♫"Look at me...what have I become?
I am lost I was once...a gentle mare...
But the storm came out...in this pony town...
So I must leave you now...but I will remember, all the ups and downs..."♫
The sky lit up like the 4th of Midsummer, the crackle and thunderous kabooms that followed the ominous trails of sinister light shaking the very ground with heavy vibrations. The wind screamed and howled with the fury that some believed could outdo some of the more horrific demons fabled to prowl in the fiery depths of Tartarus. All the around, the trees shook and swayed violently as tiny woodland animals raced and dove around for cover.
The screams of several ponies were heard as the bangs of hammers were barely audible over the fury of the coming storm. On the western most side of Ponyville, a berry colored mare helped another purple colored mare hold up a few boards as a colt with an hourglass on his flank hammered away against them.
"I'm surprised!!!!" Cherilee screamed over the outrageous howl of the wind towards the mare next to her "You actually sobered up enough to hold up a board!"
"Ahhh shaddup!" Berry Bunch hollered back, her hooves firmly pressing the board against one of the windows as Doctor Whooves pounded as many quick nails as he could into their wooden surfaces. She let her hooves drop as The Doctor gave an affirmative nod and turned to grab another board. "If it wasn't for all this thunder and lightning crashing about, I'd still be enjoying my drunken happiness! Now I'm stuck out here in wet, nasty puddles of brown that remind me of SHIT!"
Cherilee scoffed as she put her hooves up on the board that Whooves brought up, securing it before shouting back "Heaven forbid you're actually SOBER for some part of your life! You can be such an ASS sometimes!"
At this, Berry mocked her with a typical school-filly's 'ooooooh!!!!' and said "Teacher said a bad word! I'm tellin' my mummy!"
"And the Oscar goes to..." Cherilee grumbled under breath, quietly letting herself have the last word out of spite.
The three of them huddled close as Whooves did his best to hammer the nails in as fast as he could. It was just as the last nail was struck home that a violent gust of wind blasted past, knocking the three ponies to the ground. "Bloody hell!" Whooves exclaimed as he looked up from his muddy spot on the ground, at the trails of fiery orange left along a few houses and the ground "That was insane!"
"What was that!?" Cherilee asked, her voice laced with panic and fright as Berry poked her head out from behind her.
Whooves pointed in the direction of the fiery trail and with and bellowed as loud as he could over the growing roars of the wind "A PONY!!! It was a ruddy PONY!!!"
The Wonderbolts were known for many things: skill, precision, finesse...but what individually, what one pony was most famous for....was speed. Spitfire didn't know if it was from the wind or the desperation that caused streams of water to leak from her eyes, her wings screaming with burning pain as she pumped and pushed herself through the intense walls of rain and wind that tried their best to halt her attempts to get across town.
She hardly even noticed the fire she left in her wake, the fiery tendrils hissing and diminishing as rain struck and flooded them out. She was a mare on a mission...a mission in a race against time. She should have seen the signs...should have paid better attention! If she had...maybe this whole situation could have been avoided....
She continued to curse herself as she weaved through the air, trying her best to work with the violent, constantly changing wind currents rather than against them. Above, the sky had turned from a deep grey to a sinister looking charcoal-black...as if night itself was descending upon the world. The town was lip like the day time when lightning flashed, and cast back into the void as it diminished.
It was this lightning that Spitfire kept narrowly avoiding, knowing that since she was one of the more higher objects in the sky...the bolts of death would be drawn to her. 'This is insane...' Spitfire thought to herself as she barrel rolled out of the way to avoid a flying branch 'How could this of happened...!? It doesn't make sense!'
Her thoughts were muffled as a siren began to blare across the town, the howling of wind continuing to get louder and louder until Spitfire could have SWORN she heard her ears ringing. Looking quickly to her left, she narrowed her eyes on the horizon, and the strange cone shaped cloud that lingered in the distance. Her eyes quickly widened as she recognized the formation, and instinctively pumped her wings harder. 'Are you KIDDING ME!?' she screamed in thought, dipping low into the street to avoid the change in the currents 'It's all going to hell, and it's going FAST! I have to hurry, I HAVE TO MAKE IT!'
