Pinkie Pegasus

by Lets Do This

The Party Pony

"Heyyyyy, Rainbow Dash!"

Sprawled on a cloud in front of the dorm wing of Cloudsdale Flight School, the rainbow-pinioned pegasus buried her snout under her forehooves and groaned disgustedly.

"Ughhh! Not now, Pinkie Pie."

A radioactively pink pegasus with a cotton-candy mane and tail swooped down from the dorm's roof. She darted swiftly about Rainbow's cloud, her cotton-fluff wings buzzing at hummingbird speed.

"You were goin' all-out at practice this morning!" Pinkie shouted in her high-pitched, sugar-rush voice. "You were like, zoom! And then like, zoom-zoom-ZOOM! And then like loop-de-loop-annnd-BOOM!"

Collapsing on her back on a neighboring cloud, Pinkie giggled helplessly. Then she smiled at Rainbow. Upside down, putting a frown on her face so it still looked like she was still smiling. The resulting muddle of facial features made Rainbow feel queasy.

"Pinkie, that is so Uncanny Valley, ya know?"

Pinkie Pie just laughed, the way she usually did while trying to figure out what something meant. Then she rolled over and smiled again, this time the right way up. "Whatcha doooinnn?"

"Nothing." Rainbow sighed. "Just wavin' goodbye to my future as it flies off without me." She hopped up from the cloud, turned her back to the School, and slunk off. It shouldn't have been possible to slink away dispiritedly in midair, but Rainbow somehow managed it.

Just proves I'm still awesome, she thought.

A fluttering of wings, and Pinkie Pie was suddenly in front of her. Her forehooves grabbed Rainbow's cheeks, and she smiled, brightly and sympathetically.

"Whatsa matter, Dashie?"

Rainbow frowned back at her, annoyed.

"Why can't I just hate you?"

"I dunno, why?" Pinkie shrugged. "We are still friends, right?"

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Don't remind me."

Because Pinkie was right, they were friends, and had been nearly as long as Rainbow could remember.

Which sometimes seemed a bit too long, actually...

------------------------------

It started in Junior Speedsters Flight Camp. Rainbow was arcing around over the play area, practicing high-speed cornering through the target cloud-rings, while at the same time keeping an eye on the runway and play area below, to see what the cool kids were up to.

And that was how she happened to spot, trotting out of the archway of the Registration hangar, a small blob of pink with a fluffy mane and feather-duster wings. The pink filly set down her travelling bag, then stared up and around at the other fillies and colts winging through the air, with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. Then she hopped into the air herself. Hopped, that was the word for it. She pronked down the cloud-brick stairs on her hooves, sproink-sproink-sproink. Then onwards across the clouds, her wings held out stiffly, not even trying to lift off.

Suddenly, at the top of a hop she swooped upward into the air. She circled round for a bit, then landed right back on her hooves, next to her bag at the top of the stairs. And then did the whole thing all over again, seemingly for the joy of it.

Lame, Rainbow thought. Just another airhead newbie. She wasn't going to give the pink filly a second thought.

But then she heard Hoops, the tan, flop-maned leader of the Loser Patrol, guffaw loudly. "Hey guys, get a load of this," he called to his friends, brown-coated Dumb-Bell and charcoal-maned Score. "This puff-wing can barely get off the ground!"

"Yeah," Dumb-Bell sneered. "Looks like somepony sent their prize piglet to the Camp by mistake."

The pink filly giggled brightly, snorting and snerking every now and then. "I'm not a piglet, silly! I'm Pinkie Pie!"

"Pinkie Pie?" Hoops was almost speechless, it was such a perfect straight line. But he was too slow, and Score leapt on it first:

"Are ya sure it ain't... Piggy-Pie?"

The three bullies laughed derisively. And Pinkie joined in, laughing merrily as if it was the best thing she'd heard all day. And snorting and snerking as she laughed, which only made the bullies laugh harder. Even Rainbow had to grin at that. The pink filly did kinda look and sound like one of those fluff-winged pigs they kept around the farm walls in Cloudsdale, to eat scraps and chase away the woodpeckers.

But then Hoops unwisely went on. "I bet she bombs out the first day. She hasn't got a chance."

"Huh?" Pinkie's smile faded. "Whaddaya mean? Why not?"

"You kidding me? Nothing that fat and dumb can possibly fly fast enough to make the grade at Flight Camp. The whole point is to fly. Right, guys?" Hoops leered at Pinkie smugly. "Right, Piggy-Pie?"

He laughed uproariously, and the others laughed too. But Pinkie wasn't laughing now. She just sat there, looking sadly puzzled, as if she couldn't figure out why anypony could be so casually cruel to somepony they'd only just met.

