Rainbow Dash flopped onto her bed. As she sank into the clouds just enough, she relaxed her whole body, absorbing every bit of comfort her bed had to offer. The beds she had stayed in when traveling with her friends had been nice and all, but this was her bed – custom made, and tweaked throughout the years; no other bed in Equestria offered as much comfort.
She wrapped herself with her large blue blanket, and curled up to keep her hooves warm.
It was just as well that she had a perfect bed; being an athlete, she couldn’t afford to have restless nights and wake up tired in the morning. That and she liked sleeping. Tonight, though, she didn’t need her bed to sleep well. Starlight Glimmer had removed her and her friends’ cutie marks, making them equal; once restored, she had jumped at any opportunity to exercise her flying skills over the last couple of days. As such, she felt tired.
When they had been equalized, Rainbow Dash learned that being equal was hard. Not because it was difficult to become or stay equal – no thanks to a certain unicorn – but because being equal was really boring. A stream would have flowed faster than she could fly, and there was no pranking, cloudbusting, aerial tricks, or racing.
Now that she thought about it, what did the other ponies do for fun? Competitions couldn’t exist if everypony was equal. Nopony would win. Or everypony would. She scoffed at that; it was just as bad. Being equal came with too many drawbacks. She rolled over, and sleep took its hold.
* * *
At first, there was only colorless nothingness, and a lot of it.
Then it changed. There was now a brilliantly colorful landscape, accumulating details with every thought. This didn’t happen immediately, but every change pushed the idea of what used to be further away, impeding the possibility of keeping a straight timeline. In an equally ambiguous time frame, in the midst of gentle trees, winding streams, and grassy hills, a modest town took shape.
Rainbow Dash landed in one of Ponyville’s wide, grassy, and empty streets. She looked around – it was definitely the Ponyville she knew, but the town’s occupants were curiously absent.
“Hello?” she called out. Nopony answered. It was as if Pinkie Pie threw a party, and nopony invited her. “This isn’t funny!”
Rainbow Dash trotted down the street, looking down every intersection, and briefly peering into every window – or at least every window that didn’t have curtains drawn. Every house was devoid of its occupants, and the streets offered nothing more than eerie silence.
Rainbow Dash was feeling really left out now. Where is everypony?
An idea struck: Sugarcube Corner. Somepony would probably be there; most likely Pinkie Pie, who could in turn tell her why there was nopony around.
Rainbow Dash jumped into the air and took off, full speed, for Sugarcube Corner; mostly because she wanted to know where everypony was, but also partly because she wanted to put some distance between her and Ponyville’s unsettlingly empty residences.
“Full speed”, however, didn’t seem to be as fast as it usually was. Regardless, it took but a moment for her to sight Sugarcube Corner. As she drew nearer, she heard voices. A lot of voices.
Voices meant ponies and ponies meant answers.
The voices grew louder as she neared, which wasn’t surprising; what was surprising was their quantity. When she burst through the front door, she found herself not inside Sugarcube Corner’s front room, but in a large crowd standing before Ponyville’s town hall, attention focused presumably on somepony making a speech or presentation.
Rainbow Dash felt as though she flew chest-first into an over-thickened and rather chilly fog when she caught a glimpse of the pony presiding at the podium. Starlight Glimmer’s smile was as sincere as ever when she addressed the town. Everything she said sounded like the recordings she put on the speaker when they were in captivity in her town: lines like “equality is for everypony”, “you are no better than your friends”, “special talents cause adversity”.
Rainbow Dash tuned it out; but the cheers that sounded around her inspired chills. They believed what they heard.
She launched herself forwards, shoving through the dense crowd of Ponyville’s inhabitants – none of which seemed to mind. As she landed on the platform next to Starlight, she called out, “don’t listen to her! She won’t even give up her own cutie mark!”
Nopony seemed to take notice; Starlight Glimmer still delivered line after line of equality propaganda, each receiving its own cheer from the populace.
Rainbow Dash, frustrated, jumped for the podium, shoving Starlight out of the way. “Don’t you hear me?! She’s just going to take advantage of you!” The crowd fell silent. Not ‘shocked’ silent – they just stopped cheering.
She couldn’t believe her eyes when she absorbed the sight that lay before her: everypony, recognized by herself or not, had an equal sign as their cutie mark. “Whaa...?” She blinked, and noticed another ubiquitous trait: they were all earth ponies. Even the town’s mailmare – definitely usually a pegasus – had no wings to speak of.
Starlight Glimmer’s cheerful voice broke through her dumbfounded state. “I am so glad you have decided to join us, Rainbow Dash.”
“What?! No!” Rainbow Dash turned to Starlight in disbelief. Starlight still had her horn, and cutie mark. “That’s not what I said!”
“Everypony! Let us welcome the newest member of everlasting equality!”
Everlasting? The thought of being reversibly equalized again was abominable; being equalized forever was unthinkable. Rainbow Dash turned to make sure she still had her own wings and cutie mark. Relief swept through her as she found both to be present. At least, they were present for now. She realized the crowd was cheering again, louder then ever now. There is no way I’m going to become ‘equal’ again! Not if I have something to say about it!
