The Legend of Private Apple Applefly

Chapters

The Legend Begins
The Legend Spreads
The Legend Climaxes
Epilogue: The Legend Lies
The Legend Swells

The Legend Begins

It was a perfect, sunlit Equestrian morning that found a restless Applejack gazing out of the north window of her room, resplendent in full-body coveralls and a vacant grin. The work clothes had been modified into a farcical pegasus disguise, a pair of hastily taped-on cardboard wings jutting precariously from her withers.

Actually, resplendent was quite possibly not the appropriate term…. The diplomatic description of her wings would imply that the shapes were on the jagged side, suggesting some asymmetry; the Rarity description would involve shrieks of horror, as one wing was nearly twice the size of the other with several fewer of the triangular notches intended as flight feathers. Clutching at the brim of her trademark hat was a pair of chemistry goggles that may have at one time resided in Twilight’s basement. The coveralls themselves were stained, threadbare, torn, tattered, and a failing zipper meant it bowed open for half its length. In several places, corners of wide packaging tape meant to hold the wings in place had already begun to pull free from the ragged fabric.

No—she was neither resplendent in, nor was she wearing: Applejack bore the shameless display with clueless abandon. She jerked around as the door clattered open, Apple Bloom darting in with a can each of blue and gold paint in her mouth.

“Well, finally!” Applejack yelled, sprinting across the room, all wistfulness replaced with a wild urgency. “I was plum near ready to bolt!” She danced from hoof to hoof, ready to make good on her word at any moment.

Apple Bloom dropped the paint cans to the floor. “I left the room for four seconds.”

“I don’t have four seconds! My long hidden, suddenly-surging love for her is like the first bursts of apples from the bud after a long winter! It’s like a sea of emotion breaking through a dam of restraint! It’s like… uh….” Applejack, wings swaying precariously as she shifted her weight back and forth on her hind legs, waved her hoof at Apple Bloom in a supplicatory gesture.

“Like when you’re on a long wagon ride and you really really gotta use the little filly’s room?”

“Exactly!” She set her face and said, with the gravity of an epigram that defined the universe, “My love for her is like pee, filling my heart!” She growled, teeth gritted. “I gotta get up to the Wonderbolts Academy, pronto! It’s like you an’ your friends waitin for your Cutie Marks times a hundred!”

“Uh, you’ve said.” After a quick dip of the brush, Apple Bloom approached her with blue paint ready to use. “So who’s this her you keep saying you love so much, forever and ever, but mostly right now? Why’s it so important you get up there all a sudden… and painted up?”

A distant smile spread once again across Applejack’s face. “Rainbow Dash.”

“Oh, really? Huh.” Apple Bloom glanced away for a moment. “On a completely unrelated topic of conversation, can I have twenty bits? I think Scootaloo just won a—I mean, for the, uh, paint and cardboard. Cost of supplies, y’know.”

“Huh? Right, yeah, sure. Now get paintin’!” Applejack shivered as her sister slathered the blue paint all over her overalls, chilling them like fine apple wine—if she wore fine apple wine, which she didn’t, ever, while sober. “That’s it, get ‘em nice and covered. And the gold parts! It’s gotta look like a genuine Wonderbolt uniform or they won’t let me in. They’ll be on guard for the smallest inconsistencies!”

Apple Bloom recognized vaguely that the gold and blue whorled and mixed with visible brushstrokes, but thought little of it. Similarly, the marker on the cardboard wings didn’t merit much criticism, all things considered. Certainly not worth any effort in correcting, if Applejack’s urgent fidgeting was any indication. She dropped the brush, beamed an awkward smile, and declared, “Perfect!”

“Hoo-ee!” Applejack spun in a circle, giving her costume the careful analysis of one wearing rose-tinted glasses that had been dipped in tar. “They’ll think I’m a pegasus for sure! Now, I’ve gotta convince her to stick around… are you sure those pick-up lines you told me will work?” she asked, looking down desperately at Bloom.

“Trust me.” Apple Bloom beamed. “I’m great at hooking up ponies temporarily-to-permanently.”

“Really?”

“Remember that time I fed an illegal, mind-altering drug to my teacher and brother? And they’re still together, ain’t they? Don’t you sweat it, AJ,” Apple Bloom said, nudging her sister’s ribs.

“Fantastic! Y’all wouldn’t happen to have any more of that stuff lying around, would ya? Just to be on the safe side?”

“Nah. We had a bunch left over, but we dumped it out back behind the barn. Sweetie Belle got all concerned about it, sayin’ something about ‘ground-water’.” Apple Bloom trotted to the window with a shrug, trying to ignore the anxious staccato beats of Applejack’s increasingly rapid tap-dance. “We probably don’t even have a ‘ground-water’ here, right? Sounds to me like a fancy-pony kinda thing, like a fountain or whatnot.

“And even if the poison got into the fancy ‘ground-water’, what’s the worst thing that could….” Apple Bloom realized that the tapping had stopped, and turned back around to see a distinct lack of Applejack. In her place, black skid marks traced lines from her former location through several walls, each punched clean through with an Applejack-like shape.

The throne room of Princess Twilight’s castle was presently undergoing a manner of renovations. In addition to the chairs surrounding the central table-cum-map, piles of books now occupied the area, spreading about like large, blocky parasprite corpses, jumbled and stacked against the foot of a chair or lounging indecorously on the table itself.

Piles of books which, unfortunately, had a habit of tumbling down whenever the castle’s newest occupant felt like making a particularly forceful point.

“I’m talking about socialism as a means of preserving freedom!” Starlight said, stamping her hoof and creating a resounding echo. Right on cue, the Leaning Tower of Fluttershy—a multi-story pile of magazines on her chair—collapsed.

So much for Fluttershy’s burgeoning Neighponese manga section. Twilight resisted an urge to rub what felt like deep bags beneath her eyes, and said, “You mean like it did when you tried implementing a socialist commune?”

“I concede my implementation was faulty!” Starlight yelled, not sounding at all conciliatory. “Don’t use my flawed ways, which I have absolutely seen the error of, for the record—” she adopted a pious tone and used her magic to trace a glowing halo around her head “—to condemn all social progress! Right now, Celestia and Luna’s faulty diarchy is allowing weeds to flourish beneath them! Weeds like Blueblood.”

The two shared a mutual shudder of revulsion.

“Those who got close to Celestia,” Starlight said with a tap of her hoof, “have had their descendants rewarded with dozens of minor titles over the centuries, and their influence grows like cancer. They encroach more upon the rights of the proletariat each day! Don’t you see how this demonstrates an inherent flaw in the system?”

“So, let me get this straight,” Twilight said with a twisted smile. “You don’t want me to hold your town against all of socialism, but you get to hold minor failings of Equestrian politics against all theoretical diarchies!” She summoned a microphone from yet another pile with her magic, then dropped it to the floor. The lack of an attached speaker sadly deprived her of any satisfying burst of feedback.

Starlight sighed with exasperation. “Well, I mean, when you put it like that—” She stopped talking and looked over to the side. “Spike, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

Twilight glanced over to see Spike standing before a blackboard with the names Glimmer and Sparkle written on it. Beneath these names were three and five tally marks, respectively, and Twilight watched with no small amount of satisfaction as he placed a sixth beneath her own name. “You really gotta work on your debate skills,” he said, chuckling at Starlight. “Twilight’s got a logical fallacies book I can lend you—she makes me read it once a month.”

“In any case,” Twilight said, pulling a volume from her chair’s pile (and making a mental note to have Spike clean it up later), “there’s something in The Incredibly Abridged Political History of Equestria, Volume Four, Third Revision that counters your point entirely, on page… one thousand, six hundred seventy two?” She squinted at the ages-old hunk of pages. “Or was it in the two thousands?”

The door burst open behind her and, judging by a large cracking sound, splintered into pieces. “Twilight! I need your help!”

“Oh, hi, Applejack.” Her nose already buried, Twilight didn’t even blink.

“What in Tartarus are you wearing?” Starlight said.

“Is it a friendship problem?” Twilight flipped through page after page, her eyes flitting wildly across the lines. Her reference was somewhere in the area, she could almost smell it—talking was enough of a distraction as it was.

“Bigger!”

“Ha! Good one, Applejack! Everypony knows there’s no such thing as ‘bigger than a friendship problem’.” Twilight chuckled to herself as she crossed the page two-thousand threshold. “Starlight, be a friend—open the First Edition over there and help me refute your entire philosophy.”

“Forget philosomophizing!” Applejack yelled from behind her. “I need to get to the Wonderbolts training camp, stat!”

“Sure thing, Applejack,” Twilight said.

“Seriously,” said Starlight, having not moved since Applejack’s abrupt arrival, “what is she wearing?”

“Shh, Starlight,” Twilight said, “I gotta concentrate.”

“Thanks a dozen! So, how can I get there?”

Twilight ignored the question. Her thoughts were already committed to calculating the vector to the Wonderbolts academy, the trajectory based on intervening weather conditions, and which window in the general path she was objectively least fond of.

“Do I, uh, borrow your balloon, or—”

Screaming, and one crash of glass, replaced the rest of her words, as Twilight grabbed Applejack with her magic and flung her in the right—vaguely northerly—direction. “Bend your knees for landing!” she called toward Applejack’s retreating butt. “Now where were we?”

She glanced up to see Starlight staring at a point behind her. “What?” Twilight asked.

“Did you see what she—cardboard….” Starlight took a deep breath. “Never mind.”

With a sigh, Twilight tossed the volume, wincing at the cracks it left in the crystalline floor. “Forget it, linear search is too inefficient. Point is, Starlight, that we’ve always had a centralized autocracy, and it’s always worked well enough in the past, so—”

The BRAP of an air horn cut her off. “Penalty! Argumentum ad Antiquitatem!” Spike called out. “Half-point deduction!”

“Spike!” Twilight yelled.

He shrugged after he erased one of Twilight’s ticks halfway. “Fallacy of appeal to history. I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

“Oh, hey, here it is!” Starlight said, staring down at the Abridged Political History. “Page two thousand four hundred seventy!”

Twilight gasped. “Really?”

Starlight lifted the tome in her magic and began to read: “With the Noonday Accords of five hundred twenty eight, in order to curb the power of the nascent nobility, it was decreed….” She turned the page as Twilight rushed over to see for herself. “That Twilight Sparkle is an idiot who just let her guard down.”

“What?”

The book flew upward, smacking Twilight across the snout.

“Gotcha!” Starlight pumped a hoof as Twilight reeled. “Mark it, Spike!”

Twilight heard the sound of chalk on board and narrowed her eyes, even as tears streamed from them—tears are a perfectly natural biological reaction when the nose is struck, nothing to be ashamed of. However, with the curse of having a prodigal intellect, she knew she was only kidding herself.

It was so on.

In the northern reaches of Equestria, visible from the train route to the Crystal Empire, there stands a two mile-tall column of granite named Mount Pinocchio. Encircling its base lies its namesake, a massive pin oak forest home to five dozen recorded squirrel species. From the ground, much of the mountain’s height is lost, obscured by layer upon sheet cake-like layer of clouds.

Above the summit of Mount Pinocchio, one may find Camp Hiyassekyte: the Wonderbolts reserve training facility, airstrip, and last resort. In the event of a breach in other layers of Equestrian air power, this camp was designed to serve as the final line of defense before Canterlot. A single standard-issue megacloud stretched for a half-mile in every direction, supporting a Thundersteel-brand aerial runway. In a ring above that plane, cloud structures of barracks, armory, mess hall, and other warehouses and air cannons provided the infrastructure for everyday operations.

Soarin paced back and forth on the tarmac, staring at the dozen uniformed ponies gathered before him. “The final approach will not be easy. You will be required to maneuver straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point.” He flicked a pointer towards a squiggle on the chalkboard behind him. “This is a qualifying marathon individual timed event race thing! I must have been the only one who had Wheaties for breakfast, ‘cause none of you are champions yet. You wanna impress me… again… I expect all you ladies back here in ten hours, or you’re out! Questions? Yes, Private…!”

“Ah, Flitter, ma’am… uh, sir. Why aren’t we being lead by Captain Spitfire?”

“Captain Spitfire is away on special assignment. That means you ladies have to answer to me for these next three days of your training at Camp Hiyassekyte.” He winked. “Charmed, I’m sure. Rainbow Dash, you have a question as well?”

Rainbow puffed out her chest but held her gaze fixed up on the clouds as ordered. “What was your time, ma’am—sir?”

“Please,” Soarin said with a chuckle. “What kind of question is that! Please!” He waved his hoof dismissively. “The very idea that I flunked this test eight times and scraped through with three minutes left on my ninth! ‘What was my time,’ indeed, ha!”

His ears pricked as a high-pitched sound slowly built. “What is that?”

“Over there!” Flitter shouted, pointing. “It’s a bird!”

“It’s a pony!”

“It’s a plane!”

“What’s a plane?”

“It just looks really flat, is all.”

“It’s gonna crash!”

With a thick smack, an “oof”, further screaming, a subsequent thud, some rolling, and an impressive slide, Applejack finally came to a stop at Soarin’s hooves.

“Whoa,” he said, taking in the new arrival. “It was a pony after all! Not much of a landing, though. Shoulda bent your knees.” He squinted and brought his head low. “Say, what’s your name?”

