Everypony Hates Dash
I used to act like Equestria’s biggest egghead when I was a filly. It’s too bad my head was actually full of stupid and I didn’t mind sharing it with my buddy Gilda. My days at Junior Speedsters Flight Camp taught me a lot more than just flying lessons. It’s too bad that in spite of my terrific flying speed, I was a slow learner.
Gilda and I were sitting on a cloud and chowing down on our sandwiches when we heard a familiar buzzing sound overhead.
Looking up from her sandwich, the griffon said, “Looks like the new changelings have arrived.”
“Why do those bugs have to come here? They look like they can fly just fine.”
“Don’t call them bugs, Dash,” she replied with a leaden voice. “Jeez, where do you get that from?”
“My dad. Why can’t I call them that?”
“For the same reason why you can’t call earth ponies mud ponies or unicorns horn-heads. It’s speciest.” Gilda dug a thumb into her feathered chest. “Look at me. How many times have I been called bird brain?”
“Once. Then you clocked that pegasus with the basketball cutie mark on the head. You almost got expelled for that.”
She nodded. “Darn right I did. Just call those guys changelings like the teachers told us to. Besides, if we need flight training, so do they.”
I watched them land on a nearby airstrip. “Yeah, but why can’t they go to a ground-based camp? It’s not like they can control the weather or anything.”
Gilda rolled her eyes at me, but I didn’t notice. It was hard to notice much of anything while I was wearing my cutie marks as earmuffs. “Neither can griffons, genius. Yet here I am sitting next to you while you call the changelings bugs.”
“Well, you’re different, Gilda. I knew we would be friends the minute you showed up at this camp.”
“How did you know? Was your pegasus-sense tingling? I might have been a bully and you wouldn’t have known.”
I replied, “I’m pretty observant.” Yeah, yeah, save your comments until the words ‘the end’ show up, okay? “You looked too nervous and unsure of yourself to bully anypony.”
“And you’re always sooo sure of yourself, huh? Why don’t you go be buddies with one of them?”
I swallowed hard, but not because of my sandwich. “Uh, my dad might not like that.”
Gilda’s eyes slitted as a sly grin somehow crept into her hard beak. “Oh, well. My mistake. I thought that you were up to the challenge. Guess I was wrong.”
My wings pompfed out. She just said the c-word. Even at that age, I couldn’t pass up a challenge and Gilda knew it. To Tartarus with what my dad might think of these guys, it was time to make a new friend.
Polishing off my sandwich, I flew down to the airstrip. There were four small changelings and one adult. The youngest changelings were a little shorter than the grownups and their horns were stubby nubs. As I got closer, I heard them make weird clicking noises among themselves. That sound always creeped out my father and I could see why.
One of them spotted me and nudged the adult. The big one’s clicking stopped and changed to, “As I was saying, kids, it may seem scary being so far from the cave. However, these ponies won’t harm you.”
I knew Gilda’s eyes were glued on me, so I walked up to the grownup and said, “Hi, there. I’m Rainbow Dash. And you are?”
“My hive-name is hatchling minder eleven thirty eight, but you may call me Carapace.” He tried to smile at me, but his huge sharp teeth made it look as if he wanted to munch on my head.
Not wanting to lose my nerve and have Gilda razz me until I took up residence in the old pony’s home, I returned a polite smile and gestured to the hatchlings. “What are their names?”
Carapace’s gossamer wings fluttered as he said to his group, “All right, children, just like we rehearsed.”
The kids scrambled to stand in a row facing us. Carapace raised a hole-punched hoof and said “One, two, three, go!”
The children sang.
Hello, good morning, how do you do?
We are many and you are few.
Don’t let that scare you and make you tense.
We just simply want to be your good friends.
If you trust us, then we’ll trust you.
We can make ourselves look like you.
Though that’s something we’d never do.
Without your permission, this is true.
If you welcome us and have no fears.
Our friendships won’t end in tears.
I’m Buzz!
