Equestrian Betrayal

Six Months Ago

Today had been such an awesome day. No weather clouds needed maintenance, the temperature was perfect, and she had just perfected an awesome new trick. Yes, Rainbow Dash was a very happy pony.

Currently, Equestria’s most awesome Pegasus was napping in a big fluffy cloud drifting somewhere past Sweet Apple Acres southern border. Dash was dreaming about joining the Wonderbolts with her stylish moves and inherent coolness.

'Welcome everypony, to the Los Pegasus air show! Now, without further ado, I present… the Wonderbolts!" As the announcer finished, the most famous flight team in all of Equestria came racing into the arena.

‘And now, for the first event of the evening, the Time Trials. The Wonderbolts will be taking all challengers in this event. If you think you’re pony enough, come on down to the starting line and take your places!’

A few dozen Pegasi flapped down to the fluffy cloud designated as the starting platform. Then, from nowhere, the illustrious Rainbow Dash ascended to the stadium. The crowd went wild when the rainbow maned pony landed between Soarin and Spitfire.

‘Dear sweet Celestia, it appears that the Rainbow Dash has taken the field. Everypony else might as well head on back to their seats, nopony stands a chance against the creator of the Sonic Rainboom!’ The announcer hollered, beside himself with joy.

The captain of the Wonderbolts, Spitfire, was staring at the coolest Pegasus in all the land with dreamy eyes.

‘I want to have your babies,’ She cried gleefully, ‘imagine how cool they would be!’

Soarin’s eyes had become comically large pink hearts as he too stared at dash, completely smitten.

‘No, I want to have her babies! You can’t even give her babies with your girlie stuff down there,’ he objected loudly.

‘Whoa, whoa, everypony settle down. We can decide who’s having whose babies after I win this race.’

With that Rainbow Dash assumed her place at the starting line, crouched and ready to shoot up in the air when the race began.

‘On your mark,’ the announcer said, ‘get set, Go!’

Back in the real world, Dash was still dreaming.

“I’m… so… awesome…” she murmured in her sleep. Unfortunately for the snoozing pony, when the race started in her dream she kicked off in real life, bucking her poor cloud to bits and sending her plummeting toward the ground.

Dash awoke with a shriek and flailed around gracelessly for a moment, before catching the wind under her wings and stopping her decent.

“Man, I hope nopony saw that,” she muttered, blushing in embarrassment.

She eyed the wispy remains of her cloud and groaned.

“Maybe I can salvage it?” she asked herself, still wanting to nap.

There were no other clouds close enough to her to reach conveniently, so she lazily set about repairing her demolished bed. As she was pulling bits and pieces of it back together, she paused to yawn loudly.

“Jeez, I shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night. Stupid Applejack with her stupid cider.”

As the Pegasus was griping, she failed to notice a dark shape darting through the woods below her. She paused for a moment, and cocked an ear to listen. She thought she heard… buzzing?

After a few moments of silence she shrugged and went back to her cloud. It was almost done.

There it was again, she knew she heard something buzzing! Dash whipped her head around, trying to see whatever was making the noise. Again, she saw nothing and turned back to her cloud.

“Maybe it’s just a bee… a freakishly large bee… I should move my cloud.”

Two more swipes and a quick squeeze later and her impromptu bed was reassembled.

“There, a perfectly molded cumulonimbus cloud that doesn’t even want to rain. Dash, I dare say you are amazing,” She boasted to nopony in particular.

Just as she was about to hop back on her cloud and return to dream land, somepony tapped her on the shoulder.

“Huh whad-“ her sentence trailed off to nothing when she turned around to look at who wanted her attention. Rainbow Dash was gaping at a spitting image of herself hovering barely a meter away from her. The other Dash grinned back, eyeing Rainbow with malicious red eyes.

Before she could say anything more her copy smashed her fore hoof into Dash’s jaw, rocketing her through the newly reconstructed cloud and towards the field below. Normally Rainbow would be able to recover from a fall like this, even after being coldcocked, but her clone raced down after her and smashed her back hooves right into the real Dash’s forehead. She lost consciousness and crashed landed on her back.

‘Rainbow Dash’ grinned once more, and set off towards Ponyville as fast as she could fly.

Mayor Mare took a long draught of her steaming coffee. She was standing just outside of the doors of Town Hall, taking a quick break from writing an opening speech for the newly built town orphanage. Princess Celestia had funded the project personally, and chose Ponyville as the best place to put it. Technically it was already operating, but the official ceremony wasn’t for a few days yet. She sighed contentedly as her beverage warmed her insides. She loved her coffee almost as much as she loved speech writing. Who could ever ask for a better job than this?

The Mayor was jarred from her contented musings by an odd sight. Rainbow Dash was pushing a large black raincloud over the freshly constructed building. She jumped when a flash of lightening arced from one end of the cloud to the other. Mayor Mare felt panic well up inside her and ran forward, dropping her mug.

