Between a rock and a hard place
It is said that there's a place in Equestria that seemed so dangerous to it's inhabitants that they chose to not mark it on the map of Equestria, as well as deny it's very existence. Out of all that knew this secret, there were some that just couldn't keep their mouth shut, and a few individuals ended up finding out about it.
It was a dark land where earthquakes were a sight just as common as birds in the sky, and if that alone wasn't enough to scare everyone away, then there was also the fact that every earthquake would always split the land apart more and more with each time it hit, and fiery bits of magma rock would often fly out. In short - this whole land was nothing but one big, active volcano with a flat surface.
Naturally, even out of the ponies that had heard the tales of this land, none would dare to try and find it...Well, none aside from the two eager daredevils Applejack and Rainbow Dash, that is. These two only saw this as yet another chance to prove their bravery to one another.
"So let me get this straight," Applejack started a conversation. "This here land is just one big volcano that could erupt right under our hooves at any moment?"
"Yep!" Rainbow Dash proudly confirmed.
"And you brought me here to see which one of us is the most daring pony?" Applejack asked in a slightly displeased tone.
"Exactly! Seems like a fair game, don't you think?"
"Ah suppose it would be..." Applejack hesitated to approve. "If it weren't for the fact that you can just fly away as soon as an earthquake starts!" with a touch of bitterness in her voice, Applejack pointed her hoof at her friend.
"Hey!" Rainbow Dash protested. "I won't fly away as long as you don't run either," she explained.
"Oh really?" Applejack asked in a rather cynical tone.
"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash insisted, but decided to take a slightly different approach when she saw that her friend just rolling her eyes as a response. "Of course, you could always just leave if you don't think you can take the heat," Rainbow Dash acted as though she didn't care and kept on walking further inland.
"Excuse me?" Applejack raised an eyebrow.
"You heard me, you don't have to do this just to prove a point. If you're afraid, just say it and be done with it," Rainbow Dash kept talking with a careless attitude, but quietly laughed to herself as she kept walking.
"Now hold on there, partner," Applejack interrupted and ran closer to the pony that was already a good distance into the dark land. "No pony said anything about being afraid!"
"Then what's the problem?"
"The problem is that you..."
"What?" Rainbow Dash interrupted. "Were you about to say that this whole thing is unfair just because I have wings?"
"No..." Applejack denied, but felt slightly ashamed since Rainbow Dash had taken her words right out of her mouth and said them with an unforgiving attitude. "It's not the fact that you have wings that bothers me, it's just that I'm not sure about whether I can trust you to not misuse em to your advantage," she explained.
"Even if it's to save my life?" Rainbow Dash asked and stared at her friend with a reproachful look on her face.
Applejack looked away and didn't say a word for some time. "Well, lets just hope it doesn't come to that," she quietly replied. Those words seemed to wipe the unforgiving stare right off of Rainbow's face. "Anywho..." Applejack continued. "Lets just get this thing over with already!"
"Alright," Rainbow Dash didn't mind the sudden change of the topic. "Where do you think would be the most dangerous spot?" Rainbow Dash asked and looked at her wide eyed friend that seemed a bit confused about something. "Applejack?" Rainbow Dash stopped walking.
"Why don't we just ask her?" Applejack kept staring at whatever it was that had surprised her, as well as pointing her hoof towards the same spot.
"What the?" Both of the ponies were now confused and staring at the same point, as another of their friends passed by in a proud gait while humming a song to herself. "What do you think she's here for?" Rainbow Dash asked. "And how'd she even find this place?"
"Beats me, but I guess we'd better go find out."
Rainbow Dash nodded and both ponies followed the third one even deeper into the dark lands that were slowly starting to turn brighter from a fiery red light.
***
As the hoofsteps of the white, blue-maned unicorn stop, so does the humming. She lifts her hoof up to her chin and begins to wonder about something.
"Rarity!" Two conjoined voices come up and surprise her from behind.
Rarity turns her head backwards to greet unexpected, yet welcome guests, "Applejack? Rainbow Dash? What in Equestria are you two doing here?"
"Funny, we were about to ask you the same thing," Rainbow Dash counter questioned Rarity as soon as the two of them came closer.
"Oh! I was just, umm..." Rarity rubbed the back of her head.
"Come now, sugarcube, just tell the truth, we won't judge," Applejack calmed her friend who was obviously trying to come up with an excuse.
"Oh alright..." Rarity realized it was too late to make excuses and yielded the truth, "I suppose the two of you heard the same story as I did, correct?" Both ponies hesitated to reply. "Dark land, constant earthquakes, not on the map, active volcano, et cetera, et cetera..." Rarity explained further.
