The repetitive beat of Rainbow Dash's wings was almost cathartic in nature, a slight reverb vibrating against her ears as her body sliced through the calm winds, wingtips grazing the clouds. Occasionally, she allowed herself to fall into a dive, the weightlessness a feeling she was wholly unaccustomed to, but relished in the odd moments—a total lack of control.
Rainbow had long realised that it was only a fantasy of surrender. When the ground drew close, she knew it was hard and unforgiving by nature, and swiftly pulled up to save herself from a painful landing. Still, it was the illusion of falling that Rainbow held dear, the fact that she could fall, twice as easily as she could rise.
Work had been stupid and dull. Five days of running practice drills with new recruits all the way in Baltimare's division was in no way Rainbow's idea of a fun work trip, but according to Spitfire someone had to do it, and by 'someone' she had clearly meant the newbie.
Rainbow almost shuddered as the word crossed her mind. A year she had been a Wonderbolt now, and still she was the newbie. Rainbow was pretty sure that there had even been other new 'bolts since her promotion, but somehow the nickname—including her superiors' tendency to hand her all of the menial tasks—had stuck.
Rainbow felt a scowl crawl onto her muzzle as she flipped around, allowing the sun to cast its rays over her belly. It didn't matter if she flied rings around half of them, or if she had personally saved the lives of a few of them, she was the one who got carted off to teach amateur hotheads how to put the breaks on before they killed somepony.
Still, the accommodations hadn't been bad. That was about the only thing that Rainbow could say for the trip, the actual work had been intensely difficult. It was hardly her first time teaching, she had shown Twilight how to fly, after all, but as it turned out, instructing a dozen recruits at once was an entirely different challenge.
Rainbow Dash wasn't like Spitfire, who self-admittedly reveled in the act of teaching and instructing, breaking down and molding her recruits into something better, more efficient. Spitfire wanted her recruits to be the best they could possibly be, Rainbow just wanted to get her job done. Demonstration was easy, but one on one explanations with each recruit while simultaneously assuring that nopony was messing up while her back was turned? Rainbow could have turned to drink by the end of the third day, and she wasn't sure anypony would blame her.
That was over now, though. She sought to remind herself that despite the setbacks, she had eventually seen results from every recruit, and was dismissed by the Baltimare captain with a smile and a tidy little bonus. With the bits that she had saved from flying to Baltimare and back, this week had turned into a nice little earner.
Not that she ever spent bits on anything, really. Rainbow could feel the weight of her saddlebags behind her, and attributed over half of it to a pile of golden coins, wrapped and strung in a neat little purse. It was fair to assume that they would be deposited and forgotten, just like the remaining quarter of every payslip she had received in the last year.
Then again, maybe she could buy herself a nice dress, or something. Rainbow smiled at that idea, she deserved a treat after all of her hard work, and it was about time she indulged herself a little. The problem was finding a designer in Equestria that didn't personally know Rarity, it seemed they all did. Rainbow was sure that they were conspiring against her, congregating and discussing her for the sole purpose of making her feel awkward.
"Stupid fashion ponies," Rainbow grumbled to herself as she watched the hills slowly roll over in the distant horizon, a verdant landscape germinating before her eyes as the old one was washed away. "Can't even pick up a freakin' Cosmaponitan without Rarity jumping out of the woodworks." That said, it didn't have any baring on her monthly subscription; Rarity didn't know everypony.
Flying was a chance to think, to unwind. The sky was Rainbow Dash's default domain, and over the years she had probably spent twice as much time in the air than out of it, maybe more. It was strange to think that she felt most at peace even as her muscles began to burn from the stress of keeping aloft for hours, her limbs yearning to make contact with some surface, lest they go numb. Perhaps it was her position as an athlete, or it could simply be her pegasus nature.
Rainbow began to chuckle, a soft and charming sound for all of its harshness, resplendent against the relative silence of the countryside morning. She had realised what she was doing, considering why it was that she considered things in the place that she did, and the answer seemed painfully obvious: She liked to fly.
