Rainbow Dash hated taking hard things to the face. At least without warning, anyway.
Rainbow Dash was flying along in the White Tail Woods, performing a tight slalom between the thick groves of trees, focusing on her routine for her next shot at the Wonderbolts. She had speed; now she needed control. Leaves whisked off the trees in her rainbow-colored wake, and she couldn’t help but chuckle. “Psh, it should just be called the Flying of the Leaves, and I’ll do it all myself!” She glanced behind her at the leaves swirling around her rainbow trail. “Hey, that looks kind of awes—”
With a sickening crunch, Rainbow Dash slammed into a tree trunk, her legs splaying out in all four directions as air rushed out of her lungs in a wheeze. For a moment, she hung there with her wings and legs spread out. Then, with the ponderous gravity that only gravity can have, she fell to the ground.
When she opened her eyes, a tiny owl was perched on her chest. Her back ached, her stomach ached (as of course she’d just had to have a treat or two at Sugarcube Corner first), and she longed to get right back into action. “Oh, hehe, hi there,” she said, crossing her eyes somewhat to focus on the owl. It was a tiny, light-colored bird that gazed at her with a curious expression she’d seen often on Twilight’s avian assistant.
“Who?” the bird hooted.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m no Fluttershy, so I’m not really gonna be able to carry on a conversation. If you could just get off my chest? Literally?” She glared at the rude owl. What was an owl even doing awake at this hour of the morning?
The owl exhaled. “No, I meant who you were. Ponies always seem to assume I’m just hooting.”
Rainbow Dash’s jaw dropped, and she rapped the side of her head a couple of times. “Oh, not again… I know the doctors said to stop headbutting things…” She glanced around—in vain—for her pills. “You’re not gonna start telling me to kill the unbelievers like the last one, are you?”
The owl let out a frustrated avian whinny. “I’m just a garden-variety magic talking elf owl. Do you want your reward or not?”
“Reward? For what?”
“For that,” the talking owl said, pointing with a tiny wing to a toppled oak. “That was my home.”
“Oh… um… sorry,” she said, trying to think of what in Celestia’s name her “reward” for wrecking this not-figment-of-her-imagination’s home could possibly be.
“Don’t be! You scared a bunch of rodents that were trying to move in. Now I can roost in peace, once I put it back.”
“You can put trees back the way they were?” Rainbow Dash asked, cocking her head in doubt.
“Magic talking owl that doesn’t exist in your head, remember?” The owl looked as though it wanted to grin.
“Right… anyway.” She shook her head, trying to make the wobbling world slow down.
“I will give you the power to not be remembered for the next 24 hours. Anything you do will be forgotten, and anything you do to anypony will not make a single bit of difference. You have one day to do absolutely anything you want to without any consequences.”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened. “Anything?”
The tiny owl nodded. “Anything. I just ask that you come back here, tonight, to this spot, so I can make sure the magic is totally gone. I don’t think I have to tell you how horrible it would be to never be remembered by anypony you talked to. Forever.”
She shuddered. “Sounds like a nightmare.”
The owl’s eyes narrowed and glowed. Rainbow Dash felt the familiar, heady feeling of magic surrounding her. Having a force she didn’t completely comprehend affecting her had always given Dash pause. Unicorns could get away with an awful lot if they wanted to.
After a short pause, the owl fluttered onto a branch. “It is done. Enjoy, Rainbow Dash.”
“Awesome! What should I do first?!” Rainbow Dash zoomed into the sky, her mind spinning with ideas.
The owl watched her go. “Enjoy, my little pony…” It hooted in amusement to itself and fluttered off.
Lightning Dust shuffled along the cloud streets of Cloudsdale, kicking at stray tufts of them with a heavy heart. Her dream had always been to join the Wonderbolts, but thanks to a few overreacting ponies, that was crushed now. Even if she went for a different tryout method, she doubted Spitfire was about to forget her.
Just then, Rainbow Dash punched through the clouds, a giant grin on her face. Lightning Dust’s ears perked up. Here was her chance! Luck had to be with her today. If she could display to Spitfire that Rainbow Dash forgave her, perhaps she had a chance. “H-hey, Rainbow Dash… I just wanted to apologize for what I did to your friends at camp. I was wrong, and I was too hardheaded to see it. I’ve really done some thinking about what you said, and…” She was lying through her teeth, of course, but if Rainbow Dash put in a good word for her with Spitfire, there still could be hope. She had to cling to that.
Rainbow Dash cocked her head as Lightning Dust continued with her insincere apology. “You know what, Lightning Dust?” she said, cutting off what her onetime lead pony had thought was a convincing mea culpa.
“What?” Lightning Dust asked, somewhat annoyed at being interrupted.
“You’re a jerk. And a reckless one. You’re like me… except not quite as awesome.”