“Rainbow Dash. What in Celestia’s name do you think you’re doing! That is an orphanage, disperse those clouds at once!”

A handful of ponies stepped out of their homes to see what the commotion was about.

Rainbow Dash grinned down at the assembled ponies and the Mayor shivered at the sight. Something was seriously wrong here. The cyan Pegasus raised a back leg in the air poised to stomp on the cloud.

“What are you- No, you mustn’t there are fillies in there,” The mayor shrieked. Her outburst did nothing to stop the deranged Pegasus.

Rainbow stomped down forcefully, jarring the cloud. It made an ominous rumble before belching out a lightening bolt that split the roof of the orphanage wide open. The next thing any pony heard was the wailing of hurt and scared fillies. A few crawled from the burning building, and a orange Pegasus filly with a purple mane managed to haul herself out of a broken building.

Dash was now bouncing gleefully on the cloud, cackling while launching errant bolts of energy all across Ponyville. A few unfortunate souls were struck directly, ending their lives in a sudden flash of searing pain. Others weren’t so lucky. It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the dry thatched roofs burst into flame when struck by Dash’s lightening. The fires quickly spread, engulfing most of Ponyville in a raging firestorm.

“Save the children,” Cheerilee cried, galloping forward. Dash fluttered down casually and plowed her hoof right into the schoolteacher’s muzzle. Cheerilee’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed in the dirt.

Rarity, Twilight, and Pinkie Pie raced out into the street to stop their friend.

“Rainbow Dash, what the hell are you doing?” Twilight asked incredulously. The unicorn was horrified by the state of Ponyville. Ponies were running all over the place as their town slowly burned to the ground.

“Rarity!” Sweetie Belle screamed. The young unicorn was running towards her sister with Applebloom in tow. The youngest Apple’s bow was smoldering and both fillies were covered in soot and light burns.

“Come to me girls, its not safe,” the prim fashionista told the young ones. Unfortunately, the cause of Ponyville’s woes was still present. Rainbow hopped up on her back legs and punted Sweetie Belle into the side of a building. The filly hit the wall hard and slumped to the ground, unmoving. Without missing a beat she grabbed Applebloom by the bow and flung her the opposite direction, where she tumbled to the ground in a disheveled heap.

“You… bitch,” Rarity yelled, charging the Pegasus, blinded with anger. Rainbow was ready for it, and got low to the ground. When Rarity got close enough, Dash ducked under her front legs and lifted her up by the middle. When the Pegasus was standing straight she flipped the white unicorn over and threw her onto the ground. She followed up with a quick jab to the eye.

A small blast of magic hit Rainbow in the side, spinning her around and scorching her flank. The Pegasus whipped her head around looking for the source. Of course, it was Twilight Sparkle trying to save the day.

“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to stop me, little pony,” she sneered.

Twilight was trembling in fear; she didn’t know what to do. This was worse than facing Nightmare Moon, and worse than facing Discord. Rainbow Dash was a friend, somepony she knew personally and cared deeply about. Seeing her snap and go on a rampage like this was disturbing. She didn’t want to hurt Dash but she wanted to help everypony else.

‘Celestia never prepared me for this, what do I do? I don’t want anypony to be hurt,’ the lavender unicorn thought frantically. In hindsight, she should have been paying more attention to the world around her rather than her thoughts. Rainbow caught her with a vicious backhoof, knocking Twilight to the dirt. A swift kick to the side flipped the unicorn to her back and Dash was quickly straddling her.

“You. Need. To. Learn. Your. Place,” the Pegasus growled, punctuating each word with a heavy punch. Twilights face was bloodied and torn up. In a daze she spit out a tooth and let her head loll back.

Rainbow cackled and stepped off the powerless Element of Magic. Pinkie pie was crying, frozen in place. She desperately wanted to laugh the situation away; she wanted everything to be better. No fire, no blood, no death. But deep down, in the part of her that was pragmatic and level headed, she knew that the world didn’t work that way.

Dash took one menacing step towards Pinkie and she bolted, running as fast as she could away from Ponyville, towards the Everfree forest.

Dash shook with laughter as she eyed the pandemonium around her. She waltzed over to the shell of the orphanage and pulled out a slender broken board. Twirling it in her hooves experimentally, she was pleased to note that there was two long nails still embedded in the end. With a tremendous battle cry she lunged at the ponies that were still in the town, continuing her wanton bloodbath.

Ten minutes later it was done. Thirteen ponies lay dead in the streets and countless others were nursing terrible wounds. Cowering under a broken wall was Scootaloo, bearing witness to the whole event. Rainbow was spattered with gore and laughing uncontrollably as touched down where she started this rampage. She tossed the bloody board over her shoulder and surveyed her work.

‘Absolutely brilliant! Rainbow Dash will be ruined forever! Now, to find a survivor so spread the word… I hope I wasn’t too thorough…”

A whimper off to the side gained Dash’s attention. She turned to look at the source and grinned, seeing the trembling orange filly.

