Rainbow Dash was used to surprises. Of course, being Equestria’s fastest flier and all meant that she had to be. Some days, she had to deal with the surprise of crash-landing in Twilight’s library. Other days, she had to deal with Pinkie somehow managing to keep up with her sonic speed strut. Once, she even had to deal with the surprise of her own sheer awesomeness.
But still, THIS was surprise to her.
“We meet at last, Miss Dash. Welcome.”
That wasn’t what Rainbow Dash was expecting when she jerked awake. Nor was she expecting the massive headache... or being tied up to a chair in a dark room. She was in trouble, wasn’t she?
“I imagine that right now you’re feeling a little lost.” The voice was deep and rumbling, like from one of those bullies at her school that had gorged themselves on too much testosterone candy. “You are feeling a touch uncertain, and perhaps a little... scared.”
No, Rainbow Dash wasn’t afraid of this wimp in the dark. No, of course not. She was the bravest pony in the whole of Equestria, and she was just about to prove it.
“D-DON’T HURT ME!” she yelped, her voice filled with pure terror.
“You must relax, Miss Dash,” the deep voice continued from the likely-to-be-super-big-and-tough stallion in the dark. “Although I come from another world, I am not here to harm you.”
Wait... what did he just say? Who WAS this strange pony? There was something about his voice that made it sound a little familiar, but she couldn’t nail it down. It was too dark.
“Turn on the lights so I can see you,” she demanded.
“Patience, Miss Dash. The light would hurt your eyes. You need to let your body recover, and it should not take long.”
Rainbow rubbed her eyes. She felt anything but well. Her head was spinning badly, like the first time she had tried to pull off that ‘BLAZING CORKSCREW OF NEVER-ENDING DEATH!’ trick, which had ended with her crashing into Twilight’s library and almost giving the poor egghead a heart attack. It was regrettable, but fun was not without its consequences.
“So, how long are you going to keep me here?” she asked.
There was a moment of silence, and then the deep voice spoke. “You will not be here for long. I am only waiting until you are ready. I am here to offer you a chance to come to my world, where I will open your eyes to a whole new range of possibilities. You will learn many unimaginable things, and in return, you will lend me your help.”
Not liking the sound of it, Rainbow Dash looked down and realised that she was, in fact, not tied to the chair. She could fly straight out of the room as soon as she had the chance! Yes, there must be a door at the end of the room. It was such a simple, easy plan. She just needed the right opportunity...
“I know what is going through your mind, and I will not stop you.”
Horseapples... Wait, what?
“Let me tell you why you’re here, Rainbow Dash. You’re here because you know something special. What you know you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it everytime you’ve broken the sound barrier, every moment you’ve spent zipping across the sky.”
“How do you know all these things? Are you a spy?” Rainbow peered around at the darkness, trying to focus on the shape in front of her.
“There is a force stopping you from going any faster,” the voice continued. “You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a barrier in your mind, holding you back.”
“You mean I can’t fly as fast as I want because of this? You mean it’s all in my mind?”
“There are many questions that need to be answered. But first, you must decide. I am giving you a single chance to break free of that barrier, to unleash your full speed and strength. And when that happens, you will be able to achieve anything that you’ve ever wanted. It can be done, Rainbow Dash. It has already been done. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever noticed a certain... pink friend of yours move impossibly fast before? It would seem almost as if she can teleport.”
“...Pinkie Pie?”
“Yes. If that is what you know her by.”
“But Pinkie... Pinkie...” Rainbow groaned, raising a hoof to her temple. She hated all this thinking. It drove her nuts.
“The world you live in is restricted. It is built upon fundamental rules and laws,” the voice said. “All your life, you have been enslaved, forced to live within these rules. Now is the time to break free. Please, look in front of you.”
She looked down. A small table was in front of her, a glass of water and two cupcakes placed neatly within her reach. Both cupcakes were identical in every way except in colour: one being completely red, and the other completely blue.
“If you take the blue cupcake, I will leave and never return. You will wake up in your bed and do whatever you want to do, and carry on believing whatever you want to believe in. Choose the red one, and you will follow me into a new world, where I will show you how fast you can truly be.”
Rainbow Dash stared at the cupcakes for about three seconds.
Whatever.