She gasped as a market cart barreled towards her from down the street. She could see the sign of an apple attached to the cart, but all the apples were gone. She thought she heard the shouts of a mare over the wind, but she couldn't be sure, instead focusing on banking hard to her right to avoid the deadly missile. She was moving against the wind however, a scream tearing itself from her throat as her wings threatened to snap and break under the pressure of the intense elements.
The cart sailed by, but not before dragging a jagged piece of wood across a part of Spitfire's belly and drawing a shriek out of her. "AUGGH!!" She exclaimed out loud, looking down at a long gash cutting down her middle, and the blood that started to seep from it. "I don't have time for this!" She screamed, turning herself upright and blasting forward "I don't have time to bleed out! Come ON wings! FASTER!!!"
She continued to tear down the street, leaving nothing behind accept the few licks of flame, some yellowish-orange feathers, and small splatters of blood.
As she banked around another corner and out of the eastern side of Ponyville, a heart-wrenching gasp made its way out of Spitfire's parched throat. Her destination lay in ruin before her, the shreds of the clouds she had come to adore and memorize utterly blasted and littered across the ground and trees. The bulk of the cloud-structure was smashed into the trees, leaning awkwardly as a pool of rainbow seeped out from the wreckage and mixed with the muddy, flooding rainwater.
"RAINBOW!" She screamed, diving towards the ground and pulling her wings back to come in for a landing. Her hoof caught a rock as she went down, however, and sent her tumbling head first into the muck. Sputtering and coughing, the Wonderbolt picked herself back up quickly, letting her wings hang limp and defeated at her sides. She rushed forward as she called out Rainbow Dash's name again, charging towards the blown open door.
"Rainbow are you here!? RAINBOW!!!" Spitfire shrieked, rushing inside and looking about. The sounds of the raging storm were muffled inside, even though rain water leaked from several holes in the roof and walls. The whole house was a mess, cloud couches and tables blown apart and strewn about the area with no sign of the cyan Pegasus. Spitfire swore as she galloped through the wrecked living room and up the diagonally wrenched stairs upwards to the unstable second floor.
She placed her hoofsteps carefully as she made her way through the landing and towards Rainbow's room, the Wonderbolt feeling her heart starting to thud faster with panic. She burst into Rainbow's room, turning her head quickly and looking over the smashed wreckage for any sign of the mare...but alas...she was nowhere to be found. "Bullshit!" She cried, stepping inside and looking over Dash's smashed desk. "You've got be bucking kidding m-...." Her voice trailed off as she looked over the floor, at all the torn notes and damp pieces of paper that littered the ground. "What are these...?" She whispered, scooping a few off of the ground with a hoof and flipping through them slowly.
"Some days it just feels like...I'm not worth...."
"Maybe today will be the day I become..."
"I just want to turn the lights on...."
"Dear Spitfire,"
Spitfire blinked, looking over the carefully written note that was addressed to her. It was a letter she had never seen before, and she had been around for most of Dash's writing. She put the other papers down on the ruined desk and retreated to Dash's bed, carefully sitting herself upon it as she read:
"Dear Spitfire,
I'm not sure where to start. But I'll start somewhere. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, and I can't imagine a world without you and me together in it. I know this may come as a shock to you...revealing these feelings to you, but it's too late now. None of it is going to matter...I-"
Spitfire stopped as she reached the bottom of the torn page, frowning as she looked up at the time and date labeled at the top of the page. It was labeled for today...and if Spitfire's watch was correct...the letter was written just twenty minutes ago. "DAMN I just missed her!" Spitfire spat, getting back up and heading over towards the letters. "Maybe she went to town hall with the rest of the townspeople...maybe she went to take shelter." She scooped up as many notes and papers as she could, clutching them to her chest, fanning out her aching, throbbing wings and quickly throwing herself out of one of the blown in windows.
