A Fearful Stroll Down Thunder's Lane

   "Fuck off!" Lightning Dust said through her laughter. She spread her turqouise wings and took to the sky, hoping to leave her tormentor behind her. A quickly-fading streak of lightning was left in her wake.

   The cyan stallion rolled his eyes with a defeated sigh. Can't catch her till this wing heals. He thought, looking over unhappily at his bandaged wing, damaged curteousy of a collision with a branch during bad weather. It would be better within the hour, but Lightning would probably be across this plane of reality by then, doing whatever mares did.

  Rainbow Blitz was his name, and he was the less-than-renowned cousin of Rainbow Dash, the egotistical bearer of the Element of Loyalty. Lightning Dust, an even more overconfident opal Pegasus sporting a short, slicked-back orange mane and tail, was his fillyfriend, and though neither would admit to other ponies for fear of sounding mushy, they meant the world to each other. For both, no moment had felt more extreme than their first kiss. Lightning was grateful for daring to try, and Blitz overjoyed.

   Blitz looked down at his hooves, which were used to tickle Lightning's sides so much he had scraped off a few hairs. Figuring Lightning Dust would be asleep for a while, he turned and looked for an arcade machine.

Meanwhile, Lightning Dust was arcing through the skies gleefully, shooting here, darting there, and enjoying herself everywhere. "Hell yeah!" She cried out as she sped towards the ground, folding her wings in and slowly approaching the sound barrier. At the last second, just before it was broken, Lightning threw open her wings and rocketed back up into the sky, saving her from death and making anypony around marvel.

   That was, of course, at the cost of extreme pain where her wings connected with the rest of her body.

   "OW! Motherfucker!" Cursed Dust. Sporting an ego dampened by pain, she settled for an easy glide to Dash's house, stilling her wings so she didn't intensify the agony near her spine.

   She never noticed the black Pegasus staring at her bitterly.

   Without Rainbow Blitz there to tease her, she eventually found herself less and less sulky as Dash's house came into view. She landed at the door, coming to a clumsy halt. She wasn't used to gliding at such a slow, boring pace, and had spaced out too much for her to recover her senses early enough.

   At this point, the pain in her left wing had died down somewhat, but her right wing was on fire, and felt odd. Not the broken kind of odd, but simply out of place. As fate would have it, she was right. It was out of place.

   "You wrenched your wing half a foot backwards," Rainbow Dash informed her later, looking under Lightning's feathered appendage and seeing the obvious dislocation of the joint. "Shit, mare. What were you doing? Even I haven't pulled something that far out of place!"

   "Well..." Dust began awkwardly. "You know what a Vertical Snap is?"

   "You mean when you throw yourself at the ground and shoot back up? Yeah, done a million o' those."

   "Well, I did one at..." Lightning Dust did some aerocalculating, crossing over the integrals of air resistance with her mass and propelled launch. "...about five hundred and ninety-three point six-six-seven miles per hour." Rainbow promptly fell backwards.

   "You did a Vertical Snap near Rainboom-speed?!" She asked incredulously. Rainboom-speed was how Rainbow Dash referred to breaking the sound barrier: moving at six hundred and one miles per hour. "How come you've done that before me?! How come I've never done that before?!" Lightning facehoofed. "Can we just get my wing back in place, please?" She begged exasperatedly.

   "Oh, right." Rainbow trotted over to Lightning's front, ordering her to sit down. She threw her hooves loosely around her shoulders, leaned forward, and took Lightning's wing in her teeth. "Thith ith gonna hurt like hell," she said around a mouthful of feathers. Lightning nodded and plucked a covert from her other wing, holding it between her teeth.

Rainbow pulled backwards, extending the wing and then pulling it forward. The pain increased with each passing second, and Lightning Dust's plucked feather cracked in one place between her teeth, filling her mouth with foul-tasting oil. She thought it would never end, and her eyes grew slightly moist from the intensity of the hurt in her wing joint.

   Finally, there was a click.

   Lightning's feather snapped at both ends, and her wing shot out of Rainbow's mouth. "HOLY FUCKING DONKEY DICK!" She screamed, flapping both her wings incessantly. She waited impatiently for the pain to die down before actually acknowledging Rainbow was talking to her.

   "I'm no egghead, but as a Pegasus, I should know the basics if wing anatomy, which luckily, I do," she told Dust. "And I can safely say you won't be able to do more than glide for the next twelve hours while your wing re-situates itself."

