The six element bearers were having another picnic by Rainbow Dash's House, Spike would have been there, but someone has to do the whole town librarian job.
As Twilight ate another helping of potato salad, she decided to ask a question that she had, had on her mind for a while now. "Hey, Dash, I've always been a curious, but how did you afford such a big house on a Weather Manager's salary?"
"Huh?"
"Well, don't take this the wrong way, but rainbow juice isn’t exactly cheap and neither are the construction strength clouds from which it's built." Twilight said in very analytical fashion.
Rainbow looked at her friend and gave a small chuckle. "It's kind of a funny story. You see it call started about five years ago..."
You see I had been trying to do a sonic rainboom again and didn't end up breaking the sound barrier, but rather I was pulled through another dimension. I landed smack dab in the middle of a large white castle, nothing like the one our princess calls home.
Like I said, I woke up sprawled out on the floor of what looked to be a large marble lounge room. There was this thing like I have never seen before, you’re gonna think I'm full of crap when I say this; it was a little red polka dot mushroom dude wearing a blue vest.
"Heeey." It called out in really high pitched colt-cuddler tone.
I did what any of us would do. I freaked the fuck out and thought Pinkie had put bath salts in the cupcakes again. I mea--
"Dashie, it was one time. I said I was super duper sorry."
"Sorry? I was so messed up, I thought listening to Snips and Snails' self insert Codex Ebony fan fiction was a good idea." Rainbow said in disgust and shook her head.
"Wow, I keep getting distracted, heh..."
The other five mares just glared at their prismatic maned friend at continue the story.
Anyway there I was in this throne room and this limp wristed mushroom person was talking to me.
"My name is Toad."
"Bull shit, I know what a toad looks like and you're a talking pizza topping." I said still thinking I was either really high or dreaming or both.
It just ignored me, can you believe that? Me, Rainbow "Danger" Dash was being ignored by bipedal fungus.
The rest of her friends rolled their eyes.
"Toad" led me to an even bigger room with a thrown at the top of a flight of stairs. There were a bunch of um...*Scratches head*......well there was like four hoo-mans: a fat one, a skinny one, a really angry one and one with a blonde mane and way too much product in it. There was something that looked kinda like Spike, except it was pudgy and looked like it had down syndrome. Oh, and there was a giant turtle fused with a dragon that walked on two legs, and it that looked like a Slayer fan. The monster turtle had a posse of three smaller similar looking turtles and one ugly fanged mushroom dude.
The blonde hoo-man noticed me. "I am Princess Peach of the Mushroom Kingdom and this is --"
"I am King Bowser lord of the Koompa Empire." The giant turtle-dragon spoke in an odd Trottingham accent.
"We have called you here, because our kingdoms are forming a bi-anual truce. My ex- I mean the P-princess..." Bowser totally lingered before the word princess like he about to say something else. "and I have been fighting a war for what was it? Ten? No, eleven years, that's it! Anyway as much as I hate to say this, there is no end in sight and with us being immortal, all we've been doing is killing each other. We --"
I was getting really bored listening to him and he was a dragon-turtle with a spike fetish...kinda like me, except mine is working at the library...heh, heh...
The other five mares just stared at her silently, even Pinkie Pie didn't laugh.
"Oh come on, that was funny." Rainbow rolled her eyes and and grumbled under her breath. 'Spike laughs at my jokes.'
Like I was saying, I was ridiculously bored out of my skull and I had to interrupt the king dude. "Um...King Bowser could you maybe skip to the end and tell me why I'm here?"
Princess Peach spoke up. "Agreed."
This for some reason made Bowser mad. "You never listen, this why is why we got divorced!!!"
"Well, maybe if you just shut up and stopped trying to tell me about your feelings every five minutes, then maybe I wouldn't have been so nasty to you!!!"
"You try raising seven kids! You know what? I'm glad I got full custody!"
"Well, I don't need you, I get "double dashed" every night by these two!" The princess pointed to the red and green clad hoo-mans.
