Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Rainbow Dash and Full Heart

Rainbow Dash had returned to normal after the Sonic Rainboom. The extra long mane and tail, the colorful wings, the body decals, had all disappeared. She was just her ordinary awesome self again.

And she was holding Heartless, gently flapping her wings to keep them both suspended in the air.

Heartless had changed too. Her body had become deathly pale—looking and feeling like ash in Rainbow Dash’s hooves. Her bright pink coloring was gone, her sparkling mane faded, her eyes dull and empty, reflecting nothing. The big red Cutie Mark on her flank, the eye-catching heart, had lost its black outline and was faded as well. The only thing that told Rainbow Dash she was still alive was the steady thump, thump, thump that Rainbow Dash could feel from her heart now that she held her close.

And Heartless blinked, first looking up at Rainbow Dash with sadness and confusion, and then holding up her hooves in front of her face and blinking once more. There were cracks in her hooves, small pieces of her breaking off into dust, and beneath seemed to be all dust too.

“What’s happening to me?” Heartless whispered.

Rainbow Dash looked at her in a struggle to speak before she at last answered.

“I… I think you’re dying.”

“Dying?” Heartless blinked—and to Rainbow’s surprise a pair of real tears, not dust, came from Heartless’s eyes and left trails down her face. Lingering confusion and fear was visible to Rainbow Dash. “But how can I die? I don’t even know what I am.”

Rainbow Dash grimaced and bit her lip, unsure of how to respond. Heartless didn’t feel cold in her hooves—she didn’t feel like anything. She hardly weighed anything either, feeling like an empty shell of a pony. She then dropped her hooves and let her head rest against Rainbow’s body. More small cracks like those of incredibly dry ground cracking and breaking started to spread over her body.

Heartless closed her eyes as she limply rested where she was, it was certain she’d fall to the ground if Rainbow Dash wasn’t carrying her.

“I’m scared, Rainbow Dash.”

That brought a surge of emotion through Rainbow but she held her tongue. Her hooves clenched and she almost screamed at the pony in her grip. Even Rainbow wasn’t entirely sure how she felt anymore. What right did Heartless have to feel fear and be held like this? What right did she have to cry? Everything she had done, all those she had killed without any consideration or hesitation, without remembering any of them. It made Rainbow Dash so angry, angry enough that she wanted to yell and tell the pony she deserved to be scared, deserved even far worse than that and what was happening to her now. But she couldn’t. With the anger was also sorrow, regret, and while not exactly compassion or sympathy flooded her veins there was still a part of her that wished things could’ve ended happily.

This pony she was holding. She was a monster, she was something Rainbow Dash didn’t understand either. She was someone Rainbow couldn’t save completely. She was someone who never really seemed to understand what she was doing, like the others had said. It made her different. Scarier in some ways, pitiable in others. And that was finally what Rainbow Dash realized. Would her friends have wanted to help her too? Would they be upset that a better outcome couldn’t be reached? Would they think Heartless deserved forgiveness or to be helped?

Instead of saying anything, Rainbow Dash only sighed and held Heartless close. It was over anyways.

She just hoped that Heartless understood now… felt what Rainbow Dash was trying to make her feel. If she did, it could help her rest peacefully.

There wasn’t a single cloud anywhere around them thanks to her Sonic Rainboom. Just the sun above as it shined down on the two of them. It made Rainbow Dash warm but it didn’t change the lack of feeling from Heartless’s body. The day, just like Rainbow Dash had noticed on her approach, was still beautiful.

She even heard birds tweeting in the jungle below, something that had been absent before.

The pale pony had grown even more faded, and felt even lighter. Rainbow Dash watched as bits of her mane and tail, her back, and the bottom of her hooves all started to crack and fall away, carried on the breeze. Cracks had appeared all around her Cutie Mark and soon it peeled away too. Heartless’s entire body was crumbling to dust.

