Prologue
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Ask-Batted-Dash

Prologue

“Okay, got the part about the spell, Fluttershy turning into a bat, building a sanctuary...”

“Be sure to put in there that I came to see that my short-term solution was a little short-sighted.”

“And that you shouldn't let anypony pressure you into doing something that you don't think is right. Sometimes you have to tell even your closest friends 'no'.”

“Now, how about we celebrate our stronger than ever friendship with a nice, ripe, juicy apple?”

“Stand back! I vant to suck its juice!”

*Assorted Laughter*

And so everypony went home happy and everything went back to normal.

Until three days later.

Ask-Batted-Dash

Chapter: Prologue

1:30 a.m.

I woke up three days later to a dull throbbing in my head and a hazy pain from my spine which occasionally flared up. (What am I doing using words like occasionally? Ask stupid Twilight and her Dictionaries.) That was fine, I figured that some good old stretching could help with that. I got up to do just that a bit so I could get back to my regularly scheduled sleeping. It didn’t work. I figured I just wasn’t stretching right, (Which almost never happens ‘cause I’m awesome like that.) so I tried a few different poses. I ended up hurting myself. A lot. (Don’t start thinking that I went and tried it a bunch of times when it didn’t work just because I hurt myself. Totally didn’t try it 26 times.) I got up to wash my face off to see if that’d help and maybe my wings too; they were stiff and crazy hard to move like a pair of bricks. They seemed heavy like them too at the time, ‘course it could have been just because I was tired and all. I stumbled around the dark of my home looking for a switch and the bathroom before eventually finding both. I was shedding feathers all over the floor at a scary pace so I figured I should wash my wings off in the sink. And all that was good and fine until the water coming off my wings started turning red. I wasn’t really paying attention so it took a while for me to notice and I only did once I felt something off in my feathers, something… uh… leathery. Yeah, leathery is the word for it, but not like scratchy hard leather. It was firm, and… slippery? Not exactly slippery but it wasn’t scratchy either. It took feeling that to look down and see the bloodstained feathers coming off in clumps and something reddish-pink attached to most of them. I started to scrub harder upon seeing that until enough fell away to see some sort of pointy object pointing out of the mess of it. I tried to pull it out but that made things hurt more. I decided to wash my wing more to see if it might come out. It was white and slightly curved, almost like a… fang. Which would have been totally cool if it wasn’t sticking out of my wing. More squishy lumps of red-pink stuff came out and I had to take it out of the sink so it wouldn’t clog it up. I wondered if a dragon had attacked me. It would explain the claw/fang thing stuck in my wing and the blood. I figured I had fought it off in my sleep. Which means the lumps were dragon meat? I cringed a bit at that thought. “That’s a lot of feathers.” I thought, then I reached the leathery stuff. It was attached to the claw and, when I looked up a bit, my wing. I stumbled back confused. I didn’t understand. How much of that dragon was stuck on me? I reached up to grab it when it brushed against a wall of my house. I felt the wall when it did that. I felt it. That thing was a part of me. I glanced up at the mirror, only to jump back a bit. (Not because I was scared or anything, I was just surprised. That’s all, just surprised.) There was a rainbow colored pony in the mirror, looking scruffy, wild, and with feathers and blood all over what was now visible as leathery wings. I yelled at it. It yelled back. After a few test movements I had found that it copied my movements. I wondered if my mirror was cursed only to find that my reflection was the same in the reddened sink. Those wings were a part of me. That was me. I realized that if that reflection was me and those feathers were mine, then those red-pink blobs were… I remember screaming. I won’t bother denying it, ‘cause if you ask others in Ponyville who were up at the time they’ll tell you the same. (Just don’t listen when they talk about it sounding like a banshee. It was a totally normal scream, and all those ponies just have really weird hearing.) I knew I should probably go to Twilight. She’d know how to fix me up to being normal again. I rushed out the front door, only to have it get caught on my hind legs. I knew I wasn’t fat so it probably was like one of those weird wing things. I pushed and with a bit of force I got free of the door frame. Unfortunately I shot out of my house, down the slope of my home, and over the edge. I tried to steady myself only to find I was falling farther and farther through the air. Luckily I caught an updraft of air that brought me up slightly and slowed my falling. Right before I crashed to the ground.

3:30 a.m.

I don’t know how long I was out for, but I knew I had to get to Twilight. I got up and ran to her place as fast as I could; I fell a few times along the way. (Not that I’m klutzy or anything…) By the time I got to Twi’s place my legs were hurting a bit from the fall, and my jaws were starting to ache as well. I pounded on Twilight’s door for a while before the pain in my mouth really hurt. She opened the door and seemed to be shocked when she saw me. I didn’t care, I was too hurt and tired to care back then. So I did what anyone does when they’re hurt, tired, and… (Not scared. I was definitely not scared.) Annoyed. I passed out.