Both Rainbow Dash and Applejack nodded, so Rarity continued, "Well, turns out that was just part of the story, and even the hidden tale had it's hidden sentences..." Rarity shifted her eyes to their left and right corners, as if making sure no one's listening in on their conversation. she then walked closer to her friends and continued in a quieter voice, "Did you know that there was actually a last sentence to the story? One that mentions not only dangers, but also a unique prize for any pony brave enough to venture past those dangers!"
Rainbow's face lit up from excitement. "What, you mean like...treasure?"
"Oh, ho, ho! Even better, my dearest Rainbow Dash!"
"I'm listening!" Rainbow Dash moved even closer to Rarity, up to the point where Rarity was nearly whispering it in her ear, leaving Applejack barely hearing anything.
Rarity's tone started sounding dramatic. "It is said that right after an earthquake, during the period when the fiery magma rocks come jumping out of the ground..."
"Yes..." Rainbow Dash interrupted as she eagerly awaited the conclusion of the tale.
Rarity continued, "It is said that if one is to magically harvest these rocks while they're still blazing, then they can be refined into a unique gem afterwards!"
At this point, Rainbow's excitement had faded away, leaving her somewhat frustrated, whereas Rarity's eye's started shinning brighter with each next word as she went into her usual state of dreaming trance. "More red than any ruby! More shinny than any diamond! More majestic than any sapphire! The truest, rawest, purest and unaltered beauty Equestria has ever produced! The one real paragon of all precious stones!"
When Rarity finished, she remained in the same pose for some time. With one hoof on her chest, and the other pointing upwards, the same way her star blinded eyes were staring as well. Her friends couldn't hold it in any longer. Rarity's moment got broken by the hysterical laughter of the two ponies rolling around the ground. Rarity just angrily stared and waited for them to finish.
"Figures you would come all this way just for some pretty rocks, Rarity," Rainbow Dash said and continued laughing.
Rarity started furiously shouting, "And just what, might I ask, was your own reason for coming here?" Both ponies stopped laughing. "What in Equestria might make you two venture all this distance and pass through all this danger for?" Rarity demanded an explanation after having explained herself.
Rainbow Dash gulped loudly and rubbed the back of her head. "I, uhm...we were just...uhm...exploring! Yeah!"
"Exploring?" Rarity repeated and raised an eyebrow. She didn't seem convinced.
"Yeah! After we heard those tales about this place, we just had to come and see if it was really as dangerous as the legends said it was!...He, he..." Rainbow Dash kept on nervously staring at Rarity, who only stared back at her with the same unconvinced look as before.
"Let it go, Rainbow," Applejack interrupted the unpleasant situation. "She told us what she was doing here, it's only fair that we do the same."
Rarity thanked Applejack, but Rainbow Dash didn't look to content with her decision.
Applejack sighed loudly before letting out the truth, "We heard how dangerous this place was, so we came here to prove each other who's the most daring pony..."
"There, was that really so hard?" Rarity happily said and started trotting further inland again.
Slightly confused about that kind of response, Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked at each other and just tilted their shoulders before following their friend.
As they caught back up with her, Applejack asked, "So...you're not mad?"
"Why, what ever would i be mad about?" Rarity asked as though nothing had happened between them.
"Well, you know...about the way we laughed at your reason for being here while our own reason wasn't all that justified."
"Nonsense, dearie." Rarity swiftly replied. "I know the two of you well enough to know that you'd be likely to come here for such a..." Rarity paused for a moment. "No offence...ridiculous reason."
"None taken," Applejack gladly admitted.
"Right then, now that that's out of the way, what do you say we get to the center of the action?" Rarity suggested and picked up the pace.
"Right behind ya, partner," Applejack agreed completely and followed.
"About time..." Rainbow Dash quietly muttered.
***
The unmarked land wasn't all that big, and before long, the three ponies found themselves at the so called center of the action.
"Stop!" Rarity was slightly ahead of the other two, so Applejack and Rainbow Dash also stopped when she stopped. "We're here."
"Here as in..." Applejack said, hoping that Rarity would pick up her sentence.
"Why, the region with the highest amount of seismic activity, of course." Rarity explained and took a few steps forward.
The other two ponies didn't follow right away. They were curious about how Rarity seemed to know this place so well. "Wait...how do you..."
"Ah! and what luck, there's a freshly opened rift still here!" Rarity interrupted Rainbow Dash and ran closer to the fiery chasm.
Although still curious, her friends decided to keep that question for later and followed her. As all 3 of them approached the edge of the rift, they gazed down. A long way down, and hot lava surrounding the bottom of the pit, is what they saw. It's no wonder that Applejack gulped loudly. Both her and Rainbow Dash started getting second thoughts about this plan at that moment, but Rarity didn't seem to bothered.
"Now, if I could just..." Rarity slowly started moving even closer to the edge.
