The Rainbow must Shine elsewhere
Rainbow Dash stared up at her house, hanging there in the sky a few hundred feet above the ground.
Her friends had gathered together for their weekly picnic, and Rainbow had convinced them to have it under her house, next to her mailbox, as she was expecting the reply letter from the Wonderbolts Academy today.
Her whole life had been leading up to this moment of faith, would she get in? She didn't know, and that lack of knowing was eating away at her nerves.
Pinkie Pie was bouncing around the mailbox on her hind legs, staring at it nervously.
"Ooooooh, I just wish the mailpony would come alreadyyy! I can't wait another minute to find out if Rainbow Dash got in or nooot!" the party mare whined, pulling at her eyelids and burying her head in her forelegs.
Twilight giggled at her hyperactive friend's antics, "Pinkie Pie, you're more nervous than Rainbow Dash," the unicorn pointed out, gesturing towards the cyan pegasus' stoic expression.
Rainbow stayed silent for a second, processing the fact that she had just been addressed, "Oh, I'm not nervous at all," she lied, there was still some nervousness and anxiety, but it was a small amount, "When I get into the Wonderbolts Academy-" Pinkie grabbed her.
"If you get in, IF you get in! Don't jinx it," Pinkie corrected, shaking the speedster a little..
"I'm telling you, it's in the bag," Rainbow dismissed with a wave of her hoof.
"Don'tjinxit!" Pinkie warned quickly.
Applejack took over the metaphorical stand with an audible bite of an apple, "She is tha best flier in Ponyville."
Rainbow flew past her heretical friend with a gust of wind, moving a cloud into, "In PONYVILLE?" the spectrum-maned mare called down to the other five, "Try ALL OF EQUESTRIA!" she proclaimed, shaping the cloud into a slide and sliding down it.
"Ah hafta agree with Pinkie on this one here a lil' bit though, Ah'll tell ya how they might reject ya, they'll say that yer 'over-qualified', but they'll 'keep yer record on file', and what ya don' see is them puttin' it through the shredder!" Applejack recalled her troubles in finding a job in Manehattan all those years ago.
"Puh-leeze Applejack, I wouldn't be surprised if they just skipped the whole academy process and made me a full Wonderbolt already," Dash dismissed, flying upside down past her friends.
She kept going for a few seconds before bumping into something, or somepony.
"Hiya Rainbow Dash," Derpy greeted, "Got somethin' for ya," she revealed, reaching into her saddlebags
"Um, no offense Derpy, but I'm waiting for the mailpony," Dash politely informed, righting herself and standing in front of the gray pegasus.
The other mare's expression went deadpanned as she wordlessly pointed to the hat perched on her head, which read "Chief of Mail Services of Ponyville"
"...Oh, sorry, I'm so sorry," Rainbow apologized profusely, hoping to salvage the brief conversation.
"...Eh, it's okay, not a lot of ponies notice the hat before I point it out to them, anyways," the mailmare pulled out a few letters, shuffling through them.
Rainbow Dash looked at the small stack, trying to find the one that held the Wonderbolts' official seal.
"AHA! *ahem* You just got a letter, you just got a letter, you just got a letter," she stopped for a half a second as the daredevil snatched the letter from her hoof, "I wonder who it's from, YAY," she finished, watching the other pegasus tear the envelope in two.
The other five Element Bearers leaned in, awaiting Rainbow's reading of the letter.
Dash's rose-red eyes flew along the lines, reading them quickly, but carefully.
Everypony noticed her reading pace gradually slowing down and her eyes filling up with tears.
Finally, she threw the letter down and flew straight up and into her house, not listening to any responses of her friends.
Derpy looked at the house, then at the letter, back to the house, back to the letter, "I just don't know what went wrong," she lamented, looking down at her hooves.
"...The letter ought to tell us what happened," Twilight noted, levitating the paper to her.
"Oh gosh, what does it say?" Pinkie asked with watery eyes, seeing one of her friends sad instantly made her sad.
Twilight cleared her throat and read the letter.
To: Rainbow Dash
From: Wonderbolts Academy, Captain Spitfire
Rainbow Dash, I'm going to be honest with you. I, we, the Wonderbolts as a whole, cannot accept you.
