Chapters Author's Note
This story idea died a while ago, BUT I was able to stretch the chapter to where i could release the first half. It would be great if you could give feedback on my style and such so I know how to improve as I finish the second half.
P.S I had accidently hit publish way before I submitted the story, so it shows the date the chapter was more or less done. This chapter was published on March 17, 2019.
Gotta Go Fast(er)
Students bustled about the hallways of the School of Friendship, the last class having ended mere seconds ago. Doors opened and closed all over the place, and the ground shook slightly from the sheer number of hooves, paws, and claws that carried their owners from room to room. Every now and then a book would drop, some papers would scatter, even a whole body would fall before someone near helped them back up.
One particular set of cyan hooves exited a classroom then vanished as its owner opened her wings and took to the air to avoid the crowd. The cyan, rainbow maned pegasus flew through the maze of hallways, swiftly avoiding any aerial traffic with a turn of the wing and a quick apology, until she eventually made it to the school's open front doors.
Once again, zero crashes! And in only twelve and a half seconds! One day... Although she never mentioned it to anypony else, Rainbow Dash was pretty proud of her ability to navigate her way through the school's crowded hallways in record time without smashing into another creature.
Rainbow pumped a hoof in the air in light of her little achievement and headed out to Ponyville to find something for lunch. Preferably a hayburger. With extra fries.
During the week, every day started the same. Her alarm air horn would blare about a half hour following the sunrise, prompting Rainbow to stick a hoof out from under the blanket and smash the offending item to pieces. Then she would fall back asleep and stay under for a good hour until Celestia's sun was in the right angle to shine straight through her window and bathe her entire bed in light. Once awake, she would proceed to have a panic attack and rush through her morning routine: shower, breakfast, feed Tank, turn room upside down looking for the day's lecture book, speed to Twilight's castle to drop the smashed alarm clock at Starlight's room for her to fix, then fly straight to the school and through the open window of her classroom seconds before her first students trotted on in. Five minutes after that class ended another group of students would enter for the exact same course, and Rainbow would more or less just repeat everything she had just said and done earlier.
Once that class was finished, Rainbow would race through the student-filled hallways from her classroom door to the school's main doors, timing herself in an attempt to get it done in ten seconds flat. She would then fly out to Ponyville to grab lunch, then fly to Starlight's room to pick up her now magically repaired alarm clock to bring back to her cloud house. From there, the rest of the day was hers. She would sometimes practice some new flight trick, spy on her own fanclub, bust clouds for the fun and nostalgia, screw with other ponies with said clouds, read some Daring Do, hang out with her friends if something was planned, nap in most cases, or something else entirely.
Today was slightly different however. As Rainbow started to leave the school, a flash of purple light near the castle caught her eye. Narrowing her eyes, Rainbow saw that it was just Twilight. She was wearing a saddlebag with a single, thick textbook and was levitating an open notebook in front of her. After thinking over it for a second, Rainbow decided to fly over to her.
"Hey Twilight!" Twilight's ears perked at her friend's voice, and she paused right in front of her castle's open doors. She closed her notebook and placed it back in her saddlebag. She turned around and waved a hoof at the rainbow trail headed in her direction.
Rainbow glided down and landed next to Twilight, folding her wings to her side as she did. The two of them continued into the castle. "I thought you usually have a class to teach at this time."
Twilight's horn lit up and the doors were surrounded in a warm, magenta glow before quickly closing. "I do, but Starlight offered to teach it for me today. She hasn't had anypony come in for counseling all week, and when she learned what my noontime class was about, she asked if she could take my spot for the day."
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "Starlight wanted to teach about Equestrian history?"
Twilight looked at Rainbow in confusion before the realization hit her. "Ohhh, no no no. While I do teach several history classes in the morning, I teach two different classes at noon and later in the afternoon."
"Wait, you don't just teach one subject?" Rainbow put a hoof to her chin in thought. "I thought you decided to teach history class, since you wanted to make sure all creatures would be able to attend."
"No, that's correct." Twilight floated her notebook back out and opened it to a bookmarked page. On the bottom read the current date, and graphed out in cells were what looked like a color-coded schedule. "But just because I teach a history class doesn't mean I can't teach magic or advanced multivariable calcu-"
"Woah woah woah, you teach magic classes now?!" Rainbow struggled to remember the day of the school's opening, when the six of them, Starlight, and Spike were deciding how to divide up responsibilities. "I thought we were all just teaching classes in our corresponding element!"
Twilight nodded her head. "Yes, that's what we all agreed on the first day. But after our little 'fallout' with the EEA, I realized that because our school no longer adhered to EEA guidelines, each of us could start teaching multiple subjects if we wanted to. For example, while Applejack is our school's Honesty teacher, she also holds a few classes in farming and agriculture. Rarity also teaches a class in the history of fashion in addition to her normal Generosity lectures." With each example, Twilight flipped to another page bookmarked with the cutie mark of said pony. "Fluttershy gives Kindness lectures along with basic biology, and I teach history, magic, and advanced math. And Pinkie... " Twilight looked away in thought for a second. "I think Pinkie holds classes in every subject."
Rainbow spent around ten seconds absorbing it all before shaking her head. "But since when could we teach different classes?! I've been wanting to teach a class about super awesome flight tricks, but I thought it wouldn't be cool that you need to fly to really gain from it."
Twilight rolled her eyes and gave a light chuckle. "Well, I thought you would have remembered the meeting I held the following week after established our cessation from the EEA's policies. But now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure you nodded off half-way through." The textbook floated out of Twilight's saddlebag in front of her, and the notebook closed and took its place in it.
"While magic is indeed a subject typically reserved for unicorns, my textbook also teaches about the application of magic in pegasi, earth ponies, and other creatures." Twilight turned the textbook to a chapter that discussed just that. "Even non-unicorns can be eager to learn about the complexity of spells, just like how in the human world, there's nothing wrong with a computer science major taking a course in ancient mythology. Sometimes, I even see Pinkie attending my magic classes. I thought of asking her about it, but for my own good I decided against it. However, I don't see anything wrong with you teaching a class in a subject you hold passion in, even if mainly pegasi can attend."
Twilight closed the textbook and floated it back into her saddlebag before turning an excited Rainbow Dash. "As for my magic class, I had already told my students yesterday that today I would be demonstrating more advanced magic spells for those interested in learning more. Of course, I intended on doing the demonstration myself, but when Starlight came up to me practically begging to let her substitute for me, I figured it would be a good opportunity for her to connect more with the students. Besides, she's more than suited for doing demonstrations in magic. Remember the day she... um... " Twilight bit her lip and looked away sheepishly. "... accidently brainwashed the five of you?"
Rainbow folded her hooves to her chest and grumbled under her breath. "Yeah, I don't know if I can call that an accident, but-"
Twilight cut her off. "Well earlier that day, I held a short magic lesson with her just to try to see how her magic capabilities stand in comparison to my own, and I have to say I was very impressed by what she could do. She had more or less the same level of mastery over transformative magic as I did, could track and follow the leylines of my teleportation spell with less than a second of delay, and knew how to create different forms of magic shields to adapt against varying magic blasts! If I has faced off against her when I was still a unicorn, she would have wiped the floor with me! I don't think even Trixie when she had the Alicorn Amulet would have stood much of a chance against her."
Rainbow gawked at what her friend had just told her. "So how come you couldn't beat her in the past when I was doing my sonic rainboom? I thought as an alicorn, you have way more magic potential than-"
"If Starlight and I went head to head using nothing but single, concentrated beams of magic, I probably would have overwhelmed her eventually, but even now I'm not sure, and I don't to put either of us in danger just to find out. Spell casting seems to come so naturally to her, she can figure out how to weave together multiple complex spells as if she were throwing them into a bowl and baking them into a cake. On that one day I mentioned earlier, she was showing me how she was able combine a very old illusion spell, Simulo Duplexis , with a more recent spell, Accelero -"
"Wait did I hear that right? Accelero ? Is that a speed spell or something? "
Twilight blinked, thrown off a little her friend's sudden interruption. "Yes, that's right. I'm surprised you know about it. Anyway, she was able to simultaneously maintain a combination of the two to make what looked like another... her. Illusion spells only create a light projection, and attempting to touch one will dispel it since there's nothing actually there. Somehow Starlight used Accelero to oscillate between two illusions of herself to make them more tangible, thus creating a..."
Twilight continued to eagerly ramble on, unaware that her words were falling on deaf ears. A single thought echoed throughout Rainbow's mind, pushing out all concepts of rationale and caution.
Accelero = accelerate Accelerate = increase in speed Increase in speed = get faster Get faster = GOTTA GO FAST!!!!
Rainbow slowly began to inch backwards towards the door. "Well, nice talking to you Twilight but I really have to go fast- I mean FINISH! Something... else..."
Twilight turned back to her friend in concern, who had just begun to open the crystal doors. "Rainbow, are you alright? You know if there's something bothering you, you can always te-"
"Anywayigottagonowgreattalktwilightseeyoutomorrow!"
With that Rainbow opened her wings and shot straight through the open doorway into the clear, blue sky, leaving behind a very confused purple alicorn.
"Ahh well that went way better than I expected."
