Chapter Ten: Pain and Rage

Dash paced back and forth in front of the large crystal tree that was home to her marefriend. She had raced as fast as she could from Twilight’s side to her home, gathered everything she wanted—including her pet, Tank—and flown at near-sonic rainboom speeds in order to meet Twilight when she got to the castle.

It hadn’t surprised her that she had beaten them here. After all, there was nopony faster in all of Equestria—or even the world. And while it had been refreshing to be back home again after eleven whole days away, when she had entered her cloud home, it hadn’t felt like home. Not in the way it used to anyway. It just felt like a place she lived.

The sensation hadn’t been as disconcerting as she expected it to be. Rather, it just felt like that’s the way it should have always been. It was her house, but that didn’t make it a home. Rather, it just made it a place she lived. When she looked around, she found the old walls and floors weren’t something she’d miss. They were just that: walls and floors. It didn’t make it her home, it made it a house. Her home was with Twilight. As such, when she raced away with her Wonderbolt paraphernalia in tow, she had a smile on her muzzle and didn’t look back.

She flew through Twilight’s bedroom window and dropped off the large bag with her stuff before flying out to await her marefriend at the front door.

That was two minutes ago.

Dash was pacing now. She knew she was quick, but she didn’t realize that she was that quick. She started to worry over how fast she really went, or, more precisely, what was keeping them. The pegasus’s mind started to go a mile a minute. Did a monster attack? Are they in trouble? Do they need me? Instinctively, she flexed her wings wide, debating with herself for the third time in two minutes about taking flight to find them. She had wanted to wait for them here, to surprise them. But if they were in trouble, it wasn’t worth it.

Her answer came when she spotted the two humans walking to the castle with a small purple dragon in tow. That wasn’t the surprising part. The surprising part was two things that stood out to her as odd: Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie weren’t with them. The second thing was that Rainbow was holding Twilight in her arms.

“Twilight!” Dash yelled as she cleared the three hundred hooves between them in the blink of an eye.

The pegasus paused in mid air when she saw the look of pain on the alicorn’s face. Dash lanced from the sky and landed on the ground. As soon as she landed the alicorn lept from Rainbow’s arms and into Dash’s hooves, crying into her coat.

“W-w-w-what happened?” Dash asked as she patted Twilight on the back and gazed up into the faces of their two human counterparts.

Before she could answer, Twi placed a hand over Rainbow’s mouth to silence her. “Applejack and Rarity weren’t very… accepting,” she said before her girlfriend made things worse.

“Accepting? Of you two?” Dash asked in utter disbelief.

“Among other things,” Rainbow replied, her voice muffled by Twi’s hand.

“They don’t approve of us… being an ‘us’, or of you two together for that matter,” Twi said with an apologetic smile. “The same thing happened with our Rarity and Applejack, when we came out to them.”

Dash blinked three times as she held the alicorn in her hooves and stared at the two humans in disbelief. Her mind was trying to process the turn of events, trying to accept the reality of what she had just been told. “Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait, that’s not right. There’s no way they could have… I mean, Rarity’s always been all about the romance stuff, and Applejack… she’s…”

“Oww!” Twi yelped as Rainbow bit her hand.

“A fucking hick that’s too damn stubborn for her own fucking good!” Rainbow shouted, her anger overflowing.

“Rainbow!”

“It’s true!”

“Rainbow, stop!” Twi scolded her. “She’s your friend, you’re just mad that you two got into a fight.”

Rainbow glared at Twi with a look of utter disgust. And for the first time since the ponies had seen them, Twi backed down. “Sorry, I know that’s not the reason.”

“W-what is the reason?” Dash asked. “I can’t… I don’t… how did this happen?”

“Applejack, our Applejack at least, she’s more… traditional. Believes in a strong family ties, in passing on the family name, in the traditional household.”

“Why do you keep saying traditional?” Dash asked as Twilight kept sobbing.

“It means she’s not open to mare-mare relationships,” Rainbow said.

“Wait, so because I’m with Twilight, she’s not going to…”

“Don’t think too far ahead, Dash. Give her time,” Twi said. “Maybe a few months.”

“I’ll give her my hoof up her flank!”

“No, please… don’t… don’t leave me right now,” Twilight said through her tears.

Dash felt her anger abandon her. With a plea like that, she had no chance of holding onto it.

“I would never leave you, Twilight,” Dash whispered, nuzzling gently into the alicorn. “Never.”

