Rainbow Dash
Like all transit hubs, the Canterlot Exchange is cursed by waiting rooms; however, not all waiting rooms are created equal. Rainbow Dash sits in the diplomatic annex of the terminal, which has hosted notables from presidents to premieres to princesses, and it is as richly appointed as one might expect. The style is Canterlot minimalist: white stone, clean edges and sparse furniture. But, despite the lack of ornamentation, the seats are sinfully comfortable and the room has all the Earth luxuries, including a huge TV playing CNN on a five minute delay.
Rainbow Dash and I are the only ponies present besides the barmare.
“So, what is it you wanted to talk about again?” Rainbow says, setting down her drink. The alicorn is sprawled across a sofa, her back legs stretched out and her wings half extended. It is hardly a dignified position, but she seems not to care.
“Well, I’m collecting stories. I’m writing book.”
Rainbow’s head shoots up. “About me?” she asked, with foalish enthusiasm.
“Ah... Not specifically you.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s cool as well.” She picks up a can of soft-drink from a nearby table, it is emblazoned with her own face. “Well, I got tons of stories. Want to hear about the time I went hoof to claw with a dragon?”
“I heard you lost,” I point out.
She shrugs. “Eh, I gave as good as I got. How about the first time I did a Sonic Rainboom?”
“I’m afraid I saw that one myself. Though you didn’t have the horn then, if I recall correctly.”
“What, this thing?” She gives her horn a solid knock for emphasis. “Well, you know Twilight. Any other pony would take ascending to be a princess as a once in a lifetime event, but she just looks at it and says ‘I wonder if anypony else could do that’. Turns out the answer is yes, by the way. If, you know, they’re as awesome as I am.”
“And have access to incredibly powerful magical artifacts,” I add, struggling not to roll my eyes.
“Well, that too. I guess you don’t want to hear that story either.” Rainbow sighs, pulling herself into a sitting position. She is no taller than as a pegasus, but then she is very young for an alicorn. “So what do you want to hear?”
“Why don’t you tell me about Earth?” I suggest.
“Heh, Earth? Great place. That’s what all my press ponies would say.” She glances around the empty room. “Wherever they’ve got to. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two worlds for fifteen years or so now. In fact, I was one of the first ponies in living memory to travel there and whoa, let me tell you, it was freaking weird. Ignoring the whole nearly identical clones thing, which Twilight still gets all twitchy eared about when you ask her to explain it, Earth's a very strange place.”
“Oh, how so?”
“I didn’t have these babies,” she says, flexing her wings. The simple act stirs the air across the whole room and I have to grab onto my notepad to stop it flying away in the sudden breeze. “Whoops, sorry about that, don’t know my own strength sometimes. Anyway, going wingless was bad enough, you’re a pegasus, you know how weird it can be to suddenly have the sky taken away from you?”
I nod.
“Right, and then that’s made instantly worse because humans just don’t follow the rules. They still fly, just there’s no natural way for them to do it. They jump through all these technological hoops to get themselves into the sky and there’s no magic to it.” She shrugs shaking her head. “Not that humans are big on magic. I mean, I still think of myself as a pegasus first, but there’s just this void on Earth where that spark of wonder is. Look at this place.” She gestures around the empty waiting room. “Just look. There’s nothing here. It's the least freaking interesting place I’ve ever been, worse even than Applejack’s conference on growing trees, and this is still better than most human airports.”
She leaps into the air, hovering with broad, lazy flaps of her wings that stirs up enough wind I almost lose my notebook again. “See, that’s why it’s weird. Humans made flying boring. You get in a big metal tube with a bunch of other humans, sit there for a few hours and then it's done. There’s nothing exciting about it. There’s no wonder or excitement.”
“Eh, I guess I’m not being very diplomatic,” she continues, sinking down into a different chair. Once again, she glances around the empty room, furrowing her brow as if trying to remember some important fact. “I like people. Heck, humanity as a whole is awesome. With just fingers and toes they’ve managed to get to their moon and back. I just wish they weren’t so obsessed with making everything boring. It’s why Spitfire and I were so keen to do this show. Give the humans a taste of what a real flyer can do.” Her frown deepens. “Where has that girl got to, anyway?”
I clear my throat in an attempt to keep Rainbow Dash on topic. “I think there’s a lot of people who’d argue strongly that Earth isn’t boring.”
