Tight Fit

Rainbow Dash woke up early. There was something in the air; a familiar ionic scent of changing weather. She crawled out of her tent, staring at the skies. Clouds shifted and moved above the northern mountains in ways she didn’t like at all. They didn't look as funny to her as they did yesterday.

To her surprise, she found Tight Fit at the campfire. He was stoking the last of the embers, drying up some wood around them.

“I don’t like the look of those clouds,” Dash said. She paused, and remembered her rash decision yesterday. “We...” she swallowed her pride. “We should call this thing off.”

Fit looked to the mountains and nodded. “We should,” he agreed, his voice flat.

“What happens if we do?” she asked.

“No cold weather testing data,” Fit said simply, and sighed. “No testing of the new separation layer. No testing of the new waterproof layer.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “You work fast.”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.” He forced a chortle. “I must have been thinking of Jolly Rump or something.”

She shook her head. “So what if you don’t make those tests?”

Fit didn’t say anything for a while. Then he stood up and shrugged again. “It’ll be a hard sell, I guess. But since I pay you by the day, I’ll have enough to take you out to lunch once we get to Canterlot.”

Rainbow blinked, but Fit had already unrolled the map.

“You can start eastward, along the edge of the forest,” he pointed. “Then stop when you reach the great river. We set up camp there. Then we can make Canterlot by tomorrow.” The map rolled back up and flew back towards its pouch.

Rainbow snatched it mid-air and unrolled it with her hooves. “Or,” she said, “I could go north-east,” she moved her hoof across the map, then shook her head and pointed to the mountains. “See that pass over there?”

Tight squinted, and scanned the horizon. She pulled him to her, and indicated with her other hoof.

“There,” she pointed and he nodded. “That’s where the northern train line goes,” she explained, before she realized she was still holding him close to her. She let go, and slicked her hair back. “So, yeah. My friends and I went there a couple of months ago. Fought an evil king, freed a country, you know. It’s a long story.”

He nodded.

“When those clouds reach that pass,” Rainbow motioned with her hoof, “All that moisture coming up will crystallize into what we call ‘snow’”. She nodded resolutely, and eyed him. “What? I took a semester in Wild Cloud Formations and Movements at school.”

“So…?” the unicorn seemed lost. Rainbow rolled her eyes.

“So,” she explained, “if I start now and fly north-east, I can make it into that pass before that, and up those mountains when the cold air displaces the warm air from the south.” I think? She took the subject, but she never said she'd attended any of the lectures.

The unicorn frowned. “You sure? I don’t want you to take unnecessary risks.”

“Hey! ‘Unnecessary Risks’ is my middle name,” Rainbow ‘Unnecessary Risks’ Dash replied with a wave of her hoof.

“That’s actually two—”

“Come on, it’ll be fine! Now strap me into that contraption of yours, Tighty.” Rainbow slapped him over the back. “I got a cloud front to beat.”

“Okay, first on, the underlayer.”

Tight Fit produced a roll of black material. Rainbow eyed him as he unrolled it – surprisingly, it was shaped a bit like a pony.

“It’s a non-vulcanized rubber made from an emulsion of polymer microparticles—”

“Yeah, I know,” Dash stopped him. “Rarity showed it to me once. She called it lay-tex.”

The unicorn paused and blinked. “Huh.”

“You know – it’s a textile that gets people laid.”

“It’s technically not a textile—”

“And I’m not here to get laid.” She grabbed the suit and eyed him. “You sure this is my size?”

He chuckled nervously. “It’s a bit floppy on me, but I admit, for you…” he looked her up and down, “it might be a tight fit.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes, and put the first layer on. Surprisingly enough, it was her size. “Huh,” she pinched a bit on her rump and let it snap back into shape. “It's pretty okay.”

“A lot of ponies have a similar body plan,” Fit noted and zipped her up. He paused. “And hairstyles, come to think of it. Different colors, though.”

“Alright, what’s next?” Rainbow asked, eyeing the clouds on the horizon.

