The Last Ride
She'd done it a thousand times before.
Rainbow Dash stood at the entrance gate at the top of Cloudsdale Stadium, swaying nervously. The crowd outside roared in anticipation of Equestria's premier flight squad, but that didn't bother her. The crowd was her sonata, coursing through every bone in her body and steadily kicking her heart into overdrive as she nervously tapped a hoof into the floor below her.
She had her team behind her, idly chatting about the day's events. There were a dozen press ponies in every direction, the flash of their cameras piercing through her peripheral. She didn't mind it a bit.
The Captain of the Wonderbolts had done it a thousand times before, but this time, it was different; she'd never hear that subtle sonata again. She'd never get to wear the uniform that hugged her body tight, and she'd never lay out another gameplan for her team in the moments before their entrance.
"You remember my last show, Crash?" came a voice to her right.
Blinking, Rainbow turned to greet the pony who'd taught her everything she knew. Spitfire had been twelve years her senior when Rainbow entered the academy, but at fifty-six years old, she still looked youthful and vibrant. She wasn't nearly as muscular and toned as she once was, but there were very few lines that cracked her face, and Rainbow had always been jealous of the fact that Spitfire didn't have a trace of grey in her mane. The blue, yellow and red stripes in her own mane and tail had greyed over entirely, and she knew it was only a matter of time before age crept into the rest.
She wore her classic aviators and flight jacket, but upon closer inspection, Rainbow saw her own Wonderbolt nickname — "Crash" — written where Spitfire's should have been, and the insignia that came with it placed over her own patch. She'd promised herself that she wouldn't shed a single tear this show, and she was distressed to discover that it was already taking everything in her power to keep that promise.
"Yeah, I do," Rainbow said, turning her focus back to the gate. "You wept like a filly. Did the whole show with water in your goggles." Spitfire gave a small chuckle.
"Yep. Last trick was a Triple Helix, too. I thought I was gonna screw it up because I couldn't see the callouts well, but you know what? I killed it. I couldn't have asked for a better sendoff." She took a step closer to Rainbow, scanning her from behind purple-tinted shades.
"How do you feel?" she asked. Rainbow took in a deep breath, but remained fixated on the gate in front of her as she replied.
". . . I don't know, Cap," she answered. "I know I feel ready. That's about it." Spitfire waited for any further comments, and when they didn't come, she nodded thoughtfully before extending one of her wings and wrapping it around her former pupil.
"Six years ago, kid, I thought I was ready, too," she said, leaning into her ear. "You never really are. You just start getting used to it until a day comes where it's only the second thing on your mind every morning." Rainbow looked down to the floor, struggling to think of a reply to the sage words, but thankfully, Spitfire had another point of inquiry.
"You were always flipping the script when you flew under me, Crash," she said with a grin. "Don't tell me you're flying your last show by the book." Rainbow gratefully returned her smile, and she could almost feel the twinkle in her own eye as she turned to her former mentor.
"I got one thing planned," she replied slyly. "I don't know if it's gonna work, though."
To her surprise, Spitfire merely shrugged. "You don't have to," she told her.
Just then, a booming voice shot through the stadium, reverberating up and down the walls as the crowd began to cheer with a fervor.
"FILLIIEEES AAAAAAND GENTLECOLTS!"
With the announcement, Spitfire removed the aviators from her face. She turned them around and motioned for Rainbow to duck her head down, and when she did, the retired captain gently placed the shades over Rainbow's eyes and made sure they were snugly attached.
"Go get it, newbie," she said, slowly backing away. She gave Rainbow a wink, and Dash gave her a quick salute in return.
Rainbow watched her disappear down the hallway, feeling the tug of a familiar memory: the former Wonderbolts captain showing up in Ponyville to tell her that she was being called up from the reserves. It had been surreal to see her lifelong dream finally come true, and she would be forever grateful to the mare — a lifelong friend thereafter — who had made it all possible.
She didn't dare stare into space for too long, though. She'd blocked out the rest of the stadium announcer's spiel, but his introduction was the signal to start the team briefing before the individual Wonderbolts made their entrances. Quickly, Rainbow turned to the rest of her team, who were hyping themselves up in advance of the show. "Alright everypony, get in here."
One by one, they came, huddling around their captain as they had a thousand times before. This time, though, they were just a bit antsier than usual, letting the crowd noise and the announcer's booming exclamations shoot through their veins like adrenaline. Rainbow could see it almost immediately; the last thing she wanted tonight was for them to be too riled up.
"Simmer down, guys," she commanded, nodding curtly. The group returned the nod, and the not-so-subtle jumps and twitches simmered to a makeshift calm as they looked to their captain.