Satisfied that she had found the solution to the day's great mystery, she pressed on, gaining absolutely nothing in speed. Ponyville to Canterlot? That was a breeze, full speed and she could be there before anypony had even asked. Baltimare to Ponyville? That's an endurance flight, going full speed would only be an unnecessary strain on her.
Besides, when she got home, she knew she would be liable to collapse at any point. No point in tiring herself further, she actually wanted to enjoy the few days off she had, not sleep through them all because she'd decided to spend her last drop of energy on blasting her way home. She missed Ponyville, she missed her bed, she missed her Tank, but she could wait a little longer to see them if it meant actually getting to appreciate them properly.
There was an aching sensation to her wings, Rainbow Dash had a loving relationship with it. They told her she needed a break because they cared for her, yet she continued to defy them and push the limits, and they had only ever became stronger for it. Pushing through the pain was synonymous with Rainbow's lifestyle, and only made her rest more desirable, and gratifying once she received it.
Minutes trickled by with the shifting of the land beneath her, she passed over a small village, knowing from the familiar sight that she was almost home. Her eyes lingered on the earth pony architecture, strikingly similar to the buildings that made up Ponyville, and for a brief second she entertained the notion that she could have moved there, rather than where she was now, all those years ago when she left Cloudsdale.
How much would have changed? She would never have been an Element of Harmony, that much was almost definite. Would she still have friends like the ones she did now? Would she still be a Wonderbolt? The questions that her mind brought forth were interesting to ponder, but she dismissed them quickly, knowing that the answers were as inconsequential as they were unfathomable. She had moved to Ponyville, and all that had happened was a direct result of that. She couldn't have been happier with her choice.
Pegasus navigation was a funny thing. A common misconception regarding pegasi was that their magic was limited to flight, cloud walking, and the workings of clouds. In actuality, pegasi possessed an ability that even unicorns were unable to emulate, and that was a keen sense of just where everything they might have needed to find was. Rainbow begrudged that it didn't work for smaller things, like keys or the Wonderbolts pin that she had misplaced in Baltimare and now needed to replace, but it did work for landmarks and structures.
Finding north was as easy as facing it, remembering the structure of a landscape was like looking at a personalised map on the back of her eyelids. As such, Rainbow was able to find her way around very easily, and along with her keen eyesight, her sense of direction helped her to arrive at her destination swiftly and without fault.
It was for that reason that Rainbow Dash paused around a two minute flight from Ponyville, squinting into the distance with a queer look about her.
That can't be right.
Slowly, cautiously, Rainbow began to inch closer, grounding herself in her surroundings, looking about to find everything precisely where it should have been, from the buildings below to the hills and mountains in the distance, the ravine running beneath her and Canterlot in the far distance. Everything except for her house.
Shaking her head, Rainbow closed her eyes, allowing a mental picture to supplement her obviously faulty senses. In her mind's eye she saw the exact same thing, with the obvious and clear addition of her home, precisely where it should have been. Even so, she opened her eyes to find that the space before her was unquestionably blank.
She narrowed her eyes, allowing them to narrow on the space in the sky. There was a large concentration of wisps, as if a huge cumulonimbus had been kicked apart and left to slowly dissipate. Horror stories of cloud homes floating away dancing to the forefront of her thoughts, Rainbow Dash sped forwards without thought or consideration of her wings' noncompliance.
It hurt to fly so quickly after going for so long, but she didn't care. Something was wrong, and she had to see what was going on. Within moments she had arrived at her destination; the sight seemed to confirm her worst suspicions, and she hovered in place with a face of disbelief, despair slowly beginning to be etched across her features as she considered the possibilities, the ramifications.
Rainbow briefly wondered if she had managed to confuse herself, if the lack of sleep and the long flight had somehow addled her senses, and she was in fact on the wrong side of Ponyville. A short search of the hills below revealed that she wasn't mistaken, for her letterbox sat there clear as day. There was something else too. The ground had been ripped up in places. It wasn't so bad where she first noticed it, but the ground's scars became more and more prominent the further she looked away from town.
