Rainbow Dash's Unstoppable Ego

by MagicS

A Mammoth of a Problem XI

A few hours before the sun had completely descended and turned the northern world into night, Rainbow Dash was flying back down the road leading away from the quarry and towards the city. The traffic on the road had picked up considerably as even more mammoths were traveling back and forth between quarry and city. Some of the wagons she saw going towards the quarry were filled up with food and water while the ones going to the city were of course still full of stone and dirt.

Dirt, huh? Did they use the dirt taken from the quarry as fill elsewhere in the city? Maybe it was healthy enough to use as soil for some of the personal gardens that mammoths had. She could always ask Larkon now, or Korsa the next time she saw him.

As she made it back to the city limits with the homes and other buildings outside the wall she started thinking to herself; she really hadn’t checked out this area that much. In fact aside from a few cursory glances earlier in the day she had essentially ignored it. But now it would take barely a minute to actually get to Larkon’s, maybe she could go looking around here? There might’ve been an interesting shop or place somewhere nestled in this area.

So once she got to the buildings she left the path of the road and went down some alleys and side streets. She mostly saw small (for mammoths) homes and some homemakers cleaning up their yards or getting ready for dinner. With a wave and a smile to whoever saw her she flew on through these buildings. A couple things stood out, like a well that was placed in a small open area, and a grassy park that was so much smaller than what she had seen in other parts of the city she hesitated to even call it a park in the first place.

Maybe because of the hour she hardly saw anyone else outside of their homes or just hanging out, there were only a few mammoths obviously in the middle of work carrying packages and other stuff down the streets. Compared to the liveliness she had seen in the main part of the city yesterday this “suburb” was pretty subdued. Almost at a level where it felt lonely and unwelcoming.

Larkon had told her that not everywhere in the city would be especially inviting to her but she thought he mostly meant that slum all the way beyond the river.

She turned a corner and flew past a brick schoolhouse that had a jungle gym built right outside it. That put a smile on her face at least.

Until it was wiped right off her face by a snowball whizzing past her head.

“What the?” Rainbow Dash halted in midair and looked in the direction the snowball had came from. Three young, maybe even barely teenage, mammoths the size of yaks were standing in the street, two of them gathering up bits of snow that had been left over and packing them into balls while the third one smirked at her.

“So you’re that dumb pony thing or whatever that everyone’s talking about?” The smirking mammoth said.

These are just some dumb punk kids. Rainbow Dash frowned and flew over to them, hovering just slightly above their reach. “What’s your problem?”

“You!” One of them who had finished making a snowball said before launching it at her with his trunk.

Naturally she just slightly moved out of the way to avoid it and raised an eyebrow at the delinquent mammoths. “Me?”

“Yeah, you’re not welcome here! This place is for mammoths and mammoths only!” The last one said and threw his snowball as well. “Get out!”

Rainbow Dash backflipped to let it fly over her and came back up right where she had been. “Okay? I mean, you know the whole senate and basically everyone else I’ve met has been happy to welcome me here, right?”

“Well I don’t like how you fly either!” He stuck his tongue out at her.

“And your rainbow hair is dumb. Did you paint that yourself?” The smirking mammoth snickered.

“Seriously...” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. These really were just some dumb kids whose parents hadn’t taught them respect. She wasn’t going to get angry, she was the adult here and working at the school had done a… decent… job of making her get along with unruly brats. “Look, you kids should just go home. I’ve got places to be anyways so just run along.”

“Shut up, pony!” One of them reached up with his trunk to try and grab her tail.

“Quit it!” Dash zipped out of the way, only to see the others packing up more snow. “Are you brats seriously trying to start a fight?”

The smirker launched another snowball at her. “Get out, loser!”

Rainbow Dash batted it with her wing, letting it crumble to dust. “Look, I’m being nice here but if you don’t stop I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson. I don’t think your parents are going to like that.”

“And what’s the stupid pony going to do, huh?” One of the mammoths said as he jumped up and tried to grab her with his trunk.

The other attempted that too, trying to hit her out of the air. “You’re like a dumb flying bug! And that tattoo on your butt is stupid!”

A vein popped out on Rainbow Dash’s forehead. “You asked for it!”

Now she still wasn’t going to get angry angry. Or get in a serious fight with some annoying kids who didn’t know any better. Larkon definitely wouldn’t like that and she didn’t want to get in trouble for giving a mammoth kid a black eye. But she couldn’t exactly just let this stand, she needed to discipline these kids cause obviously they also shouldn’t be doing such a thing to a guest of the city. What if someone else had come here and this was the kind of reception they got? If these brats were their first encounter with mammoths? Well that would ruin pretty much everything that Larkon and the rest of them were trying to do.

When the smirking mammoth struck his trunk out at her, Rainbow Dash grabbed it with her hoof and zoomed down between the three mammoths before they could react. With lightning speed she grabbed the other two trunks and tied them all together in a knot that would only become worse the more they tried to just pull their trunks free.

“There,” Rainbow Dash grinned and flew back up, wiping her hooves together in a job well done.

“Ughh!” They all grunted as they tried to pull themselves loose to no avail.

“Put our trunks back!” The smirker (who wasn’t smirking now) yelled at her in a nasally voice distorted by his trunk being in a knot.

“Sorry, but you kids need to learn to respect others,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Have fun.” She turned to leave but paused, looking back at them with a smug and knowing expression. “Oh yeah, it would be pretty embarrassing if anyone knew it was a dumb pony that got the better of you three, wouldn’t it?”

They glared at her while she flew off laughing.

---

As it turned out, Larkon was waiting right outside on his porch with the rest of his family. Rainbow Dash hoped she didn’t keep them there waiting too long. For whatever it was they were going to be doing now. Apparently the surprise he had been keeping for her also involved his family, and she had zero ideas of what it could be. She also wanted to ask him about why he had suddenly had to leave earlier today and just who that other mammoth, Abalun, was. But whatever he had to do was obviously long finished, now he was back to being her guide.

“Rainbow Dash!” Larkon waved as he saw her coming down from the sky.

“Yo,” she waved back coming to a stop on his porch. Shibu and Alykon looked happy to see her but Samarkon just ignored her completely. Well two could play at that game.

“Did you enjoy the rest of your day? Again I’m sorry I had to leave you alone,” Larkon asked.

“It’s fine, I had a fun time.”

Shibu raised an eyebrow at her husband as they talked. “Why did you have to leave Rainbow Dash off on her own anyways? You were supposed to show her around the city weren’t you?”

Larkon coughed and tried to avert his gaze from his wife. “Some things just came up, I told you.” He regained his composure and looked to Rainbow Dash. “Regardless, I’d love to hear about what you did today after we parted ways but it will have to wait. Tonight we have a special event to go to.”

“You’ve been hyping it up all day so what is it?” Rainbow Dash smiled. “Something fun?”

“Oh yes, something I believe you will find especially fun as a very sports inclined creature yourself,” Larkon smiled back.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes shot wide open and she buzzed up to look him right in the eye. “Sports? You guys have a sport you play here? What is it?!”

Larkon laughed and patted her back with his trunk. “Rainbow Dash, get ready to experience your first game of Trunkball.”

Comments

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Great chapter!

[superfun]

Figured that not everymammoth would appreciate Dash.