"This is just like any other end-of-season show, alright?" Rainbow started. "Let's not get too crazy out there. We've worked hard on this routine and I know it's gonna dazzle, but I'm calling an audible." Rainbow expected some quizzical glares from her flyers — the final trick had been the only unaltered part of the show for the entire tour — but she got none, and she reasoned they must have figured she'd do something special for her last show.
"Alright, so we've been practicing the last stunt as a Dead Mare's Dive through a Triple Helix. When I go up for the dive tonight, though, I want you all off the field, got it? You're all done a trick early." That announcement got the looks she'd been expecting, and Cloud Chaser, the group's oldest member aside from Dash, spoke up almost immediately.
"But why?" she asked. "If you go up for the Dead Mare's Dive without the helix, wouldn't you just be falling into nothing? What kind of trick is that?"
The rest of the group echoed the sentiment with a nod, but Rainbow wouldn't have it, letting a sly smirk fall across her face as she replied. "You don't get to question my authority tonight, Frosty.” Cloud Chaser matched her smile with an eyeroll, but she dropped it just as quick as she began to speak again.
"Hey, Cap," she started. "Before we went out there, we all wanted to--" Dash waved her off with a hoof, shaking her head.
"Uh-uh. Wait until we're done. We've got a job to do, and if you all screw up my last flight, I'm gonna kick your flanks. Put your hooves in here. Bolts on three." The group nodded fiercely, and at the beckoning of their captain, they threw their hooves in the air with a fury.
"BOLTS!" they chanted, breaking the huddle. It appeared she'd called the meeting at the exact right time, as the moment the squad broke the huddle, the announcer began his lines to indicate that the Wonderbolts should be ready for their individual introductions.
"Alright, everypony! Are you ready to meet your WONDERBOLTS?" The crowd erupted once more, and Rainbow could feel the vibrations from their energy buzzing at her hooves.
The gate in front of the seven Wonderbolts opened slowly, and the muffled cacophony Rainbow had heard became an ear-splitting wall of sound. It was always loud in Cloudsdale, but she'd never heard anything like this: she couldn't help but let a grin fall on her face as the chanting of the crowd hit her full-force.
A thumping trap beat began to pump through the stadium speakers, and the first pony in line, Skyglider, trotted nonchalantly to the ledge.
"She's been Cloudsdale's Best Young Flier for four years running, has won the Wonderbolt Derby three years in a row, and is the very youngest member to ever join the Wonderbolts! Please welcome home . . . SSSSSKYYYYYGLIDER!!!!"
Rainbow wasn't foolish enough to think that she wasn't the main draw for any given Wonderbolts event — it's why she came out last — but Skyglider would have been plenty enough. The young mare's high-speed blitz style, legendary heritage, and striking beauty had won over the hearts of Equestria the moment she'd landed on the team. What's more, she was such a gifted flyer that Rainbow had elected to put her on the main squad without taking her through reserves.
Skyglider turned around and looked to Rainbow, and the captain could have sworn she saw a wink beneath her goggles.
"See ya out there, old mare," she taunted playfully. Skyglider stood up on her back hooves, spread out her front legs and dove backward from the ledge, letting gravity bend her to its will. The crowd roared as she disappeared from sight, and she re-emerged into Rainbow's view when she shot upward, twisting and contorting her body into something gracefully chaotic. As she got her bearings and suspended herself in the air, she let the music move her back and forth, and the crowd mimicked her as they bounced around to the beat. Skyglider may have been a pegasus, but she had cast her spell over the thousands of ponies at the Cloudsdale Arena as if she'd been born with a horn.
Rainbow had always been hypnotized by the young mare's talents, and she'd quickly realized she'd let a dumb grin creep on her face as she watched her entrance.
I should cherish my records while I have them, she thought, shaking her head.
One by one, her squad made their entrances. With the exception of Cloud Chaser, all of them hailed from Cloudsdale, and so the crowd made sure to give each and every one a warm welcome as they leapt from the gate and entered the arena.
Once the sixth Wonderbolt had completed his entrance, the crowd grew more restless: they knew there was only one pony left, and it was the mare they'd been waiting for all night long. Rainbow readjusted the aviators Spitfire had given her, this time taking extra care to make sure the suit she was wearing held them firmly in place. She'd have time to put them somewhere else and put her goggles on for the actual show, but for now, she wasn't going to let her former captain's gift go to waste.
"SHE IS THE NINETY-SEVENTH CAPTAIN OF THE WONDERBOLTS, TWO-TIME BEST YOUNG FLIER, THIRTEEN-TIME PURPLE DART WINNER AND SIX-TIME CONSENSUS SPORTSMARE OF THE YEAR! PLEASE GET ON YOUR HOOVES AND HAIL TO YOUR CAPTAIN—
"—Rainbow Dash." She mouthed the words as the announcer called them for the very last time, and when the crowd's fury had swelled to a blistering high, she was gone. She'd backed up all the way down the hall, and so she'd already hit substantial speed when she shot out of the gate and into the arena.
