21 Rainbow Dash: "I'm a Pretty Pony"
08:30 AM
“Rainbow Dash?”
“Ngh.”
“Rainbow!”
“Huh? Wha?”
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes, quickly shutting them in the bright room.
“Oh! I’ll turn the lights off!”
Once the room dimmed on the other side of Rainbow’s eyelids, she slowly opened them again. “Where am I?”
“The hospital.”
Rainbow turned her head toward the voice and saw a small, orange and purple pony with tiny wings. “Who are you?”
“Oh no! You didn’t lose your memories did you?!” The extra little pony turned to her side and pointed to her cute mark. “You remember me, right?”
Rainbow followed the hoof and gave the most appropriate commentary. “You have a shield on your butt.”
“Flank,” the pegasus corrected her.
“Same thing?”
“But you remember it, right?”
Rainbow snickered. “Butt.”
“Flank.”
“Butt.”
“Rainbow!" the extra little pony's voice insisted. "Do you remember my cutie mark?”
“Cute mark?”
“Cutie mark!”
“More like an awesome mark, right?”
The response was immediate. “Yeah! Totally awesome!”
The orange pegasus seemed to forget her surroundings and stared at the image on her butt for a moment, taking a step back to let it shine in the remaining light coming in from the window. Her eyes hazed over as she stared deeper. “It’s so awesome.”
Suddenly remembering the situation got the little pony to rejoin the rest of the world. “You remember it, right?”
Rainbow thought back. “Didn’t the Canterlot Movie Club add logos to their banner a few months ago? They were shields weren’t they? What do shields have to do with a movie club? Were they protecting movies? Oh, hey, this wingpony is orange and has purple hair.”
The little pony watched intently, almost making out the gears turning in Rainbow’s head.
“Scootaloo?” asked Rainbow.
“You remember me!” Scootaloo cheered, rushing forward and pulling Rainbow into a tight hug.
“Of course I remember you, squirt! How could I forget my biggest fan?”
“Are you alright?”
“Besides having difficulty breathing?” Rainbow choked out.
“Oops.” Scootaloo backed off and sat in a chair beside the bed while Rainbow sat up and flexed various joints.
“A little headache, and my nose feels a bit swollen. But I think I’m good. What happened and why am I a pony?”
Rainbow’s assessment had Scootaloo brightening up more and more … until the last few words. Those had her worried. “Uh … ‘why are you a pony’?”
“Yeah. The last thing I remember is—“ as Rainbow sat up further, she felt something shift behind her and looked at her back. “I have wings! Sweet!”
“Rainbow? Are you okay?”
“Okay? Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Rainbow said, reaching back to touch her feathers..
“I’m thinking of a few reasons right now.”
“Hey! What happened to my hands?!”
“And there’s another one,” Scootaloo said, watching Rainbow examine her hoof.
“Oh, never mind. Ponies don’t have hands. That makes sense,” Rainbow shrugged and lay back down contented.
“I’m glad it does for one of us.”
“Do I have a tail too?” Rainbow peeked under her blankets. “Yep, and I’m naked too. No gown?”
“It was just your head that you hit. It’s not like you needed surgery.”
“I hit my head?”
“With a sofa.”
“I hit my head with a sofa?” Rainbow felt her head with her hooves.
“Pretty hard, apparently.”
“Is that why I have wings now? How does that work?”
“You’re a pegasus pony. Always have been, that's why you have wings.”
“Always? No way!” Rainbow looked back down at her hooves. “Couldn’t have been a pony Monday. I was rocking out in a guitar-only jam session in school with Applejack and Sunset. I had hands then.”
“Applejack and who?”
“Sunset Shim—wait.”
Scootaloo saw the gears turning a little faster this time.
“Whoa!” declared Rainbow. “I remember now. The portal, the wings, the clouds, the—“ she flinched, “sofa.”
“Portal?
“Oh no!" Rainbow shouted in alarm. "I’m in a pony hospital?”
“Yes?”
“I gotta get outta here before they dissect me!” Rainbow sat back up and shot the door a worried look.
