Dashie the Vampony Slayer: Millennium of Darkness

As Fluttershy, Spike, and Rainbow walk down the hallway to first period the next morning, Fluttershy turns to Rainbow and looks at her with excited eyes.

“How’d it go with Doctor Whooves last night?” She asks with a not-so-subtle hint of expectancy.

Rainbow shakes her head and mimes a ship sinking. Fluttershy frowns in disappointment. They pass, but fail to notice a prank that a few of the seniors had pulled the previous night where they had pulled out one of the two bolts holding the locker doors on place, causing all of the lockers on one row to hang crookedly. It caused quite a few chuckles from some, but annoyance from others, especially those whose lockers had been targeted. Principle Davenport was in the latter camp.

“Oh, I’m sorry Rainbow,” Fluttershy comforts her friend.

Rainbow waves the sentiment off as she brushes past a short unicorn pony named Tiny who, at the moment, walking in the complete opposite direction of his first class, intent on skipping it at all costs.

“It’s okay,” She sighs in defeat. “I guess that’s what I get for liking a stallion without a soul.”

“You just need to take charge,” Fluttershy offers. “Give him a piece of your mind. I mean, in the telling him how you feel way, not the yelling at him way.”

Rainbow laughs heartily at the irony of Fluttershy telling her to be more confident.

“Since when did you become Miss Take-Charge?” the Slayer asks.

“Oh, no, I’m not Miss Take-Charge. I’m still levels of self-confidence away from-” Fluttershy begins, but falters as a green earth pony with a scraggly light brown mane approaches Fluttershy: Scott Foalgrim.

Fluttershy’s face goes bright red, like the nose of sick pony that has blown her nose raw. Rainbow Dash tries desperately to contain an amused smirk.

“Hey, didn’t I see you at the flight team tryouts yesterday?” Scott asks, feigning forgetfulness.

Fluttershy nods shyly and looks away, trying to hide her blushing.

“Yeah, but I didn’t make the team,” Fluttershy admits.

Scott shrugs.

“It’s okay, I didn’t make the team either,” He comments playfully.

“W-well m-most of your competitors had r-real wings,” Fluttershy stammers jokingly and then chuckles timidly, unsure that he would find her comment funny.

However, Scott tilts his head back slightly and laughs as well. Spike shouts back at Fluttershy, completely oblivious to the situation, as per usual.

“Come on, Fluttershy,” He calls to her. “You’re going to be late for class!”

Rainbow Dash flashes him a glare of annoyance and slaps him over the side of the head. Spike yelps, mostly in shock, and rubs his round green spines.

“Ouch, what was that for?” Spike complains.

Fluttershy looks over towards her friends and hesitates for a moment.

“I…should probably get going,” Fluttershy concludes and then gallops off towards Rainbow and Spike. Scott tilts his head in confusion and then heads off towards his first period, deciding not to linger in his confusion any longer.

“Nice one, Spike,” Dashie comments sarcastically.

“I can’t help it that I’m socially oblivious,” Spike shrugs, “It’s a serious medical condition.”

Dashie and Fluttershy laugh merrily.

--DtVS--

As Rainbow Dash sits at her desk in Mrs. Cheerilee’s class, she is not paying a bit of attention to her teacher, instead opting to draw a picture of the mysterious hooded pony that brought her back to life in her notebook. This pony has perplexed her ever since that night. How was that pony able to revive her? What sort of power must it have and where did it get such power? Her mind is filled with questions that she has no answers to. Maybe she’ll ask Doctor Whooves to investigate this mysterious unicorn later, but for the moment, infinite scenarios float around in her mind. Her mind devised scenarios of the pony being some sort of mythical god, or being some sort of Ultra Watcher, whatever that was. However, her scenarios are suddenly interrupted as she looks up and realizes that she is the only pony left in class. Daydreaming does pass the time, doesn’t it, Dash? Rainbow Dash thought to herself. She stood up, grabbed her backpack and trotted out of the room, all the while wondering why Spike and Fluttershy hadn’t woken her up.

The hallway is empty. It must be class, Dashie thinks as she peers down the ghostly row of lockers. However, one locker at the end of the hallway is open and one of its hinges is loose, causing the door of the locker to twitch slowly. Rainbow stares suspiciously at the unhinged locker door for a moment, and then slowly makes her way over to it. As she finally reaches it after her eternal walk down the hall, she cranes her head to peek inside, staying a safe distance away. She doesn’t quite know what she’s afraid of, but considering what else she’s found in the school lockers over the past few weeks, nothing would surprise her.

