• Published 18th Mar 2019
  • 3,090 Views, 92 Comments

Spells and Rainbows - 6-D Pegasus



Starlight learns why you shouldn't cast a speed spell on the fastest pegasus in Equestria,

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A Blast and a Blur of Blue

"Ready when you are, girls!"

Rainbow called back to her two friends from her position along the cloud track. Starlight's amulet hung around her neck, the cool edge of its magic gemstone pressing lightly against her chest. Despite lacking the magic-channeling horn of a unicorn, she could still feel the presence of energy within. Hidden underneath its surface, she could feel a sort of heat emanating from within.

She heard Starlight faintly shout to her about something to do with triggering the spell? Her mind processed the words think and go fast, and immediately dumped the rest. She nodded back absentmindedly, not even bothering to look over. But it didn't matter, she already knew exactly what she had to do.

Well, time to do my usual warm-up stretches! For good luck, of course. *crack pop crack* Ahhhh, wings joints are feeling good, how about my hooves? *pop* Oooo there we go yeahhh that hit the spot... Now for the neck! Hrgghhhh-

"Raaaaiiiiinboooow get on with it!"

Rainbow rolled her eyes and smirked; she could practically hear the grossed-out look on the purple alicorn's face just from the tone alone.

Hehe, that never gets old. She quickly wrapped up her little session with a final stretch of her wings for good measure before returning her focus back to the track in front of her. Okay, this is it. She snuck a glance down at the amulet around her neck, her eyes coming to rest on the gemstone that rested on her chest, and lightly pressed a hoof to it. All right, let's freaking do this.

She crouched down on the cloud platform and unfurled her wings to her side one last time to their fullest extent. Her hooves dug slightly into the cloud, and she twisted them back and forth a few times to dig short grooves to use as a platform. She raised her primary feathers up slightly and wriggled them about in the air, letting the wind flow between them and sending a slight chill through her back. Hmm, wind seems to be going about... 10 knots... northeast... did I eat lunch yet?

"One!"

Starlight's voice cut straight through her thoughts like a knige through hot butter? Her mind was snapped back to reality with a single word. Deep within her, she felt something spark, as if a switch had been flipped Let's do this.

She began flapping her wings, slowly at first as to not accidentally strain herself, but quickly gaining speed with every passing moment. She felt the force of her wingpower push her forward, but she dug in with her hooves to keep herself from moving. The gemstone suddenly lit up with an intense, teal glow, but she paid no attention to it and continued building her wing speed. Strangely, it felt as if the amulet were giving her some sort of energy boost; the more she exerted her wings, the easier it seemed to add more force to them.

"Two!"

As Rainbow continued picking up her wing speed, she felt her back hooves begin to rise from the surface of the cloud, and she dug in with her front hooves even harder to avoid accidentally shooting herself forward too early. The glow from the gemstone began to flicker rapidly, getting dimmer and dimmer each time, and she felt more of the magic within flow through her. Miniature bolts of lightning streaked between parts of her body and the cloud on which she stood. The air around her began to charge with electricity, her rainbow mane floating above her head as if she were underwater.

She heard Twilight yell something in the distance, but she couldn't make it out. Right now, all that mattered to her were her wings and the track ahead of her. She could feel all the energy from the amulet racing through her body, from the very tips of her hooves to the ends of her feathers. There was no going back now, all this energy would have to go somewhere. Time seemed to slow to a standstill. Everything around her seemed to blur and dull in color as she focused more of her concentration on her wings and the wind around her. She could almost see the currents of air flowing around the track. She closed her eyes.

"Three!"


Starlight's Stopwatch: 00:00:00.00


Rainbow propelled herself forward with a powerful thrust from her front hooves, releasing a massive explosion of energy as she left the cloud platform. She rocketed along the side of the track faster than she had ever felt herself go. Bright streaks of small cyan lightning arced across her entire body, striking the side of the track whenever she swerved closer to its edge and destroying bits of cloud in small, white poofs.