The hallways of the School were once again filled with students, the air filled with excited chatter about pretty much any subject you could think of. Among these students was a lilac colored unicorn who wore an expression of both exhaustion and satisfaction. After exiting her classroom she waited patiently until an opening appeared in the flood of students, then deftly jumped in and followed the flow of traffic to her office.
Of course I was glad enough to be able to show off to the students a few complex spells, especially a few I wrote hoof first. I didn't realize how excited some of them were for practicing advanced magic, even if their special talent didn't have anything to do with it.
Upon reaching the office donning the name 'Guidance Counselor', Starlight Glimmer magically opened the door and trotted on in, closing the door behind her and switching her 'Available' sign to the green side. I'll have to talk to Twilight later about maybe teaching my own class in magic.
Starlight began to trot to her desk when a thought crossed her mind. Now that I think about it, I'm a little surprised that there was a Pegasus filly attending the demo. Not only that, but she was paying WAY more attention than any of the other students, and looked way more serious than her usual self...
"What if..." Starlight pondered over a specific thought for a good minute before dismissing it altogether. She trotted over to her chair and reclined it all the way back before laying down it. She closed her eyes and took a calm breath. "Nah, you're just being paranoid Starlight. Let's just resolve some students' existential crisis, take a long nap, then-"
"THEN PRACTICE SOME SPELLS?!"
Starlight's eyes snapped open and she was greeted to the sight of a specific rainbow-maned pegasus hovering upside-down inches away from her face.
"AHH!" Starlight shrieked in surprise, her horn flaring with bright teal light before unleashing a beam of magic upwards at the supposed intruder.
"Woah!" CRASH!
Luckily for Rainbow, her quick reflexes allowed her to narrowly steer clear of the blast moments before it would have scorched her. The beam travelled through the newly vacated spot and slammed into the ceiling, where it reduced a considerable portion into a cloud of dust and debris. Moments later, a couple of ponies peered through the hole with shocked looks, curious as to what it was that had almost put them in a hospital.
"Sorry, my fault! Totally my fault!" Starlight coughed from the dust cloud after apologizing to the pair of ponies. After shaking her head to clear her mind, she closed her eyes and called upon a new spell she had recently mastered. Her horn glowed with a teal light even brighter than before, forcing Rainbow to bring a hoof up to her eyes to shield them.
A magic bubble enveloped the pair, and Rainbow felt an unknown force lift her and Starlight off the ground. A faint ticking sound echoed through the air surrounding them. Rainbow looked around and noticed the settling dust cloud begin to rise in the air once more. Pieces of debris jerked about on the ground before rising with the cloud towards the hole in the ceiling. Rainbow squinted her eyes as she watched everything unfold from inside Starlight's shield, and her jaw fell when she noticed the hands on the wall clock were moving backwards. Gradually, the dust and debris concentred around the hole until they reformed into the destroyed chunk of ceiling like nothing happened.
After about ten seconds the magic bubble burst, and the two ponies landed on their hooves back on solid ground. Starlight glanced at the ceiling and, upon seeing the lack of giant holes in it, briefly sighed in relief before turning on her friend in agitation. "We both know whose fault that was. Ugh what the hay, Rainbow?! I thought I told you not to pull one on me like that again! That's the second time I've had to fix the ceiling this week!"
Rainbow gave Starlight a confused look. " Uhhh what are you talking about? That's the first time I've ever caught you off guard. "
"Really?" Starlight looked up and furrowed her eyebrows in contemplation as she quietly counted something off to herself. "Oh, that must have been Pinkie Pie then. She catches me off guard on a near daily basis." She paused. "Well now you know. Please don't try to catch me off guard like that again, at least not while we're indoors or surrounded by anypony. So what do you need?"
Rainbow's jaw was still down.
Starlight her eyes before reaching a hoof up and closing it for her. Only then did Rainbow regain her train of thought. "You can do time magic just like that now?! I thought Twilight said you needed some sort of scroll to do anything as complicated as that! Even you needed one when you um... messed with the map... no offense."
Starlight rolled her eyes and shook her head before chuckling lightly to herself. "Rainbow, that's got to be at least a year ago, that's more than enough time for me to improve my magic! Besides, that spell wasn't as complex as the one Starswirl wrote. It just undoes the last minute or less, not enough to risk creating insane, apocalyptic timelines, but perfect for fixing all kinds of mistakes." Starlight raised an eyebrow. "So why did you want to talk again? "
Rainbow stared at Starlight for another few seconds before remembering what she was doing there. "Oh, right yeah! So I was talking with Twilight about an hour ago and she told me that you can do all kinds of spells."
Starlight's expression brightened a little. "She did? Well, I mean I DID study under wing for a while after she reopened me to friendship, and her castle library is filled with so many spell books. I don't always go out of my way to learn every spell that exists, but if I'm bored and there are these spells I've never heard of just sitting there right in front of me, I'll go for it! I mean, do you have any idea how old some of the spells in those books are? Some aren't even taught at Celestia's own prestigious school, like Visionem Sanorum , Simulo Duplexis, or-"
"Or Accelero?" Rainbow cut off Starlight's rant, much to her chagrin.
"Well, yes Accelero was one of the spells I learned from Twilight's library, but it's not really that old of a spell. It was invented by some unicorn named Berry Halen, but he disappeared before they could-"
"Is it a speed spell?"
"That's a bit of an understatement, but I guess you can call it that."
"Great! Can you cast it on me?"
Starlight eyes widened and she backpedalled a few steps. "Woah, Rainbow slow down! First of all, why do you need it? Aren't you, um, fast enough already-"
Starlight's words caught in her mouth as Rainbow quickly covered the distance between them and got right in her face. "There is no fast enough. " After a second, Rainbow chuckled to herself and backed out of Starlight's personal bubble. "Hehe, sorry about that."
Starlight blinked in surprise and decided to forget what had just happened. "And secondly, the spell is meant to work only on the pony who casts it. The experience is... weird. It's not a time spell, so if I cast it on myself for five seconds, it still seems like five seconds to me. The difference is that the spell also accelerates the speed of the mind, so it can keep up with my body. Otherwise I'll just crash into a wall everytime I move." Starlight looked back to Rainbow and cocked her head. "You still haven't answered my first question. Why do you need something like a speed spell?"
Rainbow looked away in embarrassment. "It's just... something I've always been curious about. Ever since I first saw Twilight trying it out, I've always wondered what would happen if it was cast on somepony like me, you know? She used it to get her errands done faster until she figured out how to teleport without trouble. I kept asking her if I could, you know... have a go, but she claimed it would be way too dangerous. According to her, my sonic rainbooms might be possible because I just have more... pegasus magic in me."
Starlight nodded. "I guess that makes sense, she told me once that creatures born with abnormally high amounts of magic should be capable of things usually deemed impossible, like how Rockhoof transformed without any known cause." Her eyes widened. "Do you think Twilight believes you were born with more pegasus magic than normal, and that trying to cast a highly complex spell matrix on you could react unpredictably with inherent magic?"
All Rainbow could do was just shrug."I don't know, she never said it but... I guess that's what it is."
Starlight stood in contemplation for a while before trotting over to her door and magically switching the sign on the window to "Unavailable". After checking through the window to make sure nopony was planning on entering, she turned back to Rainbow. "Okay, you have my curious now as well. But if we're going to do this, it's best not to do it at the school, especially with so many students still here."
Her horn began to glow with a teal aura and before Rainbow could blink, her world dissolved in a flash of teal light.
"Sister, are you alright?"
Celestia shook herself out of the trance and glanced to at her lunar counterpart, who gazed concerningly at her from her throne seat. "Um, yes I'm fine Luna, just..."
A warm, yellow glow enveloped her horn. Luna and the few guards in the throne with them noticed their surroundings beginning to take on a faint yellow hue. Upon glancing outside, Luna noticed that a large, golden shield bubble now stood around the entire castle. Luna spoke back to her sister, alarm slightly evident in her tone. "Sister, what is the meaning o-"
"Nothing you need to worry about, sister." Celestia smiled like absolutely nothing was wrong. "Just a feeling."
POP!
Starlight's room at the castle was momentarily bathed in the bright, lilac light of the teleportation spell before she and Rainbow appeared from within.
*cough cough* "Remind me next time before you do that, Starlight." *wheeeeze*
Starlight stared in bemusement at the coughing pegasus on her floor. A faint grin appeared on her face. "I wonder where I've heard that before. "
Ignoring the comment, Rainbow quickly got back up and brushed herself off with a wing. She realized she had never actually seen Starlight's room before and took a look around. It didn't look to different from the castle's other rooms, save for a few kites and framed pictures on the walls. She gazed concerningly at the frame with the "no equality" symbol for an extra second before moving on. Her attention was then drawn to Starlight's writing desk, where a completely intact air horn alarm clock stood. She grinned sheepishly while rubbing the back of her neck. "Hey, um thanks for fixing my alarm clock again."
Starlight waved off the compliment. "Oh, it's nothing. It does help having something to practice my magic on every morning. Think of it like a ..." Starlight searched for the right word. "...a warmup!"
