Rainbow Dash Turns into a Dash 8-40CW
Admiral Biscuit
Once upon a time, Twilight Sparkle had lived in a tree.1 Then Tirek had magic-lasered her tree, and a new Crystal CastleTM sprouted from the ground nearby.2 Said Crystal Castle, unlike her tree, often had internal changes—Twilight never knew if all the rooms would be in the same place when she woke up in the morning. Some of that was surely a result of the ~~tree~~ castle growing and maturing, some of that was surely a result of several powerful unicorns and Trixie living in the castle—Trixie was couch-surfing, she said, but there weren’t any couches in the castle, and Trixe could most often be found in Starlight Glimmer’s room. Where there also weren’t any couches.
Some of it was just plot convenience.
Regardless of whether or not some of her roommates were best friends or ‘best friends’,3 Twilight was long-accustomed to sometimes finding new rooms, or the laundry suddenly being two floors up. That latter change wasn’t inconvenient, since she didn’t normally wear clothes.
The main parts of the castle did stay the same from ~~episode to episode~~ day to day. Especially the room with the marvelous magical map—that room stayed more the same than the other rooms.
Until it didn’t.
Twilight wasn’t always the most observant mare in the morning, especially before she’d had her morning glass of black water. But even an unobservant mare couldn’t have failed to observe, running directly through the center of the corridor, a set of tracks.
There are many kinds of tracks: there are the ones that animals leave in soft ground, there are the ones on a CD,4 there are the ones that intravenous drug users leave behind—Twilight knew all these definitions and more. They were none of those kinds of tracks, they were instead railroad tracks, placed on wooden crossties, in the standard 4’8½” (6 liters) gauge.
Twilight also knew that tracks are generally left by somepony. Of course, that was the kind of knowledge that was sort of fuzzy and dubious, since she did live in a ~~tree~~ Crystal Castle that occasionally rearranged itself.
Still, it had never grown tracks before.
There were three options open to her. The first was to summon her friends, since everypony knew that the best way to solve a problem was to delegate it to whomever the cutie mark map selected.
Option two was follow the tracks wherever they went. That might provide some answers as to the cause—for example, did they run to the train station? Was her Crystal Castle turning itself into a new stop for the CAMP & WEtPRRR.5 While that would be convenient when it came to getting places, having daily trains run past her bedroom wasn’t ideal.
Option three was pick from Option A or B after she’d had her morning coffee, and that was the option she took.
She looked both ways before crossing the tracks, like a good pony.
•••
Coffee in ~~hand~~ ~~hoof~~ horngrasp, Twilight contemplated two great mysteries of pony life.6 Foremost was, of course, the fact that there were railroad tracks running through one of the major hallways in the castle; second was the fact that of all the coffee makers the castle could have grown, it had provided a Kureg. Besides the obvious problem of it only brewing one cup of coffee at a time and the other obvious problem that a container of Papa John’s Garlic Butter also fit in the pod holder, there was the fact that it ran on electricity, which the Crystal Castle didn’t have.7 Fortunately, Twilight was a very talented pony, and could apply a nominal 120vAC 60Hz to the prongs of the power cord.
She followed the tracks deeper into the castle. She could have gone either direction, but everypony knows that ‘where did you go’ is a more important question to answer than ‘where did you come from?’8
Unsurprisingly, the tracks wound up in the Magic Map Room—most everything did.9
That was really convenient for summoning the other girls, and Twilight did so, activating the row of buttons under the edge of the table which would light up their cutie marks. Nopony but her knew those buttons were there; they just assumed it was some sort of cutie mark magic.
Then she kicked back in her throne and drank coffee and waited for her friends to arrive.
•••
Normally, Rainbow would be the first to arrive, and today was no exception. However, instead of coming bursting in through the window like a heathen, she actually arrived through the Castle Map Room Double DoorsTM like a normal pony.
Except that she burst through them like a heathen.
Also except that she was a locomotive now. A General Electric Dash 8-40CW.
The doors were strong—certainly stronger than the oft-replaced window—but not nearly strong enough to stop 400,000 pounds (12km) of locomotive.