Applejack looked up at him like a deer looks at an oncoming train. “Uh… uh…”

She couldn’t just say ‘Applejack,’ not in front of so many ponies. It didn’t even sound like a pegasus name! She needed a name that sounded like it belonged to a Wonderbolt… a name that Rainbow Dash would love! Pegasi had names that involved flying, she knew, except for the simple one. So all she needed were some flight-themed words…

“Apple!” Not quite. She had to think. What would Rainbow Dash do?

“Uh, Apple….” So close, almost there….

“…Fly?”

Nailed it.

Soarin leaned in even closer, scrutinizing. “Apple Applefly, is it?”

“Uh, yes? Say, d’you know where Rainbow—”

“I don’t have any ‘Apple Applefly’ on my roster, miss ‘Apple Applefly’.”

“That’s, uh, well, y’see—“

Soarin abruptly pulled away, beaming. “I wish I did, and—because I’m in charge—I do now! Anypony who can fly like that deserves a shot at the Wonderbolts! And what a war cry! See you’ve got your uniform and everything! Now get up on your hooves and file in!”

Applejack quickly got to her hooves to mixed cheers and hissing from the other cadets. She swooned the instant she was upright. “Whoa, nelly….”

“Snap to, Private Applefly!”

Applejack shook her head, still reeling, but started cantering to the line of mares. The lightheadedness was probably nothing, anyway. “Any of you ponies seen Rainbow Dash around? I’m lookin’ for—“

“Privates,” Soarin barked, “you have your route. I expect each and every one of you ladies back here before night call! On your marks!”

There, in the line, she saw Rainbow Dash, apple of her eye and other parts of anatomy, picking a bug from her teeth. She quickly closed the distance, remembering one of Apple Bloom’s pick up lines. “Rainbow! Hey, Rainbow, look, I gotta ask you, did you sit in sugar? Because your—”

“Just you try showing me up again,” Rainbow Dash spat, sparing only half a glance. “I already have that Lightning Dust to deal with, I don’t need you going against me too. Only one pony’s gonna be made a Wonderbolt, and that’s me, got it, Private Pearbye?”

“Set!”

Applejack gaped. “Pear? Rainbow, it’s me, Apple—”

“Nice try, Berrydry, but I’ve got my eye on the prize.” Rainbow locked down her goggles and put on a goal-set grin. “You won’t distract me with those adorable freckles and your lying, luscious lips.”

“And go!”

The other dozen-plus cadets were off like a shot. Applejack’s goggled hat and cardboard wings wobbled in their wake. She stood there with a crushed heart, watching the colored specks grow smaller and smaller.

“Applefly!” Soarin said, seemingly shocked. “Go! You have only ten hours to complete the course!”

Applejack turned around too quickly, stutter-stepped to catch herself. “R-right. I, uh, just wanna give them a sporting chance, is all, sir. Ma’am.”

“Are you,” Soarin’s face soured as he drew the word out into five syllables, “slacking?”

Applejack backpedaled, promptly stepping off the Thundersteel-brand tarmac. She hovered in the air for a moment before—like any self-respecting earth pony supported by only a standard-issue megacloud—she plummeted out of the sky.

“That pegasus is gonna go far,” Soarin said to himself, walking back and settling into his cloud chair. He opened the latest issue ofEquestrian Pieto the centerfold, and salivation started immediately. “Oh yeah, girl, work that crust.”

Well below him—a thousand feet below and counting—Applejack was going far, just in the wrong direction.

Cloudwalking. She knew she’d forgotten something, and now here she was, cursing her wingless fate. Ah, if only she’d been born into a different family. Rainbow Dash’s family, maybe! Idyllic, cloud-edged scenes flowed through her mind of Dash showing her the ropes of flight, her watching Dash’s first rainboom, the two going to prom together and doing freaky stuff in the back of a hijacked royal phaeton—

Wait, she hadn’t thought this through. Rainbow Dash would have had to be in her family for that to work out. Not okay.

The images changed. Now she pictured Rainbow Dash swooping down, collecting her in her legs, and flying them both back to Ponyville. She imagined them competing again in their completely-necessary Iron Pony competition, and the Running of the Leaves. She pictured fighting together against a gigantic tentacle-armed, paint stripper-spewing abomination. She dreamt of diving together deep into the ocean to save a race of ocean-ponies…

Things were becoming quite wet. The blurry-edged images in her mind dissolved to blurry-edged images of the world around her.

She redirected her attention downward and saw a cloudbank rising fast, looking fairly solid and poofy, though a bit wispy around the edges. Thus far, she must have been plummeting through them, but maybe if she increased her surface area, the wings on her back would convince the cloud to support her weight. Worth a try, anyhow. With as much urgency as if Rainbow Dash herself were there, Applejack spread her legs wide and braced for impact—

She passed harmlessly through and got a little wetter. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

Another cloudbank, slightly less wispy, was not far below and, lacking better options at the moment, Applejack tried once again. She spread her legs as wide as she could possibly stretch, and was rewarded a moment later with predictable results and increased moisture content.

But there! That third one that looked very solid, and very gray, and had regular lines running across it for some reason, so Applejack again increased her surface area to maximum and dared to hope.

The large cloud-like thing flew past on her right.

Dang-nabbit.

But wait, there was one final chance! Something not from Rainbow Dash’s world, but her own: good old fashioned rope, hanging down from that strange cloud for whatever reason. She angled her body that way and grabbed it with all of her strength.

At last, she finally came to a screaming, smoking halt. The good news was she’d come to a stop. Bad news was, rope burn had cost her precious disguise some of its already-pathetic integrity, and some of the blue paint was gone to reveal the denim beneath. They’d be sure to spot her now, unless she made some repairs. Oh well.

She looked down again to see only a few hundred feet between her and sweet, merciful, probably-not-going-to-squish-her ground. With a sigh of relief, she carefully relaxed her muscles and slid to the ground.

Once there, she shook herself and set out at a gallop toward Twilight’s castle. With any luck, she could be there within about five hours from here, and get herself a quartet of cloudwalking hooves.

From there, she would return to Camp Hiyassekyte, find Rainbow Dash, and they would be together again.

Perhaps she should have looked up—looked more closely at the ‘cloud’ she’d missed. Should have paused to consider that ropes to not hang from clouds at random, or even at all, given their penchant to pass through clouds entirely. For the rope that had saved her life was not an ordinary rope, dangling from the heavens: it was a mooring rope, tied firmly around several trees at ground level.

And it was no cloud that Applejack had fallen past—unless a massive, long, thin warship supported by hydrogen confined in cotton skin, carrying a contingent of griffon warriors armed to their beaks, counted as a cloud.

(For Equestrian regulatory purposes, it technically did. Not that the griffons cared.)

“Ah, ze great airship Überkompensation. Beauteeful, iss she nott?” General Bekloppte paced the bridge, back and forth before its gorgeous windows and their view of the nigh-vertical slopes of Mount Pinocchio. His face, hard and cruel, bore several dueling scars that crisscrossed his beak and one eye: painful souvenirs of a carnival that had sold them next to the stick-on tattoos. “Grand enough to destvoy un Eqvestrian air battalion vithout fleenching; neemble enough to hide vithin zis cloud-layer; and vith enough cargo capacity to plunder ze entirety of Eqvestria’s gold reserves!”

He cackled. “Yes, yes! And soon, ven our informant und saboteur has disabled Camp Hiyassekyte’s defenses, we will destroy the Wonderbolts with vun qvick strike!”

“Who are you talking to?” asked one of his guards.

“What?” He whipped around and stared at her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, an imagined imperial orchestra screeched to a halt. “I’m talking to… meinself. So vat?”

She rubbed the bridge of her beak, between her eyes. “Okay, a question… Actually, two questions.”

“Zwei qvestions!”

“Two,” she said, emphasizing the ‘w’ sounds, “questions. Why do you want us all to talk like that? No one talks like that!”

“Das ist not obviouss? Eet is appropriate upon un vessel such as zis!”

“Which brings me to question two.” The guard gestured all around herself with her spear. “Why do we even have a zeppelin? We’re griffons. We can fly.”

“Vell….” General Bekloppte’s beak opened and shut several times in succession, like a broken cuckoo’s on a clock striking nine. Eventually finding himself again, he drew himself up to his full pompous girth. "Zu vill show ze proper respekt bevore zur Erste Luftgeneral, Unverhohlen Bekloppte!" he bellowed. “Gvard! Take ze fraulein vrom zis place and—” he grinned wickedly “—punish herr.”

“At vunce, Luftgeneral!” The other guard snapped a salute, then started poking his counterpart with his spear. “Move it, uh, zu!”

“But it’s dumb! It doesn’t make any sense!” She turned indignantly to her escort as she was pushed past the bulkhead. “You know it’s dumb, right?”

“Just go with it,” he whispered back.

The Legend Spreads

The pre-dawn glow revealed Applejack covered in dew and her rope on the Camp Hiyassekyte tarmac, twitching in the state between bleary wakefulness and tormented slumber. A drop of water fell from her hat onto her nose and she jerked awake. “Rainbwah…?” She forced herself to her hooves and shook the dew from her coveralls and wings. The cardboard wagged as another corner of tape discreetly peeled free from the fabric.

It hadn’t been quite so light, last she remembered, so clearly some time had passed. Maybe the barracks had drifted closer. She spooled the rope, trotted within range, aimed as best she could at the nearest cloud-structure, and let fly with her lasso. Unsurprisingly, it passed through the bottom inches without any effect.

“Oh, ponyfeathers,” she muttered, reeling in the rope’s length. To add insult to injury, her stomach growled at her.

She nearly dropped her rope when a bugle sounded high overhead, quick and sharp notes pealing over the cloudscape as Celestia’s sun crested the horizon.

“What in tarnation?”

In short order, dozens of ponies flew from the barracks to circle around a flagpole, split nearly even between the uniforms of the Wonderbolt candidates and regulars. One split off and flew down towards her. She quickly stashed her rope within her painted coveralls, shaking her head to banish the bleariness.

“Private Applefly!” Soarin swooped in. “Up and working before reveille…. Astounding! What are you doing on the runway so early?”

“Uh… stretching?”

“Stretching?” Soarin parroted.

“Habit, sir? Ma’amsir? Uh, and jogging. Yup, jogging. Nothing like a little jog, uh, wing jog, that is, to get the blood flowing on a cold, early morning, no, siree.”

Soarin grasped her face in both hooves, ecstatic. “Private Applefly, I could kiss you!” He turned towards the assembled ponies above. “Privates, assemble an hour before sunrise tomorrow! Applefly, I like your gumption. Inspiring! Lightning Dust, Flitter, Star Screamer,” he said, flying up to direct the arriving cadets, “form up….”

Applejack blinked. “Gumption?” Her expression brightened, a vapid smile expanding across her face like an inflating balloon. “I didn’t think anypony had gumption no more! Gone like neuralgia or something!”

Applejack’s reflections were interrupted by Rainbow Dash, landing nearby with enough force to crater the surface of the Thundersteel-brand tarmac.

Well, not really, but Rainbow liked to imagine she had: it made her feel good about herself, and she needed all the ego-boosting she could get this morning. “What is your problem, Sapperee?”

The pitter-pat in Applejack’s chest seized. “What?”

“First, you blow my time away in the qualifying marathon. Then you’re too high and mighty to tell me how you did it, and now… this!”

“Rainbow, I—”

“I barely got enough sleep as it was last night! Tomorrow we’re gonna have to get up an hour earlier just because you’re so much better than anypony else! Oh, but Dappertry doesn’t need sleep, is that how it is?”

“Rainbow, please, I…. If’n you got anything to eat? I can’t fly to the kitchens or whatever it is here where y’all eat. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept, either…. Could ya sneak me some doof from the…” She shook her head again. “Uh, food?”

“What? Whatever.” Rainbow continued to fume. “So your upstaging me wasn’t enough, huh? I’ll tell you right now, cutting into my nap times is the last straw! I’m the toughest pony in Ponyville, Snapplesy! Toughest pony in Equestria! I refuse to take second place to you!”

“…Some’a…. Doofood from the kitchen? Snuggle some sleep from the sleep hall? Smuggle? Snuggle?” Applejack laughed to herself. It had been a horrible, miserable, lonesome night. Surely a hug wouldn’t do any harm. Yes, a hug seemed to her a very agreeable notion. “And some, uh, snuggles, maybe, from the… you… hall?”

Finally things had registered as strange enough to put Rainbow’s diatribe on hold. She paused, blinking for an instant. “What?”

Those widened eyes and slightly parted lips suggested to Applejack that, in that moment, a mere fuzzy nuzzle was far from inadequate.

“Kiss me, Rainbow Dash!” She threw her forelegs around a startled Rainbow’s neck, pinning her down against the clouds.

It was everything she had hoped it would be. Rainbow’s lips pushed back, soft and supple, bending like an apple bough in a tornado caught fire. On instinct, Applejack pressed her tongue forward, opening Rainbow’s lips wider to play against her teeth. She wondered if that was what it was like opening the gates to the Eternal Pasture… or maybe one of those big doors in those Daring Do novels where a boulder rolls out—really, either comparison worked just fine for her.

“Ah!” Soarin exclaimed from across the tarmac, the unusual motion catching his attention. “Combat exercises! Inspired! The Prance Lip-Lock maneuver, very bold!”

Rainbows reaction had, at first, been completely subconscious. She was a mare of action: if something pushed, she pushed back twice as hard. Only once the other mare started employing her tongue had any of this registered, and she decided that she liked it. Exciting.

As her opponent’s eyes fluttered closed, Rainbow Dash kept hers open for one reason only: tactical advantage. As she employed her own tongue to skirmish with the invading force, Rainbow twisted under her hooves and pushed, rolling on top. They struggled, lips never parting, and the fight was on. A fight that Rainbow was determined to win.