“Psh, yeah, I’d probably get yelled at by my PR ponies at the very least.” She gives a flippant wave. “And to be fair, there’s been, what, three humans that I actively disliked. It’s just altogether, I find them weird. It’s like... Cloudsdale looks nothing like Manehatten and nopony cares. Yet, everyhuman seems to want cities to look like New York.” Rainbow Dash lets out a deep sigh. “Maybe it's just the fact that there’s only one type of human, no matter what they say about skin colour. Equestria has pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies, donkeys, buffalo, gryphons and dragons all living side by side, but Earth has people and nothing else. As I said, it’s weird. Probably not something I should be saying to the press but, hey, you seem–” she pauses suddenly, frowning at me.
“Hey...” Her eyes glaze over for just a moment, but then snap back to me. “How did you get in here, Sandy?” she asks with sudden intensity.
“What?”
“There’s, like, a dozen guards specifically there to stop anypony just wandering in on me,” she continues, standing and fanning her wings. “But you just sat down and started talking, how–”
The door opens with a bang.
“Rainbow Dash, there you are!” Spitfire exclaims. A half dozen ponies in Wonderbolt blue bustle into the room, along with innumerable other support-ponies, diplomats and Exchange staff. Within moments Rainbow is caught in the centre of a herd of happy ponies. “We’ve been looking all over for you, how have you been?”
I slip out of the room, unseen.
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Our interviewer is like a D20 rogue. High levels in both social and stealth skills. Getting into all the places she shouldn't be able to get into. And getting out of them with just as much ease.
Rainbow's not wrong though. As humans, we have a remarkable tendency to take extraordinary things and make them decidedly mundane. I suppose that's why we advance so much, on the other hand. When the wonder becomes the norm, you strive to find something else to replace it.
Edit:
Whether it's her own brand or a line with the faces of all the bearers, it's hilarious. 'Harmony Pop! Now available in Blueberry Dash'
Also, The soda
I wanna hear that story. I really wanna hear that story.
Alicorn Rainbow Dash is best Rainbow Dash
pre08.deviantart.net/e5e5/th/pre/i/2015/106/f/a/alicorn_rainbow_dash_by_haloheros-d7nwtmj.png
6827213 It's all in the psychology.
WHAT.
"Alicornhood. See if you can ascend today!"
I'll just leave this here:
I find this to be incredibly profound.
6827213 Our un-ending thirst for knowledge and the unknown/unreachable. It was kinda what makes humanity so scary, if nothing kills us off. We will spend all eternity searching and tinkering with anything in our grasp to understand it to the point of trying to achieve god hood.
6827213
The funny thing is how much this also applies to the ponies. They move celestial bodies, control the weather, and Rainbow can casually break the laws of physics. Rainbow doesn't think of those as extraordinary though, so doesn't include them on her 'things made boring by society' list. I love writing Rainbow because of this kind of thing, her biases say so much about herself and her culture.
6827238 It's on my list.
6827398
6827959
This is a really damn good fic so far.
6827213
We're able to take something extraordinary like flight and make it boring in a mere 113 years or however long it's been since kitty hawk
in that time we've gone from paper and wood contraptions that can barely stay aloft to supersonic fighter jets that can go Mach 4 
Yeah, I could see that happening.
I'm finding this fic utterly fascinating, and if it weren't updating so frequently, I'd be a twitchy mess.
6827213
As Terry Pratchett said the ability to make the awesome mundane is a human survival trait. Without that we'll never get anything done but pass all the time gaping in wonder and awe to , well, everything.
I mean, just look at me, Im sitting in front of a "magic" box that let me to comunicate with people all around the planet and allow me to acces to virtually all human knowledge at the click of a mouse, and more. To someone living not even a century ago just the concept would be mind blowing, to me is just something to waste time on reading fanfiction about little ponies.
6827213
When any given technology gets boring is when it becomes important! One computer, airplane, or even atomic bomb doesn't change history (short of sending it back in time, I suppose); it's just a novelty. Aluminum was a cool shiny thing with little practical use until electric refining made large amounts of it in big boring factories -- and then suddenly it was available to make airplane engines. If Dash thought more about the subject she'd compare technology to mastering the basics of flight; she learned some techniques so she could move on and do more impressive ones.
Flying in an airborne cattle car? Yeah that can be kinda boring. If you want to really have a fun time you have to work on getting a pilots license and then get into the home building scene and build your own bush plane.
6827213
My interpretation was that Rainbow absent-mindedly wandered off away from her staff, and our protagonists simply found her before they did.
ME WRITE BOOK. BOOK GOOD. ME GOOD BOOK WRITER.
Discord, why are you writing a book?
6850485
And im holding a object of incredible computing power that was once used just to talk to others far away!