Twilight Ships Rainbow Dash With Everything In The Universe
Chapter 1: Axiomatic Set Theory
Luna's moon draped Ponyville in a blue-white light, her stars sprinkled throughout the nearly cloudless night. It was rather quiet for Friday evening - Rainbow Dash expected a lot more ruckus to be emanating from the doorway of the tavern she was walking by. Instead, what she heard almost made her trip.
"Hey, Rainbow Dash!" shouted an over-enthusiastic voice that sounded far too much like Twilight Sparkle.
Rainbow Dash groaned. She had spent almost all her waking hours clearing out the leftovers from yesterday's thunderstorm, and her wings were incredibly sore. She hadn't gotten time to practice any new stunts, skipped her afternoon nap, and now she'd probably have to carry Twilight home instead of going to bed. That mare couldn't put down half a pint without getting so tipsy she'd start running into walls. Twilight, of all ponies, should know a spell for detoxifying herself, but either one didn't exist or she was too plastered to use it. The cyan pegasus dragged her hooves towards the entrance to the bar, where a purple alicorn greeted her with a crazed smile.
"I've done it, Rainbow Dash! I've created an internally consistent axiomatic set theory with a universal set!"
The pegasus blinked. To say that math was not her forte would be a vast understatement. As far as she was concerned, one cloud plus one cloud was just one really big cloud. "Twilight... what are you doing?"
"SCIENCE!" Twilight hiccuped, "no, wait, MATH!" She hopped over to a chalkboard that looked rather out of place in a bar filled with cranky, drunk ponies, all of whom were thankfully avoiding eye contact. Rainbow Dash wondered if she had conjured it out of thin air, then wondered how dangerous it was to do that while drunk. Could you get cited for casting under the influence? Had Twilight gotten a CUI? Did anypony even care? What's up with those swirly things on unicorn horns? Why did she ask stupid questions like this when she was tired?
"In traditional Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (with the axiom of choice), or ZFC *hic* for short, a set of all sets is explicitly forbidden. This is done to avoid Brussel's Paradox, which asks the *hic* question, ‘Does a set of all sets that don't contain themselves contain itself?’ Now, to construct a self-consistent formulation of these axioms, we must-" Twilight abruptly took a swig of her martini from a nearby table, which Rainbow Dash noticed with increasing alarm was decorated with several empty glasses already, and a piece of paper that looked suspiciously like a citation. She needed to get Twilight home, preferably before she passed out. Whether she would pass out from the alcohol first, or because she forgot to breath during her lecture was an open question.
"-But anyway, a universal set must *hic* contain itself, or it isn't a set of all sets. However, the second axiom of ZFC states that no set can contain itshelf, because if they could *hic* then we would have infinitely descending sets, and that's just shilly!" Twilight was suddenly sent into a fit of giggles before taking another sip of her martini. "Now, thish will alllllll~ be relevant later *hic* when we apply the principle of exploshun—"
Rainbow Dash, who had been edging closer and closer to Twilight's table of empty glasses, abruptly abandoned her attempt at deciphering the citation Twilight had gotten. "Wait, what? Explosions? That's awesome!" Twilight had been swaying steadily further and further to the left, and finally lost her balance, nearly stumbling into a nearby table. "Errrrr, I mean, we should probably get you home now..."
"Nonshense!" Twilight said, having corrected her gravitational orientation. "I am perfectly capable *hic* of handlin' mahshelf!"
Rainbow Dash was torn between dragging her obviously very drunk friend home before she hurt herself, and finding out what explosions had to do with math. She eventually settled on letting Twilight continue her lecture until she collapsed.
"To solve this, I created a shelf-consistent theory that *hic* allows for a universal shet that contains itself. Observe!" Twilight giggled as she scribbled something on the chalkboard.
There exists a universal set that contains itself.
Twilight looked inexplicably proud of this sentence, and made no move to expand on it. Now, Rainbow Dash wasn't familiar with any advanced ponynomial mathematical concepts, but she did know two things: 1. Saying something is true doesn't make it true. 2. Twilight was really drunk.
"Now that we've proven the exishtence of a universal shet that *hic* containz itshelf, we c'n return to the shecond axiom of ZFC set theory, *hic* which states that no set can contain itshelf. Therefore, *hic* we've derived a contradickshun, and can thus invoke the prinshaple of exploshun to imply that Rainbow Dash is in love with the set of everything, thereby proving our original hypotheshus!" Twilight twirled around and nearly fell over, before steadying herself once again and drawing a square to complete her proof, "Q.E.D.!"
Rainbow Dash's ears perked up at the word "explosion", only for her enthusiasm to be immediately extinguished by Twilight's romantically questionable conclusion. "Wait, what?"
Twilight finally fell over onto her back, laughing hysterically. "I've shipped Rainbow Dash with EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSH!" Twilight jabbed all four hooves into the air. "Now Rarity's shilly shipfics are all REDUNDANT!"
Wait, Rarity was writing terrible romance novels about her? Ugh, tomorrow was going to be a very, very long day, and today wasn't even over yet. She motioned to the bartender to pick up Twilight's empty glasses now that her drunken mathematical rampage had subsided. With some effort, she managed to lure Twilight into a standing position long enough to duck under her and lift the extremely tipsy, still hiccuping alicorn onto her back.
It was at this point Rainbow Dash remembered that alicorns also have earth pony abilities, which meant that Twilight was heavy. Granted, she wasn't as heavy as Applejack, but Rainbow Dash was pretty sure Applejack was made out of depleted uranium.
Rainbow Dash grabbed Twilight's citation and had almost left the tavern when she noticed a familiar blonde-maned pegasus sitting at one of the tables. "Derpy? What's she doing here? Isn't she already... uncoordinated enough?"
Twilight snorted. "Derpy's always drunk, silly, that's why she's so clumsy all the time! I mean really, what else could her cutie mark stand for?"
At this point, Rainbow Dash decided that today had dragged on entirely too long already and simply left without saying another word. She lugged her snoring, pony-sized encumbrance with as much enthusiasm as a filly visiting the dentist, trudging interminably towards the Ponyville library. She hadn't walked two blocks when she ran into the last pony she wanted to see.
"Rainbow Dash! Fancy seeing you here- omigosh!" Rarity almost immediately noticed the purple alicorn slung over Rainbow Dash's back, and promptly began to freak out. "Is she hurt? Did she faint? Are you taking her to the hospital? IS SHE DYING?!"
As Rarity continued to successfully defend her title of The Drama Queen by galloping around the pegasus and panicking, Rainbow Dash took a deep breath.
"Rarity, SHUT UP!"
The white unicorn gasped dramatically, and Rainbow Dash wondered if it was physically possible for Rarity to not do something dramatically. "Rainbow Dash, such uncouth language!"
"Stop. Just, stop." The pegasus glowered at the insulted unicorn. "I've been working all day, my wings are so sore I can barely fly, I didn't get a nap, I didn't get to do stunt practice, and now I'm carrying Twilight back to her house after she got so drunk she passed out, but not before she told me about those terrible romance novels you've been writing about me."
The second the words 'romance novels' escaped the weather pony's mouth, Rarity froze in terror, as if Nightmare Moon herself had suddenly materialized in front of her. "Oh-well-look-at-the-time-I-guess-I-should-really-be-getting-to-bed-now-hahaha-bye!"
Then, much to the relief of the pegasus, she was gone. With a sigh, Rainbow Dash continued her eternal slog towards the Ponyville library. It was past midnight by the time the cyan mare reached the wooden door to the library. She half-heartedly tried one of the handles, but it was locked.
"Hey Spike, you in there?" Rainbow Dash rapped on the door. "Spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike~"
"Shpigsonetahwenshdah *hic*" Twilight mumbled something incoherent, apparently having woken up from her drunken stupor, at least momentarily.
"Er, what'd you say?" The pegasus looked back towards the purple alicorn slung over her back.
"I shaid, *hic* Shpikes gone 'till wenshday!" she blurted out in a rare moment of coherency, "He's doin' shometin' foh Appohjack!"
Twilight giggled as Rainbow Dash groaned yet again. "Ok, egghead, how are we supposed to get in? Do you have a key?"
In an amazing display of either magical aptitude or a gross disregard for safety, a purple haze surrounded the door's lock, and a faint *click* echoed into the quiet night. Relieved, Rainbow Dash pushed open the door and unceremoniously dumped Twilight off her back and onto the floor. Twilight let out a small *hic!* in protest, but seemed too far out of it to care. Then, the cyan pegasus set Twilight's CUI citation on a table and, satisfied her friend was now home safely, turned towards the door. She was about to fly back to her house when Twilight let out a rather pitiful moan, and hesitated. Was Twilight going to be ok? Despite all the crap the alicorn had just put Rainbow Dash through, she was still worried about her.
Rainbow Dash shrugged and flew out of the door, but instead of going back to her house, she flew straight up. The fastest pegasus in Ponyville reached an errant cloud floating above the library in a matter of seconds, and tore a hefty chunk out of it. Flying back down, she shoved the piece of cloud through the doorway and positioned it near the ceiling. Twilight was still lying on the ground, either already asleep or in the functional equivalent of a coma. The pegasus flopped down on her temporary bed, thankful she had such a comfortable portable sleeping option, and closed her eyes to capture some much, much needed rest. She was so eager for her dreams to carry her away, she didn't notice Twilight groggily sitting up, with a faint glow surrounding her horn.
Rainbow Dash's eyes were assaulted by every single lamp in the library as they were all turned on at the same time.
Twilight looked up, confused. "Why *hic* is there a cloud inshide my house? Also, why is it shcreaming?"
The pegasus poked her head through the bottom of the cloud, still holding a hoof over her eyes as they slowly adjusted to the glaring brightness. "Because I just dragged your drunk flank over here all the way from the bar!" She hopped off the cloud and fluttered down to the floor. "Seriously Twilight, what's gotten into you? I haven't seen you that drunk in ages. Did something happen?"
Twilight stared at Rainbow Dash, blinked twice, then hiccuped and curled up on the ground. "Go 'way."
Rainbow Dash was absolutely exhausted. Today had been taxing in more ways than one, and she had run out of patience somewhere outside of Ponyville. She knew she had every right to tell Twilight to just get over it and fly back to her house for some well-deserved rest, but she wouldn't. She couldn't. She was the element of loyalty, for crying out loud; there was no way she was leaving her friend alone like this.
"Come on, Twilight, I know something's bothering you. What's up?"
"Itsh *hic* none of your beeswax, Rainbow!" Twilight stuck her tongue out at Rainbow Dash.
The pegasus rolled her eyes. "You drank so much you eventually passed out. I'm the one who had to carry you home, so I'm making it my beeswax whether you like it or not!" She stamped a hoof on the ground.
Twilight hiccuped, then curled back up into a ball, her back to Rainbow Dash. The air was thick with silence, and time slowed to a crawl, until the cyan mare heard a small sniffle reverberate through the library. Instantly, Rainbow Dash knew Twilight was hurting about something, and slowly walked up to the lavender ball of fur.
"Twilight?" She whispered, leaning down and nuzzling her friend. "Twilight, please, tell me what's wrong. I don't want to leave you like this."
No response. Rainbow Dash's head spun with possibilities. Had she failed a test? That always seemed to get her worked up. Did she do something terrible in front of Celestia? Did someone say something to her? Rainbow Dash couldn't help but think she was forgetting about something terribly important, but she was so exhausted and sleep deprived she couldn't think straight. Suddenly, Twilight's voice floated past Rainbow Dash's ears.
Twilight Ships Rainbow Dash With Everything In The Universe
Chapter 2: Trashy Romance Novels
Rainbow Dash was feeling pretty stupid.
She had completely forgotten about Twilight's coltfriend, and hadn't really ever considered the possibility of him leaving her. In her defense, they usually met in the library, and the most interaction Rainbow Dash had with the big tree was knocking on the door (or smashing through a window) to see if Twilight was home. She had never really talked to the guy, come to think of it. That, and she was extremely tired and sleep deprived and blaaaaaaaaah.