“Applefly and Rainbow,” Soarin yelled as the entangled pair rolled from the soft surface of the standard-issue megacloud to hard, Thundersteel-brand tarmac, “it is against regulations to perform combat makeouts on the runway!”

Applejack pulled away, breathless. “But I ain’t yet made it to her—”

“Privates!” Soarin called to the other candidates. “After you have completed your wing-ups, you are to split into pairs and practice basic grapples for ten minutes!”

They laid there for a moment, panting, Applejack on her back beneath a grinning Rainbow. Finally, Applejack laughed, nuzzling hard into Rainbow’s neck.

“Hey!” Rainbow said. “Watch your goggles!”

“Sorry,” said Applejack, relenting not at all, “but I don’t got a mirror.”

Rainbow twisted her head, pulling away with a smug grin. “So, did I win?”

“Win?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said, as if it were obvious. “Did I win? I won’t let you up until you say I won.”

Applejack leaned her head forward, trying to land a kiss, but Rainbow pulled out of range, smiling smugly. Applejack shifted, but she was quite effectively pinned. Well, she could escape, if she really wanted, but… “I’d say we both won. Whaddya say, sugarcube?”

Rainbow seemed to consider it for a moment. “Well…”

“Private Rainbow!” Soarin called. “You and Star Screamer will be partners for this drill. Private Applefly….” He suppressed a dreamy sigh. “As you know what you’re doing, you will assist me in preparing the Dizzitron!”

They shared a look. Rainbow’s expression said, ‘okay, I don’t know what all that was about, but that was cool and maybe a little confusing maybe we should try again sometime and I will totally win next time.’ Applejack’s, by contrast, said, ‘can next time be now?’

Reluctantly, Rainbow hopped off and helped Applejack to her hooves. “That was… uh….”

“Yeah,” Applejack said. “Uh—”

“Privates, snap to!”

Rainbow Dash marched away with a quick, military gait to practice with Screamer. As Applejack watched her leave, she mentally praised whichever designer had given the Wonderbolts skin-tight uniforms.

Applejack touched a hoof to her lips and felt it burn. Rainbow Dash had just kissed her.

Okay, well, not really. She’d kissed Private Apple Applefly. But a thought occurred to her: maybe that was enough. Maybe, just for a little while, she could simply be Applefly for Rainbow Dash. If that’s who everyone was determined to think she was, then she could just go with it.

She shook her head—what was she thinking? All that lip-locking must have made her light-headed (at least, she hoped it was the lip-locking that was doing it). Her, Applejack, former bearer of the Element of Honesty, lying to a friend? How could she look at herself in a mirror? How could she live with herself? How could she sleep at night? How could she—

The sun peeked above a cloud, and a single ray of light shone down to reflect off every acre of Rainbow Dash’s brilliant ass.

Oh, right. That was how she could sleep at night. And, if she played her cards right, with whom.

With a renewed skip in her step, she turned round and followed Soarin, wondering what in tarnation a Dizzitron was.

“Ready?” Soarin yelled.

“Uh…?” Applejack said, strapped into the Dizzitron, eyeing the gearing system with a nervous eye and an even more nervous stomach. She was starting to get an inkling of how it worked and preemptively wrapped a hoof over her hat to pin it down on her head. “Actually, could I just take a—”

“Trick question! Go!”

Soarin pulled the lever with a mighty heave, and Applejack realized how glad she was that she’d vomited so thoroughly the previous day. The world turned to modern art in front of her, all possible reference points dissolving into reference blurs.

She narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth, pole-danced with her digestive tract, un-gritted her teeth, bulged her eyes, dry-heaved, but tried to keep her head screwed on straight regardless. If she was going to be Private Apple Applefly, then she’d have to be the best! She’d have to show this Dizzitron who was boss, not take no for an answer, laws of physics be darned!

“And release!”

The Dizzitron flung her straight into the standard-issue megacloud below, arresting her momentum instantly.

“Zero-point-one seconds!” Soarin cheered. “No cadet has ever stabilized their flight path so quickly, or so completely! A novel approach from our very own rising star, Apple Applefly! Who’s next?”

She groaned into a faceful of water vapor, and pulled herself from the cloud to stand unsteady hooves.

Only to get immediately knocked back down when Rainbow Dash blasted past her with the battle cry of, “Me!” She strapped herself in, wrenched her goggles onto her face, and yelled, “Nopony upstages Rainbow Dash! Up to eleven, Sergeant!”

“The machine stops at six!”

“Are you questioning my authority, Sergeant?” She leered down at him as if she’d gained the ability to fire eye-beams through sheer force of will—or even I-beams.

“Uh, yes! I mean, no, ma’am. Here you go!” He wrenched the lever as far as it could go and kept going. Feeling a premonition of doom, Applejack shoved her body back into the cloud as far as it would go.

When Applejack came back up, the Dizzitron was… well, “broken” was the wrong word. So were “shattered”, “destroyed”, and “obliterated”. For that matter, so was “was”. The Dizzitron simply wasn’t. For years afterward, mechanical engineers would ponder its fate, deduce conclusions too eldritch to publish, and simply explain to their junior colleagues that it had been sent to a Dizzitron farm upstate, where it could run around free and play with other Dizzitrons.

Soarin stared at the physical space that the machine had occupied. “Did I leave my keys in there?”

“Ha!” called a voice shaky enough to register magnitude seven on any half-decent seismograph. Applejack looked round to see Rainbow Dash teetering wildly from foot to foot, in mid-air, and upside-down. “Beat that, Private Openfly!”

Applejack looked down, swore, and rezipped herself.

“What was my time?” Rainbow Dash tried to right herself, but with her sense of direction all askew she only succeeded in lefting herself, and landed hard on her side. “Owww—wing…”

Soarin glanced at his stopwatch. “Let’s call it a tie.”

“A tie? Whaddya mean, a—” Her cheeks puffed up suddenly, and her mouth slammed shut.

“Whoa there, Rainbow.” Applejack rushed forward to pull her up and support her. “Just let Private Applefly help you walk it off.” To be honest, which she wasn’t right now, Applejack wasn’t too sure on her own hooves, but between the two of them she figured there was one pony’s worth of balance left.

She glanced over at Rainbow’s mouth, looking less distended now as her cheeks slowly deflated. Maybe, in this tender moment, she could steal a kiss—

Rainbow retched with a horrendous, back-breaking motion, spewing half-digested breakfast all over the standard-issue megacloud.

Applejack decided to take a rain check. She stood, patting her friend on the back, mumbling soothing nothings. It came as a surprise when Rainbow leaned heavily into her.

“That awe wassome….”

Applejack chuckled. “Sure was, Rainbow. Sure was.”

With the Dizzitron no longer available for training, Soarin had quickly advanced their regimen to other forms of athletic conditioning. Inspired by the pace-breaking events earlier in the morning, he had organized the cadets into heats of 400-meter sprints.

The lineup had her standing between Bumble and Lightning Dust as they waited for their turn, cheering encouragement to the racers.

Lightning Dust had actually disappeared for a while. Applejack didn’t follow where she had gone off to, but, as Rainbow had dismissed herself for a few moments to clean the vomit from her face earlier, it seemed to be a thing of little consequence.

Besides, she was temporarily one pony closer to Rainbow Dash. She gave an airy sighed as Rainbow yawned tremendously.

Those white, healthy, lickable teeth.

“Applefly!” Soarin called. “Bumble! Privates, you two are next!”

Applejack shook herself back from wonderland. She trotted up to the starting line, her contestant, Bumble, giving her an odd look.

“Yeah?” Applejack asked, self-conscious.

“Why don’t you fly? You don’t fly anywh—” She collided with the cloud-flagpole marking the start.

Applefly knew how to answer the question now. “So I don’t do nothing like that. Flying’s dangerous business. Also don’t wanna become too dependent on my… uh, on my wings too much.”

“That’s enough, ladies,” Soarin said, good-naturedly. “Now you know the drill. One complete lap. The other pony is to help you push yourself in the spirit of competition and stuff like that. Are you ready?”

“Yes ma’am!”

“Yes, ma’amsir!”

“Take your marks…”

Bumble splayed her limbs, staring down the track.

Applejack looked dubiously at her wings and gave a little shake. The wings wobbled unconvincingly. She straightened her goggle-adorned hat and turned forward again.

“Get set…”

Bumble tensed, wings stretching even higher. Applejack coughed nervously.

Then an idea occurred to her: she was Applefly. Applefly could win this race. Applefly could do anything. She could do anything… Dash was watching, consarn it—she could do anything!

“GO!”

Bumble was off like a shot, wings madly pumping.

Applejack’s legs fired, driving her forward, momentum building, when her forehoof caught a tuft of cloud. She toppled head-over-hooves, faceplanting heroically into the standard-issue megacloud, skidding face-first for two body lengths.

The gathered ponies gasped. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t…. Wait.

“Applefly!” Soarin (and Rainbow Dash, she heard) cried out. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“What, uh, was my time?” she said, getting to her hooves.

“What?”

“Boy howdy, braking was a doozy. Don’t think I did too good, but what was my time?”

Soarin gaped. “You… You mean, you completed the lap?”

“Uh, ‘course I did!” Her eyes flitted side to side. “Weren’t ya’ll watching?” The suspicious glares bore down on her, straining her smile.

“Unbelievable!” Soarin cried. “Flies so fast that nopony can even see her! Astounding! Three cheers for Private Applefly!”

Bumble clipped the flagpole again with a sharp crack as she crossed the finish line. She plowed into the cloud deck, spewing puffs of cloud around her.

“Bumble!” Applejack cried, running over. “Bumble, ya’ll okay, sugarcube?”

With an expression of unmitigated embarrassment, she crawled out of her own hole and accepted Applejack’s hoof. “I’m, uh, okay,” she managed, weakly.

“Here, lemme help you back to the line. That was a nasty fall you had there.”

“Lightning Dust and Star Screamer, you’re—” Soarin paused, looking at the line of cadets. “Where is Private Dust? Private Lightning Dust?”

They all gave each other questioning glances and no answering ones.

“Well, she’ll be fit in at the end of the rotation when she gets back. Star Screamer and Rainbow Dash, then, you’re next!”

Rainbow Dash had had quite enough. Even as fast as she could be, Rainbow knew that nopony could fly so fast as to complete the lap unseen. Nopony. She knew what was up; what that cheater was doing. Two could play at that game.

Rainbow marched up to the starting line, completely ignoring the cheater except for the occasional caustic glance. If there was one thing Rainbow Dash knew, it was speed. If another pony would get away with cheating, Rainbow would get away with it even faster.

“Are you ready?” Soarin asked.

Rainbow and the mare she was supposed to be racing against voiced in the affirmative.

“On your marks.”

Speed. Look like speed…

“Get set…”

Nopony beat Rainbow Dash.

“Go!”

As Star Screamer took off, Rainbow laughed, jubilant. “Yes! Aww yeah! Take that!”

Soarin stared, taken aback. “Rainbow, what are you doing?”

“I’m done, duh! Five laps! Who’s awesome? Who’s awesome?” She held a hoof up to her ear expectantly.

Soarin’s expression darkened. “Private Dash, you will complete the race or you will be disqualified.”

“B-wha?” Rainbow sank a few feet in the air. “B-but….”

“Do I make myself clear, Private Dash?”

Rainbow shot a furious glance to whatever-her-name-was. “Fine.” Her wings erupted, tufts of cloud being whipped into whorl-shaped eddies in her wake. She passed her contestant on the second turn before streaking past the finish line.

“There,” she spat. “Happy?”

“Nine point nine nine seconds! Very good!”

Rainbow crossed her legs, trying hard not to be too pleased with herself. “Y-yeah, well, what did you expect?”

She swayed as a gust of wind blew up behind her. Instead of abating, however, it continued to grow stronger and stronger. “What is going—” She turned.

The air cannons on the perimeter of Camp Hiyassekyte are massive machines, easily five times the size of a pony. Like some botanist’s fetish, pipes and knobs of all sizes coursed around its bulk, feeding one way or another to the great funnel at its front. Only by a feat of magic did the impressive bulk of such a machine deign to settle on the surface of a cloud instead of rushing hastily towards a more solid surface far below.

And one of these devices was tumbling directly towards Rainbow Dash. It fell with such pondering gravity that she had difficulty processing what has happening: it simply didn’t register that such a thing could blow.

“Look out!”

The cheater sprinted across the clouds beneath her and leapt into the air. The world lapsed into slow motion as those green eyes narrowed beneath the goggled hat; her body twisted, tail whipping behind, bringing her coiled limbs into alignment. Then those legs shot out, striking the cannon from underneath with a terrific crack.

The air cannon exploded. The pipes ruptured, fragmenting to shards. Entire components shattered into powder, vaporizing and recrystallizing as the magical fields within snapped and recombined before failing completely. The larger pieces of debris blossomed upward, the rapidly-diminishing gust of wind ferrying them safely downrange.

Surrounded by a glittering powder, Rainbow gawked at the mare. Those flashing, concerned eyes, those freckles, those voluptuous hindquarters…. If she didn’t know any better, Rainbow thought she looked like… wasn’t that the craziest idea?

She dove over, giddy. “That. Was. Awesome!” Rainbow tackled her, rolling her over. “That thing was just…. and then you… ka-pow! And you made it snow! I love snow!” She rolled her tongue around in her mouth, surprisingly gritty and… tasting like blood for some reason? Huh. “You…. Did you just save my life?”

