Dreams of Las Pegasus

Dreams of Las Pegasus

From her perch in the clouds, it was obvious to Rainbow Dash that her number one fan had something weighing on her mind.  Scootaloo trudged along with her head down and her hooves dragging, a makeshift sack on a stick slung over her back.  The sight of the normally energetic filly in such a state worried Rainbow.  She decided to see what was up, and dove leisurely off the cloud towards the youngster.

“Heya, Scoots, where you headed?”

Scootaloo glanced up at the voice to see her hero hovering just slightly overhead.  “Hey, Rainbow Dash,” she piped up, the excitement in her voice not quite making it onto her face.  “Nowhere, really.  Just walkin’.”

“Uh huh,” Rainbow grunted, not buying it for a second.  The expression, the posture, the baggage—they all indicated the same thing.  “I’m guessing this is your first time running away from home, huh?”

The filly stared at her.  “How the hay did you know I was running away?”

Rainbow pointed at the bindle across Scootaloo’s back.  “Eh, it was just a hunch, but those things are usually a good clue.”

“Oh, yeah…” she replied sheepishly.  “Are—are you gonna tell my dad?”

The older pegasus landed lightly at her side.  “Well, if he asks me about you, I guess I’ll have to.  But I’m not going to go out of my way to rat you out.”

Scootaloo leaped up and hugged her around the neck.  “Oh, thank you!  I knew you were—”

“Woah, woah,” Rainbow interrupted Scootaloo with a hoof.  “ONE condition,” she said, a slight edge in her voice.  “You tell me where you’re going, and you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Dang it.”  Scootaloo dropped her bag with a squelch of smashed produce and slumped to her haunches.

“What, you’d really rather not tell me?  Come on, what’s got you down, Scoots?”

“I just…” she began as a wave of anger washed over her face.  “I can’t TAKE it anymore!  I’m so sick of those stupid bullies!  I HATE them!”

Rainbow jerked back at the hostility coming from the filly.  “Easy there, squirt, let’s back it down a bit,” Rainbow said, trying to find a soothing tone of voice.  “Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara, right?  Cheerilee said she would do something about it, didn’t it help?”

Scootaloo sighed.  “She tries, but as soon as she leaves, they’re both back on my case.  They never leave me alone.”

The mare nudged Scootaloo, gently urging her to get up and collect her bindle.  The two began to walk down the path as they continued to chat.  “What about your friends, they tease them too, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same.”

“How’s that?”

Scootaloo stared into the distance, biting her lip anxiously.  “It’s not just about being a blank flank.  Apple Bloom doesn’t have her mark, but she still works on the farm and does a lot of stuff, like an earth pony should.  Sweetie Belle doesn’t have a specific talent, but she can still do some magic, like a unicorn should.  But I can’t do anything.  Can’t fly, can’t do the most basic weather stuff...”  Scootaloo stopped in the path facing her idol, her lip quivering just slightly.  “I’m not just a failure at doing things; I’m a failure at being a pegasus!  I can’t take it anymore, because they’re right!”

Rainbow remained silent for a bit.  “So, you’re gonna go start over somewhere else then?”

Scootaloo nodded sadly.

“Is leaving gonna fix your problems?”

“I don’t know…” the filly admitted with a sniffle.

“Hmm.  Well, where you thinking of going?”  Rainbow looked down the road, trying to get her bearings.  “This road goes to Fillydelphia, doesn’t it?  It’s hard to tell from the ground.”

Scootaloo stared weirdly at Rainbow.  “Um, aren’t you supposed to be stopping me right about now?”

Rainbow gave a chuckle and ruffled the filly’s mane.  “I never told you that I ran away from home once, did I?”

Scootaloo’s jaw dropped.  “No way!  Why would you ever run away from anything?”

The older pegasus couldn’t help but blush slightly at that.  “Well, I suppose everypony has something.  This is a bit of a long story; I mean, it’s got traveling, and fights, and all sorts of stuff, but you aren’t gonna make much progress sitting on the ground listening to me talk.”

Rainbow gestured for Scootaloo to climb aboard.  The filly beamed happily as she clambered up onto Rainbow’s back, bindle tucked under her tiny wing, and the two took a leisurely flight up to a small cloud.  Rainbow took a deep breath as the two settled in for the directionless ride, looking at the filly who stared at her in rapt attentiveness.

“So, yeah, my story…”

Growing up in Cloudsdale was pretty sweet, all things considered, but I still had a lot of trouble with bullies when I was little.  I was smaller than everypony else in my class, and even back then, I had the drive: I had to be the fastest at everything.  It made me stand out, and bullies seem to gravitate to ponies like that.  Every time I screwed up or lost, they’d be sure to let me know about it.  “Rainbow Crash” was their favorite name for me, because, well, I really wasn’t always in control of myself.  Not that it bothered me that much at the time, I mean.  I was faster than all of ‘em and I knew it, so they couldn’t hurt me much—at least, not until I had a big accident at flight camp.

I just had to take another run at the Sonic Rainboom.  It had been a month or two since I had done it, and I was just itching for another chance.  It was the speed.  It was incredible, something I’d never felt before.  I had to taste it again.  Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have done it at night.  I definitely shouldn’t have been doing it outside of the flight camp’s airspace, but I didn’t want an audience.  I snuck out of the dorms, took off, and started climbing.  Nopony was around to see me, so I could just do it for myself.  I didn’t really think about the fact that everypony in Cloudsdale would be woken up by a massive shockwave if I succeeded; I had other things on my mind.