She bristled, feeling her face grow hot along with her temper. “Well, excuse me for wanting to get noticed! And if you haven’t figured it out, I got plenty of punishment for trying, thanks to you.”
“You got off too easy!” Rainbow Dash spun around and bucked Lightning Dust right in the face, sending her flying backwards through the wall of a building. “That’s for endangering my friends!” As her vision faded from pain, she saw Rainbow Dash whooping and flying away.
“I’m queen of the world!” Rainbow Dash screamed as she flew away.
Rainbow Dash tore through the skies, laughing like a madmare over what she’d just done. “That was awesome! I mean, after what she almost did to my friends… that felt way good. She’s one pony I don’t mind not remembering that I can do something like that.” She slowed, realizing she wasn’t being followed. “So, I just did that and nopony cares? And Lightning Dust already forgot what happened and thought she fell down some stairs or something?”
The wind blew by, ruffling Dash’s mane, as though the world itself was patting her on the head for how stupendous she was. She glanced down and spotted Cloudsdale Arena, the home of the Wonderbolts.
A grin slowly spread over Rainbow Dash’s face, and her mouth parted. A chuckle rumbled from deep within her, building to an insane crescendo of a cackle as she raised her forelegs up in triumph. “Nopony can stop me!” she yelled, diving through the air and weaving around startled, unimportant pegasi towards where she knew the locker rooms were from many long nights of studying the plans for where her idols spent all their practice time.
She punched through the clouds, laughing all the while with a might born of pure, unfiltered id as she smashed through solid cloud layer after solid cloud layer. Eventually, she came to a pinpoint landing on the floor of her objective: the locker room of the Wonderbolts. Luckily, nopony was there, so she was free to go about her dark work.
She strode over to a locker with Spitfire’s picture on it, ignoring all the others. “Yes…” she murmured. “Yessss.” She punched the lock into smithereens and then reached in for her prize: Spitfire’s sweaty, still-warm flight suit. She knew that they had just finished up their daily practice about an hour ago, so nopony would be there.
She pressed the warm material to her face, inhaling the acrid scent of Spitfire’s exertion. “Ah yes,” she moaned with the exaltation of a religious pilgrim reaching her destination. “I am the envy of every pegasus alive right now.”
“Every pegasus but one, that is,” a voice called out behind her.
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened in horror. She turned to see Spitfire standing in the entryway, naked, a crooked expression frozen between amusement and disappointment on her face. Her smile seemed half-sincere, and her ears couldn’t quite decide if they wanted to stand up or lay flat.
“Suh-Spitfire, I thought you were…” Rainbow Dash said. She wasn’t supposed to be here!
“They warned me you’d do something like this, you know.” She strode across the clouds, matching Dash’s ragged retreat. “My Guard buddies, my agent, other ponies on the team… they all thought you’d pull something like this eventually. Heck, if a few of them had their way, there’d be a bodyguard following me around all the time to ‘protect’ me from fanfillies like you. But somehow, Rainbow Dash, I figured you were a little different, you know? You reminded me of myself when I was younger.”
The two were almost muzzle-to-muzzle now. Rainbow Dash tried to will her wings to carry her away, but her fan self refused to miss a word of this.
“So why, Rainbow Dash? I mean, after a stunt like this, you can’t expect us to take you seriously. Heck, you could have been wearing that outfit legitimately in a year or two.” She gestured to the outfit, which the cowed pegasus held like a foal clung to a doll in the face of danger.
“I just…” Rainbow Dash glanced away, blinking. She couldn’t face her idol. Not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This was supposed to be awesome and fun, not whatever this was. Guilt, an emotion strange to Dash, welled within her. Had she betrayed Spitfire’s trust somehow?
The captain of the Wonderbolts slammed a hoof beside Dash’s head on a nearby locker. “Look at me when you’re stealing my things, coward!”
Rainbow Dash flinched. Coward. She hated that word. It was not awesome. Not cool. Almost lame. “Lame…” she breathed, so soft that her breath barely registered to her own lips. Gilda. What had become of her? Dash had thrown her out of Ponyville without ceremony and hadn’t heard from her since. Did she even have anywhere to go?
“Louder, cadet!” Spitfire barked, using her “drill sergeant” voice.
“Ma’am!” Dash replied on instinct. “I thought—I thought I’d get away with it and that it would be awesome?”
Spitfire slowly dragged a hoof down her face as her eyelids dropped halfway to a dull glare. “Oh Celestia, you are just like me when I was young… look, Dash. I did some stupid stuff too, but you understand bad things are going to happen because of this. You can’t just break into the Wonderbolts’ locker room, steal somepony’s outfit, and just fly away scot-free.”
“Well, maybe I can!” Dash cried, a surge of desperate energy flowing through her. Her shame was too great. She needed to get away. Run. Just let this handle itself and hide from how awesome this had not been. She rushed forward, expecting to have to bowl Spitfire over.
