Rainbow Dash adjusted her trajectory, trying to keep a closer formation with the other pegasi. Ahead of her, Fleetfoot yelled, “ETA THREE MINUTES! GET READY!”

Swallowing, Rainbow pulled her goggles down over her eyes, forcing herself to breath steady through her helmet’s gas filter. The landscape rolled past below, snowy and scarred with months of battle, but for the time being, serene. No, the conflict was some miles ahead.

She hadn’t been in an actual fight before. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her breath coming short and fast. She’d been excited for this, before. Before the train wreck, and the attack on the training camp. Before facing it all down. She wasn’t excited anymore.

She just wanted revenge.

Fleetfoot barely gave the command when Rainbow dived. She pinned her wings to her side, leaning into the wind, searching the battlefield as she fell. She locked her eyes on a pony in heavy crystal armor, swinging a thick staff. She twitched her feathers, redirecting her fall towards him, gritting her teeth.

Three feet before she hit the ground, she swerved, the tips of her wings just brushing against the snow. She through herself at the crystal pony, wrapping her hooves around him and rocketing into the air in one deft movement.

Rainbow hadn’t expected the pony to be so heavy. She grunted, straining her wings as she flew higher and higher, fighting back as the pony wrestled anxiously in her arms. She kept on flapping, flying as hard as she could, up and up, until they peaked the clouds, past the Thunderhead division.

Then, just like she’d trained for weeks on end, the dive, the tackle, and last, the drop.

She didn’t mean to. Once she was in the air, it finally hit her what she was doing. She was going to kill a pony. Sombra was controlling these ponies against their minds, forcing them to fight, bending their wills to suit him. She changed her mind. She didn’t want to do this anymore.

But the pony in her arms struggled too hard.

After seeing so many die at the hands of the crystal army, she was expecting some sort of satisfaction. Or at least to know that she was doing the right thing.

But instead she felt sick, staring at a crumpled blot of red in the snow, miles and miles beneath her. The ponies fighting below didn’t even notice one more body. They stepped over it and kept fighting, kept going, kept killing each other.

Rainbow tried not to vomit, but it was hard to hold it in.

She let herself have seven seconds. Three second to breath in. Four seconds to breath out. No time to accept the horror of what she had just done.

Shaking her head, she dived again, angling herself out of the path of a thrown spear. She couldn’t keep hold of her enemy this time; they slipped out of her grasp barely five feet off the ground.

She probably hadn’t been holding tight enough.

Her third time, she held tighter; she got another kill. Then another. Kill, kill, kill, miss, kill, miss, miss, kill, kill, kill.

It was easy. Why was it so easy? It shouldn’t be so easy to do something so awful? She pretended it was their fault. That they were letting her do these horrible things, making her do them, even. She knew they weren’t, but pretending, it made it just a little easier.

It got easier when she pretended.

It got easier when she didn’t watch them fall.

It got easier when she got her kill saving an ally.

Why was it so easy? Why was it so easy? Why was it so easy? It had been hard to hide in the morgue, to run for her life, to escape to the electrical closet with her ear torn. But this was not so hard.

As if led by some internal command, the crystal battalion turned and began to ran, fleeing the onslaught, overwhelmed by the surging of ponies. She couldn’t let them run. They’d recover, then head for another battle, killing more ponies, more allies. Fluttershy wanted her to keep her brother safe. She couldn’t let them get away.

She dived seven more times. She got six easy, clean kills. One after another, each time flying higher, each time diving faster. Rainbow screamed with each dive, biting back tears as she dodged arrows and spears, angry at them all for being such easy targets.

Her seventh dive was not so easy.

She was high. Not to cloud level, but high enough for a kill. She didn’t see it coming, just felt it split her skin, crack her bones.

The crossbow bolt tore through her head. The crystal soldier fell from her grasp, and though she remained aloft a few seconds later, Rainbow was falling too.

She was blind. Was this what it was like, being blind? Her vision was full of red, swimming, stinging. She choked, shaking as she fell, crying out weakly. “I c-can’t see,” she croaked, kicking wildly against the air rushing around her. “I can’t see.”

Thump.

She landed in a warm pair of hooves, nearly dropped. She could feel someone touching her eye, but she could only see the shadow in the red. “Cadet Rainbow Dash? Can you hear me? Cadet Dash, if you hear me, please give a sign.” She felt herself moving through the air, flying, but her wings hung limp.

Were Celestia’s angels carrying her away? No. No, they couldn’t, she had so much left to do. She needed to go home. She needed to see it one last time. She was breaking her promise to Fluttershy. She was going to let down Lightning Dust. “Please,” she croaked, moaning. “I can’t see, I can’t see.”

“Officer Lightning Dust!”

“Commander Fleetfoot, what—Oh Celestia! What happened to her? That’s a lot of blood. Is she—”

“She’s still alive, but she’s out of it, and she’s losing blood. You’re one of the fastest fliers. I need you to get her to the nearest medical tent.”

“Her eye—Oh Celestia, I can see bone—c’mere Dash, c’mon.”

The wind whistled around her. Rainbow blinked, squinting through the red, making out a flash of golden lightning, the sound of a soft, anxious voice. “You idiot, I can’t believe you. You shoulder have just let them retreat, you almost got yourself killed—Oh Celestia that’s a lot of blood, you’re so stupid.”

“Dusty?” Rainbow asked, leaning in close. “Dusty. . .is that you?”

“I—Rainbow? Hold it together Rainbow, keep it together, it’s only a few more miles. If you die on me who am I gonna brag to?” she asked, trying not to sob through the forced smile.

Rainbow leaned into Lightning Dust’s coat, breathing coarsely into her side. “Dusty. . . I think I’m in love with you.”

“Sh–shut up,” Lighting Dust said, her jaw quivering. “You barely know me, a–and you’ve lost a lot of blood, you don’t know what you’re talking about. R–right?”

She barely landed outside the medic tent before the nurses rushed Rainbow Dash inside. She was one of the worse off soldiers still breathing, so they hurried around her, yelling for bandages and disinfectant.

“Her mane’s in the way,” one of the nurses snapped. With a deft slash of a surgical knife, she cut Rainbow’s hair short, while another nurse tried to mop up the blood.

Taking a few hesitant steps, Lightning took off, making a sharp turn as she flew back towards her field, a strange pit weighing unevenly in her heart.

Author's Note

What's this? Trouble in ~~paradise~~ a miserable war zone? Is not the ship of this fic FlutterDash? Is Rainbow going to die four years before I said she would? Find out next time on. . . *drumroll* THIS FIC