Rainbow Dash knew flying.
It was in her blood. She was born as a Pegasus, after all, and Pegasi were born with wings. Flying was in her blood; her Pegasus blood. All day her mind wandered, thinking up new, daring maneuvers and awe-inspiring stunts. If she had spent the same amount of time on learning as she had on flying, Rainbow Dash wouldn't have found herself getting bad grades in school. If she had, she would've been able to get into a great college and do something genuinely, brilliantly, incredibly boring in life. But Rainbow Dash knew. She knew that she was born for something greater.
Rainbow Dash flunked out of school a lot later in life than she would have thought. Her parent's angry berating was tough to endure for awhile, but all she needed to do was nod her head, crack a small grin, and tell them that she was going to make them proud one day. One day, Rainbow Dash would be a household name, a name that ponies would remember forever and ever.
Rainbow Dash knew flying, and she knew the Wonderbolts. The totally awesome, death-defying stunt aerobatics who could turn heads miles away from civilization, their thunderous jet streaks booming through the blue and white air like a kind of inspiring war drum. It sure inspired her, at least. Her first show had been one of the most incredible days of her life. Rainbow Dash didn't really care about how much faster she was flying than her parents toward the stands, or how much memorabilia she most definitely would've been buying later. She'd been only nine at the time—long before she had first failed her parents—with bright, twinkling stars in her eyes that mirrored Luna's milky landscape stretching before her as she stared up and gazed in awe, the flaring wings of her heroes and heroines cutting through the wind and making their own. She didn't care that the show was over and everypony else was leaving, and she didn't care that it was way way past her bedtime.
Rainbow Dash knew flying, and from that day forth, flying was all she would know.
The Wonderbolts were to blame, really. If she needed to point a hoof at something, it would be her drawers and cabinets and desks and tables chocked full of Wonderbolt cards, and flags, and toys, and posters, and tickets, and goggles. She wouldn't really need to—she'd just blame her awesome self and be totally cool with it—but it was always nice to have a backup in case of failure, and failure was something Rainbow Dash didn't know.
She didn't know failure, but she at the very least understood it. You tried to avoid failure as much as possible. There was something about failure, something bestial, that found little cracks along her mind and embedded themselves there, far away from her reach and deep enough to not be disturbed. Failure screamed at her constantly; a runaway train with a track of its own. She didn't know failure, and that was because Rainbow Dash never failed. She knew how to make the best of an otherwise crummy situation. She knew how to pull out of a dive when it looked so much like she was gonna crash, and she knew how to pretend you were doing a U-turn when your wing stuck out just a little bit too much. She knew how to crack a smile and nod. She knew how to play it cool and go with the flow.
Knowing helped with flying. If she didn't know things, there was no sure guarantee she'd be alright up there, thousands of miles in the sky with only clouds and rain. Pegasi didn't belong in the ground, and Rainbow Dash definitely didn't want to hit it. Rainbow Dash knew flying—she had to—and that's why she practiced. She stayed up late on a daily basis, ruby eyes red with fatigue and her wings pumping as hard as a pair of punctured bellows. It seemed that she was the only one who knew flying. Ponies pointed and laughed, citing her inexperience as a younger filly as a structure that would last the rest of her life. Her parents didn't show it, but she knew they felt it.
Her parents treated her like a god, and, that is to say, they didn't really believe in her. Her dad especially. He knew the risks of flying; of soaring through the sun-kissed air for the entertainment of thousands. He knew the difficulties of achieving this level of fame. He knew how hard it was to get alongside the legendary Spitfire and her elite group of stunt fliers. He knew flying, but not as well as Rainbow Dash, and that's why Rainbow Dash practiced time and time again, sacrificing scholarships and friends and careers and alternate lives. One day, she'd show them all, and make them all proud.
Her Sonic Rainboom had done much to impress her folks, and even Cloudsdale as a whole. Ponies gazed her way as she passed, eyes wide and jaws scraping the cloud ground. They said it couldn't be done; they said that nopony could do it. They said it was a myth, like old Zacherle and Smooze.
They were wrong, but Rainbow Dash could only shake her head and frown, for it wouldn't be enough. Nothing would be enough until she was standing right there beside Spitfire, her rainbow mane swept back by her goggles and her Wonderbolts suit tight around her light blue fur.
Rainbow Dash knew flying, but she had to know it a lot more to get to where she was going.
The high-octane, adrenaline-pumping, nerve-sparking, lip-flapping, tear-jerking winds became her new home in the sky. She practiced time and time again, even as Luna's moon soared across the sky and made way for Celestia's sun, and even after that. She learned how to angle herself at a seventy-degree angle instead of a ninety-degree one when she dove, the G-forces pushing back at her Pegasus body lightening the flatter she went. She learned the differences between grayouts, tunnel vision, blackouts, and G-LOC, and both how to avoid and how to recover from them before sailing from the mass of blue to the dead of green. She learned how best to angle her wings to make her turns that much tighter, using clouds and poles around town to act as guides. She learned how to stick her forelegs out and how to dip her head to bear the least amount of drag possible, so as to increase her ever-growing want for more and more speed.
She had to be the fastest, and Rainbow Dash knew how to be fast.
She learned how to bank left and right to avoid obstacles, her ruby eyes darting this way and that to ensure that nopony got hurt today. She learned how to ascend straight up without crying into the sun's bright beams, her mind being the only thing able enough to keep her wings from simply carrying her into the atmosphere. She learned how to not be scared of heights no matter how high up you were, her stomach's contents tipping on the edge of visibility even hours after digestion. She learned how to not go yeep, for Rainbow Dash never got scared in the first place. Her wings never dared close up on her without her say, and her body never dared plummet on her without her intervention.
She learned how to only growl at her locks of rainbow mane whipping and slashing at her skin as she blew by, and she learned how to control her lips as the wind picked them up and threw them around like jelly in a jar. She learned how to avoid dark rainclouds, and she eventually learned how to kick them to get the listed weather patterns displayed in the weather factory's cafeteria room on the hazel brown clipboard aptly, always titled Today.
It was her first real job, and it was one that took up most of her time. Weather never stopped being needed somewhere; well, at least that was what the factory workers' supervisors always claimed. They cracked a whip, and broke more than Rainbow Dash would see in about a dozen lifetimes marooned on a dairy farm. She made friends at the weather factory, but there was nothing that stopped her from leaving early and blazing about, a blur of light blue zipping through the sky, disappearing into the clouds and never to be seen again.
Rainbow Dash knew flying, and she needed to get better if she wanted to join the Wonderbolts.
The weather factory was nothing more than a paying job, and Rainbow Dash liked it that way.
Time became like her; quick and blurry. If she spun around and around and around she would've been able to emulate it just right, and she could do it without vomiting or gagging because she knew how to fly. Weeks became months, and months became years, and pretty soon Rainbow Dash could just look out her cloud house's window and give a scat-eating grin to the town of Ponyville underneath her. She still practiced flying day in day out, and the ponies of Ponyville grew to anticipate the blue and rainbow figure careening through town on a graceful, well-rehearsed war path.
