Chapter 1: Dash Did Not Adjust Well To Her Desk Job
It was another Monday. A day like any other, with its odd exception. Instead of lying in bed all day like on Sunday, Rainbow Dash would go to work on a Monday and daydream about returning to that bed once her shift was over.
She was in her office, staring wistfully at the clock along the back wall. The room was too small to ever be considered a living space, but Dash often times felt like actually living there. Why bother going to an empty house when she could move her bed right here? It would save her the trouble of the subway terminal, too; she wasn’t a mole, and disliked staying underground for prolonged amounts of time. She often wished she could fly to work, spread her wings out and take to the skies to save some time on her daily commute, but she knew she didn’t have the luxury to do so.
The mind numbing boredom of her job drilled into her skull and created a nest of mediocrity with the remnants of her enthusiasm. She had eaten a sandwich minutes before, on her designated lunch break, but the food was bland and tasteless as ever. Years ago she used to put rainbow liquid as a condiment on her food, get a little extra kick out of her meals. It wasn’t much of a taste many ponies or even pegasi would like, but she always had a strong yearning for it. Not like she could ever eat it now, though.
Turning back to the empty space on her desk, she allowed herself a few moments to relax; she knew that the much dreaded paperwork would quickly make said space messy and cluttered. It reminded her of the clouds drifting aimlessly in the sky back when she could dispel them with a kick of her hoof. Except here it was papers on a desk, and she didn’t have the comfort to buck them out of existence. Picking one up, she blew it up in the air so it could float down to the table, falling and scattering those nearby it, much like clouds in the sky. She smiled a bit as the disruption among the pages reminded her of clouds being bucked in the sky, only for the smile to quickly die as she was reminded it just wasn’t the same.
Her official job was Administrator of Flying Affairs, which basically amounted to filling out paperwork for anything having to do with a pegasi, wings, or open air. And one of those things was becoming more scarce than ever.
Since Dash was part of the Flying Affairs office, most of her safety code violations dealt with flying in restricted airspace, which was practically all airspace on public grounds nowadays, or expired flying licences. The licences expired so quickly and it was such a hassle to renew them, most pegasi didn’t bother. Dash herself had a licence that expired years ago she hasn’t put to use ever since.
A knock came at her door. The rap-tap-tap of the door was an unfamiliar; nopony she worked with knocked like that. Curious, she dropped her pen, her ears pricking forward as she stared dumbly at the door. Did they come to the wrong room? A voice interrupted her thought. “Miss Dash, we have a delinquent flier who wishes to speak with you.”
Dash narrowed her eyes; she could see two dark shapes moving through the haze of the patterned glass doorway. “Isn’t that Miss Chaser’s department? I don’t usually deal with law breakers. I just file what exactly they do.”
“Yes, but this one says he knows you,” the pony at the other end said, which was soon followed by a grunt. “Him and a friend were caught in a no-fly zone in Ponyville, and was brought here for sentencing. His file is #234456.”
Sighing, Dash destroyed the towers of perfectly piled paperwork to dig for the offender’s file. It took her a few moments to find the the paperwork, since it was in a pile of files she had tried to make resemble a cloud out of boredom. Unfortunately, the papers’ straight edges and lack of fluffiness made it a vain attempt. Scanning it with as much interest as an old magazine at the doctor’s office, her eyes widened, before narrowing quickly into a hard squint.
“Send him in,” Dash called out.
The door was thrown open, the juvenile pegasus bursting in, wings rising from his side as if freed from bondage—which perhaps they had been. The officer followed him in, giving him a cold glare. "Ma'am, do you want me here to keep an eye on him?"
“No, I think I can manage well enough,” Dash replied, pointing to a the chair she kept in the corner of her office. Rumble made his way to the corner and dragged the chair over for him to sit across from her, briefly passing close by her. For a moment she stared into his eyes, feeling a chill run up her back at the coldness she could see in those purple pupils. Dash discreetly edged her chair back from, trying to put more distance between herself and that icy glare. “I think Rumble and I can keep civil, can’t we?”
“Yeah, we can,” Rumble said, his tone dipped in extra bitterness when he cast an eye at the officer. Slumping in his seat, the pegasus colt rubbed at his side, wincing. Rainbow Dash could see some faint bruises along his thin gray coat; she wondered briefly if the officer had given those to him personally.