Rainbow made a mental note to herself to bring the alarm clock back home once she was done. "So, why are we at the castle? Are we going to test it here? "
Starlight's eyes bugged out of their sockets as she mentally played out what might happen if she did just that. "Nononono no!" Starlight flailed her hooves frantically at Rainbow to emphasize her meaning. "These walls may be made of crystal, but they're definitely far from unbreakable. I don't want Twilight yelling at me again..."
"Sorry! I was just- ... wait, again?"
"Never mind that." Starlight quickly put the conversation back on track before some embarrassing things were revealed. "And no, we're not doing this near any buildings of any kind, just to be safe. I'm just picking up something that will help me with this. "
With that, Starlight turned on her hooves and trotted over to her bed. Her horn lit up, and a small crystal box floated out from under the mattress. Ugh, Pinkie was right, a closet would be really helpful...
"What's that?"
"This is a Hearth's Warming gift from Sunburst last year." The crystal lid separated from the box and out floated a necklace of sorts. It was made of a string of extremely fine metal loops, which was connected to itself by a large, teal gemstone. Though Rainbow waved it off as a reflection, she could have sworn she saw a faint glow coming from the stone while it was in the box. "This gemstone is a very rare type of crystal that's only found in the Crystal Empire. It has the ability to store almost any spell and casts it as its wearer desires it to be. Over a thousand years ago, the unicorn tribe used these stones to give crop growth and food preservation spells to the pegasi and earth pony tribes. They would also use them to store heat spells during the summer, so during the winter they wouldn't exhaust their magic reserves just trying to stay warm."
Rainbow tried her best to stifle her need to yawn."Yeah that's pretty cool. How will it help us again? "
"Well, the speed spell was designed to affect the caster only. When I showed it to Twilight, I didn't specify myself as the target since it automatically targets the caster, and to change it so it affects somepony else would require me to start from scratch. So, I found a way to 'trick' the spell." Starlight lowered her horn to the gemstone and closed her eyes. For a few seconds, the teal light around the gem brightened somewhat before turning white and dimming back down. After she opened her eyes, Starlight inspected the necklace one last time before nodding and floating it over to Rainbow. "Here, put this on. I need to make sure it still works."
Rainbow swiped the item out of the air with a hoof and used her wings to clip it around her neck. Not a second later, Starlight lit her horn again and closed the curtains on all the windows, bathing the room in darkness.
"Hey! Turn the lights back on! I can't... woah."
Not a moment after the word 'lights' left her mouth, the gemstone on Rainbow's neck began emitting a soft, white glow just bright enough to reveal everything around her, but not too bright so it didn't hurt her eyes. Starlight watched her friend's reaction play out from her bed, a bright smile plastered on her face. "Well, looks like it works just fine. "
"What do you mean?" Rainbow turned to face Starlight. "And how can you 'trick' a spell?"
Starlight levitated the necklace off of Rainbow, and the gemstone ceased its light. Darkness covered the room once more, only for Starlight to push all the window curtains aside and allow daylight back inside.
"Casting a spell doesn't just need magic; there's also a mental component involved. It's probably the easiest step in spellcasting. Think of it like... pressing the 'on' button on a machine. You can build it the most complicated thing in the world, but it won't do anything until something activates it. In this case, your desire to light up the room is what triggered the light spell. Since it was your thought, you technically cast the spell even though you're a Pegasus."
Rainbow gawked. "I ... cast a spell?!"
"Mhm. Because of this, I can store the speed spell in the amulet, and when you activate it, it'll be cast onto you!"
Starlight floated the necklace in front of her and once again touched her horn to the gemstone. This time, the light it released was so bright, Rainbow had to bring both her wings to her face to shield her already closed eyes. The light died down after a few seconds, and she spared a glance to see Starlight lying on the floor, panting in exhaustion. The amulet hovered in the air for a second before gently floating down to the ground next to Starlight.
"That was easy."
"What... was... THAT?!"
Rainbow's jaw fell as she gawked at the lilac unicorn groaning on the floor near her. Stars swam around the edges of her vision, and her head still throbbed slightly from the sheer brightness of the magical light show she had just witnessed. "Why was THAT one so intense while the one before was, like, practically NOTHING?!"
Starlight also shook her head a bit to clear up her sight before slowly climbing back on her hooves. "Well, Accellero isn't really the EASIEST spell to cast. It requires multiple base spells precisely interweaved together in a thaumic lattice that would..." One quick glance to her pegasus friend made it quite clear that she had absolutely no idea what she was saying.
"It's a harder spell, so I used more magic."
"Oh, gotcha."
Once her vision was clear enough, Starlight scanned the floor around her before spotting the amulet lying on the crystal floor a little off to her right. Rainbow followed her gaze to the magical gemstone and noticed that, while the glow it emitted was certainly no longer blinding, it was now bright enough to cast faint shadows across the walls. Making sure not to shake it too much, Starlight carefully levitated the amulet up to eye level and inspected it closely. She tenatatively poked it with a hoof before nodding to herself. "Yep, the spell's been integrated!"
Rainbow's face lit up with excitement. "Awesome! Let's test it out now!"
She reached out a hoof to grab at the glowing amulet, but Starlight quickly floated it back out of her reach. "OH NONOnonononono not here, DEFINITELY not here! Were you NOT listening earlier?! We have no idea how this could turn out, and we're not exactly in the..." Starlight gestured to the crystal ceiling, floor, and walls surrounding her with a hoof. "... safest place to do this right now."
Rainbow cocked a head in confusion. "I thought you didn't want to do this at the school cause it would be distracting to the students or something. Would it actually cause damage?"
"Well, I mean I'm not sure. But there are several historical records of spellcasting through magic-storing gemstones going wrong and creating massive explosions or sometimes worse!"
"Is it weird that I want to do it even more now?"
"Hmm.. a little. My point is, I just think it would be SAFEST to do this where there isn't really anything that can get destroyed."
Rainbow put a hoof to her chin as she thought over where and what the "experiment" would be exactly. Gasp "OH! I know where! Give me... TEN MINUTES!"
With that, Rainbow disappeared in a puff of dust and a trail of rainbows. Starlight blinked, the after-image of the cyan pegasus still hovering directly in her line of sight before dissipating into nothing. She trotted over to the window and pushed aside the curtain and blinds with her magic just in time to catch a glimpse of the rainbow trail speeding away from the castle entrance up into the sky. "Hmm... maybe I should... "
Starlight floated the amulet in front of her again and focused her magic into it, weaving another spell matrix underneath the speed spell. She then turned around and, upon spotting her gift box, levitated it over to her, dropped the amulet inside, and shut the lid.
"Why did I agree to do this?"
Nine minutes later...
"And you AGREED to this?!"
To Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle was one of the most amiable ponies in all of Equestria. It was she, after all, who was able to show her the error in her ways and reintroduce her to the warmth of friendship when she had turned her back on it. And it was she who led her through the fog of her mind, through which she emerged anew, as a changed pony. She may have been assigned as the guidance counselor for the School of Friendship, but if she ever had concerns or problems of her own, Twilight was always the first pony she would go to.
Well, technically the second. Trixie was the first.
But if it was magic-related or something complicated, she would always go to Twilight. And whenever she went to Twilight, she would give her the response she was looking for 99.9% of the time...
Turned out today was that 0.1%.
Starlight nearly tumbled out of her seat after hearing her former mentor's outburst from across the table. The other ponies at the [insert pony pun restaurant name here later] all turned to see what the commotion was about, and Twilight awkwardly shrank back to her seat, her wings quickly folding back to her side. "Hehe, sorry about that, just ignore us."
Once she was sure most of the attention had been diverted elsewhere, Twilight let out a sigh of relief and turned back to Starlight. "What in the name of Celestia were you THINKING?!"
Starlight rolled her eyes. "It's just a speed spell, nothing too dangerous. I showed it to you once, remember?"
Twilight released an exasperated groan and buried her face in her hooves. "Ughhhh, yes you did, but it's not exactly the spell that I'm worried about, it's the pony that will be casting it."
"Rainbow Dash? Well, that's why we're doing the experiment in the first place. She's already one of the fastest fliers in Equestria, if not the fastest, so I'm just curious on how the spell will affect her. Besides, she clearly wants to know as well."
"I understand what you're trying to say, but..." Twilight started finding a great deal of interest in a particular crack on the ground. "I'm not sure if it's a good idea to test this idea with Rainbow Dash in particular..."
Starlight raised an eyebrow. "Why not? Do you know something about her that I don't?"
"Ummm not entirely... Okay, actually I still have no idea why it happened..."
"What do you mean? Did something happen some time ago involving her and speed enhancement that I don't know about?"
Twilight bit her lip and spared a glance at everypony around her as if to check for any eavesdroppers. She then turned back to Starlight and motioned with a hoof to bring her ear closer. "There was an ... " Twilight lowered the volume of her whisper even further. "... incident a few years ago involving Rainbow Dash and an ability enhancement potion I created. It was REALLY bad, so bad that afterwards Celestia and Luna had to get involved to quickly undo the damage."
Starlight cocked her head in confusion. "Ummm, that sounds... pretty big... How come I've never heard a single pony talk about or even mention it during my time here?"
"Oh, that's simple. Celestia wiped the memories of everything that happened that day from the minds of everypony in Ponyville except for me."
