Blade

Pickaxes.

What did that mean? She hadn’t even met the quota in who knows how long. But there they were; two pickaxes crossed on her flank with a small rock in between them.

A Pickaxe Cutie Mark just like her dear old dad, except there were two of the damned things. It was her special talent. And why not? That’s all she was allowed to do anymore. Her father was sure hard work would scrub that mental sickness away. Bed rest and care was for sneezing and coughing fillies, not disobedient little bastards like stupid lazy Pinkamena.

She just stared at it for a minute or two, hoping that she was looking at it wrong.

Nope.

That was it, alright.

Two pickaxes and a rock. What a special talent indeed.

Her lip quivered as tears gathered in her eyes. Of all things she could have been in life, it was what she had been hoping to leave behind when she was grown.

“Well look at that.” Her father said, looking at her no longer blank flank. “I thought you might have gotten a screwball or something. This is a bit less disappointing, I guess.”

Pinkamena sniffled, trying not to be heard by her father. He’d grown quite sick of the noise and she understood. Pinkamena learned things quickly by her father’s hoof. Black eyes started to be a part of her face, receiving a new one as soon as the other healed.

“Maybe I’ll be a bit cheerier when Lilly gets one. She’s bound to get something nice.” Her father expressed. “Actually meet the quota and you might get to sit at the table.” After that, he turned around and went into the house.

Pinkamena sat on the moist dirt, looking up at the sky. It was grey. A single gigantic cloud engulfed her world, as she couldn’t see the sun or birds above. She turned her head toward what her mother called the garden and looked at the slab of stone jutting up from the earth. The garden was nothing but a few dead daisies and some carrots. The only other thing in that patch of the property was Ariel; her tombstone simply sitting there, reminding everyone that passed by about how dead she was. Pinkamena realized that her baby sister had never gotten her cutie mark. She died with a blank flank. Pinkamena wanted to pretend that Ariel was beside her, telling her how pretty her cutie mark looked. But she didn’t have it in her to put forth any creative mind. She was far too tired. She hadn’t slept in two days. Her loving father had made her sleep outside the previous night as punishment for breaking one of the dishes on what she had claimed to be an accident. She had never been so scared. She pounded on the door, screaming to come in, but her father simply sat in his chair by the fire, smoking his pipe and thinking about how good of a daughter Lilly was.

The voice had talked to her that night. It didn’t really help her feel better, of course.

The Timberwolves are going to eat you, Pinkie. Yum, yum. I bet you taste delicious.

It whistled her songs that scared her. She didn’t want to get eaten. She wanted so badly to be a good girl. She was worthless.

After some time, Pinkamena picked herself up and slowly made her way to the other side of the field. She looked for something that might help her collection count higher for that day. Sadly, the field was clean. She’d have to go further out to find something more. As she headed off, she heard her mother call.

“Pinkamena! It’s time for your medicine!” She shouted.

Every five hours, Pinkamena had to take one of the pills that Shrinkerton had given her father. It scared the voice away, but she knew that they would run out someday. It was as inevitable as what was now on her flank. She had stopped applying herself to everything when nobody was left to make her feel worth something.

Pinkamena turned around emotionlessly and slowly made it back to the house. Inside, her mother was cooking something drab. Whatever it was, it smelled like cardboard. She didn’t care either way. She wouldn’t taste it. The leftovers were what she’d get. Maybe if she was lucky, Lilly wouldn’t eat her bread.

Her mother turned around and looked down at her. Pinkamena’s relationship with her mother had gone far south since Ariel died. She paid far more attention to whatever was out the window for most of the day. She hardly had emotion in her voice anymore and Pinkamena had rarely seen her parents interact recently.

“Your father says you got your cutie mark.” She said as if there was a script in her face. “Glad to see you’re growing up.”

She opened up a cabinet above her and took out a small plastic bottle. Removing the cap, she extracted a single pill from inside of it. She reached down and gave it to her daughter, not even looking her in the eyes.

“There’s a glass on the sink.” She mostly mumbled.

Pinkamena found the glass and popped the pill into her mouth. She drank it down and then went back outside, knowing it would be the last time she would be in the house that evening. She didn’t care. She deserved it. Shame belonged on the shoulders of a filly with a double pickaxe cutie mark.

“Bullshit! You cannot!”

“Can too! I bet you twelve gems!”

“You’re bluffing, Dash. You’re so fulla’ shit.”

Dashclad got off of her haunches and sprang toward her houndaine peer. She bugged one eye out and closed the other as to intimidate him.

“Right, because I care so much about the gems I can’t even eat.” She spat.

Ziccaine and Yakko looked at each other, both knowing she wasn’t kidding.

“Cummon Dash, you aren’t that quick.” Quexel sneered.

“I am too! You’d take me up on the bet if you weren’t such a chickenshit!”

Ziccaine and Yakko whooped at him in unison, showing whose side they had taken. Quexel shot them a quick glare and then looked back at Dashclad, smiling snidely.

“Nobody here ain’t no chickenshit except you, Pony.” He growled.

“Fuck you, Quex! You’re just jealous I can fly and you can’t. You know I could do it.” She flaunted.

“Yea Quex, You just don’t want to lose those gems.” Yakko provoked.

Quexel turned around and yelled at the other two. “Shut up! She doesn’t even loose anything important or nothin’! She’s only trying to get rid of gems, I bet.”