The door closed with a loud bang, causing Dash to wince. Opening her eyes back up slowly, she allowed herself a rare smile as she leaned forward to rest her chin on her hooves. “So, Rumble, what brings you to my office today?”
“Cut the crap, Dash, you know why I’m here,” Rumble responded without missing a beat, pointing an accusing hoof at the lone file not tucked into a stack on her desk. “You know well enough from the report, so you don’t have to hear it from me twice.”
“Yes, well, I’d just like to hear it from you myself, if you’re really so set on me helping you,” Dash explained, pushing the page forward. “And by all means, you need all the help you can get. It seems you and Pound Cake were caught flying in a no-fly zone right above city hall in Ponyville in the middle of night. Flying in no-fly zones is bad enough; doing it over a federal building? That’s a serious felony.” Holding her hooves together while covering her muzzle, Dash shrugged. “The report sounds pretty straight to me. You got another story that can help disprove it?”
“No, me and Pound did do that,” Rumble said definitely, almost hanging off the edge of his seat. “But that isn’t all.”
“Oh yeah, the reminds me, Pound’s report. Five thousand fake licenses. I’m surprised Pound Cake could even fly like that.” Dash lifted up the page, creating a makeshift wall between them. “You were his spotter, weren’t you? He carried the supplies, while you looked out for trouble. Looks like you didn’t really do a good job. They probably won’t even let him out of his cell, while you still have the luxury of staying out.”
“Yeah, that’s why I came to you, Dash. I know you’d be the only one to help.” Rumble edged closer in his seat and put his hoof over the paper Dash was trying to block him with, his eyes looking at her earnestly. “You can’t lock Pound up like this. It was my idea to smuggle the licences; I wanted to carry them, but he told me I had better eyes. I never should have let him take the risk… but damnit, he just wouldn’t listen! But you know how it is, right? I just wanted...” Rumble looked away and closed his eyes. “I just wanted things to go off without a hitch. Not like this.”
Rainbow Dash shrugged, leaning back in her seat with both hooves behind her head as she eased herself in a relaxed incline. “I don’t know why you would come to me then.”
“Come on, Dash, you know what’s happening to us and every other pegasus isn’t right. We’re second-class citizens, have been ever since we built the factories! We’re fucking useless!” Rumble pounded his hoof on the desk, nearly dispelling her stacks of papers. “The unicorns control the weather! They won't even let us set up the rainbows anymore! Then because of the railroads and subways and busses, nopony needs chariots anymore! There are no jobs left for us, not with the earth ponies and not with the unicorns!"
“I still don’t see how this concerns me,” Dash said, her eyelids drooping, reducing Rumble to nothing more than a hazy gray blob “I’ve already heard this from other pegasi before, you know?”
“Yes, but that’s exactly why it concerns you! You’re the fastest flyer in Equestria!”
Rainbow raised a hoof. “I used to be the fastest flyer in Equestria,” Dash corrected him. “Not anymore. Not since—”
“Not since the first no-fly zone made it impossible for you to perform tricks in Ponyville?” Rumble said for her, glaring at her. “Yeah, I heard it before. When the regulations started getting approved, more and more chunks of Equestria land were being designated as no-fly territories, until this entire damn country became covered in them. We were already useless, best to keep us out of sight, right?”
“Now Rumble, that isn’t the only reason—”
“Don’t patronize me with the bullshit they force you to eat, Dash,” Rumble said, his eyes boring through her cheap facade and striking at her soul. “You and I both know ever since Equestria didn’t need flying to meet its needs and used magic and technology instead, we were deemed obsolete. That flying me and Pound did, that was the first time we’ve flown since we were colts. Some of the foals aren’t even taught how to fly anymore.”
“What goes on in Ponyville nowadays is none of my business anymore. I don’t even live there,” Dash said, turning away to avoid his eyes. “And really, you wanting my help won’t lead to any benefits on your end, I guarantee.”
“B-but… you’re Rainbow Dash. We grew up in the same town, for Celestia’s sake! Don’t you dare tell me you don’t care what those assholes are doing to us!”
“Rumble, if I helped you out, then I’d have to help out every half-brained pegasus that walks into my office thinking I’ll give out free handouts. I don’t deal with offenders, not matter what.” Dash shook her head, unmaintained mane swaying to and fro in a messy, rainbow sweep. “I just can’t do that.”
“But what about loyalty? Isn’t that what you’ve always made yourself out to be? Loyal?” Rumble asked, hooves spread out in exasperation. “Because this sure isn’t loyal!”