There were no fancy tricks when Rainbow shot out the gate, no fantastic freefalls or luxurious backflips. There would be time enough for that in the show.
There was only speed.
The rest of her entrance was a blur. She'd watched television reruns, sure, but be it Baltimare or Appleoosa, she could never really remember exactly what she did the moment she flew out of that gate. It always ended the same way, though: she was suspended in mid-air and looking out to the crowd, letting the mass consciousness call her name to the stars as she watched them. There simply wasn't a drug, spell, or anything between that could give her the euphoria that the cheers shot through her.
Especially not tonight.
This mob was different. While they usually just screamed in a raw channeling of their emotion, they were chanting with a rhythmic cadence and a stomp of their hooves.
CLOUDSDALE LOVES YOU
stomp stomp stompstompstomp
CLOUDSDALE LOVES YOU
stomp stomp stompstompstomp
CLOUDSDALE—
There were always signs, but tonight, they had tripled. There seemed to be one for every three or four ponies in the crowd, and even though they were too far away to read, she could feel every one of them. There was one, however, that required no effort to make out: in the east section of the stadium (the one she was facing), a giant tan banner held up by multiple ponies sported a simple phrase in black spraypaint: "THANK YOU RAINBOW".
As a few tears started to roll gently down her face — thankfully obscured by Spitfire's sunglasses — the thought she'd been combating with the sight of every crowd came rushing back:
Are you sure?
She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath in, and then a deep breath out. She felt her wings flapping on autopilot, and she felt the warmth of the stadium lights wash over her body.
The announcer was talking. The crowd was furious. Her theme music was playing loud. She heard none of it.
Yeah, I am, she decided for the millionth time. Let's ride.
The world resumed when her eyes shot open, the noise assailing her like a storm and the visuals attacking her senses in a one-sided slaughter. The adrenaline in her veins had reached its peak, and with a single wave of her hoof, Dash flew down to the arena floor where the rest of her team had been waiting.
There were a few smiles amongst the crowd of Wonderbolts, but when their captain quickly called for another huddle, they disappeared like wisps. The group huddled together, and for the very last time, their captain barked her orders over the fever of the stadium.
"Nothing different about this one besides the ending routine. Easy, you take point on the Peregrine Dive. Frosty, you're gonna be on backline when we do the Thousand Hoops. And like I said, I don't wanna see any of you in the arena when I go up for the Dead Mare's Dive. Got it?" One by one, they each nodded their understanding.
Rainbow switched out the sunglasses, leaving Spitfire’s gift to rest gently on the cloud at her hooves as her goggles snapped into place.
"FORMATION!" she barked.
Princess Twilight Sparkle was used to cameras.
They had followed her even before she'd taken up the sole position as Equestria's ruler, and once the transition had become formal, they hounded her. They followed her to every delegate meeting, shadowed her at formal events, and even documented her lunches when she dared to go out to eat in Ponyville.
Princess Twilight Sparkle and four of her closest friends sat alone in a luxury box in the Cloudsdale Arena, with a sturdy glass between them and the show. There were no camera ponies behind them, no footage being shot, no pictures being taken.
Every camera in Equestria was locked firmly on the Captain of the Wonderbolts, and Equestria's last princess was only there to watch.
"What is this first trick called again? I left the itinerary somewhere . . . " Rarity dug into a rather brilliant saddlebag at her side with her magic, shuffling its contents around with little apparent success. She didn't have to search for too long, though, because a soft voice from a seat in the corner supplied her with an answer.
"It's called the Peregrine Dive," Fluttershy replied. "Skyglider apparently came up with the choreography herself after watching a falcon demonstration at Canterlot Zoo. The last time I saw Rainbow, she raved about it all through our lunch. I bet it'll be spectacular." The other ponies rustled with excitement in their seats, and Twilight could easily see the beams from Pinkie Pie and Applejack in the corner of her vision.
"Oooooooh, here they go!" squealed Pinkie, practically bouncing out of her chair. The Wonderbolts had gathered into formation on the floor of the arena, and with swift kicks, they took to the air. Twilight had expected the crowd noise to be muffled in one of the stadium's luxury boxes, but the walls might as well have not been there: the five of them had to yell to get their points across at numerous points during the Wonderbolts' introductions, and once the team took to the air, the hollers and screams of the crowd couldn't have been louder if they were cheering inside her ears.
Rainbow wasn't in front for this one. Skyglider, who Twilight recognized as the first pony to enter the arena, took command, and she guided the Wonderbolts during a few warm-up laps around the arena. They passed right by the luxury box, and although they were fast, Twilight could only just make out a prismatic streak right behind Skyglider.