The jutting slabs of earth cut straight through the path of her home, or rather, what was left of it.
Floating in the air, a rainbow poured into a large crater below, though rather than being attached to a full structure, it was affixed to a sole remaining fragment, maybe a sixth of the home it had once been. The remainder either floated away or simply seemed to have been erased from existence.
The whole thing was almost too surreal for Rainbow to comprehend, but the implications set in immediately. Her home, it was gone. It was gone and it wasn't coming back. It had been destroyed, totally and completely. Barely a trace of its presence remained.
Rainbow considered herself to be a strong mare. Strong mares were Wonderbolts, strong mares were Elements of Harmony, and saviours of Equestria, and all around badasses. Strong mares also knew when to cry.
Rainbow Dash shivered in solitude. She had nopony to share her confusion and woe with in that moment, to communicate her sheer emotion to. Her mouth flapped open as shut as she tried to comprehend the situation, trying to find the words to affirm the situation to herself, to assure that what she was seeing was in fact actuality, and not a mistake.
Deep down, she knew that she didn't need to. It was all there right in front of her, or rather, it wasn't. There was nothing there for her now, and her soft, wailing serenade was the only thing to mourn that fact. It wasn't as if anyone else would care, she was the only one that lived there, after all.
...Tank.
Rainbow Dash shook off her tears like the light distraction they were, thundering towards the remnants of her home at full speed. "Tank!" she felt the screech from her muzzle, rather than hearing it. It was a strangled thing buzzing against her throat, and yet it wasn't loud enough. She repeated his name as she reached the only two surviving rooms, screaming and bellowing it as she rushed through but to no avail—there was nothing left.
Rainbow resisted the urge to break down in tears again, there had to be an explanation. There had to be. If there wasn't, what was there? Calm down, think objectively. Wiping the freshly forming tears from her eyes, she traced the ground to find that the cracks in the ground grew increasingly widespread the further they went. Jumping up, she concluded to follow them, flying for a straight minute in their direction before discovering that they inexplicably ended about a minute's walk from the Everfree. A few trees had been torn up, somehow.
The direction of the rampage was erratic. Rainbow's instinct and geographical knowledge suggested to her that some kind of twister was responsible, but with all of the creatures, villains, and magical powers she had witnessed in the last few years, she knew that literally anything was possible. Maybe it was none of those things. Maybe the heavens had just taken a disliking to her and decided to take away everything she owned as recompense.
Whatever the reason, it was terrible and unfair, it was heart wrenching and scary. Rainbow had no clue what to do, what she could do, but she decided that the most productive first step was finding answers, that and making sure that Tank was okay. He hadn't been in the house or the surroundings, but neither had his—
Rainbow didn't finish that thought, she couldn't. Speeding away, she angled her way to Twilight's castle, leaving a small tuft of cloud and a promptly extinguishing rainbow in her wake.
Rainbow Dash felt her eyebrows tightening in place as she stared at Twilight, her chest still heaving from the impossibly fast flight, her wings drooped and stiff. "You're absolutely sure?"
Twilight nodded for the fifth time, her muzzle twisted in confusion. "Yes Rainbow, I'm completely and utterly sure. Fluttershy had Tank all day, there's no chance he isn't still with her. What's this about?"
Rainbow exhaled a breath of relief, at least Tank was okay. Following her discovery, she had sped straight to Twilight, completely forgetting that Fluttershy had a spare key, and that she often took Tank for a few days when Rainbow was out of town. "It's my house, it's..." Rainbow cut herself off, her voice was still shaky. In her worry for Tank, she had almost forgotten what had happened, the state of her home, its walls and furnishings diminished and gone, her possessions all lost.
Twilight took a cautious step towards her, but it only caused Rainbow to back away. "Rainbow Dash, what happened?"