Bowser lunged at Peach as they began an all out fight in the middle of the throne room.
"Is anyone gonna stop them?"
"Itsa usually best to let them have it out." The red hat wearing hoo-man said coolly as he shrugged his shoulders.
I looked back at the fighting pair and they seemed to stop fighting and began to do something else. It was getting very dirty.
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, WE HAVE A ROYAL DISCUSSION TO...JUST GET OUT OF HERE!!!"
We all left the throne room, all you could hear is the sounds of flesh slapping and words so filthy they'd make a changeling faint.
The ten of us went outside to escape the moaning and yelling. In many ways it reminded me of jury duty. We found an old rubber ball and decided to have a quick game of kickball to pass the time.
About twenty minutes later and well into our second game, the large wooden door to the throne room reopened and we all went back inside. The smell was similar to Fluttershy's house after Big Mac visits her.
Fluttershy fainted and Applejack glared at Fluttershy's unconscious form, while Rarity took notes, Pinkie Pie giggled and Twilight said in a confused tone, "I don't get it."
"Yeah, you probably don't."
The giant turtle king turned to me and sighed. "You know what? Screw formality, you are here because you are the best at working with rainbows in the entire multiverse and we want to you be the foreman of a go-kart track made out of rainbows." He then motioned to one of his subjects which produced a piece of paper. "Here is your budget, the market price for your supplies and your payment in your world's currency."
I looked down at the paper, which wasn't to hard to understand because I'm the weather manger for Ponyville and it looked like a simple commission form, but what really got my attention was the payment. I had never seen so many zeroes. I could finally pay back my student loans.
"There is a bonus, if you stay within budget."
I slowly nodded. "Where am I building this track anyway?"
"Outer space." He said flatly.
"Wait, outer Space?!" Twilight exclaimed.
"Yeah, and I had the same expression on my face, he told me that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was and that because of some kind of sciencey stuff that I forget, well technically I was wasn't paying attention, but he made it sound safe."
"How is the cold vacuum of space safe?"
Dash knew the perfect way to shut Twilight up, a little trick she learned from the Doctor. "Gravity."
"La la la, it's just a myth. Celestia's powers are not fake. La la la, I can’t hear you." The unicorn shook her head in denial, like a filly who was told that sea ponies didn’t exist.
As I was saying, Bowser said that it was safe and that I would have an assistant for this project.
I was on an enormous platform in space it had what you could say was a one of those teleportation gate things from the movie Stargate, I forget what they were called in that movie. I waited for about a few minutes before a hoo-man came out of the portal.
The hoo-man was obviously middle aged looking with a balding mane and a pot belly, he wore a dirty jacket with an "N" on it, while he held a hard hat in his left paw.
"I'm Rainbow Dash, the fastest pony in Equestria. Who are you?"
"I'm K--" He was interrupted by a loud voice that came out of nowhere.
"HE'S CAPTAIN N: THE GAmE MASTER!!!"
Suppressing as laugh, I had to be sure I heard right. "The what master?"
Once again the loud voice spoke up. "HE'S CAPTAIN N: THE GAmE MASTER!!!"
I did what any of us would do if you were like me and the sense of humor of a twelve year old colt. I laughed my flank off.
I looked up and saw the hoo-man glaring at me. "It's The Game Master--"
On cue the voice repeated its previous statement. "THE GAmE MASTER!!!"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! It's Kevin Keene, the human high school dropout stuck in videoland!!!" Kevin shouted at the voice.
Well, after that he calmed down and we got to work, but I didn't know where to start. I mean I race on tracks, I don't build them. "Hey Kevin where do we start on this race track?"
We shot me this cocky look. "I know exactly where to start; I mean I helped build the race course in Mute City."
"Mute City?"
"Intergalactic Grand Prix, ring a bell?"
"Nope, never heard of it."
"Super fast hover car race?"