“Perfect.” She deliberately walked over to the collapsed wall and hauled Scootaloo out of the rubble. She picked her up with both fore hooves brought her in close. Their muzzles were almost touching.

“Remember what you saw here today, and be sure to spread the word brat.”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened to comical proportions as she realized something.

‘That’s not Rainbow Dash!’ Sure enough, under close scrutiny, the colors on this imposter were all off. The eyes were too red, akin to blood rather than the soft rose hue of her true hero. The cyan coat held no luster and looked too coarse. Her teeth were too sharp and the rainbow colors in her mane were all the wrong shade.

Scootaloo’s thoughts were racing faster than the Wonderbolts as she tried to come up with an explanation. Then she remembered the royal wedding a few months back.

‘Changeling!’

Dash dropped the frozen filly on her flank and chuckled.

“What a coward. You know, you could have at least helped your friends, instead of hiding and watching me pulverize them.”

The changeling laughed once more and took flight, casually leaving the most disastrous scene of modern history in Equestria.

Rainbow Dash came to groggily in the field. Her back ached and she tasted blood. She groaned and sat up, wincing in the process. She had a splitting headache and her jaw hurt like crazy. She looked up and it was almost dark. She didn’t remember it being so late when she went to sleep, it was only mid morning. She wasn’t so tired as to waste the whole day away like that. Furthermore, why wasn’t she on a cloud?

“What in the hell…. Oh my gosh, an imposter,” Dash bolted to her feet and took to the air after checking that her wings were unharmed. She could see a tall column of black smoke in the distance, about where Ponyville was. She could see tiny specks that were pegasi pushing rain clouds around in a frenzy trying to douse the blaze that was consuming the village.

“No, no, no, no!” She flapped harder, worried about her friends. By the time she got to Ponyville, most of the flames had been put out. She could see ponies milling about with their heads down, being aided by medics and guards from Canterlot. She touched down near the library, where she saw Her friends standing with Princess Celestia and Shining Armor.

“Guys, whats going on? What happened here?” She asked incredulously.

Applejack was tending to Applebloom who had a broken leg, and Rarity and Sweetie Belle were crying together in the dirt. Twilight was holding a bag of ice to the side of her face; one of her eyes was swollen shut. Shining Armor whirled around immediately, and placed himself between Dash and the others. He shot a flare of magic into the air and in moments, all the guards in the town had rushed to his side, surrounding Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow Dash, I am placing you under arrest for murder and the destruction of Ponyville. Please come quietly,” He said loudly, all business.

“What! You can’t be serious, I just got here!” She said, eyes darting from face to face in confusion. Celestia frowned at her and Applejack bristled.

“Thas a damn lie an you know it. You’re a monster, an everypony knows it, so jus do us a favor and shut up!” She yelled.

“Wha-whats wrong with everypony? I’ve been out cold in a field all day. I didn’t do anything!”

It was Twilights turn to glare at dash.

“Rainbow you’re just making this worse. Everypony saw you do this. You did this to me, to Rarity,” she gestured to the scuffed up unicorn, who’s eye was also swollen shut, “and everypony else! I don’t know what got into you, but you’ve got to be pretty stupid if you think you can just float back her and act like you have no idea what’s going on. You killed fillies, Rainbow. Orphaned fillies. So I suggest that you do what my brother says. Unlike us, the Royal Guard isn’t defenseless. They don’t care if they have to hurt you to bring you in.”

Rainbow’s jaw was hanging open at the end of Twilight’s tirade. She was unsettled; the guards were closing in on her slowly, prepared for her to make a move. Dash felt the familiar sensation of adrenaline screaming through her veins. Her instincts were begging her to fly away, to avoid the fight and live another day.

“This can’t be happening, there’s no way, and this is just a bad dream. This has to be a bad dream. Princess, I’m the Element of Loyalty, I wouldn’t ever do this, and you have to believe me!”

Before the princess could respond, the guards lunged forward and grabbed her, attempting to pin her wings to her body.

“No, no, get off of me, let me go!” Dash began thrashing, and managed to break free of the guards. She flapped madly, trying to get away. Applejack pulled a rope out of her Stetson and lassoed Rainbow’s bag legs. She kicked madly, trying to get out of the rope.

“Archers ready,” Shining Armor commanded. Six unicorn guards levitated their bows and pulled them taught. They had Rainbow Dash in their sights and were waiting for the next command.

“Let me go, I’m innocent. Somepony help me,” Dash was screaming. Nopony below moved. Most were watching the scene unfold with satisfaction. The guard and their Princess would protect them and they felt safe now.

Dash managed to throw Applejack’s rope off and quickly ascended.

“Fire!”

Rainbow Dash cried out as six arrows found their mark in her wings and back. She hit the ground hard for the second time that day. She desperately tried to crawl away but somepony standing on her tail stopped her. She looked over her shoulder, past the grotesque sight of arrows embedded in her back and straight into Shining Armor’s eyes. They held no remorse as he raised his hoof and stomped on her face, once again sending her into unconsciousness.