Nor was Rainbow’s mini-throne large enough to seat her new bulk. Where she had once been pony-sized11, now she was seventy feet long, fifteen feet tall, and ten feet wide.
She also carried 4,000 gallons of fuel, and that’s probably enough locomotive facts for the moment.
Instead of her usual greeting, she let out a blast from her Nathan K5LA air horn12 which was deafening in an enclosed location. It also broke the window that Rainbow the pegasus usually broke.
Rainbow Dash 8-40CW idled up to her chair, crushed it under her wheels, and stopped just shy of the cutie mark map, and the two ponies—well, one alicorn and one Erie-built locomotive—waited for the rest of their friends to arrive.
Twilight sipped the rest of her bean juice; Rainbow idled quietly.13
•••
It didn’t take all that long for the rest of the girls to arrive. Even Starlight Glimmer showed up, since she was gunning for Twilight’s seat once Twilight got promoted to Princess of Equestria and Friendship and Freaking Out and moved on to the bigger, glitterier, Canterlot Castle.2
Trixie wasn’t there; she was taking a shower.14 Also she wasn’t part of the clique.
Six ponies and one locomotive sat around the table, four of them (and the locomotive) waiting to find out why ~~Twilight~~ The Magic Map had summoned them. Fluttershy was gnawing on a summer sausage.14 She’d been up all night caring for a sick marmot and hadn’t had time to eat breakfast.
Applejack was the first to speak. “So.”
It was a sensible question, from a sensible pony, and Rainbow Dash rang her bell in affirmation.
“Why’d you call us here, Twiggles?” Pinkie asked.
“...” Fluttershy’s normally demure reserved voice was even more muffled due to the nine inches of Texan sausage stuffed in her mouth.14
“Does anypony notice anything . . . different than normal?”
Five pairs of eyes and several sealed-beam headlights looked around the room, attempting to spot anything that might be out of place.
“Window’s broken, that’s normal.”
“Is it the door?” Pinkie pointed to the pile of flinders that had once been the door. “That’s not normally broken.”
“Oh, for Faust’s sake, Rainbow Dash is a locomotive.”
Fluttershy shrugged and swallowed her sausage. “Always has been.”
“Always—what?”
“She’s always been a locomotive.”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“Has, too.”15
Twilight held her head in her hooves, lest it either explode or just float off like a balloon, far and wee. Then she took several deep breaths to calm herself, and also a shot of Herr Vodka, and then since nopony was paying attention, brought the whole bottle to her lips and drained it dry because it was that kind of day.
“Rainbow Dash has not always been a locomotive,” she said. Of course, since she’d just downed enough vodka to kill a horse, it came out like “Runbw Dsssssh hAs not alwa beh locmatrain.”
Then she passed out on the table.
Rainbow’s windshield wipers went back and forth.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Starlight muttered. “Gone and made her cry. It’s okay, Rainbow, we’re all your friends.”
“HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK.”
“Oh, I know darling.” Rarity tapped Rainbow’s fuel tank reassuringly. “But Twilight simply is not a morning pony, and I’m sure she’ll apologize when she wakes back up.”
“I don’t think she’ll wake up.” Starlight lifted a hoof up from Twilight’s slumped-over form. “I think she’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Dammit, Jackie, I’m a doctor, not—wait, no. I’m not a doctor. I’m a unicorn. Why was I trying to take her pulse with my hoof? Who does that?” She lit her horn and checked Twilight’s vitals the usual way. “Eh, she’s fine.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Easy for you to say.” Pinkie shoved a stack of condolence cards and funeral invitations back in her mane. “So, does anypony know why we’re here? Nothing’s lit up on the map.”
“I ain’t waiting for Twilight to come to; I got corn to buck.”
“Um, don’t you mean apples?”
“Nah, the apples ain’t ripe yet, but the corn is.”
Starlight furrowed her brow. “You buck corn? By which I assume you mean you kick the ears off the plant?”
Applejack nodded.
“Isn’t there an easier way to do it? Like, I don’t know, buy a corn binder and harvest it with that?”