I’m Wing-tip!
I’m Mandible!
I’m Antenna!
Carapace clopped his hooves together. “Wonderful!”
“Uh, the lyrics might need a little work,” I said with a strained smile, “But I got the message. So it’s true that your kind can make yourselves look like anypony?”
Carapace rubbed the fin on the back of his head as he looked away. “Yes. But our queen has ordered us not to do that while we’re in this camp.”
“Why not?”
“Because we only do that when we are attacked or frightened. Our ability to look like any creature of equal size is only used in self-defense.”
“Which won’t be a problem because we ponies are so friendly.” Sholy hitballs, that sounded phony even to my pipsqueak ears.
“So I hear,” replied Carapace. “This group is unique among the other changelings for they are gifted with observational singing, an ancient method for relaying stories and history from one generation to the next.”
“You mean they sing about what they see for posterity?”
“Only the more noteworthy events and people. Nothing like a catchy tune to make you remember important facts.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s how I remember what a conjunction is by thinking about that railroad worker song.”
Carapace blinked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Never mind. I’ll teach your group that tune if you like.”
Buzz grinned as he flew over to me. “Can you teach me any other songs?”
“What about your friends?” I asked Buzz.
“I have a good memory. We all do. When we reunite later, I’ll teach them what you teach me.” He was practically bouncing in place like a sugar-rushed earth pony. “I bet you could teach me a lot!”
I tilted my head. “Huh? Are you guys splitting up?”
Carapace said, “Yes. Each member of this group will be in separate campsites in order to observe as much as they can.” He rubbed his chin as he looked me over. “You seem friendly enough. Can Buzz accompany you during his stay?”
“He’s not going to be next to me all the time, right?” I asked cautiously, trying to not sound like my dad.
Buzz shook his head. “No, I promise I won’t pester you! I just want to learn. I and others had heard about you are faster than all the other pegasi. I’d love to learn how you fly so fast!”
The best way to get to my heart is through my ego, even today in my adult years. When I was a filly, if anyone pushed my buttons like that, I’d agree to fly them to the moon if they asked.
I wrapped a hoof around his scaly neck. “Stick with me, Buzz. I can tell we’re going to be pals.”
“Really?” he asked, his blue compound eyes gleaming.
“Hey, what could possibly go wrong?”
Ooh boy, was I going to regret asking that.
* * *
Gilda and I gave Buzz a tour of our campsite, Luna’s Legion. He asked a ton of questions like; how are you able to have campfires in a cloud, how can pegasi fly with such tiny wings and how can Gilda enunciate words with no lips. The answers were: magic, magic and mind your own business.
After a while, the class bell rang. “Well, we have to get back to school, Buzz,” I said. “I guess we’ll see you in the classroom tomorrow.”
“Okay! I look forward to it, Dash! Bye!” He zipped away, humming to himself.
Gilda nudged me in the shoulder. “Hey, looks like you made a friend. Buzz is kind of cute.”
“Yeah, I guess he is. Anyway, what’s this hour’s class?”
She rolled her golden eyes and groaned like an impatient parent. “Jeez, you’re such a dweeb sometimes. It’s Professor Cumulous’s class on jet stream physics. You stink at keeping track of classes.”
“I can’t help it. Classrooms make me sleepy!”
“Breathing makes you sleepy. I swear, Dash, the only time you aren’t dozing is when you’re either eating or flying.”
“I . . . I just have a rapid metabolism, that’s all.”
“And a short attention span.”
“No, I’m not. Anyway, Professor Jet Stream’s class on cumulus clouds is always boring.”
Gilda held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. “I have a psychic vision. I see a rainbow-maned doofus dying of old age in this camp because she kept getting held back due to her napping.”
“Maybe I’d nap a little less if I spent more time flying and less time sitting behind a desk.”
You can almost see the light bulb switch on over my head, can’t you?
“Dash? Why are you rubbing your hooves together and grinning?”
“Oh, no reason.”
