Today was the day. Rainbow Dash was performing in front of the Wonderbolts at their try-outs, where she was going to become their newest member. Over the past few months, she had done rigorous practise and prepared herself both physically and mentally. Stretches, exercises, stunts – all had been repeated continuously. She had even been getting help from – while simultaneously giving help to – Applejack, bucking the many apple trees of the orchard in order to build the muscles in her already strong hind legs and give her a better thrust when taking off into the sky. There were even long sky-rides she had taken the farmer on in which, due to the extra weight on her back, had strengthened her wings and built her flight endurance. As an unexpected side effect, Applejack’s help had given Rainbow better control over her temper, as the earth pony had always pushed her to her limit and chastised her when she had not fully reached it; it made her angry at first of course, but the combination of her eventually realising her friend was doing it for her own good, plus the fact that she had undergone the scolding for several months now, had made her immune to it and any digs or insults thrown at her by others.
It was a lot of hard work over a long period of time, especially considering she could only perform a few tricks in the short amount of time allotted to each hopeful Pegasus at the try-outs, but it was worth it. It was all for this one monumentally important day, the day she would join her idols. She would wow them with her stunts and mesmerise them with her flying skills, leaving them no choice but to accept her into their ranks. It was inevitable.
Doing her last stretches, she heard the number on her flank called – 17. Giving her ego and confidence one last quick stroke and taking a deep breath, she made her way into the middle of the cloudiseum arena. All around her, thousands of pegasi were moving and cheering in the stands, creating a multi-coloured wave of noise. They were all cheering for her, but her eyes were fixed only on one thing – the Wonderbolts, situated on the judge’s cloud. They were all fully clad in their uniforms, save for Spitfire, who sat at the head of the group with her hood draped around her neck.
After a few moments, Spitfire gave a concise nod to the would-be Wonderbolt, who promptly nodded back and began her stunts. First, she flew upwards to reach a large mass of cloud. She then began to fly around it at the fastest speed her strong wings could take her, forming a rainbow tornado around it; this squashed the cumulus along its width, causing it to be spewed from the top and bottom of the tornado and making the whole thing look like a colourful mini-quasar.
Next came the ‘Cloud Hop’, where, with a powerful jump and a single flap of her wings, she hopped from cloud to successively-higher cloud, performing flips and tricks between each and creating the illusion that the clouds were springs. After reaching the final cloud, she did a one last hop before spinning around in mid-air and launching herself through the staircase of cumulus, causing a trail of water to follow in her wake. Finally, after smashing through the lowest cloud, she pulled straight up, rising with a blur of rainbow behind her until she was nothing but a little multi-coloured dot against the backdrop of blue sky.
Everyone knew what was coming next. They wanted it, they had waited for it; now, she was going to do it. Aiming herself straight down, she flapped her wings as fast and hard as she could until they were a cyan blur against her sides. Once they had her going as fast as they could take her, she locked them straight backwards, making her as aerodynamic as possible. The expected cone began to form around her, doing its best to force her back and send her flying away, embarrassing her in front of the entire stadium, let alone the Wonderbolts.
It failed of course.
She broke through the barrier just above the top of the stadium, blanketing it and all within it in a multichromatic hue and driving the crowd into a deafening roar of cheers. The bold rainbow trail stayed present behind her as she flew around the inside of the cloudiseum, following along the sides of the arena and moving into a spiral that ended at the exact point she began her performance. Here she applied the brakes and almost instantly transitioned into a hover. Turning towards the Wonderbolts, she observed their reactions.
They were all gobsmacked; stunned into silence, mouths agape. All except Spitfire; she was beaming straight at the cyan pegasus, pride shining in her hazel eyes.
She had done it. She had performed her tricks flawlessly, the crowd was screaming for her, and her idol had the biggest smile she had ever seen. The elation she felt at that moment was immeasurable; nothing could compare to it and it was impossible for her to feel any happier. She grew a grin that threatened to get stuck on her face and couldn’t hold in a squeal as she saw the Wonderbolts – who had now recovered and had grins of their own – fly towards her, led by Spitfire, whose expression had not changed.
They were coming over to offer her a place among them; it was obvious. Her dream had come true. She was going to be a Wonderbolt, she was going to be famous, she was going to be loved, she was going to be-
A cupcake hit her in the face.
