.
"What'd you do that for, AJ?" she groused, although honestly it wasn't the worst awakening she could have asked for. Usually, her day began with Applejack bucking the tree she was sleeping in, which had all the associated hazards of being kicked off a tortoise but with ten feet in which to gather speed before hitting the ground.
Applejack narrowed her eyes. "Because y'all are gonna break the back o' that poor tortoise, and if Fluttershy were to see ya, ah don't think all the guards in Canterlot could save yer feathered hide."
"He's a turtle, not a tortoise," Dash replied sourly. "Besides, he's awesome. He can take the strain, and this way I get some sleep instead of having to fly everywhere."
Tank did not seem to particularly care whether he was a turtle or a tortoise, much as he didn't seem to know he was being argued over. All Tank knew was that a few almost-ripe apples had fallen on the ground, and they were...well, 'ripe for the plucking' would be an idiotic metaphor when talking about unripe apples, even for a turtle of somewhat limited brain, but something along those lines. He just thanked his lucky stars that, so far as anypony knew, turtles had no concept of petty theft.
"So, sugarcube, ya mind tellin' me why y'all took hours riding around on your turtle so you could get some sleep, instead of, say, flying here in five minutes and then napping in my trees like usual?" Applejack asked, shifting her weight slightly so the panniers didn't leave welts. Her mane, tied as usual, swung like a hypnotist's pendulum as she moved.
"Fluttershy said he's a tortoise, not a turtle. Anyways, I really wasn't in the mood to fly this morning. I didn't get any sleep. I'd probably have hit a mountain, or a tree, or Pinkie Pie. So it was either ride the turtle, or die horribly. You askin' me to die horribly, AJ?" Dash asked, eyebrows raised.
"No, but sometimes ah think it wouldn't be a problem if you spent another week in hospital coolin' yer jets," Applejack said with a shrug, dripping pure, concentrated sarcasm when she spoke. "Anywho, why didn't ya get any sleep? Ain't like you to miss an opportunity to hit the hay."
Dash thought before she answered. That, by Applejack's reckoning, was a bad sign. If Rainbow Dash actually stopped and thought, there was a chance she'd get ideas, and ideas in the hooves of a pony like Rainbow Dash could be very dangerous indeed.
"I was up reading the new Daring Do book," Dash finally admitted, a little pensively. Applejack breathed a sigh of relief. The worst that could happen after a Daring Do episode was some impromptu vine swinging practice and maybe some light theft. Insofar as there was no danger of explosion, it was by far one of the most preferable outcomes.
"Aw, shucks. Shoulda known you'd stay up all night readin' yer books. Ah prefer Apple Orchards Monthly, m'self," AJ chuckled.
"Oh, that weirdo apple magazine you keep in the outhouse? Suit yourself. I mean, they're pretty pictures, but they're just apples," Rainbow Dash said absently. Applejack narrowed her eyes once more, and decided she'd better have a word with her brother. She didn't know what her magazines were doing in the outhouse, and for what purpose, but it was either an affront to apples or an affront to literature, neither of which she intended to shoulder unless he paid for his own magazines and kept them at least 500 yards from hers at all times.
"Anyway, I was planning to read just a little bit and then finish it today after weather duty, but it was...weird. Like, weird weird. So I had to keep reading, to find out why, and then suddenly it was morning," Dash carried on, oblivious to Applejack's turmoil.
"Weird in what way, sugarcube?" AJ asked, beginning to walk. She figured she may as well listen to whatever tale Dash was telling her and get some farming done at the same time. Sure enough, the pegasus trotted along in her wake.
"Well, I dunno. It started off like, just a regular, awesome Daring Do story, and she infiltrates the great temple of Ahuitzotl, who's, like, her archnemisis, but she sealed him away in book four, so he's not there anymore, but she meets this really weird, pretty pony who says she's the priestess of the temple, and they start acting really weird around each other. Anyway, at about chapter five, Daring Do finds the treasure she was looking for, but the priestess says it's important to her, so she puts it back," Dash explained, emphasising the last words as though it was a life-shattering revelation.
"A pony that gives back stuff if her friends ask her to? Well, ain't that a mystery. Which reminds me, you done with my exercise bands yet, sugarcube?" AJ asked dryly, checking the rows of corn with a careful eye. With all the storms they'd had
recently, the poor vegetables were almost drowning in their furrows.