She grabbed the red cupcake and jammed it into her maw, her molars breaking it down quickly. It tasted funny, like there was glue added to it. She swallowed it down with several gulps of water and stuck her tongue out in disgust.
“That felt weird,” she muttered to herself.
“Very good.”
A flick of a switch, and the room filled with light. Rainbow gasped and shielded her eyes from the burning white brightness. Her head throbbed in pain.
“It takes a while to get used to the light.”
Rainbow grumbled, slowly lowering her hooves and squinting at the pony in front as he came into focus. Her vision was blurry, and she didn’t feel very good after eating that cupcake. It took a few minutes for her to make out his gray coat, and butter-yellow mane.
Then her eyes flew open at the gray pegasus.
“DERPY?! Why the hay are you a stallion?” Rainbow Dash shouted, reeling from shock. Her mind began to crack under the pressure. A handful of brain cells suddenly committed suicide there and then. “I... I... can’t even...”
“Give yourself time, Miss Dash.” Derpy the stallion was wearing a pair of shades.
It was too much. She couldn’t take it. Her mind was popping. A fragment of thought floated up as the world swam before her. Twilight... this has something to do with that wacko egghead and her spells...
She looked up one last time, struggling to remain conscious, her voice coming out as a strained whisper. “Are... are you really Derpy?”
The pegasus slowly pulled off his shades and smiled, an eye slowly began to lose focus and trailed up to the ceiling.
“You may call me... Derpheus.”
And then Rainbow Dash passed out.
Rainbow Dash jerked awake for the second time that day. She was not feeling very happy. She was not feeling very well either. That meant that she had achieved the highly undesirable state of feeling both unhappy and unwell.
The cyan pegasus groaned and raised her head up slowly. Things were not looking good. She seemed to be lying on some sort of experiment table, and the air was heavy with a stench that made her feel nauseous.
“Where am I?” she asked groggily.
Things were really not looking good. Her gut feelings told her so, and being a year older than she was, her gut had collected enough experience to become amazingly accurate. Then Rainbow Dash realised that what she smelt was actually blood. The air was filled with the stench of blood.
She gasped, her eyes flying open. Sitting up, the first thing she saw was a severed pony head smiling happily at her from where it was sitting on a table.
Rainbow screamed and backpedalled away from the gruesome sight, searching frantically around the room for an exit, only to be faced with more carnage. Large chunks of flesh and various body parts of past ponies hung around like colourful trophies. Tufts of hair, dried hooves and severed unicorn horns of different lengths covered the walls in neat rows, and a large sheet of bright orange skin was spread out as grisly wallpaper.
“No... No,” Rainbow choked, her stomach churning with horror. She struggled not to vomit as she spotted a bunch of dried intestines dangling from the ceiling above her like colourful streamers. “T-This can’t be happening. The cupcake I ate... the cupcake I ate was—”
The last traces of blood drained from her face as The Monster herself appeared before her: Pinkie Pie the butcher. She had eyes made of nothing but madness. Her pink hoof was curled around a giant, bloodstained meat cleaver. As the demonic pony moved forwards, her dress swayed and caught against the light, flashing an array of cutie marks emblazoned on dried pony skin. The skins themselves had been cut into rough squares and were stitched together using crude, sinewy string, each patch a different colour, each a reminder of a once-living pony.
Unable to hold back her fear any longer, Rainbow opened her mouth and let out an ear-splitting scream. Then she sucked in another breath and screamed and screamed until her voice cracked.
“I understand that you might be having a few bizarre side effects at the moment,” Pinkie the butcher said, raising the giant meat cleaver to her lips. “I did not expect it to be this serious.”
“Please... please don’t kill me,” Rainbow begged. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might crack her ribs. “I’ll do anything you say. I’ll—” She stopped.
That voice had sounded nothing like Pinkie Pie’s, and the crazed mare now appeared to be sucking on the handle of the cleaver. Lowering it lazily, she blew a perfect ring of smoke into the air.
“Is there something wrong?” she said in a deep voice, raising an eyebrow above a pair of black sunglasses. A patch of her mane had turned yellow.
Letting her jaw drop open at the utter breakdown of logic before her, Rainbow Dash stared in amazement.
