Starswirl Academy - Original Rainbow Dash Route

Skate Park
Description: Rainbow Dash takes you to her comfort zone, and out of yours.

When you look at the cozy suburban town near Starswirl from the outside, most would think of raising kids, daily commutes, town gossip. From a superficial glance, you’d never think this neighborhood would host a grungy indoor skate park.

But I guess chaos attracts more chaos, and Rainbow had sniffed out a concrete covered skater’s paradise sometime in the past and made it her clubhouse. The outside was painted white and blue, and it blended it with the other houses around it. The only give away was the graffiti art outside, a mural that looked like Mt Olympus with a modern edge.

Rainbow scanned a card at the front desk and walked inside the way a queen walks into her throne room. I paid my cover charge after I signed a wavier.

The walls inside were armored from edge to edge with references from the Counter-Culture and the 80’s, giving it a bright welcoming feel without sacrificing that crucial hint of rebellion.

“Where are we?” I asked as Rainbow Dash pulled a skateboard out of a rented locker with her name on it.

“Heaven,” she said giddily as she strapped a helmet onto her head. “Welcome to Cloudsdale. My second home. Hell, if they sold rooms, I’d make it my first home.”

“Why is it called Cloudsdale?”

“Cause, you either come here to fly or learn how to fly. Those clouds aren’t up there for show. They're goals.” She pointed up. The ceiling was polished glass that showed the expansive sky. Still smiling, Rainbow tucked her colorful hair under her helmet and jammed her bag into her locker. “Isn’t this place sick?”

“It’s pretty cool.” I said just to acknowledge her. Words could not describe how out of place I felt. I didn't know one end of a skateboard from the other.

Thankfully, TV and movies had taught me the names of most of the things around me. There was a huge pit for street moves, two high ramps, and a collection of different sized rails in between both.

The only thing I couldn’t identify was a collection of padded blocks in the far corner. They looked kind of like small, colorful buildings designed for climbing. And they looked very soft, maybe for safety.

There was a small loft in the top corner of the expansive building, with darkened windows and no noticeable way to access it from down here. I assumed it was the business office, but who knows.

Before I could ask her what was on the top floor, Rainbow Dash tossed me a helmet.

“…What is this for?” I asked.

“In case it rains.” She said sarcasitcally, then walked over to the board rental station. She high-fived several employees as we walked in. One was thin as a rail and hand tattoos all over his arms.

“What are those padded block things over there?” I asked and pointed.

“That’s for parkour and free-running training. That might be the coolest thing ever. I’ve done it for almost a year and…oh!” She suddenly grabbed my sleeve. “Check this out!

She pulled me towards a trophy case in the corner of the park. It was covered with autographed pictures of famous skaters, rock stars, celebrities and several medals and awards.

“See there?” Rainbow pointed to a picture in the center of the case that showed several people in tight blue and yellow flight suits. I recognized them, but that didn’t stop Dash from telling me who they were. “That’s them! The Wonderbolts! They were really here!” She squealed and cupped her hands together. Expressions like that were rare with her. “They were here, they were here, they were once here!!! They did a thing for some charity event. For a disease I think. Or was it to prevent a disease? Whatever. But when they come back, it’ll be awesome!” She bounced on the tips of her feet and squealed softly. “Look! There’s Spitfire! She’s only like 20 years old in this picture. Back when she was on the flight team, she was the best ever!”

Two of the employees stared at us. One shook his head as if he had heard Rainbow Dash gush before and expected this. The other scratched his head, like he had never seen a girl in this place.

“Um…Rainbow?”

“My future career is going to be the coolest job in the world,” she said confidently.

“What are we doing here? Just admiring the pictures?”

“Pfft. No!” Rainbow Dash sounded offended. “We’re here to tear it up!”

“We?”

---time passes---

My vision blurred as I looked down from the top of the padded blocks. It didn’t look this tall from ground level. The parkour blocks were sturdy and stable, but that didn’t make me feel better. I was forty feet off the ground and Rainbow Dash expected me to jump from one block to another like it was no big deal.

