Rainbow Dash was like a sister to me. That’s what she said, that’s what I said, and that’s how we acted.

Probably.

I mean, I’m an only child, so I didn’t really have a lot go on. And a lot of what I did have to go on wasn’t all that helpful either, because if we were going by, like, how Sweetie and Rarity are, then Dash and I didn’t argue nearly enough to be considered sisters—not to mention the fact that passive-aggressively taking shots at each other, wheedling, whining, and pouting until we got our own way was missing completely from our relationship.

I guess it was lucky we knew Apple Bloom and Applejack. They were supposed to be the ideal sisters or something, according to Sweets, so that was good to know. Like, it was something to aim for. That’s probably what Dash was thinking, too—because, well, Dash is also an only child, so I know “sisters” meant about as much to her as it did to me. Which probably meant Applejack and Apple Bloom. And I guess that actually was pretty close to how we were. Bloom looks up to Applejack—practically worships her—and AJ helps her out and teaches her stuff. I thought me and Dash did a pretty good job of that, most of the time.

But, really, even if that did tell me how sisters were supposed to act, it didn’t tell me anything about how sisters were supposed to feel towards each other. Growing up, I didn’t ever have any family members that were close to my own age or anything. Well, not that Dash was exactly close to my age, but I mean like closer than my parents or aunts and stuff—the point is, whenever there had been a pony who was somewhere near my age, they hadn’t been a relative. The closest thing I had was when my uncle and aunt came to visit every now and then for the little while they used to live around here. They had a daughter around my age, but she was my uncle’s wife’s from a previous marriage. Me and their daughter got along well, but I was definitely totally aware of the fact that she was not actually related to me by blood—because, well, I was totally crushing on her the whole time.

I suppose I should mention here that I like other mares. I always thought it was normal, until ponies told me it wasn’t, but then Dash told me there’s no point being normal when you can be awesome instead, and I took that at face value. It’s never really been a big deal for me since, and my friends were okay with it, so buck everyone else. Oh, and my parents are mostly accepting of it, but I somehow still think they’re holding out for it to be “just a phase,” and that one day I’ll go make babies like ponies are supposed to. If they don’t have a problem with living in permanent denial, then I guess everything’s cool.

That brings me back around to how I was supposed to feel towards Dash. Something tells me sisters don’t think about each other the way I think about Dash sometimes—just a feeling. But still, I really think what we had going between us is something pretty awesome, despite all that stuff. Like, saying we were sisters was just so we could be the way we were without having ponies looking at us funny all the time. It was just really convenient to say we’re like sisters. It seemed to mean something to everyone else. And I really do think it’s because we got along so well that we were so close.

Some ponies would try to say that it’s because we were probably just lonely or something, growing up as only children, and that’s why we were like that. That really bugs me, when ponies say stuff like that. Ponies are always thinking it must have been so lonely being an only child. Yeah, okay—lonely compared to what? I mean, my parents were there, and they were alright. And I always had friends. I had lots of fun as a kid.

But, you know, maybe being an only child would explain why I’m okay with so much alone time, when other ponies are all freaking out about needing to be around others all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sweetie and Bloom, but jeez do those ponies need a lot of attention. It’s like, if we were ever apart for more than a few days, there must be some kind of huge dramatic reason for it. I honestly just don’t mind being by myself a lot of the time.

Even after I’d moved out of my parents’ place and started living on my own, I didn’t feel like I was pining away for company or anything. I knew it was the same for Dash, too. She was always totally independent, and I’d never seen her pining for anypony, ever. Of course, having said all that, after Apple Bloom had gone to Canterlot, Sweetie started showing up at my door almost every day, so my alone time had been more of an impossible ideal than a thing I would ever actually have.

I got why Sweetie started doing that, though—I was just as surprised as Sweetie was when Apple Bloom was the one packing up to go to a swanky Canterlot university. Apparently, she had some kind of brilliant future as an architect, according to those Canterlot types. We heard about that later—all Bloom told us was that they wanted her because she’s real good at buildin’ stuff.

