Chapters "What do you mean you don't know how long it will take?!"
Rainbow Dash stood at Health and Hooves, Ponyville's main urgent care center, conversing with one of the receptionists. It was time for her to get her routine checkup, something Dash always hated doing. Today sounded like it would be just as bad as all the others, if not worse.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but Dr. Oxi Meter is currently treating a patient with a very severe disease. Doctors from the hospital are going to come and meet with Dr. Meter and his patient. They might try to treat him here, or they might treat him down at the hospital, we're not sure as of now." The receptionist didn't care much for Rainbow Dash's stark attitude, but she still wanted to be of as much help as possible. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience ma'am, but I'm afraid you'll have to stay here and wait to ensure that you don't miss your appointment. This might take half an hour or it might take 3 hours, there's really no telling. But if you're not present when we call for you then you'll have to come back another day and pay the no-show fee."
Okay, no this definitely sounded worse than her normal checkup. Up to three hours of waiting?! That's, like, impossible! she thought. I could even wind up in here for longer!
Rainbow decided that ultimately her health was more important than her need for entertainment, so she sat down in a chair near the receptionists' windows. At least the chairs were comfortable, with carpet-like fabric and a bit of cushioning as opposed to a hard wooden one. Or the ones she used to sit in at school, those were the worst.
Rainbow scanned the waiting room for anything of interest. To her left, of course, were the service windows. A clock hung on the wall opposite to her: 10:02. A few other people were spread throughout the room minding their own business. There were restrooms in the corner across from Dash. There was an empty children's area further along the wall with the clock. Thank Celestia, noisy toddlers would make this SO much worse. To the right of Rainbow was a small table with a magazine on it. An office-style water cooler sat beyond this table, only about 3/4 of the way filled.
Rainbow Dash decided to start by reading the magazine. "Equestria's HOTTEST New Looks! 30 Outfits Meant to Impress!" read the header. Rainbow hadn't ever been interested in fashion, especially since she never wore clothes. Other cover-page features read "Fluer shares her favorite beauty tips", "The rise of the window sweater", and "12 flirty ways to entice your stallion". Rainbow started to flip through the slickly textured pages, passing up many ads, offers, and the Fluer interview.
Finally, something had caught her eye: a short article titled "Rarity, Ponyville's up and Coming Fashionista". "I don't remember Rarity ever saying she was interviewed!" Rainbow muttered in surprise. "Surely she would've told us... Well, she probably did, I guess I just drowned her out like normal."
It may surprise you that one of the fastest-growing names in fashion resides in the small town of Ponyville. Rarity, a tailor and fashion designer, has recently been making a name for herself, beating Suri Polomare in competitions and even designing Princess Cadance's wedding dress! Rarity runs her own store called the Carousel Boutique, which is Ponyville's go-to fasion department. Rarity lives and breathes fashion, even going as far as to live in her own shop! When she's not pioneering some of the latest trends, though, she can be found saving the day, as she is one of the legendary bearers of the Elements of Harmony, specifically the Element of Generosity.
Rainbow was glad that she was somewhat slightly mentioned in Rarity's article, kinda, sorta... but she would have preferred to have her own paragraph. One of Rarity's best friends surely deserves a section of her own, right? Especially since I'm another "legendary bearer"! After scanning through the rest of the magazine and not finding anything particularly interesting, she set it back down on the table.
10:35 , the clock read. The receptionist's lowest estimate had already passed, much to the disappointment of an impatient Rainbow Dash. She rocked from side to side in her chair in an effort to amuse her, but it just wasn't enough to take her mind off of the boringness.
Rainbow decided to do what she does best, well, excluding flying. Nuzzling down into the back of the chair, Dash laid her head back and let her eyelids fall. She pretended as if she was relaxing on a plushy cloud, or better yet, in her own bed. That reminded her, she forgot to wash her comforter after getting ketchup on it last night. It was worth it , she thought, Those hay burgers were too delicious to be left uneaten. Images of burgers and fries occupied her mind as she drifted off to sleep.....
