Looking through the binocs, finding the van was simple. Without them, though, it was an exercise in frustration. Not the least because this should be so fucking easy...!

With a flicker of concentration, Rainbow Dash became a poly-chromatic blur, crossing the campus in a fraction of a second.

I’ll just pause for a second when I get close, just to make sure, she thought. No problem.

There were several vans parallel parked along the street, and of course a few students on the walk or meandering on the grass here and there. But that wouldn’t be a problem; it would all be over in an eyeblink.

Rainbow Dash stopped maybe forty feet away from the parked vehicles, and squinted.

What the hell? Are you serious?

She blurred again, pausing twenty feet behind the van in a sprint start pose.

There we go.

She grinned as she focused on the huge star painted across its hatchback and rear window.

Aww, yeah.

Then that window exploded in gunfire, the gangsters within shooting through the glass rather than take the time to lean out the sides.

Faster than thought, Rainbow Dash instinctively started to roll out of the way of the machinegun fire. But then, she remembered.

Oh, shit. The students.

Refocusing her will, she forced the bullets to slow down to a crawl. Cursing her newfound sight problems, she tried to track their trajectories, tried to predict what students would be in danger. But her eyes just seemed to slide off anything and anyone further away than around fifteen or twenty feet; closer for anything as small as bullets. And no matter how fast she made herself and her senses, she couldn’t make the bullets stop.

She wasted a valuable millisecond or two seething at herself.

Then, she was in motion again.

She had to be careful. Stupidly careful. If she moved someone too suddenly, she could accidentally kill them. But if she moved too slow, they could get shot. And the bullets, hard as they were to focus on, just kept coming.

The first few people, she moved out of the line of fire completely. The next dozen or so she had to settle for pushing to the ground.

But at the last, the incoming round was just too damned close. If Rainbow Dash moved the guy out of the way fast enough, he’d mash into the ground with such force that he could be seriously hurt. Maybe even killed.

There was only one obvious choice, and no time.

Rainbow Dash screamed as the bullet entered her upper back just below her shoulder blade, rolling forward to the ground, taking the last student with her. She heard the screech of tires as the van took off, the idiots inside still firing, hopefully into the air and not into the crowd. Meanwhile, some of the students and faculty were drawing their own weapons and returning fire.

Rainbow looked down at the poor astonished dude she was sprawled over. “Hey man, you okay?”

Completely flabbergasted, he nodded.

“Cool.” Ignoring the pain, she forced herself up onto her hands and knees, looking around. “Is everybody... oh, no,” she stared. “No!”

Lying face-down across the street, her backpack in the grass beside her and blood on her back, was a young woman. She wasn’t moving.

Rainbow staggered at unevenly enhanced speed towards her. “No, no, no, NO, NO!”

Rainbow reached her as the gunfire stopped and knelt down beside her, frantic. What should she do? Should she run her to a hospital? No. No, moving her was too risky. Maybe apply direct pressure to the wound? That part sounded right...

Then, the student coughed. Moaned.

Rainbow’s shoulders slumped a little. Oh, thank God.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey, don’t move, okay? You’ve been shot. Just lie still.”

“Owwwww...”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said, wincing a little at her own injury, “I hear ya.”

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight’s voice broke in. “I heard shots! What’s going on!”

“Gabby got away,” Rainbow said. “We’ve got a casualty. She’s shot in the back, I can’t just leave her.”

“Understood. I’ve alerted on-campus security that the shooting’s over and it’s safe to advance. Also, I called 911.”

By this time, Rainbow Dash had her pocketknife out and was swiftly but carefully cutting the woman’s shirt open. “Yeah, what good’s that gonna do?”

“The current mayor’s son is attending. I told them he was hit.”

Despite everything, Rainbow Dash grinned. “Heh. Yeah, that’ll do it.” Then, to the student, she added, “Okay, let’s take a look at you, hold still.”

The young woman’s voice was bleary. “Did I mention ow?”

“Yeah, you did. Just stay cool, and... well, son of a bitch.”

“What?” Twilight and the student asked at once.

“I can see the bullet. It’s like, right there.” Glancing over at the backpack, she said, “You... carry all your books around with you, don’t ‘cha?”

“Um, yeah?”

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news...”

A short time later, Rainbow Dash was lying on her stomach, grumpy and shirtless with her arms crossed under her chin. Meanwhile, Twilight carefully straddled her waist, the better to minister to her wound from a good angle.

“I mean, sure, I left her enough cash to get a new laptop and books,” Rainbow Dash was saying, “but still, what the fuck, you know? –ow!”

“Sorry,” Twilight said, examining the bullet she’d just removed. Then she whistled. “Armor piercing round. No wonder it got past your vest.”

Dropping the bullet into a nearby pan, she added, “I still think Rarity would have been a better choice for this.”

“Maybe. But then she’d want me to stay for a week or something. And we were just there. You said yourself we need to minimize contact.”

“I know I did,” Twilight grimaced. “It’s just... stitches, you know?”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s cool. Anyway,” Rainbow sighed, “this all happened because I fucked up. I mean, I knew I was having trouble seeing, and I still went forward. And that girl could have died. If her shot had been an AP, she would have.”

Twilight paused, considering.

“Actually, it might have been an armor piercing round,” she said. “I’ve read that most conventional ammunition, such as the nine-millimeter or the two-two-three, will penetrate two or three textbooks and then stop. From what you described, she had five or six books crammed in there. Plus, we don’t know whether her laptop might have been armored...”

“Um, Twilight?”

“Right, sorry. Focusing.”

“And anyway, that’s beside the point! The point is that if I’d handled things right, there wouldn’t have been any shooting. Those people wouldn’t have needed to be saved, no matter what the bad guys were packing.”

Rainbow sighed again, burying her face miserably in her arms. “Christ, I’m an asshole.”

Twilight shook her head. “I won’t say it wasn’t a mistake, obviously it was. But you didn’t really understand how bad it would be until you were there. The senses can be funny that way. Remember, I went for two years before anyone realized I needed glasses, including me.”

“Sure, I hear you. But what I’m saying is, I got lucky. And we can’t afford to rely on luck.”

This time it was Twilight who sighed, leaning back a little as she spoke.

“No, we can’t,” she said. “And the tragic truth is, the risk will always be there. Granted, right now things are so dire that if we do nothing then the risk is even worse...”

“That’s no excuse.”

“No,” Twilight acknowledged. “It’s not. And we do need to minimize that risk, bring it down to as close to zero as possible. But all we can do is our best. For all our powers, we’re not superheroes.

“All that being said, you also made the right call. When it came down to it, you took the bullet instead of that one guy. And you stayed with that other girl until help arrived.”

“Okay, fine,” Rainbow grumbled. “Great. Cool. I’m awesome. We knew that. Meanwhile, how do we keep this from happening again?”

“Well, I need to do more research to be certain, but this sounds like it may be a side effect of your years of solitary confinement. I’ve read that there are a variety of long-term effects that can result from that. And difficulty with long-distance vision is one of them.”

“And we fix this by...?”

“I don’t know yet,” Twilight admitted. “I don’t recall there being much research on the subject, so we may have to assemble the tools necessary for me to examine you properly. And since it’s probably neurological in nature, we’ll need to examine your central nervous system.”

“Well, examining my brain shouldn’t take long,” Rainbow grumped.

“Stop that.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Twilight said, stitching again.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Author's Note

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Ending Credits: Prison Song, by System of a Down.