Suddenly, about midway across the opposite side of the arena, the group took a sharp incline. Twilight had no idea how they'd gotten the speed to do so, but one by one, the Wonderbolts shot up into the air like cannonballs. She craned her neck with the rest of the group, and right when they hit the very top of the luxury box's view, they all came crashing down.
It was easy to see why they called it the Peregrine Dive. The septet came down like a missile barrage, and it almost looked as if they would shoot straight through the clouds below. The Wonderbolts pulled up right before they hit the ground, though, and their expert control allowed them to take that sharp incline to repeat the process multiple times over. The true brilliance of the routine began to reveal itself as it went on: by the time one Wonderbolt began their climb, another came spiraling down right behind them. It was so fast that Twilight could barely track it, but the Wonderbolts had essentially created a repeating loop of breakneck descents.
"Wow. That is absolutely stunning," Rarity said, breaking the silence. Twilight wanted to look over and see her reaction, but she found herself entirely unable to break her gaze from the trick. "This is only the first routine?"
"Sure is somethin', but I’m willin' to bet Rainbow ain't young enough fer this one." The rest of the group threw themselves back at Applejack's remark, but Twilight kept watching, entirely mesmerized by the routine.
"Do you ever wonder what it would be like to fly like her?" Pinkie asked. Twilight watched as they broke the circle, and as they did so, Rainbow seamlessly returned to the front of the formation as Skyglider drifted behind her.
"I do, sometimes," she replied, keeping her gaze firmly on Rainbow. "And then I try to imagine it."
High above the stadium, a pegasus sat on a cloud.
Maybe if somepony from the crowd squinted hard enough, they would see her. Maybe security would discover her and demand she come down.
The pegasus didn't care. She would never bring herself to pay for any Wonderbolts show — not for the last few years, anyway — and if she was discovered up here, she'd make no effort to try and stay.
Deep down, though, she hoped they wouldn't.
Twelve large rings had emerged from the field of the arena, and the pegasus could see the Wonderbolts as little specks getting ready to engage them. The rings were a staple of the Wonderbolts shows, and the pegasus fondly remembered the times she would flip through a coffee table book with black and white photos from when the Wonderbolts had only just made it a part of their routine.
The group weaved in and out of the rings, twisting and turning at breakneck speed. A few fliers — she hadn’t bothered to learn their names — got more creative as the routine progressed, occasionally flipping off of them like gymnasts and teaming up to shoot through the rings together.
None more so than Rainbow Dash, however.
Her mane had certainly greyed quite a bit, but the remaining spectra were more than enough to identify her from high up. The pegasus watched as she danced from ring to ring, twisting her body through one and front-flipping effortlessly through another. The other Wonderbolts were certainly impressive — they were out there for a reason — but even on the very last show of her career, none could hold a candle to the mastery of Dash.
The pegasus traced Rainbow with her eyes, analyzing every break and flutter in her movement.
"Not half bad, wingpony," she muttered to herself, her eyes never leaving the wisp of color. "Not half bad."
There were exactly 73,829 ponies at the sold-out Cloudsdale Arena. Most of them had been cheering to their heart's content, their voices growing hoarse from the constant strain. As the Wonderbolts completed one of their oldest maneuvers, the Low Break Cross, the ponies of the stadium erupted in glee as the team flew just above them.
There were two ponies, though, that did not.
An elderly couple, a mare and a stallion, sat calmly in their seat while the sea of ponies rose around them. While they all roared with cheers in applause, the pair could only shed tears as they watched the routine.
Eventually, the Wonderbolts descended back down to the field for a five-minute break in preparation for the show's closing act. The crowd sat down, but the excitement was still alive, bouncing between the ponies eagerly discussing the routine they'd just seen.
"Um, excuse me?" came a voice from the couple's left. They both turned to see a small pegasus colt, frowning a little as he spotted the tears flowing gently down their cheeks. "Are you guys okay?"
The mare pointed down to the field, where the captain had gathered her team in a circle around her and was giving what appeared to be a rather rousing pep talk. The ponies that formed the circle were shoving her around aggressively, but the captain fed off it, pushing them back just as tough and screaming her words of encouragement before they took to the air for their final trick.
"You see that pony in the middle?" the elderly mare asked. The colt nodded eagerly: it was the mare he'd come to see, after all.
The stallion leaned close to him and, amidst the tears that had only grown more plentiful, turned his lips to a wide smile.
"That's our daughter," he began. "And she's the greatest Wonderbolt ever."
"FILLIES AND GENTLECOLTS! ARE YOU READY FOR ONE LAST TRICK!?"