“Come on, I don’t have all day!” Rainbow Dash pestered me. Her legs dangled off the edge of the high ledge.

“I don’t think I can do this!” I said loudly. “I’ve never done this before!”

“It’s easy. You just gotta bend your knees and jump from point A to point B. Like a cat.”

“This is dangerous!”

“Only if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what I am doing!!!”

“It’s jumping! You’ve been doing that since you were a kid. Plus the stuff here is padded.” She knocked her fist on the block. “The worst thing that happens is you fall and break every bone in your body.”

“What!?”

“Calm down! I said that’s the worst thing that could happen. This is just another learning experience.”

“I’m seriously beginning to question your teaching methods!”

“Whatever man, just jump!”

I looked over the edge again. In my head, I heard the wind whistle and thought I was on a mountain top. I gulped loudly.

“I can’t do this.” My voice cracked a bit.

“You won’t know if you try.”

“Dash!!”

“Newbie…what did I tell you about fear?” She raised her voice, fed up with my attitude. “Stop telling yourself you’re afraid. You’re not. You’re excited! You’re looking at something that’s crazy and not running away from it...and that’s awesome!”

“This is not exciting! This is legitimate danger. I could get hurt.”

“Everyone gets hurt. You know who ends up winning? The people who don’t let that stop them. Boom! Find a flaw in that logic.” She chimed out another cliché that sounded like something a Disney character would say.

“I…I…” I looked down again. “No! Forget it! Let me go back down!”

“Newbie, trust me. You’ll be fine. Just go with the flow.”

Everything in my body screamed for me not to jump, to ignore Dash’s strange and confusing encouragements and get back on the ground. I couldn’t think.

I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes and…no. No! There’s no way this was happening! I gave up.

“I can’t do it!” I sighed.

“I disagree. Watch this.” Her hand touched my back. “Geronimo!” She pushed me!

“DASH!!!” I screamed. My voice echoed through the park.

Before I knew what had happened, I was on the ground with my face planted in the floor. My knees hurt. I wasn’t bleeding, but I could feel a few bruises on their way.

Rainbow Dash leapt gracefully from one block to another with the grace of an agile animal, and perched herself ten feet over my head. She looked down and watched me as I rolled over on my back.

“How did that feel?” Rainbow asked.

“It sucked.” I pulled myself up slowly. The wind was knocked out of me.

“I bet.” She flipped over, dropped down next to me, and helped pull me to my feet. “But the world didn’t end, did it?”

“No.” I brushed my knees off. “What was the point of that?”

“Did you die?”

“Obviously not.”

“You just fell down?”

“Yeah.” I nodded

“What now?”

“Huh?”

“You did something scary. It hurt. You fell down. You can go home now if you want.” She climbed back up the parkour equipment again and started jumping around, never resting for a moment.

By now, it was obvious what she was doing. Dash was showing me who she was, what she believed in, and how she lived, and expected me to get the message. Dash didn’t slow down to explain why she did things, she just did them.

What confused me was why she showed me these things at all. Did she really trust me? Really? This all could have been a strange way to pay me back for lessons I was teaching her when we studied. Or maybe she thought I needed help. Maybe she just wanted someone to have fun with, or maybe she just wanted somebody to show off to.

Either way, while I kind of understood the messages, I still wasn’t feeling them. I was still Me. Still…ordinary.

“So are you coming or going?” Rainbow Dash shouted at me when she got to the top again, and again without waiting jumped around.

‘Follow me and maybe you’ll find out’, she said earlier. And I followed. For once, I stopped thinking. I climbed after Rainbow.

I still didn’t know what I was doing.

---time passes---

Seven bruises later, I was able to jump from one parkour block to the other without trembling. My fear of heights, as it turns out, was justified because I my body always found a way to fall like a brick.

Rainbow Dash switched to the skate ramp and spent the rest of her time in Cloudsdale getting as close to the sky as possible. She didn’t do many tricks, and focused on getting all the air she could. Pretending to fly was all she needed.

