Rainbow's quill scratched across the page of the notebook. Finishing her sentence and setting down the quill, she sat back and looked at what she'd written, reading aloud. "And that's how we stopped Discord's nonsense." She rubbed her chin as her eyes scanned the page. Flipping back through the book, she glanced at bits and pieces of her mouth writing.
"Alright. Time to send this nonsense to the publisher."
She closed the book and stacked it with two others on her desk. Opening a drawer, she pulled out an envelope.
She stacked it with the other two notebooks on her desk and stood, stretching. Looking around the room, she spotted her saddlebags and strapped them on. Placing the notebooks in one pocket, she walked to the bookshelf and pulled off one of her daring Do books. She opened the cover, flipped through a couple pages, scanned the text, and closed it, putting it into her bag.
She left her house, flying to the post office, entered, and waited in line for her turn. "Hi Derpy," she said, reaching the counter. "I've got some things to go out. Gonna need a package." She pulled the books from her bag and opened the Daring Do book to the publisher’s information. "I need these three notebooks"--she indicated the stack with a hoof--"sent to this address." She pointed at the publisher's address.
"Okie dokie." Derpy took a manuscript envelope from below the counter, copied the address onto it, and slipped the books in.
"Oh yeah, and this." Rainbow reached back into her bag and pulled out a folded page. "Gotta let them know who to send the check to."
Derpy finished packaging and sealing the envelope. "That'll be two bits."
Rainbow set the coins on the counter and turned to leave.
"Next."
———
Rainbow sat across from Twilight outside the cafe. She was talking about nerd stuff again. Rainbow nodded.
"So that's why the budget for the royal guard was gutted. Now I’m stuck doing guard work until they establish the new social services bureau."
Derpy swooped down, landing beside them. "Special delivery for you, Rainbow Dash."
Rainbow turned. "Oh thank Celestia. I don't think I could have taken any more of that." She cocked her head. "Why didn't you just deliver it to my house?"
"They paid for urgent delivery and I spotted you on my way to your place. Here." She pulled a letter from her bag, hoofed it over, waved, and took off.
Rainbow inspected the envelope. "Yes!"
"What is it?" asked Twilight.
"It's a letter from my publisher. Probably my first check."
"I'm sorry. Did you say publisher?"
"Yeah. I figured that if Dr Caballeron and Ahuizotl can write a book about their adventures, so can I." She tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside, holding it before her to read.
"Uh... What?"
"I wrote about that time we defeated Discord." Rainbow scanned the page, lips moving as she read. "Huh."
Twilight leaned forward. "What?"
"It says they're interested in my book, but they want to talk to me about a contract. They've got an agent coming through Ponyville tonight for something else, and he wants to meet with me."
"That sounds promising."
"It sounds boring."
“Why don’t I come with you then? I’ve dealt with publishers before.”
“You have? Oh yeah, the journal. I guess. He says his train gets here at three-forty. He’s got to catch the next train to Manehattan two hours later.”
“I’ve got a meeting with Raven Inkwell at that time.” An organizer appeared with the clap and flash of teleportation. Grasping it in her magic, Twilight flipped through the pages to today and scanned down the page. “Yeah.” She snapped it shut and looked to Rainbow. “That goes until four. Guess I’ll miss it.”
“Maybe you can come rescue me when your meeting is done. If I have to listen to some nerd talk about books for any longer, I’ll die.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Wha—”
“Daring Do and the Wonderbolts don’t count.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “I’ll try to make it.”
———
Rainbow stopped pacing as she watched the train pull in. The doors opened and passengers spilled from the train, scattering and leaving the station or milling about. A bespectacled unicorn stallion approached.
“Rainbow Dash?”
She nodded. “That’s me. Red Line?”
“Indeed.” He looked around the station. “How about we go find a place to sit?”
Rainbow gestured at the bench. “There’s a place right there.”
He looked at it skeptically, then back to Dash. “Don’t you want to get some coffee or something?”
“Nah. I’m good.” She glanced at his bags. “So, do you have an advance for me in there?”