She knew me well enough to know what that response really meant; I’m about to push my luck so far, it’s going to fall off a cliff.
* * *
After dozing through Professor Whatever’s class, I waited for Buzz to show up at our camp. He soon arrived and circled around me with wide eyes.
“We’re going to be bunkmates, Rainbow Dash!” Buzz chirped. “I begged Carapace to let me be in your campsite! Cool, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s perfect.” I flew up to him and laid a hoof across his shoulders. “Come with me. I want to talk to you in private.”
“Okay!”
Once we were out of sight of the camp, I led Buzz behind a storage shed.
“Let me ask you something, Buzz,” I said. “Do you have to be scared or attacked before you can change your shape?”
He sat down and shifted uneasily. “Er, no. We don’t want to frighten you ponies by doing that. Queen Chrysalis is trying to get Princess Celestia to trust our race. Some ponies are worried that we might invade Equestria, you know. I and the other changelings are sent to this camp to show ponies, and your griffon friend, that we aren’t dangerous.”
“Can you make yourself look like, oh, I don’t know, me?”
Buzz looked away and pawed at the cloudy ground. “I . . . I don’t know if I should.”
Patting his back, I poured on the Dash charm with a shovel. “Come on, what’s the harm? I promise I won’t tell.” Then I recalled one of the lyrics his group sang to me. “I give you my permission to mimic me.”
“Oh. Okay.” He stood up, studied me for a second and was suddenly smothered in green fire. A moment later, I might as well have been looking in a mirror.
Grinning, I said, “Hey, let’s see if you can do what I do.”
I waved my right hoof. He waved his light blue hoof.
I jumped up and down. Buzz did the same.
Hovering above him, I stuck my tongue out and bulged out my cheeks. My twin got every detail perfectly.
After going ‘Nyaah!’ at each other for a minute, we both got the giggles until I cried. We landed on our backs. We howled with laughter, rolling around on the cloud floor. When Buzz shifted back into his real self, I noticed his body was a little bigger.
Wiping away a tear, I asked, “Hey, what’s with you? Did you eat a vitamin pill or something?”
“Oh, this? I shouldn’t mention it, but my race feeds off of positive emotion, like your laughter. ”
“So the happier I am, the healthier you get?”
“That’s right. Why are you rubbing your hooves together?”
“I’ll tell you later. Hey, do you know what would really make me a happy filly?”
* * *
The next day, I was lying on a cloud, munching on my salad, when Gilda landed next me.
“How did you get to this cloud so fast?” she asked, unwrapping a sandwich. “Usually I’m chowing down on my lunch before you even see me.”
I shrugged. “Name is destiny. My name’s Rainbow Dash, not Raincloud Slow. I guess I’m just getting faster.”
“How are things going with your new changeling friend?”
“Buzz? He’s coming in hand . . . I mean . . . we’re getting along.”
I heard a familiar flitting sound above us. “Hi, Rainbow!” said Buzz as he sat down next to me. He reached into his satchel and handed me some papers.
“Thanks, Buzz. I really appreciate this.”
Buzz sighed happily as he grew a bit bigger. “What are friends for, right?”
Gilda asked, “Would you like to split a sandwich with me?”
“Oh, no thanks.” He shook his head. “Besides, I’m full. Dash, I hate to eat and run, but I have to get to my own classes now.”
“Sure, sure.” I waved him away. “Catch you later.”
As Buzz flew back to the camp, Gilda cocked her head at him. “Did he just get a growth spurt?”
“I didn’t notice,” I replied, not making eye contact with Gilda.
“What did he give you?”
“Er . . . just some research.”
“When do you ever research anything?”
“Jeez, Gilda. I only asked Buzz to look up some stuff for me, that’s all.”
She ate her sandwich, but never took her eyes off me.
* * *
A few days later, Buzz and I were sitting behind the storage shed. I was going over another batch of my test papers when I spotted an ‘F’ on a test from Professor Cumulus.