"Aagh!" all 3 ponies screamed as they felt the ground beneath them start moving. They turned around and saw a long crack that separated a small part of the cliff from the rest of it, and all 3 of them were right on that part.
"Run!" Applejack shouted.
All 3 of them ran for it. They barely got to make a jump before the plot of land underneath them went crumbling down, but the jump wasn't enough. An even bigger part of the cliff around them had begun to crumble, and the uneven angle it was in made them slip and start sliding down.
Rarity and Applejack desperately clawed at the ground, hoping to grab onto something that could help them balance themselves, but there wasn't anything of the sort to be found near that spot, and thus, there was no way to stop them from sliding down, and their tails were already nearing the edge of the cliff.
"Gotcha!" Rainbow Dash grabbed both of their hooves right as they slipped over the edge of the cliff and started pulling them up.
"Hurry, Rainbow! This thing is about to fall!" the scared, blonde-maned pony shouted.
"Yes, Rainbow dearest, pull me up! Please, hurry!" the panicking fashionista also shouted.
"Hnnghh!" Rainbow Dash struggled as she started pulling both of her friends up at the same time. She managed to pull them a bit higher, but not all the way. Her pull failed, and her friends slipped back to their initial position, but remained in her grasp. "I can't!" Rainbow Dash regrettably admitted.
"What!?" both of the hanging ponies shouted in terror.
"I can't pull both of you up at the same time!" she repeatedly explained.
Rarity and Applejack remained silent for a moment, but their panicking only grew louder.
"This is no time for joking, Rainbow Dash! Pull me up! Please! Before it's too late!" Rarity got teary eyed as she fell into hysteria. In addition to screaming louder, she also started kicking around.
"Hngh!...Aagh! Stop struggling! You're only making it worse!" Rainbow Dash shouted back.
As Rarity began to lose her mind and Rainbow Dash struggled to not lose her grip completely, Applejack looked over her shoulder, down at the very bottom of the open rift in the ground. As she focused her mind at the sight under her, the screaming voice of her friend became more and more indistinct with every second. There was something she realized during this short moment. Whatever it was, it helped her get the fear out of her eyes and even put a smile on her face.
Applejack took a deep breath and smiled at the pony holding onto her hoof, "Pull her up, Rainbow Dash...I'll be fine."
"W-What?" Rainbow Dash asked, unsure of whether she had heard her friend correctly.
"Yes, Rainbow Dash! Pull me up! Pull me...huh?" Rarity calmed herself and turned towards Applejack.
"You heard me right...Let me go," Applejack confirmed and cleared their doubts.
"Applejack...I...I..." Rarity couldn't find any words to describe how she felt about this.
"It's alright, sugarcube." Applejack looked back at her friend with a heartfelt smile. "There's no need for both of us to fall. If one of us is to survive, it should be you."
Rarity didn't know what to say, or even what to think. Applejack's words left her speechless. Her eyes filled up with tears, but she didn't give into the sadness. She stayed strong. She closed her eyes and spoke up. "Pull her up, Rainbow Dash..." Rarity opened her eyes and formed a chain between Rainbow's eyes and her own. "I know Applejack is a better friend to you than I'll ever be...If you're going to save one of us today, then it should be her."
"Don't listen to her, Rainbow," Applejack interrupted. "She's no worse a friend to you than I am. Don't be afraid to let me go!"
Instead of shouting to save their lives, now both of her friends were shouting to let them go, but that didn't make the situation one bit easier for Rainbow Dash. Out of the three ponies, Rainbow Dash was the only one panicking right now. She kept shifting her attention from one of her friends to the other as each one of them tried to convince her to save the other.
Eventually, both of their voices started to blur inside Rainbow's mind, and she couldn't hear either of them anymore. This was not because they were too loud, nor because any other sound had made them inaudible, no...It was because Rainbow Dash gave into her thoughts and let them cancel out the sound of her friends yelling.
She began to recall all the times they've shared together. Their first meeting, their best moments, all the parties they've been to, all the challenges they've faced together...Indeed, there was no denying the fact that she had spent much more time together with Applejack than with Rarity, but that didn't put her in front of her. Instead of looking at the past, Rainbow Dash began to look to the future, at what would it look like without one of them...and she saw nothing.
It didn't take long for her to find the answer to this riddle. "No!" she shouted out.
"What?" confused, both of the ponies asked as one.
"I'm not letting either one of you go!" Rainbow Dash shouted even louder than before. She mustered up all her remaining strength into one last desperate attempt to pull them up. She managed to pull them up higher than before and still hadn't collapsed, but just as the situation was starting to look brighter, it instantly got much worse.
All three ponies started screaming as the leaning part of the cliff broke off completely and sent them all falling down.
"It's too late for any of use now, Rainbow! Save yourself, there's nothing you can do now!"
"Applejack's right, Rainbow Dash, you need to get out of here while there's still time!"