Dash sighed and slumped forward. “You’re just like your brother.”
Rumble’s tirade was cut short. “What?”
“Thunderlane. He said the same thing to me.”
Rumble opened his mouth, words just hanging on the edge of his tongue and begging to be released. However, he shut his jaw and just stared at Dash, his eyes doing more of the talking again.
“Your brother was billed the same charges as you, so many years ago. Just when the restrictions began on flying, actually. Smuggling, along with trespassing on no-fly zone areas. Though back then it was incredibly rare to be caught in one, since they were relatively new. But he thought he could get away with it, since his ol’ pal Rainbow Dash worked with the ponies who locked him up and I can help get him off scot-free. Just like I said with you, I can’t help anypony out who breaks the law. He broke the law, and then got what he deserved. I just filed his criminal report is all. After that, well,” Dash sighed and shrugged her shoulders whimsically, “it played out like any typical troubled young stallion. He’s been in and out of prison too many times for me to count.”
“But still, you… you locked him up!” Rumble shouted. “You locked up my brother! You didn’t do shit to help him and he was your friend!”
Dash held up a hoof to cut him off. “I was just following orders. It was Thunderlane’s own actions that got him locked up.”
“That isn’t good enough and you know that, Dash!” Rumble slammed a hoof down harder on Dash’s desk, causing a pile of papers to scatter over its surface. Now her once neatly organized working space was becoming a mess the longer Rumble stayed. “These papers, each and every one of them are just bullshit documents made by an even more bullshit law system. Thunderlane keeps ending up in jail because he wants to fly! But practically no one can fly in Equestria now! All cities are no-fly zones, all towns are no-fly zones, all private government land are no-fly zones… you can’t fly anywhere! Everypony just goes on a train or stagecoach and don’t even look up at the skies nowadays! Can you really blame somepony, especially a pegasus, for just wanting the freedom of the air beneath their wings without having to worry about getting thrown in a cell?”
On impulse Dash felt her wings flex out. Her feathers could practically taste the wind blowing over their surface, ruffling her quills as they teased the air. She would glide in that sea of clear blue sky and dip and dive in its endless depths while a breeze here and there would help her soar to the heavens themselves so that she could plummet like a stone to the ground. But the ground wasn’t her destination, no, it was merely a sight to enjoy while she divebombed into a perfect loop and scream triumphantly at the top of her lungs as she spun around in place, free for the limitless frontier of open skies Equestria offered.
“Dash?” Rumble called out, slamming a hoof down hard on her desk. “Are you even listening to me?”
Rainbow returned her eyes to Rumble, her wings reflexively retreating in close to her sides. “Yes, Rumble, I am. My hooves are tied on this, I’m sorry to say.”
“But you’re Rainbow Dash! You’re never sorry!”
“I am here, Rumble. I am sorry you decided I would be any help, but unfortunately for you, I can’t.” Dash lifted up her stack on files and inserted Rumble’s felony report back into it. “I just file these reports, I can’t get you off the hook or anything like that. If I was you, I’d get a good lawyer, or, since this is your first arrest, go for a plea bargain, since you are still relatively young and the judge may go easy on you. You could just get a few months or just community service. Pound, unfortunately, will receive a few years on his sentence since he was the one found with the illegal licences, but there’s always the chance good behavior could get him out early Five years is the maximum he can get, and I’m sure he’ll receive much less.”
“Good behavior? Don’t lie to my face like that! I’m getting hard labor and you know it!” Rumble was practically climbing over Dash’s desk now, one stack of papers falling to the floor. Dash stared at it with worry, more so than she was directing at Rumble. “I’ll probably be underground digging up a tunnel to make another subway station. Or maybe work on a chain-gang building a new interstate highway. And Pound will get something way worse than I will, even though the entire licence thing was my idea! Whatever I’ll be doing, it definitely won’t be flying, and I won’t get a licence to fly even years after my sentence! I’m grounded for life!”
Grounded for life. Those words rang in her mind in a dull throb that gave her a headache. The words reverberated in her skull and brought forth nasty images in their wake. No fly-zone signs popping up all over the place, smoke rising from trains built to house hundreds of passengers, crowded with pegasi who weren’t even allowed to fly to their jobs. Guards arresting pegasi left and right, most being thrown in a cell for the dire offense of having wings and daring to make use of them. No one needed wings in Equestria, not anymore.