It had been thrown by Spitfire, whose massive smile still had not changed a bit. Completely confused and dazed, Rainbow just stared at her, utter befuddlement written on her face.
Then another cupcake hit her.
That one had been thrown by Soarin. It was shortly followed by cupcakes thrown by the other Wonderbolts, all of whom still retained their smiles even as they threw them.
Rainbow just hovered there, shocked and bewildered beyond belief, until a cupcake hit her square in the eyes and her world went black.
Her eyes shot open. She bolted upright in her bed to find a multitude of cupcakes lying around her, one of which was stuck on her face. Removing it, she found herself staring at it with bewilderment, as if hoping her gaze would lead it to explain why it and its tasty friends had disturbed her sleep. The only answer came in the form of another cupcake landing beside her. Looking around, she realised it had come from the window in her bedroom. Groggily she made her way over to it, yet another cupcake only just missing her as she poked her head out into the night time air to see what the hay was going on.
She should’ve known. Pinkie was outside with what appeared in the moonlight to be some sort of cupcake launching contraption; a see-saw that acted like a catapult perhaps, one specifically designed to fire a loaded cupcake each time the raised end was jumped upon by the pink pony.
“Pinkie!” Dash yelled from her window, exasperated, “What the hay are you-”
“Shhhh!” Pinkie quickly cut her off. She waved towards herself, gesturing Dash to come down to her while simultaneously glancing quickly from left to right like she was in fear of being caught doing something she shouldn’t.
Releasing a loud sigh and hanging her head, the cyan pegasus complied with her friend’s unspoken instruction, giving her wings a few good flaps to get the blood pumping before flying out of her window and down to the party pony, landing gracelessly in front of her.
“Pinkie-” Dash attempted again, only to stopped abruptly by a pink hoof jammed in her mouth.
“Shhhh!” repeated Pinkie in a loud whisper. “They’ll hear you!”
The annoyed pegasus swatted the hoof in her mouth away with a look of tired irritation plastered on her face. “Who will hear us?” she asked in a quiet voice, intertwined with a clear tone of resignation upon the realisation that whatever Pinkie was up to probably meant she wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep anytime soon.
“Twilight and the others, they might hear, and if they hear then they will know, and if they know they will try to stop us, and if they stop us that would be VERY BAD as it’s taken a lot of time to complete and them stopping us would mean all that time will have been wasted and I am NOT MADE OF TIME, though it would be super-duper if I was, but I’d prefer to be made of cake so that I could constantly eat myself, but that’s not important right now!” came Pinkie’s answer, still in an excited whisper and in an incredibly short amount of time, her eyes continuing to patrol back and forth.
Rainbow Dash just stared at her poofy-maned friend with slightly wide eyes before her expression returned to its previous one of weary annoyance. She was only marginally surprised by the fact that she had actually understood all of what Pinkie had said in that quick outburst; spending enough time around the energetic pink pony gave you that ability, she supposed.
There were several flaws in the rapid speech and many questions both raised by it and the entire situation Rainbow found herself in; however, she decided to start at the beginning by pointing out the biggest flaw she could see.
She took a step backwards. “Pinkie,” she began, pointing at the night sky, “You see that up there? That’s the Moon. The fact that it’s in the sky means it’s night time. Night time is when ponies go to sleep. Celestia knows what time it is now, but I’d be willing to bet my wings that everypony else is still asleep – including all our friends. And if you hadn’t noticed, my house is on the outskirts of Ponyville, so there is no way on Equestria that anypony will hear us.”
Pinkie had stopped looking left and right and now looked straight at Dash. “You can never be too careful Dashie!” she said, although now in her normal cheery voice and with her usual big smile.
Rainbow sighed. “Right… so first off… why were you firing cupcakes into my bedroom?” she asked calmly.
“Too wake you up of course, silly!” was the giggled response.
“With cupcakes?”
“I needed something to wake you up with, but you don’t have glass windows so I couldn’t use stones as they might hit you and I don’t want to hurt my bestest friend. So I thought ‘what’s soft that I can use to wake up Rainbow Dash?’ and then I got hungry so I ate a cupcake or 6, and then I realised how soft cupcakes are compared to stones and so I came up with this cupcake-tastic idea to use cupcakes to wake you up – that way you wouldn’t get hurt and you would get a tasty treat when you finally wake up; some of which you still have on your face, sleepyhead!”
