• Published 14th Aug 2020
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Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego - MagicS



Bored at the recent lack of adventure in her life, Rainbow Dash goes flying off to find some.

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Of Things to Come

Slow wasn’t exactly Rainbow Dash’s thing. In any way, shape, or form. Yet that didn’t mean she had to go as fast as possible all the time and that was why she was still flying up the river instead of having already reached the checkpoint by now. She had ditched her ice floe barge not too long ago and went to flying along the southern coast of the river over the rocks for a change of pace. Now it was getting into dusk and the sun would be down soon. Which possibly meant her carefree attitude about traveling up the river could come back to bite her if she couldn’t find any sort of shelter.

She was confident that if it came down to it she could fly up, gather some clouds, and make herself a temporary respite from most of the cold of the north, but she’d prefer to avoid that effort if she could.

How close was the checkpoint? She didn’t actually know. William only told her that it was on the way to Yakyakistan and that it was impossible to miss. Only now did she think that some more detailed directions would’ve been useful. It also probably would’ve been smart to ask for any spare bags those yaks had and maybe another potato or two. But that might’ve been imposing too much on them, she was fine doing that with Applejack but not complete strangers.

Which meant that for now all she could do was keep flying on. Keep flying with the snowy and rocky ground surrounding her, the slopes of the mountains and the river beside her, and hope something came up. Something that would either shelter her, feed her, or entertain her. Maybe not in that order. There weren’t even anymore seals or bears around or anything and she hadn’t seen a single sign of civilization like those huts the reindeer had.

“I’m booooored,” Rainbow Dash yelled out to the wide world.

Her voice echoed off the mountains next to her and she had to wince at her own volume. If she did that closer and up a bit higher she could’ve practically started an avalanche.

“At least that would’ve been something!” She grumbled.

Rainbow Dash dropped down to the ground and picked up a smooth stone that she saw without stopping her flight, glancing over the river she chucked the stone sideways and watched it skip across the water several times before faltering and plunging into the cool depths. The river had narrowed considerably but it was still a bit wide for any stone thrown like that to make it across.

The bored pegasus flapped her gums and turned over so her back was facing the ground, flying upside-down while she watched the darkening sky.

An hour? Maybe two? Before it turns to night completely and the temperature drops below zero. She’d be a pony popsicle caked in frost if she just tried to fly or stay out during the night up here. Already she could picture her wings freezing in place with her feathers turned brittle and icicles hanging off of her. Not something she wanted to experience. And she was kind of hungry too, the best she could do about that at the moment was probably eating some snow off the ground. Yuck. Were there any kind of edible plants or anything that grew on snowy mountains? Applejack or Fluttershy might know, or even Twilight, but none of them were around to ask. So Rainbow Dash was just left with her own thoughts and her own choices to make. Did she try barreling up the river in the hopes she could make it to the checkpoint before it got too dark? Or did she attempt to find someplace else to stay for the night and finish her flight tomorrow morning. Both decisions carried a risk. For now at least she should stop taking things so leisurely and seriously look around.

She flipped back over and rose up a bit higher to give herself a greater field of view. The benefit of being in a place like this that was mostly empty and almost entirely a mix of cold and dull colors was that anything abnormal stuck out like a sore hoof. So if there was something here she would see it for sure.

And as it was when she passed the slope of one mountain to look up another she saw numerous buildings sitting halfway up the snowy side of the mountain.

Rainbow Dash halted and looked up at them with a raised eyebrow. “Is that the checkpoint or something else?” It looked a little… rundown from where she was. And too far from the river. There weren’t any roads or paths leading up it and the snow was completely unmoved, showing no signs of any travel through it lately. And since yaks couldn’t fly there had to be something like that unless the checkpoint was so slow that most of the time no one had any reason to leave any of its buildings.

Well even if it wasn’t the checkpoint it was looking like shelter. Rainbow Dash frowned and quickly flew up the mountainside to it. The buildings were all unsurprisingly made of wood with a lot of broken glass windows and broken planks and beams falling off in some spots with even a caved in roof or two. Some of them were half-submerged in the snow, their doors almost completely blocked off.

“What is this?” Rainbow Dash wondered as she looked over the site.

There were about twelve buildings in total, again something too small to be called a town, more like a rest stop than anything. Most of the buildings were just the size of small houses with a couple of those being two-stories and then one larger building situated a bit further up the mountainside that looked more like an old warehouse, the back half of it was completely crushed under the snow, Rainbow Dash could see splintered boards sticking up haphazardly everywhere.

“Hello! Is there anybody here?” Rainbow Dash cupped her hooves over her mouth and shouted.

The prior worries about an avalanche were completely forgotten.

Disregarding that, there was no response from the decimated little hamlet. Not like she expected anyone else to be here after seeing what it was like but she still wanted to be sure before she started checking things out. Since it seemed abandoned and she doubted anyone would care, Rainbow Dash flew in through the open second-story window of one of the two-story buildings and had a look around. It was unlikely there would be food in a place like this, or at least any food that hadn’t gone bad or rotted, but maybe she could find an old bed or sheets or something for the night. Just being inside was already something that would do wonders for her.

It was unfortunately pretty empty. Like someone else had ransacked it already or perhaps the previous owners cleaned it out before they left it. There was a broken chair in this upstairs room lying in the corner as well as a toppled over cabinet with all of its barren drawers pulled out and strewn around the floor. The door was completely missing, the only trace of it left were busted hinges barely hanging onto the frame. Rainbow Dash walked past it and into the hallway, where there was a wooden pedestal immediately to her left on the opposite side of the hallway from the stairs with an old flowerpot sitting atop it. No flowers in it at all though, not even dead ones. Since it didn’t look like there were any other rooms up here Rainbow Dash walked to the stairs and glided down them to the first story. The first door she saw right at the bottom of the stairs opened up into an empty closet, and the rest of the downstairs looked just as empty as the upstairs with every room missing all but a few destroyed pieces of furniture.

“Okay, I’m not staying in here,” Rainbow Dash scowled. “I’m gonna at least find something that’ll work for a bed in this place before I settle down.”

The front door wouldn’t open since the snow was too deep outside so she popped the frame on the busted downstairs window and flew right out of it to the next nearest house. This one only had one story but at least the roof was in good enough shape. She couldn’t pop a window from the outside and she didn’t want to break one of them so unfortunately she had to dig for a while to make enough room in the snow for the front door to open up.

After that her hooves were freezing and she was shivering a bit even with the effort keeping the blood pumping through her veins. Rainbow Dash quickly closed the door and looked around this rundown home while rubbing her hooves together for warmth. The entire building was just this one room but to her immense fortune there were a few more things inside it than what she had seen in the previous building.

Namely a very ragged and deformed mattress with several torn sheets over it all piled up in the corner.

“Awesome,” Dash sighed in relief and floated over to it.

Outside it was close to dark so she wasted no time in wrapping herself up and plopping down on the bed. Early to bed and early to rise. Tomorrow morning she’d get out of here quickly and get to that checkpoint, and then the True North beyond.

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