Rainbow Dash vs. The Multiverse
The Sonic Rainboom was an enigma, a mystery; nopony understood how it worked, it seemed to pull large quantities of magic from nowhere and defied all logic of every theory put to test on it.
And I was the only pony who could do it. I loved it; I was the pony who did the impossible trick, shattering the sound barrier and pulling what must have been millions of G's like it was nothing. Nopony could even compete with my speed or manoeuvrability or, well, flight in general. With the Sonic Rainboom I was the best of the best, the fastest of the fastest and the strongest of the strongest.
Yet, if I could go back. If I knew everything then that I know now, I would have never done the damned trick again. I would have lived my life never even approaching the speeds required for supersonic flight; I would have lived my life as perfectly average pony. I might have found a nice stallion, raised a couple foals (two, one filly one colt) and watch them grow up as I grew old, and eventually I would die quietly in my sleep.
For, the Sonic Rainboom was not merely the trick I believed it to be, the trick I would show off at parties and weddings and flight contests.
You see, the energy that was released from the Rainboom was, is, unlike any magic of this, or any, world. It was the energy from between the worlds, the empty plane of space that separated everything you know and love from everything else that could have been but wasn't.
And it was that energy that made me who and what I am today.
It all started one day, quite a long time ago. I am unsure exactly how long ago as time has lost a great deal of meaning to me since then, but I am fairly sure it was a Tuesday.
It was a bright sunny Tuesday and I had finished my weather duties early in order to get the most practice out of the day; after all it wasn't every day that you get written permission from a princess to void all light and sound pollution laws for an entire day. Granted, said princess was my recently ascended friend of four years, and I had asked her relentlessly for several weeks. But still, it was a rare opportunity.
It was the day that I was going to see how many times I could Sonic Rainboom in one day.
I felt the air before me give way in a brilliant burst as all the resistance that came with the sound barrier disappeared. The rapidly approaching ground before me glowed brightly reflecting in the light of my most recent Sonic Rainboom.
Right as I was about to collide with the hard unforgiving ground I pulled an impossible turn and flew along the ground, dodging trees, rocks and anything else that strayed into my path.
I pitched myself upwards right as the concussive wall of sound hit me.
Boom.
It shook my body as it reverberated in my lungs, reaching down into my very soul.
As I flew up, I took a moment to revel in the bright chromatic ring expanding rapidly above me before starting a complex sequence of aerial manoeuvres. Half loop, double sidewinder, aileron roll, ascending spiral, inverted half sidewinder, inverted snap spin, buccaneer blaze.
I landed on a stray cloud and folded my wings watching the last remains of the Sonic Rainboom dissipate. I had just finished my fourth Rainboom and felt like I could do a hundred more. That makes sense now that I understand how the Rainboom works – drawing energy from the space between the universes – but at the time I was simultaneously confused and excited and slightly disappointed.
The supersonic flight was supposed to be the single most difficult thing for a pegasus to achieve (only a small handful of pegasi had managed it in recorded history), and my Sonic Rainboom was hailed as the trick of the millennia. It was so impossible that it seemed to defy the very laws of the universe itself. Yet both came so naturally to me, that I was barely even winded.
I felt a twinge of despair; I was at the peak of the metaphorical mountain, and there was nothing more for me. I had mastered every aspect of flying, including the ones that even the Wonderbolts could but dream of.
For the longest time my goals gave me purpose, they gave me the drive to succeed. But now I didn't know what to do. The Wonderbolts sent me a letter of acceptance several months ago; I had to decline, unfortunately, I could never leave my friends behind, especially when the fate of Equestria had so often depended on our friendship. It was that moment that I asked the universe for a challenge, asking for some new trial to overcome. I truly wish that, in that moment, I knew exactly how lucky I was, then I might not have callously thrown it to the wind.
I launched myself off the cloud and flew straight up, higher than I had ever flown before. I flew up until I could ascend no longer until it felt like my wings were freezing off and the horizon curved before me. I remember it like yesterday, the sky dark blue like it was the middle of the night, the sun glaring with a harsh white light, the entirety of Equestria spread out below me, one last look at my true home before I unwittingly embarked on the journey that marked the end of one life and the beginning of another.
With a powerful flap of my wings I threw myself downward accelerating wildly. The frigid wind roared past me biting at me like a million burning ants. Soon I felt the familiar resistance and saw the tell-tale chromatic mach-cone forming before my muzzle. I don't know what made this Rainboom different from it's predecessors, maybe it was the repeated strain of five Rainbooms in a relatively short time, maybe it was the thinner air causing less resistance, maybe it was my desire for a new challenge, maybe it was simply that I wanted to escape from the biting cold; I simply don't know. But rather than hearing the loud trademark boom and seeing the bright coruscating colours reflecting off the land. There was merely a flash, and then
...
blackness.
Author's Note
My first attempt at a first person narrative style, this story has been percolating in my mind since I read the second chapter of Time Crusade by Fervidor (if you read that story you will understand why) and this story is greatly influenced by The Sweetie Chronicles by Wanderer D (also a good read if if you haven't read it).