The windows of Canterlot Castle rattled as a Sonic Rainboom exploded directly overhead.
“Going past Mach 1! Keep on going, Rainbow!”
Rainbow Dash grinned as she continued flapping her wings, going faster and faster with each stroke. It was a marvel at how much she had grown; she remembered how hard it used to be just to break the sound barrier going downwards.
Another explosion was heard, and another prismatic ring blossomed in the sky.
“Mach 2! Just a little more!”
Rainbow grinned even wider. If Twilight thought she would stop at Mach 3, she should’ve known her better.
Another explosion, and from the earpiece, Rainbow could hear distant cheering. “Mach 3! Mach 3! You did it, Rainbow!”
Rainbow laughed. “I’m not done yet!”
Twilight laughed. “Okay! Just don’t push yourself too hard!”
“There’s no such thing as pushing yourself too hard!” Rainbow exclaimed, forgetting years’ worth of life lessons. “Besides, I’m actually feeling a lot lighter now!”
“Oh. Um…”
Another explosion. “Whoo! Mach 4! Is that four times the speed of sound!?”
“Yes!” Twilight cheered, albeit with a little note of apprehension. “But… don’t go too fast, okay, Rainbow? If you keep going, the atmosphere will keep getting thinner and thinner-”
“That just means I can go even faster!”
“That’s not-”
Another explosion. And another. And another.
“What.”
Rainbow laughed. “Oh, yeah! There’s practically no atmosphere here!”
“Rainbow, stop! Get down, now!”
“No! This is the first time I’ve ever felt this free! Screw you, air resistance! And you, friction!”
“Rainbow, I’m serious! You’re going to-” a commotion could be heard in the background. “Mach 30!? Since when!?”
“Oh, yeah! Keep ‘em coming!”
“How are you even talking without atmosphere!?”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “By moving my mouth?”
“How are you even breathing!?”
Rainbow sighed. “By using my lungs? It’s whatever that diaphragm thing is.”
“That’s not- what do you mean, 50% the speed of light!? She can’t be going that fast! She’s still on the… Rainbow! We can’t see you on the radar anymore!”
“Oh, yeah! I’m so fast not even the radar can see me!”
“How!?”
“Twilight, I’m going so fast I think I’m breaking another barrier!”
“You- You can’t just break the light barrier! That’s impossible!”
“Oh, yeah? Is that a challenge?”
“No! That’s a warning!”
“Oh, I’m feeling it! It’s pushing me back!”
“I don’t… I don’t even know what to do. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t want to know what will happen if you don’t break the- the- the light barrier!? How far will you bounce back!?”
Rainbow broke into a devious smile. “Wrong question, Twilight. The right question is, ‘What will happen if I do break the light barrier?'”
“I… don’t even know what to expect. Moving faster than light will essentially break the laws of physics.”
“Then I’ll just go faster than the physics police!”
“...what?”
Rainbow wanted to answer, but the barrier was approaching. She could see the air around her compress into a solid white cone-
“There’s not even air out there.”
She could see the light around her compress into a solid white cone, and Rainbow kept on pushing against it. Without the annoying air resistance, she could keep going faster and faster as much as she wanted! And she just needed to keep… on… going!
For a split second, the cone flashed all the colors of the visible spectrum, and also the non-visible spectrum, and Rainbow Dash gave the final push.
An explosion of all the colors of the rainbow and everything else bloomed in the sky directly above Canterlot, its sound so loud it could be heard from Manehattan.
“How are we even seeing that? How are we hearing that?”
Rainbow cheered as she kept on soaring the night sky with a rainbow trail. “Twilight! I did it! An even bigger Rainboom! It’s a… It’s the Supersonic Rainboom!”
“I’m pretty sure that’s way above the context of supersonic speed-”
“And I’m not even done yet!”
Twilight threw her hooves up. “I am! I’m done!”
Rainbow could hear the sound of hooves clopping further and further away. “Wait! It’s going to be awesome, I promise!”
The sound of hooves started getting louder again, until eventually, Twilight’s voice could be heard. “You’re breaking so many laws of physics I don’t even know what’s going to happen now.”
Rainbow shrugged, then realized her friend probably couldn’t see her. “Look, I know I’m gonna have to land eventually and the police will be there waiting, but you’re the princess now. Like, the princess. You can just bail me out, right?”
“...what?”
“Pinkie Pie breaks the laws of physics a few times a week. And you keep bailing her out every time? You weren’t even a princess back then!”
“That’s not- That’s just Pinkie being Pinkie.”
“Oh, so Pinkie can be Pinkie but Rainbow can’t be awesome?”
“It’s different!”
“Different how?”
“It’s… Actually, you breathing out there in space is also like Pinkie being Pinkie. Is breaking the speed of light key to nigh omnipotence? Does that mean Pinkie is always moving past the speed of light? But then-”
“Don’t think about it. The last time you tried you caught on fire.”
“But this is… This is important for your survival! If I can’t explain how you’re not suffocating-” Twilight was cut off by a loud crack, then an unintelligible voice of somepony in the background, then another crack. “Okay, right.” Twilight’s breathing became rapid and saturated the radio communications. “Whatever.” Breathe. “I guess I’ll just…”
“Who was that?”
“Me.” Breathe. “From the future.” Breathe. “Telling me not to worry about it because it’s just ‘Rainbow being Awesome™’.” Twilight laughed something between joy and hysterical.
“See? I told you so!”