I shook my head and that seemed to deflate his ego. There was this awkward silence that hung in the air, but luckily a big motorized cart thing pulled on to the platform. The driver, who looked like another hoo-man, got out holding a clipboard.
"Sign here."
I saw a few hoo-mans unloading boxes and giant steel barrels. "What's that?"
"That is..." He pointed to the stuff being unloaded on to the ground. "...six hundred gallons of rainbow juice, five pallets of stars and six drums of epoxy resin." He waved the clip board at me again. "Sign here, ma'am."
I signed the shipping form and the hoo-man and his crew got back into the cart thing and left me and Kevin with all these supplies.
"We're not gonna build this all by ourselves are we?" I asked because here in Ponyville, I have like twenty other weather ponies take care of the rest of town.
"Nope, that's why I'm here. You are here to draw up the plans and keep everything within budget. I'll take care of the workers."
So it began, I don't mean the actual work, but me drawling the best, most awesome, most radical race trace in the history of ever! I mean it had loops, jumps and tight corners.
When I was done, Kevin stood by the platform as a bunch of hoo-mans came through the portal.
"These are The Lost Vikings, the guys from Road Rash and the two dudes from...um...Bad Dudes."
All of the workers looked mildly depressed. "They don't look like they're happy to be here."
"Yeah, well they've haven't had games of their own in a long time."
After all the insanity I wasn't gonna ask any more questions. I mean I'll read, but investigating stuff is for eggheads.
They got to work building my super awesome... 'I really need to find more words for awesome' ...race track, I dubbed Rainbow Road.
As they worked, I took a nap on my desk or at least I tried to take nap. I felt something poking me, it was one of the tiny Viking guys.
"What's up?"
"We can't seem to get the Rainbow juice to mix with the epoxy and we are having are hard time working up hill."
Yeah, when it comes to rainbow materials, I'm probably the best there is, Tartarus, I even have a degree in Applied Rainbow Theory and everything. Rainbow juice is one of the most unstable materials in the universe as it depends on just the right amount of light and how much it is mixed. You don't have enough light and it becomes immaterial. If there is too much light, it becomes too hard and you might as well be dealing with very expensive concrete. As for mixing, you never want to mix to much or the colors will blend together and you'll end up with brown and on the opposite side of the spectrum, the colors will start to separate and some of those colors can be deadly like red and dark blue. That’s why consumer grade rainbow juice is often mixed with emulsifiers to make it safe for consumption.
It was safe to say that all of Rainbow's friends were stunned by her explanation. "Wow..."
"You didn't think they would let anyone be weather manager of an entire town, did you?"
They all shook their heads slowly while exhibiting signs of guilt.
So, I spent the next few hours working with the crew building a wicked awesome race course. It was truly a sight to behold, it's kind of a shame that I didn't take any pictures of it. I mean it had everything: tight corners, loops, spirals, and amazing jumps.
Afterwards Me, Kevin and some of the Road Rash dudes went to celebrate our work at a bar called: The Pixel Palace. The place had a lot of hoo-mans in it, so many that I think Lyra's head would explode. We went there and I will say this, the bar tender knew his stuff, he could make a great rum runner.
You guys know I can handle my booze, but apparent my assistant: Kevin could not and he was making a drunken fool out of himself. After striking out with I'm guessing with a hoo-man female fused with a white cat, he noticed me.
"Hey hot sstuff *hick* you wanna come back to my place and play Pole Position." He gave me a wink in the middle of his last two words.
"I'm sorry dude, but how do I say this...without hurting your feelings...um...I can and have done so much better than you. So, unless you are covered in purple scales and breath green flames, I'm afraid we're just gonna have to be friends." I left and told the bartender to put the drinks on my tab, even though I had no plans to ever come back. So yeah, free drinks.
He didn't look like he took the rejection all that well, I couldn't blame him. After all, I am the "Rainbow Dash" and any stallion or mare or dragon would give anything to hook up with me.
The other mares who had been listening to Rainbow's ego rant had one thought. "How does Spike put up with this?"