Still, all her entirely justified excuses didn't stop her from feeling stupid. Twilight was drunkenly bawling her eyes out after Rainbow Dash had picked her up in a hug. She was really upset about this, so upset that Rainbow Dash began to wonder if something else was going on. Sure, her boyfriend just dumped her, but would that really drive Twilight to get so hammered she passed out? Twilight was, admittedly, far more responsible than Rainbow Dash herself was, and this seemed very uncharacteristic of her.
"It's ok, girl, it's ok," Rainbow Dash patted Twilight's back as her sobbing was reduced to painful whimpering. "Are... are you gonna be alright? Do you wanna talk about it?"
Twilight let out a small whinney and nuzzled her friend's neck, but said nothing for almost a minute.
"He... he... *hic*, he said I was so obsessed with studying I didn't have any time for him, *hic* and I tried to exshplain but he wouldn't lishen and then... and then..." Twilight whimpered, clutching her friend. "He shtarted yelling at me about how I loved my work more than I loved him *hic* and now he's gone and I dunno what 'ta doooooo~"
She dissolved into quiet sobbing again. Rainbow Dash said nothing, waiting patiently for her friend to collect herself.
"I... I really did love him. At least, *hic* I think I did. D-did I not love him enough?" Twilight looked up at Rainbow Dash with heartbroken, teary eyes. "Is thish my fault? *hic* Do... do I have to choose between work and romance? I love my work! *hic* I really do! But... I love him! Why can't I love both? Why does everything have to be sho bucking complicated?!"
The gears inside Rainbow Dash's head began to turn at an agonizingly slow pace. Twilight's boyfriend left her because he felt she loved her work more than she loved him. It was as if... as if...
Oh. Oh.
It was like that one colt she had dumped back in flight school. It was like somepony telling her she had to choose between her dream of joining the wonderbolts, and finding a special somepony to spend the rest of her life with. Oh ponyfeathers, Twilight doesn't think anypony will love her so long as she loves her work!
Unfortunately, while Rainbow Dash was a lot more observant than most ponies give her credit for, she wasn't especially gifted with words. Even if she hadn't been exhausted, sleep deprived, and confused, she probably still wouldn't have known what to say.
"I... I don't know, Twi."
So instead, the pegasus simply held her friend in her hooves, until Twilight ran out of tears and fell into an alcohol-assisted slumber. Rainbow Dash was sorely tempted to simply dump her on the floor, but after hearing what had actually driven Twilight to such... excess, she felt obligated to carry her friend up to her bed.
She didn't tuck her in or anything, though. That was too much for her.
Chapter 1: Set Theory
"Hey Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked, "Do you have any books on axiomatic set theory?" Rainbow Dash walked in through the front door, instead of smashing one of the windows for no reason at all and forcing Twilight to invent a spell specifically for fixing windows that Rainbow Dash smashed through.
"Wow Rainbow Dash, I didn't know you had suddenly developed a strange desire to learn about math! In fact, I'm pretty sure you hate math!" said Twilight Sparkle, who had definitely not just been dumped by her coltfriend. In fact, her coltfriend was sitting right next to her, nuzzling her lovingly while staying just far enough out of the scene to be irrelevant to the story.
"I know! It's like an incredibly convenient plot device used to keep the narrative flowing!" said Rainbow Dash, who picked a book at random off a shelf that happened to be the exact book she was looking for. "Oh wow look at that! Guess I don't need you your help, bye!"
Twilight looked out sullenly sordidly at the pegasus as she left without another word. Also she smashed through one of the windows too.
"...Rainbow Dash?" Twilight blinked in confusion, staring at the rainbow-mane'd pegasus sleeping on a cloud in the middle of her kitchen.
It was morning in Ponyville. This time, however, everything was most certainly not fine. Twilight had woken up with a pounding headache, and was on the verge of purging the contents of her stomach before she managed to cast a detoxification spell. Apparently, she had been drinking last night, but she couldn't remember going to the bar. She did, however, remember why she got drunk. She remembered every word her now ex-coltfriend had said to her yesterday. Halfway through her morning routine, she'd thrown herself back onto her bed and cried into her pillow.
It was almost lunchtime, but Twilight had only just come downstairs. She absentmindedly set the papers held in her telekinetic grasp on a nearby table, oblivious to the CUI ticket still sitting there from last night.
"Rainbow Dash, what on earth are you doing in the library...?" Twilight slowly approached the cyan mare, whose napping cloud had descended down to Twilight's neck level. She leaned in, and gave the sleeping pegasus an experimental nuzzle.
"mmmmrrrrrffffulfugglesmugglesnugs" Rainbow Dash mumbled something incoherent, then abruptly grabbed Twilight's neck in a hug and snuggled up next to it.
"Ack!" Of the many things Twilight had pondered doing today, becoming a teddy bear was not one of them.
"Mummy, I dun wanna wake uuuuuup~" Rainbow Dash cooed. Twilight snickered, then stopped herself - she did not want to find out what unspeakable horrors she would be subjected to if Rainbow Dash realized just how endearing she was while sleeping. No, it'd be best to just wake her up as fast as possible.
"Rainbow Dash, wake up."
"Murrrrrr~"
"Rainbow Dash!"
Rainbow Dash made an adorable little squeaking sound before attempting to kiss Twilight.
"Rainbow Dash!"
The pegasus rocketed into the air, smashing her head on the ceiling and getting stuck there for a few seconds, vibrating like a struck tuning fork, until she finally fell back down to her cloud. The cloud took this opportunity to develop a sense of humor, and abruptly decided to stop supporting her weight, resulting in a rainbow faceplant onto the floor.
"Owwwwwwwwwwww..."
Once upon a time, in a land of lush green food and turquoise water, Rainbow Dash foolishly believed that today was going to be better than yesterday. Obviously, this wasn't going to happen. She just wanted to stay on the floor, pretending to be dead, and ignore the rest of the world. Unfortunately for Rainbow Dash, reality is something that, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
"Rainbow Dash, why are you sleeping in the library? For that matter, how did you even get in here?"
Rainbow Dash grunted, slowly dragging herself up from the floor. She leapt back onto the treasonous cloud, now using it as a miniature throne from which she could dispense maximum glare power, all directed at Miss Princess Drunkitude standing in front of her.
"Gee, I dunno Twilight, what do you think?" asked Rainbow Dash with enough snark it would've made Twilight proud, had she not been on the receiving end of it. "Where do you think that massive, pounding headache I'm sure you woke up with came from?"
Twilight tilted her head, lost in thought, before her eyes widened. "Oh. Oh no. Oh nononononono. I must've... I must have gotten so drunk you had to walk me home—"
"Carry," Rainbow Dash corrected, "I had to carry you all the way to the library, because you passed out."
Twilight bit her lip. She looked so guilty Rainbow Dash was worried she was going to start crying again.
"Oh ponyfeathers, I'm so sorry I put you through that, Rainbow Dash. I can't, I shouldn't— I don't know what to say."
Rainbow Dash dismissed her concerns with a wave of her hoof. "Aww, don't worry about it. I'm the motherbucking element of loyalty! You're my friend, that's all the reason I needed. Course, I wouldn't mind a little thank you..."
Twilight nodded her head a little too vigorously, "Of course! I'm in your debt, Rainbow Dash. If there's anything you need, just let me know."
Rainbow Dash sighed, too pissed off at everything in the world to really care right now. "Yeah, well, I guess I'll try to remember that. In the meantime, you have a problem over there." She pointed a hoof towards the CUI ticket on the table, and noticed Twilight's papers sitting a few inches away. Twilight must have noticed too, because she almost immediately grabbed them with a purple glow and flung them over to her desk, then dropped a book on them.
Before Twilight could whisk them away, however, Rainbow Dash noticed that the pieces of paper had words on them, and was proud of herself for noticing this, at least until she remembered that most pieces of paper had words on them.
"Whoops-haha-forgot-about-my-research-papers-that-are-obviously-way-too-boring-for-you-just-got-to-put-them-away!" blurted out Twilight with as much conviction as a filly caught raiding the cookie jar.
Rainbow Dash chose the path of least resistance, and simply pretended to believe her. "Uh, I kind of meant the ticket over there, not whatever 'research project' you have."
"Ticket? Oh no. Oh nonononononono..." Twilight started fretting all over again, as she frantically started reading the citation. "For your illegal activities including but not limited to: 'Conjuring Under The Influence', you are hereby fined... 30 bits?!"
The alicorn flew into Rainbow Dash's face, Twilight's muzzle pressing against the pegasus: "WHAT DID I DO Rainbow Dash? WHAT DID I DO?!"
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and pushed the purple mare away from her personal space with a hoof. "You conjured a chalkboard. That's the only weird thing I saw, anyway."
Twilight looked confused. "A... a chalkboard? Why would I yank a chalkboard out of thin air while drunk?" She paused, "Well, I mean, besides being drunk."
Rainbow Dash smirked, "You were doing some weird math stuff. Tried to ship me with everything in the universe, or something. I also distinctly remember you mentioning explosions."
Twilight gasped in a dramatic manner that distinctly reminded Rainbow Dash of Rarity. "I was deriving while UNDER THE INFLUENCE?!" She then proceeded to gallop around the room screaming about how this was the worst thing in the world and she was going back to magic kindergarten.
There were moments, brief interludes in the ever-flowing tides of time when Rainbow Dash would actually understand Twilight. This was not one of them. Then again, getting more worked up about writing down silly math equations while drunk instead of worrying about how she could have blown up the entire tavern due to drunk spell-casting was pretty normal... for Twilight.
Rainbow Dash hopped off her cloud, walked over to where Twilight was running in circles, and stuck a hoof out.
"OOF!" said Twilight while faceplanting into the ground.
"Calm the buck down, Twi. It's not the end of the world. I mean seriously, we once nearly destroyed Ponyville with parasprites and we're still here. Just calm down."
Twilight picked herself up and hung her head. "You're right, I'm overreacting... again." She grimaced, "Did I... did I really ship you with everything in the universe by invoking the principle of explosion?"
Rainbow Dash nodded. She actually had no idea if that was what Twilight had been ranting on about last night, but it sounded close enough.
"I'm sorry you had to see that, Rainbow Dash." apologized Twilight.
Rainbow Dash stared blankly at her.
"Oh, right, you probably didn't understand any of it, anyway."
Rainbow Dash raised a metaphorical eyebrow.
"Wait, I mean, uh, I didn't want to imply that you— uh, I don't— um, that came out wrong?" she squeaked.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, again.
Twilight sighed. "Look, Rainbow Dash, I'm sorry about... everything. You're one of the best friends I could ever ask for, and I really do appreciate it." The alicorn gave Rainbow Dash a big hug. "Thanks, Rainbow Dash."
"Nice save, Twilight" remarked Rainbow Dash, "and I'm glad my awesomeness is being recognized, but uh, I really gotta go do the weather."
Twilight backed off. "Er, right, sorry! Again! See you later!"
Rainbow Dash sighed, and launched herself out the front door to attend to her weatherpony duties.
Twilight walked over and stared out at the rainbow blur fading into the distance. Then, she turned around and picked up those papers she had stuffed under a book.
She had work to do.
Rainbow Dash had lit scented candles in her cloud house, and dimmed the lights (did she have lights?). It was just the two of them now. Rainbow Dash and her axiomatic set theory. She had read the entire book that afternoon, which was pretty impressive considering it was like 600 pages of dry theorems and math. I mean, jeez, that's pretty hardcore stuff there.
But no, it was not the set theory our beloved heroine was in love with, it was the universal set. The set of everything. Everything that ever was, could be, or could not be. Everything that could be imagined, and everything that can't be imagined. Everything. It was a concept so unintuitive it had created a paradox in early set theory formulations. She could not resist the juicy paradoxes that flowed from those abstract symbols. She was in love.
The only problem was, she had no idea how to make love to a book. And so, Rainbow Dash stared at her book, sitting upon its throne, sadly contemplating the bitter irony of her situation. Alas!
"Wait what? What kind of an ending is that? That doesn't make any sense!" protested Rainbow Dash, blissfully unaware that this was only the end of the first chapter.