Starlight reeled back in surprise, shock evident on her face. "Yikes... that bad huh?" Twilight nodded. "What exactly happened that day?"
Twilight sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof. "Well, it started one day a few months before I became an alicorn. I was conducting the experiment that would create the ability enhancement potion when Rainbow suddenly startled me, and I..."
If anypony were to casually glance up at the sky above Ponyville, they would be greeted with the sight of a mostly clear sky, save for a few tiny puffs of cloud here and there...
... and a wide, thin ring of clouds forming a little ways off from the northern edge of the Everfree forest, one last tiny cloud being pushed into its place along the side.
"Hmm, perfect! That should do it!"
Rainbow Dash shoved the last few clouds into position and drifted back a few meters to get a view of her finished product. The ring of cloud looked almost as large as the cloud track the Wonderbolts use for aerial performances in Canterlot. She glanced down at the town below her and nodded to herself. "Okay, this seems high enough. This was where I used to practice my flying routines anyways and nopony ever complained, so this definitely shouldn't bother anypony!"
Somewhere within the Everfree forest, a lone zebra stood outside a small hut, glaring menacingly at the cyan pegasus in the sky above her.
"Grrr, my sleep you like to disrupt? One day, your number will surely be up..."
After a few seconds, she grumbled to herself in annoyance and retreated back into her hut, shutting the door behind her then closing every window she could find.
Rainbow brushed her hooves off on her chest and looked back to admire her creation one last time before turning around and speeding back down to Ponyville. She felt a small spark of excitement burst within her as she felt the wind trail around her body, her wings cutting through the currents like they weren't even there. After spending so much time around the school and its students, she eventually managed to tone herself down a little so that others could have an easier time following during lectures or lessons. However, nothing would ever be able to take away her drive for breaking limits and boundaries. Her own were never such an exception.
Now I just have to find Starlight. Rainbow scanned the streets of Ponyville from above and eventually found her talking to Twilight at that one restaurant whose name always crossed her mind. They seemed to be arguing about something. She glided down and touched down right next to their table. "Hey Starlight, you ready to this?"
Twilight turned to Rainbow with a concerned look on her face. "Look Rainbow, I know how much you want to do this and all, but I feel like this is just too dangerous."
Rainbow rolled her eyes at her purple friend. "Yeah I KNOW it is! That's why I made a place where Starlight and I can test it out a safe distance from everypony else!" She pointed up to the sky with a hoof, to which Twilight and Starlight followed up to a large cloud ring a little off in the distance.
Twilight squinted a bit in an attempt to discern it from the surrounding sky. "Well, that's really thoughtful of you Rainbow, but what I meant to say is I think this experiment might be pose too many risks to YOU."
"WHAT?!"
Now it was Starlight's turn to roll her eyes. "I know you're worried Twilight, but this isn't the same as... THAT time! First, you were working with a potion that you had no actual idea how it worked; I'm familiar with the whole structure of Accelero , so at least I know what I'm working with. And second, we can't even control potions! We're really just hoping that the ingredients react the way they're supposed to, compared to spell casting where we have almost full control over what we're doing!"
Twilight shivered. "I know, I know. I just... I still remember seeing all their faces.. so sca-"
"Twilight, if you're so worried and all, why don't come with us?"
The anxious alicorn looked up at Starlight. "Really? How would that help?"
"Well, for one part, this whole this is really just a big experiment, and it's always useful to have more than one person record what happens in case one of us sees it differently. Also, the two of us fared pretty well against the Pony of Shadows when you brought the Pillars back from Limbo. I think if some magical disaster happens, the two of us could manage."
Twilight looked at Starlight; she could tell she was convinced nothing wrong would happen. Deep down, she still could not ignore the uneasy feeling that a another horrific incident would happen. But it won't happen again, right? I mean, Starlight's with me now, we can totally handle it. Besides... what would happen if Rainbow Dash was enhanced by a speed spell? She sighed to herself.
"All right, let's do it."
Starlight nodded and lit her horn. A mint-colored saddlebag floated up from under the table and came to rest on Starlight's back. It was mostly empty, save for a small crystal box sticking out near the top of cover. "Okay Rainbow, I have the amulet with me here. What do you plan on doo..." Starlight trailed off, noticing that Rainbow had already diverted her attention elsewhere. After glancing around for a bit, she found a small pebble nearby and levitated it above Rainbow's back before letting it fall.
"What the- ?!"
Rainbow whipped her head back and let out a surprised shout. Her wings opened on reflex and propelled her up a little before she froze in midair and turned to her two friends. Starlight stared right back, trying, while desperately failing, to stifle her laugh, all while Twilight was giving her former student a very annoyed expression.
"Well sorry, you girls were taking too long. Now come on, let's go!"
Rainbow spread her wings once more and leaped to the air to take flight, only to find herself held in place by the teal aura of Starlight's magic. "Woah woah woah! Before we do ANY of this, I just want to be sure that whatever it is you plan on doing isn't anything too... reckless."
Rainbow dismissed her with a hoof. "Pfft, it's the simplest thing anypony can do when it comes to testing out their speed."
"A race?"
Twilight looked around at the crude cloud track her polychromatic friend had put together in the sky as she flew around it. It looked almost like those race tracks she would see during her trips to Cloudsdale that the pegasi would use for exercise every so often. The only differences were its lack of an outer ring and how messily it was clearly put together. After scanning the area for a second she spotted a moderately sized, unused cloud nearby. She flew over to it and poked it with a hoof to test its structure before landing atop it.
"Well, not really since I'm gonna be the only one on there. It's more of a... time trial." Rainbow flew up from behind Twilight and touched down next to her on the cloud. "I'm going to race four laps around the track and compare the time with my personal best!"
"Annnd what IS your personal best?"
Rainbow audibly smirked upon hearing Twilight's question, and the purple alicorn immediately knew what was coming. "TEN SECONDS FL-"
"Why didn't you just use one of the cloud tracks up in Cloudsdale, the ones you showed us when you gave us a tour there?" Twilight cut Rainbow off as quickly as she could, lest she start hearing the complete phrase in her nightmares once more.
"All of the cloud tracks at Cloudsdale are taken for now, so I figured I would make my own close to Ponyville."
"You're missing the o-"
"Outer ring, yeah I know. That's really to help young fliers practice control when making quick turns, so I don't really need it anymore."
Something rustled behind Twilight and she turned around to see an exhausted looking Starlight pulling herself up onto the cloud, her whole body wrapped in the teal aura of her own magic. "For Celestia's sake... could the two of you have slowed down?! I can levitated myself around, but do you have ANY IDEA how tiring it is to do it from the ground all the way up to the cloud layer!?"
Twilight trotted over to her lilac-coated friend and offered her a helping hoof, which she graciously accepted. "Why didn't you just teleport up here?"
Starlight looked to her former teacher in confusion. "It's too far for me to teleport in a single jump, and I don't want to risk exhausting my magic by doing multiple teleports through the air."
"No, I meant fly up a portion of the distance with your magic then teleport the remaining distance."
Starlight looked straight into Twilight's eyes with the dead expression one could possibly imagine. "One day Twilight..." She tapped into her magic once more and opened up her saddlebag to reveal the crystal box. "One day..."
Rainbow's eyes lit up the moment she caught sight of the box. "So are we gonna do thi-"
Starlight cut her off. "Yes, but I need to explain to Twilight what we're doing specifically first." She turned to Twilight. "Actually now that I think about it, it's VERY good that you decided to come along. "
Twilight cocked her head in confusion. "Yeeeeeaaaaah?"
Starlight giggled to herself before continuing. "I'll be using a stopwatch to get Rainbow's time." To further her point, she scooped out a chunk of the cloud in her hoof and fired a thin beam of magic at it. A second later, she was holding a perfectly normal-looking stopwatch in her hoof. "I'll need you to scan the thaumic field around Rainbow Dash during the experiment. I want to know how the amulet's magic interacts with her latent pegasus magic."
Twilight put a hoof to her chin as she pondered the thought. Eventually, her own curiosity got the better of her. "Hmm, all right. Just tell me when you need me to start. "
"Right now would be good. " Twilight nodded and closed her eyes, her horn flaring alive with violet magic. When she opened them again, the world around her looked the same with the exception of the bright auras of light now surrounding her and her two friends. Her own violet light cascaded smoothly through and around her body, emanating from points on the base of her horn, wings, and from another point deep inside her. Curious, she glanced at her friends to observe their auras.
Starlight's aura seemed to originate only at her horn, and travelled through her form in teal lines between tiny points of light that shifted throughout her body, creating little geometric patterns. Rainbow's aura started from the base of her wings, and arced through her body like bolts of magenta lightning in slow motion. She made a mental reminder to subtly check the aura of the rest of her friends, just to sate her already growing curiosity. "I got the spell working, Starlight."
Starlight nodded back and floated the crystal box out of her bag to the middle of the group. After taking a few seconds to cast an inanimate cloudwalking spell on the box and everything in it, she opened it and floating out its precious cargo. Twilight focused her magically-enhanced vision to the amulet, and saw a lattice-like structure embedded deep inside the gemstone, bright teal lines connecting several stationary points throughout it. It looked similar to Starlight's magic aura, except that the lines didn't travel and the points didn't move.
