Fool's Paradise

by Chapter 13

Part: 6

Author's Note:

The plot thickens.

~ Chapter: 13

Fool's Paradise
By: Rumble, Chapter: 13, Typoglyphic.

Lightning let out a yawn as her eyes slowly cracked open. The mare stretched out her hooves, only to wince as she felt a jolt of pain shoot up her back. She winced. “I gotta stop sleeping on the couch,” she muttered to herself, then rolled off the couch and onto her forehooves. Much like a cat, Lightning stretched her back, sighing in relief as she back popped like a firecracker. After the grand finally ended, Lightning trudged herself over to her fridge and opened the door.

It was empty.

“Damn it,” Lightning sighed, then shook her head.

Her empty fridge was just another reminder of her soon to be empty wallet… which then reminded her of her job... which she was going to be fired from if she was late! Like actual lightning, the mare bolted towards the door, only to then smack her head against the door once she realized what day it was.

“Wednesday,” she muttered, “I don’t work on Wednesday.”

With an annoyed sigh, the mare turned around and slumped back over to her couch. She quickly flopped onto it and begun her fruitless ritual of trying to get comfortable. Something that the old, worn out springs would not allow. She soon gave up at around the five minute mark and let out, yet another, annoyed sigh.

This was her life.

She was too broke to go out do anything fun (like drinking), her cable had been shut off months ago, and she barely had enough money to grab anything decent to eat once the hunger pains got too much to bear. All that she could do was lay on her shitty couch and be alone with her thoughts, the worse part of her predicament.

Lightning sighed, something that she now realize had become a regular thing. What that what she had been reduced to: a sighing, broke mess? It sure felt like it. Another adjective popped into her head, but she shot it down. She was too broke to be an alcoholic. That was good, right?

She give a chuckle… followed by a whimper.

Seriously? What that the only good thing she had going for her? She was so pathetic that she couldn’t even drown her sorrows in alcohol? She wanted to say, ‘no’, but it was true.

Lightning held back a sigh.

Now, she was just a broke mess.

---

Several hours went by like a blur to the opal mare. She had tried to get some sleep to pass the time, but that hadn’t lead anywhere. Eventually, her stomach had started to growl, and she tried to ignore it. But after the tenth or so growl, she decided to listen to her body.

Lightning, once again, rolled from the couch, repeating her back-cracking routine. It wasn’t comfortable, but it had to be done.

“Okay, now, time to find some bits,” Lightning muttered, then began to search around the room with her muzzle to the floor. She ignored the smell.

Her search had eventually fruited four bits, with one more under the fridge if she could reach it. With her hoof being too big, Lightning decided to use her wing to try and grab the annoying piece of currency. She cringes at all the dust and crap that gets into her feathers, but it was worth it to grab that final—

“Gotcha!”

The opal mare pulls her wing out from underneath the fridge, smiling as the dusty, but still usable, but in her grasp. She cocks her head as she notices a crumpled piece of paper also caught in her feathers. She wiggles it out with a hoof and uncrumpled it, curiosity getting the better of her.

Her eyes narrow.

Lightning read through the note a few more times, the scowl remaining on her face. She wanted to crumple it up again and light it on fire, but part of her held back. For some reason she could not understand, she actually considered it. If memory served her correctly, the show would be starting in a few hours.

“Well, I guess it’s better than sitting here and doing nothing,” she muttered. “With luck, they’ll have free food.”

---

Lightning made her way down Main Street Filly. The road was packed, ponies of all shapes, sizes, races and ages trotting forward like a title wave of flesh. If there was any constant in the stream of bodies, it was that almost every single pony there had some sort of wonderbolt memorabilia on their person. From hats to shirt, sky blue and victory gold shone proudly.

Having gotten rid of all of her memorabilia after she was… well, after getting rid of anything that had even reminded her of the flying team, she was one of the few that trotted barren. Not like she would have worn anything anyway, she reminded herself. This was just a time-killer and possible free food.

The mare eventually made her way down the street and up to the actual stadium itself. Several lines that lead into the stadium proper and Lightning promptly slipped into one of the shorter one’s. It was slow moving, and she desperately tried to unwrinkle the note on the nearby wall while she waited. At this point, the mare was beginning to fear that her little note wouldn’t work, guessing that the attendant would just laugh at her and throw her out. A real possibility, given her luck.

