1) And along came a Spider...Part 4

Episode 1

And along came a Spider...Part 4

Rainbow's first swing

On the roof of the building Spike and Twilight lived in, the two of them were patiently waiting for Rainbow Dash to show up.

It had been a couple of hours since Twilight finished the new prototype 'Web-shooters' and tested that they worked properly in a controlled environment. However, before Rainbow Dash decided to try them out for real, she insisted on grabbing something at home first, leaving the two siblings waiting for her.

With nothing better to do until Rainbow returned, Spike decided to use this opportunity to ask his sister about who she secretly had a crush on. With Dash out of earshot, she agreed to let him know. He did however have a pretty good idea on who it was...until Twilight told him that it was someone else entirely.

"Really?!" He asked in clear surprise when she finally revealed who she was interested in.

"Yes." Twilight confirmed.

"But...if that's who you have a crush on...why is everyone so sure you have a thing for Flash Sentry?"

"Look, just because I bumped into him more than once does not mean I'm dating him. Heck, I barely even know the guy! All I really know about him is that he's a security guard at CelestiaCorp with blue hair. That's it." Twilight's tone when she said that made it perfectly clear how much she disliked those rumours.

"I guess you have a point." Spike receded. "Still, I can't believe you're in love with-"

Before he could utter the name of Twilight's mystery crush, he was silenced by a shout of, "I'M BACK!" that obviously belonged to Rainbow Dash and came from behind the two of them.

Twilight and Spike sharply turned around to see Rainbow standing on the edge of the building wearing a skin-tight blue and yellow outfit with decorative lightning bolts all over it. The suit came with a mask that had openings for the eyes, mouth and hair. A pair of flight goggles also rested on Rainbow's forehead.

Seeing her rather unusual fashion choice, Spike questioned, "Uh, what's with the get-up?"

"And wouldn't it be easier to just take the stairs?" Twilight added.

Rainbow answered, "Climbing walls is way cooler!" with her usual bravado. "As for the outfit, well...it's my mom's old Wonderbolt uniform from when she was a member. It's actually a rather out-dated version. With the speeds the Wonderbolts are flying these days, they needed something to keep their blood from gathering in their legs and instead go back to the brain. The new uniforms can make the pilot take a few more Gs than the old ones, but they don't look as radical. However, since I doubt I will break the sound barrier, even though that would be super awesome, I think this will do for now."

"I'm surprised you knew all that." Twilight confessed.

"Just because I'm not an egghead doesn't mean I'm stupid. Despite popular belief, sometimes I do pay attention in class."

"That's...good to hear, actually. So what was the reason for spending the last few hours running home to get an old Wonderbolt uniform, again?"

"Are you kidding? Of course I'm gonna wear a Wonderbolt uniform for this moment!"

"What do you mean by 'this moment'?"

"For the first time I get to fly for real!"

"You know we're testing web-shooters...not wings, right?"

"Duh, of course I know that! But with those web-shooters, I can swing from building to building faster than you can imagine, and it will be awesome!"

To be frank, Twilight hadn't really thought about what Rainbow would use those web-shooters for, but after hearing that, she honestly wasn't surprised. "I guess they could work that way, but your timing and aim will have be absolutely perfect or else you'll...well..."

After Twilight trailed off nervously, Rainbow urged, "Well...what?"

Before she could answer that question, Spike bluntly answered for her. "You'll probably die or at least break every bone in your body."

"Well...basically." Twilight concurred.

Rainbow Dash waved off their concerns, "Just relax, you two, I will be totally fine. I just ran a marathon while jumping from rooftop to rooftop, I think I can handle this."

"I sincerely hope you're right about that."

"Of course I'm right! Now let's stop wasting time and hand over those web-shooters already!"

Twilight sighed and muttered, "Gee, sorry for caring if you live or die..." while she reached her hand into the pocket of the hoodie she was currently wearing.

She took out a pair of small devices strapped to a pair of bracelets that seemed quite advanced for technically being home-made. The back-end of the devices could be opened in order to insert a web-capsule into it, and even though there was only room for one, it would take a lot of usage before it ran out. The front end had an opening that the webbing could be shot out of, as well as an in-built scissor to cut the thread at the push of a button if the user ever needed to. There was also a small extension at the front of the device that had a button at the end. Once that button was pressed, the device would fire a sling of webbing similarly to the webgun prototypes it was based on. Depending on how long it was pressed, one could also decide exactly how much cobweb was to come out of it.

Twilight had already explained all of this to Rainbow Dash, so therefore I think I can skip that explanation. So instead, she simply handed them over to her.