“Dissect?!” Scootaloo's eyes went wide and she also turned to face the door. "W-why would—?"
“Yeah, Sunset ended up in one of our hospitals once and we had to break her out before they realized she was an alien.”
“Alien?” Scootaloo turned back to Rainbow.
“Yeah. So, like, we split into three teams. Fluttershy and Applejack were the decoys, Rarity and Pinkie wore disguises and snuck Sunset around, and Big Mac and me were the getaway team.”
“Uh.” Scootaloo's eyes flicked side to side.
“Yeah, we had the whole security team and a bunch of doctors and Lab Coat after us! I think he was some kind of scientist guy.”
“Wha—?”
“So how do we get out of here?”
Scootaloo blinked at her potentially mental mentor a few times then slowly turned to point at the window.
“Yeah? Sunset had a window too, but it was the third floor so it wasn’t like we could have just dropped her out ….” Rainbow looked back at her wings. “Wow. That makes things so much easier. I don’t even need to get dressed first! Come on, squirt!”
Quickly flinging off the blankets, Rainbow awkwardly got her four hooves under her and jumped down to the floor. “We’re getting out of here!”
She took a step forward. Then a second. Then found herself face down on the floor. “Oh, right. I haven’t learned how to walk yet.”
Out of sight behind her, Scootaloo’s jaw had dropped slightly, her head was tilted to the side, and her brow was crinkled up. She raised a foreleg, as if to ask a question. “Um, I, uh, what …?”
“But who needs to walk when we’ve got wings?”
Rainbow gave her wings a single flap strong enough to lift her in the air and easily covered the distance to the window.
Scootaloo shook her head in a last ditch effort to find sense within the past five minutes, gave up and filed them away in the same place as her Pinkie Pie memories, then trotted over to see Rainbow finishing her struggles to unlock and open the window.
Some more flapping and Rainbow was out the window and in a hover looking back in. “Whoo! Easiest hospital-jailbreak ever!”
Still inside, Scootaloo had jumped up and pulled herself onto the windowsill with her forelegs but stayed there, looking down at the ground two floors below them. “Uh.”
“Come on! We still gotta get out of here before the docs check in.”
“But I can’t. You know that.”
“Scootaloo, use those wings! Let’s go!” Rainbow made a come here gesture with a foreleg.
“But.”
“Flank.”
“I’m serious!”
“Me too. We got to go.”
With a look of great determination, Scootaloo, began flapping her wings and took a great leap out the third storey window.
She didn’t get far.
*** *** ***
08:40 AM
“You okay, Scoot?”
“Huh, what?” Scootaloo looked around, seeing that she and Rainbow Dash were just inside the treeline of a wooded area.
“You kinda fell, so I grabbed you,” Rainbow explained. “I mean your wings seem a little small, but I thought you’d be fine.”
“Small?! Rainbow Dash! How could you?”
“Huh, what?”
“You know I can’t fly!”
“You can’t fly? What, are you too young or something?”
Scootaloo looked up at her long time idol and quickly turned around to hide the tears that started to form. “Why are you acting like this? After how much I got picked on about it. Diamond and Silver have stopped but being a pegasus who can't fly still hurts.”
“Uh, sorry.” Rainbow attempted to back up a step, only to end up suddenly taking a seat on the ground. “I didn’t mean to tease you. I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know? We’ve been like sisters for years! Are you saying that putting your face through a sofa made you forget?”
“What, no. I didn’t forget. I’m … I’m, well, I'm not actually your Rainbow Dash.”
Scootaloo looked up, but didn’t turn around. “Ocellus?”
“What’s an oh-sell-us?”
Scootaloo dried her eyes and turned around to give Rainbow a critical eye. “So you smashed into a sofa and now you think you really are Rainbow Dash? Can that happen to changelings?”
“What’s a changeling?”
“Okay." Scootaloo sniffed. "We’re going back to the hospital. But you’re not off the hook about getting me to jump out a window!”
“We can’t go back to the hospital. If they did blood tests or something they might realize I’m not a pony.”
Scootaloo pointed a hoof toward Rainbow's face. “So you admit you know you’re a changeling.”