“It’s okay,” Rainbow Dash found herself saying in an attempt to comfort the other mare. “I don’t think you’ll need to be scared anymore.”

Heartless opened up her eyes again, eyes that used to sparkle above a face that normally had such a happy smile on it. Instead now she was blank. Empty. With just the slightest imprint of sorrow visible on her features. Her ears and the sides of her face were falling away, her chin, the back of her head… Rainbow Dash knew it wouldn’t be much longer.

Heartless seemed to know that too as she looked into Rainbow’s eyes.

“Can you hold me? Just like this?”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah. Yeah… I’ll keep holding you.”

Heartless closed her eyes and returned to merely resting against Rainbow Dash while more and more of her fell away.

A small smile returned to her face.

“I remember this. This feeling. Being held like this… it’s the first thing I can remember,” Heartless said calmly, peacefully. Quietly. She nestled further into Rainbow Dash as her back legs completely crumbled into dust and most of the rest of her body soon followed. “I like it… Rainbow Dash… you’re… warm...”

A final sound of cracking and crumbling before there was silence and Rainbow Dash’s hooves were empty.

She looked on as the last remnants of dust blew away in the wind, scattered through the sky.

“Goodbye, Heart-,” she stopped. “Goodbye, Full Heart.”

Author's Note:

Three chapters remaining. Though I may release the final two at the same time.

Boy it’s been quite the ride. This story has been a blast to write and its funny to think of how different it is from the initial concept I had of it. In the very beginning, this was meant to be a much sillier story with far wackier things going on in the north. Blizzard was going to be more comedic and he was going to die choking on a carrot while stopping someplace in his pursuit of Rainbow Dash. The north pole was going to be an interdimensional wormhole where strange creatures came to do battle in a fighting tournament. Stuff like that. However, considering I had already written some silly adventures and parodies of classical adventures, I decided it would be far more fun to write a normal adventure for Rainbow Dash.

And so the story kept evolving from then on. Even after deciding it would be serious, some arcs are completely different from their first concept. Especially Hoofica. Would you believe that Wish didn’t even exist at first? Neither did Vox, the King and Queen, or Dotted Easel. Dreamweaver’s plan was to collect all the leftover negative energies from Nightmare Moon, Sombra, the Pony of Shadows, etc. and merge them into one new super-monster where he’d spread despair and take over the world. Hoofica would’ve been far more of a destroyed and dark place with almost no civilization left aside from a small resistance. I found the idea for the story fun but in practice it didn’t come out to much and eventually I decided to totally rework it.

The Metal Mountain/Eternal Furnace was also almost completely different. It was meant to be a gigantic floating airship/Laputa kind of place that spewed trash and refuse everywhere and Rainbow Dash would be trying to stop it from polluting everywhere it went, only to discover what had really happened on the inside. And most of that with Resin was the same. But I found the story difficult to work and it changed again.

The Great Camel Desert was completely different too, it originally was going to end on a sand train with Rainbow Dash fighting against essentially a random thug in a small room in a claustrophobic fight similar to James Bond’s fight with Red Grant. Meanwhile Daring Do would be fighting a unicorn like Supernova. I never really came up with a satisfying way for that arc to end so I changed it once more and it became what you got.

Oh yeah originally Supernova had nothing to do with Harlequin Grey. In fact, Harlequin Grey originally appeared and did even less in this story than he actually did but I realized I had to make him appear more so added some stuff. That whole little excursion with him and White in the desert south of Hoofica? That was written in the middle of me publishing the story. That was the last thing I came up with and put in the story. The bit with Coral Sea at the end of the Grand Ocean too, I kept going back and forth if I wanted to include it or not but felt that Harlequin Grey needed to do more in the story. Originally it was also going to be Godfrey raised from the dead to become Grey’s puppet but I didn’t like that idea and there was more to do with Coral Sea at that point anyways.