“Then I don’t know why you’re telling me this. I already told you I can’t help,” Dash said again while sucking in a breath as the memory left her, already reaching out for papers to pile back up to put anything between her and Rumble.
“Why, Dash? Why can’t you help? I thought you being here, one of the fastest fliers in Equestria… you’d be doing whatever it took to help us fellow pegasi out.” Rumble reached out and grasped her hoof. “Don’t you care?”
“I care that you’re ruining my papers,” Dash replied. “Now, if you’ll please leave…”
Rumble threw his hooves up, knocking two of the towers of pages on Dash’s desk downward. The remaining were swept away by an enraged strike that sent papers fluttering everywhere. Rumble stood there, breathing heavily as pages fell about him, tears threatening to fall down his cheeks as he stared Rainbow Dash right in the eye.
“Is this all you care about, Dash? Papers? I thought you were loyal to ponies, not laws, not a desk. I thought you were loyal to friends.” Rumble bit his lip and bit back his tears the best he could, though it wasn’t doing him any good. Dash couldn’t decide whether he was just trying his best to act manly, or not look like the scared kid he currently was. “So just… just what are you loyal to?”
Dash wanted to call in the officer right there and then. How dare this nuisance ruin her perfectly stacked papers and disrupt her already disastrous day like this? How dare he tell her what loyalty is? The only answer she wanted to give him was an angry shout for him to leave immediately.
But she held her tongue. Rumble was crying. Not the bawling, sniveling crying of a colt that were ignored as frivolous or weak. It was the silent tears of an adult; somepony who knew exactly what was going to befall them in the future, and them dealing with those consequences, even through the pain. They were tears Dash knew didn’t belong on a face so young, yet so old at the same time. For that, she knew he deserved a truthful answer. “I’m loyal to myself, Rumble. No one can be more disappointed with me than I already am.”
“Miss Dash, is there a problem?” the officer called from behind the door, opening it up to reveal the two.
“No, no, no problem at all,” Dash assured him, waving her hoof nonchalantly. Already picking papers up from the floor, she said, “We were done here, weren’t we, Rumble?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said slowly, pronouncing each syllable with extra emphasis before his jaw went slack.
“Good. This one has a cell ready for him.” The officer pulled at Rumble’s shoulder, the young stallion giving way and following him out the door. He didn’t even bother to look back.
Dash sank back into her seat and sighed as the door shut close with another loud bang. Just the simple job of confronting with another pony had left her so emotionally drained she could barely get up. Even the thought of getting up to pick her papers up from the floor seemed like too daunting a task.
She wanted to sit in that seat. Just to remain there for several minutes longer. Ignore the clock, her disorganized papers, the dull throb of her soul being sucked out from her job, the pain in her wings from disuse, the regrets of her past weighing down on her so powerfully she couldn’t imagine lifting up that weight with her wings.
“Dash, hey, Rainbow, are you there?” a voice spoke up next to her.
Rainbow opened her eyes, her eyelids draped lazy down as her pupils searched for the source of the voice. It was none other than Twilight Sparkle, in all her resplendent glory… at least in hologram form.
The third-dimensional image of Twilight fritzed before it became picture clear again. “Hey there, Dash, I decided to drop on by! Well, at least using my magic, that is. Travel nowadays is so crowded.”
Rainbow resisted the urge to roll her eyes, knowing full well Twilight could travel wherever she pleased in private stagecoaches or even teleportation. Funny how the pegasi couldn't use their wings while the unicorns could still use their magic. Of course, they being the ones who made pegasi useless in the first place, maybe it wasn't so funny after all.
“I can believe that,” Dash replied back. Her commute to work that morning had taken nearly half an hour. The process of switching multiple subways to travel across the great expanse of the city left her more exhausted than flying would have done. But flying was not an option in the first place, no matter how much that thought still disturbed her.
“I was just wondering if you’ll be free in the next couple of days. We haven’t caught up in a long time, and I thought we could go out for lunch or coffee sometime. You know, catch up on things?”
The genuine smile from Twilight was countered by the fake one Dash managed to put out. “Sorry, Twi, but I’ve been a bit busy with work and all…”
She didn’t want to tell the real reason why she didn’t want to catch up with Twilight. Dash had just been through more emotional contact with ponies than she needed in a month this afternoon.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, you need a vacation anyway! Ooh, I know! We and the rest of the gals can go on a cruise!” Twilight said excitedly, that youthful vigor still showing through the magical construction. Of course it would, since Twilight hadn’t aged a day in the last decade, while Dash felt like she was fifty.