After reeling my jaw back into my mouth, I waved the paper at Buzz. “What happened, Buzz? I thought you bu . . . changelings knew all about this stuff!”
Shrinking back from me, he replied, “It’s hard to keep looking like you for so long, much less take your tests. At least I wasn’t so bad in your other classes.”
“Yeah, but not by much. Yeesh, a ‘C’ in Professor Wind Shear’s class? How hard is it to understand hairstyle wind resistance lessons?”
“I’ll try to do better, Dash, but it’s not like I’m doing so well in my own classes. Maybe you can help me with my school work since I’m doing more of yours?”
Okay, let’s pause here. Some people wonder why we ponies send our foals to school at such a young age. Well, it’s mainly because most ponies want their children to be as smart as possible before they are old enough to be prosecuted as an adult. No one likes a dumb crook, after all. What I was about to do, I was later told, would have sent me to the slammer a hundred years ago.
“Nah, I’m too busy with nap . . . studying. Maybe next week, when my grades are better, I can help you out, okay?”
As naïve as Buzz was, even he stared at me for a few seconds before he forced a weak smile. “Okay.”
Yay! Another hurdle leapt. Go, me! My happiness at having another opportunity to do zilch all day gave Buzz another healthy dose of food.
But he didn’t look any happier for the meal.
* * *
A week went by. Gilda and I were having lunch in the same cloud. She was scarfing down her scones, but I only took a few bites out of my salad.
“What’s bugging you, Dash?” asked Gilda.
“I keep getting low test scores. Dad’s going to find out soon and I don’t know how to explain to him what’s going on.”
“Yeah, that’s a real shame. In spite of your best efforts, you’re not getting better at your classes. Neither is Buzz.”
“Well, that’s . . . wait, what?”
I got that same suspicious stare again. “Yeah, his test scores are slipping.”
“He told you this?”
Gilda tapped the side of her head and crossed her eyes at me. “Dur! Yeah, Dash! He needs more than one friend, you know.”
Rubbing the back of my head, I asked, “So that’s it? He just talked about his schoolwork?”
“Didn’t he mention this to you? I thought you two were buddies.”
“I’ll have to talk to Buzz about this.” Looking around the surrounding clouds, I couldn’t find a changeling anywhere. “And I think I know where to find him.”
* * *
As I suspected, Buzz was behind the storage shed. He didn’t look so big. In fact, he looked smaller than the first time I saw him.
“So, what’s going on?” I asked as I landed next to him. “You don’t look so good.”
“That’s because Carapace is sending me home,” he replied, his head hung low.
“Because your grades are low? Gilda told me.”
“Yeah. Can I ask you a question, Dash?”
“Sure.”
“Am I really your friend? Because it seems to me that you’re getting more out of this arrangement than I am.”
“Well, you’re getting free eats from my happiness, right?”
“Does your griffon friend feed off emotions the way my people do?”
“Er . . . no.”
“Then why is she your friend?”
“Well, when I first saw her, she was alone and scared and needed a buddy.”
In a burst of green fire, he looked like me. “Don’t you remember what Carapace said about my race? That we only shape-shift when we’re getting attacked? Or when we’re afraid?”
“You . . . you took my classes looking like me because you were scared?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“You were frightened of me?”
Buzz stamped a hoof and growled. “No, dummy! It’s because I was afraid of losing your friendship!” He reached into his satchel and flung my test papers at me. “But now I wish I never met you. Gilda was right, you can be a real dweeb sometimes. “
I picked up the paperwork and looked at all the ‘F’ scores I so richly deserved. Dad was going to kick my flank to the moon. But not even my slope-browed bigot of a father would be happy with his only daughter taking advantage of anyone, much less a changeling.
Gilda once challenged me to be his friend and I messed that up with my greasy ethics. Now I had to give myself an even bigger challenge; make things right between Buzz and I before he dropped out of my life forever. Even if it meant everypony hating me.
And there was only one way to do it.