“I ain’t getting no fancy highfalutin machines for my farm. My ma bucked the corn and her ma before her, and what’s good enough for them is good enough for me.”
“HONK HOOOOOONK ding ding HOOONK.”
“Well, thank you, Rainbow, that would be much appreciated. We only got tracks laid along the south field, but if you think you got it in you.”
“ding.”
“Alright, ladies.” Applejack grabbed Rainbow’s handrails and pulled herself up the ladder. “If’n Twilight comes to and needs us again, we’ll be out at the farm.”
“Do remember to stop by the boutique this afternoon, darling; I have a tarp that’s just your size.”
“Catch you later, girls, gotta bounce!” Pinkie pronked away and that was the end of the story.
•••
But that wasn’t the end of the story. There was, in fact, a friendship mission which had gone unheeded in all the confusion of Rainbow Dash (8-40CW) suddenly being a locomotive or always having been a locomotive, and it was a mission that only the Mane 616 could handle as a team.
The mission was, of course, harvest the corn and get it to market.
You laugh . . . you know you laughed. I heard you laugh. The very fate of Equestria hung in the balance . . . okay, it didn’t really. But in order to maximize profits, Applejack needed to harvest the corn and get the corn to market while the price per bushel (meter) was high, that’s simple economics, and what better way to do it than with friends?
Applejack bucked corn, accurately landing each ear in a gravity wagon that Big Mac towed along behind him.
Rainbow Dash 8-40 CW also bucked corn, smashing through the stalks and flinging the corn up like yellow hail. Starlight and Rarity caught the flying corn and used their magic to lob it back into a hopper car that Rainbow was towing—Rainbow lacked in precision, but made up for it with 4,100 horsepower of enthusiasm.17
Fluttershy got animals out of the way, and Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie.
•••
High atop her crystal palace, a hungover Twilight Sparkle gazed out over the ~~wreckage~~ fairly normal-looking vista of Ponyville. Ponies were out and about, doing pony things. Off in the distance, a Rainbow Dash-colored locomotive was blasting through the cornfields, and off in the distance in the other direction some eldritch abomination deep in the Everfree was awakening from its slumber, preparing to wreak havoc;18 it was a perfectly normal day.
Rainbow Dash was a locomotive.
Always had been.
For a minute, Twilight was lost in contemplation. Things she thought she knew weren’t true. For example, she had always thought that Rainbow Dash was a pegasus. Or that she was in charge of her group of friends, but no, Starlight Glimmer was out there, and that could only mean one thing.
She was the guest in the castle. She wasn’t princess of the palace, Starlight was. And in that case, distasteful and demeaning and demoralizing as it was . . .
•••
There were no couches in Starlight Glimmer’s room, only kites. Even the bedsheets were kite-patterned. That pony sure does love kites!
Twilight slipped between the sheets and laid her head back on the pillow.19 Boy, it had been a strange day. And now she was playing second-fiddle to some lavender upstart, and now she was demoted to Starlight’s kite-themed bedroom.20
And—
“The great and powerful Trixie humbly requests that you remove your cold hooves from her great and powerful barrel.”
—now she was stuck with a second-rate marefriend.
Author's Note
1 Not unlike a bird or squirrel.
2 Buy Our Toys!
3 Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.
4 A shiny round disc that held music in Ye Olde Times.
5 Canterlot, Appleoosa, Manehattan, Ponyville & Wherever Else the Plot Requires Railroad.
6 Actually, there are far more than two mysteries to Pony LifeTM.
7 Except when the plot required it did.
8 Debatable; ask Rednex.
9 Except Trixie, who wound up in Glimmy’s bedroom.10
10 Sleeping on the ‘couch’.
11 On the slender, wiry end of the scale, of course.
12 Okay, I guess one more train fact.
13 As quietly as a GE 7FDL16 idles.
14 No, that’s not a euphemism.
15 Citation needed
16 Starlight being Twilight now.
17 She had the uprated prime mover.
18 Two weeks later it would be hit by a locomotive.
19 The pillow was stuffed with small, soft kites.
20 Even the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling were kites.