The mare gave a nervous chuckle. “That’s what good ‘ol dependable Apple—uh, Applefly is for, right? Being awesome and saving ponies?”

Rainbow helped her to her hooves. “Uh, yeah, totally. But, y’know, for a moment there, you kinda reminded me of my friend Applejack. I mean, she can buck—like, really buck. Everypony knows about her phenomenal bucking powers.”

Cheater-Kicker made a weird face. “R-really? Who woulda, uh, I mean…. D’ya think so? Not that I, ah… ‘cause that’d be…. Um, reminded in a good way, or…”

Rainbow swept her up in a tight hug. “That’s for saving my life.”

“R-Rainbow?”

And dropped and promptly slugged her on the shoulder. “And that’s for cheating on the racetrack!” She turned away with an exaggerated huff, trotting deliberately, and totally didn’t look back one or four times at the stunned mare.

“Private Dust,” Soarin said, “there you are! You’re the last heat. Everypony else, clear the field for—” he suppressed an ecstatic tingle “—the staring component of your training.”

Lightning Dust was of the opinion that the confines of the newly-constructed Graf Zeppelin Überkompensation were permeated by a majorly-uncool smell, and not just because of the griffons. If pressed, with the help of a few bits, she would confide that it reeked of ethanol, lubricant, and low expectations. In fairness to herself, the latter suited her just fine.

“Zu vill vait here,” one of the griffon guards said, blocking her path with his spear. For emphasis, he swung it backwards, pressing it quite unnecessarily into her chest. “Ze Luftgeneral Bekloppte must be notified before zu may enter.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever.” Her tail flicked.

The guard gave her a very stern look before turning to the hatch. As he passed through, Lightning made out two words from the atrociously-accented speech within: “Non-dairy.”

She let out a self-satisfied chuckle. “Good to see they have their priorities straight.”

Her ears perked up at the sound of other voices behind her.

"Look, let's just tell him that we took it out. A Thundersteel-brand oven, you know how heavy those things are! It’s not going to go anywhere, lodged between the hydrogen envelopes. I mean, I'm not crawling in there, and you’re not crawling in there… We’ll tell Bekloppte that we got it out, patch it up, and boom."

"The boom is what worries me."

Two griffons rounded a corner of the hallway, engaged with each other.

"They'd have to crack it open with a catapult or something for anything to happen—it'll be fine! What’s the worst—" The male griffon finally noticed that Lightning was there and cut himself off. He and his partner exchanged nervous glances between themselves and Lightning, which Lightning matched with a raised eyebrow.

All three opened their mouths as once as the hatch to the bridge banged open again.

“Ah, zere zu are!” Bekloppte’s greeting boomed, echoing down the metal hallway. “Vat are zu talking about over zere?"

“Ah…” the female griffon started. “Ah… nozing, Luftgeneral.”

“Zen get on vith zur vork! Ze traitor here ees tryving to make fraulein’s report!”

“Yey, Luftgeneral!” they said in unison, snapping a crude salute and quickly scurrying back the way they had come.

“And zu, fraulein,” Bekloppte said, beckoning, “come inzide. Ve haf much to discuss.”

The Überkompensation’s bridge was impressive, Lightning had to admit. The enormous windows offered a fantastic view of the slopes of Mount Pinocchio. A half-dozen griffons sat at stations radiating around a central war table and command chair. The effect was ruined somewhat by the table being occupied by several large trays of cold sausages, biscuits, and slices of fruit, all arrayed on fine china plates. Were she more familiar with aeronautical technology (and to be frank, nopony was, and no griffon for that matter) she would have noted that more than half the stations on the bridge were present entirely for show.

“Zo…” Bekloppte said. He settled into his command chair and puffed up his chest. “Vat do zu zink of ze Graf Zeppelin? Inspiring, non? Ze instrument of ze obliteration of Equestria, ze talon of ze skies! Ze farce to end all farces!” He occupied himself with a good, long maniacal laugh.

Ah, there was the coffee mug, on the armrest.

Finally, Bekloppte steadied himself and looked down on Lightning with an expression of mild scorn. “Tell me, vat ist ze status of ze Camp Hiyassekyte?”

At the navigator’s station, the griffon sniggered. “Wow, I totally just got that.”

“Vot vas zat?”

“I, uh, haf rezived… un message vrom, ah, engineering, Luftgeneral. Ze repairs are complete.”

Bekloppte pulled back from the state of ‘puffball’ to a mere ‘excessively feathery.’ “Very goot… Very goot… Zur report, fraulein?”

Lightning gave an egregiously exasperated sigh and began reciting like a litany. “Two dozen ponies, half are cadets. The main captain is away on state-mandated leave and there’s a clueless oaf in her place. The regulars are on a long patrol tonight, and they aren’t expected to return until tomorrow midmorning.”

“Goot, good…” Bekloppte rubbed his claws together, a wicked, twisting smile on his beak. “And ov ze oser devenzes?”

“I’ve unmoored the defensive air cannons and made sure the manual weapons are unusable.”

“Unmoored? Iz zat qvite enough?”

Lightning’s expression hardened. “That depends, I guess. Do we have a deal? When this is over, you don’t hurt anypony you don’t have to. I run the Wonderbolts with an iron hoof. Did you sign the contract?”

Bekloppte waved a claw dismissively. “Yez, yez. It is on ze map. Now, ze air cannons!”

Lightning shifted the cold-cut tray to find a slip of paper underneath, a flamboyant signature occupying the entire lower half.

“And you’ll keep your word?”

“A griffon’s vord iz un bond! Yez! Ze air cannons!”

“Okay, fine, yes, already! Yes! If you must know, I blew one down myself just to be sure! It… uh, broke in the fall, too.”

Bekloppte eyed her for a long moment, the ‘evil eye’ coming across more as a faulty wink. Satisfied, a laugh began deep in his throat. It started small, but quickly erupted into great, raucous, rot-smelling peals. The china plates tittered as they were shaken about.

Lightning rolled her eyes, sharing a glance with the other griffons in the room.

“Zen it is decided,” Bekloppte finally managed. “Ze target iz at eetz mozt vulnerable. Yez?”

Lightning shrugged. “I guess. I mean, the best cadet there is an earth pony and nopony else seems to have noticed.”

“Vundervul! Veaponsgriffon, zee to eet zat ze cannons are ready bevore zunrize.”

“The…” The griffon turned bewildered to Bekloppte. “Ah, ze vat, Luftgeneral?”

“Ve attack at dawn! Zis mazhine of dezstruction zhall vipe out all een eez path! Zuch virepower as ze vorld haz never zeen bevore! And I, Erste Luftgeneral Unverhohlen Bekloppte, zhall rule ze vorld!

“Ve attack at dawn!”

The cadets had been dismissed, the flag had been lowered, and the first of the stars were beginning to twinkle overhead. Far beneath them, cities twinkled in response, safe havens against the oncoming tide of night (barring the occasional mugging). Not that Rainbow cared about any of that.

“So then, he says, ‘iff’n you wanna bushel of apples, you gotta pay for em’!”

Rainbow gave a polite chuckle as they trotted along, the cheater continuing to regale her with stories of her rustic, surprisingly agrarian background. Some of them seemed terribly familiar, but that wasn’t possible.

Hooves thudded against the standard-issue megacloud, retracing a circuit for the umpteenth time. Rainbow had to give her some credit: the cheater knew discipline. On and on they cantered, never relenting—Rainbow wouldn’t be the first to quit if she could help it. She was an athlete, and the fire in her limbs was a familiar one. Totally not a sign that she could tumble on her own hooves at any second, not at all. She wasn’t thirsty, she wasn’t exhausted, and she certainly wasn’t hungry enough to eat a horse.

She spared a glance over to her competitor, who returned it with a grin, tired but pleasant.

Far, far too pleasant.

She couldn’t take it any more. Spreading her wings, Rainbow darted ahead of her, blocking her path. “Okay, Cletusy, what is your problem!”

The mare skittered to a halt, shocked, wings bobbling. “Wha—Rainbow? What’s the matter?”

“You!” Rainbow barked. “You are my problem! You’ve been my problem all day! You get Soarin to make us get up an hour earlier, then you start sucking my lips off! Then there was the Dizzitron, and the ‘fastest draw in the West’ routine, and then you blow up that big tubey-gun thing, and… Gah! All day, you’ve been frustrating and awesome! And now, instead of eating, or sleeping, like any normal mare, you’re just trotting in circles!”

The mare shrunk slightly. “I, uh, thought I was tellin’ stories.”

“I’m starving! I’m exhausted! How are you still going?” She prodded the mare in the ribs, who flinched.

“You’re… You’re still here because you think I’m still trying to one-up you?”

Rainbow maintained her flat glower, and the mare continued.

“Shoot… Rainbow, I’m sorry. I just thought you liked listening. Didn’t you?”

“W-well, maybe. A little. But I’m hungry!”

She sat on her haunches, abashed. “Go’n eat, Rainbow. Don’t… Don’t let me keep you up. It’s not fun if you aren’t having no fun.”

“Oh, no.” Rainbow said, drawing it out. “I’ll go when you go. I won’t lose—not this time!”

The mare stamped her hoof. “Consarn it, Rainbow! It ain’t that I won’t go, I can’t!” She pointed to her wings. “These things are cardboard, R.D.! I can’t fly any more’n you can breathe underwater!”

“A likely story!”

“Rainbow, please, it’s the honest truth!”

Rainbow turned and screamed. “You’re so… dumb! So you’re saying that if I carried you up to the barracks, you’d give it a rest?”

Her eyes widened. “Uh, yeah. I would.” Her stomach growled. “I really, really would.”

“Well, fine! Okay then. I guess I’ll do that.”

Rainbow didn’t move.

“Uh, so—”

“Right, yes, I’ll carry you!” She looked around, looking for any peeping pegasi. “Just don’t touch my hooves, got it?”

With a knowing smile, Applejack said, “I promise.”

Rainbow triple-checked the surrounding area, dragging a hoof in the cloud. Finally steeling herself, she flew up behind the other mare and wrapped her arms around her chest, and lifted.

The hat, she decided, was something of a problem. It pressed up uncomfortably against her chin. The goggle strap wasn’t helping anything either, as a loose end itched. Those primary detractors aside, however…. She liked the warmth folded against her chest. The strain on her arms was exhilarating, and the display of her wingpower was almost enough to make her giddy.

“You okay there, sugar—”

“No talking right now!”

Rainbow had quite forgotten which room belonged to whom—she vaguely recognized the building in the moonlight, however, and angled to where she thought she had spent the previous night. She settled the other mare on the cloud, indicated a quiet gesture with her hoof, and gently cracked the door.

Unoccupied, much to her relief.

“Phew.” She nodded to her guest, and entered.

The interior was spare and sparsely lit. A lightning bug lantern sat in a corner shelf, but much of the room’s illumination was a cool blue light that radiated from every surface. There was a bed and a small bedstand pressed against the wall.

“Uh, thanks, Rainbow.”

Rainbow wrenched open the drawer to the bedstand, digging for some emergency rations. She was rewarded with small bricks of a supposedly-edible substance.

“Uh… Can I eat this?” Rainbow asked.

The other mare pounced on the outstretched hoof like a cat upon an unsuspecting grasshopper. “Hardtack!” She bit down with a horrible crunching sound and chewed.

Rainbow looked down at her own block of ‘heartattack’ or whatever, and finally decided that if it was good enough for the cheater, it was good enough for her. She bit down on the thing, her teeth seizing against it like rock.

“Nngh!”

The mare chuckled. “Don’t worry none. Earth pony jaws. You might need to let it soak for a bit.”

Rainbow glowered first at the mare, then at her brick, then back at the other mare. “Actually, I’m not that hungry.”

“What? But just a moment ago—”

“What I’m hungry for is answers! How are you getting away with being a cheater, huh? Why are your wings so…” She shuddered. “Whatever you call that!”

The mare swiped the brick from Rainbow’s hooves and crammed it into her mouth.

“Hey!”

“Thowvy…” Swallowed. “Sorry.” She sank onto her haunches, head bowing. “I… I’ve kept trying to tell you, Rainbow. I’m not a pegasus. None of this is real.” She poked at her cardboard wings. “I’m not ‘Applefly’. I don’t know what’s gotten into Soarin’s or anypony else’s head that I’m so great at anything here. Dunno if it’s just cuz I haven’t slept since two days ago, but maybe there’s something about this place that messes with everypony’s head.”

Rainbow growled. “Augh! Why does everything that comes out of your mouth make me want to believe you!”

With genuine concern, “Rainbow, are you okay?”

“Tell me how you do it!” Rainbow dove forward, clutching the mare’s head between her hooves and shook.

From atop her head the strap of the chemistry goggles finally surrendered, slipping from the clasp. The goggles tumbled free, glacially spilling down the mare’s withers to roll onto the cloud floor.

Rainbow pulled back with a terrible gasp, as if having seen a ghost. She looked up at the hat, then down at Applejack, then up at the hat again, then down at the goggles, then once more at the hat. Finally, she remembered how to operate a jaw.

“Apple Bloom!?”

She stopped almost before she’d reached the end of the word, pouted a bit, and rubbed her forehead. “No, wait, the other one….”

“Applejack?” Applejack offered.

“Applejack!?”

“Yes!” Applejack dove forward with the biggest hug she’d ever given. “Finally!”

“You’re a pegasus?”