Dash grunted and hastily wiped the remains of a cupcake off her face with her forehoof, causing Pinkie to giggle some more. “What about that… thing?” she inquired, pointing towards the cupcake firing contraption.
Pinkie glanced at it before turning back to Rainbow Dash with a confused look. “What do you mean what about it?”
The cyan pegasus rolled her eyes as she began to clarify the obvious. “What is it and why do you need it?”
Pinkie’s face lit up. “Oh! Well, when I made enough cupcakes to wake you up with, I remembered how high up your cloud-house is and that I can’t throw that high – that’s when I got another idea and made this little cupcake launcher so that it could throw the cupcakes for me! And it worked!” she finished by bouncing happily on the spot.
“Uh-huh.” Dash looked at the lively pony expectantly. After a few moments filled only with the sound of bouncing, she continued. “So, I’m awake… and I’m here now… what do you need me for?”
Pinkie stopped bouncing abruptly and held a puzzled look on her face for a few moments; this
was followed by a sudden gasp as her face switched to one of shock and she grabbed Rainbow’s hoof, taking the pegasus by surprise and quickly dragging her off in the direction of the Everfree Forest.
“Pinkie! Whuh… where are we going? Pinkie!” shouted Rainbow as she struggled to run on only three legs. Pinkie seemed to be having no trouble with it at all.
“It’s super-secret Dashie; I’ll explain when we get there! Come on!” She released Dash’s hoof, allowing the pegasus to run on all four legs as she reluctantly followed.
Eventually they reached the edge of the forest and stopped. Rainbow Dash observed that they were nowhere near the entrance to the path that led to Zecora’s or the one that led to the old ruins where they found the elements of harmony. In fact, she couldn’t see any entrance at all; it was all just a wall of dark and gloomy wilderness as far as the eye could see. This didn’t seem to faze Pinkie however as she started to move towards it.
“Pinkie! What are you doing? You can’t go in there, that’s the Everfree Forest! It’s dangerous!”
“Oh Dashie,” the pink pony batted away Rainbow’s warning with a hoof, “I’ve been in the Everfree Forest plenty of times! You don’t need to be such a worryguts. Come on the path is over here!” She moved some leaves to reveal a narrow path of trodden and worn down grass. Rainbow visibly hesitated. “You’re not scared are you?” asked Pinkie in a mocking tone.
“O-Of course not! I just… u-um…” She knew she couldn’t think of a good excuse for her hesitancy, and she could tell Pinkie knew it too, so with a quick gulp and a leap she flew straight past the pink pony in a rainbow blur and charged into the forest, landing and slowing to a trot after a few moments inside. Pinkie just laughed her trademark cheery laugh as she bounced – albeit at a lower height than normal to avoid the low hanging tree branches – ahead of Rainbow and proceeded to lead them along the path.
With the darkness of the night and the incredibly dense forest combined, the path was almost impossible to make out. However, the bright pink pony was easy enough to see and she seemed to know the path like it was her cutie mark, giving warnings and pointing out any hazardous rocks or tree roots that may cause Rainbow to trip in the engulfing blackness. After long and careful trekking – for Dash’s part at least – they eventually came to a large clearing.
The pegasus could make out the silhouette of an odd shape glinting in the moonlight, but was clueless as to what it could be. She stood there squinting at it for several moments until her concentration on it was broken by her friend telling her to stay put before bouncing off towards the shape.
As the party pony approached the shape, she disappeared behind something, causing the watching Rainbow Dash to switch to relying on sound to have some idea of what was happening. Filtering out the sounds of the forest around her – which put her on edge more than a little – she could hear the muffled sound of things moving about, along with the odd curse from her pink friend. Then, silence.
Several moments passed in which nothing happened, putting her even more on edge and concerned for Pinkie as the sounds of the forest began to return to her hearing. “Pinkie Pie?” she called out towards the silhouette, “Pinkie, are you there? What’s going-” she began to say before being cut off as a flash of bright light originating from the dark shape made her shield her eyes.
“Ta-dah!” yelled Pinkie Pie, followed by the sound of a party whistle and confetti floating down around her.
Removing her hoof from her eyes and taking in the sight before her, Rainbow’s jaw dropped.
