Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Brown, Indigo, Violet
Rainbow Dash shifted from hoof to hoof as she looked out upon the crowd from her perch atop the starting cloud. Below her several dozen bleachers had to be brought out to fit every pony in Ponyville who had wanted to see her finally break the Wonderbolt speed record, and secure her spot on the team. Floating above the bleachers, several pegasi from Cloudsdale and Canterlot had also come to watch, including the Wonderbolts and several of their competitors.
Spitfire herself was overseeing the race, and would be timing her with Soarin’s help. Dash could barely make them out in the distance as two specks on a small white cloud at the finish line. She had been quite boastful when Spitfire had brought her into the reserves, promising to knock her flight suit off with how awesome she was.
Now Dash had to prove it.
Unfortunately, Dash hadn’t expected quite so many ponies to show up for this event. She could see Pinkie waving in the distance, with a large “#1” foam hand on her hoof. Dash tried to quiet the butterflies in her stomach, feeling a bit queasy at all the attention. Sure, she would have loved everypony to see how amazing she was, but this was literally every pony in town, and then some. Hundreds if not over a thousand, and each one had heard the same thing.
Dash would break the sound barrier, shatter one of the oldest records in the books, and do it right above town where everypony could see.
Her stomach gurgled again, and Dash cursed her nerves. Then she saw Fleetfoot land on the cloud next to her, with the starting flare gun attached to a hoof.
“You ready Dash?” she asked.
Several beads of sweat formed on her forehead, and Dash looked over at the pegasus. As her nerves failed to settle down she felt a low rumbling in her gut, and realized something was wrong. It wasn’t a case of nerves, but perhaps the cheap burrito she had picked up at a carnival stand earlier. With so many ponies flocking to town to witness her epic feat, several street vendors had set up shop as well. Dash needed as many calories as she could get, and had decided the burrito smelled to irresistible.
As a large buble shifted in her gut, she really wished she had resisted.
“Nerves, huh?” Fleetfoot asked. “You’ll be fine, Dash. We’ve all been there, there’s nothing to it but to do it, Crash!” She lifted up her hoof, readying the flaregun that would signal the start of the sprint.
Dash felt her tail twitch, and wiped the sweat off her brow before it could roll into her eyes. She had to call this sprint off. It would disappoint everypony but she knew she had to get to a restroom and fast. Already she was dancing on the cloud, shifting more quickly from hoof to hoof, and trying to keep her mind occupied with anything but that.
“—two, one—”
Her brain finally stopped focusing on the broiling contents of her colon long enough to register Fleetfoot counting down. “No, wai—”
“Go!” There was a loud bang as a bright red flare shot into the sky.
“Buck!” Dash shouted as she launched forward, willing her rear to pucker shut tighter than Filthy Rich’s coin purse on tax day.
The shock of the sudden acceleration took her mind off her distress, and her iron will overcame the pressure that had built in her gut. The crowd below became a blur, stretching as far as the eye could see. She angled downward towards the finish line, picking up speed, high above the spectators.
Another gurgle hit her, louder than the others. As she accelerated, the laws of physics had an unpleasant lesson to teach her. The pressure grew, as the forces aligned to push the contents of her upset stomach towards the only exit it had.
Dash bit her teeth together hard, trying so desperately to tense the right muscles while leaving her wing muscles limber, flapping as fast as she could. She tucked her legs in tightly, but not so tight as to put further pressure on her stomach.
She was almost halfway to the finish, just a little longer and Dash was home free.
The air turned white as the cone began to form around her hooves. Dash noticed her vision was starting to fade to black. The g-forces of her flight were pushing all the blood from her brain. If she could have cursed, Dash would have. The Wonderbolts had special exercises to do mid-flight to prevent a blackout. They included tensing muscles in the legs and core, helping force blood back to the heart, lungs, and head.
They included tensing all the muscles she couldn’t afford to tense.
Dash also couldn’t afford to blackout at this speed, nopony would make it to her in time. She would become dead weight traveling faster than a bullet. However, she couldn’t bear down on her abdominal muscles to stay conscious, the embarrassment of what followed could kill her just as swiftly.
She made her snap decision. Her vision returned as she felt herself break the sound barrier. Dash knew from experience a loud boom had occurred, loud enough to shake windows for miles, as the large cone of air exploded behind her. A long liquid trail shot forth, a beautiful rainbow that spewed as far as the eye could see. It would spread like a circle, coating the sky in a myriad of colors as it sprinkled down to the ground.