A small, round pendant. This is what Rainbow Dash found in the open locker. In fact, it was the only thing she found in the locker. She stuck her hoof in the locker and grabbed the loose pendant. It was smooth and pearly white with small, round blemishes covering the surface. She flipped the pendant over to find the same thing on the other side. Rainbow looked up from the pendant and let out an audible yelp of surprise. Inside the locker the walls had suddenly become covered with white lettered phrases. The Moon Is Falling. Beware the Dark Side of the Moon. Evil Moon Rise. The Night Guide Cries Blood.

The cyan pegasus peers intently into the graffitied locker. A feeling of dread crashes over her, yet she can’t look away from the cryptic messages. Suddenly, the locker door slams shut. Rainbow Dash scampered back a few steps, running flank first into another pony’s side. She whips around, praying to everything that is pure and righteous that it wasn’t Principle Davenport that she bumped into. It wasn’t, it was the coach of the Ponydale High Flight Team, Coach Papermoon. The gruff pony eyes Rainbow Dash warily, but then realizes who she is and softens his face to a slightly less frightening level.

“Ah, Dash, my new superstar. Ready for practice after school?” Papermoon growls at her, although Dashie is beginning to suspect that this is his natural voice.

Rainbow nods her head vigorously, just in case it wasn’t and he was actually somewhat annoyed with her.

“Good,” He says simply, and then looks at the clock on the closest wall to them. “What are you doing out of class?”

Rainbow’s eyes widen, reminiscent of a small woodland creature in the path of a herd of stampeding buffalo. She remains paralyzed with a minor case of stage fright for second longer and then snaps out of it.

“Uh, visit to the little pony’s room,” Dashie smiles encouragingly, trying to make the lie seem more innocent. “Darn those pesky bodily functions.”

“Okay,” Papermoon accepts grudgingly. “Just get back to class. I don’t want my new star flier kicked off the team because of poor grades.”

Papermoon kicks off the ground and flies down the hall only a few feet off the ground, as if he’s flying just for the sake of flying. Rainbow Dash waits until Papermoon is out of sight and makes her way back to the mysterious locker. She opens it, but finds neither pendant nor cryptic messages. She examines the locker further, but it reveals none of its secrets, so she closes it, foiled. Then, she sulks off to the class that she was supposed to have arrived at half-an-hour ago, hoping Fluttershy has already arrived.

--DtVS--

“Intriguing,” Twilight paces in deep thought as Rainbow Dash is telling her about the locker incident. “It seems like you were experiencing some sort of waking Slayer dream.”

“You mean those dreams that I have whenever bad things are about to happen?” Rainbow asks, but her mind is in another place. She hasn’t seen Spike or Fluttershy since Mrs. Cheerilee’s class and she wonders whether they’re okay and why they haven’t contacted her.

Twilight nods curtly.

“Yes, your prophetic Slayer dreams. It looks like you had one of those, except you were awake,” Twilight explains to the cyan pony.

“Okay…” Rainbow Dash nods dumbly. “And what sort of sense does that make? Because in little filly’s school, I was taught that dreams happen when one is asleep, not walking down a hallway in the middle of the day.”

“Yes, it is quite peculiar. I will have to hit the books to research this,” Twilight admits.

“You know, if you keep hitting those books, one day they’re going to call social services on your flank,” Dashie smirks, amused at her own witticism.

Twilight sighs heavily and rolls her eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, young filly,” Rainbow Dash continues, a wide smirk still plastered to her face. “By the way, have you seen Fluttershy or Spike around lately?”

Twilight shakes her head as she heads behind her desk to retrieve a newer looking book than the ones Rainbow is used to seeing her handle.

“No, sorry.”

Rainbow Dash crinkles her nose in annoyance. Where were those two?

--DtVS--

After a whole day without seeing Fluttershy and Spike, Rainbow Dash is worried sick about them. A thousand or so thoughts race through her mind about what may have happened to them. Some of them valid concerns, like they both got lost or decided to ditch school, and some completely and utterly ridiculous, like a sun-resistant vampony kidnapping them and sacrificing them to some demi-god who needs the blood of a pegasus pony and a baby dragon to rise from the depths of hell. She debated skipping flight practice to go looking for them, but Twilight was oddly against the notion, assuring her that she would go looking for them instead.

As she flew onto the field, she looks to her left to find two familiar faces on the bleacher, holding up a rough, hand-crafted sign that reads “GO DASHIE!!! YOU’RE THE BES”.