Pinkie was standing in a doorway at the top of a small drawbridge-like ramp that led into what appeared to be… a ship. A ship with wings. It looked like some sort of mini-galleon, supported on wooden stands that held it above the ground; it compared to Twilight’s library or Applejack’s barn in terms of size. It had a single mast in the middle that held a crow’s nest near the top and the sail of which was tied up. Rainbow Dash guessed that it had 3 decks in total; the middle deck had glass portholes and was the deck Pinkie was currently standing on, while the bottom deck held the… the wings. One of the giant wings stuck out towards the pegasus, dark gold in colour and entirely metallic with flat feathers, all of which looked adjustable. In fact, the whole wing looked adjustable, a multitude of joints and connections giving it a flexible appearance while the metal it was made of made it look stiff. There were also odd metal boxes at the side of the bow and at the tip of it, with a shape similar to that of an alicorn horn protruding from the front of it. Observing the whole ship, Rainbow realised the initial blinding light wasn’t that bright at all; it was simply a great contrast to the darkness she found herself in just a moment ago. It was originating both from within the ship – through the portholes and the doorway Pinkie was in – and from the many fairy lights that had been strung up around it, almost certainly by the excited pony, making it look like a decoration or attraction of some sort.
“Do you like it? Doyadoyahuhuhuh?”
Dash didn’t hear her. She just continued to stare at the sight before her, both amazed and more confused than before. The thought that she might still be dreaming momentarily passed through her head, but it was dispelled by the knowledge that only Pinkie Pie could dream of something this bizarre, let alone build it.
“Daaaaashiiiiiiie, helloooooo?”
The sound of another party whistle snapped Rainbow back to reality. A reality in which a boat with wings still sat in front of her. “Puh, Pinkie? What… what is this?”
“It’s my flying air-boat-ship-thing! I call it The Airship of Adventure! I’ve been building it for sooooo long, and I’ve kept it a super-sneaky-secret the whole time, just waiting for the day to use it – and today is that day!” she exclaimed, clopping her hooves together.
“You built… you built this? You?” Dash asked, incredulous.
“Uh, yeah!” Pinkie said with puzzlement on her face, as if her apparent building and engineering skills were the most common pieces of knowledge in the world. “I’ve been building things since I was an itty-bitty saddie-pie back on my family’s rock farm; it was all I could do to pass the time. Didn’t you ever wonder where my contraptions came from?” she said, a smug grin now on her face. “Twilight’s not the only who gets to be a smarty-smart pants y’know,” she added with a wink.
Rainbow’s mouth fruitlessly attempted to work; her sleep-deprived brain was having trouble comprehending. Pinkie building a ship like none she had ever seen before just seemed too ridiculous to even consider the possibility of it being true; yet, at the same time, it was exactly the sort of thing she could imagine Pinkie Pie doing. It was totally feasible.
“How?” she asked, finally getting her mouth to work and her forcing her befuddled mind to concentrate. “How could you build this all by yourself and without anypony knowing?”
“With lots and lots of time and by being veeeeeery sneaky. I mainly worked on it at night, but even when I didn’t, this place is so deep in the forest that no one heard me. I didn’t fully build all of it myself though; Twilight enchanted a few things for me,” she finished, gesturing towards the metal boxes.
“Twilight helped?!”
“Sorta; I asked her to enchant several doo-hickies with different spells – self-renewing energy mainly. Obviously I never told her what I was doing, I just asked for the enchantments. Anypony else she probably would’ve questioned, but me… well, there’s certainly advantages to ‘just being Pinkie Pie,’” she finished with another big grin.
Rainbow Dash, finally regaining full control of her body, trotted up to Pinkie at the top of the ramp. “…Okay then. One other question: why?”
“The clue is in the name Dashie – it’s an adventure ship! We’re going on an adventure!” Joyful bouncing ensued from the pink pony.
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa, we?”
“No, we’re Dash! We’re going on an adventure! You and me!” She reached her hoof over to the cyan pegasus, tightly grasping her neck and pulling her up next to herself, waving a hoof in the air before them both dreamily as she continued to talk. “Think about it – Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, exploring some new land, bringing back hidden and incredibly valuable treasures; going where no pony has gone before! It’ll be fun! Not to mention how famous we’ll be once we get back – more famous than we already are for being 2 of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony I mean,” she said with a persuasive smile, appealing to Dash’s interests.
“Umm, where exactly are we going?” asked Rainbow, wriggling free of the other pony’s grasp.