For some reason, that didn't sit right with Rainbow, not at all. It was like a switch had been thrown, and suddenly she was hopping mad. Up to now it had been the usual kidding around. Maybe it got a little rough here and there, but you got used to it. But this... this was just plain mean. A line had been crossed, and somepony needed to show these losers where that line was.

Snapping into a power-dive, Rainbow arrowed down at the bullies, her forehooves held out, aimed right between Hoops' eyes...

And at the last second she popped her wings and came to a screeching air-brake halt, scuffing up a whirl of vapor. It enveloped the bullies, making them cough and choke. "You should talk, Hoops," Rainbow said coolly. "Bet you couldn't fit through the hangar doors over there. Assuming you could even find 'em through that bird's nest you call a mane."

Then she swung round to the pink filly. "Hey there! Name's Rainbow Dash."

"Hi, Rainbow!" Pinkie was all smiles again. "Wow, that was a really sweet stop."

"Natch. It's how I roll." Rainbow smirked and held out a hoof. "Stick with me, Pinkie, and those guys won't give ya any more guff."

"Okey-dokey!" Pinkie willingly grabbed hold. Rainbow's wings raced and she powered her way back into the sky, dragging Pinkie along with her. The pink pegasus spread her own wings, shrieking with excitement.

"Whee-hee! I don't think I've ever flown this fast."

"Oh yeah?" Rainbow laughed. "Well hang onto your lunch, Pinkie, 'cause that was just the warm-up."

Rainbow went into a screaming power dive. She followed it with a barrel-roll, several loop-the-loops, and a smoooooth upward arc to finish off. Then she turned... and found that Pinkie Pie was still right beside her, having matched Rainbow move-for-move the whole time.

"Wow, Pinkie! You're an awesome flyer too!"

The pegasus grinned and fluttered her wings. "Thanks, Rainbow!"

"So how come you were just messin' around before, if you can fly like that?"

"Eh." The pink pegasus shrugged. "I don't like to show off."

While Rainbow stared at her, trying to wrap her brain around that little heresy, Pinkie dug into her cotton-candy mane with a hoof. "And I got a perfect way to give those bullies something to really laugh about." Pinkie smiled mischievously. "Whaddaya say, Dash? You in?"

Rainbow blinked. Then nodded eagerly. "Oh yeah, I'm in! Totally!"

A few minutes later Hoops and his cronies were flapping lazily along, looking for another unsuspecting victim to amuse themselves with. From out of nowhere a cyan streak blasted through them, with a thunderous wake that tumbled them through the air.

"Hey, losers!" Rainbow shouted. "Betcha can't catch me!" Pausing only to blow a raspberry, she shot upwards and disappeared into a cloud-bank overhead.

Growling, Hoops and the other bullies charged after her. They punched through the cloud themselves...

... and found nothing on the other side. Rainbow had disappeared.

Then Hoops felt his nose tickling, then itching. He sneezed. Then he sneezed again. Dumb-Bell and Score were also sneezing. The bullies all were doubled over in the air, gasping and a-chooing uncontrollably. While high overhead, Rainbow and Pinkie peered down over the edge of a cloud, snickering gleefully. Pinkie was holding the small canister of sneezing powder she'd pulled from her mane. She'd used it to liberally dust the cloud below right after Rainbow flew through it.

Rainbow grinned. "Good one, Pinkie! I didn't take you for such a good prankster."

"Oh sure! It's all in good fun. A little laugh now and then helps brighten everypony's day. And laughter is kinda my thing. I'm a party pony. Hee!"

"You know, Pinkie, you're not nearly as lame as I thought. You wanna hang out?"

"Ab-so-tively, Rainbow!" Pinkie grinned, and then laughed brightly, snorting and snerking all the while.

And in the process, she accidentally dropped the canister. It hit the cloud right in front of her snout, letting off a puff of pink powder just as she drew in a breath.

Pinkie froze, her eyes watering.

Then she sneezed. And sneezed, and sneezed again. The sheer force of her sneezes sent her volleying through the air in random directions, pinballing off clouds and puffing them into vapor. But Pinkie was giggling the whole time, whenever she could draw breath. As if it was the funniest thing in the world to her.

Rainbow stared in shocked disbelief. She was amazed that anypony could willingly behave so, well... uncool. And yet at the same time, be totally okay with it.

The thought made Rainbow smile, then laugh. Then laugh some more. She fell on her back on the cloud, snorting and sniggering helplessly while Pinkie Pie shot back and forth through the air overhead.

"Ha!" Pinkie crowed, as she finally got control of herself and hovered in the air, her wings buzzing. "There's my smile! I'm a happy party pony!"

From then on, they'd been inseparable. All through Flight Camp, and then again at Flight School. Each of them tried to outdo the other with ingenious pranks. They pranked the other students, they pranked the instructors, they pranked anypony and anything that offered the likelihood of a good, solid, harmless laugh.

