> Hot Crossed Rainbows > by JDunk1971 > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chapter 1 > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rainbow Dash was stoked! She'd received her white-bordered invitation to the Wonderbolts' annual Member's Only after-season party! Practically nopony who wasn't a past or current member of the Wonderbolts was ever invited to one. Rumor was that no one outside of the Wonderbolts themselves knew what went on , and security to keep the paparazzi away was tight. The date for the party was tomorrow, and in her fan-girlish haste to get things together she forgot to tell anyone where she was going, even the rest of the Mane 6. After all, it was only for overnight at worst; what cold possibly go wrong? These were the Wonderbolts, after all; who would attack them? *** The place for the party was a secluded stretch of clouds well away from anyplace. With her pass, she was able to get through with no problem. If she'd bothered to look at anything in her excitement, she would have seen that they were taking long, appraising looks at her flanks as she passed. Once there, she saw that the clouds surrounded an isolated flat mountaintop or small plateau divided by cloud barriers. She was directed to an area just away from the main gathering. There were a couple of pegasai already gathered there, but none of the Wonderbolts. "Where's the Wonderbolts? I thought this was a Wonderbolts party!" she asked a white-garbed pegasus mare. "Oh, they'll be along. In the meantime, why not have something to drink? Quite a flight here, after all." "Yeah, that does sound good." Rainbow Dash picked up a tankard and said "Bottoms up!" and drained half the mug of cider in one shot. She wiped her mouth and said "Good stuff; not as good as Applejack's, but..." She wobbled a bit and steadied herself with one hoof. "Whoah; that'ss some... good schtuff... wha' was innat?" Her vision blurred and she passed out. *** A sharp pain in her wings woke her up. 'Owww. What...?' She tried to get her bearings as she woke up, but found she couldn't move. 'Huh?' The muffled scream of a pony nearby cut through her grogginess and she woke up with a start as the pinpricks of pain continued in her wings and the scream faded to gurgles. "What? Who?" Rainbow Dash look around to find the source of the scream, and what she saw turned her blood cold. In front of her, a pegasus with her wings plucked and bound had the tip of a spit coming out of her muzzle; behind her another pegasus had a firm hold on the other end of the spit and was pushing it in! At the angle she was, Rainbow Dash wasn't able to see the other pegasus's flank. "Okay! Just what's going on here? Just where... OWWW! What The..." she said as a more massive blast of pain hit her wings. She turned her head to the side, and what she saw chilled her. Her beautiful azure wings; they had been... plucked! Only a few feathers remained near her body and... 'point!' the remaining ones were ripped out as well. "Okay! Just what is going on here?! Where are the Wonderbolts?? When they find out what's being done here, they'll..." "We'll do what, Rainbow Dash?" a familiar voice said that she recognized. "S-S-oarin'?? Just what's going on here? Why are pegasai being plucked and spitted?? More importantly, just why am I being plucked as well?" As she said that, the other spitted pegasus had had her fore and rear hooves bound to the spit and she was carried over to a carefully-constructed roasting pit where her spit was fitted to supports and a crank was attached. Another of the white-garbed pegasai grabbed the specially designed crank-handle in his teeth and started to rotate it. The spitted pegasus moaned around the spit as a third pegasai used a brush to apply some kind of sauce to the roasting pegasus. "Rainbow Dash, you were found wanting in the performance of your duties as the Weather Director of Ponyville for the 5th consecutive time! This kind of dereliction of duty is not permissible, so you were selected to atone for your failure by being a celebratory roast for those pegasai who CAN do their job." The pinpricks of her remaining feathers being plucked were almost lost in the whirling confusion in her mind. "Failure? But I'm one of the most awesome ponies around! I've won the best young flier competition! How can I be a failure?" "Oh, it's not in the individual accomplishments; it's in your day-to-day duties that you failed to execute. The only reason you are up here instead of sold to a Griffin butcher-shop are your individual accomplishments. We want to keep your quality meat for OUR entertainment and dining pleasure." While Rainbow Dash was trying to wrap her head around Soarin's' pronouncement of her fate, she felt cold metal against her marehood. She couldn't turn her head far enough to see what it was, but she was able to figure it out in short order. Her pupils went to pinpricks as she tried to buck off the cooks looking to spit her. She was able to buck off one mare, but two other cooks were able to slip a rope around her front legs and then her hind legs. Very quickly Rainbow Dash was unable to move and the touch of cold metal soon returned to her nethers. As her limbs were held tight, Dash felt the metal start to invade her