Dodge!!
(I’ll be mostly absent until this sentence in parenthesis is deleted)
Rainbow Pegasus lay still sideways. She heard adrenaline pumping through her. Her pupils shrunk. Face mortified, distressed. She knew no way out of this, but her Ego struck that thought out of her head.
A bright light shone on a rusty cannonball hurling towards her, the opening behind it flitting spinning splinters.
Her innate sense of gravity and speed was 99.99% percent accurate. The iron cannonball at its speed and rate of fall will straight towards her stomach
Buck the pirates, buck this trip, buck my life. We were so close to Equestria, why did I make the trip in the first place?
The ball was a quarter way there to Rainbow Dash. Nature gave her superspeed only to suffer her cruel fate of slow motion to experience.
She struggled to move her limbs. She tested the right foreleg but had a wooden stake in it, she tested her left foreleg but it was smashed by a cannonball that fell from above, she desperately test her right leg but it was injured during rescuing Fluttershy, she at last test her left leg but she remembers injuring her leg by trying to deflecting a cannonball from hurting the ship a stupid mistake on her part. Her left wing bent in the air from a crash yesterday, and her right wing was trapped helplessly beneath her body.
The blood rushing into her perked up head, her mind stiff with a headache.
She had to 'scape pronto!
She slams her face into the ground. Her snoot barely hooked onto the ground and she pulled her body with the neck, struggling to crawl away from the path of the Cannonball trajectory. She lifted her face up again.
A surge of stabbing pain froze her head. She endured the pain to move her facial muscles. Did her inflated perception of time fail her? No, she felt something else, something that she didn’t account for.
Splinters littering her face. Blood running from her nose. Her perception of time must have blinded her. She forgot that was going insane speeds. The old ships were prone to splinters. And now, she paid painful price stopped her from going any further. Not to mention the countless splinters on her body.
The ball was halfway there.
It was no use. At this rate, the ball would either fracture her spine or rupture one of the organs spelling certain death.
She felt alone, not one of her friends is there nor could they, she was the only one with the speed to dodge the apathetic, relentless ball of iron. What’s the point anyway, the pain overwhelming her Ego and her eyes nothing but tears. The hot musk of the air was cozy but that only served to make her sleepy from; the massive blood loss made her eyes feel heavy and unbearably drowsy.
Dash's friends, she couldn't stop thinking about them. Like the urban legend, her life flashing before your eyes. Rainbow Dash cherished her memory of her friends, and they cherished her like Angels opening the gates to the great beyond.
Instead of thinking about embracing her fate, all she could do was worry about her friends who might be calling on her for help any second now.
Fluttershy, she was her best friend through and through for most of her life. Applejack, her rival pushed her to make headway to become a Wonderbolt. Pinkie Pie, the bouncy knucklehead that she enjoyed playing planks with, that smile on the face that can warm a lion’s heart. Rarity, the fashionista that gave her a headache sometimes with her obsession with fashion, but she did make her feel pretty; Twilight Sparkle, the leader of the group who somehow was both an adorkable alpha and an awesome Alicorn...
A wave of realization hit her. “Wait… I'm gay for my friends?!” Her voice reverberated out visible sonic waves.
Her heart went hypersonic and her hormones rushed through blood her as if to say “finally, that took forever!”
Her wing stiffened, automatically flinging her body sideways. Training instinct kicked in and straightened her body resisting the jerking motion. She spun in midair with her face heading straight towards cannonball.
Her heart skipped a beat.
“What the!?” The situation took the turn for the bizarre, something out of a Daring do novel fanfiction. Her wing twitched and threw her at the cannonball.
"Buck!" She was too preoccupied with her physical and mental pain to realize that her right wing wasn’t crushed by the fall, she could’ve enough shove herself of the way and save all the trouble if she wasn’t so caught up in the moment.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
At the collision course set right now, she might as well say goodbye to her head. She calculated that she’d approach the collision point from a 65-degree angle from the cannon. Her head would reach the point before the cannon smashed her head and kill her instantaneously.
Wait, this is her chance! She could focus and move better in the air. She'll utilize her gut instincts to guide herself out of the way.
She abandoned the idea to move her head. She would still suffer from the impact.
A familiar instinct kicked in, she knew what she had to do.
In a desperate attempt to avoid her demise, she focused on her sprained wing in one last ditch effort to change her trajectory.
*Floosh*
She couldn't hold her stare anymore.
This was it.
She blinked.
She felt the unseen round iron ball hugging her cheek; the weight heavily slapped her face, flipping her neck to the side. A cracking sound was heard.
She knew it was all over, her face numb all over.
The cannon shot passed her. A thump later and the iron ball was rolling across the floor. Rainbow Dash's body shot up towards the roof.
*Thud* *Thud*
She to fell straight toward the ground.
Silence.
*Thud*
"Rainbow?"
*Thud
“Rainbow!!!!” Squealed a pony.
*Thud*
Everything went black.
She was rocked back and forth, a gentle bright light clouded her version.
Am I in the afterlife? She speculated.
She felt her body moving around freely through the air.
Where in the world am I? If this is the afterlife? Do I get to fight something or what? She felt dizzy, unable to open her eyes.
Her body and mind floated upwards as if passing into another world. Soon she felt a fluffy bed made out of clouds.
I have to take a peak, she echoed into the void.
Her right eye opened, she looked down at what she's laying on with her blurry vision.
"Yep, that's a cloud alright," she murmured.
