Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Startracking - Part 4

Rainbow Dash was in Ponyville, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. On a cloud, half napping, her mind occupied with nothing in particular. Resting in the shade of another cloud higher up in the air, letting the faint breeze run over her feathers and through her mane. Just relaxing, not doing much of anything.

She didn't notice things immediately. Being on a cloud, far from the ground, being out of the Behemoth's shadow, being far from Canterlot, there wasn't much for her to notice. No cold chill over her skin or vibration running up her hooves, no ground shaking where she stood or buildings dancing around her. So it took a moment, before she noticed something was amiss.

It was the commotion in town that woke her up. The nervous yelling, the occasional scream, the thumping of hooves as ponies ran this way and that and rushed out of buildings and called to each other. Her first reaction was to stand there for a second, confused, looking about as she tried to understand what was going on.

Her second reaction, just a moment after the first one, was to swoop down from her cloud and begin helping others. Understanding what was happening could wait. The earth was shaking and half of the buildings in town were threatening to come down, and she had citizens to save. Dashing back and forth across the streets, she pulled many a creature out of buildings, more than once through the windows, and helped more than a few find each other in the confusion.

Only when every direction she looked in from her hovering spot above the town yielded either dangerous situations devoid of creatures or groups of creatures devoid of dangerous surroundings did she allow herself to unfocus from helping others, and once more let herself question what was happening and why.

That is when, while turning around to look for clues, Rainbow Dash first saw the Behemoth. And her first thought upon seeing it was that it was big. Really big. Which in fairness was the same first thought a lot of other creatures had upon first seeing the Behemoth, and it would have been so for an even greater number of them were it not for those running for their lives either because of collapsing buildings or because of the Behemoth itself.

Rainbow just hovered there, about as still as one could be while bobbing up and down under the beating of their own wings. So. Unreasonably big, mysterious, and seemingly supernatural thing in Canterlot, wreaking havoc all the way to Ponyville and likely across the whole country with its mere presence and steps. The rainbow laser might not work, depending on whether it was intentionally destroying things or it had merely found itself there it might not even be needed.

The sensible thing was consulting Twilight. Who'd probably already know what the thing actually was, being Twilight and all. A lucky coincidence that going to her meant getting closer to the thing in question too. Rainbow cast a last glance around, making sure everycreature was safe, then shot off towards Canterlot in a blur of colours.

Author's Note:

Proofreading by IncongruousAndHarmonious