"You're outta your mind!"
"That's crazy… count me out."
"No way, Rainbow Crash!"
She'd heard a lot of "no" when talking about it. From the instructors at the Cloudsdale High School, of course, but also from her parents and friends. It didn't seem like such a big deal: just a special flight to satisfy her curiosity, but nopony else wanted any part in it. It would be dangerous for her to attempt, but then the whole idea of ponies flying sometimes seemed a little unlikely when she thought about it.
This all started when she'd seen some photographs taken by a famous explorer, a unicorn who'd used a hot air balloon to ascend to incredible heights. Even with magical shields the adventure had been incredibly dangerous as the thin air and frigid cold had assaulted that pony's body. The photos had been… spellbinding though. For a reason she couldn't explain Rainbow Dash hadn't been able to take her eyes off them.
The thought had come to Rainbow Dash that she wanted to see Equestria from that vantage point. Something that almost no living pony had seen, maybe not even Celestia herself. The problem was, once Rainbow Dash had got this idea lodged in her head it kinda stuck there. She'd always been interested in edge-of-the-envelope flying. Usually this meant speed or aerobatics, quite often at ground skimming heights and on her own. Her daredevil attitude had often gotten her into trouble with her teachers, usually after she needed patching up after pushing her luck a little too far.
Rainbow wasn't worried about getting into hot water with the academic faculty this time because she wasn't going to get a high school diploma. She had already been offered an apprenticeship with the weather bureau as a cloud wrangler, and hoped to become a full weather pony without furthering her academic studies. She was exceptionally young to be starting work like that, but it offered a job that didn't require any higher education and that suited her just fine. It also meant that when she became old enough to enter the annual "best young flyer" contest she'd already have several years of work experience behind her.
She'd started by simply trying to climb as high as her wings would take her. Her stubborn streak took a long time to overcome, but eventually she realised that a pegasus simply couldn't flap their wings sufficiently to make such a climb in one go. She vaguely remembered her flight mechanics tutor talking about "gravitational potential gain", and how much energy a pony had in their muscles, but all she knew was that she just didn't have the endurance needed. Maybe there were pegasus with the special talent for this kind of thing, but she'd need something else to succeed with what she was going to attempt.
The thought came to her that she needed to do this before ending her time at school. Her classes had almost finished and eventually the summer was going to come to an end. Maybe she wasn't as strong as she'd be in a few more years, but she was sure that this flight was within her grasp. She just needed something that had never seemed necessary before: a plan.
She set out with her team at noon. The second phase of the mission would require that the sun had warmed the earth below, but they had to get through this first phase before anything else could happen. One of the things they needed to do was make sure that they did everything to use as little energy as possible during the early parts of the ascent. The plan started with a natural phenomenon that was normally viewed as a hazard for unwary flyers in the region.
When the prevailing wind slammed into the Fowl Mountains east of Canterlot, it caused an air current to flow steeply upwards, with the leeward air forming a huge tumbling mass. Whilst this could drive pegasi into the rocky flanks of the mountain, they were going to fly over this vortex into the windward side of the invisible wave and use it to boost them to a higher altitude.
Rainbow Dash and her escort had been practising with towing for most of the summer. They had initially tried with the lead ponies flying side by side but had found that the constant leaning outwards was too tiring to be sustained over longer journeys. Flying all in a straight line didn't work either as the wake from the pony in front made the followers fight with turbulence.
By staggering themselves so that the following pony was behind and at a slightly lower altitude they had found the most efficient way to fly in formation. The tow ropes were made with rings at the end that could be let go of easily but didn't require too much effort to hold. Originally they'd been tethered together, but that had nearly proven to be disastrously difficult to disengage in a flight emergency.
As the two colts towed Rainbow Dash, she gently flapped her wings. Keeping the rigid and just gliding had previously led to cramping of her muscles. By keeping a minimum of motion going they didn't get cold, or start trembling with the effort. At this rate she could fly all day whilst burning almost no energy.
To prepare she'd been careful about what she'd eaten in the preceding days. All complex carbohydrates to slowly release energy into her flight muscles. It was going to be a long day's effort and there would be no opportunity to refuel before the end of the mission.