After auditing all of your records, we have found that, to put it bluntly, you are simply too overqualified.
Now I'm sure you have a friend who might have told you that 'overqualified' basically means 'your flank isn't getting in', but hear me out, me personally, Captain Spitfire.
You are too good, you make the rest of us look bad by comparison, and the status quo is too strong, we can't have the newbie coming in and trouncing the veterans on Day 1, so we can't bring you in on the grounds that doing so would destabilize the entire Wonderbolts Faction, and to do that for just one pony is unacceptable.
Your records will not be kept, we cannot officially associate ourselves with you, for the risk of public hysteria is too great, you've seen how normal ponies turn crazy when something seems amiss.
I hope you have luck elsewhere, maybe find something that isn't so under your league?
Best of wishes, with a heavy heart, :(
~~Captain~~ Spitfire.
"Dudn' really sound much like an official letter," Applejack pointed out, feeling sympathetic towards her rival/best friend.
"No, darling, it doesn't, I do believe it is more of an apology letter, per se, than a document of rejection," Rarity extrapolated in a sad tone.
"So... Dashie didn't get in?" Pinkie was crying.
"This is awful, just awful," Fluttershy protested meekly with watery eyes.
"I don't get it," Derpy said, concerned for everypony's sadness.
"Apparently, she is so good that she makes the Wonderbolts look bad by comparison, and because they're a bunch of... prideful jerks, they won't let her join, because they have to look like they're the best fliers in Equestria," Twilight explained, more angry than saddened.
How in the wide wide would Equus was you're literally too good for us a valid reason?
Formulating a plan, the studious unicorn trotted away from the picnic.
-The Next Day-
Rainbow Dash had sat in the shower all night, she even fell asleep in there, and now the shower was out of water.
Waking slowly, she heard a knocking at the front door, which sounding like a loud *POMF POMF POMF POMF POMF* as opposed to an actual clacking sound if the door was wood.
"Hold on, I... I was just finishing up," the cyan mare assured, turning off the showerhead and shaking herself dry and quickly making her way downstairs and to the front door.
She opened it, revealing a hot-pink mare with purple eyes, a steel-blue mane, and a bright blue twin-lightning-bolt cutie mark.
"Hello Dashie, it's nice to see you again," Firefly greeted cheerily, her voice was exactly like Rainbow Dash's, but two octaves higher-pitched.
"Mom, what the hell are you doing here? I'm trying to sulk," Rainbow demanded, she hadn't seen her mother in seven years, and right now was not a good time.
"Oh come on! I decide to visit and you just reject me like a stranger? I know I haven't seen you in years, but I wanted to now, my mother-senses were tingling and... just... grrrrr." it was obvious which parent Dash got the rougher half of her attitude from.
"Mom, I just got rejected from the Wonderbolts and I'm trying to cope, I have a tub of Huugen Dazh ice cream to eat, and it's calling for me,"
"I TOLD you you'd never be a Wonderbolt, it's impossible, but you didn't listen to me, and fifteen years of dedication just went down the drain, what's next on your list of impossible tasks? Trying to be a rapper? Because I'll say it know, so later I can say 'I told you so', but rap was made by earth ponies, for earth ponies, and any non-earth pony will fail in the rap industry. Or maybe you'd like to go to the moon? Something that you know you can't do, but you'll try anyway, and put forth too much effort, and at the end, you'll have exhausted yourself for nothing," the pink pegasus ranted, flailing her hooves in a wide array of gestures.
Rainbow stayed silent for several seconds, "........... Wow, just wow, I can't believe it, you haven't changed a bit."
"Technically, neither have you," Firefly countered, poking her daughter's nose.
"Shut up, III'm talking now, this is myyy turn to speak. You've never supported me in anything, you've never once said 'I love you', or anything, I'm surprised you haven't keeled over from all that poisonous attitude you have. Mom, I'm going to do what I want, I'm a national hero three times over, and you're a lowly factory worker, you've been in the same position for twenty years, and I'm the Weather Captain of Ponyville. Y'know what, thank you for the suggestion, I'm going to be a rapper, and when, not if, but when I make it big, I'm going to write a song about how much you like doing drugs." the cyan mare smirked at the shocked expression on her mother's face.