There was a point when Scootaloo thought the crowd couldn't get any louder, but as the night went on, she found herself proven wrong again and again. Her ears had already been ringing, but when the mob of ponies responded to the announcer's loaded question, she found a surge of pure force pumping through her eardrums. She didn't mind — she was one of them, after all — but she could easily see the two friends at her side wince in her peripheral.
"Are they all like this?" Sweetie Belle asked, rising up from the metal bleachers. Scootaloo shook her head violently, entirely unable to hide a dumb grin on her face.
"No, they are not," she replied. "Somethin' special in the air tonight. How are you girls holding up?" Despite their reactions to the crowd, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom nodded with soft beams and the inquiry.
"This is amazin'!" Apple Bloom yelled over the crowd. "I don't know why Twilight ain't hit us with that fancy spell and let us come 'round here more often. Them Ponyville shows are lotsa fun, but this is somethin' else!"
Scootaloo chucked at the enthusiasm. Wonderbolt shows in Ponyville were just that: shows. In Cloudsdale, they were a culture, and nothing could explain it better than the sight of its denizens saying farewell to its most beloved daughter.
"Yeah it is," she began. "Back in college, I used to have season tickets to the Cloudsdale Thunder games, and all the Wonderbolt meets were included. We can come next year if you all are down!" The two nodded once again, but before Scootaloo could follow up, the crowd exploded once more as the Wonderbolts flew up in the air in a V formation. As per standard, they took a few moments to engage in some warmup laps around the stadium, and Apple Bloom spoke up with another question as they flew by their section.
"What's the last trick?" she asked. "I looked at the itinerary, but I think I lost it somewhere 'long the way."
"It's been the same all year," Scootaloo answered. "Rainbow goes up and does a Dead Mare's Dive while the other six Wonderbolts do a Triple Helix for her to fly through. That's what the itinerary claims it's gonna be, too." Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow at her last sentence, leaning in towards Scootaloo just a hair.
"'Claims'?" she wondered. Scootaloo's lips twisted to a Cheshire grin.
"This is Dash's last trick in a Wonderbolts uniform," she explained. "She may just have something different for us . . . and I think I might know what it is."
This was it.
If this were any other Wonderbolts show, Rainbow would have stopped right here.
She was quite a ways above the stadium, and at any other show, she would have locked her back legs, pinned her front, and let gravity take her: the Dead Mare's Dive. Below her, the remaining six Wonderbolts would assume their accustomed vortex formation, and Rainbow would fall through it perfectly to close out the show.
But this wasn't any other Wonderbolts show. As instructed, the other Wonderbolts had gone back down to the cloud-field below and waited. Rainbow wasn't stopping here.
No, she would go higher. And higher, and higher, until she was no more than a speck to the vision of the audience below her. The crowd could tell that something was up, and amidst the expected oohs and ahhs were ponies cheering simply for the sake of suspense. The piercing eruption she'd heard all night became fainter and fainter as she rose, and eventually, she suspended herself in the air to look far, far below.
She breathed in the fresh, thin air, letting it course through her lungs a few times before looking down once more. The crowd had melded together to become an indistinguishable mass at this point, and she watched it move and sway as the hesitant excitement built and built. Quickly, she looked back up — she was wasting too much time — and with a strong flap of her wings, she ascended further still.
This is gonna hurt, she thought to herself.
It had been seven years since Rainbow Dash had performed a Sonic Rainboom.
She'd done it only sparsely for special shows, and after performing it at the Grand Galloping Gala seven years ago, she'd decided to retire the trick. She told the press that she'd felt as if the magic behind it had worn off a bit, but her friends and teammates knew the truth: each time she pulled it off, the pain of it magnified, and at just 36 years of age, the trick and the preparation that went into it had become far too taxing. There were plenty of ponies that were really beat up about it — Scootaloo had refused to talk to her for a week — but she was still proud that, even without her signature maneuver, she could still put on a spectacular show for her fans.
The idea had fluttered into her brain two seasons ago when Skyglider, who had just defeated her at the Wonderbolt Derby for the second year in a row, inquired about the maneuver in the locker room after the race. Rainbow had told her she would never perform it again, but when she decided one night that her next Wonderbolts season would be her last, she had known it was the only way to cap off her career.
The air was getting hard to breathe now, and that was Rainbow's cue to stop. The stadium below her was the size of a golf ball, and for a moment all she could do was stare.
She was supposed to start now, but she stopped for just a beat. The roar of the crowd was always like a constant shot of adrenaline in her veins, their admiration fueling her every break and maneuver, but up here, the noise was not so affecting. Up here, it was silent, and the still air and little wisps of clouds around here could have been a painting of a fonder age.
She could stay up there forever. The moment she came down was the moment her world would change for good, but if she allowed herself to hang in suspension far beyond the reaches of the Cloudsdale fervor, maybe she would always be a Wonderbolt.