The pegasus felt the air leaving her as Twilight hugged her as tight as she could. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Dash thought she might die breathless, but at least it would’ve been in Twilight’s hooves. Just before she had serious breathing problems, Twilight softened her grip, allowing her to breathe again. “You can, Twilight. I’d never leave you hanging, even before. But now I would rather die than do so.”

“No, don’t say that,” Twilight looked up with red eyes. “Just promise to be there for me and don’t leave me because of this.”

“Twilight…”

“Please,” the alicorn looked her in the eyes, magenta locking with violet. “Please… please…”

“I’d never leave you. Not for this, or anything. I swear it.”

The alicorn hugged her again, tears still falling upon the pegasus’s coat. Dash nuzzled into Twilight’s mane, and then looked up. She was still mad, she just wasn’t overflowing with rage anymore. Applejack, I’m going to buck your teeth in next time I see you, she promised herself. Dash knew that Applejack was rash, but she never imagined Applejack would be this rash.

“We should get inside,” Twi said.

Dash just nodded, and, flexing her wings, swooped up the alicorn in her hooves, flying up to her bedroom. “Spike, I trust that you’ll show them around,” she called out, not pausing to wait for a reply.

The pegasus swooped into Twilight’s bedchamber. She gently placed Twilight on the bed and lay next to her, all the while unceremoniously knocking her bag of Wonderbolt items onto the floor. After a minute of just holding her, Dash said, “Twilight, I’m so sorry.”

The alicorn lay on the bed, almost like a sack of potatoes. “Y-you didn’t do anything wrong, Dash.”

“I should have been there, I should have… ugh, I don’t know, kicked their bucking teeth in!”

“Dash, no. They’re our fri—”

“Horseapples! No friend of mine would dare!”

“Dash, you don’t mean that,” Twilight said in a pleading voice. However, rather than calm the pegasus down, it only served to rile her up that much more.

“Don’t dare? They’re the one’s that—”

“You’re right.” A voice cut in. It was Twilight’s voice, but not from the alicorn herself.

“Huh?” Rainbow asked from behind her.

“You’re one hundred percent right, Dash,” Twi said as she walked into the room and got on her knees. She was quickly followed in by Rainbow and an out-of-breath Spike.

“Sorry, I tried to… they wanted to see you… I…”

“It’s okay, Spike,” Twilight said.

“Hang on, what am I… right about?” Dash asked, confused at this turn of events. Sure she was angry, but she’d expected to have to fume in private, to be told that she shouldn’t yell, or go beat the hell out of Applejack and Rarity; not that she was right. Given, it’s not like that’d stop her anyway.

“What they said, what they did, it’s not right,” Twi started. “I was there and heard every word. Applejack is coming from a position of tradition, Rarity from standing. They’re not being themselves right now, and they shouldn’t have said it like that.”

That seemed to take the wind from beneath her wings. Dash slumped back. “So I can’t go yell at them?” She asked.

“Oh no, go ahead,” Twi said, surprising everyone.

“Who are you and what did you do with Twi?” Rainbow asked, half jokingly.

Twi looked up at her. “Rainbow, remember? I tried to stop you from doing it, and you went anyway. Ended up with a black eye if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah, well I broke one of her ribs for it,” Rainbow said, half proud and half ashamed at the same time.

“So you just want Dash to get hurt?” Twilight asked, unsure what to make of this discussion.

“Not at all. But Dash—our Dashie—she’d go simply because we told her not to. Instead of going down that path again, I’m telling her the truth: that she’s right, and her anger is justified. As is yours, Twilight.”

“I’m not—”

“Yeah you are,” Rainbow said. “As much as she’s like me, you’re like my Twi. You’re hurt right now, but that’ll become anger soon enough.”

“I thought you two weren’t going to get involved?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, how well did that work?” Twi stated. “I didn’t want us to get involved in hopes that it wouldn’t happen that way again, that we wouldn’t make it happen. I should have known better. The similarities between us and… them… are too great. So instead, I want to try and minimize the damage, to not strain your relationships in the same way ours were.”

“How bad was it?” Twilight asked.

“It took almost a three months before Rainbow and Applejack could be in the same room again. Rarity came around sooner, once she saw she couldn’t break us up with her words, that is.” Twi let that sink in.

“Break you up with words?” Twilight asked and received a nod. “What kind of words?”