The Sarraroccon Order in general were also last minute additions to the story. So was the brief Wandering Island arc because I saw that I didn’t have enough of the crew of the Heart of Azure actually just out searching for Merlantis and the Trident. There needed to be more regular adventuring on the ocean so I put that in.

I also made sure to have just the right amount of chapters of Giraffes so “The Happiest Pony in the World” could be chapter 100. Did that on purpose.

Also throughout both stories I had a number of chapters I wanted to name “Rainbow Dash vs. Blank” but decided to keep that naming convention just for “Rainbow Dash vs. Harlequin Grey”.

My favorite three new characters to write were:

1. Godfrey (Big surprise)
2. Wish
3. Anathema

Also for this story I had a theme going with most of the major characters representing one of the Major Arcana. But I could never find a non-cringe, non-blunt way of conveying this in the story so I’m just putting it down here right now:

The Fool: Gilbert
The Magician: Tempest
The High Priestess: Daylight Gleam
The Empress: Senax
The Emperor: Breakwater
The Heirophant: Barnaby
The Lovers: Dotted Easel
The Chariot: Godfrey
Strength: Wish
The Hermit: Anathema
Wheel of Fortune: Miss Valentine
Justice: Captain Red Wing
The Hanged Man: Raalzeron
Death: Berten
Temperance: Daring Do
The Devil: Vox
The Tower: Dreamweaver
The Star: Coral Sea
The Moon: Supernova
The Sun: Rosalie
Judgement: Lord Copper
The World Upright: Rainbow Dash
The World Reversed: Harlequin Grey

And of course Heartless exists outside of everything so she isn’t included.

I’m very happy with how these stories have come out but I know I could’ve done more at the same time. It might sound silly to say, but that original concept for the story was that it would be twice as long as this. 3 million words. You might think 1.5 million words is already a super long story, but when you think of what the story contained, how many places Rainbow visited, that it isn’t really that much. It certainly doesn’t compare to large epics such as A Song of Ice and Fire or our big fimfic series such as Austraeoh (which I’d like to reiterate I did not start reading until after finishing writing Ego and having Around the World fully planned). I know if I was a better writer, better at prose and descriptiveness, better at naturally and organically padding and developing things, I could’ve improved a lot of these arcs. Four in particular stand out to me as arcs that I really could have and should have done more with. True Pegasus, Mammoth of a Problem, Eternal Furnace, and Hoofica.

All four of those arcs should be twice as long as they are. You might balk at that but it’s true. With the worlds I created there, there was so much more to do with them, so many characters and things to develop. I should have had more of a real war going on with the pegasi, should have had Rainbow come into conflict with Karkona more times and develop the city more. And especially with Hoofica—there was a ton to do there. I really wanted to show off more of the average life in Hoofica, and Wish’s life in the castle, more. The first part of the story before she actually met Rainbow Dash in the dungeon should have gone on a fair deal longer. In the end though, too many characters were just left as one-offs or props. If I was a better writer I could’ve made these places feel so much more alive and have Rainbow’s journeys through them feel more natural.

I’m proud of these arcs but there are disappointments too of course because of things like this.

The Grand Ocean though I’m happy with, I think I wanted the characters to spend a little more time in the Archipelago and down in Merlantis, but for the most part I’m happy with what I wrote there. That arc was essentially half the story—with everything after being what I consider a long epilogue—and I had built up so much leading to it and its conclusion that it truly felt weird to move on and no longer be writing it. I had a lot of fun writing it. The Grand Ocean and Hoofica were the two arcs I was most looking forward to writing, I knew they would be big undertakings but it was exciting to write them.

Also, although I had the ending planned for a long time obviously, even I wasn’t totally sure what Rainbow Dash and Heartless would actually say to each other.

And that about wraps things up for Rainbow Dash. There were also a few rules I had in place that are mostly the same rules I have for all my main adventure fics:

1. No bat ponies or changelings as I find them overused
2. No romance involving Rainbow Dash (There were some times I wanted to break this but in the end it really wouldn’t fit the story’s style or atmosphere)
3. No excessive violence (the story being T-rated instead of E thanks to everything about Hoofica allowed me to be a little flexible with this occasionally)

I’m very tired.