Across town in the Golden Oaks Library as if the dragon had heard the pleas of the universe. "...booze, ear plugs, soft music and white wine, helps a lot."
"Um, who are you talking to, Mr. Spike?" A little light orange unicorn filly asked the dragon at the checkout counter.
"I honestly, don't know Pumpkin. I just don't know." He pinched the bridge of his snout and shook his head.
"..."
The drake finally remembered the task at claw. "Oh, your books are due back on the thirtieth."
Yeah, on the commission form that Koompa dude wrote down the name of hotel I would be staying at for the night. I couldn't remember the name of it; all I knew was there a lot of green doors and giant centipedes. I'm guessing they were the maids. *Shrugs*
After an okay night of sleep, I came back to the track to see that both the King and the Princess as well as their groupies where there, before I could get paid, they needed to take Rainbow Road for a test spin.
I took in the sight of the track and to my surprise, you won't believe what I saw, a bunch of the guard rails were missing, boost switches were added to the loops and entire sections of the road where taken out! It was a disaster waiting to happen; I knew the GAmE MASTER must have done something to the track. Just as I was about to warn the racers, they took off at the green light.
I tried to fly around the track but the raceway official stopped me. I looked at the stands and of course like a total bastard Kevin was watching the race intently and only looked away briefly to flash me a shit eating grin.
As I watched the karts go around the track, a couple of the racers fell off the track, but luckily a nerdy turtle on a cloud caught them with a fishing rod.
Even though the race itself pretty hectic, it looked crazy awesome. Like it was nothing but jarring jumps, pit falls and drifting on sharp corners with nothing to keep you from going over the edge.
When it was all over and the winner was named, it was the tubby green dragon by the way. Peach and Bowser made their way towards me.
"Are you responsible for that rainbow coated insanity back there?"
As I kinda suspected, Kevin jumped in between the three of us. "Yeah, she did it, it all her fault, something about radicalness and stuff. Yep, I can safely say Rainbow designed the whole thing."
I had one thought. 'What a total dickhead.'
The two world super powers whispered to each other before Princess Peach cleared her throat to speak. "Well, because we are both still experiencing an adrenaline high from the race, I believe everything Kevin claimed without any proof. So we shall double your bonus payment. Furthermore we thank you for all your hard work."
"Yes, yes, don't you see? No one turns down The N..." It took him a few seconds to process what the Princess has just said. "...wait, WHAt?!"
I returned his grin from earlier and soon after that I was paid a ton of bits, I was returned back to Equestria and true to my word I paid back my loans. Oh, and I had a enough money to build my dream house.
The first of the four other mares (Fluttershy still being unconscious) to speak was Twilight.
"...um, that was definitely something." She looked at Pinkie Pie. "Are you sure you didn't put LSD in the cupcakes again?"
"Nope, I didn't put any party favors in anyone's baked treats. I've been clean for four years. I even have my super duper certificate from Party-holics Anonymous." The pink mare said in a sing song voice.
"You guys don't believe me?" the blue pegasus asked her friends whom had an incredulous look on their face.
"No."
"Nope."
"Nopey dokey."
"You want proof? Wait here." With those words Rainbow dashed up to her house and after a few minutes of searching found her evidence.
When she returned with her “proof,” her friends were trying to wake up the butter yellow pegasus.
"You wanted proof? Here's my proof." Rainbow placed a clear multi-colored box with a question mark on it, in front of her friends.
"Watch this." She bopped the box and it disappeared, only to reappear again after a short time.
The rest of them were speechless and the new question was how much was Twilight going beg to examine the box, but that is a story for another time.
In the local arcade a drunken Lyra was slamming her head against the screen.
"Why can't I get in there?!" she cried in frustration. "Am, I not good enough for you?!"
*SLAM*
*THUD*
An hour later the arcade's janitor would drag the unconscious form of Ms. Heartstrings into Ponyville General for the eighth time this year.
Author's Note
Bonus points to anyone that caught all the references.