No, she thought to herself. This is how it started. This is how it ends.
The Captain gritted her teeth, tucked in her wings, and dove. The key wasn’t the power, but the timing, and the countdown roared through her mind like the wind through her ears.
Three.
The stadium began to blitz forward in her vision like an oncoming train.
Two.
The traces of the cone she'd come to know so well flooded her vision, outlining her body as she careened towards the arena.
One.
She adjusted her trajectory only slightly, and the telltale whistling overwhelmed her every sense.
NOW.
At first, there was nothing.
Rainbow Dash had disappeared from the view of the luxury box. Twilight Sparkle craned her head in an effort to see her, but it was no use: with her ascension out of view and the rest of the Wonderbolts landing on the cloud field below, the air stood entirely still.
"Where did she go?" asked Pinkie Pie, mimicking Twilight's actions. The rest of the group looked equally perplexed, staring out into the night sky with some hope that they'd see her return.
Then, there was everything.
With a boom that shook the arena to its very core, the most brilliant explosion of light Twilight had ever seen coursed over the arena in every direction. The brilliant colors shone and sparkled under the arena lights, and the vibrancy was such that even looking at it too long could create its own little euphoria. Equally fast came streaks of prisms circling around the entire structure, just as Rainbow Dash had done years ago by an airship in the billowing storm. The entire moment lasted maybe three or four seconds, but it could have been a millennium.
Minutes ago, the crowd had screamed and cheered and yelled the loudest they could, but with a single maneuver, Dash had stolen their roar from their mouths right along with their hearts.
If a pin dropped in the arena, it would have roused a dragon. Rarity could only cover her gaping mouth with a hoof, and the other Elements merely stared shellshocked into the depths of the Rainboom with eyes as wide as Luna's moon.
And then from Twilight's right came a blistering roar of triumph.
"WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!" yelled Applejack, repeatedly punching the desk of the luxury box with primal fury. "That's her best one yet!" The crowd broke free from their spell, too, and just as quickly as they'd been silenced, they erupted louder than any noise would dare at the magnificent sight before them.
"You've gotta be kidding me!" exclaimed Fluttershy, yelling louder than Twilight had ever heard her. "Did you all see that! She's done it before, but . . . "
"Yes, darling, yes!" Rarity replied with laughter, wrapping Pinkie and Fluttershy into a group hug. "They're gonna talk about that one for centuries!"
Twilight found herself laughing as she stared at the slowly-deteriorating rainboom in above her. The sight made her feel like a filly again, staring at the marvel and soaking up the color through her retinas in any attempt to understand them.
She watched Rainbow descend towards the cloud field, flapping her wings to the rhythm of the crowd.
"We can save the world all we want," she said aloud, feeling the gazes of her friends lock on to her. "But we can't do that."
The pegasus stood up on her cloud. Even from far away, the Rainboom burned brighter than a thousand suns, and she found herself entirely unable to break her gaze from it.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to snarl. She wanted to curse the day that mare was ever born.
But she couldn't, and so she just stared.
Scootaloo didn't remember running down to the front row. She didn't remember Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle yelling frantically to keep up, or the ponies that were too far too engrossed with the spectacle before them to even care.
Scootaloo had seen quite a few Sonic Rainbooms. She'd seen quite a few in public, at very special Wonderbolts shows and at the Grand Galloping Gala. She'd also seen a few private ones, too: she'd seen Rainbow hit it at the end of practice when she felt like doing something fun to cap it off and demonstrate it for her by request high above the skies of Ponyville.
But this one — this one was different. The Sonic Rainboom was already a spectacular maneuver, but the one she'd just performed was greater than any other Scootaloo had ever seen. It shone brighter, it burst bigger, it lasted longer: it had almost seemed as if Rainbow had poured her heart and soul into a cannon and shot it through the sky for all of Cloudsdale to see.
She didn't know how long she'd been hanging over the edge and staring before she noticed her two best friends right next to her, marveling with her just the same.
"Hey Scoots," Sweetie Belle said, breaking the silence. "You remember that Rainbow Dash Fan Club you used to run? You imagine what they'd all think of this?" Scootaloo raised an eyebrow, but she was unable to hide a curl of her lips as she replied.
"'Used to'? The club's still going strong, Sweetie."
Sweetie Belle scrunched up her face in confusion, but Apple Bloom countered before she got the chance. "Still goin' strong? I ain't never seen you back in that clubhouse fer years. How many ponies it got?" Scootaloo chuckled, twisting and turning to view the thunderous crowd from every angle she could.
"Oh," she began, studying each and every face her vision passed. "Eighty thousand, give or take."
It hurt.