“On the ocean? You know how seasick I get,” Dash chuckled with actual mirth in her voice for the first time since she could last remember. She couldn’t remember the last time she had taken a day off, much less a vacation. The bore of work was her only way to get past each and every day, and she couldn’t take a vacation from her life or troubles.
“No, in the sky. They have these new airships that can accommodate a couple of dozen passengers now, and I was thinking that’d be a nice experience to have, wouldn’t it?” Twilight asked, looking at Dash with bright eyes—or that could have just been a result of the magic the hologram was producing. “I can pull some strings and get you a new permanent licence so you can fly up there. I always wondered why you didn’t ask in the first place. Wouldn’t flying around the airship be fun, Dash? ”
The dull look returned in Dash’s eyes. She turned away from Twilight, picking her papers up one by one and meticulously sorting them into their former stacks.
“The others girls miss you, Dash,” Twilight said. It was obvious she was grasping straws now, with the lack of interest Dash was showing her growing by the second. “Applejack said you don’t come over to visit anymore, Fluttershy hasn’t seen you in ages, you never write or even call Pinkie Pie, and Rarity says you haven’t made a trip to Ponyville in years.”
“Like I said before, I’m busy with my job,” Dash replied. “If they’re so worried about me, they can visit me themselves.”
“But Dash, you were never busy when you were a weather pony! You always just lazed around and napped on clouds all day! Yet you still found the time to spend quality time with your friends.”
Rainbow nearly bit off a piece of her tongue. She hadn’t slept on a cloud in years. Or for that matter, spoke to one of the others face to face. She couldn’t remember what it felt like to get a hug from Pinkie Pie. What Applejack’s apples tasted like. Rarity’s face escaped her memory no matter what she tried to remember How long ago was it that she had given her that dress? And what did Fluttershy’s voice sound like again? The voice escaped her memory, just like all the rest.
Gulping in a large lump stuck in her throat, Rainbow slowly turned to Twilight. She was to blame for her problems. Twilight, the revolutionary genius who changed Equestria through advanced technology for the better. In only a decade cities were booming, the population was skyrocketing, and Equestria was quickly becoming the number one industrialized nation in the world. It came with its price, of course. One that each and every pegasus in Equestria had to pay for. With Twilight’s gift came a curse that befall all those with wings across the nation, a curse that still haunted Rainbow Dash to this day. But for the life of her, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t say this to Twilight. She couldn’t lose that one last shred of loyalty to her friend, even if it meant swallowing both her tongue and misery.
“Yes, I did. When I was a weather pony. But now, I’m an Administrator for Flying Affairs, and I have a job to do. And I would much prefer to do that job than go on some silly trip up in the air, okay?” Dash slammed her stack of files down on her desk. “So I am sorry to say I can’t.”
Dash knew Twilight wanted to speak further. It was her nature, after all. But she stopped. Dash could only guess that the dead eyes in her own gaze were the cause. So Twilight’s ears dropped, and she nodded her head.
“I… understand, Dash. I hope you find some time in the future.”
“Maybe,” was the only response Twilight got out of Dash.
The hologram disappeared, and Rainbow Dash was once again left alone in her office. Just her, her desk, her stacks of carefully arranged files, three blank walls and a single door opposite her. All that was left of her world, fit into a single room.
She was suffocating. Not the crisp, beautiful expanse of blue she was used to, just blank and white. They drew themselves closer, threatening to smother her under their presence. Then the ceiling would come crashing down, the floor would entrap her, and she would die in her office alone and caged and unwept.
So she crawled up in a ball, underneath her desk. Still trapped, but not suffocating. She could breathe. She could breathe in the fresh air of the open skies, the blue flavor that seemed to seep from the ceiling of the world to fall into her mouth as she yelled in victory for soaring through the heavens. The clouds she passed through were a refreshing experience, covering her coat and feathers in a slight dew that quickly dried off when she gained altitude. Her speed was increasing, her wings pumping faster than ever and all around her was the limitless scope of possibility, the unbelievably infinite world of Equestria before it was changed. The Equestria of her dreams were just a dream, but right now, it didn’t matter to Rainbow Dash.
She just wanted to fly.