When it was obvious that Firefly had been struck speechless, Dash closed the door in her face.
Firefly stared at the front door to her daughter's cloud-house for almost a minute, then she turned around and walked to the edge of the platform, spreading her wings and flying away.
"Oh stupid Dash, you know that pegasi can't rap," she said to herself.
Rainbow Dash appeared in front of her, "That's racist," she stated simply, flying back to her cloud-house and slamming the door shut again.
Firefly sighed and continued her flight back to Cloudsdale.
-The Next Day-
Twilight jumped, winced, and cringed at the sound of the front door slamming open, Rainbow Dash barreling into the library and knocking a bottle of ink onto the plan she had spent all night writing up.
"RAINBOW DASH! I just finished writing that plan to get you into the Wonderbolts," Twilight complained, trying to clear the spilled ink from the list and center table.
"The Wonderbolts are just a bunch of pussies, I've already come up with a new goal in life, and I need a... one of those big books with all the words in it," Rainbow couldn't remember what those word-books were called.
"An encyclopedia?" Twilight guessed.
"Whasat?" Dash asked in confusion.
"It details several semi-related subjects in great detail," the studious unicorn explained.
"No, I need one of those things that tells you what words are," the speedy pegasus tried, what were those things called?
"A thesaurus, it lists synonyms and antonyms," the amethyst-eyed mare tried.
"That might help, but I need, like, a book that tells ponies what words... AH! What they mean, a words-meaning book," the rose-eyed mare realized.
"You mean a dictionary," Twilight informed, pulling a dictionary from the shelf.
"YES! I need that, I need to expand my evoke-a-cab-larceny thing." Dash definitely needed to work on her arsenal of words.
"Vocabulary, Dash, I can't believe you don't know that word, what in the wide world of Equus are you planning on doing with a dictionary and thesaurus?" the stripe-maned heroine queried, cocking an eyebrow at her friend.
"I'm going to be... drumroll PLEEEEEAAAAASE!" the spectrum-maned mare gestured to Spike.
The baby dragon reached into the 'Space of Plot-Relevant Things', pulled out a drum, and began the drumroll.
*ba-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM*
"A RAPPER!" Rainbow announced when it was obvious that poor Spike's wrists couldn't handle much more drumming.
Twilight facehoofed, "Rainbow Dash, while I'm not exactly an expert on the genre, I'm fairly certain that the rap genre is run by earth ponies," she pointed out, drawing up an ethereal bar chart in midair with her magic.
The chart was just a fancy way of saying 'There are absolutely no unicorn or pegasus rappers who hold any fame'
"Twilight, ponies who say that pegasi can't rap are racist, and I don't deal with racists, so I'm going to be a rapper, and prove to all of them that a pegasus CAN rap," Rainbow grabbed the dictionary and thesaurus and flew out of the library.
Twilight sighed, when would Rainbow learn to slow down and think?
-Several days later-
Rainbow had been studying the dictionary, skimming through words and already doubling her vocabulary tenfold, now she just needed to start writing some actual rhymes.
A random building caught her eye, the name was what had grabbed her attention, 'Aftermath Entertainment and Tempos Electronics'
She needed a place to sit down and start writing so maybe this place was an arcade?
Shrugging and think 'Why not?', Rainbow Dash entered the building.
Author's Note
so, this is something really different to what I usually write, but how will I get better at writing if I don't experiment?
I'm sure some of you can already guess where this is going, and which rapper Rainbow will take after.
Let's just say: from a pony's perspective of races translated to a human's perspective, earth ponies are the Blacks, pegasi are the Caucasians, and (not really important but) unicorns are the Asians
I hope to write more on this, I have a problem where I write a few chapters on a story and then I just leave it and go write another story.
To emphasize the previous concern, I have 7 unpublished stories, 3 of which have less than a thousand words written, and the other 4 aren't done, to make matters worse, 2 of them are HiE, another 2 are crossovers, another 2 are main-character bastardization, and the last 1 is a clop-fic. Ooh boy, I wonder which one might get published next? Fuck my indecisive mind and its need to write several different things at once.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT OTHER STORIES! I want to know how you all feel about this one! Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion in it below.