“Yes! I mean, no! I—” She sighed and decided to quit while she was ahead. “Yeah, I guess. For you.” Applejack buried her muzzle in Rainbow’s mane and sighed again.

“But I…” Rainbow sputtered, pushing her to hoof’s length. “That means… You… Huh?”

“I came up here for you, Rainbow. I never wanted to get involved in whatever it was going on up here. Didn’t think too much about any of it, really. I didn’t mean to cause you any problems, R.D.”

Rainbow stared at her blankly.

“Uh, nod if you’re still in there, R.D.”

She did, slightly.

“Right. Um. Well, it’s still me, Rainbow. I just… I realized that with the Wonderbolts and all, you might be going away. I didn’t think about it at the time, but, I think that’s why I’m here now. I don’t wanna lose you, y’know?”

Rainbow nodded again, vacantly, her left eyebrow slowly, steadily rising.

“And, um, it’s been… fun. Yeah, fun, I guess. Crazy, frustrating, sometimes right scary, but that’s what we’ve always done, isn’t it? Saving Equestria, trying to show each other up, and stepping on each other’s tails while doing it? I… I wanna keep that.”

Rainbow continued to nod. By now her left wing had gotten into the rising action and her body had begun to tip.

“Do you, maybe, feel the same way? I mean, I know we kissed out there on the runway—which was really, surprisingly, amazingly amazing, y’hear—but, I dunno, did you… would you want to again, with me?”

Rainbow, nearly askew, blinked. “Kissu?”

Applejack stomped. “Like this, Rainbow.” And pressed forward.

There was a reprise of the Battle of the Gates. Hooves shifted, bodies leaned, tongues fenced until both armies forced a tactical withdrawal.

Applejack chuckled at Rainbow’s wings, spread to full mast. “Somepony likes?”

Rainbow glanced back at her wings and blushed, embarrassed. “I—well, maybe!”

“It’s ain’t a competition, Rainbow. I… uh, I like it, too. I like you. But, I guess what I gotta know is….”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like me? I mean, like me like that? Only me?”

Rainbow laughed. Applejack shrunk until a pair of blue hooves wrapped around her. “Are you joking? You’re totally awesome! I mean, not as awesome as me, but it’s a really small margin! Of course I like you!”

She tried for another kiss, but Applejack pulled away. “Huh?”

“I, uh, I only want you, Rainbow. Do you…. I mean, if Soarin… or Spitfire, or anypony else, I guess, well…. I just gotta know, is it only me?”

“Hey, Apple Vinegar—”

“Applejack.”

“—Right, you’re totally awesome. Everything we’ve done together has been awesome, even if you do make me mad sometimes. I don’t care if there were a dozen Soarins or Spitfires or Twilights or Zecoras, none of them would stand a chance against you!”

“Then, uh, even if you become a Wonderbolt, you’d still… you’d still stay with me?”

Rainbow spat into her hoof and offered it. “You know it.”

Applejack spat into her own hoof and bumped. “Love you, R.D.”

“Totally. Now—” Rainbow gave a tremendous yawn, “—how about we hit the hay? Didn’t Soarin say something about, like, getting up at some crazy-stupid hour?” She turned, and made a face at the bed. “Great. I think this is Fleetfloot’s cot.” She groaned. “I flew us to the wrong room…. What are you doing?”

Applejack turned from hitching her rope to the legs of the very solid-looking bedstand. “What, you thought you and I were gonna just sleep after that? And just so we’re clear, I call top.”

“But it’s not a bunk bed….”

Applejack winked.

The Legend Climaxes

It had been a magical night, which actually doesn’t mean anything extraordinary in Equestria, but still. The time Dash and Applejack had spent together cuddling, kissing, plowing each others’ fields, and cumulating each others’ nimbuses. It had been enchanting, mystical, spellbinding….

Okay, fine, it was really sexy. The night had, in fact, centered almost entirely on rough, loud, consummately delectable kinky sex. (Equestrian poetic language has long run into problems with flowery description. When burgeoning Romeos cried up to their prospective Juliets that their beauty was fit to part the heavens, a common response was, “Can we please not bring my day job into this? I’ve spent all afternoon moving clouds to let the sunset through and really I don’t want to think about parting even one more heaven, thanks”.)

However, the night had, by corollary, also been exhausting. When Applejack awoke still wearing her ‘uniform’, with Rainbow Dash on top of her and tempestuously knotted rope strewn all over them both, she realized that she could count the hours of sleep she’d gotten on one hoof. And—as her stomach rumbled particularly loudly, and everything began spinning—that she could describe how much food was in her stomach with no hooves. She chuckled at that thought.

“Rainbow!” she mumbled. She tried to push herself up from beneath her lover and get out of bed, but got her rear hoof snared in an alpine butterfly for her trouble and tumbled to the floor. She chuckled at the way she swung from the ceiling, unsure of how she’d managed to attach the rope to the ceiling in the first place.

“AJ?” Rainbow Dash’s eyes opened as quickly as possible, given all her muscles were currently on strike. She stared at her hanging friend-with-a-benefit. “What are you doing?”

“Rainbow!” Applejack managed to say, chuckling at the painful sensation of blood rushing to her head. She wasn’t sure if that deserved a chuckle, and chucked at her uncertainty. It was like being back on the Dizzitron but, for some reason, kinda funny. But she did know one thing: “Rainbow, I really need to….” She couldn’t think of the word ‘food’, so she resorted to opening her mouth wide and pressing her hoof into it.

“Really? You know I’m not equipped for that, but, uh… I guess I could find a doorstop or something and tie it to my—” Rainbow Dash blinked a few times. “Ohhhh, you mean food, right?”

“N-no?”

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

Rainbow Dash tried and failed to untie the butterfly knot, and settled for pulling Applejack really hard until her hoof got free, then supported her on their way out of the room. “Come on, the mess hall’s got a bunch of good stuff for ya.”

“Rainbow!”

“Yeah, Apple Tart?”

“Lookit.” Applejack looked to either side and giggled. “I’ve got wings, Rainbow Dash.”

“And you still haven’t let me preen them.” Rainbow Dash eyed the wings with a critical, but mostly puffy, eye. They seemed even more ragged than they had last night.

Despite the abominably early hour, the mess hall was occupied by almost every cadet. Rainbow Dash guided Applejack to a table, hearing disconnected whispers as the others watched them pass.

“Is that…?”

“Private Applefly?”

“I heard she flew ten laps around Equestria with her legs—”

“—ran a marathon on her wings—”

“—once stopped a rogue hurricane by glaring at it—”

“—won gold, silver, and bronze at one Equestria Games in the same event, and she was in the audience—”

“—kicked a dragon, fought a bugbear, and saved Equestria multiple times from evil monsters!”

“Whoa, no need to get crazy.”

Rainbow Dash sat Applejack down at her table, said, “Wait right here,” then flew to the buffet area. She piled a plate high with biscuits, pancakes, waffles, and at least one of every fruit she saw, then returned to Applejack in seconds flat. “You know what to do!”

“Sure do, sugarcuuuuube,” Applejack droned. With a speed that would have made glaciers check their watches in irritation, she leaned in toward the food pile.

“Uh….” Rainbow Dash glanced around, feeling an emptiness in her own stomach. The lack of a second plate seemed a glaring oversight in retrospect. “You gonna eat that? Because if you aren’t, I totally will.”

“Huh? Yeah,” Applejack mumbled. “Thanks for the pillow, R.D….” Her head sank into a waffle, and she began to snore, her eyes still half-open.

Rainbow Dash groaned. It was just about dawn, slivers of light were peeking through the mess hall’s windows, and they didn’t have time for this. “Come onnnnn. Look, just….” She pushed Applejack’s head off the waffle, pulled her jaw open, and put a pancake on her own hoof. “Heeeeere comes the cumulus!” she said in the most cheerful tone possible, moving her hoof forward.

At the last moment, Applejack’s head sagged again, and the pancake squashed against her cheek.

“Heeeeere comes the cumulus.” Rainbow Dash’s eyes narrowed, and she tried to get the pancake into Applejack’s mouth again. It squished into her lips. “The cumulus. Here comes the….” Something caught the corner of her eye, and she looked out the window. “Here comes the massive gray blimp, totally violating Equestrian airspace?”

“Mmmm,” Applejack said. “You can violate my airspace later if’n ya like.” She opened her mouth to take a bite, at which point everything (give or take) exploded.

Unverhohlen Bekloppte cackled with glee as his magnificent war machine broke through the cloud deck of Camp Hiyassekyte. He imagined it to look something like a second sun rising through the mist, except maybe something more like a murderous dolphin. He had heard of the vicious dolphins in the distant oceanic realms, and thought them quite terrifying—thus the application of the idea to his current situation was appealing.

He lifted a sippy cup, full of a red liquid, and bellowed, “Zis eez ze moment ve haf all been vaiting vor! Camp Hiyassekyte zhall vall! Zere vere zose who vondered vy ve built zuch a machine ven ve griffons could fly! Vell, I answer zem all now!”

He poured the cranberry juice into his gullet, swallowed with only a few hacking coughs, and turned to the weapons station.

“Prepare ze Great Danish arms, ze finest veapons manuvaktured by canine-kind! Ze ponies vill be gathered een zeer barracks, and ve vill vipe zem all out een vone volley!”

“Ah… da, Luftgeneral! Ze, um, Danish arms!”

Bekloppte rose from his chair and tottered over to the massive bay windows. “Zis,” he muttered to himself, “vill be un day to remember vorever, ze eend of ponies….”

“Veapons ready, Luftgeneral Bekloppte!”

Without looking back, Erste Luftgeneral Unverhohlen Bekloppte gave the order:

“Vire.”

A dozen loud thumps sounded to his mad peals of laughter.

Weaponized pastries pierced the Hiyassekyte mess hall. Discs of dough and jam accelerated to near-sonic speeds ripped through the structure’s cloud walls, striking tables, plates, and ponies alike.

Bumble was struck squarely in the face and began screaming bloody murder while brushing the residue from her face. Star Screamer was doing her namesake as she gaped at her ruined tail styling.

It was enough to bring Applejack into a barely-functional state of consciousness.

“Huh? Who, whuzzat?”

“We’re under attack!”

From somewhere, a bugle sounded, sharp brash notes echoing throughout the hall, adding to the din. Applejack turned to see Soarin, hoof raised in front of his lips, making the sound with no visible instrument. It wasn’t the strangest thing she’d seen in the past day.

“Privates! Everypony!” he yelled. “Pull yourselves together and fly outside. Man the air cannons! Camp Hiyassekyte must fight back! Lightning and Rainbow Dash, get to the armory! Everypony else, follow me!”

A dozen-plus ponies punched through the tattered loud walls of the mess like bees swarming from a hive, as another volley of danishes ripped into structure. The compromised walls gave way, and the roof began to drift up on a breeze.

“You maniacs!” Soarin wailed, looking back in agony. “You blew it up! Darn you! Darn you all to Tartarus!”

“Uh, you can build another one when this is over, right?”

Soarin grudgingly collected himself and looked at the cadet who had spoken. “Applefly…” He swept her up in a grateful hug. “I should have known it would be you. You’re right. It’s not the end of the world. We cannot lose hope—not yet.”

“Can you maybe let me down now?”

“Right, sorry.” He did so, then stuck his hoof in a nearby pastry crater. With narrowed eyes, he lifted the glaze to his mouth and licked it. His expression melted into despair. “Griffons,” he breathed, tears forming in his eyes. “No one else would be crazy enough to use coconut flavoring. To turn my own love against me….”

The great zeppelin fired another volley, filling the air with dangerous confections.

“Cover!”

Flitter was struck in the cutie mark and fell to the standard-issue megacloud screaming.

Bumble flew in over Soarin and Applejack. “Sir! Soarin, ma’am-sir! The air cannons—they won’t work!”

Soarin gaped. “What? Did you try pushing the big, red, only button labeled ‘On’?”

“Yessir-ma’am! Nothing happened!”

“We’ve been betrayed!”

Rainbow Dash dove in, using the cloud to brake. Her eyes were wide as dinner plates.

“Soarin, ma’amsir, the armory! It…!”

“What, Private Rainbow Dash? What is it? Tell me what it is!”

“The spears and wingblades have been sabotaged!”

Soarin clutched at his cheeks. “How can this be!?”

“Every single one had a sticky-note on them saying, ‘do not use, sabotaged’!”

“A double treachery!” Soarin cried, folding over himself. “We’re doomed!”

Again, the blimp fired. Star Screamer shrieked and writhed on the cloud, a danish splattered against her mane.

“What are we gonna do?” Rainbow cried. “Soarin, ma’amsir, what do we do?”

But he could only gibber, “There’s nothing we can do!”

Applejack stomped her hoof. “This is ridiculous! Land-sakes, pull yourselves together! You got wings, don’cha? You got hooves, don’cha? Take the fight to’em!”

“We… We can do that?” Soarin peered up through a veil of tears.

“A’course you can! Rainbow, think you can do that barn-busting thing of yours on a balloon?”

“Can I!”

“…Can you?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Right then. All y’all, fly a distraction. Rainbow, you’ll—”

“Incoming!” Soarin hollered, as once more the air was filled with flying projectiles.

Rainbow Dash screamed, her voice piercing Applejack’s heart.

“Rainbow! Rainbow, are y’all okay?” Applejack rushed over, picking her up in her legs.

“My wing!” Rainbow cried. “Ahhh, my wing, my wing! Nooooooo, my life is ruined!”

