A/N: This is a bonus chapter that takes during the events of Stray Ardor and Something More. This can also be taken as a stand alone fic. I'll be honest it's inspired by My Little Dashie.
Rainbow Dash had been going back and forth between Ponyville and Canterlot recently since the incident.
Let's backtrack it all started about a week ago. Rainbow and the weather team were placing about a dozen or so clouds over Ponyville. The forecast called for partly cloudy so a few light grey clouds were needed near city hall. It was a fairly simple task or it would've been except for one of her oldest friends Derpy the thundercloud loving mail mare who unaware of what she was doing was jumping up and down on the grey cloud and building static up to dangerous levels.
"Hey, Derpy could please stop doing that?"
"Oh, hey Dash." The wall-eyed pegasus said in her trademark bubbly tone. "Stop doing what?"
"Jumping on the cloud, somepony could get hur--" As if on cue Dash was struck by a rather large bolt of lightning and promptly hit the ground.
"Sorry, my bad." Derpy flew off to get help.
As Rainbow Dash laid there, she was met by a plethora of images and memories or she thought they were memories. It was like she could see a second version of her own foalhood different in every way from the one she currently remembered, the one where she grew up in the Cloudsdale foster home system. These were memories of a weird place called Texas, waking up in a cardboard box, and last came the visions of an odd bipedal ape like thing.
As if someone put her mind in fast forward she was met with all fifteen years of someone who cared about her, feed her, raised her and loved her like the parent she never had growing up. There were tons of good moments and a few bad one thrown in as well, but the one word that came to mind was: daddy. He called her his little Dashie. It was funny that a nickname that a few of her friends called her over the years could trigger such an emotional response from the blue mare. As the memories were coming to an end one of the last things she saw was Princess Celestia herself taking her away from all of this.
'Dad, No!' Rainbow Dash started to panic as she felt herself trying to latch onto the remnants of these forgotten chapters of her life. Just as quickly as it had come, it was now over and she was met with a pitch black void that faded into a white light.
Rainbow woke up on the library floor with tears in her eyes and sweating. Standing over her were Spike, Twilight and Derpy.
The purple dragon was the first to break the silence. "Hey, Rainbow Dash, ya alright?"
Rainbow finally let the visions she saw finally sink in as she got to her hooves and wiped here face free of anything that would give up her tough self image she had created for herself. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm the toughest pegasus in all of Equestria; it'll take more than getting struck by lightning to keep me down."
Derpy looked down at the ground, sadly. "I'm really sorry about that Dash. Tell you what, you can have free postage for a month and I'll even let you hang out in the Doctor's TARDIS; it has a huge hot tub inside of it."
The mail carrier punctuated her apology with a bone crushing hug.
Dash knew she couldn't stay mad at Derpy, because even with all her clumsiness she had the ability to bring out the best in ponies. "Geez, Derpy I forgive you...but...you're crushing...ugh...my spine..."
The grey mare released her friend from her grip and looked quite embarrassed by the whole scene.
However, the prismatic maned pony had bigger issues to attend to and flew out of the library and towards Canterlot for answers.
Twilight looked simply dumbfounded by her friend's sudden actions. "I wonder what was wrong with Rainbow?"
The other three just shrugged before chalking it up to the cyan mare's impulsive behavior.
In Canterlot, more specifically the palace of the royal sisters and the home of Discord; the god of chaos had made amends with his former friend/lover Princess Celestia. In fact the two have been rather close as of lately much to the surprise of everyone. He agreed to not use his powers to make everypony miserable and return she allowed him to cause as much chaos as he wanted on certain days of the week like Chaos Fridays. It was revealed that his chaos wasn't unwelcome to the Buffalo Tribes whom state that Discord had actually added an air of culture to their people with the introduction of ballet. Everypony would have to admit that buffalo were extremely graceful, even more so than the thinnest and most slender of ponies, but that is a story for a different time.
Yeah, things were going very well in the Equestrian capitol city, which was a surprise when rainbow colored blur torpedoed toward the castle.
The guards simply let Rainbow Dash pass as she did help save Equestria two times and fought to free the city from the changeling invasion. The mare rushed to the royal throne room and sitting in three chairs were princesses Celestia and Luna and the god of chaos Discord.
"Well hello there, element of loyalty. It is always much joy to see friends pay us a visit." Luna greeted Rainbow Dash warmly unaware of her problem.
Rainbow took a second to collect her thoughts and greeted them while remembering that Luna preferred not to use her royal title. "Uh, hi, Luna, Princess Celestia and..." Her mood shifted to distaste. "...Discord."
"You're still upset about the whole turning you against your friends thing?"
Rainbow Dash ignored him and began to explain what happened earlier that day from when she was struck by lightning to the secondary memories and how she woke up on the library floor.
Celestia looked at the element of loyalty and sighed. "One year prior to the Nightmare Moon incident, you were accidentally sent to another world called: Earth as a filly of four years of age and due to possible time distortion fifteen years had passed on that world by the time I managed to retrieve you and change you back to the correct age. Those memories are secondary because essentially you were a foal twice. I erased your memories or so I thought, but instead I only repressed them."
Rainbow looked at the solar princess with a very sour expression. "Wait, you tried to erase all that?!"