However, Rainbow ended up with a few problems when it came to actually putting them on. The first attempt ended up with one of the devices aiming at the wrong direction, and the second try didn't have the trigger at the correct location, and the third attempt didn't have the bracelet strapped securely enough.

Eventually though, Rainbow got the things right, with the devices firmly attached to her wrists, aimed forward, and had the triggers placed at the base of her palms, allowing her to use them properly.

"So...what now?" Rainbow asked once she was done.

"All you need to do is to aim one of those at a desired target and press down your middle fingers on the trigger." Before Rainbow could get any funny ideas, Twilight added, "And just to be clear, I am not a desired target."

With a mischievous smirk on her face, Rainbow casually aimed her arm in Twilight's direction while asking, "Really? So you don't want me to do THIS!?" before she made a move to press the trigger button while aiming the web-shooter at her face, making Twilight attempt to duck from the incoming webbing.

Only...she never actually pressed the button, and it turned out Rainbow Dash had merely trolled her by pretending to.

"Hehe, got ya!" She teased.

Twilight slowly stood up straight and looked Rainbow in the eye. "That wasn't funny."

"Hey, lighten up, egghead, it was kinda funny."

"No it wasn't, and trust me, I know funny."

Spike and Dash simultaneously rolled their eyes at that statement.

Twilight's response to that was a simple confused uttering of "What?"

Rainbow Dash backed away a bit and began to look around the place for a suitable target to test the web-shooters on.

The building she was standing on had to be at least twenty stories tall and was surrounded by buildings that were far bigger. Yet, despite being in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the country, there were surprisingly few people out today. One reason for that could be the slightly chilly and cloudy weather, another might be that fact that it was Sunday. However, while there might be relatively few people out, it was still in Central Canterlot, so it wasn't exactly empty either.

Rainbow could already see quite a number of promising locations so far, but she hadn't really decided which to go for first. While she was pondering over this, she nonchalantly walked around on the edge of the roof, not bothered in the slightest about the height she was at.

Eventually, she stopped pacing and set her eyes on a pretty tall building across the street from the one she was on. She then looked down at the distance between herself and the ground. There was no possible way for anyone, even with spider-powers, to survive a fall from that height. Yet, her determination didn't waver in the slightest.

Rainbow slipped the flight goggles over her eyes and carefully aimed her right web-shooter at the highest point of the building. With her target in sight, she pressed her fingers down on the trigger and released a long thread of cobweb that quickly attached itself to the building's roof. She then took a firm grip on the thread with both hands and prepared herself for what she was about to attempt.

Seeing all of this, Twilight asked, "Um, wouldn't it be better to try on something a little less...life-threatening?"

Rainbow turned her head around to face her and smiled. "Twilight Sparkle, sometimes you must run before you can even walk."

With those words said, Rainbow Dash jumped straight off the building, allowing herself a few moments of free-falling before the thin line of webbing she was holding onto began to halt her descent and swing her towards to the structure in front of her. Throughout her trip, she was excitingly repeating, "Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!"

Twilight and Spike ran over to the edge to get a closer look, and Spike even pulled out a pair of binoculars from his pocket to see even closer.

However, Rainbow Dash hadn't really thought this through all that much, and she realised a bit too late that her swing was sending her on a collision course with the building.

Inside her apartment, a very reclusive and studious woman named Moondancer was fully absorbed in her book on Professor Starswirl's theories on cross-species genetics.

She had spent most of the day having tons of crazy (according to her) people constantly trying to befriend her, and they simply never gave her a break. She didn't need any friends, or parties or...whatever else everyone kept saying she needed. All she needed (still according to her) was some privacy where she could study in peace, and she knew that nobody would ever disturb her in her own home.

At least that's what she thought.

Needing to rest her eyes for just a moment, she put down her book, took off her thick-rimmed glasses, rubbed the base of her nose a bit and chanced a peak out the window.

That was when a girl dressed in a skin-tight blue and yellow outfit suddenly slammed straight into her window, nearly making Moondancer jump out of her skin and let out a startled scream.

Both Spike and Twilight winced at the sight.

"That got to hurt." Spike commented while he took his eyes away from his binoculars.

Rainbow Dash groaned in response to her hurting shoulder that had the misfortune of impacting with the surprisingly tough glass of the window. The fact that she hadn't broken anything was a miracle...and probably a result of her increased durability as a result of the spider-bite. Still, it would be fair to say that things didn't turn out exactly as she planned it.

She dropped the thread she was holding onto and used her hands and feet to attach herself to the window. She tried her best to ignore the pain and glanced back at the house where Spike and Twilight were watching. Once she saw them looking back at her, she freed one of her hands and gave them a thumbs up, signalling that she was okay.