“The cooling layer.”

“I’m well-acquainted,” she sighed, and slipped it on. “Did you fix the wriggling?”

“No, but I filled up the loop. It should be fine unless you sit on any rocks.”

“The tubes bunch up in—” Rainbow cleared her throat. “You know. My crevices and creases?”

Fit took a sharp breath. “Ah.” He said after a few moments.

“Yeah… I wanted to tell you yesterday, but…”

“Right. Uh…” he glanced around. “Let’s… uh… hope it’s not so bad?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Not unless they move about too much.”

“They shouldn't, unless you pierce the loop again. I’ll fasten them down better in the evening,” the unicorn offered.

“Yeah, let’s just get this done.” The pegasus stepped into the tube-covered suit, and felt a familiar rub of magic running from her neck down. “Hey! There’s a bottom layer now!”

“Sorry!” the unicorn blushed. “Force of habit!”

“Habit after just one time?” she cocked an eyebrow.

“It made… a strong impression?”

Rainbow scoffed and rolled her eyes, then chortled despite herself. “Just zip me up, Tighty.”

He did, and the tightness increased. “Did you size this down again?”

“I think the cloth layer shrunk when you washed it,” Fit replied. “Is it okay?”

Rainbow stood up and moved her hooves, then rolled her wings. “It’s…” she glanced at him, suppressing a smile. “A Tight Fit.” It was his turn to roll his eyes as she laughed. “I think it’s fine. Unless it shrinks more.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Fit replied. “Third layer is a waterproof one…” He pulled out a familiar black, rubbery, pony-shaped suit.

“How many of these do you have?” Rainbow asked, giving him a curious look. “Are you in one of Rarity’s weird clubs?”

He coughed and turned red, which seemed an answer enough. “This one is a size bigger,” he said after clearing his throat. “Let’s hope it's enough.”

It was. So far, it worked, but the layers had the tendency to slide against each other.

“Finally, there’s the armor layer,” the unicorn pulled out the suit-of-many-straps.

Rainbow groaned. “Oh come on, do I have to?”

“Do you want anypony to see you like that?” he took a step back, and looked at her. Then, for some reason, he coughed again.

Rainbow looked down at herself. Funnily enough, the three layers, alongside the tubes’ tendency to slip around and flatten, gave her a bit of a bulk she didn’t really dislike. Other than that, she was as slick as an otter, and as black as Luna’s proverbial pu— She shook her head. “See me? Out here? What pony?”

The unicorn nodded, still staring. “R-right...”

“But it might be better for the weather,” she capitulated. “I think that lay-tex thing cuts really easily.”

“Yeah,” the unicorn replied with a hint of sadness in his voice.

Rainbow smirked, and donned the final layer. He had to help her fasten all the zippers and whatnot, of course, but by the end of it, she felt pretty fine. She jumped up and the zipper jingled. “Now I look like one of the other friends of Rarity,” she chuckled at the memory. “They wear gas masks, though.”

“You have to introduce me to this ‘Rarity’,” Tight Fit noted, tightening some last straps by hoof. And taking his time.

For some reason, Rainbow didn’t dislike that, but she still felt a pang of something in her chest. “Eyes on the prize,” she said, pointing to the horizon. The clouds were gathering.

“Right!” he said, staring forward, right past her rump. His eyes might have waived a bit, and for some reason, Rainbow felt a smirk on her face.

The pegasus did up one last buckle. All of those layers creaked a bit, but seemed to hold right. She didn’t feel warm, or cold. “What’s the trick with the heat?” she asked while she loosened up her muscles before the flight.

“There’s an array of heat-accumulator gems along your sides,” Fit explained. “They’re small beads in those pockets. The peristaltic motion of the tube circulates the cooling liquid, which spreads across those, like blood inside lungs. Anything higher than body temperature gets absorbed, but if the liquid gets colder, the gems warm it back up.”