"I... I don't know." Rainbow's eyes widened as she looked at Twilight, her lip quivering, "I came home from training in Baltimare this afternoon, right? I had a real long weekend, and I was looking forward to..." she choked back a heavy sob, "to relaxing. And then I came home, and, and... It was gone, Twi." Her voice dropped to a muted whisper as she gestured out of the window, back to where her home should have been. "All of it, gone."
Twilight became alarmed, her lips parting and brows raising as she took in Rainbow's words. "How can it be gone? That doesn't make sense. Cloud homes don't just up and vanish, Rainbow."
Rainbow could see how skeptical Twilight appeared to be, but she didn't have time for her to second guess her account. "I'm telling you, Twilight, it's freakin' scary. I came back and there's like a sixth of the place left, all of the ground had been ripped up around it like a tornado or something sliced through, it looked like a war zone or something."
Maybe it was the scarcely heard seriousness in Rainbow's voice that led Twilight to drop her quizzical expression, but it quickly appeared to be replaced by a spark of realisation, characterised by a small blink. "Hold on, Rainbow. You said that the ground looked like it had been cut up by a tornado?"
Rainbow had to take her attention away from actively attempting not to shiver in order to manage a short nod. The surreality of the situation was quickly beginning to be superseded by an insidious dread, clawing at her consciousness as it endeavoured to take control of her. Her body ached, but that didn't impede her mind, which constantly rushed from one possibility to the next. In the few short seconds she had spent not worrying for Tank's life, she managed to outline a million different ways her life had effectively been ended.
Twilight's face had become extremely grave, her jaw was so tense it looked as if it was about to snap in two. "The Ponyville weather team came to see me two days ago, they wanted to create a class one hurricane on the outskirts of Ponyville in order to shift away dead foliage and other debris." Twilight cocked her head, her brow furrowed as she nervously tapped a hoof against the floor. "But surely there's no way a localised hurricane of that magnitude could cause that much damage to a cloud home? Why would it even have gone near it?"
Rainbow's mind was currently going into overdrive. What had she lost? How much was there in her home that she would never see again? Twilight's question helped to pull her back to the present situation, and she felt her teeth grinding as she began to comprehend the possibilities. "Y-you're telling me that the weather team might have just destroyed everything I own with an errant hurricane?" A moment, and it began to feel even more ludicrous. "A hurricane they created just so they could clear away dead plants?"
Twilight drew closer, though she barely saw it in her peripherals, given that she had taken to staring at the floor. Rainbow's back was tremulous—she seethed with anger and upset. Twilight began to rub her withers, but it did absolutely nothing to calm her. "Rainbow Dash, I'm sorry," her cadence was soft and true, her voice outlined her empathy, "I'm truly sorry. I feel like this is my fault for letting them go ahead, I shouldn't have let it happen..."
Rainbow twitched violently, frightening Twilight's hoof away. "How were you to know?! You're not an expert on weather practice, and nopony should expect you to be. It's them..." When she looked up, her eyes expressed a pure and unholy rage, "It's those asshole weather fliers that are too lazy and incompetent to do a proper job! Talk about cutting corners... Whose bright idea was it to create a freakin' hurricane just to shift a few fucking shrubs?!"
"...I don't know, Rainbow Dash, I really don't." Twilight shook her head, backing up a few inches and looking her dead in the eyes, "I know how hard it is though. I lost a home once too, remember? It's difficult letting go of that, terribly so."
"Yeah," Rainbow scoffed, throwing her eyes, "Not like you didn't have a castle waiting for you."
Twilight's face hardened, as did her tone. "Come on, Rainbow, you know I still lost everything. I had things from my childhood in there, signed first editions that I'll never see again, and then there were all the memories you, me, and the girls shared in Golden Oaks. It was more than just a home."
"And you don't think I feel the same way about my place?" Rainbow shot back, her wings flaring, "Ever since I left Cloudsdale I've called that place home, and now I have what?" Apparently, Twilight didn't realise that that question wasn't rhetorical. Rainbow shook away a sniffle. She held Twilight with a hoof, imploring her to respond. "What do I have, Twilight?"