A face of an angelic figure appeared right above her. "Rainbow," called out a pony-shaped figure.
"Uh, who are you?" Rainbow peered at this "been" as she began to recall what happened. Right before she flapped her wing a cracking sound was heard.
She took a turn or two at flapping her wings.
It didn't move.
"It's me, Fluttershy!"
What if the wing broke instead of her neck?
"Wha..." She uttered, unable to make full sense of the situation. "Am I alive?"
"Yes, Rainbow, you're alive!" Tears streak down the pony's face.
"I'm alive?!" She moaned shockingly.
I'm alive! She mentally shouted with glee, unable to talk clearly due to the bandages. In no time, her vision cleared to reveal her savior.
Fluttershy, filled with joy, wrapped her wings around her friend in a cozy hug.
She found herself inside in a general hospital in the ER.
The shot open, her best friends come rushing in; Rarity with a bouquet, Applejack with a card, Pinkie Pie wearing an eyepatch held a cake with a crossbones symbol saying "Congratulations you're not dead", Twilight carrying a gargantuan book titled "War and Peace, and Starlight with an awkward look spelling "Should I be here? Or---"
"Rainbow Dash!!" They shouted of out sink.
"I can't tell if this fuzzy feeling is from you guys being here or the fact that I can't feel my body," Rainbow cooed hoarsely through the bandages.
Fluttershy blushed from the "Well, um, Rainbow Dash."
"Am I paralyzed?"
Twilight replied, "No, it's just the anesthetic."
"Yeah that," she mumbled.
"Shoo, I thought for a second there---"
The rest of the mane 5 swarmed her. They showered her with gifts and bombard her with questions to check if their extraordinary Pegasus was in stable condition.
"Guys, guys, it's fine, I'm fine. I'm gonna die from embarrassment before I die from these wounds."
They acknowledged her range of hardship she suffered through.
Once again, she murmured. The bandages around her muzzle made it difficult to utter a single word.
"Oh, I see sugar cube," said Applejack. "You can't talk with that muzzle of yours shut. We'll leave you here if you want."
Everypony went quiet. Amidst this pause, Rainbow Dash had an epiphany.
"On second thought, could you guys stay here for a bit," she mumbled. This time they understood her.
As time passed, some of her friends left to do their business, leaving Pinkie, Twilight, and Starlight with her.
Starlight chuckled nervously, "So, can I talk to Rainbow for a second?"
"What for?" Pinkie asked.
"Can you Pinkie promise to give me some privacy and not eavesdrop? You could just leave if you want."
"I promise," she did her obligatory routine and slowly faded away from existence.
"Okay... How about you Twilight?"
"Hey, I'm the princess of Friendship, I've kept the darkest secrets Celestia has given me locked up in my brain. A secret between friends won't change my perspective on the world and traumatize my childhood."
"Sure… Hey look, doesn't that desk look a little bit off to you?"
She looked over at the Doctor's desk, "it does look disorganized... No, I'm not falling for that trick Starlight, never again!"
"But Twilight, there are some many ways that could go wrong. What if she forgets something or loses something valuable."
Her eyes widen. "Oh no, you're right! What if the nurse gave the wrong dosage! She could end up with lots of pain or an overdose!? What if Rainbow Dash gets addicted to painkillers and---" She rambled on spouting jargon until she jumped to the desk and tediously organized the place left and right.
Starlight lowered her volume, whispering into Rainbows ears, "I know your secret."
"What secret?"
"A secret so shocking that I'm sure that anypony eavesdropping will respect their friend's privacy and ignore this very conversation." She levitated her earmuffs she used for sleeping over to Twilight and clasp her ears."
"Hey! I wasn't eavesdropping!!" She yelled. She continued checking the documents making sure they're in the correct order.
"Sure you were. Anyway, Rainbow, when I was using the superspeed spell to defeat the pirates, I heard someone shouting really loud"---she snickered---"'I'm gay for my friends?" She giggled.
Her eyes widen in shock.
"Don't worry about it. I'm not sure anyone else heard it since it is too fast for anypony to hear. But just between you and me, I feel the same way." She licked her lips. Her eyes staring ogling her, stroking Dash's wings thoughtlessly.
Rainbow was speechless, her thought was somewhere on the line between this couldn't be happening and stranger danger.
"Alrighty then, see you next time around!" She grinned nervously and left the room.
Before she could think about the intended meaning of that statement, Twilight showed up with a heap of books ripe for the taking. "Since you're going to be here for at least four months, and you can't read by yourself for a month, you'll have plenty of time for us to read books and get educated, you probably missed a lot in school so we have lots of ground to cover."
Rainbow Dash could do nothing but think how much time she can spend with Twilight with the Daring Do novel and all the possible adventurous fiction despite just been in something worth a novel worth a fictitious material.
She escaped her fantasy to process the words Twilight said.
Aw, she's so cute when she said... Wait, did she said at least four months? Educate? School?
The heart monitor beep erratically off the scale.
"What's wrong?" She at the heart monitor, "astonishing? You maxed out the machine, I didn't know you could even do that?"
"NMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!" She shouted in anguish.
"Nothing but this, I rather be dead!" She mumbled
"Oh, did I mention we're in purgatory?"
"...On the count of three, I'll wake up from this dream and none of this ever happened. One... Two... And..."
"Just kidding! I hope a prank would lighten the mood," she giggled nervously, teeth showing.
At that moment, Twilight was off her list of available ponies to mingle.