So it was just me and Sweets, once Bloom had gone off to university. Not that the two of us were total losers or anything. We both spent a couple years at Ponyville College. Sweetie had taken the music diploma program, and was getting pretty regular gigs around town after that—she’s this totally awesome singer, you see—and even went as far as Manehatten to sing sometimes. Not for very long, though—I barely would get a week to myself before she’d be back again. But it did always sound like she had a good time.

I took weather, lined up with what my cutie mark is. That bucking cutie mark that took me so long to get. Of course, the reason it took so long was just because I hadn’t gotten in the air yet. Once I started darting around through the clouds, my flank lit up soon enough. It has to do with being super quick and agile when handling clouds. At least, that’s what I tell ponies—the mark is just three clouds next to each other, but I like to think that it’s like an obstacle course or whatever, because I’m really good at stuff like that. Either way, I was pretty good at being a weather pony, too, and I liked the job well enough. I got a pretty good position lined up right after I finished college, so that was cool.

Rainbow Dash had been off living in Cloudsdale being a Wonderbolt for years, but would still pop by Ponyville every few weeks or so for a visit, when she could. Of course, she was there to visit all her friends, but lots of the time she would swing by and pick me up from work right as she got into town, and we’d hang out for a while before she would even go to see anyone else. It always made me feel like she had come to see me, specifically, when she did that. Of course I knew that wasn’t exactly true, but it was still awesome.

That’s basically where everything was at when all the stuff with Dash and the Alpha Squadron trial happened, which was really the start of all the craziness between me and Dash. And the stuff with that damn Lightning Dust, too. Oh, and also Sweetie Belle, of course. Apple Bloom and Applejack should probably get an honorable mention in there, as well.

Anyway, I figure the best place to start in on this whole thing is on one of those days Dash came to visit, in the spring, the third year after Apple Bloom had left for Canterlot. It was about two weeks before Dash’s flying test to try and get into the Wonderbolts’ Alpha Squadron, and I had just gotten off from a particularly awesome day of cloud-clearing, I remember, so I was already in a pretty awesome mood when I saw Dash swooping in like she did. I really wasn’t expecting her at all, because of her trial coming up, so I was extra stoked to see her. Of course, I had gotten over my outright fangirling around Dash, but ponies are allowed to be a bit ridiculously enthusiastic about seeing their big sisters, right? Yeah, buck if I know, but that’s what I’m going with.

“Dash!” I cried out. I managed to stay flying and everything.

“Hey Scoots! You done for the day? Want to hang out and stuff?”

I couldn’t say “yeah” quick enough, and soon we were landing in front of The Salt and Apple for a bit of food and a drink like we usually did. The Salt and Apple is this pretty average place that seems to always be nearby.

“How’s weather patrol treating ya’?” Dash asked.

“Pretty great! Actually, today, there was totally this stray system coming in from the Everfree, right? And the weather team was all ‘it’s going to take all day to clear blah blah.’ ”

“Yeah, they do say that, don’t they? They always think everything’s going to take so long!” said Dash, with a kind of knowing grin that included me on the same level as her, up above regular weather ponies.

“Right? But I’m like, ‘whatever, I’ll have it done in an hour.’ ”

“Yeah? And did you?”

“Naw, it took about twenty minutes and then I had a nap for the rest of the hour.”

Rainbow laughed, and slapped me on the back. “That’s my Scoots!”

I was grinning. I loved when she said stuff like that.

“So, how’re the tricks coming?” she asked. We had gotten our drinks by then. I told her about the stuff I had been working on, just chatting like we always did. She got excited at all the right parts, as I told her about this awesome routine I had pulled off. It was like some kind of crazy feedback loop when I was around her: I’d be all excited, and she’d be excited about the stuff I was excited about, and that just made me more—you get it. Like bringing along a cumulonimbus into the room, being together with her. Except some kind of bright light happening at the same time, because, you know, cumulonimbus clouds are totally dark. And, well, the only reason cumulonimbus clouds are the way they are is because they’re so tall, so they wouldn’t actually be able to fit in a room. You know, it actually wasn’t much like a cumulonimbus at all.

