It felt odd seeing Rainbow Dash reading a Daring Do storybook to a snow bank. I stared from a distance as Sweetie Belle trudged through the snow carrying ice skates, barely, in her flickering magic.
She asked, with a couple squeaks, "What are you looking at? Oh, that."
"What 'that'? I've always seen Rainbow Dash being either awesome or napping. This is just—well, strange."
"Rarity told me that Tank needed to hibernate because of winter coming and that Rainbow Dash did not take it well."
I stared at my adopted big sis and shook my head. "Resilience" was her middle name, perhaps more so than "professional," as she had once said in front of our class.
"Applejack told Apple Bloom who told me that she thinks Rainbow Dash may have had something to do with the epic snowstorm."
"'Epic' sounds about right."
"Apparently, she was trying to prevent winter from happening all week."
I stared. Rainbow Dash? Epic fail? No way—
"I'm going to try to earn my cutie mark in skating. Join me?"
"Maybe later."
As Sweetie Belle tobogganed on her rear down to the lake, I hop-fluttered about three-pony lengths at a time to Rainbow Dash, making a series of snow angels. I quickly became plated with snow and quite cold. When Rainbow Dash saw me, she gave an uncharacteristic sigh and clapped the book shut.
"How's it hanging, squirt?"
"I'm awesome. You though, not so much?"
She chuckled, stood, and flicked off clinging snow with waves of her tail. "Some days you have to take it as it comes. Lessons learned and all that."
"You okay?"
"I will be—after a tankard of hot chocolate! Hop on, I'm flying to Sugarcube Corner."
"Awesome!"
We sat in a corner booth, slick red vinyl crinkling below us, breathing in bubbly cocoa that barely masked the smell of the hot swirl-glazed cinnamon buns on our plates. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Most other ponies seemed to be out playing in the new snow. Only one Big Mac-sized white unicorn had entered, shrouded by a wool coat; she sat at a nearby table. Essentially. we were alone in quiet, well, aloneness. My first sip left my tongue a little cooked, so instead of drinking I asked, "You're missing Tank, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"I heard you caused the epic snowstorm."
"Oh, you did, did you?" We both glanced across the room through frost-rimed window panes at flurries blowing in the late afternoon sun.
"Uh, huh."
"Well, stories can be deceiving."
"You did cause it!"
"I was in Cloudsdale."
"Oh, come on. Tell me. I'm not Gabby Gums any more. Please!"
Rainbow took a big chomp of her cinnamon bun and looked this way and that, considering. She didn't look at me. In fact, looking down, she said, "Yeah, I guess you got me."
"What happened?"
"I really wanted to stop winter. "
"Whoa, and you tried, didn't you? That's hard core, Rainbow Dash."
"I did everything I could to stop it from snowing at all! No half measures. Always commit, right?" As Mrs. Cake walked away from the unicorn at the other table, Rainbow Dash asked, "Mrs. Cake…? Some ice for Scootaloo, please."
Mrs. Cake blinked as if Rainbow Dash had spoken in a different language. Looking shaken, she nodded and trotted off.
Rainbow Dash was the best. She continued, "I, um, actually I was there when somepony sabotaged the weather factory."
"No! Really?"
"Yeah, really. A real secret agent type, too."
"Dressed to the nines and licensed to kill?"
Rainbow Dash laughed. "You've been reading too many comic books, squirt. More like dressed to blend in; still sharp looking and suave, reputably. She cased the joint, social engineering some unsuspecting assembly-line jacks and jennies to get a passcode to break-in between shifts." She moved one hoof at about nose level across from right to left. "A real smooth operator, this mare. She first thought to sabotage the snow flake templates, but then realized making fast melting snow wasn't good enough to make her a reputation."
Mrs. Cake dropped a couple of cubes of ice into my cocoa. She smiled, then looked nervously at the other table before trotting there with a tall cafe glass of hot tea and scones on a tray balanced in the small of her back.
"But winter is all about snow," I said. "What could be better than ruining the snow?"
"Breaking the regulator and safety shutoff systems for the entire Cloudsdale weather factory, perhaps? Assuring that Equestria would be inundated with snow from coast to coast all at one time?"
"She certainly got that!" I sipped my now warm chocolate. So good.
Rainbow Dash finished her bun. As soon as she stopped chewing, she added, "She apparently rerouted the main intakes, bypassing the storage tanks. Then fried the control mechanisms by unleashing a few hundred jars of bottled lightning all at one time!"
"That would have been exciting."