Starlight let the decorative gift box slip from her magical grip, and it dropped onto their cloud with a soft poomph . She mentioned with a hoof to Rainbow for her to get closer and floated the faintly glowing amulet up to her neck. Rainbow caught it with a hoof and, once again, used her wings to fasten the clip behind her neck. This time, she made sure to tighten it a little more, so it didn't loosely dangle from her neck whenever she moved around.
Twilight turned to Rainbow once more to observe the way their magics interacted. The glow from the amulet brightened slightly, but other than that she could see nothing else really happening. Starlight turned to her. "See anything yet?"
"No, nothing yet."
Starlight looked away in thought for a split second, then turned back to Rainbow. "Okay, are you ready to do this?" Rainbow nearly squealed in excitement.
"Awwwwww yeah!"
THERE!
One small bolt of Rainbow's aura arced from her body and struck one of the stationary points inside the gemstone. The sudden change cause Twilight to blink in surprise, but when she looked again, she could see no longer spot a difference. What was that? I could have sworn...
Starlight took notice of her friend's confused expression and mirrored it. "What is it, Twilight? Did you see something?"
Twilight continued to focus on Rainbow as she flew off towards the cloud track, holding behind her a makeshift finish line out of cloud. "I could have sworn..."
Starlight took note of Twilight's nervous expression. "Come on, Twilight, you're worrying too much. If it eases your worries, I weaved a cancellation spell into the amulet that should negate the effects of Accelero if it detects dangerous levels of magical energy release."
"And what level of energy is that?"
Starlight searched for the numbers through her memory. "Ummmm, double rainboom?"
"Ready when you are, girls!" Twilight cleared her thoughts to check on her friend. Rainbow had attached the strip of cloud for the finish line to the cloud ring, normal to the side of the track and pointing towards the cloud from which Twilight and Starlight were watching her.
Starlight prodded at her cloud-turned-stopwatch for a second to make sure her transfiguration spell wouldn't randomly die out on her during the experiment. And to figure out how to use it at all. Once she had everything in order, Starlight shouted back to her friend in confirmation. "Ok, we're ready now! The spell should trigger the moment you begin since you're trying to go faster than your best time, as long as you think that!"
Rainbow nodded fervently and touched down onto the cloud strip. She stretched her wings in and out to get herself into the moment. She then proceeded to loudly crack every single joint possible throughout her body, eliciting a groan from Twilight. "Raaaaiiiiinboooow get on with it!"
Rainbow rolled her eyes and smirked, before focusing her attention back to the track in front of her. She opened her wings out one last time and bent down in a ready stance.
"One!"
Rainbow began flapping her wings, slowly at first then gaining speed until they appeared as a light blue blur to Twilight. Suddenly...
I knew it! There it was again! Twilight's spell-enhanced vision confirmed her suspicions from before; another small spark of magenta lightning arced from her body and hit the amulet's spell matrix. This time, however, it wasn't alone. Another bolt followed, then another. And another. And another. The little points within the gemstone began slowly moving, the beams of light connecting them starting to shoot between each point as well, getting faster and shifting from Starlight's teal color to Rainbow's magenta hue with every bolt of magic lightning that struck the spell lattice.
"Two!"
Rainbow picked up the speed of her wings. They were going so fast now that her back legs we had already lifted off the cloud platform, the only thing keeping her in place was the resistance her front hooves gave. The points within the gemstone were moving faster than Twilight could keep track off. Suddenly, one of the points shot out from the amulet into Rainbow and began spinning throughout her body the way Starlight's did. More and more points travelled from the gemstone into Rainbow's aura until the amulet was completely devoid of magic. Tiny beams of red lightning began shooting between each them until Rainbow's aura in general looked similar to Starlight's, but the red color and lightning gave it a more unstable appearance.
A flicker of light broke Twilight's concentration and the spell she was using to view the auras collapsed. She gritted her teeth in annoyance and began to construct the spell once more, then gasped when she got a look at Rainbow without the spell. Small bolts of bright cyan lightning were streaking across Rainbow's form, flashing more frequently and brighter the faster Rainbow flapped her wings, and occasionally arcing away and striking the cloud she stood on.
Twilight's fur stood on end as the air around their general region was charged with more and more electricity. A particular bright bolt streaked through Rainbow and arched upwards into the air, producing a small crack of thunder. It was then that Twilight realized what they were in for. She threw a panicked look at Starlight, whose attention was concentrated completely on the stopwatch in front of her. "Starlight, wait! "
But her words fell on deaf ears.
"Three!"
Twilight instinctively threw up a magic barrier around she and Starlight just as the world around her seemed to melt away in a brilliant flash of white light.
Author's Note
Redoing the chapter to try to fix the date issue
The first chapter was written in the end of november, and was also finished then as well, but I had put it off cause i wanted to put out the whole story all at once for whatever reason. As a result, you can see as the chapter progresses, I gradually regain my writer's momentum and ideas become more and more detailed. PLEASE leave feedback if you can! I'm sorry if this chapter is a bit of a letdown for some of you, but I promise to make it up for you in the last chapter!
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[April Fool's Intermission] When It Rains...
*Adding this note now for future readers, you can skip this chapter of you want. It's just something I did for April Fools, doesn't actually happen in the story. *
"Hrrghh owww my head..."
Rainbow groaned to herself, her head throbbing with an intense pain. A sharp, high pitched noise rang in her ears, and she shook her head to try to clear her thoughts. "Ughh what just happened?"
The last thing Rainbow could remember was the start of... a race? No, there were no opponents. She had been racing herself. Why was she racing herself? Did she get faster? Enhanced by a... potion? Artifact? Spell? Yes it was a spell. A speed spell... cast on her by Starlight... no, through an amulet...
Her eyes slowly opened, but they quickly widened in surprise as she was met with white. Just white, everywhere.
What's going on?
She lifted a foreleg in front of her and was relieved to see that it was still there, along with her entire body and all its accompanying limbs. She wriggled her hind legs around a bit and slowly unfolded both her wings. A faint breeze flowed through her open feathers, and she quickly closed them before she started shivering. Nothing seemed to hurt. Everything was in working condition. So where the hay am I?
Once she was satisfied her body wasn't missing anything vital, Rainbow once again glanced around at her surroundings. Or to put it more accurately, her lack of surroundings. She took a look down and realized she could see no ground below her. Somehow, her body was floating in nothing, and yet her brain reassured her that down was indeed down; she was floating right-side up.
She narrowed her eyes to try to focus on something, ANYTHING, in the distance, but to no anvil. All she could see was white, the only color in her sight being her very own rainbow mane drifting around above her.
"Hello?" She called out, her voice shaking slightly in anxiety. "Is... anypony there?"
No answer. Nothing. Not so much as an echo of any sort returned to her ears. "Pinkie, is this one of your pranks again?" Rainbow frantically swerved her head back and forth, hoping to catch a glimpse of the telltale pink colors of her fellow prankster friend. "Th-... This isn't funny anymore!"
Still, no reply. No flash of pink. Not even a hint of her signature, high pitched giggle.
Panic began to set in, and Rainbow felt her heart beat more and more frantically as adrenaline began to pump throughout her system. What is this?! What's going on?! Am... I dead?
She had heard tales from ponies with near-death encounters. Those who had seen Her and returned... But they described the encounter as being in an environment of absolute darkness, with the warmth of Her light beckoning them forward.
There was no darkness here. Just white.
Her pupils shrank as she realized she was utterly alone. And she hated being alone more than anything. All alone with only the sound of her own breathing and the occasional ruffle of her feathers.
Her feathers...
My WINGS! Rainbow ran a hoof across her face to wipe off the few tears that had began to collect underneath her eyes. Once again, she unfolded her wings and studied the wind that brushed past her feathers. So weak... I can't even tell how fast it is... But it's definitely coming from in front of me. And if I have wind...
She gave her wings a strong flap, putting all her hope and determination into it. To her eyes, nothing had changed. But the rest of her body quickly sent a wide range of signals to her brain. The fluid in her inner ear sloshed slightly, the fur along the front of her body flattened slightly as if hit by a sudden wind, and her mane flew behind her.
She had moved forward.
...I have flight!
She began to flap her wings again, slowly at first, to test the strength of the wind that blew around her. It felt like a normal breeze, as if she were flying around the skies of Ponyville like nothing was ever wrong. Gradually, she began to put more energy into her wings, each flap stronger than the other and propelling her forward even more so. She put herself in forward flying position, with both hooves stretched out in front of her and her back legs and tail lined up behind her to create the least amount of air resistance possible. Suddenly, something up ahead caught her attention.
*Gasp* "Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh!" In the far distance, though she could not tell how far exactly, lay a tiny black dot, standing out harshly against the whiteness around it. Filled with a newfound sense of hope, Rainbow gritted her teeth and put everything she had into her wings. She felt a familiar spark ignite within her, and started noticing small bolts of bright cyan lightning streak across her front hooves. Sometimes, a bolt would jump loose and arc between them for a moment before resuming its path throughout her body.