Once again Celestia let out a gentle sigh. "Yes and no. I tried to remove your memories because I feared what they would do to you, but the thing is I couldn't turn back time for the human that raised you nor could I remove you from his memories. My theory is that since Earth is not my domain I have no powers over any creature from that world."
The polychromatic pegasus let all that information stew in her head. 'Wait, if I feel this bad just getting all these moments of my life back....that must mean that he...' Rainbow knew that somewhere out there was father who misses her deeply. The very thought of that brought her to the verge of tears.
"Is there any way I can see him again?" Dash pleaded.
"At the time there wasn't, but there is one option you have set before you. You can't stay in his world; however, you can bring him to our world."
Rainbow's face perked back up again and she was happy with the suggestion. "Really, princess you could do that?!"
"I'm sorry. I can't."
"But you just said y--" Dash's impending rant was cut off my Celestia.
"I don't have the ability to control anything on that world."
The three of them turned to the sound of laughter. "My dearest Celestia doesn't have the power, but I do. Hell, I'm practically playing with it." Discord conjured up a biker jacket and was now wearing a Nintendo Power Glove.
Rainbow Dash had to swallow her pride and ask the draconequus for help. "Please, can you help me?" She said while struggling to be nice to him.
"Oh, how the mighty have fallen. HA HA." He received as angry glare from Celestia which made him stop his teasing.
Luna giggled and whispered. "Thou art whipped."
The god of chaos was not amused. "Hey Luna, I got two words for you: space sphere."
Luna cringed at the thought of the strange ball that talked to her for several hundred years on the moon.
Discord got up from his chair and motioned towards Rainbow to follow him to the gardens.
Meanwhile, in relatively nice looking ranch style house in Texas lived a thirty-seven year old man named Ron Ryans whom three years after his Dashie left still felt the pain of losing a child. Sure he went out with friends and had the faint outline of a social life.
Ron spent the last three years of his life trying to be strong but he couldn't and the photo album and her note didn't help much. The idea that the only times he could see his daughter were in static images and old videos from a show that ended over eleven years ago left him with only more sorrow.
"I wish I could see her just one more time." He prayed that one day he could see Dash again even if it was only for a second.
Just as Ron was getting ready for bed he heard a car pull up to his drive way. He put a jacket on over his pajamas and went outside to inspect it. All he saw at first was a chromed out low rider, "Hello, can I help you?" He called out and just as he did the damn thing turned on its high beams and blasted its air horn that was in the tune of the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazard.
"Umm?" He slowly walked toward the dark tinted windows of the car and he was startled when the driver's window rolled down and it was the face of Discord whom simply teleported him to Equestria leaving the human very confused.
Mr. Ryans took in his surroundings and instantly recognized them as the Royal Canterlot Gardens.
"Why are you here and why couldn't you just do that in the first place?"
"HA HA, so many questions. I don't need a reason that was fun."
"Speaking of fun. I did have fantastic time on Earth, so much chaos. I went to Houston to cause some havoc at a convention hall and the fowl smelling and rotund humans there kept on calling me De Lancie, what in the depths of Tartarus is a De Lancie?"
With his piece said Discord left the area leaving a puff of smoke in his wake and when it settled the familiar colors of appeared before him. The two just stood there.
The roughly middle aged human was the first to break the growing silence. He still couldn't believe his eyes. "A-are you...real?"
He was promptly tackled to the ground by a rainbow colored blur.
"DADDY!!!" Dash screamed as she cried into his shoulder, her own becoming wet with the tears of her long lost father. She could feel the years of sadness and pain conflicting with renewed hope and happiness emanating from his hug.
Ron may not be on Earth, hell he may never see it again but at least he was back with his family and that's all that mattered to him. All he could do was continue to hold her like he had when she was a foal.
After twenty minutes they were both emotionally and physically exhausted. The human took his jacket off and placed it on Rainbow Dash as a makeshift blanket as he carried her to a nearby bench as it was getting dark.
Suddenly, Ron noticed a white shape flying towards them; as it got closer he automatically knew exactly what or rather who it was, it was princess Celestia. Just as she was about to speak, he motioned to the now sleeping Rainbow Dash.
The solar princess got the message and kept her voice to a whisper. "Greetings, Mr. Ryans. I know you said when we last spoke that you said that you had no ill will towards me and I hope that is still the case."
He replied with a simple nod.
"Good. Tomorrow I wish to discuss your integration into Equestrian life as well as get Ponyville prepared for your arrival. I do wish to give you fair warning that you may need to stay in Canterlot for the next three or four days."
"They can't be that easily startled, can they?"
Discord randomly reappeared. He let out a hardy laugh and snapped his fingers changing into hippy attire. "Questions, questions, questions with this one, just go with the flow, dude."
Celestia rolled her eyes. "To answer your question; yes, judging from what my faithful student has told me."
Ron let out a small laugh, still careful not to wake up his little Dashie. Her sleeping form coaxed a yawn from him.
"I'll have a room prepared for you two." The princess motioned to a passing maid to show them to a guest room.
The Two of them made their way into the castle following the maid down the corridor. Celestia sighed knowing that this was for the best. However, all this reuniting and happiness did have a positive effect emotionally on her draconequus as he gently led the two of them to their own bed chambers.
It was going to be a very busy week as in the next coming days Rainbow would have to use up most of her vacation time from the weather office in order to fly back and forth to Canterlot.