"Scary, really. I was blown clear out of Cloudsdale; I landed outside of Ponyville." Rainbow Dash's voice lowered. "Fortunately, miraculously really, nopony was seriously hurt in the incident. Were there anything I could have done about it, I would have stopped it. I was there to stop winter from happening. What this secret agent accomplished was the total opposite."
I looked up from my cinnamon bun and noticed Rainbow Dash staring into her hot chocolate, desolate and quiet. I slid out of the booth. As I clopped on over and slid in beside Rainbow Dash, I noticed the unicorn watching us from the shadows in the oversized hood of her coat. Rainbow Dash barely moved. When I extended a wing around her, the way she had done after she had saved me from the waterfall, she shuddered. It reminded me how nightmares had driven me to do stupid things. I had broken enough rules and fragile objects over the years to know guilty when I saw it. Despite having taken her coat off, Rainbow Dash felt very warm.
"That secret agent was you, wasn't it?"
To my complete horror, a great big sob wracked Rainbow Dash and she began to cry. I looked up at her. She had her eyes closed tightly and tears streamed down, turning her sky blue fur indigo in streaks. She was being quiet about it, though. I snuggled closer and tightened my small wing around her. She said, "I was sure that Tank was dying, that—that Fluttershy and the others were using hibernation and long sleep as a euphemism for Tank dying. I just—I just completely lost it. Wasn't reasonable. I can be so stupid, sometimes—"
She stiffened and her sudden stop made me make a connection I realized she had made. Death of loved ones. I had lost many.
"Scootaloo!" Snap, her tears stopped like that. She squirmed a bit and got her wing around me instead. "I'm so sorry. I really don't think sometimes. You, Apple Bloom, and Applejack have all experienced the real thing and I just go blathering and blabbering on." She suppressed a sob and said, "I'm not a very good big sister."
"You couldn't have proved you're my big sister better. You're family. As Apple Bloom would say, we're doing what family does."
More tears. Different tears. "I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry about thinking of me instead of you. I'm so very sorry about what I did." She opened her eyes and sniffed loudly. Her magenta eyes looked into mine and she smiled tentatively. "And I'm going to take the advice I would give you in a similar situation. I'm going to find somepony and admit what I did wrong."
I blinked away some tears myself. I chuckled. "That is good advice."
A sweet crisp voice said, "I concur."
We both gasped. Princess Celestia stood at our table, her fuzzy hood pulled back, her particolor mane swirling inside its shadowy reaches. She wore neither her crown, her breast plate, nor her golden horseshoes. She looked nonetheless regal.
She addressed me, "What Rainbow Dash did, my little pony, was indeed wrong, and unbecoming of a bearer of an element of harmony. That said, and I think you would agree, she is repentant."
I nodded, "She certainly is."
Rainbow Dash tightened her wing around me as Celestia turned her purple gaze on her. "It is an open secret that you are responsible for the greatest snowstorm of the century. As you said, nopony was seriously injured, but plenty of machinery in Cloudsdale was wrecked; commerce throughout the kingdom has suffered. Under the circumstances, should you volunteer for the repair crews and any needed weather team duties—enough so that ponies see that you truly are repentant—I may not need to make an official issue of your involvement."
"I will do that, Princess."
"And—"
"—and?
"And, you need to explain to some security ponies in charge of Cloudsdale security how you managed to social engineer your break-in and explain to some industrial engineers how you so thoroughly rewired the systems as to increase the output of Cloudsdale's snowflake replicator by two orders of magnitude."
I looked at Rainbow Dash as she made that you mean I have a test today and didn't know it expression. She rubbed the back of her neck and said, "I'll try, ma'am."
"Do more than try. You need a silver lining for your storm cloud."
"Uh-huh."
Princess Celestia winked at me, turned and levitated a stack of bits onto her abandoned table, then walked outside. The wind howled for a moment, then slammed the door.
Without looking up, I said, "We weren't grounded. I'll take that as a win."
Rainbow Dash burst out laughing.
Author's Note
And that, my little ponies, is how Rainbow Dash escaped being punished for a slew of felonies and misdemeanors. She didn't.
Also, In my mind, this fixes the raw bad message for children in Tanks for the Memories that a misdeed may be ignored if the emotion behind it was somehow deserving or noble. Were Tank another pony who was dying in reality, the episode would have been less flawed but flawed nonetheless.
Of all the characters on the show, RD has the best potential for strength of character. She isn't stupid. Other than rewriting the episode, the best I could do was make it plausible with this follow on.
