Goals to Strive For

by DigitalPhoenix

Memories

Fluttershy found herself within the empty corridors of Canterlot High, the soft lights flickering in time with her quiet footsteps. The halls were otherwise empty, several of the lockers void of any supplies or personalization.

"Hello?" Fluttershy watched as her solitary sound rang out further and further down the corridor, the scenery changing as her cry passed. The walls lost most of their color, draining to a soft gray. The floor shined a periwinkle blue, and the smaller lockers were coated a metallic onyx.

This is Cloudsdale Elementary, she thought to herself as she looked around, the setting all too familiar as she recognized the very hallway she stood in. But why am I...

Her thought was interrupted as her eyes were drawn to one of the lockers. It was the only one with any sort of decoration on it, stickers of butterflies, ladybugs and bunnies adorning its front. As she slowly went up to the locker, she found it also had a few paint marks on its surface, little remnants of her attempts to paint it a different color. Gray was always too... bleak for me. She opened the locker to find all her books inside, as well as various photos decorating the inside of the door. Most were of her in the woods behind her home, taking care of its various inhabitants, but it was the centerpiece that she truly treasured; a photo of herself and a young Rainbow Dash, standing outside this very locker about a week after they had first met here. Rainbow looked so excited in the photo, holding Fluttershy right next to her. It made the young girl blush. but she also remembered doing her best to keep herself visible in the photo, something she was never keen on doing, just so the photograph was worthwhile to her friend.

She closed the locker, the sound of it locking into place coinciding with the loud creak of the front door of the school opening. Turning her attention to the source of the sound, she saw a younger version of herself wandering down the hallway. Several faceless young bodies would appear and disappear, but by and large young Fluttershy was left alone, until three more individuals entered the scene.

"Well, look what we've got here. You must be the new student everybody's been talking about," Hoops began as he and his two cohorts surrounded the young Fluttershy. Fluttershy couldn't eve understand how her younger self responded, her voice just barely audible even in dead silence. Never realized I was that shy...

"I don't think she likes to talk too much," Score said in a leering tone.

"Don't worry, I'm sure we could get something out of her." Hoops trapped her against the lockers and extended his hand out. "Like some lunch money?"

"Oh... I... I-I d-don't have l-lunch m-money..." the young girl produced a bag from her backpack. "I bring my own- EEP!" she squealed as the bag was snatched right from her hands.

"Let's see what kind of goodies we have." Hoops began rummaging through the bag, only to find a small container with several vegetables inside. "What is this??"

"Um, that's called a salad." the young Fluttershy responded, the viewing party vaguely recalling how she wondered just how stupid these guys were at the ridiculous question.

"What are ya, one of them weird vegans?" Dumb-bell interjected, once again only earning a mumble from their victim.

"Let's see what else she's got in that bag." Hoops reached for Fluttershy's backpack, only for a blue hand to interrupt him.

"Leave her alone!" Rainbow shouted at the three. "I know you three are jerks, but can't you see you're scaring the poor girl half to death??"

"Aw, come on, Rainbow, we're just putting the new girl through some initiation." Hoops backed off one step as he and the others attempted to feign innocence.

"I think you've done enough already. Now go."

"And what are you going to do about it, huh Rainbow Crash?" Hoops continued to instigate, though it was at this point his two friends decided to pull him away before he took a step too far. It was well known throughout the school at that point that Rainbow did not take half-measures when it came to defending anyone from the three, and Hoops had received more than a few beatings whenever he couldn't keep his big mouth shut. The inevitable punishment Rainbow always faced, was well worth it in the end, and she always seemed glad to put the jerk back in his place.

Rainbow turned to the young girl she had successfully defended. "Are you okay?"

She found the girl curled up behind her, softly sobbing into her sleeves. Something about this girl tugged at Rainbow's heart; this wasn't just some other victim of Hoops' harassment who was quietly seething on the inside; this girl seemed legitimately broken from the encounter. So Rainbow did the best thing she could think of, sitting next to the girl and pulling her into an embrace. "Don't worry, they're gone now."