Soon they were approaching the Fowl Mountains. On the leeward side the air appeared calm, but they could see tracks of vapour leading skyward from the ridge. There was a low rumbling, booming sound from the ridge, a clear warning of the nearly invisible riptide of air. They had already claimed to be level with the peaks to avoid the tumbling vortices that were being shed beneath the jagged spine of the mountain range, and were ready to face the coming maelstrom.
They accelerated as hard as they could to hit the wave of ascending air with as much velocity as possible. The sudden step change in air speed massively boosted the lift over their wings as they slowed in the onslaught. The strain on Rainbow's wings was severe as her lift forces battled with her inertia. She gritted her teeth and clung onto the tow rope as it slackened from the sudden change of relative velocities between the teammates.
Banking together they turned to travel with the ascending air current and gained a second boost of altitude. The change of direction meant the sun was now warming Rainbow's back, which was a welcome relief from the ever-cooling air as they had climbed, and they now headed towards the south west. Rainbow could also feel the air pressures adjusting inside her sinuses and ears as she ascended. The unique features of her pegasus physiology meant that there was none of the pain from sudden changes of altitude that she'd heard afflicted the other pony races when they used balloons to travel but she could tell that this was higher than she had ever been.
In mere seconds they were more than four times higher than they had been. The air was noticeably colder at this height, but Rainbow knew it was going to get much worse before she was finished. The air current had reached its peak and was starting to descend. Rainbow and her escorts popped out the top of the current to see that they had travelled to the edges of Rambling Rock Ridge. She let out a whoop of delight because this was exactly where they wanted to be for the next phase, and they'd nailed it without expending any extra energy.
The landscape below was again going to define the flight envelope for phase two. Rambling Rock Ridge's bare stone was being heated by the sun much more strongly than the surrounding greenery of the Everfree Forest. This means that a strong column of ascending air, known as a "thermal" was being created that spiralled high into the clear skies above.
Large gliding birds could stay aloft simply by riding these thermals. By linking them together they could migrate across seas and continents without using any energy. Ponies aren't good enough gliders to be able to stay aloft just by riding these thermals. Further ascent would still require that her escorts flapped their wings, but the amount of energy would be much, much lower than it normally should be.
Staying within the thermal was going to need disciplined formation flying. At the start of the summer Rainbow had assumed that she'd know when they were flying within the thermal because of the temperature she felt, but different factors of humidity and wind-chill made this impossible. With practise her team had become more attuned to their vertical speed from the visual cues and sensations within their inner ears. If they strayed out of the rising column of air they would be able to feel it, and the experience they'd gained over the previous month's had assisted them in painting a mental map in three dimensions of the skies around them.
This second part would be the longest phase of the entire operation, almost as long as the rest of the journey put together. All they had to do was make circles that wasted as little effort as possible. This was going to be the most mentally taxing part for Rainbow Dash, as she was not naturally inclined to fly as slowly and gently as possible. The steady efforts of her escort team would be undone if she got impatient and tried to hurry things along.
As she half-concentrated on the demands of the gentle climb her mind started to wander over how she'd come to this undertaking. Whilst it might seem to the casual observer that Rainbow Dash was reckless and carefree, she actually was very precise in her flying. What most ponies didn't see was the hundreds of hours she spent on the wing, for nothing more than the joy of flying. Hours and hours of playing was in reality building a formidable level of experience that made easy the aerobatic manoeuvres that seemed so daring when she performed them. She knew exactly how tight a turn she could pull, the span of her wings to the feather's width and what small changes in temperature and pressure did to her lift to drag ratio. Endlessly repetitive cycles of flying meant she could do amazing feats of airponyship, whilst giving the appearance of not trying at all.
She'd never been interested in academic learning of the underlying principles of flight before, relying on her instincts and endless experimentation to improve her abilities. Now her curiosity has grown as she asked her teachers about how a pony could reduce the energy needed to fly higher. One thing that had captivated her early on was the thought that, although she was very athletically built for a filly, she was significantly lighter than the colts her age. That if anyone was going to make this journey, she had the greatest chance due to her excellent power to weight ratio. It almost seemed like destiny wanted her to make this flight.