Several more, painstaking minutes later, Lightning stood nervously in front of an elderly ticket mare. The mare looked over the note a few times, then passed it back to the pegasus.

“Please step out of line, miss,” the ticket mare said, pointing her hoof away from the coliseum. “I’d rather not make this a big deal.”

Lightning went to open her mouth, but a stern look from the attendant made the words die in her throat. She slowly slunk out of the line, then, when she was out of sight of the attendant, she stomped out of the stadium practically seething. It had been a lie, a trick, just to make her look like an idiot! Why had she thought that her former Wingpony would actually go through with something like that? Part of her wondered if Rainbow had stolen anything when she had walked her home that night, then remembered that she didn’t have anything to steal… and that Rainbow was probably rich since she was a Wonderbolt, now.

She made her way down the now empty street, grumbling to herself.

She made her way down the now empty street, grumbling to herself. She wasn’t working, and she didn’t have any money. That narrowed her selection of pass-times down to… zero, really. She had to admit that as petty and annoying as Dash’s little joke had been, at least she’d made it halfway through the day now without thinking about all of her other problems. Like food. And booze. And… it had been a few weeks since she’d checked in with her landlord, so it was probably safe to add ‘paying rent’ to the list. She gritted her teeth and took off from the sidewalk to cross a busy street. If she were a lightning wrangler, she’d be able to afford all of those things. Two out of three, at least. She touched down on the far side of the street and kept trotting in the vague direction of her house.

Sometimes it still baffled her how the Academy could keep on haunting her like this. How many other ponies had their whole lives trashed because of one slip up? She rolled her eyes, and something in the sky caught her attention.

A rainbow. She stopped walking. It hadn’t rained in days. As she watched, a flash of colour streaked across the sky before swerving around a high-rise and disappearing into the urban forest. She felt an urge to follow the rainbow contrail—an urge she squashed immediately. The last thing she wanted was to have another pathetic conversation with her. Besides, Dash was just flying to the stadium, where Lightning apparently wouldn’t be permitted. She grunted and kept walking, trying to think of something to do for the rest of the day. She could… read, maybe? Who was she kidding, she didn’t own any books, and she’d rather die than be seen in a library.

A flash of light filled the corner of her eye. She ignored it. Another flash on the other side. Keep walking.

She finally looked up when she heard screaming and shouting above her. A group of pegasi were hovering in place, and a rainbow contrail hovered between them. Several pegasi were clutching limbs or heads. What was Dash doing? Had one joke not been enough? She snorted. Was Dash stalking her? That was just typical. She started to turn her head back to the pavement when she saw a blue blur zigzag around a cluster of buildings, drop toward the earth and then shoot almost straight up. Was she insane? Doing manoeuvres like that in downtown airspace was a good way to get grounded. Maybe even arrested, considering the speed she was flying.

She bit her lip. She really didn’t want to do this. She took to the air with a sigh and flapped hard toward the end of the rainbow. It wasn’t hard for her to find the mare again, as she literally had an outline of her movements. She saw her former rainbow companion floating in the middle of an air traffic jam, yelling at some random pegasus.

“Get out of sky, you idiot!” one yelled to the sky-blue mare.

“Hey, you don’t own the sky,” Rainbow shot back, then turned her head to face another of her unwanted critics. Minturn, her and Lightning’s eyes met. Rainbow muttered something under her breath, softer than Lightning could hear, then turned and bolted in the opposite direction.

Cursing under her breath, Lightning bolted after the mare. She was able to keep pace for the mare as they weaved in between buildings, but she was soon to feel it’s toll on her for her lack of practice. She needed to catch Dash, fast.

A few more hairpin turns, and near misses, later, the chase finally came to a halt. Rainbow had accidently ran into a walled off alley, leaving her pinned. She promptly turned to fly back the way she came, but was unable too as an opal blur suddenly slammed into her side. She soon fell to the ground, her and the blur rolling to a stop, the blur ending up pinning her down.

Lightning let out a loud wheeze, her chest throbbing as she tried to get the oxygen she desperately needed back into her lungs. “Dash!” she gasped out, followed by a short coughing fit. “Stop, you idiot!”

Rainbow looked up at her capture, then squirmed and tried to worm her way out of her grasp.

Lightning would have none of that. She shifted her weight onto the mare’s hooves. “Will you stop squirming, you blue moron!”

This, somehow, caught Dash’s attention. She stopped squirming, looking up at Lightning.