Rainbow Dash’s wings were still a bit sore, but she managed to fly back to her house at a decent pace. She really needed a shower after yesterday.
*gurgle*
...And food, apparently.
After a bowl of Hooflakes and a banana, Rainbow Dash stepped into her shower and punched the shower-cloud above it. Warm rainwater poured down her cyan coat and through her rainbow mane. Pearls of water dribbled down her face as she closed her eyes and inhaled the steam filling the room. As she let her stress slip away into the shower drain, her thoughts turned to Twilight’s romantic problems.
Rainbow Dash couldn't help but feel a sort of kinship with Twilight's emotional issues; It reminded her of her own troubles with colts. Sure, she knew she was cool and awesome and hip, but that's all the colts ever fell in love with. They didn’t fall in love with the mare who wanted to be held at night. They didn't fall in love with the mare who was so frightened of failure she almost had a nervous breakdown at the young flyers competition. They didn't fall in love with the filly who was terrified that everypony would see through her act, even though she desperately wished that somepony would, just so she could have somepony to be herself around. No pony ever fell in love with the real Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash sighed as the cloud ran out of water, grabbing a towel to dry herself with. She was already so late for weather duty it probably didn’t matter, but she was the captain, and should probably get there as soon as possible. Several minutes later, a rainbow blur rocketed out of the cloud house, headed for the weather staging area.
Being Rainbow Dash, it didn’t take her long to reach the staging ground, where a pink-maned mare was overseeing the few pegasi who bothered to show up. Unfortunately, she spotted the rainbow-mane'd pegasus sooner, rather than later.
"Rainbow Dash! It's 2 in the afternoon!" Wind Whistler, second-in-command of the Ponyville weather team, angrily buzzed over to Rainbow Dash. "Where have you been?!"
The cyan pegasus shot her a nasty look. "Sleeping, duh."
Wind Whistler crossed her forelegs. "Rainbow Dash, you have no excuse for—"
"FOR WHAT?!" Rainbow Dash exploded, "WORKING MY FLANK OFF ALL DAY YESTERDAY AFTER HALF THE STUPID WEATHER TEAM BAILED OUT ON ME?!"
Wind Whistler was taken aback. "You have no right—"
"I have every right to be late when my excuse is BECAUSE I WORKED MYSELF TO EXHAUSTION YESTERDAY!" Rainbow Dash threw her hooves in the air out of frustration. "I don't know why I even bothered to show up! We have nothing to do, it's clear skies today!"
"Errr, about that..." Wind Whistler nervously scratched the back of her neck with a hoof. "There was a last minute change to the weather schedule that didn't go in until late last night. It's scattered showers today. Luckily, it's scheduled for late afternoon, so you haven't really missed much."
"GUUUUUUUH! Why does the universe hate me so mu-- wait, did you say 'scattered showers?' " Rainbow Dash froze in the middle of a rather dramatic expression of frustration.
"Errrrr, yes?" Wind Whistler double checked her clipboard, just in case.
A twisted grin spread across Dash's face. "Well, you know what they say, when life gives you lemons..."
"Throw them back?"
Facehoof.
Luckily(?) for Rainbow Dash, the conundrum presented in the previous chapter’s end was really just a cheap cliffhanger, and not the beginning of a long and drawn out psychological examination of how we can’t always get what we want. That would just be boring, you see.
She knew exactly what to do with her love, her book of 1432 axiomatic set theory postulates. Rainbow Dash took the book and... no wait, don't put it down there! What are you—
Oh, my.
That is definitely not something anypony should be doing with a book. It would ruin the spine!
It was raining at Rarity’s Boutique. Rarity found this rather frustrating, as she thought today was supposed to be clear skies. In fact, it had been sunny earlier, it was only now, in the late afternoon, this dreadful weather had found it’s way into her day. Just then, she heard a knock on the boutique door.
“Coming!” Rarity trotted over to the door, and opened it to find Rainbow Dash sitting on her front porch, getting soaked.
“Hi Rarity,” the pegasus said with as little enthusiasm as possible.
Rarity froze for the briefest of moments before recovering, “I, uh, Rainbow Dash! What a surprise seeing you here! And just in time, too, I wanted to ask you about this unsightly downpour we seem to be having. You see, I was under the impression today was supposed to be clear skies...”
“Oh, that.” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “There was a last minute change to the weather table last night.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow, “What? Really?”
"It's scattered showers today," explained Rainbow Dash, her smile quickly turning to anger, "over YOUR HOUSE!"
Rainbow Dash had gotten lucky that day. Or perhaps Rarity had gotten unlucky. The updated forecast called for several small cloud showers, and one large shower. No points for guessing where the large cloud ended up.
Rarity sighed. “This is about those... stories I wrote, isn’t it?”
“Wow, you must be psychic! How ever did you guess?” Rainbow Dash scowled. “What have you been writing about me?”
Rarity hesitated. “Uh, why don’t you come in, dear? You’re getting positively soaked standing outside in that rain!”
While Rainbow Dash wanted to retort that it was better than getting a bunch of slash fiction written about her, she had to admit that it was very wet and cold outside. She would know, she put the cloud there. She would later admit to having a good time doing it.
The pegasus stepped inside the boutique, and immediately shook herself off.
“Rainbow Dash, be careful! You’ll get my—”
“Shut up, Rarity. Now, tell me, how many stories are there?”
“Please, have some manners! You can’t seriously be asking me to just give you all the stories I worked so hard on!”
Rainbow Dash let out a very aggravated breath through her nostrils and lowered her head. “Rarity, if you don’t show me every single story you have ever written about me, right now, with Celestia as my witness, I will make it rain every day for the rest of your natural life.” She shoved her muzzle into Rarity’s face. “Show Me.”
Rarity was a lady. One did not push her around very easily. However, she also began to get the feeling she had unknowingly crossed a line, and if there was one pony you did not cross, it was Rainbow Dash. Deciding her works of literature were not as important as her ability to, say, walk, she reluctantly opened a small drawer in a dresser near the back of her studio. Out floated an ominous stack of papers. It was not a small stack.
“Here,” said Rarity, dumping the stack in front of Rainbow Dash, who glared at her before snatching the first few stories off the stack and flipping through them.
Rainbow Dash moaned sensually, shivering as a hoof brushed up against her flank. “Oh, Spitfire, I didn’t know you could be so... flexible about wonderbolt applications.”
Spitfire moaned sensually as she licked Rainbow Dash in a very inappropriate manner. Rainbow Dash couldn’t get over how hot it was. “Oh, my little rainbow-maned marefriend, the night is still young!”
Rainbow Dash couldn’t bring herself to read anymore. It was terrible. It was embarrassing, demeaning, grossly inaccurate, and just... wrong. Dreading what she would find next, she flipped to another story.
”Oh Applejack,” cooed Rainbow Dash, brushing a hoof through that gorgeous, blonde mane of hers, “I can’t believe you got me these flowers. That’s soooo sweet of you!”
Applejack blushed, and then blushed even more when Rainbow Dash planted a big, smoochey kiss on her cheek. “Aw shucks, sugarcube, ‘twas nothing, really...”
“Mmmmmm, you know what I love, Applejack?” Rainbow Dash giggled and leaned in close to her ear and whispered “you, my honey bunny.”
Rainbow Dash grimaced. It was so absurdly sappy, the cutie mark crusaders spontaneously started gagging almost a mile away and couldn't figure out why. Rainbow Dash continued flipping through the stories, becoming increasingly mortified.
“Why am I a lesbian in all of these?! I’m straight for crying out loud! And in this one I’m shipped with a toothbrush! What is wrong with you, Rarity?!”
“Actually, that one was for Colgate...”
Rainbow Dash did a double-take.”WHAT?! You- You’re writing these for ponies? Oh Celestia, what did I do to deserve this?!”
Rarity had retreated into a corner and was looking rather morose, but that didn’t stop Rainbow Dash’s tirade.
“Are these it? Are these all of them? Are there any other copies anywhere else in this celestia-forsaken universe?!”
“...Almost?” squeaked a terrified Rarity. Rainbow Dash slowly turned her head towards the white unicorn and gave her a look that would shrivel bowling balls.
“FLUTTERSHY!” Rarity blurted out, “Fluttershy is the only one who I’ve lent a story out to!”
Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “No one else?”
“No one else! Please, I’ll never do it again, I swear!”
Rainbow Dash sighed. “Fine. I’ll pick up the story from Fluttershy and then we can put this all behind us. Forever.” The pegasus began to pick up a few errant pages that had escaped the pile.
Rarity, deciding she was no longer in danger of being mauled by an enraged pegasus, took a hesitant step forward. “I must ask, Rainbow Dash, what do you intend to do with these stories once you’ve picked up the last one from Fluttershy?”
“I’m going to burn them all and throw the ashes into the deepest, darkest pit I can find.”
“But, but, it’s art!” pleaded Rarity.
“It’s a bunch of polished turds!”
Rarity bristled. “Why, I never! It’s one thing to just barge in here and—”
“You invited me in, remember?” Rainbow Dash was busy ensuring she hadn’t missed any scraps of paper. There must be no surviving evidence. Nothing.
“...You’re missing the point.”
“No, I’m really not.”
With that, Rainbow Dash flew out the boutique door in a rage, tightly clutching the sinful pages to her chest as she rocketed towards Fluttershy’s cottage, eager to put a stop to this madness once and for all.
Twilight Ships Rainbow Dash With Everything In The Universe
Chapter 3: Diabolus ex Machina
Wind whipped through an unkempt mane, its rainbow-colored strands thrashing about in a roaring gale. A cyan pegasus cleaved through the air like an enraged javelin, clutching a large bundle of papers to her chest as if her life depended on it.
Rainbow Dash was flying to Fluttershy's house. Like most things involving Rainbow Dash, it involved traveling at deliriously unsafe speeds. Today, however, there were no completely unnecessary loops or 10-G turns, no corkscrews or dives, not even a barrel roll. Today, Rainbow Dash was doing something very unusual: flying in a straight line. Some ponies might say "not crashing" would also count as unusual, but they had remarkably short lifespans.
A sonic rainboom is best described as the air itself becoming so terrified of Rainbow Dash that it runs away, screaming, as fast as it can. Had Rainbow Dash been going much faster, she probably would have triggered one, but she couldn't afford to let that happen while carrying such important pieces of paper. Such treasonous pieces of paper. Such sickeningly gross oh-god-what-was-rarity-on-when-she-wrote-these pieces of paper.
It wasn't long before a rainbow appeared in the skies over Fluttershy's woodland cottage. Sadly, this rainbow didn't have a pot of gold at the end of it - just an extremely frustrated pegasus. Her descent was rapid, but careful; Fluttershy didn't like her smashing through windows. Despite this, Rainbow Dash didn't notice a small snail in the shadow of her hoof as she softly landed in front of the cottage door.
Sherry Snail looked up as a giant monstrosity blotted out the sun. Her world was consumed by a titanic shadow that stretched almost two whole inches. "Oh Celestia, what is that thing?!" she cried out.
A nearby snail looked up, and was almost paralyzed by fear (not that anypony could tell the difference). "It's— It's— You have to get out of there Sherry!" he choked out.
"I'm not going to make it! It's coming down too fast!" Sherry wailed. Of course, snails don't actually communicate by vocalizing, so the wail would be better described as a very enthusiastic waving of her little feeler-antenna things. "TELL GARY I LOVE HIM!"
*crunch*
Rainbow Dash looked backwards and lifted up a hind leg. Yellow snail guts dripped off, landing on the ground below with a sickening splat.
"Eeeewwwwwww..." Rainbow Dash wiped her hoof on the ground before knocking on Fluttershy's door.
There was a quiet clip-clopping of hooves before the door opened slightly, with a nervous Fluttershy peeking out of the crack.
"H-Hello?" Fluttershy paused for a moment before recognizing the mare standing outside. "Oh, it's you, Rainbow Dash!" she said in a much more confident voice that was still barely above a whisper.