"No! I'm not leaving you behind!" Not out of stubbornness, but out of undying love for her friends, Rainbow Dash refused to fly away and watch them perish. "I won't be able to forgive myself if i did that...I won't ever abandon you, even if that means I have to burn with you."
"But..."
Rainbow Dash already knew what Applejack was about to try and say. She saw the sadness in her eyes, so she smiled at her and placed a hoof on her shoulder. "We've had some good times together."
There wasn't enough time left for anything other than a final goodbye, not even for thinking. Applejack smiled back at her friend and placed a hoof on Rarity's shoulder, who, in turn, placed her's on Rainbow's shoulder, forming a circle between them. Even in this sad and desperate moment, the best of friends could find something to smile about.
"Friends forever," Rainbow's last two words came right from the heart, and her friends repeated after her in the same tome, after which all three ponies smiled at each other one last time and closed their eyes, assured that they would never open them again.
***
Some time had passed, and the air that should have been burning hot by now, didn't seem to be getting hotter at all. In fact, it almost seemed a bit chilly.
Applejack opened one eye and peeked around. She spoke up only after realizing she hadn't already left this world, and that her friends were still with her as well, "Say, umm...Don't y'all think we've been falling for way too long now?"
Rarity and Rainbow Dash also opened their eyes and looked around.
"Is it just me or have we stopped falling?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Why, yes...I do believe we are sitting in mid air," Rarity added.
"Not sitting...we're flying up!" confused and slightly nervous, Applejack shouted out as the fire underneath them started slowly fading from view.
The confusion in their faces got replaced with happiness as they gave a closer look to their surroundings. They soon recognized the purple bubble spell that they were sitting inside, and instantly realized just who would they be seeing as soon as they'd get lifted back up to surface level.
"Twilight!" the three overjoyed ponies greeted their friend. They had never been so happy to see her before. As soon as the bubble around them faded and they felt solid ground under their hooves again, all of them rushed over to hug her.
"Hey guys," Twilight happily greeted them back. The ground around them was still a bit shaky, and the cliff made noises that suggested another upcoming earthquake. "I think it's best we leave now..." Twilight suggested, and her friends nodded in approval. Without much thinking, all four ponies began walking away from the unsafe place.
A while after all of them had left the dark lands, Twilight started a conversation to help pass the time, "you three seemed to be in quite the tough spot back there."
"Oh, umm...that..." Rainbow Dash took over the sentence without much thinking, mostly out of fear that the so called element of honesty would do her thing. "Thanks for the lift n all, but we actually had everything under control back there." Despite her not stuttering on that last part, Twilight wasn't fooled.
"Really?" Twilight asked and looked at her unconvincing friend with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah," Rainbow Dash quickly replied, ignoring Twilight's glance.
"Huh, well, you sure didn't seem to have everything under control, what with all the kicking and screaming."
Rainbow Dash turned towards Twilight, who was still glaring at her with an unimpressed expression. "Heh, well, you know me, Twilight." Rainbow Dash broke eye contact with Twilight before continuing. "I sometimes get a bit carried away during stuff like this."
Twilight kept staring at Rainbow Dash as if awaiting for her to confess. No words followed. Slightly disappointed, Twilight spoke up, "Okay then." Twilight turned her head forward and walked a few steps at a faster pace, placing herself slightly in front of the pack. "I guess that's that."
With Twilight in the front, the other three ponies took the opportunity to share a few sad-eyed looks with each other. Their looks had both a touch of sadness and happiness in them. They recalled what had just happened between them, and they were overjoyed about the lone fact that they have the chance to look upon each other again, for up until the very last second, all of them had thought that they had seen each other for the last time.
Why the sadness? Because they knew well, that none of them would be here if it weren't for their friend Twilight, and that after she had just saved all of them from imminent death, they couldn't even do a thing as simple as share the truth with her. Naturally, they knew that Twilight suspected something, and that lying wasn't the best way out of the situation, but none of them seemed to want to let the truth come out either.
"Hey, Twilight," Rainbow Dash spoke up and trotted forward to place herself next to the pack leader.
"Hmm?" Twilight looked back at her.
Rainbow Dash had decided to make up for her previous false story by saying a few true words that came right from the heart, "I'm really glad you showed up when you did." Both ponies smiled at each other, but Rainbow's smile still felt more genuine at that moment.
"Me too," Applejack added and joined the two ponies up front. Rarity said the same words and repeated the same action after her.
"Under control or not, I'm just glad you're all unharmed." Twilight tossed her hard feelings aside and smiled back. "Lets not do this again, shall we?"
"Yeah, lets not," Rainbow Dash happily agreed with Twilight's suggestion.
"I hear that," Applejack nodded.
"Though I would still love to get my hooves on one of those magma rocks..."
"Rarity!"