Comments

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Great chapters!

Great story arc!

[Mini-Joe]

Fantastic work man, it's a ton of work. Very fun adventures.

[redmar]

I'm looking forward to the last few chapters and this was a great story.

[RoboRed]

I'm quite satisfied with the way that fight ended.

Boy it’s been quite the ride.

Ain't that the truth. I started this at the beginning of Rainbow's journey just a few months ago, technically part of the same story, caught up and crammed in all the rest of the currently-written fics for this universe, and now here were are finally at the end. It's been one heck of a world trip.

And there's still a couple more stories yet to come! (hopefully🤞)

Also for this story I had a theme going with most of the major characters representing one of the Major Arcana.

That's really interesting. I don't know a whole lot about the Major Arcana so I definitely wouldn't have put this together. I just now read over the desciptions of them to get an idea of what you were aiming for.

One that particularly stuck out to me was The Tower and Dreamweaver. Hoofica was probably my favorite arc next to the Grand Ocean. Towards the later parts of the arc and definitely at the climax of it I was getting similar vibes to The Tower of Doctor Zalost from Courage the Cowardly Dog, which also shares some similar themes of despair and depression. I recall you mentioning in another post somewhere that you took some inspiration from older cartoons in your writing, one of them being Courage, and I was wondering if that episode was at all inspiration for Hoofica. Having looked at the description/symbolism of the Tower card I'm wondering now if that card might have further back reaches and inspired John Dillworth to write that episode. Some deep food for thought.

I could’ve improved a lot of these arcs. Four in particular stand out to me as arcs that I really could have and should have done more with. True Pegasus, Mammoth of a Problem, Eternal Furnace, and Hoofica.

All four of those arcs should be twice as long as they are. You might balk at that but it’s true. With the worlds I created there, there was so much more to do with them, so many characters and things to develop.

Maybe, I suppose. I see the point you're trying to make here and yeah, seeing all these amazing locales get fleshed out with smaller details of daily life would've been pretty cool. You've done some great worldbuilding across these stories. As far as getting the story going though I'd argue that they were long enough.
Although I wouldn't have minded a bit more spicing up on True Pegasus and Hoofica but that's because I'm biased towards Pegasus culture and just really liking the Hoofica arc.

The Grand Ocean and Hoofica were the two arcs I was most looking forward to writing, I knew they would be big undertakings but it was exciting to write them.

And they're my faves.

Also, although I had the ending planned for a long time obviously, even I wasn’t totally sure what Rainbow Dash and Heartless would actually say to each other.

It was right up to this point where I started thinking harder about Heartless and changing my opinion on her. That dialog they had in the calm right before the fight was really impactful. Again, I'm satisfied with how this turned out.

And that about wraps things up for Rainbow Dash. There were also a few rules I had in place that are mostly the same rules I have for all my main adventure fics:

1. No bat ponies or changelings as I find them overused
2. No romance involving Rainbow Dash (There were some times I wanted to break this but in the end it really wouldn’t fit the story’s style or atmosphere)
3. No excessive violence (the story being T-rated instead of E thanks to everything about Hoofica allowed me to be a little flexible with this occasionally)

1) Uh...well alright then, I guess...
2) Pretty sure a lot of people who read this were pretty close to shipping Barnaby and Rainbow Dash at the Oreville arc.
3) I'd say you did really well within the bounds of T-rated to make this work.

I’m very tired.

Thanks for the great story! Now go post and go sleep.

[MagicS]

11609978

And there's still a couple more stories yet to come! (hopefully🤞)

Both stories are fully planned out but I have not yet written a single word of them and don't know when I'll start or when they'll be published. But I will write them.

[TheCommunistDog]

And so she finally found peace