Something felt... different. As she watched her surroundings pass her by, she knew for a fact she was travelling at an immense speed, and yet it didn't feel like she was going any faster. In fact, she couldn't even tell she was moving when she closed her eyes. It was like the wind had... disappeared. Yes, that was it. She was going at a ridiculous speed, and yet she could barely feel even a hint of a breeze across her body and wings as she sped along the track.

One lap...

What? Already one lap? She could have sworn she had left the starting cloud not even an instant before.

Two laps...

Three laps...

Four laps!

Rainbow halted to a stop right past the finish line. "Woooo! That... was... AWESOME!!" She landed on the closest intact cloud and began prancing in circles with a goofy grin plastered on her face.

"Oh yeah, oh yeah new record here we- what the?!" Her cheering was brought to a halt as a stray bolt of cyan lightning jumped from her mane to the cloud, shocking her to her senses. "Huh, thought that cool electricity thing was just my imagination!"

She lifted a hoof in front of her and watched as the streaks of bright, blue lightning bounced across it and off towards nearby clouds. Huh, this is... pretty cool. Probably a side effect of the spell or something? She put on a prideful grin as she patted herself down.
"So Starlight, how did I do?" She squeezed her eyes shut and waited excitedly to hear her time.

And waited...

And waited...

No response.

Confused, Rainbow opened her eyes and searched around her for the particular unicorn who was supposed to be clocking her time. Anxiety flashed through her thoughts for a brief moment as she recalled how Fluttershy fell during her race as a filly, but it was quickly assuaged as she spotted both Starlight and Twilight still standing on the same cloud as before.

There was something... off about them. Actually, something was off about everything. She felt like it was staring her right in the face, and yet the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to elude her.

"Yo! Girls! Did you hear me?!" Rainbow shook off the uneasy feeling and quickly flew up to them, but stopped when she noticed that, to her surprise, a violet shield of magic had been erected around the two of them.

She squinted her eyes to peer through the shield to see if her friends were all right. Twilight was crouched down; her eyes were squeezed tightly in concentration, and the glow surrounding her horn quickly tipped Rainbow off to who the shield was from.

"Um... Twi? You can put the shield down now. Helloooo?" She poked and prodded the shield for a few seconds, watching its surface ripple with every touch, then turned to Starlight. She was standing upright, still staring at the stopwatch no differently than she was the last time she glanced at her. Maybe they just can't hear me?

Rainbow flew around the shield behind Starlight's position to get a look at the stopwatch herself.

The time was still at 00:00:00.00.

"What the... Starlight! You said 'On three', remember?! Did you forget to start it or something?!"

No response.

"Helloooooo? Starlight, quit horsing around! I know you can hear me!" Rainbow raised a hoof to pound against the magical barrier. As it went up, bolts of bright, cyan lightning streaked up her foreleg, arcing off towards the rest of her body or the cloud below her. She brought her hoof down. Hard.

"Can you at least ackno-"

The moment her hoof hit the magical barrier, her eyes were momentarily blinded by a bright flash of light from the point of contact. The cyan bolts of lightning that had accumulated around the end of her foreleg rapidly streaked along the surface of the shield and dissipated into the cloud. Several thin, glowing cracks appeared in the barrier, starting at Rainbow's hoof and tracing each

"Woah, what?!" With a strong flap from her wings, Rainbow pushed herself away from her friends before she could cause any other damage. "Well... that's definitely new..."

It was then that Rainbow finally noticed what had been bothering her the whole time. All around her, colors seemed dull and slightly darkened or grayed. The faint background chatter from Ponyville that she had gotten accustomed to hearing was completely absent; even this high up she should still be able to hear something. She strained her ears, flicking them every which way to try to catch some hint of another sound, but all she could hear were the flaps of her own wings and the sound of her breathing. But that wasn't it...

The wind... where... ? Rainbow Dash floated back down to the cloud track and landed smoothly on its soft surface, noting that her impact seemed a little softer than usual. She tucked her wings back to her side and closed her eyes, trying to reach out with her senses to feel the wind, but nothing came to her but silence. There was one more thing though...