“No, I’m not a whatever that is. I’m just not a pony. Normally. I was changed into one earlier today.”
“Huh? How?" Scootaloo scratched her head. "Starlight and Twilight are out of town. Trixie? That can't be right. She just does teacups.”
“There’s a Trixie here too? Let me guess; is she a unicorn?”
“Okay. Who are you really?”
“I’m Rainbow Dash!" Rainbow brought up her forelegs and tapped her chest to stress the point. "Just not your Rainbow Dash. I came here from another world through a portal in Twi’s palace.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Huh.” Scootaloo mulled that over. “Well, I guess I’ve seen weirder things. Especially involving Twilight's palace. So, how did you know my name?”
“There’s a Scootaloo in my world too. And a Trixie … unfortunately.”
“Can that Scootaloo fly?”
“She doesn’t have wings.”
Scootaloo gasped. “That’s horrible!”
“No, no, no. I don’t normally have wings either.”
“What!? No! I can’t even imagine that!”
“We’re not ponies in my world, we’re humanes.”
Scootaloo blinked. “Those things that Lyra keeps talking about?”
“Huh?”
“Furless minotaurs.”
“I’m not sure what that is.”
“Two legs, hands instead of hooves on their forelegs, no wings, horns, or magic.”
“Okay. With no fur and no tail that kinda fits.”
Scootaloo pulled her tail in close and hugged it. “No tail? Eww.”
Rainbow shrugged. “Just more to brush, right?”
Scootaloo sat down on her haunches, taking a moment to shift through it all. “So she can’t fly either, but that’s actually normal for the kind of creature she is? She’s not … different?”
“Right," Rainbow nodded but then thought for a moment. "Though, now that I think about it, she does kinda has a bit of a limp. Something with her knee I think? Hip? She doesn’t really talk about it.”
Scootaloo sucked in a breath and let her head drop, prompting Rainbow to quickly attempt to add a remedy.
“She’s actually the fastest kid I know.”
“Really?” Scootaloo looked up, eyes filling with hope.
“Yeah, with that scooter she always has. She can pull some pretty sick tricks too. She’s awesome in the skate park. Teaches even me a thing or two sometimes.”
Scootaloo jumped to her hooves. “I have a scooter too! I use my wings to speed me up! Nopony’s faster than me. Except for you.” Scootaloo fluttered her wings as evidence, making a buzzing sound.
“Yeah! Now you’re talking!”
“So are you faster than our Rainbow Dash?”
“Ha! Of course I’m faster. I run so fast I’m a blur. Literally!”
“Can you show me?!”
Rainbow cringed and scratched the back of her head. “Well, I’m not really sure how to run with four legs and hooves. Not a pony, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
“I can fly though!”
“But I thought you don’t have wings as a minotaur.”
“Humane.”
Scootaloo's tail twitched when she thought back to the idea of such tailless creatures. “Yeah, that.”
“Yeah, so I don’t usually have wings, but after Twi and Sunset did some crazy magic in my world I can grow them anytime I do something that’s extra awesome! And then the geode I got at Camp Everfree gives me super speed which even works with my wings out!”
“Awesome!” Scootaloo's wings pomfed out in excitement.
“I know!”
“So can you do a rainboom?”
“Do a—?" Rainbow frowned. "Hey, the Rainbooms and I don’t have that kind of—are you old enough to be talking about this?”
“What?”
“I don't think you're old enough to be hearing these kinds of rumors. Even if they are fake. Which they are!”
“Huh? I just want to know if you can pull off a rainboom.”
Rainbow blushed. “I'm not pulling off—Nope! Not talking about this!”
“But, it’s like our Rainbow’s signature flying stunt. One of them anyway, she’s got a lot.”
“Oh. It’s a—that makes more sense" Rainbow scratched her chin, a smile growing on her face. "Signature stunt, eh? Hmm. Meaning if I do better than her at it, I win? Tell me more.”
*** *** ***
09:40 AM
“What do you mean ‘she’s faster than that’?!” an exasperated and exhausted Rainbow Dash asked between pants.
“Well, she is,” answered Scootaloo.