from behind. Try as she might, she could not shake the cold metal pole being inserted into her. She turned her head and saw the previous pegasus already starting to turn brown as she cooked, and Rainbow Dash realized that very soon she was going to look very similar. A sudden rip of pain in her hindquarters brought her out of her musings as the spit ripped through her marehood and into her guts. "YEEARRRGH!! OWOWOW!!" she bellowed helplessly at the pain, but the cooks at the other end of the spit did not let that deter them. Dash soon felt a strange sensation in her guts as the spit slid past the coils of her intestines. She shivered at the feeling, hoping against hope that somehow her friends would come to rescue her, leading a rescue force of guards. Her hope broke into a million little pieces as she remembered that she hadn't told anyone where she was, and she had the only copy of her 'invitation'. Her mouth open in shock, she barely noticed the sharp pain as the spit tore through the bottom of her stomach. "Glrrggh! Huck.." she choked a bit as the spit found the bottom of her esophagus and started to straighten her neck out as it traveled towards her head. It was like a painful need to vomit, only nothing came out. She tried to say something else, but the spit passed her vocal cords, and the loud pegasus mare would say nothing more, 'Aaarrgh! How could I have been so stupid!' she mentally yelled at herself as something grabbed what was left of her mane and roughly tilted her head back. 'Hey, owww, watch the mane' she thought, as the spit passed the back of her throat and started to force her jaw open. Her eyes crossed as they tried to focus on the bloodied tip of the spit as it passed the end of her muzzle. 'That's it; now I'm nothing more than meat on a stick' she thought in her despair. She didn't even try to struggle as her forelegs were bound to the spit in front of her. Some vibrations behind her din't register until she felt a new intrusion in her flank-hole. She cast her eyes around in a panic at this new, unexpected intrusion and happened to look at her predecessor on a spit and saw a smaller spit attacked to the larger pole inserted in the mare's rear end. 'That's what that is' she thought as the intruder was tightened down. Her hind legs were then bound to the spit with the smaller spit between them. She heard the buzzing noise before the clippers met her skin for the next indignity as she felt her hide being shaved. It took several minutes, but in the end all that was left of her blue hide was a shadow of her cutie mark. She shivered as a cold liquid was spread on her sensitive skin and she was coated all over. A bit landed on her nose and she smelled something salty and sweet. While she tried to identify the aroma, she felt her spit being picked up and moved by a couple of pegasai. She was carried over to an empty roasting pit next to where the previous roaster was almost done. She tried to scream around the spit in her mouth as the intense heat of the coals hit her. She instinctively tried to squirm away from the heat but the long pole she was impaled on neatly stopped that. It seemed an eternity of scorching heat until the spit started to turn, or it could have only been a few seconds. To Rainbow Dash, time seemed to no longer hold any meaning as all of her reality shrunk down to the intense heat that crawled around her as she was turned over the coals. The scorching heat made it almost impossible to breathe, and she had to close her eyes as they dried out as quickly as her lungs. The slow constant turning robbed her of any means of judging if she was upright or not and her plucked wings fluttered weakly as she sought to try and stabilize herself. As she made another rotation, through her fading eyesight she saw her meat-sister taken off the coals and placed on a serving platter. A line of hungry pegasai led by Thunderlane lined up at the other mare as the spit was withdrawn from her. Dash wondered what sin she had committed to deserve such a fate, and was shocked a bit when she managed to see the remains of Spitfire's cutie mark. As her remaining breaths grew shallower and shallower, her thoughts grew more and more sluggish and couldn't even dwell on why Spitfire had been cooked. She smelled a delicious aroma and briefly thought it was the other roast pegasus until she realized it was her. As she faded out, she thought 'I guess i needed to get really hot to be 20% cooler...'. Epilogue As Rainbow Dash was presented on the silver serving platter next to the remains of Spitfire, Soarin' took his position as the one who procured the mare in front of him. It hadn't been cheap to alter the weather station records for Ponyville, but with Rainbow Dash's haphazard record-keeping it was made even easier. Soarin' took a big whiff of the delicious aroma of roast mare and accepted his portion. He got some sides, set his platter down on a table, and proceeded to enjoy his meal. With Thunderlane managing to 'prove' that Spitfire had mismanaged Wonderbolt finances, the two of them had dredged up an old pegasus punishment for such egregious failures and arranged the BBQ well away from Canterlot. As Soarin' exchanged looks with Thunderlane, they both thought the same thing: 'He's next."