The young Fluttershy looked up at the girl suddenly cradling her in her arms, uttering a soft "thank you" before placing her head back down. Fluttershy herself watched the scene play out in front of her, recalling just how gentle Rainbow had been with her, showing a side of herself she admitted to never letting anyone else see. Usually it was a quick pick-me-up from the confident Rainbow, assuring the victim that she would always look out for them, a promise she always kept. Yet she took a different approach to Fluttershy, most likely because of how frail she seemed to be. She would later inform Rainbow that this wasn't because of her natural personality, but because she had transferred here in an attempt to get away from the bullies who plagued her old school. For things to go right back to square one in ten seconds flat was too much for her younger self to bear.

It was different this time. She had Rainbow with her ever since that day, and the two became inseparable. Her old school didn't have someone like Rainbow, and the bullies their pretty much ran around unchecked. Fluttershy shuddered at the thought of where those jerks were now, and how many innocent souls they had tormented along the way.

Her attention was drawn back to the scene in front of her as her younger counterpart managed to speak through her tears.

"What's your name?"

It was hard for Rainbow to place, but this girl's demeanor seemed to shut down the brash, confident side of herself, as she couldn't bring herself to put on the usual show of confidence she usually introduced herself with.

"Rainbow Dash."

"Wow, that's a cool name," the young Fluttershy marveled, finding herself more comfortable in the presence of this stranger than she had ever been in public otherwise.

"What about you?"

"Oh, u-uh, my n-name's... Fluttershy..." she mumbled in response.

"Fluttershy, huh?" Rainbow adjusted herself next to her. "Just stick with me, Fluttershy, I'll make sure those kids don't bother you again."

The young Fluttershy gave out a small sigh of relief. "Thank you, Dashie."

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "Dashie?"

"Oh, I-I-I h-hope you d-don't mind m-me calling you t-that..." the young girl slowly shrinking in upon herself.

Rainbow gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Just not in public, ok? I do have a reputation around here." She picked up Fluttershy's lunch bag and went to put it back into her backpack.

"Oh, no, wait!"

Upon pulling her hand back out, she found it covered by something white and fluffy.

"... you brought a bunny to school?" Rainbow eyed the animal curiously, noting that it seemed to be just as frightened as its caretaker.

"Oh please, oh PLEASE don't tell anyone!. This poor bunny is too young for me to leave at home by himself, and my family doesn't know anything about caring for animals!"

Fluttershy looked on with amusement. It was strange, seeing how she used to behave from a third person viewpoint. Looking back, she realized just how unstable she really was, flitting about between extremely shy, exasperated or paranoid, and the occasional bit of blind rage. It made her very proud of her calm demeanor nowadays, though she was still prone to her outbursts every now and again.

Speaking of which... "Woah, woah, relax, I'm not gonna tell anybody." Rainbow started to pet the little bunny on her hand, a gesture which the little critter seemed to appreciate. "What's his name?"

"Oh, I actually haven't named him yet." Fluttershy started absentmindedly twirling her hair. "I haven't thought of anything good for him."

"Oh, alright, well, we should probably get to class. Is he gonna be alright staying in your backpack?"

"He's got some lettuce to chew on in there, he'll be fine."

"Ok, well, see ya around, Flutters!" Rainbow took off towards her own locker, Fluttershy just watching her as she left. She hugged, her backpack to her chest, taking comfort in knowing she had her very own guardian angel.

"Angel..."

---

As Fluttershy continued through the corridors, she heard Hoops' voice once again shouting around the corner, although this time, it wasn't at Fluttershy.

"Why do you have to be such a pain in the butt? We're just having fun."

"I don't think picking on my friends counts as 'fun'. " Rainbow found herself surrounded by the three bullies. Fluttershy could only assume that this was not too long after Rainbow had helped another student away from these tyrants.

"You really think these kids are your friends? They only stick around you because you 'saved' them. Tell me one friend you have that you didn't meet by picking them up off the ground."