And so Rainbow kept on going faster and faster. And in ten seconds flat, Rainbow found another planet.
“Hey, is that Equus?”
“What!? How?”
“I think I’m going so fast that I circled the universe and returned back to where I left!”
“That’s not how the geometry of space works! I think! Maybe!?”
“How cool is that!?”
“Just- okay, just remember to slow down before atmospheric entry, alright? We don’t want you suddenly dying because you hit our planet at… integer overflow. Huh. Is this a 16-bit computer?” A couple of noises came out from the background. “No… 128-bit? And it’s in meters? Ok, hold on.” Twilight’s hooves could be heard moving away from the microphone, before another set of hooves approached just as quickly. Twilight’s voice could be heard again, saying, “Hello?”
“Hello? What happened?”
“Twilight’s gone to scream out her frustration. I’m her from the future taking her place until she’s done.”
“Huh. So… will I end up getting married?”
“What? No, I mean, I don’t know. I’m just from five minutes in the future after Twilight screamed her lungs out.”
“Oh, ok. Anyway, I’m approaching Equus, so I’m slowing down.”
“Right. You’re now at… still overflow… okay now at…”
“... Twi?”
“How is the radio still functional at this distance anyway?”
“Uh, because it’s connected?” Rainbow clicked her tongue. “Didn’t you say anypony- anyone with the earpiece can talk to each other?”
“But you went so far that light probably needs to travel a few seconds to reach you, and even if the comms work by magic, it’s still limited to the speed of light-”
“But I broke the speed of light.”
“Yes, and that means whatever speech you’re trying to do should be distorted by time dilation, to the point of negative time, and-” A crack could be heard in the background, then a distant conversation, then another crack. Twilight grumbled. “Fine. Don’t think about it, then!”
“Anyway, I’m getting closer to it now and… I don’t think that’s Equus…”
“Really? How close are you?”
“Pretty close. I’m just above the moon now, and I can’t seem to find Equestria…” She whistled. “That’s some untended weather right there, yeesh.”
“Right, we can’t find you on the radar. Maybe that’s just another planet?”
“I found a lot of other planets. Only this one looks like Equus!”
“Wait how many-”
“There’s a dragon! I can see a dragon!”
“A what!?”
“It’s… I don’t know, I don’t think dragons can fly as high as this.” Rainbow flew closer to the ‘dragon’. “It looks like it has crystal wings, though, and… whoa, it’s huge!”
“Be careful, Rainbow.” A set of hooves could be heard approaching. “Oh, Twilight’s back. Here.”
“Oh, hey, Twi! Should I tell you what happened?”
“No, I came back right after that because I went back in time right after screaming, so from my perspective- you know what? It doesn’t matter. What’s the dragon look like?”
“It looks like… a dragon.” Rainbow could hear Twilight’s unamused look through billions of lightyears of empty space. “I don’t know how to describe it, it has four crystal wings and a thin body… sort of like a dragonfly, now that I’m closer.”
“Be careful. How big is it?”
“Almost like… a hoofball field, I think? I’m getting closer now.”
“Oh, you’re surprisingly slow now… subsonic?”
“Yeah, don’t want to startle the dragonfly from being too awesome, you know? The last time that happened you got a cutie mark.”
“No, the last time that happened was… 18 minutes ago. Huh.”
Rainbow kept on creeping closer at an agonizingly slow pace. This close now, she could see that the dragonfly was as big as the town hall at least. The creature looks serene with the green and blue planet behind it, and its reflective wings enhanced its beauty by glittering from the sunlight now behind her.
“I’m close enough to touch it now.”
“Huh? What? Who’s there?”
Rainbow spun around, then frantically looked in every direction. “Who? What? Who’s that?”
“Are we hacked?”
“Is the spell matrix breached?”
“What spell?”
“Houston, what’s happening?”
“Why are you calling Houston?”
“Who’s Hoofton?”
“Twi, I think I see who it is!”
Rainbow was at the ‘head’ of the creature, and all the way at the ‘tail’, she could see another, smaller creature. “Hey, you there! You’re the one talking?”
The creature seemed to notice her. From this distance, Rainbow thought it looked like a minotaur, except its head was a gigantic, black eyeball. “Oh, I see it! It’s… a horse?”
Rainbow flew quickly to the eye-minotaur’s side, startling it. “Hey! So you have an earpiece too?”
“Earpiece? I mean, yes, but it should’ve been encrypted…”
“And our earpieces should’ve been protected with a couple of wards at least…”
“Didn’t you say that anyone wearing the earpiece can talk to each other?”
“Yes, but-”
“What are you even?”
Rainbow stared. “Uh… I’m a pegasus. But first things first!” She gestured at the dragonfly. “What’s this? Is this going to eat me?”
“That’s the International Space Station. It won't eat you. I live there. Well, for now.”
Rainbow nodded, and then pointed at the eye-minotaur. “What are you?”
“I’m a human. You?”
“As I said, I’m a pegasus. What’s your name?”
“John. Astronaut.” The human extended a hand toward Rainbow.
Rainbow Dash took the hand and shook it. “Rainbow Dash. Nice to meet you, John Astronaut!”
“Nice to meet you too, Rainbow Dash." John Astronaut gestured to the planet behind him. "Greetings from the children of Earth!”
“Greetings from the children of Equus! Let’s be friends!”
“Let us be friends!”
And thus the magic of friendship grew to encompass the galaxy.
Author's Note
0:22:12.128