A few seconds later, the meat cleaver faded away, replaced by a thick, brown cigar. Pinkie Pie had vanished, and in her place stood a familiar gray pegasus with a yellow mane and tail.
Rainbow Dash felt her jaw drop a few inches lower. Her eyes flicking to the table, she saw that the severed pony head wasn’t a pony head at all, but a dented black helmet. A quick scan around showed her that she was actually in some sort of workshop. The hunks of bloody flesh were just pieces of rusty metal, and the grisly skin wallpaper was really an ordinary sheet of paper with a painting of a completely naked pony on it. She took a deep breath and the air smelled of metal and oil.
“I don’t believe it,” Rainbow whispered, staring at a bunch cables dangling from a large crack in the ceiling. She raised a hoof and prodded it. Just moments ago, she could have sworn that they were dried intestines. It didn’t make sense.
Wait... She snapped her head back towards Derpy. Now that she was seeing things right, the pegasus was wearing a pair of black shades and was in the process of snuffing out a cigar on the ground. But Derpy the mailmare, to her disappointment, was still a stallion.
Rainbow Dash dragged a hoof across her face and groaned. She wished that everything would return back to normal.
“You appear to have recovered,” Derpheus said. “Good. We cannot afford to waste more time. Let me show you around to an important place that you need to know.”
Spreading his wings, he flew to a metal doorway of the workshop, landing in front of it. There was the sound of heavy gears shifting into place, and the door grinded open, revealing a long hallway that ended with another metal doorway. Folding his wings and tucking them in neatly, he led Rainbow along the path. Upon reaching the second door, it grinded open like the first, and Rainbow wondered why they needed such strange doors.
The moment she stepped in, Rainbow Dash felt her eyes widen at the bright colours and cheeriness in stark contrast to the gloomy metal hallways. Rows upon rows of tiny cupcakes and muffins sat upon shelves that looked like they were made of hard bread. At another section, multi-coloured pellets of rock candy and delicious sweets were packed into clear cylinders and stacked against the wall. Then she realised that the wall itself resembled old gingerbread, and so did the ceilings, and to her amazement, even the very floor she was standing on.
“Welcome, to our main operations bay,” Derpheus announced.
As if to ruin the appearance, a tangled circle of machines and computers had been built in the middle of the room. They seemed to be in operation, with tiny columns of green figures running down their screens like raindrops.
“This is our systems operator,” Derpheus said, motioning to a purple mare seated behind one of the computer terminals. A very, very familiar purple mare.
“Twilight?” Rainbow said.
The mare turned her head back, her face brightening into a cheery smile. “Hi! You must be Rainbow Dash.”
“Twilight! What are you doing here? Oh hey, I’m glad to see that you’re still a mare.”
Twilight furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, and then she blushed and wiped her forelock with a hoof. “Yes, well, I am a mare. Don’t I look like one? I mean, I’ve always been a mare, I think. Why would you expect otherwise?”
“Oh, um... because Derpy there was supposed to be a mare, too?” Rainbow jabbed a forehoof to the stallion, who was busy inspecting a shelf full of butter-yellow muffins.
Twilight looked from Rainbow Dash to the pegasus and back again. “That’s interesting,” she said. “I think there must have been an error in the projection from our world to yours, or rather a connection fault between the two worlds.”
Rainbow Dash opened and closed her mouth several times. She had understood about ten percent of that.
“It is possible,” Derpheus agreed. He stood across the room, munching on a chocolate muffin with red licorice tubes.
Twilight’s eyes brightened. “What do you think, Rainbow? I wonder if there are more of those sorts of errors hiding between the two worlds. Maybe I should do some research on your biometric data to see what else I can find!”
“Oh...” Rainbow Dash mumbled. She had lost track of what Twilight was saying.
Twilight sighed. “But of course, all that will have to wait until after I’m done compiling your abilities and summarising your three core aspects. We do that for every pony that comes through here.”
Rainbow Dash scratched her head. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’m sure that it’ll be fine, though. You’ve done some really impressive feats before. You are Equestria’s fastest flier after all.”
It was something that Rainbow could understand, and she perked her head up, her ears twitching. A heartbeat later and she was off the ground, punching a hoof up in the air. “Yes I am! The one and only! Do you like watching me fly?”