She could feel more streaks travelling the surface of her skin, but she dared not look, in fear that if she were to take her eyes off the black dot for even a second, it would vanish.
Slowly but surely, the dot grew until it became a small, black rectangle. A doorway.
This could be my way out! Rainbow continued flying, ignoring her slowly increasing fatigue from the amount of stain she was putting on her wings. She began to lose track of time as the task for flapping her wings got placed on autopilot and all of her attention was directed towards how close the door was getting. How long had she been in this place already? Minutes? An hour? Could a full day have already gone by? Without a way to time, Rainbow kept pushing forward, determined to see the smiles of her friends once more.
Almost... there...
Eventually, the darkness that indicated the doorway was large enough that she could tell it was just a few meters away. With a final cry, Rainbow propelled herself through the doorway and landed on some invisible black floor. Everything around her was black, obscured in absolute darkness. It was like the white area she had left behind, but this time her hooves clopped soundly against solid ground. What the ground was made of was remained a mystery to the exhausted pegasus.
Rainbow turned around to gaze back through the doorway through which she had just flown. Without a reference object on the other side, the doorway now appeared to be nothing but a floating, white rectangle.
BANG!
A loud noise came from behind, startling Rainbow and forcing her attention away from the door. She quickly turned on her hooves to face the source of the sound.
Where there once was nothing but darkness now lied a single piece of paper, seemingly lit by some unseen light source from above.
"Hey?" Rainbow called out. "Did somepony put this here?" She cautiously trotted over to it and examined it. It looked like a perfectly normal piece of paper. She picked it up with a hoof and noticed some small, blue writing in the bottom right corner of the page.
Turn me over.
Rainbow gulped nervously. What would she find written on the other side? A spell to get out? Some evil curse that she could only get rid of if she sent ten copies of it to other ponies in the next twenty four hours? There was only one way for her to be sure.
She shut her eyes out of fear and turned over the page. Very slowly, Rainbow peaked her eyes open to read what was written...
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀
GOTCHA
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀
Author's Note
Hahaha GOTCHA! Happy April Fool's! Heeheehee...
All jokes asides, do not worry! The real 3rd chapter is on its way, and this chapter was also a way for me to practice writing some more! This whole chapter was done under 90 minutes, including planning and really no proofreading.
Even though this was a joke chapter, please help me out and give me feedback on my writing! This was a change in genre so I might work on a story like this in the future!
A Blast and a Blur of Blue
"Ready when you are, girls!"
Rainbow called back to her two friends from her position along the cloud track. Starlight's amulet hung around her neck, the cool edge of its magic gemstone pressing lightly against her chest. Despite lacking the magic-channeling horn of a unicorn, she could still feel the presence of energy within. Hidden underneath its surface, she could feel a sort of heat emanating from within.
She heard Starlight faintly shout to her about something to do with triggering the spell? Her mind processed the words think and go fast , and immediately dumped the rest. She nodded back absentmindedly, not even bothering to look over. But it didn't matter, she already knew exactly what she had to do.
Well, time to do my usual warm-up stretches! For good luck, of course. *crack pop crack* Ahhhh, wings joints are feeling good, how about my hooves? *pop* Oooo there we go yeahhh that hit the spot... Now for the neck! Hrgghhhh-
"Raaaaiiiiinboooow get on with it!"
Rainbow rolled her eyes and smirked; she could practically hear the grossed-out look on the purple alicorn's face just from the tone alone.
Hehe, that never gets old. She quickly wrapped up her little session with a final stretch of her wings for good measure before returning her focus back to the track in front of her. Okay, this is it. She snuck a glance down at the amulet around her neck, her eyes coming to rest on the gemstone that rested on her chest, and lightly pressed a hoof to it. All right, let's freaking do this.
She crouched down on the cloud platform and unfurled her wings to her side one last time to their fullest extent. Her hooves dug slightly into the cloud, and she twisted them back and forth a few times to dig short grooves to use as a platform. She raised her primary feathers up slightly and wriggled them about in the air, letting the wind flow between them and sending a slight chill through her back. Hmm, wind seems to be going about... 10 knots... northeast... did I eat lunch yet?
"One!"
Starlight's voice cut straight through her thoughts like a knige through hot butter? Her mind was snapped back to reality with a single word. Deep within her, she felt something spark, as if a switch had been flipped Let's do this.
She began flapping her wings, slowly at first as to not accidentally strain herself, but quickly gaining speed with every passing moment. She felt the force of her wingpower push her forward, but she dug in with her hooves to keep herself from moving. The gemstone suddenly lit up with an intense, teal glow, but she paid no attention to it and continued building her wing speed. Strangely, it felt as if the amulet were giving her some sort of energy boost; the more she exerted her wings, the easier it seemed to add more force to them.
"Two!"
As Rainbow continued picking up her wing speed, she felt her back hooves begin to rise from the surface of the cloud, and she dug in with her front hooves even harder to avoid accidentally shooting herself forward too early. The glow from the gemstone began to flicker rapidly, getting dimmer and dimmer each time, and she felt more of the magic within flow through her. Miniature bolts of lightning streaked between parts of her body and the cloud on which she stood. The air around her began to charge with electricity, her rainbow mane floating above her head as if she were underwater.
She heard Twilight yell something in the distance, but she couldn't make it out. Right now, all that mattered to her were her wings and the track ahead of her. She could feel all the energy from the amulet racing through her body, from the very tips of her hooves to the ends of her feathers. There was no going back now, all this energy would have to go somewhere. Time seemed to slow to a standstill. Everything around her seemed to blur and dull in color as she focused more of her concentration on her wings and the wind around her. She could almost see the currents of air flowing around the track. She closed her eyes.
"Three!"
Starlight's Stopwatch: 00:00:00.00
Rainbow propelled herself forward with a powerful thrust from her front hooves, releasing a massive explosion of energy as she left the cloud platform. She rocketed along the side of the track faster than she had ever felt herself go. Bright streaks of small cyan lightning arced across her entire body, striking the side of the track whenever she swerved closer to its edge and destroying bits of cloud in small, white poofs.
Something felt... different. As she watched her surroundings pass her by, she knew for a fact she was travelling at an immense speed, and yet it didn't feel like she was going any faster. In fact, she couldn't even tell she was moving when she closed her eyes. It was like the wind had... disappeared. Yes, that was it. She was going at a ridiculous speed, and yet she could barely feel even a hint of a breeze across her body and wings as she sped along the track.
One lap...
What? Already one lap? She could have sworn she had left the starting cloud not even an instant before.
Two laps...
Three laps...
Four laps!
Rainbow halted to a stop right past the finish line. "Woooo! That... was... AWESOME!!" She landed on the closest intact cloud and began prancing in circles with a goofy grin plastered on her face.
"Oh yeah, oh yeah new record here we- what the?!" Her cheering was brought to a halt as a stray bolt of cyan lightning jumped from her mane to the cloud, shocking her to her senses. "Huh, thought that cool electricity thing was just my imagination!"
She lifted a hoof in front of her and watched as the streaks of bright, blue lightning bounced across it and off towards nearby clouds. Huh, this is... pretty cool. Probably a side effect of the spell or something? She put on a prideful grin as she patted herself down.
And waited...
And waited...
No response.
Confused, Rainbow opened her eyes and searched around her for the particular unicorn who was supposed to be clocking her time. Anxiety flashed through her thoughts for a brief moment as she recalled how Fluttershy fell during her race as a filly, but it was quickly assuaged as she spotted both Starlight and Twilight still standing on the same cloud as before.
There was something... off about them. Actually, something was off about everything. She felt like it was staring her right in the face, and yet the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to elude her.
"Yo! Girls! Did you hear me?!" Rainbow shook off the uneasy feeling and quickly flew up to them, but stopped when she noticed that, to her surprise, a violet shield of magic had been erected around the two of them.
She squinted her eyes to peer through the shield to see if her friends were all right. Twilight was crouched down; her eyes were squeezed tightly in concentration, and the glow surrounding her horn quickly tipped Rainbow off to who the shield was from.
"Um... Twi? You can put the shield down now. Helloooo?" She poked and prodded the shield for a few seconds, watching its surface ripple with every touch, then turned to Starlight. She was standing upright, still staring at the stopwatch no differently than she was the last time she glanced at her. Maybe they just can't hear me?
Rainbow flew around the shield behind Starlight's position to get a look at the stopwatch herself.
The time was still at 00:00:00.00.
"What the... Starlight! You said 'On three', remember?! Did you forget to start it or something?!"
No response.
"Helloooooo? Starlight, quit horsing around! I know you can hear me!" Rainbow raised a hoof to pound against the magical barrier. As it went up, bolts of bright, cyan lightning streaked up her foreleg, arcing off towards the rest of her body or the cloud below her. She brought her hoof down. Hard.
"Can you at least ackno-"
The moment her hoof hit the magical barrier, her eyes were momentarily blinded by a bright flash of light from the point of contact. The cyan bolts of lightning that had accumulated around the end of her foreleg rapidly streaked along the surface of the shield and dissipated into the cloud. Several thin, glowing cracks appeared in the barrier, starting at Rainbow's hoof and tracing each
"Woah, what?!" With a strong flap from her wings, Rainbow pushed herself away from her friends before she could cause any other damage. "Well... that's definitely new..."
