Ghost Hunter Twilight 2: Clone Lores

by Keywii_Cookies55

8 Dare to Be Stupid

“Are you sure?”

It was getting on in the day, well into lunch, and in Partyville that meant that the streets were filled with ponies. They were walking around for various reasons, some were looking for food, others were looking for company, others still were looking for someplace to sit. And another yet still was looking for answers.

“Yes,” answered a grey stallion with a certainty that indicated a lack of wandering thoughts.

“…okay, thanks,” replied the answer-seeking mare, she sighed as she turned around and walked off, giving little thought to the stallion. To his credit though he smiled and walked in a different direction, indifferent to any potential rudeness. The mare slumped slightly, considering her options.

“Would the tourist guide know where to look?” She thought as she walked along the busy Partyville sidewalk. She bumped into several ponies as she walked in contemplation, but either due to not noticing or not caring, she made no indication that she’d change or stop. I don’t really want to go out alone.”

As she walked, ignoring everyone and for the most part blending in, she avoided one pony that stood still on the sidewalk. Bumping directly into them, the mare backed up and shook her head.

“Rainbow Dash,” The bumpee plainly stated, lacking all nuance in emotion.

Rainbow looked at the pony and recognition filled her eyes. “Oh, hi Rose.”

“Hello.”

Rose was a pony Rainbow Dash considered a friend, they talked every couple days. Rose was a cashier at a hardware store and normally Rainbow wouldn’t go into stores like that, but after reading Dark Alley’s The Tool she wanted to see a hardware store for herself. Rose was a yellow earth pony with a red mane, she liked flowers, and most importantly, she was really the only one that remembered Rainbow Dash’s name.

Looking around, Rainbow saw most of the ponies walking around, she the looked back at her unmoving friend, “What are you doing here?”

“Standing,” Rose replied plainly, the same way she always did, but that was one of the things Rainbow liked about her. Unlike other ponies that liked to talk down to her or call her annoying, Rose treated her like an equal.

“I always thought you ate lunch at the hardware store.” Rainbow chuckled to herself.

Rose stared blankly at Rainbow, a simple smile the only thing on her face. Her eyes weren’t empty so much as uncurious.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” Rainbow admitted, “I need some help, are you busy?”

“No.”

“Okay, I guess what I’d like is to know something. Do you know where in the forest I can find a clone?”

“The forest.”

Rainbow chuckled, “I guess that was a dumb question. I think I’m just afraid, I’ve never been out there before.”

Rose blinked, still smiling.

“Maybe I just need a second opinion. Are you afraid of the forest, Rose?”

“No.”

Rainbow tilted her head to the side a bit, “You’re not?”

“I’m not.”

“That’s good at least. Thanks Rose, I still don’t know, but I’m glad one of us is brave.”

“Rainbow Dash.”

“…yeah, I know, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be nicer to myself. I need to get going though. Goodbye Rose.”

“Goodbye.” Rose bid farewell plainly before Rainbow walked off towards the edge of the city. Rose’s simple smile never wavered, but a small teardrop escaped her eye before she walked away.

---

Rainbow Dash wasn’t somebody she herself would consider brave. She didn’t like being out at night, she didn’t like having to call ponies over the phone, and she’d been putting off mailing her brother for a few years. She wasn’t brave, she wasn’t fun to be around, and she didn’t like being pressured to talk with others.

That’s why she was still standing outside the forest, staring at it. She was mare enough to admit that she was uncomfortable with the idea of didn’t something she didn’t like. It was easy, really, she could just go back home reread one of her books and start work on that puzzle she’d been putting off, that sounded like a great way to pass her time.

No creepy forest, no searching for a clone, no helping out Applebloom or Twilight, no distractions, no change in scenery, no doing something interesting, no being proactive, no friends no… fun really.

Rainbow sighed, “I can’t let Twilight down, she’s depending on me.” She looked around, seeing other ponies pass by, they looked at her quickly before returning to whatever they were doing. A couple waved at her, and she smiled and waved back, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk with them anymore. Looking straight ahead, Rainbow saw the path before her.

The path was dirt and hardly tread, it lead into the forest, parting the tree covering some. Enough light was getting through that it wasn’t ominous, but Rainbow steeled her nerves anyway. “This isn’t a book, this is real life, I can do this.”

Taking a deep breath she stepped forward, beyond the official city border into the great unknown. She wasn’t sure if there was anything out in the wild; they didn’t teach much about what was outside the city during her days in school. It was just a forest that spread out into infinity, going on forever and never stopping. The only ponies in the universe lived in St. Orangeberg, so it’s not like she’d run into any raiders or bandits. Rainbow even doubted she’d be followed by some sort of killer. After all, she was asked by a friend to go find something that wasn’t death scene material. If she had to guess, Applejack was going to be the one killed first, Earth ponies were always the first to die.

Well that and the kids sleeping together, but none of her friends really had that problem. Rainbow shook her head, realizing she was distracting herself from moving forward. Then she realized that apparently she wasn’t because she was already in the forest. “When did that happen?” She asked, beginning to shake.