I kept practicing my jumping and watched her as I climbed back up. When I got too tired, I explored the rest of the skate park and watched Rainbow Dash as I did. Eventually, as the sun started to really go down and my muscles grew weaker, I sat on top of the half pipe and watched her.

After 3:00pm, groups of teenagers came into the park. Many from Starswirl, some from the public school downtown. And they skated and grinded and hung out…but Rainbow Dash kept flying, like she belonged in the air and coming down, even for a rest, would be the wrong thing to do.

As the sun started setting, the glass ceiling became a beautiful mural or purples and oranges. And Rainbow Dash kept pushing herself physically, lifting off the ground every few seconds and never slowing down.

I couldn’t imagine what skating for hours felt like, or how fast her heart must have been beating after moving for so long. She was so athletic. I could never know how it felt to be that physically capable. I felt bad when I thought that Rainbow Dash could never know what it was like to be as smart as me.

When the sunlight disappeared, a man stuck his head out from the window on the top floor. He whistled with his two fingers, then shouted. “We’re closing! Everybody out!” The other kids started booing, but the manager closed the window and went back to…whatever he was working on.

The skaters left one-by-one. Only when told to leave did Rainbow Dash finally stop. She jumped off her board mid-air and plopped down next to me. She was dripping with sweat and panted heavily.

“That…was a…great…workout,” she said in bated breathes. Her clothes were soaked and her hair was stringy.

“You were going for almost five hours straight.”

“Yeah…wicked…run…man.” She huffed and puffed and sounded like she was going to have a heart attack.

“You gotta get out of here kids!” the front desk worker yelled at us from the bottom of the half pipe.

“Okay…one…sec…” Dash waved to him. This time, I helped her up. Her hands were wet. Gross.

---time passes---

“Isn’t that place radical!?” Twenty minutes later, she’s fine. Still sweat drenched, but energetic as usual. “I really wish I could live there. I’m one cot away from doing that.”

“Uh huh.” Rainbow Dash was so high off her endorphins that she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going. So I led us back to Starswirl.

“How’d you like your first taste of extreme sports?”

“It was…extreme?”

“Yes!” She slammed her hand on my back so hard I nearly fell over. “That is what you're supposed to feel.”

---time passes---

Campus was quiet again. This was the second time in two weeks that we both snuck back to our dorms at night, and the second time I was exhausted from wasting my day with Dash.

My knees felt better now. My ego was more battered up than my body.

"So..." I said softly, "...what now?"

"Wanna go play videogames? No sports games though!" she demanded.

"No, I mean...what do we do now? We just...keep quiet about all this?"

"Pretty much. Just act like nothing happened. We weren't gone all day. Just the last...what was it, two hours? Not even?"

"Okay." I nodded but couldn’t imagine how I could do that. "Does Applejack and Fluttershy know you play hooky sometimes?"

"The best way to keep a secret is to not tell anyone."

"But..." I stopped myself before I could point out that she was taking me out on her adventure rather than her old friends. That was a major compliment...I think. Maybe it was because she knew I wouldn't argue with her if she asked me to come.

"But what?"

"Nothing."

"Ugh. Again with that."

"Again with what?"

"Forget it. I bet you don't even realize you're doing it."

"What did I do?!"

"I'll tell you tomorrow. Right now..." She yawned loudly. "...I need to go home and forget to turn my alarm clock on. I'll see you in the library, okay?"

"S-sure." She remined me about studying before I could. Guess she meant it when she said she'd take her studying more seriously. "Right after class, as usual."

"Okay." She took a few steps away, stopped, then turned around and came right back.

"Forget something?" I asked. She fidgeted a bit, then coughed.

"So...thanks for...doing all that. It was pretty cool of you."

"I had a lot more fun than I thought I would have. Thank you for the invite."

She stared at me. We said nothing.

She stared some more.

Then she turned a left.

"Bye. Good night!" I said. She waved her hand behind her head without turning around.