“How’s stuff looking for the Alpha Squadron trial?” I asked Rainbow. “It’s totally awesome that you’re here, but that’s coming right up, isn’t it? Why’d you come all the way to Ponyville right now?” She was still a reserve flier for the Wonderbolts, like most of the team. The Alpha Squadron was a small group of only the best fliers in the Wonderbolts, and only they got to do the best stunts. And, for the first time since Dash had joined, a spot on it had opened up. Even though she was almost thirty, she was still way younger than any ponies in the Alpha Squadron, but she was in a good position to make it in because she was just that awesome. Really, it was between her and Lightning Dust, as far as I could tell, but I knew Rainbow would wipe the floor with Dust. I couldn’t stand that pony, so I was pretty stoked for that to happen.

Dash narrowed her eyes and glanced around before leaning in close. “Well,” she said in a whisper, “I came here to practice my new moves. I can’t risk letting this get out—even to other Wonderbolts; it can get pretty crazy around Alpha Squadron trials, you know?—but this new trick I’m going to do is likely going to be the most radical thing anypony with wings has ever done.”

I believed it would be. My eyes were definitely glowing, I have no doubt. “Can I see it?” I asked, also whispering.

“Yeah, of course!” she said, grinning.

We stealthily paid our bill, and hurried out like two ponies with something to hide, both taking flight as soon as we were out the door. We both mostly forgot we were being sneaky, though, and started messing around as we darted through the streets of Ponyville, flying much closer to the ground than most fliers would call safe. After a particularly awesome narrow dodge of a vegetable stand, me and Dash shared a glance.

“A round of Ponyville Obstacle Course?” she called out to me.

“Always!” I called back.

We dropped even lower to street-level, veering towards things on the road and darting around them at the last minute. A few ponies actually dived for cover. They really should have known that making sudden and unpredictable movements actually made them harder to avoid, but it did add a certain challenge to the game.

I struggled a bit to keep up with Dash, who was actually going at a rather easy pace, for her. I didn’t want to be completely outdone, even if she was a Wonderbolt, so I tried a few maneuvers that were about as reckless as hers, looking up after each one to make sure she saw—which she always did.

We came to a high-speed landing in front of a park, just off the main drag. “Not bad, squirt!” Dash said. She still called me stuff like that, even though I was just as tall as she was by then. That’s the only thing I could match her with, though—my height. For example, I was gasping for breath and her breathing had never even quickened. Seriously, she might as well have just woken up from a nap instead of racing through the streets of Ponyville.

“Alright!” she said intensely, back to the secretive whispering. “Are you ready to be the first pony to experience this amount of awesome all at once?” Ignoring the other ponies around the park, I nodded eagerly. If either one of us still half-believed the hay she had spouted about this being a big secret, maybe we would actually have found a private spot.

Rainbow Dash leapt into the air. Like all the other tricks I’d seen her do, it started out with a series of stunts that all seemed nearly impossible on their own, but in the sequence she did them in, I’d swear it couldn’t be done if I hadn’t been sitting there watching it. The last part of it, though, I didn’t have any kind of clue as to what happened—she sort of shifted to the side at a ridiculous speed, with a clear “buck you” to the idea of momentum, and then flipped with a crack that actually made a flash of light. No idea.

“I don’t even understand what just happened!” I said as she landed. “That was like five kinds of impossible! What even was that?” I really couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“Doesn’t have a name yet, Scoots. But yes,” she said sticking her chest out and turning her chin up, “praise me more.”

“You were worried about a pony hearing about it and ripping you off? Nopony could figure out what that was, much less try to do anything like it! You’re on a whole different level than the rest of Equestria!”

“And that reminds me why I keep you around,” Dash said with a cocky grin.

“That was amazing!” I was still geeking out. “Got any more?”

“What, one impossibly awesome trick not good enough for you?”

“I know it’s not good enough for Rainbow Dash,” I said. I knew it wasn’t.

And then that’s when everything started.

“The others are still works in progress,” she said. “I’ll wait till they’re perfected.”

“What? I don’t mind seeing a work in progress.” I was frowning. She never said stuff like that. “You always show me stuff before you get it perfect.”

“Well, this is for the Alpha Squadron trial. It’s different.”

“Psh, like hay it’s different. Come on, that’s all just a formality, anyway! That spot’s yours—no doubt! Just a chance for you to show off a few real knock-out solo tricks—just like now!”