Pinkie stared at her blankly for a few moments before replying. “Wherever we feel like going Dashie – the world is our chocolate cake that we can rub our faces in and then pick up every little delicious crumb of!”
Dash just blinked – the common response to such a sentence for those who are as familiar with Pinkie Pie as she was. Although, seeing as how Pinkie had supposedly built a flying boat with the intention of random adventure, perhaps she didn’t know the pink pony as well as she thought. “So, you built a… flying boat, which you were planning to somehow use to… go on an adventure?”
“Uh-huh!” was the cheerful answer.
“And you want me to come along?”
“Yeparoony!”
“And you don’t see a problem with that?”
“A problem with what?”
“A problem with any of that.”
Pinkie tilted her head sideways in confusion. “What is there to have a problem with?”
Rainbow let out a noise of irritation and raised her voice. “Well, for starters the whole idea is crazy, and-”
“No it’s not,” interrupted Pinkie in an uncharacteristically calm tone, appearing hurt, “The ship is stocked out with everything we might need, along with the ability to make anything we might need. I’ve been planning this for a long time Dash; I’ve thought everything through several times.”
The party pony’s unusual voice unnerved Rainbow Dash, but left no doubts in her mind that the pony before her was being serious. This caused her resolve to falter and her tone of voice to change from annoyed to subdued. “What about asking me, completely out of the blue, to join you?”
Pinkie lowered her head and looked at the floor. “Well, I knew you’d say yes.” Her ears drooped. “At least, I thought you would…”
She hated it when Pinkie did that – making herself look crestfallen. It was a very rare occurrence, but it always broke the pegasus’ heart to see it, as well as make her feel incredibly guilty. Whether the pink pony was genuinely sad or just very good at using emotional blackmail to get Rainbow to do what she wanted she didn’t know; what she did know was that it always worked.
After a moment of hesitation, she caved in. “Okay Pinkie… I’ll come with you. I still don’t
understand any of this, but if you put all this effort into… whatever all this is,” she said, gesturing around with her hooves, “then I’ll join you on this ‘adventure.’”
The mood of the downcast pink pony instantly changed to one of glee as she pulled the pegasus into a tight hug and dragged her inside the ship. “I knew you’d come around! I promise we’re gonna have lots and lots of fun Dashie, you’ll see! Now then, let me show you around the ship.”
The ship had three decks, just as Dash had thought. The middle deck held the essentials for living and then some, with two walls holding door-lacking doorframes separating the whole space into three rooms. The stern room was a living room of sorts, though it seemed to be more suited to helping a certain pink pony apply her special partying skills to anyone who entered it; either that or it enabled her to satisfy her cravings and get her fix of her cutie mark defining talent. It had a table and chairs in the middle, a sofa up against one of the side walls and a fully filled bookcase by the stern wall; it also held party games like Pin the Tail on the Pony and apple bobbing, a collection of party hats and stacks of plastic cups next to a bowl of punch, among other things. A spiral staircase leading upwards was present in one of the corners of the stern wall.
The room at the centre of the deck held two single beds parallel to each other up against the side walls, each under a porthole. At the foot of each bed sat a wardrobe filled with miscellaneous clothing for different weather conditions.
“Look Dashie,” Pinkie said as she pulled out one of the items of clothing from her wardrobe, “I even brought my old Mare Do Well costume along.”
“Um, why?”
“We’re going adventuring, and it could be dangerous. You never know when we might need a superhero to save us.”
The room towards the bow was a fully stocked kitchen – fridge, cooker, oven, the whole lot. It even held a small kitchen island with two chairs up against it on one side. There was also a strange looking metal box resting in the corner on top of the work surface, with empty slot in the middle of it. Dash just passed it off as yet another of Pinkie’s crazy contraptions.
It didn’t compare to the madness she found on the level below.
The bottom deck was one big space filled with an incomprehensible mess of wires and machinery running all the way around the room and up the walls, with a workbench and tools placed next to the wall. The only entrance to the deck was a ladder that led down from a trapdoor across opposite the staircase in the living-party room on the floor above. The only part of the lower deck one could get to from the ladder was the workbench as the floor was covered in too many mechanical and electrical devices to be considered safe to traverse. Of course, if Rainbow wanted a better look at something, she could have simply flown over to it, but the mechanisms for the wings – assuming that is what they were for – were glowing and she didn’t want to get near them.