She didn’t wait for an answer; She didn’t need one. Who wouldn’t want to watch her fly?
“You should totally watch me more often! Don’t you remember how fast I was at the young fliers’ competition?” She did a happy little flip in the air. “Or at the Wonderbolts training academy? Oh, and you’ve got to see my brand new combo. It starts from this super-fast corkscrew spiral, and then moves on to the dizzying back and forth streaks of rainbow flashes, before ending off with my signature Sonic Rainboom. It’ll turn out to be so,so awesome!”
Twilight smiled and nodded. “Yes, you are quite amazing... for a pony from Equestria.”
Rainbow landed and rubbed her chest, grinning. Amazing, she thought, bouncing the word a few times around her head. Twilight had just admitted that she, Rainbow Dash, was amazing. It was a satisfying feeling for the pegasus. Actually, she kind of knew that already. It was just a matter of time before Twilight brought it up.
“Well then, I guess I had better get back to my work. Your data should be coming out anytime now... Wait! Here it is.” Twilight levitated a few sheets of paper from the tangle of machinery. “Let’s see what it says—”
“WHERE IS SHE?!She must be feeling terrible! Is she hurt? She had better not be hurt!”
A yellow pegasus had burst into the operations room and was looking around like a madmare; then she made eye contact with Rainbow and her gaze softened. “Oh, um... Hi.”
“Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash said. “You’re here, too?”
The pegasus trotted daintily to her, her hoofsteps hardly making a sound. “Um... I’m the crew’s medic. Oh, but I’m not really good or anything. I was just given this job because I couldn’t do anything else.”
“She’s the best medic you could possibly hope to find in a hundred thousand mile radius,” Twilight said.
“Oh... Oh no, I’m not.” Fluttershy shrunk from the praise as if it was more of an insult. “I’m really not. I... I’ll just do a really quick check and then I’ll be out of your way! You two must be really busy now!” The pegasus did a quick glance around Rainbow Dash before ducking her head and making a beeline for the door.
Twilight shook her head as she watched. “It takes a while for her to get used to ponies. I don’t think you’ll be seeing much of her until then.”
“Agent Sparkle.” Derpheus waddled towards them with a bloated stomach and quite a few crumbs around his muzzle. “Are the results out?”
“Yes. I was about to have a look at them before Fluttershy came in.” Twilight found the sheets once again and levitated them around, her lavender pupils flying across the pages. “Okay... this is calculated out of a maximum bound of twenty points, which means that your highest possible score in each area is twenty points, Rainbow Dash.”
“Excellent,” Derpheus said. “Read them out.”
Rainbow Dash nodded eagerly in agreement.
“The stats are as follows: Rainbow Dash, pegasus mare. Strength, a high of fifteen points. Agility, also a high of fifteen points...”
The blue pegasus puffed out her chest proudly. She was just being awesome.
“...and Intelligence, negative two points.”
“Hey!” Rainbow shouted.
“I think there must be something wrong with the machine,” Twilight muttered, opening up a few metal covers and peering around inside.
“Try hitting it. It works for me sometimes,” Derpheus suggested.
Looking unconvinced, Twilight gave the machine a few loud knocks with a hoof before checking the screens again. “I don’t think it helped. It still says that her neuron count is much below average.”
“Hey!” Rainbow yelled again.
Derpheus raised a hoof to his forehead. “It doesn’t matter. She would still come along for the next mission.” He turned back to a fuming blue pegasus who looked ready to explode any moment. “Now, Rainbow Dash, you must prepare yourself for your first operation. Agent Sparkle will be training you up for it.”
“Oh, I won’t be training her,” Twilight said with a twinkle in her eyes. “This cupcake will.”
A bright purple cupcake, complete with a coating of pink sugar and chocolate sprinkles, levitated its way through the air. It landed before Rainbow Dash, who frowned at it.
“This is my newest invention,” Twilight began, obviously too excited to notice the grumpiness of her test subject. “I think I’ll call it ‘The cupcake of knowledge’, because that’s what they contain. This one holds all the combat training that Rainbow needs.”
“Interesting,” Derpheus said.
Rainbow, on the other hoof, was having a completely different view of it.
Twilight nudged the cupcake closer to her. “Rainbow, eat this cupcake and you’ll gain an immense knowledge of fighting techniques.”