“Naw,” she said, looking to the side, “I should actually get going.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I said I’d go for supper with the girls. It’s getting late.” It was getting late, but that wasn’t it. Dash was definitely being weird. She was all shifty and everything.

“You really can’t show me any more tricks?”

“No, I got to go.”

“Well... alright then.” I let it drop. It drove me a little crazy, but I didn’t really have a choice. Mules wished they could one day be as mulish as Dash was. “You going to be around town for a few days?” was what I asked.

“Yeah, for a week or so.”

“Come by again when I’m done tomorrow, if you want.”

“Sure, I will. Later!” She took off and was gone.

I was still thinking about how weird Dash was being by the time I got home. It’s not like it was totally out of the ordinary for Dash to get all weird about things—she was secretly a pretty weird pony: this I’d figured out—but she never outright refused to show me a new trick she was working on, especially after I’d heaped a bunch of praise on her. She must have known that I wouldn’t be okay with seeing just one trick. Really, I had no idea what that was about. I had just reasoned it to be unlikely that Dash had been replaced by a changeling, because no changeling could have pulled off that stunt Dash did, as I got to my door.

The door was already unlocked, like I’d expected. There had come a point where Sweetie Belle was using my hidden key that I kept underneath the doormat so often, that instead of putting it back, she started just leaving it on top of the mat for the sake of convenience. I told her to just keep the key with her—at least that way she’d be the only pony who could waltz into my place whenever they felt like it.

“Hey, Sweets,” I said as I came in.

“Were you hanging out with Rainbow Dash?” I heard Sweetie Belle ask from the couch she was lying on. “I heard she was in town. If that’s the case, then you’re back early.” I swear, half the time she talked like she lived there.

“Yeah, she was going for dinner with the girls.”

“Oh,” she said. “Weird.”

“What?” I asked. You always had to ask “what” before she’d say what she was going to say.

“Rarity must be planning on being fashionably late, then. It didn’t look like she was anywhere near ready when I left, and that was only about an hour ago.”

“Yeah. Weird is right,” I mumbled, and went to start supper. I didn’t love my place, but I liked it enough to not let Sweetie near the kitchen. At least she brought over groceries, sometimes, even if they did just come from Rarity’s pantries. That’s where Sweetie was living—at Rarity’s. Because we were both so great at planning out our lives, after college I managed to stick myself with a year’s lease on a mediocre place I could barely afford, while Sweets was over bumming off her sister. If my place had had more than one bedroom, Sweetie probably would’ve moved in with me by that point—but we had been doing a lot more scrambling around than thinking back when we were trying to figure out what the hay we were supposed to do after losing the title of “student” as an excuse for why we were still living with our parents, and didn’t exactly plan that through very well. We made such good adults, I had no worries for the future, whatsoever.

It had almost been a year by that point, though. My lease would be up soon, and Sweetie had mostly worn out her welcome at Rarity’s, but I hadn’t really thought about whether I’d renew the lease or move or what. I had kept meaning to talk to Sweetie about it, but it just never seemed to come up.

“Hey,” I called out, “you want to come chop these veggies?” She glanced up from the comic book she was reading.

“Do I want to?”

“Okay. How about, ‘get over here and chop, filly!’?”

She gave a dramatic groan, but was smiling as she tossed her comic book back on the pile and came over. They were mostly all hers, the comic books. She only started reading them just before Apple Bloom left for Canterlot. After years of fillyhood resistance to one of me and Bloom’s favourite pastimes, she had finally caved and became totally obsessed. Bloom and I were very proud.

The thing is, I’m really bad at keeping up with the latest issues, or even remembering what issue I’m on half the time, so Sweetie took it upon herself to keep all her favourite series up to date. And she’d always be talking about what happens in the ones I hadn’t read yet, which drove me crazy. She quit reading Catmare when they switched artists in the middle of the series, though, so at least my favourite series stayed spoiler-free—at the cost of me having to go out and buy the latest issues myself.