In contrast to the other two decks, the top deck was rather simple. It provided a nice high view of the area around it, although the treetops still reached slightly higher than the deck itself. At the stern was a room which held the end of the spiral staircase and acted as a storage area for a few bits and bobs like rope and buoyancy jackets. Atop this room were the mechanisms to control the flight of the ship, along with a wooden wheel for steering, all set up so that the pilot could look at where they were flying. A set of stairs was present either side of the room leading up to the controls.
The entirety of the ship overwhelmed Rainbow Dash – the idea that her hyperactive jovial pink friend spent Celestia knows how long building all of it and putting it together was both incomprehensible and entirely reasonable at the same time, a fact which still confused her greatly; however, she realised that asking Pinkie Pie about the origins of the ship would most likely get her nowhere, so she did her best to push any questions about it out of her mind.
She still had a few questions about the trip itself though.
“Alright then Pinkie,” she said, observing the area around the ship as the stood on the top deck, “when do we leave?”
“Right now.”
“Right… now? How long will we be gone?”
“I dunno,” shrugged Pinkie.
Rainbow’s hoof met her face in exasperation. “Well then we should probably let the others know we won’t be around for a wh-”
“No!” shouted Pinkie, one of her hooves in the pegasus’ mouth and fixing her with a glare, “I already told you that we can’t tell them Dashie! If they find out what we’re doing they’ll try to stop us, and I’ve spent too long planning and building to be stopped now!”
Rainbow was taken aback by the sudden outburst, but quickly regained her composure and took a step backwards so her mouth was clear for speech. “Shouldn’t we least leave them a letter or something? They’ll just worry about us otherwise.”
“Already taken care of,” replied Pinkie, back to her normal happy self, “I left Twilight a note saying that I was going away for a while and I was taking you with me. I also told her not to worry and that we’d be back before she knew it. Relax.”
Dash thought about this for a minute before sighing in resignation. She couldn’t think of anything else that needed to be done before they went on this ‘adventure’; Pinkie really had thought of everything. “Okay… okay. Let’s do this thing then.”
“YIPEE!” exclaimed Pilot Pinkie Pie as she jumped in the air in an explosion of pink excitement and flew towards the controls, an aviator hat and goggles appearing on her head from out of nowhere. Immediately she began to mash the controls, causing the ship to shudder in response. “Here we go!”
The sound of wind hit Dash’s ears as the wings of the ship began beating. They flapped up and down, steadily increasing in speed while the airboat began to rise out of its supports, the fairy lights covering the ship releasing their grip on it and falling to the ground. A few more shakes and several groans from the ship caused the pegasus to brace for the worst, but it remained intact as it rose higher and higher into the air. Eventually it was above the clouds, around the altitude Cloudsdale sat at; it would’ve been a small silhouette against Luna’s moon had anyone seen it. Finally, it began to move forward, albeit at a relatively slow but constant pace, something Rainbow did not fail to notice.
“Pinkie, it’s going to take us forever to get anywhere if this is as fast as we can go,” she said with brows furrowed, until she caught herself, realising that, considering how much the pink pony had planned for this trip, she probably had a solution to this problem too.
“Don’t worry Dashie,” - yup - “this is just cruising speed. There is a way we can go faster than you can imagine, but I need your help for it.”
“Me?” Dash asked, puzzled.
“Mmmhmm,” Pinkie frantically nodded her head, “I need you to do a sonic rainboom!”
“A sonic… how would that help us go faster?” asked Rainbow, incredulous.
“Don’t worry your little rainbow head about that, you just perform your famous stunt and I’ll do the rest,” replied Pinkie Pie with a smile.
Rainbow’s hoof found her face once more before she replied. “I’ve only done the sonic rainboom a few times, and none of those were just after I’d had been woken up! I may be the best flier in Equestria but even I have my limits, few as they may be. I’m too tired to manage a sonic rainboom right now; I need my sleep Pinks!”
“Oh!” squealed Pinkie as she closed the distance between the controls of the ship and Rainbow Dash in one large hop, “that’s exactly why I have these!”
In true Pinkie Pie fashion, she brandished a cupcake she apparently got from thin air in mid-hop before the confused eyes of the cyan pegasus. It was a simple, ordinary looking cupcake, except that it held rainbow icing on top.