"Hey, Fluttershy, I need to talk to you about—"
"Oh NO!" Fluttershy abruptly interrupted Rainbow Dash as her eyes went wide. "Oh no no no no no no NO!"
Rainbow Dash looked confused. "...Huh?"
"That snail! You crushed that poor snail! How could you not have noticed?!"
"Oh, yeah. Stepped on it by accident. Very slimey."
"You MONSTER!" Fluttershy 'shouted' in that slightly less quiet voice she used when she was upset. "How can you just... just... stand there like nothing's wrong?!"
Rainbow Dash tilted her head to one side. "What's wrong?"
"You killed a snail! You're a murderer!"
Oh for Pete's sake. "Uh, sorry about that, I guess?"
"You're a bad pony, Rainbow Dash."
"I'm devastated," deadpanned Rainbow Dash, "Now, seriously, there's something I need to talk to you about."
"No."
Rainbow Dash blinked. "What?"
"I'm not speaking to you about anything until you atone for your sins!"
"Uggggggggggh," Rainbow Dash dragged a hoof down her face. "I don't— That's— Fine, what do you want me to do?"
"Apologize to the rest of the snails."
Rainbow Dash looked at Fluttershy like she had just grown a second pair of wings. "Fluttershy, not everypony has been blessed by the pagan goddess of the forest. I can't speak Snail. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're the only pony who can."
Fluttershy glared at her. "Then I'll be your translator."
Boy, I'm not getting out of this one, am I? Rainbow Dash sighed and turned around. Apparently, the snails had been on some kind of grand exodus to Fluttershy's cottage, as there were actually a large number of them slowly creeping towards the front door. No wonder she'd landed on one. She cleared her throat and looked back at Fluttershy, who nodded solemnly. "Ah, uh, um... Hi? I-I'm sorry about accidentally, uh, squishing your friend, and stuff."
Rainbow Dash was suddenly distracted by Fluttershy waving her hooves above her head in a hilarious attempt to mimic the snails' antenna, and had to bite her lip to avoid laughing. "So, I hope you can, like, uh, forgive me. Yeah."
There was a long pause as Rainbow Dash waited for the pegasus-who-should-have-been-born-as-a-dryad to finish translating with her ridiculous hoof waving.
"Much better." said Fluttershy with a satisfied smile, and she finally led Rainbow Dash into her house. "Now, what did you need to talk to me about?"
"I need to get back something that you borrowed - a romance novel, by Rarity."
Fluttershy froze in place as soon as Rainbow Dash uttered the words 'romance novel'. When 'Rarity' echoed inside her ear canals, Fluttershy let out a small squeak, her eyes shrunk to pinpricks, and she immediately rolled onto her back, with all four legs sticking straight up.
"...Fluttershy?"
Ohhhh boy. She suddenly remembered that she was here for a romance novel about herself that was being read by one of her closest childhood friends. Naturally, Fluttershy would be far too embarrassed to just give it to her. Rainbow Dash set the bundle of papers she was holding on a nearby table, took a deep breath, and went into full comfort Fluttershy mode. Slowly approaching the petrified pegasus, she reached out with a hoof and started massaging directly above her wing.
"Ooooooohhhh...." The pegasus immediately melted into a puddle, Rainbow Dash's recent transgressions entirely forgotten. Rainbow Dash was exceptionally adept at getting Fluttershy to relax after so many years together in Flight Camp. She leaned down and nuzzled Fluttershy, rolling her over and then snuggling next to her.
"Fluttershy,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, “I need to ask you something.”
Fluttershy let out a quiet “hmmmmm?”
Rainbow Dash draped one of her wings over the yellow pony. “I want you to know that, no matter what happens, you’ll always be my friend, ok?”
In response, Fluttershy made some cute noises.
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath, and dropped the anvil. “I need you to give me that romance novel you borrowed from Rarity.”
Fluttershy let out a terrified ”Eep!” and attempted to fly away, but Rainbow Dash was ready. She grabbed the fleeing pegasus and pulled her into a hug.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s ok, Flutters, I’m here, I won’t leave you, I promise.”
All Fluttershy did was let out an embarrassed whimper as her cheeks turned pink.
“I know the story is about me, Flutters. I know it’s embarrassing to you that you were reading a romance fic about your friend, but I’m not here to judge you.” Rainbow Dash nuzzled Fluttershy’s mane as the yellow pegasus squirmed around in a futile attempt to escape the warm, comforting embrace of her friend. “I just want the story back, ok? No one else ever has to know. It’ll be ok. You’ll still be my best friend, we’ll still go flying over Everfree Forest, I’ll still preen your wings, and I’ll still be here for you when you’re lonely. I just need that story back.”
For some reason, this didn’t seem to calm Fluttershy down. As she curled up into a tight ball around Dash’s hooves, who was still clutching her stomach to keep her from escaping, Rainbow Dash began to wonder if she was missing something. She already knew the story was about her, how could it possibly get any... more... embarrassing...?
Oh, no.
The gears in Rainbow Dash’s head slowly began to turn as she thought about what she’d just told Fluttershy. Flying with her. Preening her wings. Being there for her. There was a single, crucial piece of information she was missing - she didn’t know who she was being shipped with in that romance novel.
What if she was being shipped with Fluttershy?
“Fluttershy,” whispered Rainbow Dash in the softest voice she had ever used in her life, “Do... do you have a crush on me?”
Fluttershy, of course, didn’t respond.
Rainbow Dash gulped. “Listen, Flutters, even if that romance novel is about... what I think it might be about, you’re still my friend, ok? I won’t stop being your friend. Ever. I’m the element of loyalty, after all.”
Fluttershy let out a small whine, but didn’t move.
“But, and I really hate to tell you this right now, I’m... straight. Not lesbian, not bi, straight.” Rainbow Dash hugged her friend tightly. “You’re my best friend, Fluttershy, and this won’t change that, but it’s not going to turn into... something else.”
Rainbow Dash could feel the pegasus sag under her hooves, and could almost hear the sound of a heart breaking in two, never to be the same again. She could almost see Fluttershy’s dreams fly away, lost to the unrelenting harshness of reality. She knew that she was no longer holding a pegasus in her hooves, but a broken mare, whose life was now bereft of meaning.
“It’s... It’s on my nightstand.” Fluttershy’s voice cracked, the sorrow and hopelessness that besieged her seeping through the fractures.
Rainbow Dash was torn. Her friend was distraught, and she wanted to stay and comfort her, but now she was the reason her friend was on the verge of tears. Her very existence was the cause of this. What should she do? Just leave? Stay? Stand awkwardly in the middle of the room?
“I’m so sorry, Flutters,” whispered Rainbow Dash, still clutching her friend in a hug, “if you want me to stay, I’ll stay, but if you want me to go, I’ll understand.”
Suddenly, she wasn’t hugging Fluttershy anymore. An enraged yellow pegasus pushed her nose against her’s.
“Understand? UNDERSTAND?!” Fluttershy was screaming at her now. As in, not Fluttershy screaming, but actual screaming, which was incredibly unnerving. “You’ll NEVER understand! You’ll never come CLOSE to understanding what you’ve done to me! What I’ll never have! What it’s like to have your heart yanked out of your chest and smashed into a million pieces!”
Rainbow Dash leapt onto her hooves. “I DID NOTHING!” she shouted back, “It’s not my fault you fell in love with me! Do you think I’m telepathic?!”
“But, you did so much with me! You flew with me, you preened me, and I thought... I thought...” Fluttershy drifted off as tears began to choke her words.
“You thought WHAT?!” yelled Rainbow Dash, “That I was a fillyfooler? That I had the hots for you? You were my best friend, Flutters, it’s not my fault you can’t tell the difference between friendship and romance!”
“I... I... But...” Fluttershy’s rage melted away as she curled up into a ball of self-pity. “I thought... I thought...”
Rainbow Dash suddenly realized her wings were flared in anger, and decided it would be best if she just left, immediately, before she made things even worse. She turned away from Fluttershy, marched into her room, grabbed Rarity’s unmistakable handiwork, picked up her stack of slashfics and left without another word.
As the door closed behind her, Rainbow Dash hesitated. Even though she knew none of this was technically her fault, she put an ear to the cottage door anyway. The muffled, yet unmistakable sobbing of a distraught yellow pegasus could be heard. Rainbow Dash winced - now, she really felt like a monster. She shook her head and launched herself into the sky, clutching those cursed stories tightly to her chest.
It was time to go home.
Chapter 3: Experimentation
It had occurred to Rainbow Dash that being attracted to the mathematical concept of the universal set was nothing more than a red herring. After all, it was the set of all sets, which included everything that had ever existed, could ever exist, or couldn't exist at all. It encompassed all the things she could ever imagine, and everything she couldn't. It even encompassed the very red herring that it was.
So, naturally, Rainbow Dash started hitting on the metaphysical red herring in a desperate attempt to take it out on a date. It almost worked, too.
The cool evening breeze ruffled Rainbow Dash's fur as she sailed high above Ponyville. It was nearing sunset, but the town was not yet asleep. As she soared over one of the fields in Ponyville Park, she noticed a group of youngsters playing a game of hoofball - or trying to, at least. One filly had learned the hard way not to headbutt things when you're a unicorn, and was running around with a partially deflated hoofball impaled on her horn, while being chased by a large throng of angry schoolfoals. Nearby, Derpy was trying to push mail through the wrong end of a mailbox... again. The cutie mark crusaders, however, were nowhere to be found.
Normally, Rainbow Dash would be a bit deflated if she couldn't find Scootaloo. She kind of liked the little squirt, but not today. Today, she was thankful the orange filly was nowhere to be seen, because she could never know about the horrors Rainbow Dash was clutching with an iron grip. Today, she was making a beeline for her house, tearing across the gold-tinged sky with a rainbow in her wake.
The sun reached the horizon as pegasus wings fluttered above the entrance to a very special house. This house was suspended several hundred feet in the air, and was made of clouds. It used to have rainbow falls coming off of it too, until she'd gotten fined for a zoning violation. Apparently, the house wasn't high enough off the ground for them to properly dissipate. The front door was pushed open by a cyan hoof as Rainbow Dash walked inside. She immediately deposited the load of papers she was carrying on her desk, picked up a blue, translucent stone about the size of her hoof, and plopped it on top of the stack. As far as she was concerned, the world just spent the last 24 hours trolling her as much as possible, and she wasn't about to take any chances.
A faint buzzing sound introduced her to Tank, who zipped down the stairs and attempted to tackle her as much as a turtle with a propellor on its back could tackle a fully grown pegasus.
"Tank! There you are," she giggled. "I know you want to play, but I'm really tired today. Maybe tomorrow, ok?"
Tank looked dejected, and buzzed away towards the kitchen. She was about to follow him when she hesitated. There, sitting on the top of the pile, was the slashfic Fluttershy had been reading. Against her better judgement (which really wasn't that good in the first place), she pulled it out from under the paperweight, and starting flipping through it. Predictably, it involved two pegasi doing inappropriate things. Less predictably, it involved whips, gags, and a lot of rope. Also, Fluttershy wasn't on bottom.
Apparently, there had been more to that assertiveness training than she realized.
Deciding now would be a perfect time for a cold shower, Rainbow Dash abandoned the toxic papers on her desk. Minutes later, she was sitting under a stream of water in her bathroom, wet strands of a drenched rainbow mane curling around her shoulders. She watched as beads of water travelled down the multi-colored hairs, trying to process everything that had happened. She needed to calm down, breath, and relax. She had the fics, and now everything could go back to normal. So, why did she have a terrible feeling about this? Why did it feel like the middle of a long slog up a steep hill covered in molasses in January?
Water swirled around the shower drain in a mesmerizing pattern of ripples and waves. Was it because of Fluttershy? Was it because Twilight seemed like she was slowly falling apart? Was it because Rarity had been writing creepy, inappropriate slashfics about her? It seemed like her problems had simply ballooned into an untamable, writhing mass of chaos and uncertainty that defied her ability to cope with. Instead, it was like a tumor, pushing against the sides of her psyche, gobbling up her mental processing, leering over her and making it difficult to think. Something seemed wrong, as though the last 24 hours had somehow awakened a dark sorrow she had hidden deep within herself.