11:00 a.m., the Trash and the Pen
Rainbow Dash was touring the Wonderbolts Academy, jumping with joy the whole time. Before her eyes was the very track that the Wonderbolts used for practice and she couldn't believe it! Her biggest idols hit up this track almost everyday and she was about to walk onto it herself. Her hoof was about to come down onto the track, but was interrupted by an itch on one of her hind legs. By reaching down to scratch it, she woke up from her slumber. Stupid itch, waking me up when I'm about to take a lap on their track...
She rolled onto her side, trying hard to return to her dream. She focused all of her thoughts on falling back to sleep and finishing the dream. Despite her best efforts, Rainbow just simply wasn't tired enough to nap. She looked up at the clock: 11:27. She hadn't even slept for an hour.
She found that her mouth was dry and her spit sticky; she must have slept with her mouth open. She planned to fix this discomfort. Placing a Styrofoam cup under the nozzle of the water cooler, she pulled on the handle. Water began to fall into the cup, making the satisfying sound of liquid making contact with foam. She downed the cup of water and threw it away in a nearby receptacle. She took a quick glance in the trash can to find anything of interest – yes, she was already bored enough to look through trash for entertainment. To her demise, she saw nothing. She considered going over to the kids' area, but she'd be damned if any of the other people saw her, the fastest flyer in Equestria, playing with kids' toys. Besides, she thought, all I'd be doing is moving shapes around on a track. No thanks.
She returned to her chair. 11:35. Still no nurse calling for Dash. Still fully awake. Still bored. Going back to the trash, Rainbow reclaimed her cup. She sat back down in her chair and tried to throw the cup into the bin. Miss. She retrieved it and tried again. She made it this time. Next she tried doing it while lying on her back. Miss. Miss. Score. Now while hovering above her chair. Then from the kids' area. Then from underneath the clock.
The receptionist, by this point, was tired of hearing the sound of cup clattering on floor. She asked Rainbow to stop in the least irritated voice she could muster. What is she, the fun police? Dash began to protest but ended up figuring that it would do her no good, lest she be kicked out. She plopped back down in her seat, staring blankly at the wall.
I can't believe my luck. Of course I'd be the one with the appointment after the dying guy. Or whatever's going on with him. Why don't they ever have anything fun to do in these waiting rooms?!
She recalled a time when Rarity was complaining about waiting at the post office to sign off on something only for them to not have any pens. Rainbow Dash thought she was overreacting by a long shot when she first heard her story, but now she could see where she was coming from. This waiting could make you explode, even over something stupid like pens... pens... Pens! That's it!
Rainbow trotted up to the receptionist's window. "Do you have any pens I can borrow?"
The receptionist raised a sarcastic brow. "It depends, are you gonna try to throw them in the trash can?"
"No, no, I'm done with that."
The mare reached over and grabbed a pen out of a mug on her desk. "Here you go."
Rainbow went back to her seat and picked up the magazine again. Flipping to an ad with a very beautiful mare, she defiled the image by giving the model a handlebar mustache and holes in her teeth. She went to the Rarity article next and did the same with her picture, this time adding devil horns as well. "Haha, that's more accurate!" confessed Dash. Turning to an Equestria 500 ad, she scribbled down a random address and wrote "Come here for a good time~" next to it.
Three weeks later, Lyra was relaxing on her couch, sketching in her journal. She always liked to draw humans and make notes about them to pass the time. She was copying notes from a rather arcane book on anthropology when she heard a knock on her door. It came as quite the shock when the stallion at her door told her that he had come for a "good time".
Within 15 minutes, Rainbow had a large portion of the magazine rebranded with some classic RD humor. Mustaches, insults, and various doodles were scattered throughout the pages of the old magazine. She kept the pen, not wanting to have to ask the mare at the window for it later if she would happen to want it again.
12:02. Rainbow Dash had been waiting for two full hours at this point, an hour and 50 minutes too long in her eyes. She got up and poured another cup of water. She observed the rising bubbles in the cooler as the water was being emptied into her cup. They reflected everything in a funny way; she could even see herself being distorted into a small blob of cyan and rainbow colors with each passing bubble. Rainbow finished her cup and returned for a third. As the bubbles rose again, she moved her head around in various ways, distorting her profile to an even funnier degree. While gulping down this cup just like she had the rest, it hit her: she had to use the bathroom.