"Yeah, yeah. I told you last time that I'd bring them the next time I saw you. Anyway, back to important stuff. They start talking, and Daring Do finds out that the other pony is only Ahuitzotl's priestess because she was forced to be, so they end up talking about junk for an entire night, and then in chapter seven-" Dash carried on, before grinding to a halt. Chapter seven. Hoo, chapter seven.
"What happened, sugarcube?" AJ asked, smiling softly. She enjoyed this fashion of talk, truth be told. Dash could be obnoxious, but when she was passionate about something, she made it sound like the best thing in Equestria. Almost made her want to get the darn books out of the library herself.
"They...well, it's...u-um...They kiss, okay?!" the pegasus blurted out, becoming just that bit more multicoloured as a blush leapt to her cheeks.
Applejack rolled her eyes. Was that what all the ruckus was about? "Aw, sugarcube. That'd be what Twi calls a romantic subplot. Now, I ain't gonna claim to be the most knowledgeable about books- ah still maintain that a plot's what you put seeds in- but I hear they appear in most books."
"But that's it, AJ! This isn't most books! This is Daring Do, the coolest, most awesome explorer ever! If even she's not immune, what am I gonna do?" Dash whined, throwing her hooves in the air for dramatic emphasis.
Applejack lifted her hat from her eyes and fixed her friend with a very piercing 'are you serious?' kind of look, which she'd probably learned from Twilight. When you hung around with the same group of buddies a lot, you tended to 'share' expressions. The similarities between Rarity and Fluttershy's faces when scared defied all belief.
"You're not getting it, AJ. I can't stand all the kissy-kissy, roses and serenades stuff. Romance is for dweebs. But Daring Do did it, and she's awesome. What am I meant to think? You can't awesome and a dweeb. It doesn't work like that."
"Well, ah think maybe y'all might wanna revise yer position. Either Daring Do wasn't the pony y'all imagined her to be, or romance isn't all so bad as ya think. M'self, ah got no opinion on the matter. Y'all wanna talk about romance, ah suggest you go and visit Rarity," AJ sighed. "By the way...where's that tortoise of yours, anyway?"
"Turtle," Dash corrected her irritably. "But stop trying to change the subject. This is serious business, AJ!"
"Everything y'all do is serious business in some way or another," AJ deadpanned. "But I'd sure hate to be in your horseshoes if Fluttershy finds out you lost your turtle."
Rainbow Dash meditated on this, and decided it had wisdom, so much so that she didn't even bother to tell Applejack that Tank was a tortoise. If she lost Tank and Fluttershy found out, there would be crying, countrywide searches, and the distinct possibility of 'Shy cracking open that weird mind control stare she did so well. Of all possible ways to ruin your day, that was one of the very worst, second only to finding out that the Wonderbolts were in town and you didn't see them, which itself was only second to dying in a fire.
Luckily, finding Tank was not hard, since he had helpfully littered the ground around him with the half-eaten cores of fallen apples, and was in the middle of ramming the nearest tree to procure more. Applejack's expression was, perhaps, the best summation of the phrase 'not amused'.
"Ah was plannin' to gather them apples and compost them fer next year's harvest," she said pointedly.
"Oops," Dash said, as if talking to the trees rather than Applejack. The farm pony's frown deepened, and Rainbow Dash realised that she had probably chosen poorly. "W-well, I ought to get out of your hair, let you hug your apple trees or whatever weird mumbo jumbo you apple farmers do."
"Rather 'n maybe opening yer wallet and payin' fer those apples your pet stole?" AJ deadpanned.
"Not like I wouldn't, but, uh, I left my purse in my other dress. Talking of dresses, you think I should go and talk to Rarity about my Daring Do problem? I think I should. Later!" Dash babbled, before picking up Tank and making for the skies, leaving her usual rainbow coloured contrail as she went.
"Not like y'all wear dresses anyhow," AJ snarked to nopony in particular, but it was a moot point. She'd get her money back in terms of the random weather favours Dash sometimes did for her friends when she thought they weren't looking, which were common enough knowledge that Twilight had taken to predicting them, with variable success.