Applejack looked. Between the feathers, a white corner and slick red poked between the feathers. “Rainbow!”

“It stings!” Rainbow shook her wing, dislodging the danish chunks and filling from her wing. “It really, really stings, Bic Mac!”

“Applejack,” Applejack corrected. “Can you fly?”

“I…” Rainbow tested her wing cautiously. “Maybe? I think so, but there’s no way I can do a Rainbomb now. I’m useless….”

“But we’ve got you, Applefly!” Bumble ran over. “Applefly, you can stop the dirigible! You can do anything!”

Applejack whirled around, nearly dropping the moaning Rainbow Dash. “Horseapples, I ain’t done nothing my little sister can’t do, and she only got her cutie mark last season! Y’all are crazy!”

“But, you’re Applefly!” Bumble protested.

“But you’re Granny Smith!” Rainbow Dash added.

“It’s Applejack!”

“You can do it!” Bumble said. “I believe in you!”

“I believe in my sexy-awesome marefriend! You fly up there and show that zeppelin who’s boss!”

Soarin crawled near. “Private Applefly, fly up there and apple that terrible machine!”

“I know this’ll be hard for y’all to take in, but I can’t fly!”

“Yes you—”

The zeppelin fired. Applejack felt a strange tug at her back, and for a moment she thought the screams she heard might be her own.

“Cream cheese!” Bumble shrieked. “I’m lactose intolerant!” She contorted herself on the cloud, desperately scraping the pastry filling from her coat.

Rainbow Dash gasped, pointing at Applejack aghast. “Gala, your wings!”

“Applejack! And what wings?”

“They’re gone!”

Applejack looked over her shoulder and, sure enough, a rogue danish had stripped the crudely-painted, not-too-symmetrical, cardboard cut-out pegasus wings that had been taped to her even-more-crudely-painted coveralls.

She fixed her gaze back on Rainbow and laid down the law. “Rainbow, I ain’t a pegasus. I ain’t never been a pegasus. I can’t fly, I never could, and Celestia willing I never will. The things were made outta cardboard!”

“Wait wait wait,” Soarin said. “If your wings were cardboard, I think somepony would’ve noticed.”

“That’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask about…. But now ain’t the time. Rainbow. If anypony’s gonna fix this mess, it’s you, not me.”

Rainbow looked down at her wing, then back up at Applejack. “No, Honeycrisp. It’s you. You gotta do this.”

“Applejack. And what part of ‘earth pony can’t fly’ ain’t getting through?”

“Being a pegasus isn’t about having wings!”

“It isn’t?” Soarin asked.

“It isn’t?” Applejack echoed.

“It’s about heart! And lungs! …And also a surprisingly differentiated pancreas, but I don’t think that’s important right now. You’re awesome! I know in my heart and lungs and pancreas that you’ve got what it takes. You can do it! You have to do it!”

“I… Rainbow, I—”

“For me.”

How could she deny those eyes? Applejack nodded, gave a final loving look filled with resolve, and turned to face the zeppelin. Rainbow Dash believed in her—she could do this. She unzipped her shoddy, painted coveralls, slipped from the raggedy fabric, and planted her hooves wide in the cloud.

“Y’hear me, Grey Pastry-Flingin’ Not-Cloud? Private Applefly’s coming for you! This rodeo ends now!”

Her legs fired, she charged forward, and leapt from the cloud rim…

And fell. Like a brick.

“Zat pony juzt jumped vrom ze cloud…. Zeer morale has been broken! Viktory ees at claw! Keep viring! Keep viring!”

“Erste Luftgeneral, look!”

“Vat?”

“There! I mean, zere!”

Glowing a pale blue, Applejack bust through the standard-issue megacloud and hovered level with the zeppelin.

“What in Equestria?” Soarin gaped, awestruck. “I think I’m in love!”

“Hey, that’s my marefriend, bub. Redstreak, you’re doing it!” Rainbow cheered. “You’re really flying! I knew you—Bwah!” She spun to see another glowing pony floating beside her. “Ghost! Ghost!”

“Starlight Glimmer,” the pony deadpanned. “We’ve met. And I just saved Captain Suicide over there, so apparently you’re welcome.”

“But…. How are you flying!”

Starlight’s expression hardened, progressing past corundum. “Magic.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. What are you doing here, anyway?”

Starlight awoke with a shudder. “Guh!”

“Finally!” Twilight sagged, distraught, capping the half-dozen vials of smelling salts in her magic. “I am so, so sorry!”

Starlight winced, looking around from her position on a blanket on the floor. “What happened?”

“I mean,” Twilight continued as if she hadn’t heard, “I knew you weren’t dead, with you breathing and your mark and everything, but you wouldn’t wake up and I’m so sorry I didn’t mean it honest I didn’t, you just got me so angry, but then the map and your mark and you wouldn’t wake—”

Starlight finally looked down at herself; specifically the flashing cutie mark on her flank. “What was that about my mark?”

“—huh?” Twilight blinked and refocused on Starlight. “What? Right, your mark…” She made a pained face. “Well, um, It turns out that Equestria needs you to save it.”

“Me.”

“That’s how it works! The map summons ponies to a place to solve a friendship problem that has direct ramifications for the well-being of Equestria. I tried to wake you up… well, I did at first, but then I got the letter and I may have gotten side-tracked, but it didn’t work so I asked Spike to find—”

“Twilight. Why is my ass blinking?”

“Griffons!” Twilight bawled, waving parchment in her magic. “If this letter that fell in through my window and has no way to trace to who sent it is any indication, there are griffons attacking the Wonderbolts training facility as we speak! And the map wants you to be there! You, not me! I can’t even use magic on the map to change it, I tried… believe me, I tried. It isn’t fair! First I don’t get to see the griffons—” she buried her head in her hooves “—and now I don’t get to friendship the griffons!”

Starlight shook her head slowly, as if swimming in molasses. “What did you hit me with?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? Griffons, Starlight!”

“The stupid griffons can wait until you slow down and tell me what’s going on!”

“That’s not how friendship works!” Twilight’s horn flared as tears streamed down her face. “You charge in and face the problem horn-first, because your first impressions are always wrong! You do what has to be done even when you have no idea what to expect! You go because it’s what friends do!”

Starlight was promptly hurled through the window towards the north as the sun broke over the horizon.

Spike waddled in, a sour look on his face. He set a box of mixed chocolates and a roll of tissues next to a sobbing Twilight, patted her on the shoulder, and left without a single word. Back in his basket, Spike pulled out the piece of slate that had been used as a scoreboard. Down near the bottom, he wrote the name Spike. To nopony but himself, he muttered, “Ad Misericordiam….” and added a mark.

Starlight looked Rainbow fully in the eyes, face completely level. “It’s what friends do.”

“Starlight?” Applejack yelled. “What are you—”

“It’s what friends do, okay? Now do you want help getting rid of the griffons or not?” She turned back to Rainbow Dash. “That blimp is piloted by griffons, right? And not some other invaders, like the Great Danes or Yakyakistan or anyone else?”

Rainbow shrugged. “If Soarin knows his pastries, then yeah.”

“His pastries?”

The zeppelin fired again, and Starlight threw up a magical shield on instinct. Several danishes broke against the glowing surface before tumbling the long way down.

“His pastries,” Starlight repeated. “That is really, unbelievably dumb.” She levitated herself over Applejack. “Okay, so as fun as it would be to just blast that thing into smithereens, I think our Princess Autocratic Head Trauma would prefer it if I could say that friendship was somehow involved. Applejack, I’m gonna need you to use your true power to bring this thing down once and for all.”

Applejack blinked, surprised. “You mean, flying?”

“No! Not even slightly! I’m levitating you, and you’re welcome by the way. Try again.”

“Uh, lying?”

Starlight grunted. “If you’re talking about fooling all these ponies into thinking you’re a pegasus, think again. Turns out that pegasus magic doesn’t do anything to stop oxygen deprivation, and with all the time they spend in the clouds, these pegasi are all loopier than rollercoasters. It’s probably affecting you too.”

“So it is lying!” Applejack hoof-pumped.

“I don’t know why I said ‘probably’. No, Applejack, you are not a good liar.”

“Loving, then?”

From the cloud ring: “Yes!”

“No!” Starlight yelled, repeating it for good measure. “No! It’s bucking!”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

“I meant kicking—ugh, I did not need that, Rainbow Dash—it’s kicking, Applejack! Kicking the thing in the face! Or, in this case, balloon!”

“Oh.” Applejack chuckled. “I guess that makes sense. So what do I do?”

“Extend your rear legs,” Starlight explained, as if to a toddler.

“Like this?”

Starlight rotated Applejack’s body to point the right way, then nodded. “All the way straight. And remember: don’t bend your knees.”

With zero warning, Applejack was hurled at the zeppelin. At that range, there was no chance to miss.

Alarms sounded on the Überkompensation’s bridge. “Luftgeneral!” screamed one of the griffons. “Zere’s somezing coming right at us, and it’s moving fast enough to puncture ze envelope! Ve’re going to explode!”

General Bekloppte crossed the room in three swift steps and smacked the panicking griffon upside the head. “Dummkopf! Mere impact alone ees not enough to detonate hydrogen! Zere vould haff to be unt source of ignition in ze envelope—vat a laughable idea!”

He laughed loudly, gesturing with his talons to encourage his underlings to join in, and they all did. Two such underlings laughed especially hard, wrenched the door open, and, still venting hysterics, ran for their feathery lives.

Applejack tore into the envelope rear hooves first, reducing it to shreds in her wake. Inside, she passed through heavier fabrics one after another, bursting the bubbles that contained the hydrogen that kept the zeppelin aloft. Even the out-of-place Thundersteel-brand box lodged amongst the cables of the envelope—Soarin’s magical oven—caved beneath her hooves and ruptured wide. The thousand-degree temperatures inside immediately ignited the hydrogen flooding the air.

The zeppelin blossomed into a tremendous conflagration. Its eruption propelled Applejack up on a plume of roiling red flame.

“You did it!” Rainbow cheered.

“She did it!” Star Screamer cheered.

“Great shot, Applefly—that was one in a million!” Soarin cheered.

Rainbow Dash leapt up and caught Applejack from her inevitable fall. Soarin, Star Screamer, a recently-returned Lightning Dust, and the other cadets who’d gathered around them turned that two-person hug into a group number full of cheering..

“I knew you could do it!” Rainbow Dash planted a kiss on Applejack’s lips. “You didn’t need wings, the magic was in you all along!”

“No it wasn’t!” Starlight shrieked, off to the side. “I was me! It was literally all me!”

In the center of Camp Hiyassekyte, the boiling wreck of the Überkompensation finally crashed down onto the Thundersteel-brand runway, crunching like a sick coyote chewing on chicken bones. Griffons scrambled from the gondola, wings in varying states of singed. A cadet swooped down from the safety of the armory and began pummeling the largest, most ruffled of the lot.

“Three cheers for Applefly! Hip-hip—”

“Hooray!”

“I could have thrown a rock!” Starlight screamed. “Not even a big rock! ANY rock!”

“That was awesome, Pinkie Pie!”

“Apple—”

“—Apple Bloom, right! Er, Applejack!”

Rainbow’s lips found Applejack’s again, and then her hooves got lost all over Applejack’s body. As Applejack reciprocated, the realization of what was going on moved through the group like nauseating ripples on a lake, and the group hug broke up with little fanfare and much awkward muttering.

“You brain-addled witless wingheads!” Starlight screamed. “It had nothing to do with any of you! It was all me! It was all….”

She sighed. “Oh, forget it. I’m setting up another utopia.” She drifted away, letting her magic carry her idly as she pondered. “I was on R-Town last time, wasn’t I? Or am I misremembering—”

A small pop came from behind her—the sound of air magically displaced to make room for an incoming teleportee—and she heard her least favorite pony in the world right then say, “Starlight, wait! Don’t do it!”

“Do what?” Starlight yelled, looking back at Princess Twilight. “You don’t know that I’m about to establish yet another microstate ruled by myself in the name of peace and order!”

“Actually, I was going to say you shouldn’t—” Twilight glanced to her left, where the last griffons were crawling out of the wreckage, their plumage burned away. Her jaw dropped. “Resort to violence… to solve this issue….” She shook her head rapidly to refocus. “But you also shouldn’t do the thing you said!”

“Why not?” If Starlight had had a ground to stamp her hoof on, she’d have done it. “I put all this effort into saving Equestria and I don’t get any credit, because these friends have the combined intelligence of a paper plate! Why shouldn’t I do things my own way?”

“I know it’s frustrating!” Twilight flew a little closer, hoof outstretched. “I know what it’s like not to be recognized for—”

“You do not! Everyone you know is a national hero!”

“Okay, maybe not, but still!” Twilight sighed. “Look, I know things didn’t turn out like either of us expected, but they went okay anyway, didn’t they? Equestria is saved, most of those griffons don’t look… too dead….” She smiled. “Can’t we just go with it?”

Starlight growled. “Really?” As Twilight kept smiling, Starlight finally grumbled, “Okay. I guess it doesn’t matter too much, as long as Equestria is safe.”

She managed a smile of her own, but it quickly turned to a confused frown at a curious sensation on her flank. She looked down to see her cutie mark lighting up and buzzing. “Why is my ass blinking again?”

“It means your work here is done. The friendship problem is solved!” Twilight beamed, but then she too fell into confusion and tapped her lip. “But why now? Why not as soon as you stopped the invasion….”

Her eyes suddenly grew wide. “Of course! The griffons weren’t the friendship problem!”