“But we’re supposed to be physically identical. I mean, well, the Twilights have different hair and Twily has glasses, but they look the same otherwise.”
Scootaloo thought on that. “But our Rainbow has had wings all her life. She knows everything there is to know about her wings and flying. You just got them today. You gotta know how to use them right. Right?”
“You mean I gotta study, like, aerodynamics and angles and wind resistance and weight to speed ratios and all sorts of other math?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Aw come on!" Rainbow groaned. "That’s turning flying into homework! You're supposed to just feel the wind on your feathers and stuff! You know, just listen to them tell you that stuff!”
Scootaloo tilted her head. "Feathers don't talk."
"Well, not literally!"
“I’ve seen Twilight help her out with the math and physics stuff sometimes, now that she has wings too. Pony Rainbow got even faster after that.”
“She’s got more practice and she’s got an egghead doing her homework?! That’s totally cheating! There’s gotta be a way to get faster today. Even the odds.”
“Well,” Scootaloo began, a sheepish look on her face, “I might know a way.”
“Whatever it is, let’s do it!”
*** *** ***
09:55 AM
“And you said you’ve done this before?” Rainbow Dash asked, narrowly forcing the warble out of her voice.
“Yea, we do stuff like this all the time,” answered Scootaloo.
“ ’We’?”
“The Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
“Who?”
“Me, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle. They aren’t the Crusaders in your world?”
“Oh, they’re the Canterlot Movie Club back home." Rainbow blinked "Hey! Same initials.”
“They’re just a movie club? What about cutie marks?”
“We call them dream signs. We just kinda dream them up while we sleep and then put them on stuff we own.”
“That’s it? But, but—“
“Flank, flank,” Rainbow continued the gag.
“—But, we, everything, all that—Really? It’s that easy?”
“I don’t know about easy. They just happen when they happen. Happens to everyone eventually, we just never know when that will be.”
Rainbow continued while Scootaloo sat, looking a bit dazed. “I got mine years ago when I realized how awesome I was at, you know, everything; like sports and racing, and standing up for my friends. It was the night after some bullies were picking on my world’s Fluttershy. I totally wupped their sorry butts—“
“Flanks?”
“—In a race so hard that it just showed up in my dream like it was a part of me. Actually, Fluttershy got her dream the same night. Said she had run off during the race, got lost, and followed a field of butterflies back to town.”
“That sounds like how our Dash and Fluttershy got their cutie marks.”
“Neat.” Rainbow shrugged.
“How’d I—I mean other me get hers?”
“I don’t know how, but all three of the Movie Club members got them the same day a little before the Friendship Games.”
“The what?”
“Oh it’s a school thing. We were totally awesome at it this time. I’ll have to tell you all about it later.”
“Yeah!" Scootaloo hopped in place. "I can’t believe I actually know two Rainbow Dashes!”
“And you’re going to help me be faster than her in both worlds instead of just in mine. Because I’m totally faster than her in mine already!”
“I can’t wait to see you two together. You totally have to race each other!”
“You bet we will!”
“Yeah!” Scootaloo cheered and shot a hoof toward Rainbow and held it there.
Rainbow looked at it, then at one of her own. “Am I supposed to shake it?”
“Hoof bump!” Informed Scootaloo.
“Oh! Like this?” Rainbow mimicked Scootaloo’s gesture and bumped her hoof to hers.
“Yeah!” Scootaloo cheered louder.
“Ha ha,” Rainbow chuckled.
Then Rainbow looked back at their project. “… So, you’re sure this is a good idea?”
“Ponies ask us that all the time,” Scootaloo answered nonchalantly.
“And?”
“Well,” Scootaloo shrugged, “It’s not like that’s ever stopped you either.”
Rainbow stopped a moment then nodded. “True.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Let’s do this!”
The pair of ponies traveled away from the pair of wood posts in the ground. Scootaloo trotted, Rainbow drifted in a hover, still not trusting her legs for graceful mobility.
“But—“ Rainbow started.
“Flank!”
“Is that gag getting old yet?”
“Nope,” Scootaloo answered with a slight chuckle.