She opened her eyes again and scanned everything around her, searching for the one thing that was poking her in the back of her mind. Eventually, her eyes settled on a flock of geese off in the distance and then it finally hit her. Are they... frozen? Rainbow opened her wings and zoomed up to the group, ignoring the streaks of lightning that seemed to trail behind her as she flew off. Their wings were open, all frozen in different positions of flight, and each of them were locked in the V flight formation they take during migration. None of them were moving.

It was as if somepony had taken a picture of the entire world and left it for her to explore. Wait... no. Rainbow peered closer at the birds' wings and realized that they were actually moving ever so slightly; to a normal pony, the motion would have been imperceptible. But Rainbow Dash's eyes had been trained to observe even the tiniest of movement from a distance during her years as both a weather pony and her training sessions as a Wonderbolt.

That, and she had watched the minute hand of a clock in Ponyville Hospital move for over an hour straight out of sheer boredom.

So... time isn't frozen or anything... nothing is. Rainbow Dash came to a surprising, but welcome, realization. It's... me!

Rainbow glanced again at the world around her, piecing together everything she had just experienced. The silence, the lack of wind, the dulled colors, everything frozen... and of course, the lightning. "I'm moving so fast, everything else is like super slow to me!"

The experience was not entirely unknown to her; she had moved at these speeds several times before, especially when dealing with Pinkie and her pies, but never before had she managed to keep it up for more than a couple seconds, let alone several minutes.

Rainbow looked back to the cloud track and noticed three small rings of rainbow-colored fire frozen exactly at her starting point. Surrounding them was what appeared to be a faint bubble of expanding air, only noticeable due to the way it distorted light passing through it. She quickly recognized it as a shockwave, having been encouraged to recognize them during her training sessions as a Wonderbolt. Rings of colored fire a shockwave could only mean one thing...

"I made a sonic rainboom from rest?!" She did a double take as she recounted the number of colored rings. "Wait wha... I did THREE?!"

Filled with curiosity, Rainbow flew up to the shockwave and gingerly poked at the clear bubble of concentrated air with a hoof. She felt a weak force resist her, but it felt no more like she were just passing through a thin curtain. With her worries weakened a little, Rainbow pushed herself through the bubble's surface entirely. She shivered slightly as the strange sensation passed over her entire body, but soon it was over and she was through. She shuddered a little and shook her head to clear her focus.

"Woaahh" All of Rainbow's surroundings had taken on a sort of blurred, distorted look due to the bubble of air around her, as if she were looking at everything through a smooth, cascading sheet of water. Everything, except for...

My sonic rainbooms... Rainbow stared at the three polychromatic rings of fire in awe, zipping around them to take in every detail from every possible angle. So this is what it looks like from an audience's point of view, huh? Hehe not bad at all if I do say so myself.

Now that she was closer, Rainbow realized it while the rings still bore the shape of fire, it looked as if they were just made of colored air. The smallest of the rings seemed just tiny enough to pass off for a super cool, magic necklace, and the largest of them was about twice the size of the cloud rings the Wonderbolts would navigate through during agility training. Scattered throughout the air around her were tiny sparkles of light, all frozen in place. She waved her hoof at several of them, and they flowed around her outstretched foreleg as if they were fish in water.

Once again filled with curiosity, Rainbow flew up to the smallest ring and tentatively prodded at it with a hoof. Unlike with the shockwave, this time her hoof passed straight through with ease. The closest thing she could compare the feeling with was bringing a hoof close to a campfire on a cold night. In this case, the heat penetrated straight through her limb, warming her up from the inside and out. It filled her with a sort of... happiness, though she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. She relished the warmth for a few extra seconds before pulling her foreleg back and retreating a few hooflengths away.

"Well this is... new." Rainbow backed a little aways from the ring of magically charged air, curiosity and a hint of mischief getting the better of her. With a single flap of her wings, she propelled herself smoothly through her own frozen rainboom, giggling a bit as the tips of her primaries brushed against the heat of her own inert pegasus magic.

After making it all the way through, she spared a quick glance back before quickly zipping up, over, and around the ring before reentering it again. And again. And again. "Hehe, this is actually really cool!" Suddenly, a thought came to her mind. If everypony else was essentially frozen in time... and she wasn't...