Rainbow visibly struggled with this challenge. She didn't really socialize much with other students outside of helping them out with the bullies or addressing them as a crowd. She didn't like anybody with a massive ego because they more often than not butted heads. She preferred to have more reserved friends, someone to help talk her down if she needed it, or to give her the support she needed. Little did she know how much her choice of friends was going to pay off...

"So what? I still hang out with all those that I helped, and I guarantee that they'd still be my friends regardless of whether or not I stopped you snot-nosed brats from tormenting them."

Fluttershy looked away to see her younger self round the opposite corner and immediately duck away, watching from a safe distance. She had wanted to see firsthand if Rainbow could truly hold her own against these guys.

"Well, then, maybe we should make an example for them, show them what their hero is truly like." Hoops continued to try and intimidate her, but nothing worked. He had no trump card to pull on her, and the adage of 'Rainbow Crash' had long since simply flew past the radar. That is, until he snatched her backpack.

"Hey, give that back!" Rainbow attempted to reach for it, only to be held back by Dumb-bell and Score.

"Let's see what we've got in here." The first thing he pulled out was a rather large stuffed turtle, to which he burst out laughing. "Looks like Rainbow isn't so tough after all!"

"Gimme that back!" Rainbow shouted as she continued to struggle against the restraint. Her expression paled when she saw Hoops pull out a pair of scissors as well.

"Ooh, even better, I wonder what would happen if I- OOF!!"

Just before Rainbow completely fell apart in front of the three, Hoops' was tackled by the previously hidden Fluttershy, dropping both the scissors and the toy. Rainbow broke out from the grip of the other two bullies, their expression matching that of their ringleader's. Rainbow quickly gathered up her stuff, and turned to find Hoops wrestling with the young girl above him. She could vaguely hear Fluttershy mumbling about "not hurting her friend" or something like that, but honestly her action was all Rainbow needed to understand what she was doing.

Then Hoops punched Fluttershy off of him.

What happened next was such a blur that even the older Fluttershy couldn't make sense of how exactly events transpired. All she knew was that her younger self was on the floor crying, Score and Dumb-bell had run off, and Rainbow was currently beating Hoops to a pulp.

It took several teachers to break up the scene, and Hoops was immediately taken to the nurse's office. Rainbow had enough strength left to break away from the teachers' grasp for a moment and ran over to Fluttershy, picking her up to see if she was alright. Fluttershy's cheek was severely swollen from where she was hit, but otherwise she remained fine. Rainbow was then taken to the principal's office, with Fluttershy not trailing too far behind.

Principal Spitfire, despite being a stern figure, was very understanding of the situation, even giving some leeway for Rainbow's immediate concern for her friend's well-being outweighing even her urge to continue beating the bullies she was notorious for getting into scuffles with. She left the room with nary a punishment save for a conversation with the principal. As the two girls left the office, Rainbow decided to speak up.

"Thanks, Flutters. Didn't know you had it in you, and I'm sorry things had to turn out the way they did."

"Oh, it was nothing, really." Fluttershy remembered what caused the standoff to escalate. "Since when did you bring a stuffed turtle to school?"

"Oh, this is Tank." Rainbow pulled the toy out from her backpack. "My parents said I couldn't have an actual pet turtle, so they got me this instead."

"Is that why it's so important?"

"Well..." Rainbow turned slightly redder at the question. "I actually got it because of you."

Fluttershy was surprised. "Me? Why me?"

"Well, you talk so much about all the critters you have back home and all the animals in the forest you help, I figured I'd see what all the fuss was about." Rainbow stowed the turtle back into its hiding place. "That, and I was hoping maybe I'd be able to come over and help someday."

"I... I... Of course! You could come over any time! I have so many wonderful critters to show you..."

Fluttershy watched as the two young girls continued to class, chuckling slightly at her own enthusiasm as her younger self started to ramble, Rainbow just walking with her and taking it all in.

Wakefulness started to call to her, and her lucid dream began to fade away from her vision.

Comments

[OmniFox]

Tortoise.

[Vaguely Demented]

8754280
I imagine Rainbow and maybe even Fluttershy didn’t know the difference at that point.