Under the shower's stream of moisture, Rainbow Dash didn't notice the water collecting in her eyes, or the tear that slowly slid down her cheek. What Twilight had said the night before echoed through her mind, feeding that festering mass of stress and unease that threatened to overwhelm her.
"Why does everything have to be so bucking complicated?!"
It was a good question.
Later that evening, after washing down a hay sandwich with some berry punch, Rainbow Dash wandered over to her bed and collapsed on top of it. She felt drained in more ways than one, and figured she could hit the hay - er, cloud? Well, anyway, she decided to go to bed early, even though the last rays of sunlight had yet to fade away. It wasn't long before she was carried off into Luna's dreamland by quiet noises that drifted through her open window.
A handsome stallion sat across from Rainbow Dash at an extravagant restaurant. She felt like she was supposed to be attracted to him. He said something vague and witty; Rainbow Dash laughed without knowing why. A waiter appeared out of the fog she hadn't noticed and asked for their orders. Words were exchanged, but she didn't remember what they were. She was entranced by his eyes, as they glistened in the candlelight. She didn't remember candles being on the table before, but now there were. She thought it was all a bit sappy and romantic, but for some reason she didn't care. Suddenly, she spoke words that felt real and concrete.
"I'm just going to quickly go to the bathroom, be back in a second."
The stallion's face grew dark, and a frown took over his features. A strange fear crept into her heart, an unspoken feeling of dread that swallowed up the light and sucked the love out of the room.
The nameless stallion leaned forward. "You split the infinitive, honey."
"Wh-What?! I don't- what are you talking about?" She was confused and frightened. There was so much terror, so much fear, so much undirected apprehension. Everything around them had the light sucked out of it until it was just their table floating through a black void.
"Now you've just used an en dash instead of an em dash. What is this nonsense?" The stallion's face was slowly twisting into a horrible, maniacal grin. Jagged teeth lined his mouth, and his terrible eyes seemed to bore into her soul. "I bet you use the oxford comma, too, don't you? What a silly little filly you are."
Rainbow Dash was trembling in fear. "That doesn't even make any sense!" Then, it dawned on her - she was dating a grammar nazi. She tried to scream, but no noise came out. She felt as though she was choking, and found pointless prescriptive grammar rules wrapped around her neck. The stallion was no longer a pony, but a monstrosity born from the same maddening chaos that Cthulhu had once called home. Incredibly asinine grammar nitpickings poured out from its tentacles, and it screamed an unearthly roar using obscure dialogue punctuation as it flung a thesaurus at her.
Rainbow Dash woke up, screaming. Remnants of the nightmare clung to the edges of her consciousness. In and out, in and out, she thought, deep breaths, it was only a dream, deep breaths. Her heart pounded against her chest, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Slowly, she began to calm down, and looked out the window. Night had fallen over Ponyville, but Rainbow Dash no longer had any desire to sleep. She hopped off of her bed and walked over to her desk. It was at this point that Rainbow Dash realized the nightmare had never ended. In fact, it had only just begun.
The slashfics were gone.
A standard normal distribution is called a bell curve, so named because it looks kind of like a bell (if you squint). According to the Central Limit Theorem, the mean of a sufficiently large number of independent random variable iterations will be approximately normally distributed. In other words, the Central Limit Theorem states that everything becomes a bell curve if you hit it hard enough.
Rainbow Dash is good at hitting things. Rainbow Dash also liked bell curves. They were so... smooth. And bell-shaped. And also smooth.
And maybe also bell-shaped.
Rainbow Dash wanted a bell-curve inside her. She wanted to take it all the way to the standard deviation. But to do so would require sacrifice work, so she headed down to her lair to do some mathematical work research.
working
work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work [illegible scribbles]
A full moon was suspended high in the night sky when Rainbow Dash arrived at the Ponyville library. The romance fics were all gone, save for the one she had gotten from Fluttershy, which had been clinging precariously to the edge of her house. Oddly, the paperweight that should have kept them from blowing away was gone too. There was no longer any doubt in Rainbow Dash's mind that the universe itself had grown so jealous of her awesomeness it was now torturing her in retribution. After a frantic search around her house had turned up nothing but a single story, she’d almost immediately decided to go to Twilight for help. She may be an egghead, and she might be going through relationship problems, but if anypony would know what to do about this, it would be her.
The pegasus quietly approached the library's entrance, unsure if Twilight would still be up at this hour. To her surprise, there were still a few lights on, and the door was unlocked. Perhaps Twilight was in the middle of a late-night study session? Rainbow Dash shuddered - she had no desire to replay the events of last month, but she was running out of options. She pushed the door open and called out Twilight's name, but received nothing but echoes in return. As she explored the foyer, wondering if Twilight was even home, she noticed a light coming up from the stairs.
"Twilight...?" Rainbow Dash would never admit to anypony just how nervous she was right now. Slowly, she descended the staircase to Twilight's basement, and her nose was immediately assaulted by a foul odor. She could see a large assortment of bubbling potions laid out on one of the tables, along with a strange machine that was making random beeping noises. There were some scattered papers next to the potions, but she couldn’t get close enough to read them without the smell making her dizzy. She stumbled over to the opposite side of the room, trying to clear her head, and smacked into the wall.
The pegasus opted to lie down before she lost her balance completely, and squeezed her eyes shut, fervently wishing the room would stop spinning. When she opened them, she was surprised to see that it had, indeed, stopped spinning. She was even more surprised when the wall behind her swung open to reveal a secret passage, apparently activated by her errant flank smacking against it. She got back on her hooves, and peered down the empty passageway. Strange noises emanated from its depths, and it seemed to lead into some sort of small room.
Rainbow Dash chided herself for being so jumpy; she was Rainbow Dash, she lived for adventures like this! Well, preferably under less stressful circumstances, but one can't be picky. She shook herself and confidently trotted down the hallway, only to stop in bewilderment when she reached the room it led to. It appeared to be some sort of square platform with glass windows all around it, but behind the glass was just another wooden wall. In the center of the platform stood a small pole with two large buttons on it, one with an up arrow, and one with a down arrow. Rainbow Dash, being a pegasus, liked things that went up, and pushed the top button with her hoof.
Nothing happened. She poked at the button a few more times before letting out a long sigh and gingerly pressing the bottom button.
*beep*
Before she could react, the door behind her had slid shut, and with a shuddering groan, the platform began moving downward. Rainbow Dash briefly considered panicking before chastising herself once again. What would Daring Do... do? That line sounded so terrible even Rainbow Dash winced.
Her thoughts of adventure were interrupted as the wooden wall behind the glass gave way to a colossal, mind-blowing cavern that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was filled from floor to ceiling with impossible technological wonders that would bewilder all but the most prestigious unicorn scientists. It took Rainbow Dash a few minutes to realize she was still sitting in the elevator with her jaw hanging open after it had reached the ground floor.
She shook her head to try and clear it. Focus, Dash, she thought, just ignore the enormous laboratory that's apparently sitting underneath Ponyville, filled with super-advanced technology beyond your wildest dreams. Find Twilight. Sure enough, she could hear the occasional rumbling coming from somewhere deep inside the lab. Yet, something seemed different, now. If she listened closely, she could occasionally hear that familiar *click-clack-click-clack* of someone writing on a chalkboard. Twilight was definitely here, but Rainbow Dash didn't want to surprise her. Bad things happened if you snuck up on Twilight while she was in the middle of a super-advanced technological experiment.
"Hello? Twilight?" she called out, walking slowly towards the sound. The click-clacking abruptly stopped, and was replaced by the faint clip-clopping of hooves. Excited, Rainbow Dash almost took off into the air, but then remembered she didn't want to do anything to surprise Twilight and settled on a quick trot as she zigzagged through a maze of strange devices that defied explanation. She was almost feeling relieved when she suddenly saw a massive gun coming around the next corner, easily the length of two ponies, with a barrel almost as big as her head. It was being levitated by the unmistakable magenta aurora of Twilight.
"Wait, Twilight! It's me, Rainbow Dash! IT'S RAINBOW DASH!" Rainbow Dash frantically called out as the gun instantly pinpointed her location and nearly fired an unstoppable death ray that would have vaporized her into oblivion. At least, that's what Rainbow Dash imagined it would do; In reality, it was just a comically oversized stun gun.
"Rainbow Dash?" Twilight came around the corner, still levitating the enormous gun. "Rainbow Dash, it is you!" Twilight lazily tossed the gun to the side, where it smashed into something that looked important and burst into flames. "Sorry, I thought you were Pinkie Pie, she gets in here sometimes and makes a mess of things."
As far as Rainbow Dash could tell, Twilight didn't seem to need any help doing that. Still, she was here for a purpose. "Twilight, I need your help," asked Rainbow Dash, "If you aren't busy, that is."
"How did you even get in here, Dash? This lab is top secret!"
"You left the door unlocked."
"Oh. Well, anyway, while you're here, you can look at what I've been working on!"
"But I—"
Twilight waved a dismissive hoof at her. "No, no need to thank me, now come on, I'm sure you're very excited to see this new advancement in pony technology!"
Rainbow Dash sighed, and trudged behind Twilight Sparkle as she wove her way through the technological maze. "Say, Twilight?" she asked.
"Yes, Rainbow Dash?"
"What's all this... stuff?" Rainbow Dash vaguely gestured around her with a hoof.
"Oh, well, let's see, that's container for liquid nitrogen, that's a space probe, that's a 5-mile-long particle accelerator, that's an empty case of plutonium, that's a magnetic antimatter containment device, that's a mass spectrometer, that's a cat-proof can opener, that's a 1/10 scale model of a rocket design I've been working on, that's a self-stimulation device, that's a phaser set to stun mode, that's a sniper rifle that can shoot the flea off a dog's back at a hundred paces, that's where I was experimenting with portable dimensional pocket devices, those are all my report cards from magic kindergarten, that's a miniature nuclear reactor, that's a powered suit of armor made out of gold-titanium alloy, that's a partially-peeled banana, that's one of Rarity's dress models, that's a magnetically powered self-heating tea cup, that's a stale bag of potato chips, that's a pile of Luna's dirty laundry, that's a sonic screwdriver, that's a bottle of vampire sparkles, that's a high powered railgun pointed at a house of cards, that's censored, that's a ridiculously large contraption made entirely out of ice cubes for no reason, those are enchanted earplugs, that's a time machine—"
Rainbow Dash looked back at the alicorn, bewildered.
"It goes ding when there's stuff," she explained.
Rainbow Dash sighed, and was trying to forget she ever asked that question when they rounded the last corner. She immediately noticed two things: a bizarre machine in the center of a cleared out oasis in the laboratory, and a small table with an empty martini glass on top of it. “Twilight, have you been drinking ag—”
Rainbow Dash was interrupted by a magenta glow hurling the martini glass at a wall, where it violently exploded into a million tiny glass shards.
“NOPE!” said Twilight, with a crazed grin on her face.
Rainbow Dash decided not to push the issue any further.
“Anyway,” Twilight gestured at the odd machine in the center of the clearing. “This, my dear friend, is a—"
Twilight didn't get to finish her announcement of what the strange machine was, because at that precise moment, there was a loud crash and a pink blur.
"HIYA TWILIGHT!" Out of nowhere, Pinkie Pie suddenly appeared in front of the alicorn, her nose pressed against Twilight's in an egregious invasion of personal space, because she's Pinkie Pie. "Whatcha Doin'?"
"ARGH!" Twilight backed away from the hyperactive party pony and pointed an accusatory hoof at her. "Pinkie, I don't know how you got in here, but get out right now before you break something! Again!"
No sooner had Twilight finished her brief tirade, then a large explosion tore through a nearby lab section.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Too late."
Pinkie Pie giggled. "Oops, did I break something?"
"Pinkie Pie, I'm warning you," growled Twilight, who was now regretting her decision to toss her enormous stun gun into a server farm.
"Ooooooooh~" Pinkie paid her no heed, and was now hovering over a large, red button on a nearby wall, while defying gravity for no reason at all. "What does this button doooooo~?"