7:00 a.m.

When I woke up I was covered in a soft star-patterned blanket. Twi was sitting by a table, reading a book, with some hot drink in a mug beside her. “H-hey Twi.” I managed to say, hating how shaky my voice was. She looked up from her book at me looking very tired and a bit scared. “Hey Rainbow, how was your nap?” I realized that I had kinda crashed out on my friend’s doorstep in the middle of the night, and was a bit embarrassed that she had probably had to stay up dragging me inside and getting a blanket for me. “Oh… Yeah. Sorry a-about that. You see I had this weird wing thing going on-” pausing to try and think of how to explain what I didn’t quite understand. “And there was lots of feathers everywhere, and I think there was blood. I mean, I don’t know if it was mine, but there was lots of it. A-and there was squishy pink stuff, and I fell off my house, and my jaw hurts, and-” Twilight cut me off with a wave of her hoof. “Dash, first off you’re rambling.” (Was not!) She paused for a moment to think. “Secondly, um I don’t quite know what to say about what happened; I mean it’s a bit interesting, but you might not like it and-” She snatched a mirror off the table in a quick jerky movement and held it to her chest, taking in slow shallow breaths to calm her down. (She does that for some reason when she’s scared or worried.) “And-and I don’t know what happened exactly but-” I cut her off with a quick reply. “Twi? Why are you holding that mirror?” Twilight’s ear twitched and she frowned a bit. “Twilight, what are you hiding from me?” Twi let out a deep sigh and gripped the mirror slightly tighter. “Y-you changed Rainbow. I’m not sure exactly into what but you really changed.” She grit her teeth and closed her eyes. She brought the mirror up to my face. I looked… weird. Really weird. I had now lost all the feathers on my wings, now showing big, dark, heavy dragony wings. I turned to look at my back which was now covered in only fur; I had lost all of my hard earned Storm Guard feathers. (For those of you non-peagasi and non-eggheaddy folks, Storm Guard is a type of feather that grows on the backs of pegasi who are really good with weather magic and sometimes flying. The color and stiffness of feather shows what you’re good at. If it’s really stiff then that means the pony’s good with lightning. If the pony’s feathers are dark and stiff then they’re good at dealing with wild storm clouds. Fluffy feathers mean good with normal clouds and rain. Most Storm Guards look like this, no not everypony has them. Of course, there is Celestia {Who has scales where her Guard should be.} and Spitfire. {Who has fluffy phoenix feathers on her back. How the heck she’d get those anyways?!} Oh, and then there’s me! Who has fluffy shimmering feathers for being awesome, being fast, and being able to make rainbows a heck of a lot easier than anypony else without the liquid rainbow stuff.) My tail feathers fell off too… Along with the part that moves the tail feathers. “Aw man! Does this mean I can’t fl-” I paused after realizing something felt off with my mouth. I opened my mouth to see two fang-ish teeth poking out near the front of my mouth along with the flat teeth in the back looking a little more pokey than usual. I rubbed my tongue over them a few times. “So what happened Twi? Did one of your freaky magic spells go haywire or something again?” I chuckled a bit nervously. “’Cause you can fix this, right?” I looked to her. “Right?” Twilight lowered her head towards me. “I have never seen anything like this transformation before.”

“So… You were testing something new out?”

“N-no rainbow.”

“Wha’d ya mean ‘no’? This wasn’t your magic?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

It took me a moment to take that in.

“So this wasn’t you.”

“No Rainbow.”

“B-but you know how to fix it, right?”

Twilight looked at me sadly. She pitied me. I didn’t like that. The look ponies get on their face when they pity anypony else just screams wrong.

“Twilight?”

“Rainbow, I don’t know exactly what happened but I promise you that I will do everything I can in order to get you back to normal.”

I think that Twi must have had some onions for breakfast or something ‘cause my eyes started getting a little watery there. She hugged me. Then the onions really got to me.

Day 3

Twi had been working herself to the bone trying to fix me. There were many long nights and lots of tests she had me take. My wings were stronger now, and I felt like I could fly again, but Twilight wanted me to stay grounded for a bit longer to make sure everything was working alright. I really hoped that she would figure out what was wrong with me since my fur was falling off in clumps.

Day 7

All the old fur from my coat was now gone and new fur had grown on. It was pretty much the same as the old other than the fact that it was a shade darker than my old one and my coat had felt a bit fuzzier and silkier than before. It had been a pain when it grew in. Since it grew so quickly and had been shedding everywhere around the guest bed Twi had let me borrow, the previous days had been very itchy. My tail had been growing longer at the time too, so the days were painful and a bit awkward. Twilight had said something about tests not making sense. (Have they ever?) I didn’t pay it any mind back then. I remember thinking though that she’d better hurry. My wings had been cramped and my mane had been falling off.