She did have something to say about it. Seeing the exuberant smile plastered on Starlight Glimmer’s face was all the motivation she needed to make up her mind.
Rainbow Dash, letting her fear take complete hold, took flight as quickly as she could.
“GAAAAHH!”
She followed the urge to get far away in as little time as possible. As she watched her surroundings pass by, she grew agitated; the faster she tried to go, the slower she seemed to become. Surely she could fly faster than this? She had to. Starlight needed to be stopped, and the only way that was going to happen was if Rainbow Dash found her friends, which would only become harder if she let Starlight relieve her of both mark and wings.
She shut her eyes and pushed as hard as she could. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was behind her. Something that was bad. She couldn’t let it catch up or she would be ‘equal’… forever.
When she opened her eyes, she was startled to see a wall rushing towards her. As fast as she was able to slow her velocity, she still smashed into it. She picked herself up, unharmed, off of a strangely smooth floor for… outside? Looking around, she was unsettled to see that she wasn’t outside, or anywhere she could have wound up without going through a door or two. She was inside Ponyville’s hospital, and had crashed into the end of a hallway.
She had to get out. As Rainbow Dash rushed down the hallway, she passed a large window. Stopping, she peered through. It was the same room that she had seen the Cakes’ newborns in. About a half-dozen foals – each no older than a couple of weeks – slept in their own small beds. They would have been adorable if four of them hadn’t been wrapped with bandages at telling locations.
Now I know why nopony has wings or horns. The thought made her nauseous. She resumed her attempt to run away.
She passed a few nurses and doctors, but none of them seemed to notice her – a definite change from the yelling she always received when she flew down hospital hallways. She made turn after turn, but the hospital defied her memory. She passed by the sickening window again. This time she heard talking.
“Congratulations, Mister Blaze. Would you like to see them?”
“Heck yeah!”
Rainbow Dash froze. She knew the voice, and the name.
A chuckle came from the one that was presumably a doctor; then, “this way please.”
She followed the hoofsteps, turned a corner, and caught a glimpse of the doctor ushering a grey-blue earth pony with a rainbow tail, like her own, into one of the patient rooms.
“Dad?!”
Rainbow Dash skidded to a stop in front of the door just before it closed. She shoved her way through. Her father lived in Cloudsdale, not Ponyville, so why was he here, and who was he visiting? Neither he nor the doctor acknowledged her existence when she entered the room.
She looked at the occupant of the room’s bed: another earth pony. She was pale-blue, and held a sky-blue foal – a foal with a bandage wrapped around its midsection.
The mare presented her child to Blaze, and crushed what little of Rainbow Dash’s fortitude remained. “Meet our daughter: Rainbow Dash.”
* * *
“GAAHH!” Rainbow Dash bolted upright, her blanket launched a couple of meters closer to the other side of the room. Her window suggested very strongly that it was still nighttime.
It was just a dream. She sighed, but didn’t feel very relieved. Settling for hugging her pillow, she considered what she had just experienced.
It was unsettling, to say the least. Equal from birth, with no say in the matter. Also, she enjoyed her wings; a life without flying would be excruciatingly dull at best.
If they had failed to defeat Starlight Glimmer, could that have been the outcome? Even if cutie marks could be restored – thank Celestia – Rainbow Dash was pretty sure wings and horns would be a different matter entirely, even if Discord was involved. As daunting as the prospect was – or perhaps because of it – she was confident that nopony would consent to have entire limbs removed from their foal unecesarily at birth in the name of equality.
Some equality that would be; the earth ponies that were born earth ponies would be better at everything. But then there was the cutie mark removal. Last time, she could fly, but she couldn’t fly better than anypony else. Would earth ponies still keep some of their magic, just reduced to a minimum? Would it still be more than the disabled unicorns and pegasi? Now that she thought about it, she really didn’t understand any of Starlight Glimmer’s magic, or the details surrounding cutie marks that Starlight manipulated, or suppressed, or whatever.
Rainbow Dash’s mind was spinning quite rapidly now. Rapidly for her, at least. Each question prompted several more, even without her having an answer for it. She laid down and groaned. It was too late in the day for her to think this hard, but her mind seemed to have, well, a mind of its own.
She wanted to fall asleep again, but nothing could make her forget about her dream. The questions she had put off – she would just ask Twilight about, which was a lecture for another day – but the dream still turned her stomach. When she shivered, though, she had an easier time focusing on something else: retrieving her blanket.
Setting down the pillow, she reached out from the edge of her bed; she could barely reach enough to tug on a corner of the lump of blanket. She slid it close enough to pull up and wrapped herself with it and laid back down. A glance at Tank’s sleeping form in his own bed – a form hardly distinguishable from his awake one – brought hope and a smile back to her.
Even if something bad happened, she wouldn’t be alone, and because of that, they had defeated Starlight Glimmer, and she wasn’t ‘equal’.
She was the best flyer in Equestria.