Still, she thought as she resumed her inspection of the orchards, she hadn't expected Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, to get that worked up over a bunch of paper and ink. Insofar as she knew, Rarity was still the town's biggest drama queen. But sometimes she thought the unicorn had some competition.
Rainbow Dash did not reach Rarity's Boutique that day, or the next day, either. Why? Because of a run-in with her oldest nemesis- windows. Ponykind had invented many things over the years, and windows were usually considered among the best of them. Elegantly simple, all you needed was a pane of glass with perhaps a hinge or two, and your home became warmer, harder for wasps to invade, and did not have an unsightly hole in the wall.
Ponykind had invented many things, but Rainbow Dash had invented speed. And she thought windows were a ridiculous idea.
She didn't really mind them, per se, at least most of the time. She tended to mind them when her cheek was crushed up against them after a crash (doubly so, since it pretty much meant that all her dental work in the last year was null and void as her teeth were nearly shaken from their sockets), but, other than that, they were like alligator: fine, until you actually had to deal with one. And the only alligator she was prepared to deal with belonged to Pinkie Pie and shared her loathing of the dentist.
When her ire was inflamed, however, she detested windows almost as badly as she detested clear glass patio doors, which were like windows but even further mired in insidiousness. The only difference was that you walked into patio doors at a speed of, say, three miles an hour. Which, whilst making you look foolish, ran a very small risk of breaking your nose. Whereas windows? Opened. Outwards. In town. At exactly the wrong place and exactly the wrong time.
“Pinkie Pie,” Dash said with strained cheerfulness, “Have I ever told you that I hate windows?”
“Oh, silly Dashie. You spent the last five minutes telling me you hate windows, and the five minutes before that saying you hated Gummy for chewing on your mane,” Pinkie Pie grinned, before depositing a bowl of vegetable soup haphazardly near the bed, and watching as the bowl rattled to a standstill.
“Why did you open your window, anyway?” Rainbow Dash asked archly.
“My pinkie sense said you'd be stopping by, so I decided to open the window for you. Turns out you were early!”
“Horse apples,” Rainbow Dash said sulkily, and made vague motions towards the soup. She couldn't move, as she had been all but mummified; Pinkie Pie was an enthusiastic first-aider. Somewhere behind her, Gummy was indeed trying to eat her mane, making perhaps the sloppiest slurping sounds ever known to pony or beast. Tank, unharmed by the crash due to his shell being considerably more durable than Rainbow Dash's face, just watched, occasionally making eyes at the soup.
The situation was not helped by the fact that, well, Pinkie's room still creeped her out. Majorly. She remembered very distinctly a conversation between a pony, a pile of rocks and a sack of flour, conducted in those very walls, and the pony had been near-insane at the time, in a heartbreaking way. Pinkie without her ridiculous curly mane and her stupid prancing hop and her crazy habit of bursting into song over the smallest little things was not Pinkie at all, in her opinion. Not, of course, that Dash had been scared to be privy to her friend's breakdown. They were only emotions, after all. Feelings didn't breath fire or smoosh you between their claws or look at you with a thousand disappointed faces when you bailed on your latest trick. Feelings were foal's play.
"Say, Dashie. How was your book?" Pinkie asked, strangely topically. What she'd been talking about five minutes before, Rainbow Dash had no idea. She tuned a great deal of Pinkie's less meaningful babble out. It was the only way to remain sane.
"Weird," she pouted, and felt her nose ache when she did. "There was kissing and junk."
Pinkie Pie said nothing. Which, her being Pinkie Pie, was the scariest thing she could have said. Instead, she began to shake. Violently. The soup sloshed down the sides of the bowl, stirred up by the vibrations. Pinkie's hooves rapped out a frenzied SOS as they jittered on the wood floor.
“Pinkie? Please tell me this is Pinkie Sense, and you haven't decided to liven up my day by having a seizure?” Rainbow Dash moaned.
Pinkie Pie opened her mouth and tried to talk, but even her tongue was shaking. She tried to nod, but it was hard to discern through the 6.9 Richter Pinkie Sense attack. After five full minutes of shaking, Pinkie finally stopped.
“A doozy?” Rainbow Dash asked, quickly going through a mental checklist of things that could be going wrong. She came up with nothing. Nothing that was her fault, anyway.
