Cascade! Clouds Above, Obfuscate!

by WritingSpirit

Day I

"Uh... hey, so..."

"Yep?"

"Did I ever tell you how much I hated jungles?"

"Ngh-hahahaha!! Heh. Whew! O-Okay, okay, wait wait wait, this is good, this is good... So! You spent a couple of days at my place to prepare for our trip. After that, there was that five hours of nothing on that train to get to Vanhoover. Then we spent one day — yesterday — just walking around town and eating at all the pie stalls in sight. Finally, we woke up this morning, got ourselves ready for our expedition and we're about half an hour in, and now you're telling me that you hate jungles?"

"With a passion."

"You know what, it's not that big of a deal! Really, no biggie at all! Except for that teeny tiny fact that I mentioned back home that we were gonna, oh, I don't know, spend days travelling across a jungle?"

"Hey, relax, I just said I hated jungles, not your little expedition. Yeah, I mean, sure, spending days in a jungle is kind of a bummer and all. You look around, it's just green and green and goopy green, like egggh. But you said it was important, didn't you? One of those awesome adventures where you and the girls just save the day, right?"

"Yeah, I did."

"So I thought hey, maybe, just maybe, I get to see the Element of Loyalty in action!"

"Look, first off, that's not how the Elements work. Second, as you can clearly see, my friends are not with me, so there's not a chance you could see how awesome we were anyway. Last but not least, I said you didn't have to follow me, alright? I could've handled this by myself."

"Really now? Is it me or was that your bravado doing the talking?"

"For the record, I went on a couple of adventures with the great Daring Do herself, and they all took place in jungles like this one. Anyways, like I said, you could've stayed behind, even back at Vanhoover if you wanted to. I'll just be away for several days anyway."

"And leave me alone to scour every pie joint on this side of Equestria? No way, Jose."

"Well, you don't have to do exactly that. There's probably a lot of other things you could do in Vanhoover too, you know."

"Like?"

"Like uh... uh... I don't know? I mean, there's that big park that they have. You can walk around it. Or fly around it. Last I checked, the ponies here aren't that fussy about stuff like that. Remember when you tried doing that in the Canterlot Royal Gardens? You somehow managed to rile up half of those snobs! Ha! That's probably setting a record somewhere!"

"Yeah, I don't think my heart can take being mobbed by everyone all by myself."

"But you're a Wonderbolt—"

"Retiring Wonderbolt."

"R-Right... retiring... still, you can handle all that jazz, right? I mean, being a Wonderbolt does kinda mean you're gonna have a mob or two around the corner somewhere."

"I wouldn't mind if you're there with me."

"You know I can't be there."

"Right. Yeah. Of course."

"I'm here for a job, after all. I didn't wanna drag you along for this, you know that. I mean, it's better for you if you found something else to past the time. You know, maybe doing something productive?"

"Which is why I'm not gonna spend my third date with you cooped up in our hotel room away from the fans, all alone with boring baking shows to watch on TV while you go do whatever jungle business that you have to do out here."








"You're angry."

"No. No, I'm not."

"Look, I know... I know it's supposed to be our third date, I know you've made plans and... Celestia, how does everyone else do this..."

"Listen, Rainbow, just... let's just keep moving..."

"... y-yeah... okay... sure, sure, but I mean—"

"Just... lead the way, Dash."

"Right, I... right..."