Starlight’s eye twitched. “Huh.”

“The map didn’t bring you here to stop some silly little belligerent force!” Twilight rushed forward and hugged Starlight. “It brought you here to learn humility!”

Starlight’s other eye twitched. “Huh.”

“You’ve grown so much over these past few weeks,” Twilight said, squeezing her tighter. “And I am so proud of—”

Starlight magically grabbed a piece of the wreckage and smashed it against Twilight’s head. Twilight’s grip loosened, and she dropped like a stone.

“S-Town it is, then,” Starlight mumbled, turning a hundred and eighty degrees and floating away at speed. “This one’s going to be—objectively—perfect.”

Captain Spitfire had not enjoyed her mandatory three-day leave to the Crystal Kingdom Diplomatic Hideaway Ice Cream Parlor and Spa… not one bit. She had been pampered, preened, well-fed, not told what to do (beyond keep her voice down, please—the only orders here are one scoop or two!), and the entire experience had been patently wretched. At least she had introduced the idea of a sauna, however indirectly, and took a tiny measure of relief in having a place where she could go to sweat.

It hadn’t hardly been enough, though, and at the earliest possible moment according to regulation, she had taken wing and left it all behind.

“Worst state-mandated vacation ever,” Spitfire grumbled as she approached the last cloudbank before Mount Pinocchio. She squirmed with discomfort—or rather, with comfort but in a bad way—at the lack of either familiar knots in her back or skull-splitting migraines.

She dove into the cloudbank and, within seconds, had burst through it with a loud call of, “Hello, cadets! How did you get by without….”

There appeared to be a burning zeppelin crumpled on her Thundersteel-brand tarmac, an entirely unauthorized two-person celebration was taking place in the wreckage’s very shadow, and the whole camp bore evidence of what had to be the world’s least diabetic-friendly food fight. Also, there seemed to be a Princess of Friendship buried head-first in a low-lying cloud. Clearly, they hadn’t been able to manage half a week without her.

She wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Soarin!” she yelled. “What in Tartarus happened here?”

Soarin, who was watching the revelry with mild interest and a camera, looked up and flew her way. “Captain, we won! That cadet saved all of Equestria! Can we keep her?”

“And I helped!” yelled another pony whom Spitfire recognized as Lightning Dust. “I am so glad I chickened out and sent that letter to the princess, I could just—”

She grabbed Soarin’s face and pulled him close for very sloppy kiss. She then turned to Spitfire—

Who, channeling a weekend of pent-up aggression, punched her in the temple to knock her out cold. “Celestia, I needed that.”

Epilogue: The Legend Lies

In a town with no name worth speaking of stood an old ramshackle house. It had become slightly miskept not from neglect, but from love—the love of two old owners who couldn’t see the flaws anymore. (And not just because of uncorrected eyesight problems.) The faded, slightly-singed paint was chipped at the edges like the dog-earing of a beloved book, but whereas a book might have little notes in the margins, this home stored dusty trophies, ribbons, and certificates.

There was a trophy for “First Place in Six-Legged Triathlon”, next to a certificate of lifelong banning from the event for “Victory Makeouts”. Newspaper clippings, framed on the wall, bore such headlines as “Wonderbolt Sergeant Suspected of Pastriphilia; Private Investigators Turn Up Heat”, and “National Hero Sued for Part in Raindiation Disaster”. Beneath all these, older and dustier than them all, lay a once-shining medal for “Special Services to the Equestrian Crown, in Recognition of the Single-Hoofed Rout of a Griffon Invasion In Which Definitely No Unicorns Were Involved”.

“Close the door outside, would you?” said one old gray mare, though to call her merely gray would be a disservice even if technically true. Her hair had once held every shade of the rainbow, but now it embodied the entire grayscale. Her coat, in a similar fashion, was a timeworn blue, best found at the edge of the clear sky: even the lightning bolt on her flank appeared blunted. Then again, appearances could deceive.

Her partner tapped the door closed with a rear hoof, shutting out the lion’s share of some ruckus outside. “Too loud for old ears, R.D.?”

“I just don’t want to bother the youngsters outside.” Rainbow Dash stood and stretched like a cat in slow-motion. “Don’t want to mess up their fun….”

“While we have ours?”

Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Exactly.” Her gaze traced along the wall of the room, alighting briefly on each memento like sunlight framed by breeze-pushed clouds, until finally ending above the room’s mantle at the site of their crown jewel.

Which, funnily enough, was neither any of the jewels scattered about the shelves, nor any of the crowns. If anypony else were to see their most prized souvenir of olden times, they might have called the couple crazy—but then again, perhaps they were. Improperly disposed-of drugs, altitude sickness, and true love had a way of messing with anypony’s mind.

Dash walked over to the mantle, flapped a few times to gain height, and took the cardboard wings down from the wall. Not the old pair, which had been lost at the Battle of Camp Hiyassekyte: this newer pair had been created soon after the battle, and cut even more mismatched in size. She grabbed a roll of tape in her mouth before landing.

As she made to lift the cardboard to Applejack’s back, however, Applejack stopped her. “I was thinkin’... maybe we spice things up a bit this round.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyebrows rose. She loved it when Applejack got adventurous.

“This time….” Applejack took the cardboard in her own hoof. “How about you wear the wings?”

“You old so-and-so,” Dash laughed, turning around to let Applejack apply the wings to her own back, just above her regular ones. As Applejack made to tape them at the base, a grenade flew through the window with a tinkle of glass.

“Just a sec,” Applejack said, and calmly threw the grenade back through the hole before ducking. After the overpressure from the explosion broke the rest of their windows, she flexed her neck, brushed the shards of glass from her hair, and called through the window, “Hey, you whippersnappers! Mind being a bit more careful with your ball-games?”

“Sorry, Miss Jack!” replied a young war-painted stallion with an appropriately abashed expression. “Bad throw!”

He looked to his right and gasped, probably at an incoming squad of Unpleasantness Correction Officers coming his way in full military gear. “Dive for cover!” he yelled, and a ragged bunch of grenade-belted freedom fighters around him did just that. “Don’t give up a single inch to the regime!”

Applejack closed the drapes and smiled. “What a thoughtful young fellow. Where were we?”

“I think I know where.” With only slightly shaky hooves, Rainbow Dash finished the taping on her own, then presented herself with the aid of the room’s coffee table. “All right, Private Apple Applefly. You know the drill—one hundred laps. Get to it!”

“With pleasure. Clear the landing strip, Applefly on approach.”

Applejack kissed Rainbow Dash gently on the lips, then the cheek, then the neck, and down and down and down. The two old lovers’ laughter was soft, barely noticeable outside under the explosions, cries of pain, hooves marching in lockstep, and a gentle voice that carried over it all, propelled by massive speakers.

“We are all safer if we are all together.”

“Death to the Starlight Regime!”

“In W-Town, disruption starts and ends with you. Be the better pony and remain calm.”

“Cover me! I’m gonna try to flank them!”

“Your best friend Starlight Glimmer says: just go with it!”

The Legend Swells

Applejack’s first thought upon seeing the bursts of light inside Twilight’s castle was that her friends were setting off fireworks. Between Pinkie Pie, Trixie, Starlight, and the general fatigue of her five-hour gallop back from the foothills of Mount Pinocchio, it occurred to her as a perfectly sensible and likely possibility.

Inside, the books had been moved to form a low impromptu barricade near the middle of the room, supported by a throne on either side. They provided some shielding from the spells being flung, but little protection from the irate shouting that accompanied them.

“If Celestia’s rule is so great, how come dozens of ponies came to my town, Twilight?” Starlight poked her head around the barricade and shot a bolt of magic. “They had everything they needed without any precious princess managing everything! They took care of themselves!”

“Weak analogy,” Spike cried from somewhere beneath the map-table.

“Quite right, Spike,” Twilight said, clearly self-satisfied. “Everyone knows that Celestia takes care of the sun! Unless you were moving a completely different sun on your own—”

She was cut off by a muffled burst from an air horn. “Tu Quoque.”

“That was for one day, Spike!” Twilight shrieked. “If you lower my score for that, so help me—”

“Argumentum ad Baculum!” he yelled in response.

“Speaking of score,” Starlight said, “what is it now? Spike?”

“Uh… ad Verecundiam?” Both participants were, by his scoreboard, deep into the negative ticks at this point.

“You tell her, Spike!” Twilight said. “It’ll be so much better to show her, once I’ve taken her apart once and for all! Her argument, I mean… Ah-ha! Listen to this, Starlight, from Selected Diaries of Heavy Burden, 680-715, page one hundred four: ‘Undoubtedly, were it not for the quick thinking of Her Majesty in the allocation of guards and relief supplies in the wake of the draconic deluge (of which I have previously recorded enough for a lifetime), an incalculable bulk of baked goods would have been soiled, plunging the land into absolute chaos.’ A centralized command structure with undeniable value. Take that, Starlight!” She punctuated that with a crack of magic, well high enough as to pose no threat to her precious books.

Applejack cantered in, skidding to a halt, wings wobbling. “Twilight! Twilight, I need—”

Starlight yelped in surprise, firing a wild burst of magic that ricocheted off the wall.

“Oh, hi there, Starlight! Have ya seen Twilight around?”

“What are you wearing?”

“Twilight?” Applejack shouted, completely oblivious to Starlight’s bewilderment.

“Back here, Applejack!” Twilight’s voice lilted over the makeshift barricade.

“Twilight, d’you got any more of them cloud walking spells?”

“Just a minute, Applejack…”

Starlight lifted Applejack in her magic and tumbled her around. This time, taped-on blue construction paper covered some of the more raggedy patches. She poked at the vestigial wings and eye protection. “What. On. Equestria….”

“Starlight,” Twilight called, “is Cantrips for the Practically-Minded over there in your wall?” Her magenta field began to lift several volumes from the pile.

Starlight immediately slung another spell around the side, forcing Twilight to throw up a shield and drop the books. Starlight’s aura seized the entire collection, pressing them firmly against the floor. “Don’t know and don’t care!” she yelled.

“Appeal to ignorance,” Spike shouted.

Starlight growled and hurled a book low across the floor. From under the table, there came a thud and a startled yelp, followed immediately by Spike running from the room, a broken corner of blackboard in one claw and a piece of chalk in the other, frantically yelling, “Ad Hominem! Ad Hominem!”

Applejack rolled back onto her hooves, ignoring the squeaking sound of sliding and bending cardboard wings underneath her. “So, uh, voodoo hooves, please?”

“Why?” Starlight yelled. “Why on Equestria do you—”

“I’m doing this from memory,” Twilight said unseen from the other side of the barricade, “so I’ll warn you now: May take up to ten minutes for maximum effect; re-apply once every two days; not intended for walking on fog banks or cirrus formations. For the duration of the spell, do not operate heavy machinery; do not operate light machinery; do not operate machinery made of light; do not submerge yourself in water, even partially; do not use for periods in excess of two weeks without a magus’ recommendation. If swallowed, do not induce vomiting. Report any nausea to your doctor immediately.”

A swirl of magic whirlpooled around Applejack’s hooves and up her legs: she shivered. “Ooh, that’s tingly in my britches. Could you get me back to the Wonderbolts while you’re at it?”

“Sure thing!” Twilight let her magical aura surround the rest of Applejack.

“And maybe could you teleport me this—”

It took only a thought to launch her, once again, far to the north.

“That works too…” came the fading cry.

“Twilight,” said Starlight, audibly nonplussed, “she’s still wearing that… I don’t even know what it is, and now you’re doing complex magic on her from memory? What is wrong with you!”

“Hey, I’m the friendship expert here, and don’t you try changing the subject! I’ll have you know that in the time I saved by you not letting me find the spell book, I found something else that might interest you….” Twilight cleared her throat and recited, “‘So urged by the mass protests of the Union For Perenniality, Princess Celestia set in motion the first executive redistribution of capital ownership in the industrial sector’.”

Starlight poked her head out excitedly from the safety of her barricade. “Wait, really? What are you reading—”

A book held in a magenta field shot forward, striking Starlight in the head. She crumpled against the floor.

“A book heavy enough to get through your thick skull,” Twilight said. “Now we’re even! Ha!”

Silence boomed from the other half of the room.

“Starlight?”

“Oh, look at the curves on you, you juicy thing.” Soarin was working himself into a nigh-frothing frenzy over a gorgeous little tart on page thirty six of one of his more… exciting magazines. “And that skin, so smooth and golden… what I wouldn’t give to eat that… come to papa, baby….”

A blueberry tart, to be precise, with the recipe to the side. It called for cinnamon in the crust, for the right balance of tastes.

“The crust, so flaky… the juices thick and sweet!” He gasped with pleasure, his forehooves occupied below his waist. “Oh yes, I’m gonna finish any second!”

Ding! The timer above his Cloudy-Bake oven went off, and he opened the door to see a perfect replica of the photo recreated inside. “Finished!” He pulled on oven mitts and pulled it out to let it cool. “And plenty of time to….” He allowed himself a salacious laugh. “Enjoy myself before the cadets return—”

“Gangway!”

Soarin frantically turned in the direction of the noise, and recognized the rapidly-approaching figure with two thin, powerful, brownish wings like twin blades of bronze—well, fraternal twins. Without a moment’s hesitation, he shoved the magazine and his mitts in the oven and turned its temperature up to eleven hundred, setting them on fire within seconds. Not a single soul could ever know of his forbidden passion.