“Huh, cool,” Rainbow understood some of it, at least. She spread her hind legs and bent forward until her chest touched the ground. It wasn’t a traditional stretch per se, but she liked how it put some crimson in Tight’s pale cheeks.

“Yes... cool...” he muttered, before clearing his throat. “And warm,” he continued in a tone of an academic. “The same reservoir that absorbed that heat in the last few days will make you warm today.”

“Good,” Rainbow nodded and flapped her wings. “Well, time to go.”

“If there’s anything wrong, just set up the flare.” Tight said, his voice serious all of a sudden. “Just... Stay safe out there.”

She nodded. “Don’t worry, dadd—” Luckily, she stopped herself there. “I’ll be careful.” With a crimson face, not glancing back, Rainbow put her goggles on, and took off to race the clouds.

There are times for action, and times for subtlety. Rainbow Dash had rarely considered the latter.

She was in her element now. No more teasing, no more weird feelings – it was just her flying as fast as she could. She would just have to fly to a mountain on the horizon, before some clouds get there.

Easy.

The clouds loomed menacingly, and the horizon neared slowly. Rainbow pushed herself, ignoring the occasional chafing of the suit layers against the base of her wings. The tubes churned like a hungry stomach, and started to warm up despite whatever magic they used.

But she pushed on. Dash wasn’t really good at maths, like Applejack, but she had a lot of practice with estimating the motion of things. As she barrelled across the tundra and stared unblinkingly at the clouds, she’d realized she was not going to make it in time.

So she pushed harder. She gritted her teeth, feeling her body stretch into an arrow that cut through the wind. Her wings and the pegasus magic carried her forward, faster and faster, until she saw a cone of air form against her front hooves.

Every time before, she always saw the cone first. It would only happen after that. But before it did, what would follow would be the feeling of her trying to slowly push a hole through a wall; a force against her hooves that would not yield until she made it yield to her.

But not today. Instead, she saw the top layer of her suit flap around wildly, chafe, and begin to tear. Before she could react – as though there was anything she could even do – the cloth and zippers and laces and whatever else tore in front of her, and peeled off of her like she was a banana.

And banana she was. Sleek and aerodynamic, with rubber skin wet with moisture from sky around her. Somewhere behind her, a unicorn with a stupid name saw a rainbow explode across the sky, and maybe heard a distant boom! as she went supersonic. But that was all behind her – she didn’t hear it, nor did she realize just how fast she was going. For once, the suit actually worked, and then some.

The ground underneath blurred into a gray smear, errant water droplets bombarded her face like needles. As she tore through the mist at the edge of the cloud front, she felt her hooves getting warmer and warmer. The white cone narrowed, and she hid behind it as it started glowing red. The air in front of her turned red, than separated outwards, forming into a scintillating shield of fire around the tip of her front hooves. The thermal accumulators singed her sides – and the mountain grew ahead faster than she’d ever seen anything grow.

She screamed, but the air was torn out of her lungs. Her wings were useless now – she was flying by her magic alone, a crimson streak across the sky; a star falling sideways, right into a mountain. Rainbow desperately pitched up, the blazing plasma searing her stomach, her ears popping, and then, she finally lost all control.

Rainbow was falling through the air.

“Uh,” she grumbled stupidly. “What—”

A set of jagged white teeth loomed in front of her, with clear blue behind it. As she tumbled, the jagged teeth moved up, biting into the blue. Underneath, the white was broken by the gray of stone, flying by so fast she barely realized it was a mountainside at all.

A mountainside?

She tumbled on. Behind her, a distant cloud form was slowly crashing against a mountain side. Above it, the sky was steel, and then once again, blue, until it was bit by the mountain's peaks again.

They were much bigger now.

“Aah!” Rainbow screeched— and then took a hold of herself. She was breathing, flying, and not panicking. That’s how you stayed alive.

The mountainside grew ever closer.

“AAAH!”

Rainbow forced her aching muscles to motion, snapping her front hooves together. Be a spear, she reminded herself of the old lesson from Advanced Flying at Ridiculous Speeds lectures. With every moment, the disorientation passed, and the dread turned into ice.