Red Line sighed and sat on the bench. “I don’t. I have your manuscript.” He pulled it out and flipped it open seemingly at random. His eyes scanned through the page. “You’ve got a good core of an idea here, and we’d love to publish something from an element bearer, but this needs work.”
Rainbow stepped closer, craning her neck to look at the page, but he snapped the page shut and met her gaze.
“What do you know about ghost writing?”
Rainbow blinked. “Like horror stories?”
“Tsk.” He shook his head. “Sometimes, especially with non-fiction titles, we pair an experienced author with an inexperienced one. We call the experienced author a ghost writer, and they help expand a narrative into a full story.”
“Look,” said Rainbow, walking off a few steps and looking around in the distance. “I’m not interested in helping somepony fix their boring story.”
Red lifted a hoof. “That...” He inhaled deeply. “What I mean is, we’d like to pair you with a ghost writer who can repair your manuscript so we can publish it. You don’t have to worry about authorship—yours would be the only name on the cover. We’ll send a ghost writer by in a few weeks. All you have to do is answer some questions for them. They’ll work with you on your schedule and rewrite this document to our standards.” He lifted it, but she wasn’t watching. ”I’ve got a contract here I can review with you before my train leaves.” He pulled the contract out. “What do you say?”
“This was a mistake.” She turned to him. “Repair my manuscript? Fix it? Your Standards? What in Tartarus is wrong with my story? It’s awesome, just like me.”
“Oh.” He pushed the bridge of his glasses up. “Let me show you.” He flipped open one of the notebooks, stuck a hoof on the page, and scanned down the page partway. “Here. ‘Then Dip-Cord stole my wings and it was a real downer. I get them back later but he can be a real jerk sometimes.’”
He looked up. “See what I mean? The tense change and missing comma are something we could fix with a line editor and copy editor, but the exposition should be worked into a proper narrative and that pun is terrible.” He started flipping through the pages. “There’s tons more like this. Let me find ano—”
“What pun? Actually, just forget it.” Rainbow hung her head. “My writing is awesome. If you don’t see that, then just forget it.” She snatched her manuscripts back while he gaped. “This was a mistake.” Turning, she walked to the edge of the platform as he sat there, his mouth opening and closing as his expression shifted. With a leap, she took to the air.
———
Rear legs extended, Rainbow plummeted towards the cloud. Connecting, it exploded into a dissipating swirl of moisture. Twisting and spreading her wings, she snapped into a glide that curved up, bringing her high above the cloud level before she levelled out again.
Looking around, she spotted another cloud. And Twilight. Rainbow banked around, pretending not to see Twilight.
With a flash, a bang, and a poof of displaced air, Twilight appeared beside her. “Hey. I didn’t see you at the station so I asked around. They said you took off, literally, so I came looking for you.” She glanced over. “How’d it go?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Rainbow tilted her wings into a dive, and landed on a cloud.
Twilight landed beside her, putting a wing around her friend. “That bad, huh? I don’t think you should worry too much. Keep sending it out and I’m sure you’ll find a publisher who won’t reject it.”
Rainbow shrugged off the wing and rolled away, looking up at the darkening sky as she lay on her back. “They didn’t reject it.”
“That’s great! What are you upset about then? Was the advance smaller than you wanted?”
“He didn’t make any advances on me.”
Twilight opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again, shaking her head. Folding her forelegs and resting her chin on them, she watched Ponyville over the side of the cloud. She waited.
“He said my pun was terrible.” A breath. “I didn’t even have any puns.”
“And?”
Rainbow rolled over beside Twilight, studying the town below. “He wanted someone else to rewrite my book. Like I can’t write or something. I took my book back and left. I don’t want some stranger messing up my story.”
“If not a stranger, how about me? I’m an author, and it can’t be that bad if they wanted to publish it. It probably just needed some polish. I could help you clean it up before you send it to another publisher.”
“I’m not sending it to another publisher. I’m done with writing.” She muttered, “Waste of time.”
“Dash, don’t say that. I’m sure it’s great. You wrote some of the friendship journal entries, and that’s published. I’ll help you clean it up, then we’ll submit it to another publisher.”
