Lost at Home

Lost at Home: A My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfic by the *Secondbestscribe*

Chapter Four: Sisterhood and Silhouettes

To Rainbow Dash, aspiring member of the Wonderbolts and professional daredevil, the world was a blur. Two weeks into the summer holidays and foals were running around left, right and centre. It was really tiring, and they tended to get in Dash's way on the ground. But in the air, she was free.

Zipping and zooming around, diving like a territorial magpie and letting her wings burst out at the last minute, then riding the thermals with Celestia's sun looking down on the rainbow blur with approval. Wings beating, adrenaline coursing through your veins, tail whipping in the breeze, cerise eyes narrowed against the wind. There was really one word to describe the whole feeling, and that word, like the rainbow, had seven letters.

Awesome.

Dash saw two incoming weather ponies, and executed a flawless mid-air tumble in order to avoid them both. Giving them a cocky salute, she turned to face Canterlot, the wind whipping her spectrum-coloured mane. Then, a small voice caught her attention.

"Rainbow Dash...!"

Dash ground to a halt, looking around with a confused expression. There was nopony but the sky, the town and the clouds. Slightly unsure, she hazarded a "Squirt?" and looked around some more.

"Rainbow Dash! Over here!"

The cerulean pony turned and saw, far below her, the tiny figure of her sister-by-adoption, Scootaloo. Grinning to herself, the pegasus dove with ease, drawing upwards right in front of the blank flank, who had somehow climbed up onto a low-floating cloud. She looked nervous and sheepish as her older sister approached, her ears flattened against her head.

"Hey there, Squirt," smirked Dash, landing on the cloud. "Scooch over, wouldja?"

Scootaloo did so, looking up at Rainbow Dash with a mixed expression of apprehension and awe.

"Erm... hi, Rainbow Dash," said Scootaloo quietly.

Dash chuckled and punched Scootaloo lightly on the shoulder. "C'mon, Squirt, you're my sister now! No need for all that uptight 'Rainbow Dash' stuff. Just call me 'sis', 'kay?"

Grinning, just because her sister was too, Scootaloo shuffled around on the cloud and said, "Okay... okay, sis!"

"So," said Dash, looping a friendly hoof around her sister's shoulders, "what's gotcha down, Squirt?"

Scootaloo sighed and shuffled some more. "It's... well, it's not exactly nothing..."

"Then what's up?"

Another sigh came from the filly. Then...

"Well... on the first day of the holidays me and the other Crusaders were on the cart and we were singing and it was awesome and then Sweetie Belle's horn started sparking and then we bailed and then the cart crashed and there was a big explosion and then we ran to Sweetie and then she was all sooty and stuff and then my scooter was all broken!"

The last five words were spoken with an underlying sob punctuating each syllable, so that Rainbow Dash felt inclined to give Scootaloo a little hug with her wing, which she did.

"C'mon, Squirt," said Dash comfortingly, while Scootaloo ducked her head and sniffled. "How bad was it?"

"A-all in little b-bits!"

Dash frowned as she pondered how best to approach the situation. Nothing like this had happened to her when she had been a little filly. No, she had mostly flown around, racing colts and having to apologise for getting into hoofticuffs. Her dad had ruffled her hair whenever she had fallen down or something, and she had always gotten up again. She had been a single child, too, but now, as an older sister, she had responsibilities. What did she do now? Then, suddenly, she brightened up as she figured out just how to do so.

"Well, I know a pony who could probably fix it," she whispered, lowering her voice conspiratorially.

Scootaloo's head jerked upwards. "Wh-what? Wh-who?"

Rainbow Dash grinned and punched Scootaloo on the shoulder again. "He's a... um... he..."

The daredevil frowned. Scootaloo suddenly decided to hazard a guess.

"Is he... that stallion who got dumped by that mare?"

"Yeah!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash, brightening. "That guy! Caramel, or something!"

Scootaloo pouted, which was a rare occurrence in itself. "Well, I tried to go to ask him to fix my scooter, but he wasn't there! And then I went there the next day, and he wasn't there either! In fact, he hasn't been in Ponyville for a whole WEEK, Pinkie Pie told me!"

At this, Rainbow Dash saw a flaw in her original plan, which went along the merry lines of find-that-Caramel-guy-and-MAKE-him-help-my-sister-and-if-that-doesn't-work-then-ask-him-nicely. Faced with this new-found dilemma, Dash decided to go ahead and draw her trump card.

"We-ell," she said in a wheedling tone, "if Pinkie said that Caramel hasn't been in for a whole WEEK... then he's gotta be back today, right?"

Confused, Scootaloo looked up at her sister. "Erm... how does that work, exactly?"

"Aw, it's simple logic, Squirt," said Dash, waving a hoof around in an airy manner, which is where Scootaloo had gotten the idea to do exactly that in order to make herself look smarter and awesomer. "Y'see, everypony knows that all random trips start at the start of the week, right?"

Scootaloo frowned as she thought about this, and had to conclude that this was, in fact, accurate in every Equestrian town, city, village or other. She nodded.

"We-ell, it only stands to reason that they all END at the END of the week, ri-ight?" Dash waited impatiently for Scootaloo's exclamation of "Rainbow Dash, you're so smart!", but got nothing more than a, "I gue-ess..."

Dash, however, still hadn't fully flourished her trump card yet. She leaned close to Scootaloo and whispered excitedly, "Then, how about you and me go for a... a preliminary search of the town for Mr I Have No Marefriend, eh?"

Scootaloo's eyes lit up immediately, and her wings buzzed in instinctive agreement.

"Would I!" she squealed.

"Well, I dunno," grinned Dash, slipping her a wink. "Would you?"

If one were to look up into the skies of Ponyville as Celestia's sun crept below the horizon, one would see a pony-like silhouette emerge from a hitherto thought-uninhabited cloud, powerful wings beating at the air as it zoomed through the sky. However, the odd thing about this silhouette would have been the fact that it was carrying another silhouette, this one smaller and with less-able wings, though they were a-buzz all the same.

And, if one would have had the time, one would have listened, and one would have heard an ecstatic scream of, "Wa-HOOO!"

And then a second voice would reply, in a tone charged with adrenaline, "You think THIS is awesome, Squirt! HAH! You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Then one would have looked up at this point, this time actually looking, and they would see the two silhouettes dive in unison, both whooping and cheering in excitement and pure freedom. Then, if one watched even more, one would have seen the two silhouettes pull up out of the dive neatly, the smaller silhouette struggling slightly.

By this time, one would have been rooted to the spot, mouth agape.

Then the larger silhouette would have caught the smaller silhouette with one hoof, and held the latter aloft while it buzzed its wings and threw back its head, laughing with the joy given to a pegasus that has just learned to fly.

But this silhouette hadn't learned how to fly.

Well... not yet, at least.