“Well, she didn’t do something too bad—” Twi started, just to be cut off.

“The hell she didn’t,” Rainbow snorted. “Rumors are bad, really bad if they get to the wrong ears.”

Twi sighed. “Well, yes. It spread around slowly, but went faster after a while. Soon nearly everyone around us tried to avoid each of us.”

“What did she say?” Dash asked.

“She didn’t like the fact that Twi was an honor roll student and that I… wasn’t. So she started to tell people that…”

“That what?”

“That I was using her, that I saw Twi as nothing but a meal ticket and was going to dump her like a bad habit as soon as school let out,” Rainbow practically growled the words, her fist clenching in frustration.

“Rainbow didn’t get in for two months,” Twi said. “The school rejected her multiple times until I had a real talk with them.”

“Rarity did that?” Dash asked, her anger returning.

“How is this helping?” Twilight asked as she looked at the pegasus. Dash’s fur was practically standing on end with her shock and anger.

Twi looked back at the pegasus. “Dash, you can be angry, you can be mad, you can fly out of here and—”

In a flash of light, the pegasus was gone. There was nothing left of her but a rainbow contrail as she vacated the room and beelined it straight for the apple farm.

“No, I wasn’t done!” Twi said.

Rainbow couldn’t help but laugh. “You probably should have seen that coming.”

“Should I teleport her back?” Twilight asked.

Twi shook her head. “No, it looks like history will repeat itself after all.”

Rainbow walked over and sat down next to Twi. “Don’t worry, she won’t do anything… I mean, I wouldn’t… um…”

“Not helping,” Twi and Twilight said in stereo.

***

Dash, the Rainbow Dash, the most awesome, amazing, best flyer in Equestria, who had the most awesome, amazing marefriend that she could ever ask for, the Princess Twilight Sparkle, was enraged. Her anger had dissipated a little after their talk, but as soon as she heard what the human version of Rarity had done, It made her want to wreak havoc on Ponyville, it made her angrier, her insides boiled and heated to a fiery blaze of magma that would soon erupt. She yearned to scream, but didn’t.

After she had been given permission from the human version of her marefriend, well, the rest wrote itself. She beelined it straight out of the castle to go knock some sense into her so-called friends. Something they desperately needed in both worlds.

Rarity was closer, but right at that moment, she wanted somepony to hit. And besides, at those speeds, at those heights, the apple-farm was simply a much more inviting target.

With anger in her eyes and heart, Rainbow made it from Twilight’s castle to the farm in less than ten seconds. Her eyes focused in on the first pony she saw, a big red stallion. With a slight adjustment in her wings, she zipped down and landed right in front of Big Mac.

“Where’s Applejack?” Dash shouted.

Big Mack almost jumped out of his fur at the sudden appearance of a cyan pegasus landing right in front of his face.

Dash didn’t wait for his answer, she got right into his muzzle, or tried to anyway. At their respective heights, she only came to his neck. “Where. Is. Applejack‽ She in the field‽”

“N-noope,” Big Mac muttered, surprise, shock, and disbelief evident in his voice.

“The house‽”

“Nnope.”

“The barn‽”

“Eeyup.”

Without any more words, Dash shot away, heading straight for the barn. A faint voice in her head told her to stand down and just wait calmly to ask Applejack to come out, but her wings and her heart didn’t listen at all.

In a ear-shattering smash, Dash crashed through the big barn doors, ripping them off their hinges along with parts of the barn. It stayed standing, but just barely.

“What in tarnation—” Applejack started, just to be cut off as Dash landed on her.

“WHAT the hay did you say to Twilight?”

“Dash, get off me!”

“I’ll tell you something, mud pony.” Dash gritted her teeth. “You might not approve, but buck me! Love doesn’t need anypony’s approval!”

Applejack glared back. “What y’all are doin’ ain’t natural!”

“Who the hay gives you the right to say what’s natural and what’s not? Just because I don’t have a dick to buck her and have foals with her? What the hay, Applejack?”

Applejack glared at her in disbelief before she rolled over and kicked up with her back hooves. Years of applebucking had given the mare back-leg strength the envy of Bulk Biceps. Dash flew back and landed back first into a bail of hay that Applejack had just finished stacking. “Whoever y’all love is up ta you, that doesn’t mean Ah have ta like it!”

“We’re friends!” Dash said before scowling. “At least we were. How can you betray Twilight and me like this?”