She knew it would. It hurt seven years ago, so Rainbow didn't even bother to practice the trick before her final show. She didn't know if she still had the speed to pull it off, but there came a point during that descent where it just felt right. She was glad something did, at least, because as she descended from the air with all the might she could muster, every bone in her body felt entirely wrong.
There was no permanent damage, that much was certain, but she was also fairly confident that she'd sprained or torn a few things in her body. The road to recovery would probably be a long one, but there were no more shows to fly in, so she'd just have to hope that every would-be villain that sought world domination was on vacation for the next few months.
It took quite the effort to land, but Rainbow knew it would be an even greater one to stave off her teammates when she touched down on the cloud field. Sure enough, they were waiting for her with cheers, and Rainbow managed to wave them off with her hoof before she touched down. The moment she did, she felt pain course through her legs like an electric current. Thankfully, they withheld the temptation to mob her, and they all made way as she touched the clouds.
"Hold me up," she commanded, doing her best to stave off a wince. Skyglider and Cloud Chaser came soaring over almost immediately, and she felt a wave of relief wash over her joints for the time being as she looked out to the crowd.
Rainbow would be the very first pony to admit she loved attention. She felt compelled to do something meaningful when a crowd of ponies had its eyes on her, and when they cheered her name and chanted her praises to the heavens, she felt a swell of pride in knowing that she'd done something to inspire somepony or bring them joy.
To hear them all tonight, though — refusing to cease the ritualistic roars of her name — caused a pit in her stomach like she hadn't felt before. Perhaps it was merely the understanding that she'd never hear it again, or the pat on the back she'd given herself for reuniting with her old lost love, but she could only smile sheepishly as the ponies of Cloudsdale channeled all their energy and emotion right into her.
"Are you okay?" came a voice from her left. Blinking rapidly, Rainbow turned to see Cloud Chaser throwing her a worried glance.
Rainbow looked back to the crowd, and the beast had yet to be quelled. She let the thunder roll through her ears, humming the massive sound in her head as if it were her favorite song. She was pretty banged up, that was for sure, but there wasn't a way in Tartarus she was going to be assisted off the field. As her name slowly began to lose its meaning in her ears, Rainbow turned to friend and partner and flashed her a Cheshire grin.
"I've never been better, Frosty," she answered.
Cloud Chaser gleefully returned the grin and gave her a soft elbow to the side as she jumped up and down to the rhythm of the audience.
The press had asked Rainbow many questions. They asked her how it felt to be officially retired. They asked her about her favorite moments from her storied career. They asked her if the world would ever look up to the sky and see a Sonic Rainboom ever again.
Rainbow answered all of those questions with a smile, but there was one towards the end of her press conference that had given it a hairline fracture, if only for a second.
"What do you plan to do in retirement?"
Rainbow took a deep breath into the microphone, and she stared off to her left to gaze at nothing. It seemed an eternity before she leaned back into the microphone and gave her answer.
"Probably save the world a few more times, I guess," she answered nonchalantly.
She promised she wouldn't cry.
She fought back tears during her entrance. She battled with them in front of her old mentor. She managed to stave them off when she landed and the crowd sang her name.
Now, though, in front of her locker in an entirely empty Cloudsdale Arena, there was nopony to hide from.
Rainbow sat down cross-hooved in front of the locker. Cloudsdale Arena was home to the Cloudsdale Thunder of the Equestrian Hoofball League, and the Wonderbolts would traditionally use the players' lockers for the show: a few years back, however, the arena had given Dash her own locker in the corner of the room, emblazoned with a yellow and blue version of her cutie mark.
Her flight jacket hung neatly on the locker's open door. Despite a bandage around her right hoof and her wings wrapped tightly to her side, she'd managed to fold her Wonderbolts uniform and hang it in the back. Long ago, she'd plastered pictures of her favorite Cloudsdale memories on the inside of the door, and her gaze darted between them as she sat.
Rainbow Dash broke her promise.
It wasn't slow: there weren't a few small drops of tears that danced down her cheeks before the floodgates opened. She bawled and bawled and bawled, letting the downpour rage on as she thought back to the dream that had defined her life. Every sniffle and noise echoed off the empty locker room walls right back to her. She thought back to every Mustang Marathon, every Wonderbolts Derby, to the Rainboom that earned her cutie mark and the time only moments ago she'd buried the maneuver for good.
She should have left a long time ago. Her friends had booked a reservation for dinner, and she was keeping them waiting with her weeping. She tried her best to slow it down, but it failed: all it took was a single look at any of the memorabilia in her locker to bring it back to full force. She buried her head in her hooves, formulating a string of sentences in her head to tell herself goodbye.
Suddenly, Rainbow heard a quartet of footsteps behind her. The entire arena had emptied, and the custodians making the rounds had already hit the locker room. Rainbow figured it was likely one of her friends come to retrieve her, and she mentally chastised herself for keeping them waiting so long.