"You have..." Twilight grasped Rainbow's hoof with her own, slowly setting it down and casting a soft gaze over her. "You have me and the girls, and you have Ponyville."
For a long time, Rainbow Dash said nothing. She just stood there, her hoof feeling alien against the floor. That brief contact with Twilight had been her security. She felt as if she could barely stand, but knew that if she sat she would only become more anxious, more restless. Everything was gone, but she still had her friends. "...I know, Twilight." she nodded, more to herself than anypony else. "I know. It's just a bit of a shock, you know? My entire adult life I've lived there, I thought I was gonna grow old and retire in that place, or something boring like that..." When Rainbow looked at her again, her eyes communicated her utter exhaustion. "I wanted something boring like that, Twilight, and now I can't have it."
Sometimes, when you don't know what to say in order to make a situation better, or if you even can make it better, it can be best to say nothing. Clearly, Twilight understood that, as instead of offering a verbal response, she chose to step forwards once more. This time Rainbow was calm and demure, barely moving besides the rapid fluttering of her chest as she desperately attempted to control her breathing. Twilight unfurled a wing, wrapping it over her and sharing her warmth.
Rainbow briefly nuzzled into her friend, guiltily conscious that she was wiping fresh tears on her coat. She was immensely grateful when Twilight didn't comment on it. "I had plans for that place, you know?" It wasn't even relevant, and she knew it, but she felt as if she had to say it. It was that or taking a deep breath, and she didn't feel ready to breathe yet. "I was gonna buy more furniture for it, get a little bit of it decommissioned, cause it was always too big for me, decorate it and install a lift or something so I could have Scootaloo around without magic. She'll get too big to lift eventually... I was gonna make a room for Tank, and he could fly around with his little helicopter thing or play in a little thing I built for him."
Rainbow turned to face Twilight, her eyes glossy, her voice trembling. "You know what I mean, Twilight? I was gonna build Tank a thing to play in... A thing. And now I don't get to do that, and he doesn't get to play in it," a loud sniffle, "And Tank doesn't get to have his thing..." Rainbow buried her face in Twilight's side, expelling fresh tears.
"I know, Rainbow, I know," Twilight hummed, gently stroking her mane as she wept. "We'll still build Tank a thing, I promise."
Rainbow realised how ridiculous she must have sounded as soon as she heard that. She broke away, hiding her face as she tried to collect herself, failing once, and trying again until she had managed to put on some semblance of stolidity. "I know we will, but it won't be in our home, Twi. I think that's another thing that's really getting to me, it was our home, not just mine. I know I'm being silly, but it really hurts."
"You're not being silly," Twilight assured her, wiping her eyes and giving her a light squeeze, "You've had a really stressful day, I know that. You can stay here for as long as you like, and I'll see about getting a temporary place set up for you while we contact the cloudstone architects. Does that sound good, Rainbow?"
Rainbow Dash only nodded, her cheek brushing against Twilight's side. "Can I see Tank soon?"
"Of course you can, Rainbow," Twilight said, "I'm going to send some ponies round to your place to see what they can find of yours, okay?"
For the first time since her arrival, Rainbow's voice was completely level. "There's no point, Twilight. There's nothing left, I saw that much."
Twilight didn't question her. For the first time, Rainbow was beginning to accept the gravity of what had happened. It didn't matter how it had happened, or even why. What mattered was that it had happened, and no amount of pondering or wishful thinking was going to do anything to change that. Right then, she needed a long rest, a shower, something to eat, and to see her Tank.
"Say, Twilight? When you lost the library, what brought you closure?"
Twilight sounded as if she had an answer on the tip of her tongue, but she faltered and hesitated at the hint of an utterance. Eventually, she managed to speak her mind. "Having a part of it in the castle made things a lot better for me, honestly."
"...You can send someone over. Let them grab whatever they can."
Twilight said nothing, but Rainbow knew that she had heard her. Through all of this, maybe having a bit of the place to hold on to would make the transition that little bit easier. Maybe it wouldn't, but she could at least try and convince herself that it would.
It had to at least help, right?