"Hmmm... I wonder what else I can do. " Rainbow looked below her towards Ponyville, its residents frozen in their daily routines. A slight, sly smirk stretched along her face.


Somwhere around Ponyville, a cyan-colored pegasus trotted casually out of a certain purple crystal castle, whistling the familiar tune of the wonderbolts to herself as she slowly closed the doors and took off, her departing form unnoticed by the equally purple drake frozen mid-step just outside before the front step. Every book in its library was now organized by the titles' last letters.


Somewhere around Ponyville, a rainbow blur zoomed out of an all too familiar barn, carrying out a basket of newly harvested apples and leaving behind a plethora of red-painted pears.


Somwhere around Ponyville, a certain ash-coated celloist's instrument had all of its strings loosened to the point where they practically dangled off the wooden peg. The bow's hairs had been carefully removed and placed neatly besides the remaining wooden stick.


The blue blur sped towards a particular yellow pegasus's cottage near the outskirts of town, before quickly coming to a halt and turning the other way.


The next stop was the flower stand, with three well-known earth ponies standing frozen behind it. The blue pegasus carefully reached forward and grabbed a single daisy off the stand. She stared at it for a good few seconds before snapping the stem in half and carefully replacing it right back where it was.


Said cyan pony was about to enter Sugarcube Corner until she noticed the sign on the front door reading "Hello super fast Rainbow Dash! I made some cupcakes for you! They're in my basement!"

She sped off and didn't look back.


The basket of needles in a certain alabaster coated unicorn's boutique found itself now emptied then filled with individual strands of hay, each one painted a shiny silver.


Every student who was enrolled in Rainbow Dash's Loyalty class now had a fake pop-quiz assignment in their saddlebags.


Five relative minutes later...

"Well, that was satisfying hehe..." Rainbow patted herself on the back for her efforts. She had set up some form of practical joke in almost every single household. "Everypony is certainly in for a big surprise real sooooon." After a few more seconds of devious chucking, she quieted back down and began to glance from house to house expectedly. Everything was still quiet. Nothing moved but her.

"Ughhh is this still going on? Come on I want to see what happens!!!" Rainbow flew a few circles over Ponyville, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. She waited and waited... and waited. Nothing.

"Ugh whatever, I'll be able to see what happens tomorrow I guess." Rainbow turned around and flew all the way back to her floating house, pausing for a second to glance at Twilight and Starlight still inside the same magenta shield. She sighed to herself before continuing up to her house. Feeling lazy today, the pegasus opted to dive through her open bedroom window. Looking down at the amulet still wrapped snug around her neck, Rainbow frowned slightly. While the day had certainly been interesting, she had at least been expecting to really see something happen. Or at least, see the reactions of the ponies. But that could wait from tomorrow. For now, a nice, long nap was calling her name.

The lightning around her seemed to have mostly died down, only appearing as the occasional spark from a hoof to the nearest cloud and no longer strong enough to actually obliterate any of them. The gemstone in the amulet she wore now felt cold, and was completely devoid of light.

Reaching up with a hoof, Rainbow gripped the back of the amulet and, with one swift swing, pulled it off her neck. A strange wave of fatigue suddenly hit her, and she started to stagger about her room. She quickly dumped the amulet onto her bedside table before it could fall from her grasp through the layers of cloud below it. With a final yawn, she collapsed onto her cloud bed, completely clocked out, her eyes and ears no longer registering the sounds of chaos in the distance.


Starlight's Stopwatch: 00:00:01.00


The moment Twilight saw the explosion of lightning and color from Rainbow, she immediately focused her magic and brought up a bubble shield around her and Starlight. As soon as it completely formed, a blur of bright blue lightning smashed into it from behind. The shield shattered upon impact, the force knocking Twilight unconscious as she and her former pupil tumbled to the earth below, thrown about by the shockwave from the initial explosion.

Starlight quickly came back to her senses, her eyes filling with panic as she opened her eyes to the sight of Equestria speeding up to meet her face-to-dirt. Without another second, Starlight flared her horn and wrapped her and the blacked out alicorn in a telekinetic blanket, slowing their descent until they landed safely next to Ponyville's lake. She briefly took note that they would have landed in the water anyways.