“You’re kidding me,” Rainbow said, gagging and pushing it away. And she knew better than to consume that cupcake, remembering last time she had popped a seemingly harmless red one into her mouth. Cupcakes had never been that treacherous before.
“Please, Rainbow? You have to try it.” Twilight fixed her large lavender eyes on Rainbow, and the pegasus gritted her teeth. “Pleease?” Twilight jumped up and down like an overgrown filly. “Pleasepleasepleaseplease—”
“FINE!” Rainbow Dash shouted. She hated it when Twilight begged and mushed her words together like that. Picking up the small purple cupcake with a hoof, she stared at it for a prolonged moment, as if it was sprouting a set of wings. “Uh... are there any side effects from this?”
“Not that I know of,” Twilight said confidently.
“Okay...” Trying hard to ignore its strange purple colour, Rainbow Dash crammed the cupcake into her mouth, chewing and then swallowing it in a large gulp.
Just as Rainbow felt the cupcake hit the bottom of her stomach, Derpheus spoke up suddenly. “Of course you wouldn’t know of any side effects. Nopony has ever tried eating one of those before.”
Rainbow Dash felt her eyes bulge out. Celestia help me, she thought. Then her eyes bulged further as she felt its crazy effects begin to take place. Her stomach was getting steadily hotter, as if a fire had been lighted inside. Suddenly, the fire exploded forth in a wave of heat that travelled along her spine and straight to her head.
Instantly, the magical world of fighting opened up before her.
From the sacred sparring techniques of ancient warrior tribes, passed down for generations and perfected through trial and error, to the advanced knife wielding skills imparted to the best of the Royal Guard. Countless warriors and masters flashed before her eyes.
There was Lionheart Stormhoof, a mighty warrior who had spent fifty years of his life smashing rocks in the abandoned wastelands of Arcturia to harden his hooves. He could smash entire boulders to bits, eventually finding a place for his talent at one of the land’s most prestigious rock farms.
She learnt bipedal balance techniques of Zebrarian Zekecoriakuka, an exiled potions master from the distant lands of the Eerfreve, along with the Super Sophisticated Staring Styles of Flutter the Heartbreaker, a pegasus who lived within and dominated the forbidden forests of Tallytail, crippling any critter in her path and blinding any beast that dared oppose her tender loving kindness.
Sword wielding stances were taken from Iyunkishiwanaya Macaronipony, a professional swords-craft samurai pony who had spent his entire life crafting a blade made entirely from enchanted sea sapphire crystals, only to realise on his deathbed that sapphire crystals don’t slice things very well.
And if that wasn’t enough, she knew how to kick flank like Cloudy the Flank-kicker, a legendary pony who had kicked the flanks of a thousand adversaries, before being defeated and getting his flank kicked by a particularly grumpy goddess of the sun.
She had learnt everything. By the time the fire in her stomach had burnt out, Rainbow Dash had turned into an entirely different pony. She was ready for anything. She could balance on the tip of a hoof and juggle a dozen knives, all while reciting one of Applejack’s worst attempts at poetry backwards.
“How are you feeling?” Twilight’s voice pulled Rainbow out of her stupor, and she focused on the unicorn standing before her.
“A hundred times cooler,” Rainbow said, doing a flip and landing perfectly on her hind legs.
“So the cupcake worked, then,” Depheus said. “Excellent. Now, it’s time to show Twilight what you have learnt.”
Rainbow dropped back on all fours and glanced at Twilight. “You mean that you want me to fight her?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. With all her newfound skills, she might end up hurting the poor little unicorn.
“I don’t think Rainbow Dash is in any condition to duel,” Twilight began. “She has just taken in a huge amount of knowledge in a very short time.”
Rainbow Dash gave Twilight an incredulous look. “What? I was worried about you! Are you sure you can take me on?”
“Yes, I will be able to,” Twilight said.
Rainbow Dash snorted. She could flatten the unicorn in a matter of seconds. “I’m not going to show you any mercy, you know?”
Twilight smiled back. “You don’t have to. I’m a much tougher opponent than you think.”
“Alright egghead, you’re going down.” Rainbow flared her wings open in a rush of adrenalin and shot up into the air like an arrow. “Let’s fight!”