"PINKIE GET OUT OF MY LABORATORY!"
*beep*
Too late. The floor shuddered beneath Rainbow Dash, and a gaping black maw opened up behind Pinkie. Slowly, a massive, 50-foot-tall bipedal mech rose out of the floor and towered above the three ponies. There was a low hum, followed by a faint click, and the colossal mechanical construct turned on.
“SRX-3188 AWAITING ORDERS”
Now it was Twilight’s turn to facehoof. “Oh, Ponyfeathers. Now you’ve gone and woken up Kitty!”
It took Rainbow Dash a moment to realize that ‘Kitty’ referred to the giant robot standing in front of her.
“KITTY PARTY!” shouted Pinkie Pie, who summoned a party cannon out of whatever chaotic pocket dimension she controlled as a lesser goddess and blasted a stream of confetti into the air.
“PARTY COMMAND RECEIVED,” said the giant robot in a monotone voice, “WILL COMMENCE PARTYING IMMEDIATELY.”
“Wait, what?!” was all Twilight was able to say before an enormous explosion tore through the laboratory. The giant robot had decided the best way to ‘party’ would be to dance around like a ballerina, smashing absolutely everything in the process.
Rainbow Dash was rolling on the floor, laughing, when she was abruptly grabbed by her tail and magically dragged into the air. “Hey!”
“I have to catch this giant rampaging robot now, and you’re going to help me. I don’t care if it wasn’t your fault, I st- st- s-” *hic!* Twilight’s diatribe was cut short by a hiccup, and her magical grip on Rainbow Dash was broken.
*Thud*. Rainbow Dash groaned and pulled herself up just in time to hear another hiccup escape from Twilight. “Oh for celestia’s sake....” As she’d expected, Twilight had been drinking, she just hadn’t been feeling the booze yet. Now that the drinks had caught up to her, she’d no longer be able to cast magic effectively, just in time for a giant 50-foot-tall robotic ballerina to destroy her laboratory. The pegasus rolled her eyes and launched off towards the robot, without really knowing what she would do when she caught up to it.
In an alcohol-enhanced stupor, Twilight stumbled after her and made a rather pitiful attempt to take off, which was rewarded by flying 8 feet before she smashed muzzle-first into a large computer. “Owwwwwwww...” She winced and poked at her nose gingerly, hoping she didn’t break anything. Deciding that attempting to fly while drunk was a stupid thing to do, she instead galloped as fast as she could towards the rampaging machine.
Well, she tried to, anyway. She got went almost 20 feet before tripping on a chunk of debris and falling flat on her face, again. Frustrated, she decided to just teleport herself over there, forgetting that she was drunk, because, well, she was drunk.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
*Wham*
While she had succeeded in teleporting herself next to the rampaging robot, she had unfortunately also teleported herself 25 feet in the air. Twilight considered this attempt to prove that gravity still worked a complete, if rather painful, success.
“Hey Twilight!” shouted Rainbow Dash as she zipped by her to circle the robot, “How do I shut this thing off?”
Twilight, still recovering from her gravitational experiment, attempted to pick herself up, and almost succeeded, but had to abort the mission at the last moment due to unforeseen alcoholic complications. “I got it!” she called out, after assuming a sitting position, which was much easier to maintain. Focusing her thoughts, she called out to the astral plane, tearing a hole across the infinite depths of space and time, across spiral galaxies and distant quasars, around black holes and spinning pulsars. Through this portal, she could feel the unbridled power of magic in its natural form, and dragged it with her back into the mortal plane.
Twilight could feel the emergency stop button in her mind. She just needed to push it. Closing her eyes and concentrating, her horn began to glow, and—
“Meow!”
—Twilight opened one eye. The robot was definitely not shut down. Also, there was now a cat in front of her. The thing about being drunk is that it’s really hard to concentrate on anything, so apparently instead of shutting off Kitty, her mind had wandered off-course and instead conjured a literal “kitty” out of thin air. Amusing, but not helpful.
“Twilight, what are you doing?” Rainbow Dash was now hovering near the robots head, far enough away to avoid it’s wild flailings as it attempted (and failed) to perform a particularly difficult ballet move.
“*hic* I can fix this!” shouted Twilight, and her horn started glowing again.
Rainbow Dash was not optimistic.
*poomf!*
As the cloud of smoke disappeared, Rainbow Dash saw that Twilight was now surrounded by 10 cats instead of just 1. Well, 9 cats, anyway, the tenth was on top of her head.
“Meow!”
“AAAAAAAAUGH!” Twilight screamed in frustration, then hiccuped again.
“Twilight, just stop with the magic already, you’re too drunk!”
Twilight threw her head to one side and chucked the cat off the top of her head.
“Mreoooooooooorrrrrrwwwwwwwww!”
“FINE! No more magic! And I’m *hic* too drunk to fly, so it’s up to you, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight pointed towards the rampaging robotic ballet student. “You’ll have to open the rear *hic* hatch to reach the emergency shutoff switch!”
Rainbow Dash looked confused. “The rear hatch? I don’t see a rear hatch.”
Inexplicably, Twilight started giggling. “It’s *hic* the hatch on it’s rear end!”
“What.” Rainbow Dash was not amused.
Twilight, on the other hand, was snickering uncontrollably. “Doooooooo eeeeeeeeeeeet!” she crooned, before collapsing in a fit of drunken laughter.
“NO! BUCK THIS! BUCK ALL OF THIS!” shouted Rainbow Dash, at the end of her wits. She flew halfway across the lab, did a U-turn, then rocketed towards the front of the robot. Letting out a fearsome war cry that was enough to make the robot hesitate for a split second, she extended her rear hoof and bucked it right in the metaphorical crotch.
*crunch*
Silence fell, broken only by the occasional *hic* from Twilight. Not a creature was stirring, not even the cats who were still attempting to hump Twilight for no apparent reason, because sometimes cats do that and nopony knows why. A quiet whine began to fill the deafening silence, slowly growing in volume until it became a robotic shriek of pain. Rainbow Dash clamped her hooves over her ears and wondered if Kitty was about to explode.
Then, it stopped. It all stopped. Rainbow Dash opened her eyes, and to her surprise (and immense satisfaction), Kitty had turned itself off.
Twilight hiccuped, staring at the deactivated robot before looking back to Rainbow Dash. “Ah definahtley did not progwam it tah do DAT!”
The alicorn started giggling again, “Hey, Rainbow Dash?”
“What?”
“Rainbow Dash!”
The pegasus raised an annoyed eyebrow. “What?!”
“Rainbow Dash!” Somehow, Twilight’s voice didn’t sound like it was coming from her anymore.
“WHA— woooooooaaaaah!” All of a sudden, the world began to wobble and lose focus. Rainbow Dash tried to land, hoping solid ground would stop everything from spinning around, but there simply wasn’t any floor anymore.
Twilight Ships Rainbow Dash With Everything In The Universe
Chapter 4: Total Immersion
"RAINBOW DASH!"
Rainbow Dash opened her eyes and found herself back in Twilight's laboratory - the small one, under the library. She shook her head and shakily rose to a sitting position. "Twilight?"
"Oh Rainbow Dash, I'm so glad you're ok! I came down here and saw you lying on the ground and I didn't know if you were breathing or not and it was so scary and I didn't know what to do and I had to ventilate the fumes before I could get to you and—"
"Whoa whoa whoa, what? Where am I?" Rainbow Dash felt like she'd gotten hit by a truck, and was running dangerously low on common sense. "What happened to your enormous underground laboratory? Where's the giant robot ballerina?"
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Underground laboratory? Giant... robot... ballerina? Rainbow Dash, this is my laboratory, and there aren't any robots in here."
"Huh, cuz I coulda sworn I just helped you shut off a giant rampaging robotic ballerina." Rainbow Dash rubbed her temple with a forehoof. "Uuuggggghhhh, it seemed so real... was I just dreaming?"
Twilight's eyes widened, "Starswirl's Beard, I had no idea Total Immersion Potions produced hallucinogenic fumes!"
"Hallucinowhatsits?"
"Oh dear, oh dear ohdearohdearohdearohdear," Twilight seemed more interested in pacing back and forth than listening to Rainbow Dash. "Zecora didn't mention this! Then again, I haven't attempted such a large brew until tonight, either. Maybe it's a cumulative effect brought on by a self-sustaining exothermic airborne reaction—"
Under normal circumstances, Rainbow Dash had difficulty paying attention to Twilight's paranoia-fueled techno-rants. Right now, it was like trying to force herself to do homework that wasn't due for a week. Her brain exited stage right, and Rainbow Dash's eyes glazed over, her thoughts pre-occupied with things like ‘why does Twilight talk so much’, ‘I need a bath’, and ‘why is wood brown? If wood was like, blue, it'd make the library much more awesome. I'm blue and look how awesome I am.’
Actually, Rainbow Dash was cyan, but nopony ever pointed this out, except for Twilight. After five minutes of incoherent rambling involving copious amounts of advanced scientific terms, Twilight booped Rainbow Dash on the nose. This would have been adorable, except it was Rainbow Dash, so it was automatically cool instead.
"Rainbow Dash?"
Rainbow Dash was abruptly dragged back into reality. "Bu-wah? Oh, Twilight, um, sure, that was uh, very interesting. Yeah."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "Nevermind, look, I need to check you in to the hospital—"
"What?! I'm dying? What did you do to mmmmmrrrrrrppppph—" Rainbow Dash's panic attack was cut short by a purple hoof getting stuffed in her mouth.
"You aren’t dying, Rainbow Dash," Twilight nearly shouted, before lowering her voice. "It's just a precaution. The potion is supposed to be completely harmless, but I've never had somepony pass out after inhaling the fumes."
"If I die, I'll kill you." Rainbow Dash had managed to separate her face from Twilight's hoof, and was now shooting an acidic look at the alicorn. Her threat drew nothing more than an amused snort out of Twilight, so Rainbow Dash decided to ask another question that had bubbled its way up into her consciousness. "So, what exactly was this potion for, anyway?"
At this, Twilight's ears folded back and she looked like she'd been caught raiding the cookie jar. A smirk quickly spread across Rainbow Dash's face in anticipation of whatever naughty things Twilight had been toying with.
"It's... ah... a potion for inducing vivid dreams, that's all."
Rainbow Dash just sat there, grinning like a maniac. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...?"
"Ugggggh.” Twilight dragged a hoof down her face. "Look, it's just that, Rarity's been begging me—"
"Rarity...?" Somehow, Rainbow Dash's grin grew even wider.
"Yes, Rarity. She's been begging me to make something like this for months now, because it induces a very specific kind of vivid dreaming. It sends you into a dream using the nearest piece of literature. This potion was sitting next to a comedy I wrote about giant robots. It did not, however, involve 'rampaging robotic ballerinas', so apparently the potion gets a lot of artistic license."
Rainbow Dash spontaneously started giggling, amazed at how perfect this all was. Oh the things she would do to Rarity tomorrow...
"I'm sure you can figure out what Rarity was going to do with it," Twilight deadpanned.
It took the better half of a minute for Rainbow Dash to get her snickering under control. "Oh I know what—*snerk*—Rarity intends to do, but what I want to know is, what did you want to do with it?"
Twilight fell silent, and mostly just stared at the floor.
"Awww, come on, Twi', it can't possibly be as bad as Rarity."
The only sound in the room was the quiet beeping of a machine and the faint gurgling of potions.
"...Twi'? Look, if it's like, really personal, you don't have to tell me about it."
A small whine emanated from the purple pony. A pregnant silence echoed through the lab, eventually interrupted by a sigh.
"No no no, I'll tell you," mumbled Twilight, "It's just that, well, earlier today, I tried to make a parallel universe viewing machine—"
"Is that the annoying beeping thing over in the corner?"
"Yes, but I couldn't get it to work. It kept showing me perpendicular universes instead."
Rainbow Dash tried not to think about that too hard.
