The Day That Started It All

Note: This is told from Rainbow's perspective

I've been running for three days, or is it four? Time no longer has meaning to me. Everypony else is gone. None of this would have happened if we hadn't gone to the beach that day.

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"Oh my goodness! This beach is absolutely GORGOUS!" Rarity said as she spread out her blanket. “Yeah!! It’s superdy-duperdy great!” agreed Pinkie Pie as she bounced past, carrying a basket that was surely chock-full of goodies from Sugar cube Corner. “Yeah, this beach IS pretty sweet.” I said as I flopped down on my blanket.” Going to the beach in the summer was a bit of a tradition with the six of us. We were all either lounging on our blankets or splashing in the waves, enjoying the sunshine and warmth. All of a sudden, I heard Fluttershy stammer, "H-H-UGE S-S-SNAKE I-IN T-THE W-W-WATER!!!!" As I turned around to ask her what the hell she was talking about, I saw it for the first time. It was MASSIVE! It was at least thirty feet long, probably bigger! As I stood there with my mouth gaping, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Pinkie started grabbing foals out of the water and tossing them ashore. I just stood there, dumbstruck by the sheer size of this thing until I came to my senses and started helping everypony else. Once we thought we had all of the foals out of the water, we ran back onto the beach, and collapsed, panting. All of a sudden, I heard crying. At first I was thinking, “Oh one of the foals is hungry or something." That's when I heard screaming. As I turned around to see what the hay was going on, I saw the foal, and the snake, in the water. Terrified, I stood there, staring as the monster opened its giant maw and hissed as it began to wrap itself around the struggling foal.

Panicking ponies dashed about, tossing sticks and pebbles at the gargantuan snake, but their efforts were useless. The massive reptile continued to squeeze the life out of the tiny foal. I turned around and shouted to Fluttershy, “Hey Flutters!!! Can you do anything about this snake!!!” She shouted back,” I don’t think so! I just tried giving it the stare, but it just ignored me!” “Wow” I thought. “Nopony can just straight up ignore Fluttershy’s stare!!” At that instant, I remembered that I still had an axe in my saddle bag from the previous day’s camping trip. I dashed back to the cart with all of our supplies in it and began tearing through our bags in a frenzy. Once I found it, I grabbed the handle in my mouth and flew as fast as I could back to the beach. When I arrived, Twilight and Rarity were using their magic to hurl large objects at the snake. As I bolted by, I shouted, “ Hey! Cease fire! I’m going in!” I saw them nod and back away. As I got within ten feet of the snake I slowed down and made sure it didn’t see me. After I knew I was safe, I moved in and raised the axe. I took what seemed an eternity for that axe to come down and sever the snake’s head. The head fell to the ground with a disgustingly wet “plop".

As I franticly dug through the coils of dead snake, blood spurting from the neck of the snake drenched my mane and coat, along with anypony within a five foot radius of the body. All of a sudden I realized ”HEY!!! The foal isn’t here!” I started panicking. “Where the buck is the foal!!!!” I screamed in my head as my searching became even more frenzied. As my eyes traveled along the length of the sticky, blood covered snake, they fell upon a small lump in the middle of the snake’s body. With a sudden lurching in my stomach, I realized the only possible thing that it could be was the foal. As I gasped in horror, I took a step back. My hoof landed in a puddle of blood, and I slipped and fell. When I got up, I was coated in the snake’s blood. As my mind reeled trying to figure out what to do next, my eyes fell upon the axe. At that moment I realized the only way that I could possibly save the foal was cutting the snake’s stomach open. I picked up the blood coated tool, walked forward, unsure of the state I would find the foal in. I set to work, carefully slicing open the beast’s stomach, until I was right above the lump. I took in a breath, and forced myself to reach into the snake’s body and pull out the foal. Once I had it out, I forced an eye open to look and see if there was any chance of it being alive.