Once I was at least eighty-percent sure Sweetie Belle was incapable of setting anything on fire with only vegetables and a kitchen knife, I went back to the pasta I was boiling, and my mind went back to Rainbow Dash. I knew sometimes Dash’d kind of freak out over the most random things, but she’d never been anything except perfectly predictable when it came to showing off. I just could not figure out what was behind her holding out on me like that. I knew she had more tricks she was working on, and I knew they would be even more awesome than the one she had shown me, probably. I almost half-entertained the thought that she had meant to show me more tricks, but was too nervous with this whole Alpha Squadron thing coming up to follow through, or something—as if being nervous wasn’t a completely unthinkable thing to apply to Dash.

The only time I ever heard of Dash being nervous was for the Best Young Fliers competition that had happened forever ago—and I knew that was the last time because Bloom’s older sister still hadn’t let Dash live it down. That was almost ten years ago, now—Dash wasn’t much more than a kid back then. Like, she would’ve been around the age I was now. Weird. I can’t even imagine Dash not being totally awesome, or me being the same age that Dash was then, as ridiculous as that sounds.

What I remember is the day she left for the callbacks for the Wonderbolts—the final, make-or-break test. She had been as cool and awesome as I’d ever seen her. Dash had always been a role model for me—and, yeah, maybe a bit of an obsession—but I’d never been more dazzled and captivated by pure awesomeness as I was seeing her run her routine one last time before she went to take the Wonderbolts flying test. If you saw Dash that day, you wouldn’t be able to think for a second that that pony could ever be nervous, either, I’ll say that much.

I was pulled from my thinking as I turned to see Sweetie Belle hacking an onion to misshapen bits, wielding the kitchen knife with all the ferocity she could muster while keeping her eyes tightly shut.

“But my eyes were watering! I couldn’t keep them open!” she said after I pointed out that the knife had been missing her foreleg by inches. I turned her loose on some green peppers while I tried to give the onion a merciful death after the torture it had suffered at the hooves of Sweetie Belle.

“Why don’t your eyes water when you chop onions?” Sweetie asked, glancing over at me.

“Because, Sweets, I’m slightly tougher than a marshmallow,” I said.

Once I’d had to mercy-kill a few more vegetables that’d met the torment of a white unicorn, as well as doing everything else, I managed to make the intended pasta thing, and it took only slightly longer than it would have making it without Sweetie’s help.

That was one thing I never understood—why Sweets was such a terrible cook. All cooking was was following a guide and making sure to get each part right along the way. It just took repetition and perseverance to get good at it. Wasn’t music kind of like that? I don’t know. I suppose, for me, lots of little things like learning how to cook a few different meals for myself seemed like no problem at all after learning how to fly.

I can remember when Dash sat me down, finally deciding that my flightlessness had stuck around longer than it should’ve, and said she would personally train me to be the best flier Equestria had ever seen—besides herself. My initial excitement at having flying lessons with Dash was tested right to the limit, though, as I still to this day think of those weeks as the most grueling and challenging experience I’ve ever gone through. It really pushed me to my absolute limit—physically and mentally—and all for something that came totally naturally to almost all other pegasi. After that, things like learning how to cook really didn’t seem like that big of a deal.

After a pretty great meal and a bottle of wine, which Sweetie had snagged from her sister’s, I had to chase Sweetie out because I had to be up early for my shift the next day. At least the next day was Friday, and I had the weekend off.

“And before you say anything,” I cut her off as she was trying to tell me she had to be up early the next day, too, “getting up for a gig at noon doesn’t count as early to anyone who's not a musician.” She huffed at me. “If musicians ran Equestria, they’d move midnight to where four a.m. is now, and adjust everything around that.” I nudged her out the door before she could tell me all the reasons why that would be the most perfect thing ever. I swear, she hadn’t aged a day since we were fillies. Or maybe I was just getting boring. The thought worried me, a bit.

I cleaned up the dishes and thought about how I was going to see Rainbow Dash again the next day. I couldn’t let her off so easy again—I really wanted to see those other tricks she had been working up. Of course, as much as I wanted to see those tricks, I really just wanted to know what was up with Dash.

Author's Note

Thanks to Cerulean Starlight and Syvvak for editing. And special thanks to Cerulean Starlight for going over everything multiple times and endlessly listening to my random thoughts on it and telling me if they suck or not. You've been a friggin big help, man!

Going to be updating this every week for a while! (Unless I catch up to where I've written up to, which is chapter four... so we'll see!)