It was then that Rainbow finally noticed what had been bothering her the whole time. All around her, colors seemed dull and slightly darkened or grayed. The faint background chatter from Ponyville that she had gotten accustomed to hearing was completely absent; even this high up she should still be able to hear something. She strained her ears, flicking them every which way to try to catch some hint of another sound, but all she could hear were the flaps of her own wings and the sound of her breathing. But that wasn't it...
The wind... where... ? Rainbow Dash floated back down to the cloud track and landed smoothly on its soft surface, noting that her impact seemed a little softer than usual. She tucked her wings back to her side and closed her eyes, trying to reach out with her senses to feel the wind, but nothing came to her but silence. There was one more thing though...
She opened her eyes again and scanned everything around her, searching for the one thing that was poking her in the back of her mind. Eventually, her eyes settled on a flock of geese off in the distance and then it finally hit her. Are they... frozen? Rainbow opened her wings and zoomed up to the group, ignoring the streaks of lightning that seemed to trail behind her as she flew off. Their wings were open, all frozen in different positions of flight, and each of them were locked in the V flight formation they take during migration. None of them were moving.
It was as if somepony had taken a picture of the entire world and left it for her to explore. Wait... no. Rainbow peered closer at the birds' wings and realized that they were actually moving ever so slightly; to a normal pony, the motion would have been imperceptible. But Rainbow Dash's eyes had been trained to observe even the tiniest of movement from a distance during her years as both a weather pony and her training sessions as a Wonderbolt.
That, and she had watched the minute hand of a clock in Ponyville Hospital move for over an hour straight out of sheer boredom.
So... time isn't frozen or anything... nothing is. Rainbow Dash came to a surprising, but welcome, realization. It's... me!
Rainbow glanced again at the world around her, piecing together everything she had just experienced. The silence, the lack of wind, the dulled colors, everything frozen... and of course, the lightning. "I'm moving so fast, everything else is like super slow to me!"
The experience was not entirely unknown to her; she had moved at these speeds several times before, especially when dealing with Pinkie and her pies, but never before had she managed to keep it up for more than a couple seconds, let alone several minutes.
Rainbow looked back to the cloud track and noticed three small rings of rainbow-colored fire frozen exactly at her starting point. Surrounding them was what appeared to be a faint bubble of expanding air, only noticeable due to the way it distorted light passing through it. She quickly recognized it as a shockwave, having been encouraged to recognize them during her training sessions as a Wonderbolt. Rings of colored fire a shockwave could only mean one thing...
"I made a sonic rainboom from rest?!" She did a double take as she recounted the number of colored rings. "Wait wha... I did THREE?!"
Filled with curiosity, Rainbow flew up to the shockwave and gingerly poked at the clear bubble of concentrated air with a hoof. She felt a weak force resist her, but it felt no more like she were just passing through a thin curtain. With her worries weakened a little, Rainbow pushed herself through the bubble's surface entirely. She shivered slightly as the strange sensation passed over her entire body, but soon it was over and she was through. She shuddered a little and shook her head to clear her focus.
"Woaahh" All of Rainbow's surroundings had taken on a sort of blurred, distorted look due to the bubble of air around her, as if she were looking at everything through a smooth, cascading sheet of water. Everything, except for...
My sonic rainbooms... Rainbow stared at the three polychromatic rings of fire in awe, zipping around them to take in every detail from every possible angle. So this is what it looks like from an audience's point of view, huh? Hehe not bad at all if I do say so myself.
Now that she was closer, Rainbow realized it while the rings still bore the shape of fire, it looked as if they were just made of colored air. The smallest of the rings seemed just tiny enough to pass off for a super cool, magic necklace, and the largest of them was about twice the size of the cloud rings the Wonderbolts would navigate through during agility training. Scattered throughout the air around her were tiny sparkles of light, all frozen in place. She waved her hoof at several of them, and they flowed around her outstretched foreleg as if they were fish in water.
Once again filled with curiosity, Rainbow flew up to the smallest ring and tentatively prodded at it with a hoof. Unlike with the shockwave, this time her hoof passed straight through with ease. The closest thing she could compare the feeling with was bringing a hoof close to a campfire on a cold night. In this case, the heat penetrated straight through her limb, warming her up from the inside and out. It filled her with a sort of... happiness, though she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. She relished the warmth for a few extra seconds before pulling her foreleg back and retreating a few hooflengths away.
"Well this is... new." Rainbow backed a little aways from the ring of magically charged air, curiosity and a hint of mischief getting the better of her. With a single flap of her wings, she propelled herself smoothly through her own frozen rainboom, giggling a bit as the tips of her primaries brushed against the heat of her own inert pegasus magic.
After making it all the way through, she spared a quick glance back before quickly zipping up, over, and around the ring before reentering it again. And again. And again. "Hehe, this is actually really cool!" Suddenly, a thought came to her mind. If everypony else was essentially frozen in time... and she wasn't...
"Hmmm... I wonder what else I can do. " Rainbow looked below her towards Ponyville, its residents frozen in their daily routines. A slight, sly smirk stretched along her face.
Somwhere around Ponyville, a cyan-colored pegasus trotted casually out of a certain purple crystal castle, whistling the familiar tune of the wonderbolts to herself as she slowly closed the doors and took off, her departing form unnoticed by the equally purple drake frozen mid-step just outside before the front step. Every book in its library was now organized by the titles' last letters.
Somewhere around Ponyville, a rainbow blur zoomed out of an all too familiar barn, carrying out a basket of newly harvested apples and leaving behind a plethora of red-painted pears.
Somwhere around Ponyville, a certain ash-coated celloist's instrument had all of its strings loosened to the point where they practically dangled off the wooden peg. The bow's hairs had been carefully removed and placed neatly besides the remaining wooden stick.
The blue blur sped towards a particular yellow pegasus's cottage near the outskirts of town, before quickly coming to a halt and turning the other way.
The next stop was the flower stand, with three well-known earth ponies standing frozen behind it. The blue pegasus carefully reached forward and grabbed a single daisy off the stand. She stared at it for a good few seconds before snapping the stem in half and carefully replacing it right back where it was.
Said cyan pony was about to enter Sugarcube Corner until she noticed the sign on the front door reading "Hello super fast Rainbow Dash! I made some cupcakes for you! They're in my basement!"
She sped off and didn't look back.
The basket of needles in a certain alabaster coated unicorn's boutique found itself now emptied then filled with individual strands of hay, each one painted a shiny silver.
Every student who was enrolled in Rainbow Dash's Loyalty class now had a fake pop-quiz assignment in their saddlebags.
Five relative minutes later...
"Well, that was satisfying hehe..." Rainbow patted herself on the back for her efforts. She had set up some form of practical joke in almost every single household. "Everypony is certainly in for a big surprise real sooooon." After a few more seconds of devious chucking, she quieted back down and began to glance from house to house expectedly. Everything was still quiet. Nothing moved but her.
"Ughhh is this still going on? Come on I want to see what happens!!!" Rainbow flew a few circles over Ponyville, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. She waited and waited... and waited. Nothing.
"Ugh whatever, I'll be able to see what happens tomorrow I guess." Rainbow turned around and flew all the way back to her floating house, pausing for a second to glance at Twilight and Starlight still inside the same magenta shield. She sighed to herself before continuing up to her house. Feeling lazy today, the pegasus opted to dive through her open bedroom window. Looking down at the amulet still wrapped snug around her neck, Rainbow frowned slightly. While the day had certainly been interesting, she had at least been expecting to really see something happen. Or at least, see the reactions of the ponies. But that could wait from tomorrow. For now, a nice, long nap was calling her name.
The lightning around her seemed to have mostly died down, only appearing as the occasional spark from a hoof to the nearest cloud and no longer strong enough to actually obliterate any of them. The gemstone in the amulet she wore now felt cold, and was completely devoid of light.
Reaching up with a hoof, Rainbow gripped the back of the amulet and, with one swift swing, pulled it off her neck. A strange wave of fatigue suddenly hit her, and she started to stagger about her room. She quickly dumped the amulet onto her bedside table before it could fall from her grasp through the layers of cloud below it. With a final yawn, she collapsed onto her cloud bed, completely clocked out, her eyes and ears no longer registering the sounds of chaos in the distance.
Starlight's Stopwatch: 00:00:01.00
The moment Twilight saw the explosion of lightning and color from Rainbow, she immediately focused her magic and brought up a bubble shield around her and Starlight. As soon as it completely formed, a blur of bright blue lightning smashed into it from behind. The shield shattered upon impact, the force knocking Twilight unconscious as she and her former pupil tumbled to the earth below, thrown about by the shockwave from the initial explosion.
Starlight quickly came back to her senses, her eyes filling with panic as she opened her eyes to the sight of Equestria speeding up to meet her face-to-dirt. Without another second, Starlight flared her horn and wrapped her and the blacked out alicorn in a telekinetic blanket, slowing their descent until they landed safely next to Ponyville's lake. She briefly took note that they would have landed in the water anyways.
"Owww... my head..." Twilight groaned softly from beside her. Starlight quickly rushed to her aid, offering a hoof to pull her back up to all fours. Twilight shook her head a little to clear out the stars that obscured her sight. "What happened?"