“Well if she can’t do it, then you’re twelve gems healthier, Quex.” Ziccaine replied.

“Z’s got a point, guys.” Yakko threw in.

Dashclad still stood, wings spread, smirking at him so surely. Quexel gave in.

“Alright! Fine! But, to make things interesting, let’s double it to forty!” He shouted.

“Doubling it would make twenty four, dipshit.” Yakko corrected.

“Just shut the fuck up, Yakko! I’m doing it already!”

Quexel reached into his blazer and pulled out a revolver. This particular revolver had been used by his father in the great Gem Hound-Griffon war. With it, he had killed two hundred griffon soldiers (or so he had claimed). The revolver had a longer history however, but for the time being, it was irrelevant.

Quexel opened up the chamber and loaded a single magnum round into the slot on the right just below the top one. He snapped it shut and pulled back the hammer without looking. His eyes were fixed on Dashclad.

“Alright, Dash. This ain’t a ordinary bullet. This one here is a tracer. It leaves a trail behind.” He described unnecessarily.  “It cost me a fucking fortune, so make it count or I’ll fuck you up.” Quexel threatened, faking his pegasus friend out with a quirk of his head.

Dashclad didn’t react. She held her smug grin.

“I’ll be able to tell if you aren’t going faster. Believe me.” He asserted.

“Blah, blah, blah.” Dashclad mocked. “Shut the fuck and up and shoot it already.”

“You shut up!!!” He screamed back.

With that, he jerked the weapon up to the sky and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out all the way down the mountain that they were playing on. Nobody heard them, however. Everyone was under the immense erosion, minding their own business in the caves.

The bullet left behind a smoking trail of green smoke, brightening things up on that cloudy day of grey skies. It whizzed up in the air and kept going.

Quexel looked at Dashclad, her wings spread out, looking up at the trail. He grinned creepily, seeing she hadn’t even lifted off yet.

“Ha!” He shouted. “I fucking knew it-“ But before he could finish, a blast of air knocked him on his ass. Dash burst up into the air, flapping her wings like she never had before.

She hadn’t shown it, but she was nervous. She wasn’t entirely sure she could do it after all.

“Oh man. If I don’t get this, I’ll be a chickenshit for the rest of the year!” She worried silently.

She had to win. She flapped her wings harder. She could see the end of the trail getting closer.

Harder.

“Wow! Look how fast she’s going!” Yakko shouted, watching her from hundreds of feet below.

“Shut up! She hasn’t even caught up yet!” Quexel squawked over his shoulder.

Dash was indeed getting closer. She could see the bullet, shimmering from the sparks it was leaving behind. She was gaining on it.

She flapped harder. Harder. Harder.

She was there. The bullet was at equal altitude of her belly. But that wasn’t good enough. She needed to push harder. She knew she could. The wind didn’t agree with her choice as it tried to push her back down. Her eyes were peeled back by the pure force of her movement.

The tracer round lost its momentum and slowed. Dashclad however, only gained speed.

“She did it! Oh, man! She did it!” Ziccaine blared into Quexel’s ear, much to his discomfort.

“Goddamnit!!! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He screamed at the sky, despising his defeat.

They were silent for a couple of seconds while Quexel simmered. It was soon enough that Yakko pointed back up at the sky.

“Holy crap! She’s still going!” He shouted.

“It’s alright, Dash! You won!” Ziccaine shouted stupidly, thinking she could hear him from her elevation.

Dash couldn’t hear anything but the rushing air in her ears. She had already gained enough momentum. This might be the only opportunity to see how far she could go in a while. She fought the natural air resistance with all of her might. Still rising, the air grew thinner. Thinner.

Faster. Faster she went, flapping her wings all the quicker. Her mane flowed behind her in a perfectly straight stream. She felt something coming on. She heard a somewhat slicing noise behind her now. A white tunnel gathered in her vision. She felt like she was going faster without even trying.

The last thing she felt before it happened was a weak tingle.

Then, it happened.

Dashclad was launched into a speed so amazingly fast that she felt her body stretch out at least a thousand feet. Everything became a linear blur as she zipped by a mile a second. Behind her an enormous explosion of cascading colors sliced through the air, reaching out several hundred miles in the blink of an eye.

“HOLY FUCKING DRAGON SHIT!” Quexel bellowed at the top of his lungs as he and his friends ducked in horror.

The rainbow colored blast zoomed over their heads with an earsplitting boom as the ground rumbled, causing as many avalanches as the mountain could handle without collapsing.

She had done it. The Sonic Rainboom. And as she zipped through Equestria, she got her cutie mark, just as she would have on the day of the race in Flight Camp.

But it was too late.

The day was bleak. The only ponies that saw it that day were a squad of soldiers that had been dispatched to spy on the Diamond Dog colony nearby. They would always have that story to tell their kids; “the day they saw the rainbow explode”. It would most certainly be a fireside favorite in their veteran years.

But it wouldn’t be special for anybody else.

Applejack was being taught table manners when it happened.

Rarity was sulking in her room, uninspired. She didn’t see it either.

Fluttershy had been cruelly stuffed into a locker. She couldn’t see the tip of her own nose in the dark.

Twilight Sparkle sat sadly in her room, looking at illustrations of the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns, wishing she had been accepted.

And little Pinkamena just looked up at the sky, wishing she had more to her life than a dead sister and a pickaxe cutie mark.