Her wings screamed in agony as she made her way back into the storm, pushing herself towards the north side of town. Below, she could see several groups of ponies rushing in the same direction as her. Her eyes darted back and forth across the swarms of dashing ponies, her hopes of finding Rainbow Dash in the crowd still high in her heart.
Her heart sank however as she failed to spot her amongst the crowds. With a light groan, the Wonderbolt banked to her left and soared downwards towards the spire-like building in which her and the other ponies shared as their destination. She dropped to the ground as she stuffed the notes in her mouth, trying her best to keep them together as she trotted inside with the others.
As she made her way in inside, bumping and pushing against other ponies desperate to get out of the storm, the shouts and yells of several officials boomed out over all of them "PLEASE! No pushing! Keep the lines moving! There's room for everypony, please stop pushing!"
Spitfire kept her eyes on lookout for Rainbow Dash as she moved with the crowds into the building, coming across the large, rotunda like room that opened up in the middle of town hall. There were tiny cots and mats placed out everywhere, most of them already secured and taken by groups of two to three ponies. Families settled down and town officials galloped this way and that as Spitfire looked around for a quiet corner she could sit herself down in.
The sounds of ponies sobbing and talking made Spitfire's ears perked as she trotted towards a small, empty corner in the side of the Rotunda, her head turning and her eyes ever searching for the Pegasus she had often heard about during her time in the Wonderbolts. The 'Hopeful' they always called her in the locker room...the 'Pegasus with the creepy obsession', the 'Rainbow Mare with the Big Dream'.
But to Spitfire...she'd always be the 'Girl with the Guts', the one who refused to quit despite the odds. She smiled as she reflected back on the good memories of the past few months, the mare's wing sagging heavily as she felt her wounded belly press against the cold, marble floor of the Rotunda.
Once she was comfortable, she spread the notes out onto the floor around her, trying her best to sort them and line them up against one another. She kept a steady eye on the torn part of her letter, hoping to find its match soon. As she went through the notes, the dates and notes started to get messier and more extreme, dating from at least twelve years ago...
"This...is this her life journal?" Spitfire whispered to herself, looking at the piles of notes she had collected. "Did she write her entire life down? ....Jeez....."
She spent the next half hour trying to sort the papers by date, and once she felt like she had done so to the best of her ability, let out a quiet sigh and picked up the first page. It was old...she could tell just by touching it. She placed it gently in front of her and took a quick look upwards, checking once more for Rainbow. When she couldn't be found, Spitfire merely shook her head and looked back down towards the page, reading quietly:
"May 21st, Year 11AB,
Today I'm going to be si-.... for classes at the Cloudsda-.... Flight Academy! I'm-.... -ed to be here, and I can't wait to start! My mom was too sick to take me to orientation...and Dad was...well...being Dad, but it's ok! I got a ride with Gilda's parents, they said it was ok! Maybe I-.... but who- ..... right? Maybe things will start to look up after all!"
Spitfire started to smile as she read through the happy and excited words of a young, eleven year old Rainbow Dash, trying her best to piece together her sentences from the blotted out and unreadable words. Her smile suddenly vanished however as she reached the end of the page, at the words added in at the end. They were much neater than the scribble above, but it was handwriting that Spitfire still recognized as Dash's...perhaps an older Dash.
The words moved across her vision slowly as her eyes widen and her breath caught. Whatever it was that was happening...Spitfire wasn't sure she liked where it was going.
As she read over the words again, the pieces started fitting into place quickly, the realizations of the past few months clicking into place and sending her mind into a small state of panic. The signs were there...as she knew they might have been! And now...now the pieces of the puzzle were there before her...
...she would just need to fit them together...and finally learn the truth.
With a determined look forming on her face, Spitfire carefully slid the note to her right into the 'Already Read' pile, and placed a new one before her. Before she started to read, however, her eyes lingered over the added in words on the first page...and the warning she was sure was hidden in the confides of those sinister lines of black and grey.
"Little did I know...that this is where it all started...where everything went to total hell. I thought I could escape it but I couldn't...and I was a bucking idiot to believe I could. This is where it all started, this is where it all went downhill...
This was the first step down the road...the road of my Broken Dreams."