It was hard to breathe. Little dancing lights zipped across her vision. But more importantly, her wings had precious little air to push against. I'm not gonna make it, she realized, watching the mountain close in fast. She spread her wings wide, and closed her eyes, thinking of her friends.

There was a rush of air, wild motion, then, nothing.

Dash was sitting on a cloud, watching other clouds go by. They were shaped like male genitalia, and gradually turned into them, each with their own flapping wings.

“Pricks don’t fly,” Rainbow said sagely.

“Yes, we do,” the flying penises answered her.

“Where do you fly, pricks?”

“Where do you want us to fly?” they asked in turn.

Rainbow looked at the horizon where all the pricks were flying to. There was a beautiful pink rose opening ahead, warm and moist, rimmed in light blue fur, the color of the summer sky. The genitalia sank into the flower, and as they did, Rainbow felt a corresponding, incessant, ever-present wriggle.

“Not this shit again!” she groaned, and looked down at her crotch.

Rainbow Dash coughed and sat up straight. Snow fell off of her head, and the too-thin air did its best to fill her lungs. She tumbled forward again, planting her face into the snow, pushed herself up, groaned, and coughed again.

“At least the suit is warm,” she wheezed and stumbled. It was, from her sides to the tips of her hooves. Which, she realized as she stared at them, were singed. “Huh.” After a moment, Rainbow blinked to make herself stop staring, and tried to stand up. She managed, in the end, and looked around. “It could use a c-cowl or s-something,” her teeth chattered.

She was standing in the middle of a snow-filled basin. Ahead and below, she saw gray clouds gathering in a valley. To her right, far white fields of the northern ice sheet stretched to the horizon. Behind her, above, loomed a steep cliff side covered in more ice and snow. To her left, below, lay a vast tundra, and at the very edge of it, a forest of evergreens. And somewhere out there, a unicorn was, hopefully packing hastily.

“H-huh,” Rainbow’s teeth chattered again. She took a deep breath.

“S-so,” she recapped. “I m-made it before the clouds, and flew into a mountain.” She sighed, and jumped up and down to warm herself up. She stretched her wings— and winced at a sudden pang of pain.

“Ah, crap.”

She’d been in this boat before. Last time— Rainbow took a deep, hissing breath, trying to stem the panic. That was, what, two years ago? Before Twilight got her wings. Dash was showing off, broke her wing, and learned to love reading.

'Broke her wing' was the part that story that made her blood run cold.

Rainbow shook her head. None of this was helping her now. “Okay, D-dash,” she told herself, shivering now. “T-two options. F-freeze to death, or c-call for help.” She shook her head, but her lip, and groaned.

She patted herself down, and unzipped the top layer of her suit. Cold air rushed in, and she hurriedly pulled out the two gemstones. “M-maybe he won’t p-pick up…” she told herself. “Y-yeah. T-then I can f-freeze ang-gry…”

With shaking hooves, she put the two pieces together, and tossed them onto the ground. They fell into the fluffy snow and disappeared from sight. Other than that, there was nothing.

“F-figures…” Rainbow chuckled, and stood up on shaky hooves. The world swam. She’d lived through enough concussions to know the cause. “Joke’s on you!” she screamed across the tundra below. “I have your stupid prototype!” With that, the pegasus sat down, and coughed. “You prick,” she muttered.

There was a glint of light in front of her. She blinked, but it didn’t go away. In fact, it intensified, until a familiar gem rose from the snow and the light blinded her. A burst of snow hit her face, and Rainbow cackled, falling onto her back.

The sky above was a deep blue. A shape leaned over her, and something tingly pulled her.

“Hey! Help me out here! At least try to crawl!”

“Hey Tighty,” she croaked. “I think I broke something.”

“No, really? Come on! On your hooves!”

She leaned against him.

“T-the suit could use a cowl,” she muttered. Dimly, she saw an A-shaped object in front of them, then fell.