Sweat stung Rainbow Dash's eyes as the prismatic pegasus pushed her limits. While exceptional in both speed and acceleration, recent testing in preparation for her next tryout with the Wonderbolts had indicated she needed to build up her stamina and endurance. So she found herself hundreds of miles away from home as she flew flat out for as long as possible.
Completely spent, she collapsed on a cloud to catch her breath. After a few minutes she finally sat up and started scanning the ground for the nearest town so she could calculate the distance she had flown. There were no signs of civilization within view, just a massive mangrove swamp that stretched on for miles in all directions. She could see the ocean a few miles to the east, so she flew in that direction. If worst came to worst she could always fly along the coast until she came to a city.
After a few minutes of flying she spotted what she thought was a tower and swooped down for a closer look. Her preliminary guess was right... sort of. The structure had obviously been a magnificent tower at some point in the distant past, but it was now just crumbling ruins submerged in about ten yards of water. Rainbow Dash was transfixed by the clarity of the water. From a distance she hadn't been able to tell the difference between what was on land and what was in the sea, but now she gaped in awe at the ruins. At long last she finally had a chance to emulate her hero, Daring Do. She made a mental note to contact the archeologist as soon as she returned home. No doubt she'd want to check this place out firsthoof.
She circled the tower in ever-increasing arcs. There was a whole city down there on the ocean floor. And she had discovered it. She grinned; maybe they'd name it after her: Dashopolis! It had a nice ring to it. She hovered inches above the surface of the water as she peered into the crystal clear depths. Surprisingly, there were few signs of life – very few fish darted amongst the ruined buildings.
She closed her eyes, inhaled, and propelled herself into the water using her wings as makeshift paddles. The view was even more spectacular up close. She looked around for a something she could bring back to Daring Do as a sample – jewelry, pottery, anything at all that would help the archeologist identify the location. Lungs burning, she returned to the surface and gasped for air. Ponies weren't made for breathing underwater, and even all the conditioning she had undergone to breath for extended periods of time in the upper atmosphere couldn't prepare her for diving.
She swam a bit further away and once more dove to the bottom. Five yards beneath the surface she trod along a road that hadn't seen equine hooves in millennia. But try as she might she still couldn't find anything to bring back with her. And the longer she stayed down there the more certain she was she could hear doo-wop music coming from somewhere.
“Shoo-be-doo....shoo-shoo-be-doo.” The music echoed in her ears as she strained to remain underwater a few more seconds.
She broke the surface yet again. She had now completed five dives and had yet to come across anything remotely useful at all. She was getting tired – each dive had been progressively shorter than the last. She decided to try one last dive. If she couldn't find anything to bring back with her she'd just fly back with a camera and take some pictures. She flapped her wings and flew to a height of thirty yards above the surface and then she plunged into the ocean below.
She sank into the depths faster this time, maximizing her exploration time. She found herself only a few yards away from the remnants of a house and she swam over to it. Surely she could find something inside, whether it be shards of pottery or cracked dinnerware, there had to be something there. The door had long ago rotted away and she swam through the empty space unimpeded. Debris littered the floor of the home but most of it was the collapsed remains of the walls and roof. She was about to give up and return to the surface when she spotted a spearhead. Like the door, the spear's shaft had long since been lost to the ravages of time but the head was intact. She ignored the dizziness setting in as she worked to extricate her prize from where it lay half buried in sediments.
With her last reserves of strength, she pulled and finally dislodged the spearhead from where it lay, but the momentum propelled both the pony and her prize across the room, where they landed in a heap of debris.
“Shooby dooby doo, where are you? We've got some work to do now...”
Rainbow Dash's life flashed before her eyes, from stunts gone wrong to epic sonic rainbooms, growing up in Cloudsdale to clearing clouds in Ponyville, and from fillyhood friends at summer flight camp to her current best friends and fellow Elements of Harmony. Her friends... she would've sighed if that wouldn't have immediately resulted in drowning. It was amazing how much the brain could process in the last few moments of consciousness, already she could feel the darkness overtaking her but all she could think about was her friends and family. They'd no doubt be worried about her, and spend weeks searching for her with no luck. They'd never find her out here in an unexplored, forgotten city beneath the sea. She'd never become a Wonderbolt and all those years of training would have been better spent doing something else, preferably with her friends.
Soon sharks or other scavengers would devour her remains, an inglorious end to a life cut tragically short. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream in frustration. But instead she slipped out of consciousness as the oxygen level in her brain dropped. Her last thought was that that confounded be-bop music would haunt her into the afterlife.
When Rainbow Dash finally awoke, she was safe and sound on the shore, with both the spearhead and a seashell next to her. Waves lapped at her hooves as the tide gradually came in.
“Shoo bop–he bop–a–we bop, I bop–shoo bop–a–they bop, be bop–be bop–a–shoo–shoo bop.”
She shook her head. The doo-wop music had returned. She picked up the seashell and examined it. There were myths passed down from generation to generation of a group of aquatic ponies known for rescuing swimmers and sailors alike. And they always awoke next to a seashell that could be used to ‘call upon the seaponies’ at some point in the future. But those were just legends... right? She added that to her list of questions for Daring Do. Perhaps she'd run into them in her own travels and could shed more light on this mystery. Whatever had happened, she was grateful she hadn't drowned.
She hopped to her hooves, picked up the items, and then took to the sky. She was going to have to set some new speed records if she wanted to make it home before dark.