It might seem paradoxical, but it was her great confidence that gave her the next thing she needed for this attempt. Rainbow had always been unafraid to admit when she needed help. She was always amazed when ponies were too proud to acknowledge when they couldn't do something. So she'd sought out the assistance of the ponies who she thought would know more about this than she did. She'd spoken to friends whose specific cutie marks meant they studied weather patterns, geography, flight dynamics and dozens of other specifics to help plan a mission profile and the checklist for the prerequisites that would need taking care of before the flight. If this had been an actual assignment she would have been a straight "A" student.
The preparation for this flight was the first time in Rainbow's life that she'd truly planned beyond the next few minutes. The flight had to be split up into several phases, as she was going to need a lot of help to get the kind of altitude she was aiming for. After learning all she could about ways to reduce the effort needed to gain altitude, she had studied maps and charts. Then spent hours searching through data on prevailing air currents and weather formations to find candidates that could be linked together to form the mission profile. The more she looked, the more topics there were that needed to be considered. She charted out a project plan linking all the individual things she'd needed to learn or practice. From this a checklist was created to make sure that nothing was missed or overlooked. It soon became apparent that this flight was different from anything she had ever done before: it would require teamwork if she was to pull it off.
She'd spent that summer break working the checklist. Her first serious problem was that most of her friends were either not strong enough fliers or didn't want to get caught up in such a scheme. The instructors weren't of any use because they'd all refused point blank to assist in such a plan. They'd said it was too dangerous for a filly, that even an experienced Wonderbolt would be unlikely to succeed. What was needed were slightly older ponies who still had a streak of recklessness in them. She'd eventually found some cadets who weren't afraid of getting into trouble to help her because they were about to graduate. They were all pretty strong flyers and were used to playing on the same sports teams
For anypony that knew her it was remarkable that she'd got a support team of ponies to work with her. Maybe it was that having a definitive plan and a vision of what she wanted made a compelling narrative of what she wanted to achieve. Maybe being able to describe exactly what she wanted other ponies to do, whether physical or doing calculations, was compelling. Whatever it was, other ponies started to follow her, prepared to give up their time to play a supporting role in her big adventure.
It had taken many weeks of planning, and was easily the largest project of any kind that Rainbow had ever undertaken. Everything had to be done secretly, and she was sure her parents had been very concerned about how much she was sneaking around with older colts. That made her chuckle, because they certainly had nothing to worry about. She didn't want to scare them, because all the parents were still freaked out from when that one filly had gone missing from her junior school, but she couldn't tell them what she was up to.
Not only was there a very precise flight plan, but there were also new technical skills she, and her teammates, had to learn. Eventually though, Rainbow had thought they were ready. Everypony knew what they were expected to do and what the plan was going to be. The weather was going to be gentle for weeks to come. A calm had come over the team, all that had remained was the flight itself.
The afternoon wore on, with hours of this gentle effort leading to another threefold increase in height. Riding the thermals had conserved huge amounts of energy. It was just a shame that "thermals" didn't seem to reasonably describe the air conditions she was flying through. The air at this attitude was burning cold on her fur. She was glad that she was wearing a pair of goggles and ear-warming mitts. These long hours in sub-zero conditions may have caused her pain, or even led to frostbite, if she'd not been wearing protection.
The moment had come for her escort to leave her. They were obviously exhausted, and Rainbow didn't want them to come to any harm from being too spent to return safely to the ground. They had agreed to meet in Ponyville after the flight was concluded, and Rainbow had already left a stack of bits at Sugar Cube Corner so her friends could have a high-calorie refuelling whilst they waited.
The lead escort had signalled their need to disengage by doing a couple of rolls, as spoken conversation was impossible between the teammates. The prearranged signal was that, ten wingbeats after the third set of three rolls, they would dive sharply.
Rainbow braced her forelegs to keep a strong grip on the ring she was holding. The two escorts dived sharply, their sudden increase in speed magnifying the tension in the rope. Rainbow pitched her wings back and used that increasing tension to catapult herself skywards. She released the rope as the strain became unbearable, and now was flying freely for the first time.