Once I had gotten high enough to where my wings were starting to get cold, I dove.  The wind was incredible, and the faster I went, the more dense it got.  First, it was like flying through fog, then through water, then like I was pushing against a solid wall.  Even if it had been daytime, I don’t think I could have seen much—the wind was making my eyes water so badly, but I just needed that much more to break through.  In fact, when I saw the outline of the Cloudeseum go past my side, that was the first indication I had that I was badly off course.  I tried to look ahead, and all of a sudden, there was the city.

By that point, it was much too late to slow down or avoid crashing.  I knew the impact would be awful, but then I saw where I was headed, and there was a pony standing right in the way.  He must have been a night janitor or something.  I tried to yell, but I just couldn’t make any sound come out.  I froze up and slammed right into him.  I still remember the look in his eyes as he finally saw me coming.  He even ended up in the hospital bed right next to mine.  He wouldn’t forgive me—wouldn’t even talk to me.  Not that I blame him, of course.  I did kinda ruin his week by being incredibly foalish.  At least I got hurt more than he did.  I don’t think I could have lived it down if I hadn’t gotten the worst of it.

Anyway, the day after I got out of the hospital all the other foals in flight camp showed up in full hoofball pads and pretended they were terrified that I was going to hurt them.  Most of them didn’t even know why, they just thought it was funny that they were all doing the same thing.  The ringleaders knew, though.

They never tried to beat on me after that—they knew they didn’t need to.  “Rainbow Crash” became a new name, one that constantly reminded me that I had gotten somepony else hurt.  I tried not to let them know it got to me, but they had to know somehow, because they would always pile on when I felt worst.  They could have beaten ten shades of purple into my hide and it wouldn’t have hurt more.  I ran home crying more than once.

My parents were sympathetic enough, but they couldn’t really do anything about it outside of trying to encourage me.  It was nice and all that, but it didn’t really help.  My instructor was even more useless, because he just didn’t want to get involved at all.  To top it all off, Fluttershy—my only real friend—had just moved away to Ponyville with her family.  I suffered through it alone day after day after day, until I had just had enough.

I decided I was going to leave Cloudsdale.  I packed my bag—just like yours, actually—and headed for the edge of the city.

I turned up that night on my own doorstep accompanied by a Royal Guardspony.

The next night, it was one of our neighbors who brought me back.

Then it was a janitor from my school.

I tried sneaking away at night and I tried in the middle of the workday.  I even tried to sneak out with a Pegasus Freight wagon.  Every single time somepony caught me and brought me back home with a lecture to boot.

I was cursed; I had to be.  There’s no way my luck could have been that bad.  Well, I knew if I was gonna get out of Cloudsdale, I would need to come up with something much more clever.  So I decided that I was gonna ship myself away—but that came with its own set of challenges.  I needed food and water, air would be nice, and a way to let myself out—but more than anything I had to decide where I was going.

I eventually settled on Las Pegasus.  I’d heard stories about the place, and it always sounded like a dream.  They said the Cloudwalk was actually paved, so non-pegasi could walk on the clouds.  It was a city where you could be anypony and do anything.  You could win more bits than you could count, and live like the Princesses themselves only dreamed of.  It was a place of new beginnings.  For a filly like me, who wanted to start over and prove herself, there was no dream sweeter.

So, I found a big crate.  I think a chair had been shipped in it before, I don’t know.  All I know was that it fit me, plenty of food and water, a lantern, and a bunch of comics to read, so that was good enough for me.  I made some latches on the inside of the lid out of bent nails and some rope, stuck a bit of cloud inside to sleep on, and I was all set.  I swiped as many bits as I could find into my saddlebag, dragged the crate outside the post office in the night, climbed in, and fell asleep…

Rainbow Dash jerked awake at a firm bump, stifling a cry of pain as she slammed her head against the wooden lid of the shipping crate.  Rubbing her mane with one hoof, she reached out and shook the lantern to wake up the fireflies inside, and the interior of the crate came into focus.

The first thing she realized was that she was still in the crate.  Nopony had found her as far as she could tell, so that was good.  The second thing she noticed was the steady clicking noise outside.  It took her several seconds to identify the noise that she had never heard before, but it could only be the sound of a train.  She had made it!  She was out of Cloudsdale and on a train bound for Las Pegasus!  She cut her celebratory hoof-pump short as she made her last realization: she desperately needed to use the little filly’s room.

Oh crap, she thought.  She hadn’t even thought about that!  There wasn’t room in the crate for that, even if the situation was that critical.  It would smell, and that would draw attention, and she’d be caught and not to mention she’d be all covered in—

She had to get out.

She pawed at the knots she had haphazardly tied to keep the lid shut.  Oh Celestia, oh Luna, please don’t anything be on top of my crate!  She pushed upwards, frantic to find the outside.  The fates were with her, it seemed, because the lid gave way.  It hit against something, but it was enough space that Rainbow could slide it off to the side.  It turned out she was on a shelf, above the rest of the luggage piled up either side of the baggage car, right up against the roof.  She struggled out, trying to wriggle between the crate and the roof of the car, banging against the wall as the train swayed back and forth.  Her saddlebag kept getting caught on the crate, and her mane and tail got caught in the splintery wood, tugging painfully.

She gave a soft cry of triumph as she finally popped free, switching quickly to despair as she plummeted straight to the floor to slam against the wooden planks.  Her vision swam for a moment.  She shook her head, groaning slightly.  There were a set of hooves in front of her.  As she looked up, more and more of a very unhappy-looking earth pony with an official jacket and a ticket machine came into view.  She tried to give a disarming grin as she reached back into her saddlebag, pulling out a bit.

“Uh, one please?”

Chapter 1 is dedicated to Invictus_Rising.  Happy birthday, dude!

OtterCo. Story Staff:

Storycraft: Invictus_Rising

Editing: Firebirdbtops and Cheezesauce, via SALT

Art: Robert Zakes