   "Damn." Lightning sighed and sat down in the living room. "Can I stay around for an hour or so? I need to stop and eat."

   "Sure, but I don't see why it would take an hour to eat a meal."

   "You know, I might just wanna hang out, too. Got anything?"

   "Daisies and petunias."

   "Got it." Lightning headed for what she guessed was the pantry. Fortunately, she was correct, and pulled out two pieces of white bread. Laying petunias on a slice and sprinkling it with hay shavings, she finished her sandwich within two minutes. Rainbow Dash fixed herself her own, and they evidently launched into typical mare-talk.

   "So, how's it going with Blitz?" Rainbow asked. Lightning shrugged nonchalantly. "It's great," she replied. "He's a really sweet stallion, and he's not overly clingy. I can definitely tell this is going somewhere, because he's not acting like one of...those stallions."

   "The ones just lookin' for a bang?"

   "Yeah." Lightning rubbed her still-hurting wing. "What's it to you?"

   "Well, let's see." Dash tapped her chin in mock thought. "You're one of my best friends, and he's my cousin." She smirked. "Yeah, I can totally see why I shouldn't get involved." Lightning groaned and punctuated her defeat with an eye roll and "Okay, you win!" Attempting to reverse the conversation, she asked Rainbow, "Anypony got the hots for you?"

   "Soarin." She smirked again. "I got a bit of it for him, too."

   Lightning nodded. "Oh, speaking of which," she quipped suddenly. "I heard that when the Wonderbolts performed in Ponyville last week, Spitfire found Soarin covered in Zap Apple Jam. Where do ya think he got it from?" Much to her confusion, Rainbow blushed. "Um...I dunno," she muttered, looking away. Lightning promptly grinned. "It wasn't Zap Apple Jam, wasn't it?" She asked. Rainbow Dash went even redder. "Yeah it was!" She denied, a little too quickly. Inside, she vaguely remembered how long it had taken her to stop panting.

   Lightning smiled. "It's okay if you did it," she told Rainbow Dash. "Just make sure ol' Spitsy doesn't find-"

   "Oh, for the love of Celestia!" The thought of what would happen if Spitfire found out about her and Soarin's little escapade was enough to scare even her. "Can you get out?"

   "Whatever." Lightning Dust trotted to the front porch, flapped her wings stiffly, and eased into the breeze, sliding away in the wind. Rainbow Dash watched her disappear, then muttered, "Honestly, though, sometimes I wonder about that mare."

A small house on the edge of Ponyville was interrupted from its silence by a hateful Pegasus covered in long, black fur hitting the door so hard he practically smashed it off its hinges, causing the pony inside to give a start. This one was also a Pegasus, but this one was coated in jasmine hairs and a Tiffany blue mane, possessing a cutie mark of three raindrops.

   She turned her head at the sound, taking a split second to notice her coltfriend's demeanor. "What's wrong, Thunderlane?" she asked. The black Pegasus said nothing, only storming past the mare and into the living room.

   Concerned now, the mare followed Thunderlane, the sound of their clopping forming a strange four-four beat. "Thunderlane! I asked you a question!" Thunderlane paused. Without turning around to look, he hissed, "I saw Lightning Dust today."

   This earned a gasp from the mare. They both had hated Lightning Dust with a burning passion since the timberwolf incident. The fact that they had nearly...she couldn't finish the thought. Thunderlane continued. "I just want to give that stupid, cowardly bitch what she deserves, Raindrops. She's worth less than worthless. I can't believe she just fled like that. She deserves worse than death."

   Raindrops remained motionless, before a small smirk spread across her face. "Well, let's give her what she needs."

   "Huh?"

   Raindrops snorted. "Haven't you heard?" She asked. "Lightning Dirt's just moved into town."

   "You're kidding."

   "Nope." The Pegasus' smile grew wider, almost maniacal. "Knowing her, she probably drinks about a glass a day, if not more. Why don't you deliver her some cider..." Raindrops paused. "And stick it in her face?"

   Thunder stared at her expressionlessly, then chuckled without mirth. "I like the way you think, Drops. When do we start?"

   "Tonight," she replied. "Six forty-five." Raindrops laid a hoof on Thunderlane's shoulder. "And I think you should do the honors. We'll make sure Lightning gets what she pays for."