As I peered through my half-closed eye, expecting to see the worst, I was shocked, the foal was perfectly fine, despite being eaten alive. I cleared off its nose and mouth and gave it a few quick pats on the back. The foal started coughing, then it started crying. As the foal’s parents rushed over to reclaim their little bundle, I looked around at all of the relieved faces of the ponies around me, hugging their children, spouses, and friends. I realized, “Wow, this is amazing, when there is an emergency, everypony pulls together to get through it.” I looked over at Twilight, grinning from ear to ear. She gave me that look that told me that I had a letter to write to the princess about what happened.

As I stepped into the shower in my cloud home to wash the gore off my coat, I thought about what had happened that day and how the hay I was going to get it all in one letter. I laughed as I thought about how furious Spike would be with me for making him write so much. As I dried off my coat and mane, I sat down on my cloud bed thinking, “Well that ended well. Guess we don’t have to worry about him anymore.” As I curled up in bed, I thought, ”Now everything will be alright.” I fell asleep with a huge grin plastered on my face, glad I would never have to deal with that monstrosity again. But, as I found out later, I was wrong,… dead wrong.

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dzamie

dzamie #1 · Mar 7th, 2013 · · ·

Rainbow Dash, I thought you said you wouldn't be writing self-insert Daring Do fanfics!

I'm ~~assuming~~ hoping that it's intentional, but your timing could use a lot of work. It's one thing to avoid purple prose, and another to rush through the most important action.

twilightsparkle13

twilightsparkle13 #2 · Mar 7th, 2013 · · ·

2230565
thanks for the feedback, i wasn't actually planning for this to be a daring do related story, but i guess it kind of is
the first chapter is actually partially based off of a dream i had......so you can probably guess i didn't sleep well that night

BR #3 · Mar 7th, 2013 · 2 · ·

This is pretty fast paced. I'd recommend an editor to help with the pacing, and a simple way to spread out your writing is to go into detail when it comes to the most important things. For example, I took this from the story:

As I turned around to ask her what the hell she was talking about, I saw it for the first time. It was MASSIVE! It was at least thirty feet long, probably bigger!

Lemme rework that.

As I whipped around in the salty air to ask her just what the hell she's talking about, I saw IT for the first time. I've fought dragons, changelings, and other nasty things, but I, in my entire history of being awesome, have never seen anything like this before. It must have been as long as two houses put together, maybe even bigger than that. I dunno. Anyway, it was covered in black, rippling scales that reflected the bright sun like dusty old bottles, and was strewn with moss all the way down it's hideous body. Normally I would have rushed into action, but the size of the thing held me back.
"Woah," I said, mouth gaping. "That thing is massive. The rest of the ponies had the same reaction that I did; the entire beach went silent with shock from just looking at the giant snake.
Somewhere, a pony screamed, and then everything went to hell.

I had to add some minor details to the passage, but that's probably the consistency you wanna look for when writing.
It's a good story, though. Just make some changes to it, and I can see that it might have a lot of potential.

BR #4 · Mar 7th, 2013 · · ·

Oh, and don't put "this is my first fic" in the description. New authors tend to make that mistake, making them look very unprofessional.

dzamie

dzamie #5 · Mar 8th, 2013 · · ·

2230748
Not only that, but more ... experienced readers have a sort of Pavlovian reflex: see "my first story" --> expect bad writing. This makes small mistakes shine like a beacon, and large ones really... I dunno, I guess just worse.

BR #6 · Mar 8th, 2013 · · ·

2231648 I just don't like it how people think their story will be reviewed better if they put that on the description. Plenty of other authors have struck linguistic gold without having to mention that it's their first time writing.

twilightsparkle13

twilightsparkle13 #7 · Mar 9th, 2013 · · ·

2230737
thanks for the feedback, i was trying to get this done pretty quickly, so i wasn't focusing on detail, in the next few chapters i will be taking more time on the details so it should be more interesting

BR #8 · Mar 9th, 2013 · · ·

2236618 Well, it never really pays off if you rush through things. And if the first chapter is poorly done, then how are people going to be hooked in enough to read the more detailed chapters? What I like to do is finish the first part of a chapter, wait a week, then take another look at it and have a pre-reader/editor go over it. There are tons of guys like that on this site who will be perfectly willing to help you.

dzamie