"Ummm..." Starlight nervously rubbed the back of her neck. "I think it's safe to say that the experiment was a... success?"
With that, she awkwardly gestured to the sky with a hoof. Twilight followed her gaze upwards, her jaw falling slack in awe and shock. Three massive rings of polychromatic fire were expanding rapidly from the the cloud track they once stood near. There was no sight of neither the cyan pegasus nor the mysterious blue blur that had shattered her shield spell.
"Woah... I didn't think it was possible to perform more than a single rainboom at once, let alone three!" Starlight remarked in surprise and excitement. The two of them watched as the rings of rainbow spread across the sky, their heads tilting in confusion as they noticed the golden dome surrounding Canterlot. The fire dispersed upon contact with the much larger shield spell, leaving Canterlot completely unharmed.
Celestia smirked to herself. "Ahh, feels good to be useful for once." She halted the flow of magic to her horn and the combined illusion and shield spell she cast around Canterlot quietly dissipated. With Ponyville's tendency towards disasters, the spell had become almost muscle memory to her. She couldn't have the nobles bugging her daily during her day court.
Luna turned to her in confusion. "What dost thou meanest by-"
"Nothing, sister." Celestia turned around and gave her sister a brief nuzzle. "Everything is fine."
"Hey, why's there a sh-"
Starlight's question was cut off as a thought suddenly crossed Twilight's mind. In alarm, she opened her wings and took to the air, searching for Ponyville and preparing herself for the worst. However...
"There's no damage..."
There was no powerful wall of wind that swept Ponyville off the ground like last time; virtually everything seemed untouched. A few ponies took notice of the spectacle in the sky and pointed up in amazement. There were a some cries of annoyance and frustration, but they did not seem to be directed at the rainbooms, but more at some "blue blur" that supposedly messed with their things.
Filled with uncertainty, Twilight gradually slowed her flapping until she softly landed in the middle of Ponyville. The ground beneath her hooves felt... like ground. Real. There was no illusion. Other than some mysterious prankster, Ponyville seemed perfectly fine.
There was a flash of teal light beside her as Starlight teleported to her location, giving her former teacher a look of slight annoyance. "You feeling alright Twilight?"
Twilight continued to stare at Ponyville and all its undamaged houses. "How... how is this possible? The town should be leveled right now!"
Starlight pondered the thought for a few seconds, bringing a hoof to her chin in a sort of comical look. "Hmmm, maybe Rainbow was moving so fast that the air around her flowed perfectly around her as she moved? She wouldn't be disrupting the air at all, so it wouldn't create any sort of wind currents."
Twilight considered it briefly. "I suppose so... Either way, I think it would be best that we check up on Rainbow. We have no idea what side effects this may have on her. We need to ask her some questions, maybe even a few tests!"
Starlight nodded in agreement, turning her head to the skies above. "But she can be anywhere by now!"
Twilight blinked. "Actually... I think there's really only one other place she'd go after doing just about anything, especially after teaching. Come on, follow me!"
Starlight watched as her mentor unfurled her wings and took to the skies. Rolling her eyes, she lit her horn and wrapped herself in her own telekinetic magic, lifting herself off the ground and following suit. Ponyville could handle its own issues for now.
Somewhere in the sky, a cyan pegasus snorted in bed. "Hrghhh yes. Eat my dust, lightning."
Author's Note
Goodness, talk about a writer's block XD. A close friend of mine sorta inspired me (a second time) to get back into the things I used to find enjoyment in, and writing was one of them. This is the last major chapter of this story, and a brief epilogue should follow shortly. I'm working on a crazier, more action-packed story series that will be begin real soon so don't miss it!^^ Anyways, enjoy the craziness of this chapter XD. It may seem a little rushed at parts because I was dealing with multivariable calculus when this chapter was started haha
I might revisit this story later to revise the chapters a bit also
"I told you already, I'm fine!"
Rainbow squirmed in place while Twilight continued to poke and prod her with her horn. Starlight Glimmer stood off to the side, silently observing, a piqued expression on her face. The three ponies were now back to where it all started: the library in Twilight's castle, where Starlight first showed off the speed spell.
"Well you certainly look fine, but we have no idea how this spell may have altered you!"
Rainbow glanced over to Starlight with a pleading look, who let out an awkward laugh before turning to Twilight. "Twilight, I scanned her through with every magical scan spell I know. As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with her."
Twilight ignored her, attempting to inspect every individual feather on Rainbow's wings. Her horn began to glow with its familiar violet aura. "Maybe if I-"
She was interrupted as Starlight reached up with her hoof and gently tapped on her Twilight's horn, breaking her focus and halting the spell charge. "Check her inherent magic aura? Way ahead of you, Twilight. Everything is in working order."
"Hey, I'm not a ma-" Rainbow's remark was interrupted with a lavender hoof shoved on her mouth.
"I think maybeee a bigger concern right now would be the current panicked state of much of Ponyville right now." All three ponies stopped talking for a few seconds, taking in the faint, but clear, sounds of the residents of their local town freaking out over the mysterious pranks that supposedly appeared out of nowhere. Piercing shrieks of "the horror" could be barely made out among the mix of voices. Every now and then, a small explosion shook the ground beneath their hooves, and small trails of smoke were already beginning to rise from their little village.
Twilight sighed and closed her eyes. "Yeah, you're right." She stuck her head right in front of Rainbow's. "But if you feel anything weird at all-"
"Yes yes yes, I'll let you know, Twilight!" Rainbow backpedalled a little from the sudden intrusion of her privacy. Twilight flashed a brief smile before disappearing in a burst of purple magic. Moments later, her voice could be heard in the distance enhanced by a voice amplification spell, addressing the citizens of Ponyville.
"Well, now that that's out of the way..." Rainbow unfurled her wings and launched herself for the door, only to be stopped by a teal, translucent wall in her way.
"Now now now, Rainbow, I'm not done with you yet!" Starlight trotted over to Rainbow, who was rubbing a hoof on the now-sore spot on her head. "I'm doing you a favor here."
Rainbow froze and looked up to Starlight, a confused look on her face. "What do you mean by that?"
Starlight gently lifted her pegasus friend to her hooves with her magic. "You see, I told Twilight that there's nothing wrong with you, and that I did a complete magic scan of you, including your magic aura."
Rainbow cocked her head before nodding. "Yeah... isn't that a good thing?"
"Yes, but it's not the full truth."
Her eyes widened. "Wait, what?! Am I dying or-"
Starlight frantically waved her hooves in front of Rainbow in a desperate attempt to calm her down. "No, nothing like that! Everything I said is true; there's nothing wrong with you."
After a few seconds to calm herself, Rainbow looked back at Starlight with a very inquisitive expression. "So what did you mean by that then?"
"Well, your magic aura is a little... different now."
"Different? Different how?"
"It seems slightly more... sporadic."
Rainbow stared. Starlight smirked and rolled her eyes. "It's more excited in a sense. Your aura was already constantly in motion, but now it's even more so. And what's weird is I can't find any trace of the speed spell in your body, which means the spell has ran its course and likely dissipated through latent energy, as expected. But it isn't supposed to have any sort of lasting effect on its user."
Rainbow pondered over it a little, unsure of what to make of the news. "So... what does this mean for me?"
"Right now? I'm not sure. Other than the extra energy in your pegasus magic, everything else about you is back to normal."
"Great!" Rainbow began to take off again, but was stopped one last time with a hoof on her back.
"Rainbow, please, let me know if anything, anything , feels weird or different. While everything is fine at the moment, I can't guarantee that this won't have some sort of effect on you in the future. I was the one to prepare the spell, so I just don't want to see you get hurt because of me..."
Rainbow flashed back a comforting smile. "Don't worry, I'll be over the moment anything feels weird!"
Starlight opened her mouth once more, but paused for a second before closing it and glancing away briefly. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Alright Rainbow, just... be careful, alright?"
Before Rainbow could respond, Starlight vanished in a burst of teal magic. She rolled her eyes. Sheesh, a little warning next time before flashing a bright light directly in my face would be reeeaal helpful. The cyan pegasus rubbed her eyes with a hoof and gave her head a quick shake to clear the stars from her sight.
She gave a quick glance over to Ponyville, admiring the fruit of her labors as the sounds of utter chaos and pandemonium rang out from the town. A small smirk grew on her face and she gave herself a brief chuckle before turning her head back to the clear, blue skies above. The last traces of the cloud track she created was already burning away in the heat of Celestia's sun.
Rainbow shifted her gaze over to the floating city of Cloudsdale in the distance; she was supposed to meet with Spitfire and a few of the other Wonderbolts about plans for the next aerial show. She opened her wings once more and, with a powerful boost from her forelegs, launched herself in the air towards her target.
As a small cloud of dust filled the air where the pegasus once stood, a few sparks of cyan lightning danced from her hoofprints, disappearing in moments like they were never there.
Author's Note
Thanks everyone for sticking around for this awesome story!^^ I know I made yall wait quite a bit for that third chapter so thanks for being patient <3 I'll be working on a new story series so if you're interested, feel free to follow so you don't miss out x3