“Fluttershy! Spike!” She cries and zooms at them, landing on the row below them.

Spike nods proudly.

“Yep, that’s us.”

“Where have you been all day?” Dashie demands.

“We decided to skip class to make a banner showing out support of your new athletic outlet,” Fluttershy explains. “Do you like it? You do like it, don’t you?”

Rainbow examines the long yellow banner with the sparkley letters written on it.

“I’m “the bes”?” She asks critically.

Fluttershy shrugs innocently.

“We ran out of room on the sign. It was supposed to say “best!”,” She explains softly.

“I love it! Bes be damned!” She thinks for a moment. “Hey, why didn’t you wake me up in class?”

“Well we wanted to surprise you,” Fluttershy says.

Spike nods.

“And we thought it was funny that you slept through the end-of-period bell,” Spike admits with a small chuckle. Rainbow and Fluttershy laugh as well.

“DASH!” Papermoon’s voice barks from across the field. “You can socialize after practice! Get your flank over here!”

Rainbow Dash looks back towards the coach’s voice.

“See you after practice.”

She jumps into the air and takes off towards the other end of the field where the rest of the pegasi are waiting. She lands at the end of the line of flight team pegasi, most of which don’t look nearly as in shape as Rainbow Dash. Papermoon paces in front of the line like a general about to give battle orders.

“This is no mere practice, ponies. This is war. Bloody, brutal war. There is no mercy; there are no rules, except for the ESAA mandated ones. These are the rules, soldiers, you fall behind, you may as well drop out of the sky. Win at all costs, except for cheating or you’ll be disqualified,” Papermoon growls. “Understood?”

--DtVS--

“Understood?” Rainbow Dash demands as she paces in front of Fluttershy and Spike in Ponydale Hills Cemetery, light from one of the tombstone candles casting a yellow pall over her face.

Spike and Fluttershy nod.

“You’re become a regular protégé to Sergeant Papermoon,” Spike quips.

Rainbow Dash’s brow furls in mock annoyance.

“15 more laps around the cemetery for your backtalk, soldier,” She teases.

Over the next two or three hours, the three patrol the cemetery, looking for fanged denizens of the dead, but with no luck. Finally, the three friends decide to call it quits for the night and head their separate ways for the night. On her way home, a strange tingling shot through Rainbow Dash’s mane and the strange feeling that she was being watched came over her. She whips around.

“Who’s there?” She demanded.

Suddenly, a brown, winged pegasus pony with an hourglass on his flank shoots out of the trees and lands on the road in front of her. He bows his head a little.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” Doctor Whooves says apologetically.

“Ah, Doctor Night, I should’ve known you were sneaking around here somewhere,” Dashie snorts. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m past the age where I need a chaperone to make sure I get home in one piece.”

“Twilight told me about your prophetic daydream,” Doctor Whooves says, ignoring her snark. “It’s another sign of what’s to come.”

“And what might that be?”

“I have a theory, but I sincerely doubt it. It’s almost impossible…” Doctor Whooves responds cautiously, as if contemplating telling her. “The Mare in the Moon.”

Rainbow’s jaw almost drops off her face.

“Like the fairytale of the evil pony who was banished to the moon?” She asks. “Yes, that is impossible and also the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Doctor Whooves nods in agreement.

“I agree, but I’ve seen much more ridiculous stories turn out to be true. Twilight is investigating the possibility, however, just in case it’s true.”

“Any excuse to crack a book with that one,” Rainbow comments.

She could have sworn that she almost saw Doctor Whooves crack a smile, but if he did, it was only a flash. He cleared his throat.

“I should go,” the undead peagsus announces.

As he turns to fly off, Rainbow summons up all of her confidence and whispers under her breath.

“Take charge, Dash, take charge.”

“Wait!” She says loudly, causing Doctor Whooves to stop in his tracks and turn back towards her.

“Yes?” Doctor Whooves asks in confusion.

Rainbow Dash trots over to him confidently and kisses him straight on the lips. Doctor Whooves is taken aback, but doesn’t try to pull away. A few moments, Rainbow breaks lip contact with him. Doctor Whooves looks thoroughly confused.

“What was that?” He asks, puzzled and turning a severely dangerous shade of red embarrassment.

“That was take-charge Dash,” She announces, proud of herself.

“I can see that,” He responds.

“Now you can leave,” Rainbow Dash says, grinning.

But Doctor Whooves does no such thing. Instead, he leans in and kisses her. A rush of thrill passes through Rainbow Dash and she kisses him back. They continue kissing for a while, the moon the only thing providing light for them.