Again she had to resist the temptation to rush at the altitude gain, the thin air would mean she quickly ran out of oxygen if she over exerted herself. She stretched her wings to their fullest extent and used slow beats, flapping them over the widest arc she could manage. She timed her breaths to the wingbeats, using the tension across her ribs and chest to help drive the air in and out of her lungs.
The angle of her ascent was moderate, but the effort felt like she was trying to hover with saddlebags full of bricks. The deep breaths were starting to make her nostrils and throat burn, as she gasped for the terribly frigid air. She was feeling lightheaded, a combination of low oxygen and the sheer amount of calories she'd burnt. Her heart was hammering so fast that it was impossible to make out individual beats, it was just an intense buzzing inside her chest like a monstrously angry insect. Her muscles were in a battle with her brain for the dwindling glucose supply in her blood, and she knew that she didn't have much time left.
It was going to be the most dangerous phase of the flight next. This was the last sprint, abandoning aerobic exertion for a burst of anaerobic speed. Sprints like this were the area where Rainbow naturally excelled, turning her muscles into a closed system focused on nothing but the maximum power. Normally she would land soon after to recover, and there was a hard splinter of fear over what would happen if she gave 100% at the end of a gruelling marathon like this so far from safety. She put her fears aside, and focussed solely on her goal.
Pitching up into a steeper ascent she willed her cold and tired muscles into a final explosion of energy. She shortened the stroke and started moving her wings almost into a smooth blur of action. For the first time in this flight her magical aura, the rainbow trail that formed behind her started to show. A ghostly wisp of colours which looked like the Nacreous clouds of a frosty dawn started to be painted in the evening sky behind her. She doubted that anypony would see it from the ground though.
She gritted her teeth and ignored the burning pain in her muscles, just another ten seconds… and another… and another… and another!
Her ascent had stalled. She could no longer find the lift in the vanishingly thin air to fight her mass. She twisted her head around to take in the vast landscape of Equestria. It was spread out beneath her, further than she'd ever been able to see before. There was the twinkling jewel of Canterlot Castle. The metropolis of Manehatton could be seen through the haze to the east, and even the Smokey Mountains stabbed skywards to the west. The moon was so clear and bright, the distinctive pattern known as "the Mare in the Moon" razer sharp on its cratered surface. The view was awe inspiring and worth the pain and exhaustion of getting here.
Then there was blackness.
She snapped back to consciousness, the wind screaming past her ears. Her vision swapped between red- and black-out as her tumbling snapped her head around. She was hopelessly disorientated, the random movements causing severe vertigo. It took a few seconds for her to remember the high altitude flight.
From the depths of her memory the firm, yet kind, voice of her flight-recovery teacher at school came to her: "Stay calm, analyze, adjust, trust your instincts, practice - recovering from a loss of control in flight requires focus and determination."
She needed to gather herself before she got beyond recovery. Already the aerodynamic forces were wrenching her limp wings painfully and making her tumble in unpredictable ways. She took a deep breath and held it for the count of three. Now was the time to trust the instincts that her formative years of extreme flying had earned her.
She pulled her wings and legs tight to her body, and tucked her chin onto her chest to stop the strain in her neck as the tumbling pulled her head around. Shaped like a pony sized rock she plummeted towards the ground even faster. As she hoped, her tail streamed behind her and stopped the tumbling motion. Her head now cleared and she could see clearly through the layers of wispy clouds all the way to the rocky ground far, far below.
She tried extending her wings, but found they were horribly weak and stiff from the punishing flight and uncontrolled fall. More deep breaths, calm yourself Rainbow, she thought. Instead she extended her four legs as widely as possible, causing an immediate sensation of heaviness which told her she was reducing her speed.
She gently extended the primary feathers of her wings in a sharp angle upwards. They combed the passing air and she could feel the beginnings of control returning. Now she could choose the direction in which she was facing and start thinking about navigation.
The ground was much, much closer though. Unbidden, more of those gentle but blunt words from her teacher came to mind… "if you're gonna crash, don't fight it... minimise it."