"At least, I think they were perpendicular universes; there was a lot of static. So anyway, when that failed, I remembered Rarity's potion, and decided to give it a shot. I really should've locked the basement door, but I was going out for a quick errand and thought I'd be right back."
"Waaaaaaait a minute, why were you building a parallel universe thingamabob in the first place?"
Twilight looked back at her friend with teary eyes.
"B-because, I... I thought, maybe in one of those parallel universes, my boyfriend s-still loves me for who I am, instead of who he thinks I should be."
Rainbow Dash's giddy anticipation of exacting her revenge against Rarity was instantly crushed. Memories of all those colts from Flight School rocketed through her mind, and she struggled to maintain a façade of composure in front of Twilight. She felt like she'd been punched in the chest.
Those words had hit far too close to home.
"O-oh," stuttered Rainbow Dash, "I, uh... sorry. I know how that is." Do I ever.
Thankfully, Twilight was only half paying attention to her. "So, yeah, the entire point of the potions is to let you explore a fictional world. I'm sure you can guess what fictional world I wanted to explore." She chuckled bitterly, "I'm such a hopeless romantic."
"No!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash, interrupting Twilight's attempt to sink into the floor.
Instead of turning into a puddle of misery, Twilight sat bolt upright. "What?!"
"Uhhhhh...." Rainbow Dash didn't actually know why she had reacted so strongly to that statement. Right now, however, Twilight was staring at her, expectantly, so she needed to come up with some grade-A horseapples. "You're not hopeless! Or, it's not hopeless, or, not hopeless to me? Uh..."
That was like, grade-D horseapples, tops. Rainbow Dash gave up trying to say things, trotted over to Twilight, and gave her a hug. "Look, I'm not as good with words as you are, but trying to find somepony who loves you for who you are is worth it, ok?"
Twilight sniffled and hugged her back. "I... I guess. Thanks, Rainbow."
The pegasus smiled weakly. "Hey, what are friends for?"
It was at this incredibly inopportune moment that the door to the library decided to get knocked on.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
"Oh no, that must be Rarity! She's come for the potions! Quick, you have to get out of here!"
"I, er, why? Am I not supposed to be here?"
"No! She doesn't want anypony to know about this! She'll freak out if she realizes you know about the potion!"
Rainbow Dash groaned. Why were all her friends slightly... off? More importantly, what did that say about herself?
Twilight started pushing Rainbow Dash towards the stairs. "Quick, fly out through the skylight or something! And do it quietly!"
"I— But—" Rainbow Dash threw up her hooves. "Oh, fine, whatever, I'll see you tomorrow, blah blah blah." The pegasus flew up the stairs, and then smashed into the skylight. "Twilight!" she hissed, "Unlock your stupid skylight so I can get out of here!"
"Sorry!" Twilight whisper-shouted back, a magenta glow momentarily enveloping the window's hatch. "There, now get out of here!"
The pegasus vanished through the portal, and Twilight quickly closed it again, as another round of incessant knocking pounded at the door. "I'm coming!" she called out, briefly organizing the cluttered library floor as she walked towards the door.
Creak.
"Rarity!" Twilight chirped, "I didn't expect you this early!"
"Quiet!" Rarity hissed, "I didn't sneak all the way over here in the dead of night to be caught like some scoundrel!"
Twilight recoiled. "I, erm, of course. Sorry, follow me."
The white unicorn slipped inside the library, and the door clicked shut behind them as a blue blur streaked across the night sky.
It was late in the afternoonmorning evening, and the bluecyanwhatever-nobody-cares-pegasus was frolicking about in the flowery meadow of flowers near some hill or something. Rainbow Dash had brought her book of 1432 axiomatic set theory postulates to a meadow in a disturbing romantic display of obsession affection. Why, with her makeshift crown of petals, one could say she would make for quite a dashing princess.
That pun was so bad, Rainbow Dash ran right into it.
"Ow!" said exclaimed Rainbow Dash, wondering how she managed to smack face-first into the fourth wall. When she saw them, those sentences, those words, that pun, she let out a low growl.
"Excuse me, Set Of All Sets, I need to go perform an exorcism on Common Equestrian."
The book did not respond.
The flowers, however, thought it was hilarious.
It was a calm, slightly chilly equestrian night. Rarity was trotting along a path on the outskirts of Ponyville, in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible for any prying eyes to figure out what her precious cargo was. First, she had walked away from the library in the exact opposite direction of her house, until she reached one of the trails leading outside the city. Now she was ever so carefully following another trail around Ponyville, and it was taking forever.
"Ugh, these potions had really better be worth all this trouble."
She still had a ways to go before she reached her destination: a place where the trail was just two blocks away from her house. Letting out a weary sigh, Rarity looked around. Apparently, she was just a quarter-mile away from the weather team's staging area. Hmmmm, that's strange, thought Rarity, I would have thought the weather team would have amassed a large number of clouds in preparation for tomorrow's afternoon shower. The pearly white unicorn shrugged. Oh well, maybe the staging area moved. I'm sure Rainbow Dash has it all under contr— "waaaaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"
Rarity, lost in thought as she was, hadn't been paying attention to where she was going, and had tripped on a branch sticking out of the path.
Thud.
She landed face-first in the dirt, which totally messed up her facial. It also might have damaged the highly volatile chemicals she was carrying, too, but that wasn't nearly as important.
"Oh, heavens no, my mane is completely ruined!" she moaned, "Oh, and I should check to see if the potions are all intact."
Rarity was pleased to find that only a single vial had slipped out. Regrettably, it had smashed against the ground, and was now dumping its contents into a tiny stream weaving its way across the path. The stream itself emptied into a nearby lake, but Rarity wasn't particularly concerned about that. Most of the potions had survived, and that's all that mattered. She used her magic to levitate the broken glass into one of her saddlebag pouches, dusted herself off, and continued down the path.
As the stars twinkled in the night sky, a faint green cloud began to spread out through the pond.
"Buck it all, Wind Whistler, it's five in the bucking morning!"
"I'm sorry, Rainbow—"
"You'd better be."
"—but this is an emergency!"
"On a scale of sleep to emergency, just how emergency is this?!"
Wind Whistler frowned. She was having trouble following Rainbow Dash's sleep-deprived logic. "...Very emergency, Captain!"
"Then tell me what it is, already!"
"Yes c—" Wind Whistler stopped herself mid-sentence. "We have no clouds!"
Rainbow Dash blanched, then let out a stream of cursing that probably would have landed her in the dungeon if she had been within a mile radius of a princess. Then again, Twilight was a princess now, so technically she was, but whatever. Seriously though, it was a lot of swearing. Like, whoa.
"... the Bucking Goddess herself! I can't make it rain without rainclouds! How many do we have in emergency staging?"
"Like, four, captain, and they're reserved for fires."
Rainbow Dash fell silent, tapping a hoof on her windowsill. As the gears turned inside that rainbow-maned head of hers, a plan slowly began to fall into place. "Ok, Whistler, wake up the entire weather crew and bring them to the staging area. I need to take out a loan."
Before long, a haphazard gathering of 30 or so very tired pegasi took up residence next to four lonely rainclouds. Somehow, those rainclouds needed to provide an entire afternoon shower by themselves, and also maintain an emergency fire reserve at the same time. According to the laws of physics, this was impossible.
Luckily, Rainbow Dash didn't believe in the laws of physics.
"Listen up, pegasi! We have a situation on our hooves. As you can plainly see, we only have four rainclouds today. This is a problem, because we need about 200 for today's afternoon shower, plus four rainclouds in our emergency fire reserve."
The only response Rainbow Dash got was loud snoring. Pepper Dasher had fallen asleep in midair, and the rest of the pegasi seemed prone to follow suit. The weather captain sighed; unlike certain crazy ponies in charge of the educational department, she recognized that it's difficult to get somepony to focus at 6 AM in the morning, let alone effectively do their job.
"You know what, buck this. All of you, go back to bed. I'll get you up again in an hour." Rainbow Dash pointed a hoof at a pale green pegasus. "Except you, Tinker Hooves. I've got something special for you. And somepony carry Pepper Dasher back to his house!"
An off-white mare fluttered over to Pepper Dash and picked him up, trying in vain to hide a faint blush. Rainbow Dash smirked, I knew Snow Burst had a crush on that guy. As the rest of the pegasi floated off to rediscover the joys of sleeping in a warm bed, Tinker Hooves flew up to Rainbow Dash, trying in vain to suppress a yawn.
"Alright, Tinker Hooves, here's the plan. I'm going to borrow our fire reserve clouds, and you're going to help me use them to jury-rig a cloud-making machine." Tinker Hooves looked ready to protest, but Rainbow Dash held up a hoof. "If we are extremely unlucky, and the fire we usually get about once every three months happens in the two hour window this will require, then we'll just rip the machine apart and use it to douse the fire."
"Rainbow Dash, how on earth can we build a cloud making machine with only four medium-sized rainclouds?" protested Tinker Hooves, "We have an entire factory for this in Cloudsdale!"
Rainbow Dash grinned. "That, my little genius friend, is what you're going to figure out. Let me get you started. First, we'll—" She paused. "I... need a chalkboard."
Five minutes later, Rainbow Dash was doing something she really, honestly never thought she'd be doing. She was scribbling on a chalkboard she had borrowed from Cheerilee.
"Clouds form when the air gets saturated with water. Colder air holds less water, so as air cools, it can no longer hold on to all the water it's carrying, and from this excess, tiny water droplets form. Clouds happen when these tiny water droplets decide to have a giant party together. Pegasus magic is density manipulation - we lower our effective density, which lets us fly and walk on clouds, even if we aren't necessarily consciously aware of it. Lowering the density of a gas cools it down, because math."
"Actually," piped up Tinker Hooves, "That's a consequence of the ideal gas law, which states that—"
"Yeah yeah yeah," Rainbow Dash waved a hoof in the air. "Like I said, lowering the density lowers the pressure, then math happens, and the gas cools down. In addition, it is well-known to pegasi that wind causes evaporation. One can only assume that water particles are deathly afraid of pressure. Consequently, we can efficiently create clouds by creating a wind tunnel across a large pool of water, saturate warm air with water, let it rise, and then rapidly cool it down by lowering its effective density. We do this on a massive scale in Cloudsdale, but we can also pull it off on a much smaller scale using just a few clouds. We just need a small lake, a lot of pegasus wings, a funnel, and a density-lowering machine."
Tinker Hooves gulped. "You want me to imbue pegasus magic into a tiny machine with only four clouds to work with?"
"Two clouds," corrected Rainbow Dash, "the other two are needed for the funnel."
"Ponies get PhDs for inventing stuff like this!" protested Tinker Hooves. "This is graduate level work, at least!"
"Well then, I'm fortunate to have somepony pining for graduate school on my team, aren't I?"
By a combination of brilliance and dumb luck, Tinker Hooves actually managed to miniaturize one of her professor's designs using a particularly ingenious gear construction derived from her friend's work in engineering. What was more impressive was the fact that she did this in an hour and a half, prompting Rainbow Dash to wake up the rest of the team again. If this thing was going to work, they needed wingpower, and lots of it.
"Alright, pegasi, our resident genius over here has invented a miniature cloud machine using our four reserve rainclouds. I'd like to ask everypony to please not set the town square on fire right now, because that would be extremely inconvenient. If you have a really bad urge to burn down the town, please refrain from doing so until this afternoon."
All she got out of her team was a few yawns. Well, at least they're not falling asleep this time.
"The device is manually powered, which means one pegasi will need to sit up there turning the crank. We will be using that lake over there for water vapor." Rainbow Dash pointed towards a nearby lake that also happened to be right next to a trail. "It's reasonably small, so we'll only need about 20 pegasi to surround it and generate a vortex."
At this point, Tinker Hooves cut in. "Generating a vortex over a simply-connected domain is a known solution of the Hoovier-Stokes equations. Given a vector field F, which is our lake, we give it an initial boundary condition approximating the wingbeats of our pegasi, represented by the parameterized curve g(ß). Our initial condition is zero eveywhere, and our continuity equation is , so if we plug this into the Wingbeat Theorem ..."