“I guess.” She pulled out the notebooks and gave them to Twilight. “I need to go home and get some sleep. You can tell me how it goes.” Rainbow rolled off the cloud, snapped out her wings, and glided towards home.
Twilight looked at the notebooks, opened the one labeled I, and began reading. Finishing the first page, she closed the book and closed her eyes, massaging her temple.
———
Dash tucked in her wings, rolling to the side as bullets flew into her previous flight path. She scanned the ground, spotting another group of sling-wielding skeletons below. “Twilight, two o’clock.”
“What happens at two—” She saw them and banked away. Most of the bullets missed, but she couldn’t dodge one, which clipped her wing, sending her spinning out of control. Erecting a shield, she smashed into the ground, bouncing and rolling into a cluster of skeletons, knocking them apart into scattered piles of bones. “I finished, by the way.”
Foreleg extended, Dash ploughed through the second group in a dive. With her remaining momentum, she slammed into the door of the manor, cracking the door and busting the frame. “Finished what?”
Twilight blasted the door, knocking it the rest of the way off the frame. “Those revisions to your story.” She glanced at Rainbow’s nonplussed expression. “I sent a copy to a publisher yesterday.”
Rainbow stepped through the doorway. “I don’t know. I just wonder if it was all a mistake.”
“We’ll find out soon,” said Twilight, following her.
Dash walked to the fireplace, lifting a picture from the mantel. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”
“Well yeah. I don’t regret it at least. I think there’s a good chance you’ll get published. It just takes hard work and revising sometimes. I’m hoping we’ll hear back next week, even if it’s a rejection.” Twilight looked around at the furnishings and frowned.
“No, I mean breaking into this house. It looks like a family lives here.” She passed the photo to Twilight.
Her frown deepened. “I think we may have made a mistake.”
———
Twilight huffed. “Look, the reports said there was an evil necromancer living there. Multiple witnesses even. How was I supposed to know they were just raising their ancestors from family crypts to protect the estate from bandits? Let’s just drop it. The publisher will be here soon.”
“Whatever.” Rainbow sat in her chair in the cutie map room “It’s not like I don’t have enough bits to pay for half a broken door, especially after they buy our book.”
“Don’t count your eggs before—”
Spike pushed the door open. “Mark Up from Slash Fiction is here.”
Twilight smiled. “Thanks, Spike.” She gestured. “Come on in and have a seat.”
A short pega stallion entered, bowing to Twilight. “Highness, thank you for hosting this meeting.”
“Please. Twilight will do while we’re here.”
He nodded. Turning and approaching the table, he held a hoof out for Rainbow, who bumped it with her own. “You must be the author, Rainbow Dash. Pleased to meet you.” He set a bag on the table, pulling out a book and some papers. “I’ve followed your story in the papers. We were excited to see a submission from such a famous mare.”
“Yeah, yeah. Cut to the chase. You’re interested in my book?”
“There’s a solid core of the story here, but it’s encumbered with a little too much prose. We’d like to cut it back a bit before publishing. You can do that yourself, or we can hire a line editor to make the cuts for you, but that would eat into your advance. What do you say?”
Rainbow sighed. “I just want this over with. What were you planning to cut, anyway? I thought it was pretty tight, and the last publisher wanted to expand it.”
“Well let me show you an example.” Mark Up flipped open the book and read. “Discord grinned wickedly and snapped his finger with a flare. Panic crashed over me like the waves of a lunar tide. I strained to escape, but his magic took hold, pulling and stretching at my wings until—pop—they came off, floating to discord. I plummeted to the ground, an apple shaken from a tree, and curled up like a little filly. I sobbed, disconsolate as he stole the best part of me: my wings. Placing them in a box, he told me—”
Rainbow held a hoof to his lips. “Alright, stop. That’s… that’s not mine. That’s not even what happened!” She turned to Twilight. “What did you do?”
Twilight’s ears lay flat. “What? I just filled it in a bit?”
“A bit?” Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Where’s my original?”
“I… I’ll go get it.” With a flash, she disappeared.
