Love in Lowly Places

by Drynwhyl

Chapter 3

Ker-puff!

Rainbow Dash woke with a spluttering start, coughing violently as she sat up in her bed. With the realisation that her sleep had been cut short came a vicious scowl, one made all the more gruesome by the drool that had accumulated on the side of her mouth over the course of what had formerly been a wonderful night's sleep. Muttering sleepy obscenities under her breath that would make even the dirtiest sailor blush, she mentally chastised herself for allowing Pinkie Pie to force-feed her all those damned cupcakes yesterday afternoon. As delicious as they were, the fact that Pinkie had a tendency to pour about five times more sugar than necessary into the things wasn't really good for her sleeping pattern, not to mention her pancreas. Wiping the drool off her cheek with a hoof before sleepily ruffling her disheveled mane, she eased back into her bed and closed her eyes, coughing fit subsiding just in the nick of time.

Ker-puff!

She shot up in her bed again, her heart beating a mile a minute as that sound, whatever it was, captured her undivided attention and drove whatever fatigue she was previously afflicted by right out of her - the Wonderbolts would have to wait another night for Rainbow Dash, unfortunately for them. Suddenly alert, her ears pricked up to listen for the source of the strange noise as she rolled to her hooves and lit the lantern hanging above her bed. There was something or somepony in her house, in the dead of night. The walls of her room basked in the dim glow of the lone light as she scrutinised her surroundings, trying to come up with some reasonable plan of action before she struck across a most brilliant idea.

"Hey, who the flying feather is in my house!?" vehemently shouted Rainbow Dash before taking to the air and bolting into the hallway outside her room, lantern shaking wildly in her hoof. Glancing left and right, she peered down the narrow passageway suspiciously. After waiting for a few more seconds and getting no response from the intruder, she thought for a bit as she stared off into the eerie murkiness of the corridor before remembering which direction the sounds came from. Turning left, she quietly and slowly (relatively of course) flew towards the retreating gloom down the hall. Anger slowly turned into apprehension as the creepiness of the situation began to gnaw on her mind.

"L-look, if you come out now and apologise I won't have to beat one out of you! Just tell me why you're in my house, whoever you are!"

Ker-puff!

The gravity of what was going on began to dawn on Rainbow Dash as she reflexively hugged her forelimbs to her chest, inadvertently burning herself with the lantern she was still holding. Biting her lip hard and rattling the lantern away from her body, she averted the inevitable and managed to keep herself from giving away her gradual approach to her intruder - an intruder she was quickly becoming more and more worried about meeting. To her, the reasoning behind her apprehension made absolutely perfect sense: she's the coolest, toughest pony in all of Ponyville, so it would have to take one mean customer to even consider bothering her. Given that said customer was rummaging around her house in the middle of the night, it would have to be one really mean customer. The possible ramifications of this irrefutable line of thought made her shudder.

"H-hello? Whoever you are, I won't hurt you," squeaked the suddenly squeamish mare. Continuing her Odyssean journey down the hall, she peeked into every doorless entrance as if Discord himself would be waiting there for her in the shadows. While each room contained nothing more than her possessions and a whole lot of cloud, the lack of any kind of confirmation of her suspicions merely served to compound her dread. However, as she gradually eliminated each room one by one and reached the end of this long, terrifying journey her resolve began to return, and she soon found herself facing the last couple of rooms in the hallway. With her newly-found vigour, Rainbow Dash fired off a final warning.

"That's it, enough games! Get your flank out here or I'll just have to drag it out!"

She heard a surprised gasp coming from somewhere ahead of her - or at least she thought she heard one. Her vitriolic outburst had obscured the exact origin of whatever it was that made that sound, but she was dead certain that there was something in her house just ahead of her and that they were up to no good and that they almost certainly deserved one of her patented Rainbow Dash flank-kickings. Holding her lantern high, she looked to her left and then her right before mentally shrugging and deciding to check out the room on the left; after all, that's where she kept all her most valuable things such as her Best Young Flier award and her secret stash of Daring-Do novels. Obviously it'd have to be the first stop for any nefarious individual looking to ruin her (and hey, if she's going to be up all night there'd be no harm in grabbing a book to help while away the hours).

But there was nothing. Nada. Sweet, sweet bupkis. The absolute opposite of 'everything'. Rainbow Dash's gaze wandered across the scene of perfect normality as her left eyelid began to shutter slightly.

As an aside, it's important to realise that even the coolest ponies have their boiling point. A point where a pony may be totally and utterly broken, their mind just quietly packing away any notion of sanity like a foal's blocks being put away into a box and then just deftly slinking away, whistling innocently as it decides to go on a holiday and vacate the premises. Equestrian physicians tend to call this particular phenomenon quite a lot of names, each more esoteric and confusing than the last; however, the simplest nomenclature is often the best so we'll just keep it simple and refer to this as 'going bucking insane'.

Fortunately for Rainbow Dash, she did not get to give 'going bucking insane' the old college try. Dropping her lantern as she slowly descended to the floor, she looked about at her valuables laying around untouched in their designated places as an unfathomable wave of anger and sense of injustice rose to the surface. She ground her teeth and was about to say something titanically foul about having to suffer through five nights straight of needlessly lost sleep before a familiar sound interrupted her.

Ker-puff!

Suddenly, in the corner of Rainbow Dash's eye was a white alicorn, standing in front of an entranceway which had been forcefully widened to accommodate the uninvited equine. Clad in a black, all-body outfit, Princess Celestia looked down at the dumbstruck form of Rainbow Dash in shock before backing away, turning to reveal some straps around her abdomen securing something to her back. It was a turtle.

"Tortoise," the alicorn princess corrected the ignorant narrator.

Comments

[Frizzy]

Dun dun duuuuuuun.

[Drynwhyl]

1775069 It's getting super intense!

[Kai-Zr]

Ok then, I have no idea how this is going to end but I'm pretty sure its going to be crazy.

[Pinkie Primus]

There's a 'hoofs' near the start that needs to be changed to 'hooves'.

On a more positive note I really like your style of writing! Can't wait to see what kind of awkward excuse Celestia tries to come up with under pressure

[Drynwhyl]

1777108 Thanks for catching that for me. Bit of a silly error on my behalf, haha. I'm glad you're enjoying the story! I don't really write very often so this is all a lot of fun for me.

[Pinkie Primus]

1777346
It's great you're having fun! I didn't use to write often either. Actually, scratch that, I still don't. It takes me a lot longer to update than it seems to take you, anyway...

Good luck with the next chapter, and if you need a prereader to spot the little things that you don't notice, I could help you out with that. I know I'd be lost without the prereaders who help me

[Drynwhyl]

1777454

Haha, well free time and inspiration tend to be fleeting things, I find. Especially the former.

I also might have to take you up on your offer there. I'm a bit rusty and tend to miss little things at times, so having a third party take a look before I post up the chapters could be nifty.

[Pinkie Primus]

1779523
Awesome! Well, just drop me s PM when you have a draft and I'll do what I can