She hoped that it wouldn't come to that, but starting to pick a survivable landing zone would be prudent. Just in case she ran out of sky. The options weren't appetising, but then slamming bodily into the ground was a less pleasant thought.
Many ponies would assume that crashing into water was ideal. This was a mistake, because at high velocities it was still a hard landing and broken limbs were a possibility. Swimming if suddenly immersed in cold water was hard enough, and pegasi were not known for their prowess in that element, but to do it with broken limbs was a short route to drowning.
Smashing through the canopy of a tree was a true option. This came with an increased risk of impalement in addition to the broken limbs, and many unlucky pegasus had lost an eye this way. At least if the crash didn't kill you, the aftermath wasn't immediately life-threatening.
Neither option was particularly attractive but, compared to slamming into the unforgiving landscape, the latter seemed the less bad option. She had hoped to land in Ponyville anyway, so the border of the Everfree Forest seemed the best place. With luck, and if it was a hard landing, her voice would carry far enough or maybe a townspony would see her come down.
One thing was certain though; she wasn't ready to accept defeat yet. She was a supreme athlete, and her recovery from exercise was far quicker than most ponies would be. She was slowly extending her wings and bringing her secondary flight feathers into play. Her control was increasing every second. She was now turning her downward plunge into a wide corkscrew, despite the absolute fatigue and weakness in her muscles.
Control over her direction still just meant that she'd get to pick the location of her impromptu grave. Ok Rainbow, she thought to herself, time to stop falling and start flying. It felt like her wings would barely hold her up; the additional load of pulling out of the dive was going to need careful management. She tilted forwards so the air was passing over her feathers instead of streaming through them. She felt ghostly fingers dragging over her wings, "unstable transonic shock waves" was what her old flight dynamics tutor had called them. Rainbow just knew they were an indication that she was going really, really fast.
She started to flare her wings to turn speed into lift, but her wings just buckled under the strain. She lost valuable seconds recovering from this setback by folding and then re-extending her wings to regain control. Time was running out and she needed to slow down. She angled her body to side-slip into the airflow, adding drag without too much effort. She could feel the air tearing around her torso and know that this would be slowing her down.
The Everfree Forest was now streaking towards her. She was starting to make out the details of individual trees, and as she got closer it was easier to see that the terrain wasn't flat but undulated up and down. She was starting to feel like her wings were gaining more strength, but the quick mental calculations told her that the curve she was desperately trying to create just wasn't going to be enough. She was going to intercept the ground, hard and fast.
Just as she was accepting the seeming inevitably of hitting the verdant scenery at lethal velocity she spotted a gully that cut into the forest floor. She desperately banked towards it, praying that the extra load wouldn't buckle her wings again. Just as it seemed her luck had run out, the ground dropped away sharply beneath her, the tangled thorn bushes on its edge snatching a hank of hair from her tail.
She streaked through the narrow gully, her wingtips brushing the uneven and rough sides as it snaked along below the forest canopy. A sluggish stream flowed through the bottom, and it seemed that the roof of an ancient underground river had collapsed creating this miraculous scar in the landscape. Her descent had finally stopped and she was almost skimming her hooves through the water beneath. Finally her trajectory turned upwards and she could start to rise again.
Oh Celestia, she thought, I'm gonna to make it.
She rose towards the far end of the gully. It was going to be close but she'd flown narrower margins before. At the last second, though, a hanging vine snagged her left wing. Suddenly her nose was pitching down and flattening her ascent. She crashed into a low growing shrub that was barely clinging on to the edge of the Clif face, tearing dozens of feathers from her wings and making her cry out in pain.
Helplessly cartwheeling now she tore through the canopy of a tree, firing upwards from the top branches like a cyan coloured cannonball. She opened her eyes to see the ground tumbling downhill away from her. Calmly compartmentalising her thoughts, she used the apex of her ballistic trajectory to get a feel for the landscape. She could just barely make out the taller buildings in Ponyville on the horizon, and saw that the edge of the forest, and perhaps a road, wasn't far from where she was going to crash.
