Ponies Don't Wear Shorts

by kits

Dash is Bored [Rainbow Dash][Sunset Shimmer]

8:57

"Ugh! So bored!" Rainbow Dash announced to the ceiling fan. Throwing herself onto her back, she glanced through at her messages again. No reply from Pinkie. She had alerts enabled, so she knew it was pointless to flick through all her other friends, but it killed about ten seconds so she did it anyway. Rarity, Sunset, Twilight, AJ, Fluttershy, of course, but also Lemon Zest, Juniper, Thunderlane, Indigo Zap, Trixie, Sour Sweet, Vinyl Scratch, Sugarcoat, and Sunny Flare. Even Scootaloo and her friends were at some last-week-of-vacation cooking camp. Her random walk through her friends list triggered a spark of irritation that she latched onto. How dare they all leave her to stew in Ponyville by herself! But try as she might, the righteous indignation faded as fast as it had come on.

As she had seven times this morning, Dash let her phone flop back onto her bed. She stared at the spinning ceiling fan until the blades seemed to vanish and it was her that was spinning.

A buzz brought her out of her trace. She shot up into a sitting position and eagerly unlocked her phone, thumbs automatically performing the ritual that would bring up the latest received message. It took her a full second to realize that she'd gotten excited about a reminder email proclaiming that she only had two more days to sign up for school sports.

Dash had enough self control to resist the urge to hurl her phone at the wall. It was still pretty new and her Mom had made her work to pay for it herself. Nine hundred dollars was a lot of "would you like fries with that"s to break on a whim. With a groan, Rainbow dropped back into her bed, settling back into her boneless sloth.

A second buzz. It could have been seconds, minutes, or hours later. Well, not hours. Rainbow almost ignored it. It was probably some lame notification from some lame game she'd already grown bored of trying to suck her back in. Hardly worth the effort of lifting the thing. Boredom won out and she brought her phone back to her face just in time to catch the notification banner sliding back up and away.

Sunnybuns: Sorry, Dash. I promised P. Twilight and P. Celestia I'd make it back home before vacation was over. Hang out when I get back?

Great. Her last hope was heading out of town. Way out of town. Dash let herself flop half off of her bed, only moving to the floor when the aching in her spine outweighed the effort it took to succumb completely to gravity. With a heavy sigh, she brought her phone back to her face. Two minutes had passed. Rainbow checked her message to Pinki--

"Screw this." Dash growled at herself. Rolling to her stomach, she found Sunset's last message, she thumbed in a message of her own and hit send before she could reconsider. She levered herself to her feet, ignoring the stinging tingle that had set into her left leg, and began digging through the laundry basket, looking for anything that was clean. She ignored the buzz her phone gave a few seconds later. Grabbing a skirt that wasn't too wrinkled, she ran off to the bathroom to brush her teeth. It didn't matter what the message said, she wasn't going to let the answer be no anyway.

As she hurriedly dragged a brush through her hair, Rainbow idly wondered what else besides chocolate fondue she'd end up eating before the week was out.

---

"For the last time, Rainbow," Sunset Shimmer quickened her step, as if she could somehow walk fast enough to leave Rainbow behind, "You can not come with me to my 'Magical Horse Kingdom' just because you're bored!" She hitched her satchel up, as if she could wall out Dash's very existence and thereby not have to deal with a very loud, very annoying, and very persistent friend.

Rainbow snorted and rolled her eyes. Her arms were folded up behind her head, exuding an air of lazy assuredness that had Sunset on edge. Too bad it didn't hinder her in the least. She easily kept pace with Sunset. "Yeah. If I didn't give up and go away the first ten times you said that, what makes you think an eleventh is going to do much good?"

"It's my home," Sunset growled. "Not some playground for bored adolescents."

"I'm eighteen, Sunnybuns." The smugness in Rainbow's voice oozed over Sunset and she ground her teeth to keep herself from saying something she'd regret later. "And in case you missed it," she caught Rainbow winking at her as she made and fired a finger gun, "that's 'adult' in human years."

Sunset rolled her eyes. "Yay." Her voice held all the enthusiasm of boulder in an empty room. "It's not a playground for 'adults' either." Rainbow had better be able to hear those quotes. "Besides, Princess Twilight—"

"Yeah, yeah. She's worried about dimensional boundaries blah, blah, blah." Dash waved away a dozen theses on dimensional manipulation like so many cobwebs. "But I figure with you and her and Starlight—who I kinda wanna hang out with again, just, you know, Eff Why Eye—anything that was gonna happen would have by now."

Sunset froze mid retort and Rainbow continued several steps past her before turning around and cocking an eyebrow. Sunset dropped her hand back to her side. "You make a good point," she said to the bush by the path.

Rainbow flashed her a grin. "So I can come?"

Sunset hesitated. If she hadn't tried to beat Rainbow to the statue, she could have written to Princess Twilight and asked permission, but the journal was the link between worlds. She didn't want to risk the portal closing if she brought it back to Equestria, and so had left it safe at home.

What was the worst that could happen? Rainbow gets mistaken for the native version, goes along with it, and... Twilight's other friend was a bit miffed? Somepony got a forged signature on a poster? "Fine. You can come. But!" she raised her voice, drowning out Rainbow's "yes!" and catching her fist mid pump. "There's a few rules."

"No problem. Lay 'em on me, pony pal."

It was Sunset's turn to roll her eyes. "Well rule one was going to be don't go blabbing about the portal, but I think not calling me 'pony pal' ever again trumps it." She set her face in her most serious stare. It lasted all of five seconds before she and Rainbow both broke out in giggles.

After they'd recovered, Sunset continued. "Just, try to keep the whole other-world thing on the down low, ok? I dunno how much Princess Twilight has told everypony—yes, that's the proper way to speak there—about the portal."

"Yeah, yeah." Dash flung one arm around Sunset's shoulders and jabbed her other thumb at her own chest. "I've seen enough aliens-come-to-earth movies to know how to play the part." They walked for a dozen paces before Dash spoke again. "So 'everypony'? Anything else I need to know to not stick out like a sore thumb."

Sunset snorted. "You won't have thumbs. Nopony will. That's kinda one of the defining characteristics of being a pony."

"Huh." Dash descended into quiet contemplation once again.

"Hey, Sunset."

"Yeah?"

"If ponies don't have hands, what are your rules for soccer?"

Author's Note:

I see a lot of the same character tags. I wonder if I have a preference?

Comments

[ZanarNaryon]

well now I want an entire fic about Sunset and Rainbow having wacky adventures in Equestra