By this point, Rainbow Dash's brain had checked out and was currently somewhere over Manehatten. Rainbow Dash had no patience for math that wasn't directly related to either going really fast or managing weather systems.
"... and the derivative of Rainbow Dash is Scootaloo, so—"
"Wait, what?!" Rainbow Dash was not used to being a variable.
About half the weather team started snickering. "I-I, uh, it was just a temporary variable..." stuttered Tinker Hooves.
Math clearly wasn't taking its breakup with Rainbow Dash very well.
In a modest cottage outside the Everfree Forest, a small yellow pegasus was feeding a group of bluejays. Her eyes drooped, and a hint of red was still visible. Her posture was slouched, as she half-heartedly poured birdseed out of a bag into a feeding tray. It wasn't hard to tell she was feeling a bit down.
Ok, a lot down. Actually, she looked seriously depressed, and of course, nopony can look seriously depressed in Ponyville for more than five minutes without—
"Hey Fluttershy!" A pink party pony padded past the potted plants placed precariously upon the pastel pegasi's palisade. "Whatcha doin'?"
Fluttershy muttered something unintelligible, but Pinkie Pie didn't seem to notice. "Really? Well I thought I'd just hop right on over and see what's been getting you down, because I know everypony in Ponyville and I especially know when somepony isn't feeling super duper fabulous like yourself and it wasn't really that hard to—"
Pinkie Pie was interrupted by a small squeak emanating from the yellow pegasus, who dashed into her cottage and slammed the door shut.
"Hmmmm, maybe I shouldn't have come on so strong."
The pink pony bounced over to Fluttershy's door and cheerfully knocked. "Fluttershyyyyyy~ Are you hoooooooooooooome~?"
The only response was a terrified whine that worked its way under the door.
Pinkie giggled. "Oh Fluttershy, I thought you'd be more enthusiastic about seeing your bestest best friend forever!"
At this, the door started crying. Well, ok, the pony behind the door started crying, as muffled sobs filtering through the wooden cracks. Now, there are a great many things you can get away with in the vicinity of Pinkie Pie. The two things you can't get away with are transdimensional teleportation, and crying.
Instantly, Pinkie went into crisis-management mode. She pushed the door open (Fluttershy had never actually locked it), and found a despondent yellow pegasus lying on the welcome mat in front of her, bawling her eyes out. "Oh, Fluttershy!" Pinkie grabbed her in a hug and held her tightly, letting Fluttershy cry into her shoulder.
“I-I-*sniff* I’m s-such a bad p-pony, Pinkie Pie. I had this crush on R-Rainbow Dash and then s-she told me *sniff* she wasn’t a lesbian and she tried to comfort me and I just… just…” Fluttershy couldn’t finish, and started bawling again.
“Shhh, it’s ok, Flutters, it’s ok, you’re not a bad pony. Sombra was a bad pony; you’re the kindest, sweetest, most lovable—”
“No!” Fluttershy managed to get her crying under control again. “Y-you don’t understand, *sniff* Rainbow Dash tried to make me feel better and I just yelled at her for no reason and it wasn’t even her fault! It was all my fault and I just took it out on Rainbow Dash and I’m such a horrible terrible pony…”
“Oh, Fluttershy, that’s ok, you just had an itsy-bitsy episode, there. I’m sure Dashie will understand. She won’t hold it against you. I don’t hold it against you. We’re your friends, why would we ever let something like that get in the way?”
She wasn’t sure if Fluttershy had heard that, because she just started crying again. For several minutes, Pinkie Pie sat awkwardly, letting Fluttershy cry her heart out, unsure of what to do. She wasn't used to dealing with such a seriously depressed pony. What could she do to cheer up Fluttershy?
Without warning, and without thinking, Fluttershy turned her head, and kissed Pinkie Pie. It was a deep, passionate kiss, filled with hope, and longing, and a lot of other things Fluttershy didn't have time to think about after suddenly pulling away in a panic.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I can't believe I just did that, I don't even know why I did that, I'm just doing the same thing all over again and I'm a terrible pony and—"
Fluttershy's self-deprecation was abruptly interrupted by Pinkie kissing her. The two ponies toppled over, locked in a romantic embrace, their hearts fluttering with excitement.
For once in that past three days, things seemed to be going well. The pegasi had taken shifts generating a gentle wind column across the small lake, directing water vapor into the cloud making apparatus. Rainbow Dash had used the first few clouds they'd gotten to widen the funnel, and then quickly paid back her loan of four clouds to the emergency fire reserve. By lunchtime, they had cranked out nearly enough clouds to handle the afternoon shower, and it was at this point Rainbow Dash realized she hadn't had anything to eat all day.
*grumble*
Her stomach wasn't particularly happy about that.
"Alright, great work guys. I'm starving right now, and I'm sure most of you are too. So, let's take a lunch break."
A few scattered “Woo’s” could be heard, but most of the weather team was too exhausted to do more than drop whatever they were doing and trot towards Ponyville.
"And I want all of you back here in an hour, we still have a few more clouds to make!" Rainbow Dash shouted after them. Satisfied, she began walking towards town herself, when a piece of paper lying on a nearby trail caught her eye. The fact that it was a piece of paper wasn't interesting, but it sure seemed familiar. It almost looked like the same paper Rarity had written... her... slashfics....... on?
Her hunger momentarily forgotten, she dashed towards the parchment and swept it off the ground. A quick glance at the title confirmed her worst fears.
Rainbow Dash's Birthday Present
The summer breeze blew through an open window as Rainbow Dash hovered in her cloud house. A large package sat in the middle of the room, courtesy of a certain wall-eyed mailmare. Rainbow Dash was almost drooling with anticipation, and after letting out a small squee of excitement, she tore into the package.
It was something special she'd gotten herself for her birthday. A little happy-birthday-to-me kind of thing. Something she'd been pining to have ever since she'd first started reading those amazing stories. A little something to have fun with.
Her very own giant Daring Doo blow-up doll.
Rainbow Dash couldn't read any further than that, and simply let out a howl of frustration. Did this really have to—
"Geeze Rainbow," interrupted a nearby stallion, "why are you so crusty today? You got something on your loaf?"
Rainbow Dash shot the stallion a sour look and bolted towards the library. She had completely forgotten to ask Twilight for help last night! Five minutes later, Rainbow Dash was catching her breath while sitting on the Ponyville Library welcome mat. Unfortunately, the librarian didn't seem to be in a very welcoming mood.
"Twilight? Twilight! It's Rainbow Dash, you gotta help me out here!"
Rainbow Dash heard a muffled shout behind the door that sounded suspiciously like "Buck off!”.
"Come ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnn, Twilight!" whined Rainbow Dash in the most obnoxious voice she could muster.
The door abruptly swung open, and a very tired and angry-looking Twilight stood behind it. "What?!"
"Wow, when did you get up this morning, Twilight?"
Twilight's eye twitched. "Twenty minutes ago. I still haven't had my morning coffee."
Rainbow Dash blanched, again. "What?! Just how late did you stay up last night?! And why?"
Twilight groaned and facehooved. "It's none-ah your buckin' beeswax, Rainbow, now either shut up or tell me why you insist on ruining my morning."
Part of Rainbow Dash wanted to correct Twilight, because as far as she was concerned, her morning had been far worse. That, however, would not get her any closer to fixing the slashfic problem. "Can you cast a spell to find pieces of paper that were really close together at one point?"
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Why do you need a proximity history detection spell? Actually," Twilight raised a hoof before Rainbow Dash could reply. "Hold that thought, I'm going to make myself breakfast, then we can talk about this."
At that moment, Rainbow Dash's stomach reminded her about certain aspects of her anatomy - primarily, her need to consume plant matter on a regular basis so she didn't starve to death. "Oh, ah, sure," Rainbow Dash followed Twilight into the library and watched her pick up some bread with her magic. "Actually, while you're at it, could you make me a sandwich? I'm really hungry."
Twilight twitched, that disturbing kind of twitch that traveled down her whole body, before slowly turning towards Rainbow Dash with a scowl. "What did you say?"
"I-I, uh, could you make me a sandwich?"
Twilight just stared at her for a few moments, before her scowl abruptly flipped upside-down into a cold, unnerving smile. "Of course, I should have thought of this earlier!"
Rainbow Dash heaved a sigh of relief. Well, she tried to, anyway. She got about halfway through when her breath caught in her throat. A familiar tingling sensation was surrounding her body, and a purple haze had invaded her vision. Suddenly, she was three inches tall, staring up at a huge purple Twilight Sparkle, whose eye twitched again.
"There, I made you a sandwich." Twilight turned back to her kitchen counter and began laying daisies on to a slice of bread.
Rainbow Dash was about to protest that Twilight had instead shrunk her to the size of a mouse, but then she looked down. She did not see hooves. She did not see cyan fur. Instead, she saw a piece of bread. Suddenly, Rainbow Dash realized precisely what had happened - she’d been turned into a sandwich.
Naturally, Rainbow Dash did what anypony would do if they were suddenly turned into a sandwich.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!"
She screamed.
"YOU TURNED ME INTO A SANDWICH! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!" wailed the little Rainbow-Sandwich as it hopped up and down.
Twilight shot her a sardonic look, and something clicked in Rainbow Dash's brain (which was currently occupying some unknown region of hyperspace).
"I didn’t mean literally make me into a sandwich! Change me back right now!"
“Hmmmmmm,” Twilight looked up, feigning indecision. “Nah, I like things better this way.”
Rainbow Dash attempted to walk forward, but quickly realized that, without legs, such locomotion was futile. So, she hopped forward, until she smacked into Twilight’s leg.
“This is an outrage!” protested Rainbow Dash, “I don’t even like tomato-and-daisy sandwiches!”
“On the contrary, Rainbow-Sandwich, this is hilarious.” Twilight retorted, while making a more traditional tomato-and-daisy sandwich on the kitchen counter. “Perhaps now would be a good time to expand your culinary tastes.”
The Rainbow-maned sandwich simply sputtered in rage as it angry hopped around Twilight’s hooves.
Twilight was about to consume her delicious vegetarian sandwich when she paused. “Hmmm, you know, I’ve never had a chance to taste Rainbow Dash before.”
The sandwich briefly froze in midair, before gravity remembered it had a job to do and dragged her back down to the floor. “I, uh, don’t like where this conversation is going.”
Without warning, a giant purple hoof had grabbed the Rainbow-Sandwich and was now lifting her, inexorably, towards the purple alicorn’s open maw. "No, wait! I’m allergic to being eaten!"
The sandwich’s death march halted. “Is that so? Seems like a rather unusual allergen, if you ask me.”
The sandwich went quiet for a moment, before speaking up in a much softer voice. “Twilight, this really, really isn’t funny anymore. I’m serious.”
Twilight let out an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes. “Oh fine, you pansy.” She chucked the sandwich towards the door.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-Whoa!” Rainbow Dash was turned back into a pegasus in midair, just in time for her to smash into the door. “Ow!”
Twilight had already gone back to her organic sandwich, and was now munching on it while eyeing the crumpled pile of cyan pegasus next to her front door. “Well, tha’ was ethucashunal,” she said with her mouth full.
Educational, my flank, thought Rainbow Dash. “Um, sure. I’ll just be going now.” Without waiting for an answer, the pegasus launched herself through the library’s front door and into the sky.
"Mental note: Never bug Twilight about anything before she's had her morning coffee. Ever," muttered Rainbow Dash as she flew away. Her stomach growled again, reminding her, once again, that she was hungry. This was very frustrating to Rainbow Dash’s stomach, because it had told the rebellious pegasus that it was hungry like ten times already and she still hadn’t listened.
Should I go for some Hayfries? Or maybe Fry’s Pantry? The pegasus fluttered to the ground in the middle of the food court, and was still mulling over where to eat when she heard a familiar buzz approaching from behind her.
"Hey, Rainbow Dash!” shouted Scootaloo, waving as she rode her scooter through the crowd.
Rainbow Dash turned around, glad to have a distraction from all the nonsense. "What's up, Scoots?"
The orange filly skid to a stop next to Rainbow Dash.