* * *
Carapace and the professors who gave Buzz the bad grades were in the teacher’s lounge when Buzz and I walked in.
“Buzz?” said Carapace. “Why did Rainbow Dash ask all of us to come here? If you’re trying to get a reprieve of your relocation, it’s too late for that.”
“He’s not going to ask for that, sir,” I replied. “I am. You see, Buzz wanted to be my pal so badly that he imitated me and took my place in some of my classes. That was my idea, not his.”
My ears flattened as my cheeks burned in embarrassment. “I could have stopped him when his own grades were falling, but I didn’t.”
Buzz walked over to Carapace. “I guess I should have simply walked away, but I wanted her to like me so much I ignored my own ethics and let her . . . use me.”
Carapace sighed, patted Buzz on the shoulder and looked at the professors. “Well, what’s the tally?”
Professor Cumulous answered, “That’s the third pony-imitation this year.”
My ears pricked up. “What?”
Professor Wind Shear shook his head. “Rainbow Dash, did you really think you were so terribly clever? I bet you rubbed your hooves together as you conjured up the brilliant plan to have Buzz mimic you and take your classes so you could take more naps.”
Carapace looked at me. “This is one of the unofficial functions of changeling and pony integration within Equestrian schools. My race acts as an empathy and ethics test for you ponies. As it happens, you flunked that test. Buzz failed to see that he was being taken advantage of, so he fell short as badly as you have.”
“So what happens to us now?” I asked.
Professor Cumulous rubbed his chin. “Hmm. Well, a month of summer school should get both of you back on track as far as your grades are concerned.”
Buzz jumped and hovered over Carapace. “You mean Rainbow and I can take classes together?”
Carapace tilted his head, puzzled. “If that’s what you want. Are you sure you want to be near this dishonest pegasus?”
Buzz grinned. “If she was completely crooked, she wouldn’t have arranged this meeting. Maybe this time, she’ll be a better friend. I don’t think she’ll make the same mistake twice.”
That was true. Since I was such a genius at being an idiot, I already came with a half-dozen other ways to screw up in the next month alone.
Professor Wind Shear piped up. “We can’t have this sort of thing happen any time soon, however. Word will get out eventually about what happened here.”
Carapace said, “My group is bound to come up with a morality tale song about this event.”
Professor Cumulous added, “So perhaps they can sing in front of the school while Rainbow Dash and Buzz are busy with their pre-summer school punishment. Let the other students know that the faculty is onto this particular scheme.”
Buzz and I looked at each other and said at the same time, “Punishment?”
* * *
We were in an empty classroom in front of our own chalkboards. I was writing one hundred times “I will never take advantage of another person, no matter the species, ever again”. Buzz was writing one hundred times “I will never let another person, no matter the species, take advantage of me ever again”.
The classroom windows were all open so both of us could hear Buzz’s companions Mandible, Wing-tip and Antenna sing in front of a growing audience.
Friendship is magic, or so we are told.
It’s far more precious than some dumb chunk of gold.
Yet some foolish ponies let their morals go to seed.
I heard Gilda sing, “And start acting like bone-headed dweebs!”
As we were saying before the interruption,
children often fall prey to easy corruption.
Buzz learned a lot, but not what he expected.
You can’t live in fear of being rejected.
You want to trust us and we want to trust you.
But trust must be earned, this is never not true.
If your ethics go sour, your friendships will crash.
Gilda yelled, “Because everypony hates Dash!”
She quickly added, “Just kidding, Dashie! See you after summer school! I’m going to the beach with my backup singers!”
The changelings cried, “What?”
I bonked my head against the chalkboard and sighed.
“Rainbow?” said Buzz. “You mentioned a railroad worker song to Carapace. How does that song go?”
I knew all the words to every one of those educational songs by heart, which helped make the time go. Within a few days, Buzz and I were singing the songs together, which helped make our punishment a lot more fun.
At least my childhood had a good soundtrack. And good friends.
The End