“The dooziest,” Pinkie replied cheerfully, and drank the rest of Dash's soup. “Needs more pumpkin.”
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Between the prologue and this chapter, this is off to a great start! I like all the little touches you add in that make this story unique and original. Such as Dash having the "If Daring Doo isn't immune, how will I manage?" stance after being exposed to romance, Applejacks "Are you serious stare" that talks about friends having inside tracks on certain expressions, turtles not having a concept of petty theft, and the foreshadowing with the Pinky sense doozy (to name a few).
These things all tie together to make a fun and engaging story. I'll be eagerly awaiting the next chapter!
Im am in love with this. You're a fantastic writer! Im so jelly right now!
Keep it up, i wanna see more!
Did I say Rainbow Factory? I meant
"Daring Do and the SEXY Rainbow Factory..... temple... place..."
Looking good my friend. Apparently you can write equally well for longer stories as you do with drabbles. Which is pretty impressive.
Oh boy this is gonna be one visit to Sugercube Corner Rainbow Dash isn't going to forget easily.
605738
I'm glad you've enjoyed it thus far, though. I'm finding it to be quite a fun story to write, so it'll probably not take too long for new chapters. 
Oh well. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. Thanks for your support. 
I'm still trying to figure out what a keepsie chip is. Somehow, I feel like a complete idiot for not knowing.
605606
Thanks! I didn't think it was especially unique, myself; most of the stuff you mentioned is just part of my habit of narrating sideways.
605688
You're jelly? As in, the food? You should really get that checked out. Do gelatin creatures go to the doctor's or the vets? [/idiocy] Thanks a lot. I'm glad you liked it. I'll try and keep the chapters coming.
605908
You lie, sir. I personally think that the drabbles would quite easily win in a bout of literary fisticuffs. Every time I write something long, I end up squicked out by it.
607707
That depends entirely on whether that altercation with the window gave her a massive concussion or not. On one hand, I didn't plan it to; on the other hand, it would be far funnier if it did.
At first i was like ('
'); but then when rainbow dash corrected applejack for the third time about tank being a turtle/tortoise i was like ('
');
This is awesome. I laughed at the line RD said about a seizure.
Heck, I kept laughing during the entirety.
Wait, I didn't actually comment on this? Curse my forgetful mind.
Great new chapter. I really didn't expect this fic to be so funny, but pretty much every line that came out of Applejack's mouth was comedy gold. Rainbow's completely ridiculous "inner conflict" was also highly amusing.
617532, 627963, & 631637
Glad y'all got some mileage out of it, though.
This is what always happens when I try and write long stuff. The first chapter I'm all like, 'Let's try and be serious, here. Let's tell a story," and then by chapter two I'm always like "Screw that, let's have a whole bunch of fun and put jokes everywhere, because that's what I like writing." Even in angst, I put jokes in. It's like a verbal tic.
Well now I have to wait for the next chapter in order to be happy again. I live a hard life.
"I'd probably have hit a mountain, or a tree, or Pinkie Pie. So it was either ride the turtle, or die horribly. You askin' me to die horribly, AJ?"
Sounds about right.
610734Applejack narrowed her eyes. "Because y'all are gonna break the back o' that poor tortoise, and if Fluttershy were to see ya, ah don't think all the guards in Canterlot could save yer feathered hide."
"He's a turtle, not a tortoise," Dash replied sourly. "Besides, he's awesome. He can take the strain, and this way I get some sleep instead of having to fly everywhere."
Wait ?......What????............
Upon re-reading this I found out something that needs to be corrected.
Namely: The next chapter needs more pumpkin.
I enjoyed the turtle/tortoise gag.
Ok, so I kind of love this. I really like the humour (chuckled out loud multiple times) and your descriptions of scenarios and conversations are great. I'd been meaning to read this for a while, but the lack of updates made me a bit wary of starting on something that may or may not be completed. Glad I finally made the effort, though, as it has been quite entertaining. I also really like your take on Dash's stealthy pranking mind and the Daring Do/love dilemma. Well - off to the next chapter!
Something tells me the entire story is about proving Dash wrong. ;D
I'll take a fire-breathing dragon any day - those you can figure out how to deal with, and what works on one has a chance of working on another one. ;D