The finish line was rapidly approaching, and Dash finally began to angle her wings to slow down, and not blow out the entire cloud Spitfire and Soarin were standing on.. She felt a sense of relief wash over her; it felt better than any other time she’d ever performed the Sonic Rainboom.
Dash touched down on the cloud, hearing a click of the stopwatch as Spitfire recited her time. “Forty seven seconds, that’s a full twenty-two seconds faster than the record. Congratulations, Dash!”
She smelt something in the air and a sense of dread filled her. Dash looked over at Soarin, whose mouth was wide open in shock, then over at Spitfire. The lead Wonderbolt was only just now looking up from the stopwatch, her eyes slowly panning out towards the town, and down to the bleachers.
“Oh no… please, kill me now,” Dash muttered. She turned slowly to look behind her.
The long rainbow contrail had followed Dash, like a giant beacon pointing directly to the pony responsible. The colorful rainbow was awash in a sepia-tinted brown as it slowly disintegrated into the air.
Soarin chuckled. “What a shitty way to break the record, huh?”
Moments earlier…
Pinkie, Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy sat atop the bleachers halfway down the racetrack. They had some of the best seats in the house, near where Twilight calculated the center of the rainboom would occur.
“Look, here she comes!” Pinkie shouted. “Go Dash!”
“Woohoo!” Spike yelled.
“Yeah!” Scootaloo screamed, sitting near Sweetie and Apple Bloom.
Just as Dash passed overhead there was a loud explosion, shaking the bleachers and knocking Scootaloo off her hooves and into the backrest atop the bleacher. Rarity gasped and grabbed onto the bleacher to keep herself from falling off, as the other ponies all received a similar jolt from their proximity to the rainboom.
“Uh, is it supposed to look like that?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Discord?” Pinkie stated, tilting her head. “Is it raining chocolate milk again?” She looked around, but the draconequus was nowhere to be found.
Applejack had to shield her eyes from the bright colors coating the sky, but even she could tell it was tinted like an overcast day. Something was between her and the beautiful rainboom, and it was tinted a yellowish-brown like dirty hay. “I think Dash messed something up—”
The farm pony stopped mid sentence, turning to spit something out of her mouth. Then the smell caught up, as the gentle brown mist fell into her hair and fur. Applejack wanted to shout out a warning to her friends, but could already hear them retching. Something sulfurous and foul, like rotten eggs left in gym clothes in a duffle bag in the sun, then rolled around in a dead whale carcass dredged out of a sewer, was coating her nasal passages and mouth.
She looked up against her better judgement at the expanding brown concentric rings in the sky, and her heart sank. Applejack pulled Apple Bloom in close, trying to shield them with her pitifully small stetson.
Nearby Rarity was wailing something about the spa, before passing out. Fluttershy had curled herself up into the fetal position, covering herself with her pink hair, which was rapidly turning a dirty magenta. Pinkie, having realized this was not chocolate milk, had used her Pinkie Sense to nope the fuck out of this scene. As for Twilight, a shimmering purple bubble surrounded her and Spike, rendering them the only two out of a crowd of over a thousand not covered in the expanding miasma of half-digested beans and oats.
Twilight noticed the glare of her friends, who looked like they’d fallen in the mudpit of the Sisterhooves Social, and shrugged. “I guess this was a real shitshow for the rest of you.”
Senor Taco, an earth pony and proprietor of a food stand that sold burritos, but not tacos, looked up into the sky and smiled. He munched on one of his burritos absent mindedly and dropped his disguise, pouring some more hot sauce onto it with the snap of his fingers. He took a drink from a glass, leaving the sasparilla inside undrank while the glass slowly vanished.
He looked down at his half eaten burrito, which was crossing its arms in disapproval. “What?” Discord asked. “I did promise Dash her record breaking attempt would be a blowout!”
Author's Note
Thank you to n3k1dsk1llz, Pilot Light, Dustchu, Arkadios, and Coitus Ergo Sum on discord. You helped me get my juices flowing with this writing prompt. You really pulled that blockage right out, and got the words moving again. Once I let it run, I couldn't stop until I got it all on paper. My writer's constipation, as well as at least 2 days worth of bad jokes, are fixed, and I owe it all to you.