Day 10

My mane had grown back by now, and my tail had finished growing and had a new hairdo as well. It was still a bright rainbow, but my tail had normal rainbow streaks along with streaks that blended into different colors and the occasional streak of black. (I bet I’d look awesome while flying.) The fur on my cutie mark had fallen off and the skin underneath had shed and grown back a bit weird as well. The fur on the new skin had undergone some minor changes too. The cloud on my flank was an angry, dark, grey and my bolt’s colors all blended together. The bolt was thinner, but it had grown a bit longer too creating three places where it zagged (Those zig-zaggy parts of lightning.) out from side to side, instead of two. My head started to hurt that day; it was when my new ears started to grow in. My fur had gotten slightly matted from staying inside, and my wings stiff from lack of use. Twilight wouldn’t stop screaming about something wrong. When I went to ask her what was wrong she seemed scared. She told me that “everything was perfectly fine” and to go back to the guest room. Her hair was crazy and her eyes practically screamed loopy, but I did what she said.

Day 11

I had woke up around 12:00 p.m. that day (Which is perfectly normal!) to find, when I entered the lower half of the library, Twilight with a few royal guards by her. I asked:

“Hey Twi!” *yawn* “What’s going on this morning? You seemed a bit creepy last night, so I was-”

I think I had bumped into one of the guards.

“Huh? Oh, hey there! Twi, why are some of the royal guards here?”

She didn’t move, just staring at the ground for a while before she had looked up at me slowly. She had seemed scared. Not like, I’m a bit worried scared, or horror movies are too much for wimpy Twilight scared. She seemed scared. She looked scared, but determined and maybe a bit… I don’t know the word.

“Rainbow, I’ve tried my best to understand what we’re working with here. I’m not exactly sure how to help you, but I think I know a bit about your condition.”

The guards had seemed a bit closer than before.

“Ok, what’d you find out?”

She had shuffled her hooves. Her long tail was lashing back and forth, her wings fluffed slightly in agitation.

“I don’t know much right now, but I- you could- I-I don’t know how to explain.”

“Are they here because of me?” I had said, gesturing towards the guards.

She had nodded.

“Rainbow, I-I need you to remain calm. I need to run a few more tests and maybe get a few doctors.”

I remember feeling incredibly jittery back then. Something about the whole situation had felt wrong.

“Uh, ok Twi. We can do that; but right now I really need to stretch my wings out for a bit so I’m gonna go-”

“NO!” She’d said probably a bit louder then she’d expected, and a bit too quick to be normal. She winced at hearing her own voice.

“Please don’t Rainbow, it’s not safe.”

“What do you mean not safe? What could be not safe about going outside?”

She had glanced at the ground.

“You’re not safe.”

Her voice had been so cold. Her eyes had a bit of a glassy look over them.

“What do you mean ‘you’re not safe’?! Do I look like some kind of freak to you? Like some kind of MONSTER?!” I remember I was breathing heavily. The guards looked tense. Twilight had looked up at me, for once, looking me in the eyes. She looked so crazed, cornered even. (Though, I probably didn’t look any better at the time.)

“Oh, is that it? You think I’m a monster.”

She took a step back.

“Please Rainbow.”

I think I remember the word for what she was. She was desperate. She was desperate for some reason. Her breathing was heavy and ragged. She was desperate, determined, and incredibly scared.

“Why?” I had barely breathed out. “Why would you think that? I-I’m your friend. I thought you knew that.”

She stood a bit straighter. She had seemed a bit unsure of herself.

“I know Rainbow, that’s why I’m doing this. I promise you’ll get better. I-I’ll make sure you can be free again. Just please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

“What do you mean?” I stepped back.

“Just calm down, or I’ll have to use the guards.”

“I-I don’t trust you!” The guards had run forward, I jumped through a window. I remember it cutting my wings, remember flying to my friends for help as a slight amount of blood streamed behind me, blown away by the wind. I hadn’t minded, I was too scared to care. Too sad that one of my friends saw me as a monster to enjoy my first flight with my new wings. I went to my friends one by one. Fluttershy was the first, and the longest to get to since she lived near the forest and a bit farther than the outskirts of town. I knocked on her door. She answered. She also passed out screaming. I flew away, my eyes watering from the wind. Rarity did the same. (I used clouds for cover so you know.) I couldn’t find Pinkie no matter how hard I looked. She could have gone into one of the shops, but I wasn’t able to check since the guards were swarming the streets. I took all day. I remember going to Applejack last… And I remember her thinking in the dark that I was a monster, chasing me off her farm, and bucking my face for getting near Scoots who was visiting Applebloom at the time.

My name is Rainbow Dash. I’m not sure I know what friendship means and I am currently hiding in a makeshift cloak I nabbed from a unicorn’s boutique behind Sugarcube Corner.

Got any ideas of what to do?

(The ask box is now open.)