Rainbow turned to Mark. “Sorry. Twilight’s a bit of a nerd sometimes. She was supposed to fix it up just a bit before sending it in, not completely rewrite it.”
Twilight reappeared with a pop. “Here. This is the original.” She floated the books to Dash, who took them and opened one to the matching passage that Mark Up had just read.
Dash handed the books to Mark Up. “Check it out.”
Mark took the book, scanning the page. He nodded. “This is much better.” He looked up. “I’ll take this back with me. If the rest is like this, I think we can publish it with only minor corrections, like this missing comma here.” He touched a hoof to the page.
Rainbow shook her head. “No.”
“No?” asked Twilight and Mark in unison.
“Publish it as-is or forget it. I’m tired of this nonsense.”
Mark rubbed his chin. “I see. I’ll need to consult about it.”
“No. Either take it now or leave it.”
He flipped through the smaller manuscript, skimming the pages. “That’s a big risk. I’m inclined to say no, but maybe if we skip the advance.”
“What? You don’t want to pay me? Forget it.”
“You still get paid, just not up front. You’d only get the royalties.”
Rainbow looked at Twilight. “What?”
“You’d get paid the same amount, but only after it comes out, and in monthly installments.”
“Uhhh… sure.” Rainbow took Mark’s quill and signed the forms he presented.
———
“Well now,” said Applejack. “I didn’t expect that friendship problem to take two months to resolve. Those Saddle Arabians were mighty thankful about us stopping the assassination plot with only a modicum of bloodshed and reconciling a hundreds-year-old feud, but I’m sure work’s piled up for me at the farm. See ya later, Twi.”
“I hear you. I’ve got a long bath calling for me in the castle. Later, AJ. Or maybe I should start calling you Your Grace.”
“Not unless you want me to start calling you Your Majesty, Your Majesty,” called AJ over her shoulder.
Twilight rolled her eyes, plodding through the streets of Ponyville to her castle, head held low, too plumb tired to teleport or fly after the long journey. Thus it was she walked horn-first into the obstacle.
“Ow. What the hay?” She looked up. And up. “What in Celestia’s name?” The new castle was tall, rainbow-colored, and obviously not hers. The mosaic showing Rainbow Dash creating a sonic rainboom was kind of a dead giveaway. “Rainbow Dash!”
Dash poked her head out a window in the upper floors. “Oh, hey Twi. You’re back.”
“Why is there a castle in the middle of the street? And the edge. And where Mayor Mare’s house used to be. Blocking access to my castle.”
“Neat, huh? I had it made while you were gone.”
“How? Why? Did Discord do this? Where’s Mayor Mare living now?”
“I gave her like the whole ground floor.” Rainbow leapt from the window, gliding down to land beside Twilight so they wouldn’t have to yell. She swept a wing at the mural. What do you think?”
“I think you need to explain what happened.”
“Oh. I got those royalty payments from my book. Now I live like royalty. Get it?” She nudged Twilight, grinning.
Twilight facehoofed. “Rainbow, you can’t rely on your royalty payments staying the same. The bank’s just going to repossess this place as soon as your royalties dip and you can no longer afford payments.”
Rainbow cocked her head. “What bank?”
“Wherever you took out a loan to buy this place.”
“I didn’t get a loan, Twilight. I paid cash.”
Twilight looked at the castle skeptically. “Cash. Right. And just how much money did you make from your first three months of book royalties?”
Rainbow looked around cautiously and leaned forward, whispering into Twilight’s ear.
Twilight began to hyperventilate. “How? My last book didn’t make a fraction of that?”
“I guess I’m just a better author than you.”
Twilight glared. “No. I refuse to accept that notion. I read your draft. It was terrible.”
“Jeeze, Twilight. No need to be jealous. Anyway, I gotta jet. Appointment with my masseuse. You’re welcome to join me if you like, as long as you drop that attitude. It’s up on the seventh floor.” She waved a wing and took flight, calling down for all of Ponyville to hear, “If you keep trying, then, some day, I’m sure you’ll be a good writer.”