“What’s this?”
Pilot Pinkie Pie rolled her eyes. “It’s a cupcake dummy!”
“How is a cupcake going to help me do a sonic rainboom?”
“Cupcakes are full of energy, especially this one!” answered Pinkie as she passed the confection to Rainbow Dash, “Just trust me on this one, okay?”
Dash hesitated for a moment, but then shrugged and popped the cupcake in her mouth, eating the whole thing in one bite.
“I don’t feel any different… uh, Pinkie?”
Pinkie didn’t reply. She was in the middle of blinking her eyes and was taking a very long time to do so, as if she was moving in slow motion. In fact, the whole world seemed to be moving in slow motion to Rainbow. The cupcake wrapper she had let drop from her hooves had not yet reached the floor of the deck, while the wings of the ship were flapping at an incredibly slow rate; yet they still managed to stay in the air. She was also surprised to find how acutely aware of her surroundings she was; she could clearly hear the sound of the ship’s wings flapping and Pinkie’s incredibly slow breathing. Yet, at the same time, everything seemed so quiet and serene. She couldn’t get her head round it at all.
Suddenly, she felt an intense desire to move. To run. So she did; she ran twenty laps around the top deck of the ship, during which time Pinkie finished her blinking and started widening extending the size of her usual smile. Those laps did not help however; if anything the urge had only grown. It was like an insatiable itch, eating away at her from inside. She decided on a new tactic and took to the air using her own wings, doing 30 laps around the entirety of the ship. At the completion of these laps, the pilot pony was only halfway through a large bound back towards the controls her controls.
Still the itch persisted. It was starting to make her lose her mind; her thoughts were quickly becoming less clear and rational, until eventually she was acting on instinct alone. Her brain knew nothing but the itch and her need to be rid of it. Changing her approach again, she decided she was just going to fly as fast as possible. She flew behind and above the ship, hovered for a moment, then push forward with all her might in the same direction as the airboat, zooming over it in a second. After a very small amount of time, she could see the sound barrier attempting to resist her movements, but she could neither feel it nor hear the whistle that accompanied it. Despite the speed she was going at, the world around her was still one of tranquillity, with herself being the only disturbance inside it. Not that she noticed.
The tranquillity was shattered as she burst through the sound barrier, a ring of multiple colours exploding in the vertical plane. The moment she broke through, time and sound suddenly caught up with her and her itch, her thirst for movement, was, finally, quenched. It was then that she could hear Pinkie Pie yelling for her and remembered her current situation. Doing half a backwards roll, she flew towards the pink pony waving for her attention from behind the ship’s controls and landed on the deck in front of her. Before she could utter a single word however, the party pony bellowed at her.
“Hold on tight Dashie!”
Immediately following this, Pilot Pinkie Pie forcibly pushed the largest and reddest button in the array of controls before her.
The loud sound of power building up was heard at the bow of the ship, followed by the sound of electricity; the sound of lightning. Rainbow Dash turned around to see tendrils of electricity lashing out from the 3 odd metal boxes at the front of the ship towards the iridescent ring caused by her sonic rainboom; those from the boxes on the sides of the ship attached to their respective sides on the ring, while the lightning from the box at the very front of the ship connected with the top and bottom edge of the ring.
Suddenly, the loop ceased expanding, but did not fade, choosing instead to remain still and colourful while electricity licked around its edges.
Then, to Dash’s mounting surprise, the ring began to stretch.
The outer side seemed to be pulled towards the ship, while the inner circle was repulsed from it, stretching away towards the horizon and narrowing along its length until it resembled one of the strangest and brightest tunnels the cyan pegasus had ever seen.
“Here we go!” yelled Pinkie above the noise, pulling a lever as she did so.
The wings of the ship stopped flapping, instead adopting a gliding position, letting the ship steadily move towards the rainbow tunnel. As it neared, the ship itself began to defy the laws of physics, stretching and elongating parallel to the tunnel while remaining completely intact.
When the electricity-producing boxes passed the event horizon of the tunnel, the ship suddenly zipped inside and disappeared into the tunnel at a speed not even Rainbow Dash could imagine, carrying both ponies along with it.
A resounding boom and the sounds of a pink pony cheering were the last things to be heard as the tunnel disappeared, collapsing in on itself and allowing the quiet darkness of the night to return and take its place.