“Yeah? Friends don’t love er buck each other. Yer playin a foul game, Dash.”

Dash’s eyes grew wide as she stared at Applejack in complete and total disbelief. “Are you bucking serious‽”

“Yer darn right Ah am!” Applejack said. “Families are what’re important, Dash! That was taught to me a long long time ago! Ah reckon if yers wasn’t so screw—”

A hoof cracked across her muzzle as Applejack was knocked back onto her side. Dash flexed her wings, working off the stiffness that came from accelerating so fast. “Talk about my family again! I dare you!”

Applejack got to her hooves and spat out a small glob of bloody phlegm. “Ah reckon that was a good shot, Dash. But that’s the last free one yer gonna get.”

“Really? What’re ya gonna do, mud pony? Crawl while I conquer the skies over you?” Dash growled.

“Yer gonna fly in the barn? Yer welcome ta try.” Applejack laughed. “They always said pegasi were feather brains. Ah guess we know that fer sure now.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Dash jumped at Applejack, her front hoof positioned to throw another shot at Applejack’s muzzle. But this time, the earth pony was expecting it. She ducked to the side and lashed out with her own hoof, catching Dash in her side as she looked on in surprise when her blow failed to connect.

The pegasus gasped as the air left her lungs and she impacted the floor of the barn. She rolled with the landing, quickly getting to her hooves and lunging for Applejack again and again.

Contrary to what some ponies thought, Applejack wasn’t some hick. Not by any definition of the word. She knew that Dash was an airhead and that, if she was mad, the pony wouldn’t stop to think. She’d lash out in a blind rage—a rage that could easily be turned against her. Applejack let Dash take the momentum, spend her energy. Dash was quick and fast, faster than her if she was being honest with herself, and she knew no other way. But Applejack had the endurance to last, something the pegasus was working on, but wasn’t nearly on the same level as Applejack.

She ducked Dash’s blows, even going so far as to roll out of the way. As strong and smart as she was, she wasn’t quick enough to dodge everything. Several landed, but with her lithe body and without the room to truly use her speed, Dash’s blows lacked the power to do any real damage.

“Ah think this is enough,” Applejack growled as she lashed out for Dash’s head after her roll to duck the previous hit.

Her hind legs hit their mark squarely, making the pegasus collapse in a puddle of fur and feathers.

“Next time, ya better think. Acting like that won’t get ya nothin’, featherbrain,” she said before turning to leave the barn—and Dash—behind. She paused when she heard a grunt coming from Dash.

Turning, Applejack saw the pegasus trying to stand, only to fall over again and again. It was obvious the fight was over, Dash had lost, and even she couldn’t deny it right now. “Ah reckon Ah made my point. It’s not right, Dash, and Ah ain't gotta like it. That’s just me being honest.”

“That’s… that’s… that’s not why we fought, Applejack,” Dash managed to say, only after she gave up trying to stand.

“Oh?” Applejack asked.

“I don’t give a damn if you like it or not. That’s your problem, not mine.”

“Then why’d ya come in here all hot headed?”

Dash’s body might have lost the fight, but her eyes still kept all the anger she had felt. “You can hide behind your honesty all day long, Applejack. But when you use it make your best friends cry, that just makes you… you…”

“Me what?” Applejack asked as Dash tried again to stand up, this time with success, even if it was more than shaky.

“A bitch,” Dash finished before taking flight and leaving the barn, and Applejack, behind her. Next time I see you we’ll fight in the open, and then we’ll see how it goes.

***

“You think she’ll be okay?” Twi asked.

“Yeah… I hope so, at least. But knowing her, she will do something really stu—” Twilight started, just to be startled by a loud cracking sound echoing up the stairs.

They quickly went down to find Spike staying frozen in the throne room, looking at the throne of the Element of Honesty.

“Guys… you better look at this,” he mumbled, eyes wide.

Twilight, Twi, and Rainbow all gasped as they took a closer look. A long, deep crack was going through the whole throne, destroying it grotesquely. As seconds passed, more and more cracks and splinters appeared in the crystal until it suddenly fell apart, the cutie mark on top losing every bit of shining grace it once held.

“I don’t think we have to see or hear Dash to know that whatever happened was the worst possible result,” Twi whispered.

Author's Note

Only a small chapter here, but we're far from being done!
If there are any grammatical errors in it let me know!