“Good. Now, what the heck are you doing flying around like a bat out of tartarus? You could have hurt somepony!”

“I fly when I need to think, okay?” Rainbow replied. “And I had a lot on my mind, so it required a lot of flying.”

Lightning rolled her eyes, then removed herself from Rainbow. “You are an idiot, you know that? Weren’t you going to, I don’t know, fly at the freakin’ performance.” She blinked, then tilted her head. “Actually, why aren’t you there?”

Rainbow rose to her hooves and brushed herself off. “I, uh…” The mare bit her lip, rubbing the back of her neck with a hoof. “I was, kinda… suspended?”

Lightning snickered. “Oh?”

“Y-yeah…”

Silence.

“You lied to me.”

Rainbow lifted her head, meeting Lightning’s pissed expression.

“Huh?” she asks in confusion.

The opal mare rolled her eyes, then motioned to the ally around her. “Do you notice where I am not right now?”

“Not right…” Rainbow’s eyes went wide and she cringed. “Oh...”

“Yeah, ‘oh’ is right.” Lightning sighed. “I can’t believe you’d really sink that low. Honestly, what do you have to gain? My life is shit already. And the one time I think something is going my way, it turns out to be just an old idiot reminding me how pathetic I really am.”

“I…” Rainbow sank down, her features deflating. “That’s not what happened, Lightning. I was serious in the letter, but… I kinda got suspended and couldn’t follow through.”

“I really want to punch you, right now.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Rainbow shook her head. “But, I’m telling the truth, I promise! If the whole thing was a trick, then why would I still be lying? You already fell for it, apparently.”

Lightning opened her mouth, but closed it soon after. That did make sense, she realized. “Even if that is true,” she adds, “I’m still pissed at you… and more than a little confused.” She cocked her head. “What the heck did you do to get suspended and drove you to practically suicidally fly into oncoming traffic. I mean, aren’t I the one with nothing left to live for?”

Rainbow cringed at that last remark. She fell to her flank and avoiding Lightning’s gaze. “I… I may have gotten suspended for…” She took a deep breath. “I told Spitfire off for what she did to you, and she suspended me for it.”

“Heh?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how I can be any clearer that that, Lightning.”

“No, I got what you said, just… why?”

Rainbow looked up from the ground to see Lightning staring down at her, an unreadable expression on her face. “It was the right thing to do, once I figured everything out. I… I’m half the reason why it happened to you. I didn’t stick by your side, and you payed for it.” Her body sagged.

A loud crack rang out as Lightning’s hoof made contact with Rainbow’s face. The assaulted mare toppled to the side with the force of the impact, momentarily stunned.

“No!” Lightning screamed, standing over Rainbow. Tears stung her eyes. “You can’t do all that to me and just flip flop around! You don’t get to do that! You can’t do that!”

Rainbow was quick to recover, self preservation kicking in as she shot up from the ground and tacked her aggressor. Lightning countered the mare’s advance, the two grappling in the middle of the abandoned ally.

“You ruined my life, you heartless bitch!” Lightning screamed, tears now free falling down her cheeks like twin rivers. Her assault began to wain; her blurred vision messing with her accuracy, her faltering resolve weakening her to half hearted slaps. “I hate you! I hate you!”

Rainbow had no trouble holding off the frantic mare, pushing her back as her anger, sadness, and sorrow lashed out in a blaze of tears. A sad frown remained on her face. Guilt weighed heavily on her mind.

Several minutes later, Lightning fell to her haunches and curled up into a tight ball, hugging her hooves tightly into chest. Tears continued to fall as she let out choked sobs. All of her anger had been released, leaving only sadness in it’s place. The mare soon felt something soft and warm press into her side, followed by the soft coo of hushed whispers in her ears.

“I hate you… I hate you,” Lightning muttered. Though the words came from her mouth, they held none of the emotion, no force. They were hollow.

Rainbow ignored them. She ran her hoof gently through the Lightning’s mane and held her close. She was going to be there for her, this time. She would not fail her friend.

Not again.

Comments

[tuntematon]

Good for Rainbow for sticking with her friend.

[Fire Seeker12]

I like where this going.

[MorgothII]

Man this is very good please don't stop!

[Chapter 13]

7715407 Just slow because of school -- plan to have more soon.

~ Chapter: 13

[MorgothII]

7717631 Ag, I feel you, so happy to be a senior this year Looking forward to more