Taking her past experiences to heart, Applejack heeded the suggestion to bend her knees for impact. Unfortunately, this tactic served of little gain to her developing situation: instead of the solid surface of the Thundersteel-brand tarmac, her trajectory landed her firmly on the standard-issue megacloud. The puffy substance caught her momentum, bringing her to a halt at the bottom of a pony-shaped hole, only her hat and one of her cardboard wingtips protruding above the surface. “Private Apple... Flying… reporting for duty,” she mumbled.

“Private Applefly!” a shocked Soarin bellowed. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m lookin’ for Rainbow—er….” she stammered, crawling out of the hole and checking her wings. “Uh, that is, I’m back, ma’am. From the marathon, ma’am. Sir?” She decided to hedge her bets. “Ma’amsir.”

“You’re back,” he said.

“Yes, ma’amsir.”

“In….” He checked the stopwatch. “Five hours and twenty one minutes.”

“Yes, ma’amsir.”

“From a marathon which you had ten hours to complete, and which should have taken you eight at the absolute minimum.”

“Um,” she said, finally turning her attention to him instead of looking for a maybe-lurking-nearby Rainbow Dash. “Right. That thing you just said.”

He advanced upon her, stopping with his snout inches from her own. “You know what we call pegasi who say things like that?”

“Uhh… definitely not liars, I’m hoping—”

“Absolute damned prodigies!”

He grabbed her hoof and pumped hard enough that Applejack felt confident she would fly back to Ponyville if he let go. “Congratulations, Private Applefly, you’ve just set the new academy record for marathon speed! Those other rookies are gonna have to pick up the pace, and might I just say it is an honor to have you on my squadron.”

“Uh, thanks!” Applejack pulled her hoof free, but he kept shaking empty air. “Granny always says to give two hundred percent, at least when the dementia hits real bad and she don’t remember how percents work so good. Say, y’all got a place I can sit? I’d be fine with that oven over there.”

“Oven?” Soarin laughed, cantering over to what was clearly an oven. Trying (and failing horribly) to appear nonchalant, he started shoving it through the cloud layer with all of his might. “That’s not an oven, why would that be an oven? An oven up here? I don’t cook, and certainly not in public!”

Not a single soul.

“Oh,” Applejack said. She looked around. “So, we’ve got, uh, what, three hours at least before anyone shows up?”

“Huh?” Soarin looked up from pounding down the last vestiges of the box. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Applejack looked around. The spot where the definitely-not-an-oven had been sitting now featured a perfect square hole, the east waterfall of Mount Pinocchio visible on the other side. At least she wasn’t falling through the cloud this time, so there was that.

“Nice… weather,” she offered.

“Made it myself, thanks.” Soarin smiled, nodding.

“Really?”

“You know it!”

“Huh.”

Still nodding long past the point of sensibility, he let out a redundant, “Yup.”

She twiddled her hooves, which is really difficult without any sort of smaller appendages on the ends.

An idea seeming to occur to him, Soarin sidled closer. “You know….” he said, voice low and husky.

“Mm? I mean, mm, ma’am… sir?”

“Since it’s just the two of us….” He stepped closer still.

“Sir?”

“How about you and I—” his breath was on her cheek as he whispered “—do something really special together….”

Rainbow Dash knew, in the final stretch of the marathon, that she could afford to take it easy. She’d left even the fastest other fliers behind hours ago. She also knew that she wasn’t gonna.

The sunset had just begun when she burst from a cloudbank nearby the landing strip, flying straight up at such speed that tears flung themselves from her eyes like driving rain. She rose hundreds of feet above the runway, then pivoted and executed a perfect vertical split-S, so that she faced the runway directly. She grinned and focused: this was gonna be awesome.

The Atomic Rainbomb was a variant of her signature Sonic Rainboom, one she’d been working on in semi-secrecy for years. She’d practiced again and again by volunteering to demolish old buildings—some of which had been asked for, others the owners would have asked for if they had any sense so what was the problem anyway? Besides, now she had it down to an art. Or a science. Whichever was more precise.

The moment of impact with the runway was perfectly timed with the instant of the Sonic Rainboom. The air snapped, twisting in the Unspeakable Plane; shock waves bounced off one another until finally breaking free once again into reality as a tremendous explosion. The very precise position of her body meant that all of the blast force was not directed outward, but vertically. She felt the surge of raindiation blow past her body, and looked up to see it firing into the sky like a scintillating prismatic spear of hope and mild tackiness.

Something caught the corner of her eye, and she glanced over to see a rainbow sliver that hadn’t gone up with the rest, but instead flew toward the horizon like a spear of… slightly less hope. She frowned—there must have been a hoof out of place—but then shrugged. So what? It didn’t matter. No way that little jet of rainbow could do any harm.

Soarin offered Applejack a sliver of pie on a platter with one hoof, an elegant spittoon in the other. "Now here's a real treat for you - a '78 peach pie, with fruit grown just outside Fillydelphia. Wonderfully aged, gives it the perfect bitter taste.” Applejack’s contorted expression went completely unnoticed. “Go on, taste…” He set his nose over his own slice, inhaled deeply, and took a bite. “Test…” He chewed, catching Applejack doing something like the same in the corner of his eye. “And spit...."

His own polite exhumation was overpowered by a thick retching sound from his partner. Again.

“Well, maybe it isn’t for everyone. Ah, but this beauty, I’m sure—”

A flash and a crack of overpressure from behind launched him into action.

“Alarm!” he cried out, slapping the insignia on his uniform and screaming to anyone who might listen (i.e., no one), “Hiyassekyte is under attack! Massive explosion on the runway! Activate the air cannons! Contingency four! Green group, stay close to holding vector fifty-seven!”

Rainbow Dash tackled him over the table in her enthusiasm, and they tumbled over each other twice. “Ohmygosh, wasn’t that awesome? First place, with a Rainbomb at the finish line…” She leapt off of him and began pumping her foreleg. “Aww yeah, aww yeah!”

“Uh… stand down alert status. False alarm.”

“So what was my time, huh? What was my time? I had to have set some kinda record!”

Soarin plucked a stopwatch and clipboard from a pie tin. “Eight hours, eight minutes, Private Dash,” he said. “Very impressive.”

“I totally won, right? Did I set a record? Please say I set a record or something!”

“Actually…” He paused, giving Rainbow time to squish her face in anticipation. “The record was broken by Private Apple Applefly!”

“What?” She turned in shock to follow his pointing hoof. Surrounded by dozens of pies, Applejack sat retching horribly into a flamboyant spittoon.

“Five hours and twenty-one minutes! I’ve never heard of anything like it!”

“Five? No. No, nononono…” She darted over, ears burning. “Hey! What’s the big idea, Applepie?”

Applejack gave one final heave before looking up. “Rainbow, you’re glowing…”

Among the manifold aftereffects of an Atomic Rainbomb, the resulting electro-magical pulse interacts with high-energy particles near the Sun and Moon, resulting in a glowing field of multihued light high above Equestria. From Applejack’s near-prone position, Rainbow Dash’s head was surrounded by a dancing aurora which, even suffering the gastro-intestinal plight of consuming decade-old slices of pie, was quite spectacular.

Applejack reached up reverently with a hoof. “You’re beautiful…”

Rainbow swatted it away, oblivious. “I said, what’s the big idea! I’m the fastest pony in Equestria! Did you win Best Young Flier? No! Did you kick a dragon in the face? No! I did! I—wait. That hat…” She stopped, taken aback. “I’d recognize that hat anywhere.”

Applejack’s heart hitched into her throat, which was a welcome change from the myriad other things which had hitched up there recently. “You mean, you recognize—”

“I told you the score before the race started! Nopony upstages Rainbow Dash!” She smashed her brow against Applejack’s, folding the brim of Applejack’s hat back against the impromptu flight goggles. Her snout was close enough to lick. “No. Pony.”

Applejack spun away, madly grabbing for the spittoon, and heaved again.

Rainbow took a cautious step back. She fought with herself, anger and sympathy engaged in a vicious duel of tic-tac-toe for dominance. “Uh… Are you okay?” Her ears swiveled away to catch Soarin arguing into his uniform. “…N-not that I care or anything. Cheater.”

Applejack straightened up, wiping at her mouth, and offered a shaky, “Sorry.”

Biting back a bitter retort, Rainbow looked away. “Yeah, sure. I mean, I guess you can’t help it.”

“I mean it, Rainbow.” Applejack took a cautious step forward. “Not the throwing up, the… the race. You deserved to win. You did win.”

Rainbow’s wings flared, instantly furious. “Ponyfeathers! Soarin said you got a time of five hours! That’s impossible! I was ahead of everypony by miles, and here you are. You didn’t complete the race, you’re—”

“Consarn it, Rainbow, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, I didn’t! It’s me! Applejack! I’m here for you, Rainbow.”

Rainbow squinted. “I have a friend named Applejack, but she isn’t a pegasus.” She pointed accusingly at the cardboard shapes on Applejack’s back.

“Rainbow, they’re cardboard. I fell through the clouds when the race started, got saved by a rope-dangling cloud, and Twilight tossed me back here after putting that cloud-walking spell on me again. I didn’t win the race, and it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters…. Rainbow, all that matters is that I’m here with you. D’you understand? I need you to understand, Rainbow. All these years I’ve been saving Equestria with you, or competing against you, and finally it all came together like one of Granny’s Apple-Lemon soufflés that I needed you to understand how much I need you, Rainbow. I need your brashness, your resolve, your flair and… ‘awesomeness’. I need your heart and your mind and your wings. I… I love you, Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow snapped her attention back to Applejack’s face. “Huh? What? Sorry, but your wings are in, like, awful shape.”

“W-what?”

“Seriously,” Rainbow said. “Do you even preen? They’re freaking me out just looking at em!”

“Rainbow, I… I….” The words wouldn’t come any more. She had lain her heart bare, and had been completely overlooked.

Another mare flew in, landing beside Rainbow. “Figures I’d lose to you, Rainbow Dash.” She placed a friendly hoof over Dash’s shoulders.

“Hello, Lightning Dust,” Rainbow said with clear distaste, shrugging off the hoof. “What do you want?”

Lightning huffed. “Maybe I wanted to congratulate you on second place, Rainbow.” She turned to Applejack with a suspicious glance. “And… congrats, prodigal mare.” She held her gaze far longer than Applejack was comfortable with, but at last she relented.

“Was there anything else you wanted?”

“Fine, I’m going!” Lightning took off, circling around the runway in languorous laps.

Soarin flew over, beaming. “First three all under the eight and a half hour mark! Astounding! I see Private Lightning is still warming down. Rainbow and Applefly, why don’t you two hit the showers and the mess?” Applejack stifled a gag. “A few regulars should be there and have everything in order for you. You’re in barracks D-4 and D-7, you two. Call is at sunrise tomorrow.”

He patted them each on the back before gliding back towards the runway and his clipboard. “Simply astounding.”

Rainbow’s eyes followed his departing figure, shuffling the wing he had touched. “Y’know, actually a warm shower sounds like a really good thing right now. But,” her tone took an edge, “I’m still angry about you beating me. Still, if those wings keep giving you trouble…. Stop by before I fall asleep. I’ll help you preen. Maybe you can tell me how you really won.”

“But… But I…” Applejack stammered to a departing Rainbow Dash. She could not help but notice the perfect azure rump and prismatic contrail, thoughts stalled. On one hoof, she had moments ago been completely crushed from being ignored. On the other, Rainbow had offered to preen her—not that she was particularly informed on the details of preening, or indeed what it was (she’d heard once that mouths were involved, and fervently hoped so), but the thought of being in the private company of Rainbow Dash was quite appealing.

“Private Rainbow,” Soarin called, “yours is third on the left. Private Lightning, that is the armory!”

“Whatever.”

Applejack looked down in frustration at her hooves, the pie tins, and the spittoon. “Horseapples!” She give the spittoon a solid kick, launching it far out into the clouds. It helped, a little.

She took a few steadying breaths, which mostly served to draw attention to the lightheadedness and minor headache she’d felt since arriving. Finally, she looked towards the barracks arrayed on the cloud ring above the runway. Above, away from, and nowhere attached. The gravity of the situation slowly fell upon her.

“I don’t know how to get up there.”

Applejack’s evening was consumed by efforts of increasing desperation to reach the barracks, until exhaustion overwhelmed her. Beneath the bright moon, the clouds of the barracks drifted tantalizingly just out of reach. She had tried jumping, throwing her lasso, and even throwing her lasso while jumping. Those few times the rope had reached the clouds, it had passed through the formation without care. Her wings, being made of cardboard, served her to no avail.

The futile exercise had given her plenty of time to think. It had been perfectly clear to her earlier in the day that she had to find Rainbow Dash, no question—even in the hours of returning to Ponyville on hoof, she had been filled with a simple, raw purpose. Once the sun had set, however, leaving Rainbow presumably slumbering out of reach, her mind had set to pondering why. They had been friends for years, and nothing like those thoughts had entered into her head before. At least, nothing so imperative.

The simple fact of it, she finally decided, was that Rainbow had been called away to another round of Wonderbolts training. When Rainbow joined the Wonderbolts—Applejack knew in her heart of hearts, and brain of brains, that there was no ‘if’—there would be something missing in her life. No more Rainbow in her orchard; no more tail-pulling to keep each other in check; no more pithy competitions where they played horseshoes or slathered each other in honey. She imagined regaling to Rainbow her crazy night of trying hour after hour to make it up to the barracks just overhead.

Only far into the night, when exhaustion had overwhelmed her, did she finally pass into a pathetic state of semi-unconsciousness.