She pulled her wings and hindlegs in as tightly as she could and wrapped her forelegs around her head, in preparation for hitting the trees again. The ground rose up towards her, horribly fast. She slowed in a series of sickening impacts as she ripped over the treetops like a stone skipping across a pond, as they followed the terrain down the slope. She felt the final branches raking her face and body before that final, unimpeded, drop to the ground.
Then there was blackness… again.
She eventually limped into Ponyville just before dark. It'd been a long, slow and agonising walk from the Everfree Forest. She realised it might be days before she could fly again, and maybe weeks until she'd be fully recovered. She trudged through the town until Sugar Cube Corner came into view, oblivious to the stares from the townsponies who passed her by.
Her flight crew, and a few other classmates, were waiting for her. The welcoming sound of their voices died away as they caught sight of her. No doubt they were shocked by the sight of this highly energetic pony in such a forlorn looking state.
"Ah horseapples," one of the colts nudged the companion sitting next to him, "there she is, looks like I owe you ten bits!"
The somber mood was burst and they rushed to her side, helping to carry her to the table they'd been sitting. Quickly the sweetest cakes and hot chocolate were placed in front of her, as they gently removed her goggles and ear warmers. Now that she'd stopped she barely had the strength to feed herself, and the care shown by her friends brought tears to her eyes.
She cleared her throat, "hope I haven't kept you waiting too long. Kinda had to walk the last bit."
Something was different… her voice has a hoarse rasp to it. Her throat was sore, and she realised that the cold air had burned her vocal cords. She wondered how long she'd have this gravelly tone.
"What happened, Dash?" Asked a concerned friend, "You look like you fell through a tornado into a pool fulla rocks!"
"Huh yeah," she groaned, "turns out I owe the flight recovery teacher big time."
"So what was it like up there?" Enquired a filly she knew from her Equestrian history class.
"Just amazing. I've never seen so far," she answered, "it's like the whole world is just laid out beneath your hooves."
"I wish I could see it," sighed her friend, "it sounds so inspiring."
"Don't you go getting any ideas," Rainbow coughed and continued, "this was a crazy way to see the scenery… And I nearly become a part of it."
"Well let's see how high you got," exclaimed a brightly coloured colt.
Suddenly Rainbow remembered the very small and lightweight device strapped between her wings. One of the more science orientated nerd foals had built it. A simple glass tube with a sliding plug fitted on a spring. As she'd ascended the plug had moved out to let the air escape from it, and as she descended the plug had been pushed in against the spring as the outside pressure increased. A simple scale etched on the side told how high she'd reached.
The tube was carefully removed, before being given a few gentle taps to settle the plug. The tiny hoof-written scale was hard to see, but once it'd been read there were incredulous gasps from the assembled pegasi.
"Ten thousand shoulders," gasped one of her companions, "that's higher than Mount Everhoof."
"What can I say," slurred the exhausted Rainbow Dash, "told you guys I was gonna be a high flyer one day."
Oblivious to the admiration of her friends she rested her head on the table, and almost immediately her eyes started closing. This had been the hardest day of her life, maybe it would be the hardest she'd ever have. There was no doubt that she'd learned some valuable lessons though, not only about flying but also about herself. Although she doubted that she'd ever become a book reader, she now understood the power of learning about the things she was passionate for. With this chapter complete she was comfortable with the idea of starting her working life, that this big adventure had marked the end of her childhood years. In the space of a few months she had matured, and over the course of a day she had grown.
Despite her pride at having achieved her goal, it was apparent to all those attending that Rainbow was completely spent. She could barely keep her eyes open to sip on her hot chocolate. There was certainly no way she was travelling back to Cloudsdale any time soon.
They briefly discussed getting her to a hotel, but decided that the local hospital might be a more sensible option despite Rainbow's protests. Fortunately she was in no condition to resist as they borrowed a cart from a nearby farm and loaded her near comatose body into it.
They pulled her across town from Sugar Cube Corner to where the hospital sat. When Redheart, the trainee nurse on duty, saw the state of the pegasus and heard what she had done there was no hesitation in admitting Rainbow for the first of her many stays in a hospital. It would be a solid night and day of sleep before she was going to start complaining about it, though.
Author's Note
Just another little "before they were famous" alt history.
See if you spot any Easter eggs from my other stories.