Their true pièce de résistance came when they managed to prank the School's headmare, Lieutenant Coldstream herself, by swapping the wooden pointer the graying pegasus favored with a replica made of rubber. So that when the Lieutenant snatched it up and fiercely whacked it against the chalkboard, as she often did, it first splatted against the board like a wet noodle and then hung limp in her fetlock as she stared speechlessly at it, the entire auditorium erupting in shrieking laughter.

Rainbow had spent that entire night in an agony of gut-churning terror, fearing she and Pinkie would be found out and hauled before an inquisitorial tribunal, a firing squad, or worse. But nothing of the sort happened. And even if it had, it had totally been worth it. Especially over the next few days. Whenever Pinkie and Rainbow clapped eyes on each other, they had to slap hooves over their mouths to suppress incriminating laughter at the Best... Prank... Ever!

Together, they were a team. Partners in pranks, utterly unstoppable. The Diabolical Duo. The Mayhem Mares. The Ones Who Never Got Caught...

------------------------------

And now? Now things were suddenly different.

Shaking loose from Pinkie's hooves, Rainbow flapped onwards. She wasn't sure where she was headed, just sure what she was leaving behind.

Pinkie flapped along beside her, puzzled. "What's up, Rainbow? I mean, we are gonna go visit the earth-pony world and see Twilight again, right? That’ll be just super-duper-looper-awesomely-cooleriffic! And I’ll finally be able to throw her that welcome party I'd planned. Although," she added thoughtfully, "since we know her now, I might have to re-theme it as a Hey, It's Great to See You Again party. But no problemo, I can do that. Easy peasy, mac-and-cheesy! Right?"

Rainbow just stared straight ahead, frowning. She'll never get it. She’ll never understand. No more pranking, no more craziness. From now on, Rainbow Dash flies straight and true.

So why... why does it feel so unfair?

Comments

[Yoshifan30]

It started in Junior Speedsters Flight Camp. Rainbow was arcing around over the play area, practicing high-speed cornering through the target cloud-rings, while at the same time keeping an eye on the runway and play area below, to see what the cool kids were up to.

[Yoshifan30]

But then she heard Hoops, the tan, flop-maned leader of the Loser Patrol, guffaw loudly. "Hey guys, get a load of this," he called to his friends, brown-coated Dumb-Bell and charcoal-maned Score. "This puff-wing can barely get off the ground!"

Oh no even in an alternate universe they're still going to find a way to bully other ponies

[Yoshifan30]

For some reason, that didn't sit right with Rainbow, not at all. It was like a switch had been thrown, and suddenly she was hopping mad. Up to now it had been the usual kidding around. Maybe it got a little rough here and there, but you got used to it. But this... this was just plain mean . A line had been crossed, and somepony needed to show these losers where that line was.

Once again no matter what alternate universe Rainbow Dash will always come to rescue when it comes to the victims of bullying

[Yoshifan30]

Wow this is a pretty interesting story so far so it looks like Rainbow Dash it's starting to have some mixed feelings with about her friend Pinkie Pie and apparently it's time to get a little complex lately I mean back when they were kids they look like they were having much fun together and everything but I guess things change when you're starting to grow up usually that always happens and that's the sad part and she really doesn't know how to break it to her well let's hope nothing bad would happen

[Scyphi]

And in the process, she accidentally dropped the canister. It hit the cloud right in front of her snout, letting off a puff of pink powder just as she drew in a breath.

Pinkie froze, her eyes watering.

(It was amazingly hard to find that clip unedited, by the way...how'd that happen? )

[Comickook]

Absolutely loved the first chapter of this latest story. The exchanges, characterizations, Mythology Gags and future chapter set-ups were all wonderfully done, especially in the flashback to Rainbow and Pinkie's first meeting in this universe.

On to the next chapter.

[FredMSloniker]

I'm not sure what makes me raise an eyebrow more: Rainbow Dash knowing the concept of the uncanny valley, pegasi in general having developed the concept of the uncanny valley, or pegasi calling it "the uncanny valley" when they don't have a big largely-metal ball to have valleys in. None of these are deal-breakers, of course (they use 'ground' to refer to large flat surfaces, so they could have a term for a depression in those surfaces), but it did make me stumble a little while reading.

[Lets Do This]

11375589
It's not that much of a stretch. Pegasi can have a notion of "valleys", in that cumulus clouds look a lot like mountains. And they probably have a notion of graphs from flight training, and perhaps training in friend-or-foe identification which might lead them to the awareness that if something feels distinctly "off" like that, then it definitely shouldn't be trusted. Hence the notion of the Uncanny Valley, which once the expression is used enough anyone can reference casually without fully understanding the psychology behind it, as Rainbow does here.

But in this case, this is definitely one of those Intentional Anachronisms for Comedic Effect, which make MLP so much fun to watch. And which don't really work right if you overthink them too much!