“I-I must have kept walking with I was thinking. What was I even thinking about?” Rainbow asked, but didn’t know. She didn’t know how all her new friends did it, but they all had great memories, she bet they always knew where to go, what to do or what to say. And with a good memory, she doubted she’d need to always been rereading her old books.

She probably would anyway, she loved reading, but it’s probably be a lot easier.

Rainbow looked around, there was a bit of sky exposed between the tree tops above her, like a skypath. That was nice, normally Dark Alley wouldn’t describe the sky, not unless it was night time or red or something. But the sky above Rainbow was a clear blue, like it always was went it was sunny. She smiled, “Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought.”

Immediately after saying those words her eyes darted around, “Wa-wait! I didn’t mean it; it’s just as bad as I thought! I’m not surprised!” She glanced at the bushes lining the path, and the tree branches, at everything around her. All in a vain attempt not to invoke whatever gods of literature didn’t exist. Seeing that the expression was just an expression, she sighed in relief. “That was a close one.”

---

Rainbow Dash was lost, plain and simple. She’d been in the forest for a while, maybe an hour, she didn’t really know, but it’d been a while at the very least. She stopped being afraid a few minutes after she entered, and that was nice, just exploring a forest for a while; being outside the city didn’t seem to matter, if this was everything else then she’d be fine with that.

But then she slowly started to feel nervous. What if she was just lost forever? No books, no food, nothing, and worst of all, no friends to spend her days with. She was still sort of new to the friend thing, other than Rose she hadn’t really talked to anyone until she met Twilight. Even in school nopony liked books or reading as much as she did. Twilight didn’t really either, she told Rainbow that Dark Alley was a bad author, but it was nice to talk and spend time with somebody.

Rainbow looked around herself, just more forest, she heard a bird or two, but didn’t see any. She considered flying up above the trees, but that wouldn’t really help her find an Alpha Clone.

…Unless they could fly too.

Spreading her wings out, Rainbow flew up into the skypath and saw what was around her. It was pretty much only forest like she thought, but it didn’t go on forever, after a while it just disappeared below the horizon. She turned around and saw that to her left was St. Orangeberg, which was strange, she thought she was walking away from it the whole time.

Not only was it not behind her, she could probably fly back in five minutes if she wanted to. The forest was apparently a strange place it was easy to get turned around in.

Looking everywhere she didn’t see another pony that looked like her, or any for that matter, so clones couldn’t fly, that was good to know. Rainbow decided to get back to searching on hoof, and so flew back down to the path and landed.

“Wait…” She said, unsure of herself as she looked down both directions the path took, “Which way did I come from?” Rainbow sighed, unhappy with her bad memory again, it was always something.

Maybe that’s why other ponies avoided her? No, she knew the reason was because she spent so much time with her nose in her novels. But that was fine, she guessed, she wasn’t as smart as Twilight, or Pinkie, or even Applejack, but she was just as smart as everyone else in town. Maybe even smarter?

“No,” Rainbow whispered as she picked a direction and started walking down the path again, “I’m not smarter than everypony else.” She knew more and bigger words, but that didn’t make her smarter, it just meant she used more time talking. She didn’t stare when you talked to her like the rest of the ponies in Partyville, but that just meant she wasn’t as focused as them.

“It wasn’t always that way, was it?” Rainbow asked as she saw a fork in the path, picking the left path. She remembered back when she was in school. She didn’t pay too much attention to the other ponies, but they were all different. They asked questions and played games, and pretended they were, well, they were all kids after all.

But then they all grew up, they stopped asking questions because they all knew the answers. They quieted down and focused better, stopped playing games and matured. “Not like me… They all grew up and I was too busy reading and not paying attention that they all left me behind…”

Rainbow lowered her head and just absently followed the path for a while. There was nothing she could do, all the ponies her age had so much more going for them, they had their lives together, and they knew who they were. And it’s not like she could ask Twilight for help, that unicorn had so much going on for her, she was on top of the world.

Rainbow sighed, resigning herself to the life she chose, it really was her own fault she wasn’t good at anything. You can’t get a job if your own skill is you like books, she checked, it wasn’t in the newspaper. No job listings were, really, that was another thing that was only in her books. The newspaper wasn’t a big bundle of paper with comics and weather and stuff, it was a sheet of paper with different changes going on downtown. She still remembered the last Partyville newspaper that had anything going on in Partyville happening in it. It was when they changed the name of the library a couple years ago.

It was nice to see something going on hear her in the local newspa- CLANG

“Ow,” Rainbow stepped back and rubbed her forehead. Looking at what she walked into, it was a chain-link fence with a metal sign bolted to it. St. Orangeberg city limits it read. Rainbow Dash was confused though. “I thought the forest was the edge of the city, why is there a fence here?” It looked pretty old too, the fence and the sign. Whoever built it, they do it a long time ago.

Then Rainbow looked past the fence and saw a clearing with… something… in it. Some sort of shack or garage. She stared at it for a couple minutes, wondering if a clone made it. It was outside the city after all. It was worth a try.

Author's Note:

Title reference to the weird al song.

I always liked writing Rainbow Dash in the GHT world, and this was really my first chance to write her internal process, XD Really see the world from her lens. I didn't know at the time it'd be my last.