“Good. Anyway. But since the three of you can’t fly, have you really done this before?”
“Not quite this But—“
“Flank.”
“—I’ve done this with a giant ramp to get to Cloudsdale.” Scootaloo pointed to a faraway mass of clouds that looked oddly like a city skyline.
Turning to look, Rainbow dropped her jaw a moment. “Cloudsdale? That’s Cloudsdale? That looks like a—like a city made of clouds?”
“What else would it be with a name like Cloudsdale?”
“In my world it’s just a suburb full of skyscrapers, and it’s next to a valley. You know. A dale.”
“So the buildings touch the sky or clouds?”
“Neither, well not literally. Clouds are way higher up in my world. Like miles high.”
“Wow." Scootaloo looked straight up. "Must make it hard for your weather teams to move them around.
Rainbow looked down at Scootaloo with a quizzical expression and considered asking for clarification but her rising impatience with not moving fast had caught up with her. “You know, this is cool and all, but if we keep comparing worlds we’ll never get this thing going.”
“Oh, right! So, anyway, when I did this, Cloudsdale was right above Ponyville—“
“Ponyville?”
“That’s where we are now.”
“Oh.”
“So since all I needed was altitude. So I had the ramp pointed straight up and had Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle launch me with this giant slingshot!”
“But since I need speed,” Rainbow cringed having admitted to being even the tiniest bit less than awesome at something involving moving fast, “we have the slingshot running down this big hill leading to the edge of a cliff.”
“Right! You’ll ride one of my scooters down the hill, picking up speed with your wings out as the slingshot forces you over the edge of the cliff. Once you’re airborne just keep flapping and doing your Rainbow Dash stuff while aiming for the ground, like at a forty-something degree angle to keep going even faster! Then just keep going until you get that rainboom and pull up really hard. Now that’s physics!”
“Yeah! Take that Twilights and Sunset! We’re doing math stuff without your help.”
Rainbow’s face was full of cocky confidence until Rainbow’s brain remembered the results of her last math test.
“Say, Scootaloo,” Rainbow asked nonchalantly, “what do you normally get on your math tests?”
“Math tests? I got a B on the last one.”
Rainbow wiped her forehead in relief with a surprisingly natural-feeling swipe with her wing as Scootaloo continued.
“But I usually get C’s.”
With a gulp, Rainbow looked down at the very taut and slightly vibrating slingshot straps surrounding her on three sides, the edge of the cliff at the bottom of the hill at least fifty feet away, and the scooter she had one hoof on. “You don’t say.”
“Ready?” Scootaloo shouted with her hoof poised to release the slingshot.
“Uh, actually ….”
“What?” Scootaloo leaned in to listen to Rainbow’s suddenly quieter voice causing her hoof to push into the lever holding the slingshot band and releasing it.
Rainbow clung tightly to the scooter when the strap slammed into her backside and propelled her down the deep slope.
As she saw the cliff edge approaching she had only one comment.
“Meep.”
Fluttershy would be proud.
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Amazing how the crazy jock does it smarter and better than the others.
"Yeah I'm totally from another world." Makes perfect sense, gets them past the awkwardness.
A good chapter. *Smashes mug on ground* Another!
Rainbow, did you forget you're here for something? Wait, of course you did, you're an idiot.
9527634
I agree with him, another chapter please, this one was great and I can't wait to see how the other Princesses will react when they find out another Mane 6 are down in Ponyville when they are suppose to be out of town at the moment.
Now that we've seen Rainbow just up and admit the whole tale, it sort of makes me think that maybe all of them should've just done that from the start.
Rainbow’s going to kill herself and it’ll be Scoots’ fault.
I saw the end note, and all I can say is I can’t WAIT to read this.
Fluttershy's antics happen: "Heh, kinda funny. I chuckled."
Applejack's shenanigans happen: "Kinda bi-polar as far as lighthearted/heartwarming plotlines goes..."
Rarity's escapades: "...meh."
Pinkie's silliness: "OK, edging into Creepytown..."
Rainbow's adventures: "THIS IS THE STUPID I SIGNED UP FOR! MOAR!!!"
I loved it!