After doing her business, Dash decided to stay in the bathroom to look for entertainment. She would still be able to hear the nurse calling for her through the thin wooden door, and no one was in here to stop her from goofing off.
Rainbow needed to run around, something she wasn't allowed to do back in the waiting room. First she ran from the door to the opposite wall and back 10 times, then flew in the same manner 20 times. Then she tried to flush all of the toilets in the smallest amount of time. She flushed the first, bolted out of the stall, into the second stall, flushed it, and did the same with the third and the fourth. She managed about 10 seconds flat. But she didn't stop there, not when there were still records to break and toilets to flush. She tried again, getting about the same time as before. Undeterred, she retried, this time getting about 9 seconds. She realized that she didn't have to be precise with the final flush; just running straight into the handle would save time. This got her down to about 7 seconds. She grabbed some paper towels and dried up a few moist spots in her path so she would have more traction. "The janitor better thank me later for this," Rainbow muttered. A few more attempts got her down to a time of 6 seconds, a time she could be proud of. She could now boast to her friends that she was better at flushing toilets than they were.
The ponies in the waiting room were relieved to hear the constant flushing of toilets finally come to an end. They rejoiced in unison.
Dash wanted to try her hoof at origami, something she'd seen before but never really cared enough to learn. At first she wanted to do it with the rigid paper towels, but then she remembered how the restrooms at the Gala normally had toilet paper origami; Dash felt that the same touch could give this bathroom a livelier atmosphere. Some had been in the shape of a sailboat, others were flowers, some were seashells, and some were just intricate designs. But how did those things work again? At her first Gala, she had unfolded one of the sailboats to see how it was put together, but the specifics of this were long forgotten by now. Even if she had remembered, would she actually be able to put all those steps in reverse to get the end result? Was it folded horizontally first, or diagonally? And then what? Did she even fully remember what the end product should look like? She decided to just go with the flow and hopefully get a fancy design in the end.
First, she folded the two end corners in towards each other, then she folded everything upward, making a triangle. Then she folded everything over to the left. When she let go to scratch her leg, everything unraveled. She tried again, folding the creases harder this time. Doing a test, she released the paper. It fell apart again. The toilet paper was simply not resilient enough to stay folded. Dash thought for a moment, then went to the sinks to wet her hooves. This time, she dampened the creases with water, hoping it would adhere. When Dash let go, it stayed firmly in its place. She went to rewet her hooves then came back to continue folding. Fold up, then diagonal on both sides, down, cross left twice, more water. Up twice, up and to the right, crease backwards, then finally fold into a triangle. It wasn't the prettiest design Dash had ever seen, but she liked it nonetheless. She would have taken it home and framed it if she could've. She copied this design in two of the other stalls.
Wanting to continue her sudden streak of artistry, Dash went back to the waiting room to grab her pen. Returning to the bathroom, she unrolled some of the toilet paper in the final stall. Memories of poetic devices she had "learned" in school came flashing into her head: onomatopoeia, trochee, imagery, iambic pentameter. She used none of these in the toilet paper poem she was writing because she just didn't want to deal with that stuff. The pen sometimes snagged on the piece of toilet paper, creating small holes and tears throughout. Despite this, her end product would surely catch the eye of anypony who happened to use this stall.
Trapped in this endless waiting,
I wish I were in my home.
I miss my bed and my pet
I'm tired of playing with Styrofoam.
The waiting room is evil
It has an ill-willed mind!
Aiming to drain the patients of fun
And bore all of ponykind!!
I am starting a rebellion
Join me if you like
Write things in the toilet paper
To help pass your time
It can be whatever really I don't care
A poem, a picture, a story
Fight against the waiting room
And it's desire to be boring!
~Rainbow Dash
Anypony who reads this masterpiece will have no choice but to continue this tradition and write something else due to the sheer inspiration in my poem! Smiling at her handywork, she added one final closing note to ensure the poem's safekeeping.
Please don't wipe your plot with this.