"Owww... my head..." Twilight groaned softly from beside her. Starlight quickly rushed to her aid, offering a hoof to pull her back up to all fours. Twilight shook her head a little to clear out the stars that obscured her sight. "What happened?"

"Ummm..." Starlight nervously rubbed the back of her neck. "I think it's safe to say that the experiment was a... success?"

With that, she awkwardly gestured to the sky with a hoof. Twilight followed her gaze upwards, her jaw falling slack in awe and shock. Three massive rings of polychromatic fire were expanding rapidly from the the cloud track they once stood near. There was no sight of neither the cyan pegasus nor the mysterious blue blur that had shattered her shield spell.

"Woah... I didn't think it was possible to perform more than a single rainboom at once, let alone three!" Starlight remarked in surprise and excitement. The two of them watched as the rings of rainbow spread across the sky, their heads tilting in confusion as they noticed the golden dome surrounding Canterlot. The fire dispersed upon contact with the much larger shield spell, leaving Canterlot completely unharmed.


Celestia smirked to herself. "Ahh, feels good to be useful for once." She halted the flow of magic to her horn and the combined illusion and shield spell she cast around Canterlot quietly dissipated. With Ponyville's tendency towards disasters, the spell had become almost muscle memory to her. She couldn't have the nobles bugging her daily during her day court.

Luna turned to her in confusion. "What dost thou meanest by-"

"Nothing, sister." Celestia turned around and gave her sister a brief nuzzle. "Everything is fine."


"Hey, why's there a sh-"

Starlight's question was cut off as a thought suddenly crossed Twilight's mind. In alarm, she opened her wings and took to the air, searching for Ponyville and preparing herself for the worst. However...

"There's no damage..."

There was no powerful wall of wind that swept Ponyville off the ground like last time; virtually everything seemed untouched. A few ponies took notice of the spectacle in the sky and pointed up in amazement. There were a some cries of annoyance and frustration, but they did not seem to be directed at the rainbooms, but more at some "blue blur" that supposedly messed with their things.

Filled with uncertainty, Twilight gradually slowed her flapping until she softly landed in the middle of Ponyville. The ground beneath her hooves felt... like ground. Real. There was no illusion. Other than some mysterious prankster, Ponyville seemed perfectly fine.

There was a flash of teal light beside her as Starlight teleported to her location, giving her former teacher a look of slight annoyance. "You feeling alright Twilight?"

Twilight continued to stare at Ponyville and all its undamaged houses. "How... how is this possible? The town should be leveled right now!"

Starlight pondered the thought for a few seconds, bringing a hoof to her chin in a sort of comical look. "Hmmm, maybe Rainbow was moving so fast that the air around her flowed perfectly around her as she moved? She wouldn't be disrupting the air at all, so it wouldn't create any sort of wind currents."

Twilight considered it briefly. "I suppose so... Either way, I think it would be best that we check up on Rainbow. We have no idea what side effects this may have on her. We need to ask her some questions, maybe even a few tests!"

Starlight nodded in agreement, turning her head to the skies above. "But she can be anywhere by now!"

Twilight blinked. "Actually... I think there's really only one other place she'd go after doing just about anything, especially after teaching. Come on, follow me!"

Starlight watched as her mentor unfurled her wings and took to the skies. Rolling her eyes, she lit her horn and wrapped herself in her own telekinetic magic, lifting herself off the ground and following suit. Ponyville could handle its own issues for now.


Somewhere in the sky, a cyan pegasus snorted in bed. "Hrghhh yes. Eat my dust, lightning."

Author's Note:

Goodness, talk about a writer's block XD. A close friend of mine sorta inspired me (a second time) to get back into the things I used to find enjoyment in, and writing was one of them. This is the last major chapter of this story, and a brief epilogue should follow shortly. I'm working on a crazier, more action-packed story series that will be begin real soon so don't miss it!^^ Anyways, enjoy the craziness of this chapter XD. It may seem a little rushed at parts because I was dealing with multivariable calculus when this chapter was started haha

I might revisit this story later to revise the chapters a bit also