"Hey, I'm really sorry— "
When Rainbow turned around, it was not one of her five best friends. It was a pony she hadn't seen for quite some time, and although she had long divested herself of her regalia, her towering presence was more than enough of a reminder of the mare she used to be.
"You know," Celestia started, looking down to her with a soft glance. "I was there when the Wonderbolts were formed. I was around when Purple Dart brought them around Equestria for the first time. I saw the personal shows that Commander Easyglider's squadron performed for me at the palace, and I opened the Wonderbolt Academy with Headmaster Wing." Celestia looked back towards the door she came in.
"But you, Rainbow Dash, outshine them," she told her, turning back to her with raised eyebrows. "You're the greatest Wonderbolt I've ever seen, and I've seen them all."
Rainbow had felt prideful plenty of times in her life, but at those words, she felt it swelling in her like a raging storm. She couldn't help but let a dumb grin wash across her face, but as she glanced over at her flight goggles placed gently on the top shelf of her locker, it fell away as quickly as it had come. With a pleading glare, she turned to Celestia, her tears slowing to a gentle crawl.
"I don't . . . I don't know if I'm ready," she croaked. "I've felt it in my bones for years, but now that it's finally time, I-I . . . I've spent nineteen years of my life living my dream, Celestia. And I go get checked out by the nurse and I come here and I hang my stuff up, and it's over. It's all over."
Celestia nodded sagely, and to Rainbow's surprise, she quickly sat down right in front of her in the same cross-hoofed manner. She looked up to the ceiling with her mouth slightly agape, seemingly taking a moment to collect her thoughts.
"You remember when I told you all Luna and I were stepping down? I sprung it on you rather suddenly, didn't I?" That drew a quick chuckle from Dash, and she nodded slowly as she recalled the memory. "It's because I thought Twilight was ready to take our place, and that after thousands of years of ruling Equestria, I would be able to step down and live life unburdened by the weight of my crown. Was she ready? Was I?" Rainbow shook her head, and it was Celestia's turn to chuckle.
"No. I was so ready to give it up, I didn't stop to think about how she would handle it. And then the time came for Luna and I to actually do it, and I felt a strange feeling. I'm sure you're feeling it now." Dash said nothing, opting to look into Celestia's eyes as she continued.
"I'd been Equestria's ruler for almost my entire life, for thousands and thousands of years. It defined who I was as a pony, just as the Wonderbolts define you. I began to doubt if I was truly ready to let that go, but as I was lost in my thoughts for a good week leading up to Twilight's coronation, I realized something." Rainbow tilted her head to the side.
"What was it?" she asked, a pleading cadence seeping into her tone. Celestia rested a hoof on her shoulder, making sure not to put too much pressure on it after a visible wince from Dash.
"Being Equestria's ruler would always define me. Even without my crown and my necklace and my horseshoes, I'll always be a princess, and the decisions I made as a ruler and the friends and enemies I've made with them will always be with me. You're not a captain anymore, and you won't wear that uniform ever again, but you're still a Wonderbolt, Rainbow. You always will be, because that's who you are."
Rainbow looked back at her name on her locker, printed black on a prism field. She held a hoof to her mouth as she took in the scenery around her for the thousandth time. Finally, she looked back towards Celestia, who'd risen from the floor and was in the process of dusting herself off.
"So what do I do now?" she asked her. "I mean, I'm still an Element, and that's cool. But you've been retired for a while. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna wake up in the morning and not go to the weight room, not chew out recruits, not go over routines?" Celestia flashed a wry smile — the kind she always gave when she knew something you didn't — and she motioned her head towards her flight jacket hanging on her locker door.
"You put on that flight jacket," she told her. "You fly away for good, and watch them all try to catch you."
The former ruler walked out the room just as gracefully as she entered, and Rainbow stared at the doorway far after she'd vanished out of sight. Making sure to take it slow, she rose from her sitting position and removed her jacket from the locker room door. She put it on carefully, making slight adjustments as her bones ached from even the slightest movement, but eventually, she managed to put it on.
She opened the locker door a bit wider to look at her own reflection in the mirror. Greyness had completely overtaken three of her stripes, but the ones that age hadn't reached remained strong and vibrant.
She watched herself blink in her reflection, looking over the redness in her face from the tears and the subtle lines that had just begun to crack it. Lastly, she looked at the flight jacket she'd worn time and time again since Spitfire gave it to her during her first day of practice. She'd hated the name and patch inscribed on it when she first saw it, but over the years, the moniker used to poke fun at her became her identity. She smirked at the memory, moving around slightly to let the jacket touch her skin.
Still fits, she thought to herself, and with a swift motion, she slammed the locker shut.