Moondancer then opened the window next to her and gave Rainbow an unamused glare while making an annoyed, "Ahem!"

Dash looked at her with a nervous smile, wondering how she was possibly going to explain this one.

However, Moondancer's priorities seemed to be elsewhere. "Whatever stunt you are trying to perform, can you please do it somewhere else? I am trying to study!"

"Huh...sorry about that. Just give me a second and I'll be out of your hair."

"You better..." Moondancer warned with a bit of venom in her voice before she closed the window rather soundly to emphasise her point. Immediately after that though, she sat back at her desk and turned her focus back to her book.

"And I thought only Twilight could get so obsessed with studying..." Rainbow muttered under her breath.

While the first try at web-slinging may have not been so successful, Dash didn't believe in giving up prematurely.

The second try began pretty much the same as the first one. She shot a new line of webbing at another building nearby and detached herself from Moondancer's window, allowing gravity to propel her forward.

However, she had learned from her mistake the last time and just before she was about to receive another painful impact with the second building, she used her left web-shooter to attach a sling of web to a third building and let go of the thread she was holding. This way, she narrowly avoided the impact and kept herself in the air.

Using this method, she soon managed to swing from building to building almost as if she was flying. Rainbow Dash could feel the wind sip past her at high speed, she could feel the adrenaline flow through her blood, she finally felt...free, and that was one of the greatest feelings she had ever had.

All her life, ever since she was in kindergarten, she had wanted to fly, to soar through the air, to look down upon the world below, and to be free from the confines of the ground. And this...was the closest she had ever gotten to that goal. As she swung herself between the massive skyscrapers around her faster than was humanly possible, a smile of pure joy formed itself on her lips.

Lost in her euphoria, Rainbow Dash began to perform all kinds of tricks while swinging.

First, she began to sling herself higher up at the end of the swings, allowing the momentum alone to propel her into the air. Once in the air, she flipped around and somersaulted like crazy before she suspended her falls with an emergency line.

With even more bravado, she decided to swing as close to the ground as she dared. With a line of webbing attached to a high enough point on a building in front of her, she swung widely towards the street below, her feet nearly reaching the ground when she sipped between an ambulance and a delivery truck, leaving the drivers of both cars wondering what the heck just flew past them. At the end of her swing, she braced herself and landed on a wall on the Empire Canterlot Building, the tallest man-made construction in the country.

After attaching herself to the surface of the wall, she stood up on her legs and shot a line of webbing from both web-shooters to the very top of the massive structure. Once they hit their mark, she took a few steps and bent herself as far back as she could to increase tension in the cobwebs. Then, she suddenly let go and allowed the stored pent up energy to propel like a slingshot towards the top.

When gravity eventually began to slow her ascent and pull her back down, she grabbed the wall of the building and started to climb the rest of the way up.

It took her a while, but she eventually reached the roof of the enormous structure. And she didn't stop there, for she also decided to climb up on the huge antenna spire at the very top, giving her a view from the highest point in the entire city.

443 meters up into the air, Rainbow Dash could see all of Canterlot and beyond from here. It was a view she could only dream of until now, and a part of her was convinced she was still dreaming. All of this: the powers, the experience, everything, was so unreal and out of the ordinary that she had trouble even grasping the fact that this was actually happening.

However, while sitting atop the tallest building in the city may seem awesome, eventually it was starting to get cold, and windy, and...it was actually a bit hard for Dash to breathe at this altitude. All of this meant that she couldn't stay up there forever.

There were a fair number of ways to get down, but there was only one that was crazy enough for Rainbow Dash at this moment.

"When in Rome..." She said while bracing herself for what she was about to do.

She jumped straight off the building and allowed gravity to ferry her back to the ground. As she began to fall from her skydiving attempt at over 400 metres height, she began to pick up speed from every second she spent falling. By the time she started to get close to the level of the regular-sized buildings, she was close to encountering G-forces.

Seven seconds before she would have hit the ground and probably died, she used one of the web-shooters to secure herself to a tall enough building and stop her descent.

While she did so, she began to happily shout, "THIS IS SO AWESO-"

However, her swing trajectory was not exactly planned, and before she could finish shouting her catchphrase, she suddenly crashed right into Senator Blueblood's face on a giant sign with the slogan 'A vote for Blueblood is a vote for the future!'. At the speed she was travelling at, the impact was, needles to say...painful.

Rainbow Dash cursed whoever placed the sign at that particular spot, probably as much as she was going to curse the pain in her now bleeding nose.

Oh, and there was also now a sign of Senator Blueblood with a hole where her face was supposed to be.