To her surprise, the famed flier sidestepped with the grace of a master. “I won’t stop you, Rainbow Dash,” she said. Her orange eyes glinted with a hint of something—sadness? Disappointment? Dash didn’t know. “I won’t stop you,” she said again, her tone lowering in volume and pitch. “Just know that going through that door and running away is a choice you can’t take back. It’s a choice I’ve made before, kiddo, and trust me: it’s not always the smart play. Ponies remember. I’ll remember.”
“It…” Rainbow Dash shook her head, trying to clear her choked-up throat. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Spitfire chuckled and sat on the floor. “Is it ever?” Her unreadable gaze never wavered.
Rainbow Dash bolted, unable to bear her idol’s bitter gaze any longer, though she felt it follow her for miles after she’d left Cloudsdale.
After acre upon acre of Equestria had zoomed past her in a spectrum of bright cheer, she landed on a stormy cloud that sat all alone, separated from all its peers. She glanced down at the rolling countryside below, then at the uniform she still held in her hooves. It had grown cold by now, and the high-speed flight had left it rumpled and creased, not at all the pristine, yet used beauty she had admired in the locker room. Her trophy, hers by right of daring.
It stared back at her, a crude mockery of a dream she had just ruined.
She would, of course, be able to go back like nothing had happened. Nopony would remember. She could even spin some wild tale to Spitfire about finding her uniform in the hands of some shifty thief and battling him for it in a wild chase that led her all over Equestria. She could paint herself as the heroine of the story; in her hooves was the power to rewrite a little bit of history once the spell wore off.
It would be so easy, and the thought tempted her as she sat there, miles above the ground, staring at the pilfered uniform.
She held it at foreleg’s length, unable to look at it any longer. “Damn it.” She let it fall and sat on the cloud until she could no longer spot its tiny bit of blue and gold in the sky below.
Gilda had always been interested in the sprawl of large pony cities, and Rainbow Dash had heard that Gilda had flown east after that party in Ponyville so long ago. So, she found herself standing in an alley in Fillydelphia, staring up at an overweight griffin who peered out his apartment’s door with almost aggressive disinterest.
“So you haven’t seen her?” Rainbow Dash asked for the umpteenth time that afternoon. She had in her hooves a crudely drawn sketch of Gilda, although for all her artistic talent, it could have been any griffin. Baltimare had certainly held its share of dead ends and false leads. No one, it seemed, had ever even heard of Gilda.
“No,” the latest griffin she’d been directed to responded. The day had caused only a string of disappointments in her search, not that she could have expected much else. She didn’t have much beyond a name and description from years ago—how could she have expected anyone to know of her? The sun continued to creep under the horizon, as though Celestia herself was taunting her about her running out of time.
“Alright, thanks. Sorry to bother you,” she grumbled. She started to walk away, resenting this town all the more. How difficult could it be to track down one griffin? Gilda had mentioned she lived in Equestria, but where Dash had no idea. For all she knew, Gilda had gone back beyond the ocean to her ancestral homeland. What did she expect, some convenient sign that screamed “Gilda is this way?”
Just as she was about to round the corner and emerge back into the main streets of Fillydelphia, the griffin, who had been standing in the doorway, staring, cried, “Wait!”
Dash glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah?” Maybe this was it, her one lead!
“Good luck,” he said.
Her wings would have drooped if she hadn’t been aloft. “Thanks.” She flew away, her back to the sunset.
It was a long flight back to Ponyville.
She landed later with the stars and moon in full view near where she was pretty sure she had met the owl this morning. “Hey! Owl! You there?” she called, feeling foolish. What if she had imagined the owl and the spell after smashing her head into a tree one time too many? What if she couldn’t take back bucking a pony through a wall whose only crime was a semi-ruthless drive for success?
“Hey, this isn’t funny, owl!” She flapped her wings, her eyes subconsciously tracking the falling leaves stirred as she began to fly forward. “Where are you? Answer me!”
She landed and poked her head into the trees, mindful of the branches. Leaves crunched underhoof as she moved forward, feeling like she’d been tricked. “I don’t wanna just vanish…” She thought of Gilda. As much as Dash’s speed had allowed her to, she’d searched much of the major cities of Equestria’s east coast, and there had been no trace of her.
As though she’d never existed. As though everyone had simply forgot about her.
“Hey!” she yelled, startling a few slumbering critters into night flight. “Are you here?!”
“Hoo,” a voice hooted behind her.
She turned, and sure enough, there was the owl, just where she’d been looking moments before. Had the darkness concealed it? Was it all these branches? Rainbow Dash didn’t know. “Hey, it’s… you, right?”
“Yes.” The owl nodded, a gesture that only came across as ridiculous. “You see, Rainbow Dash, this was all a test,” the owl said.
“A test?” she repeated. “But… my reward! I helped you out with your tree and stuff. What’s all this about a test? I hate tests.”
“Then why don’t I tell you how you did and get it over with?” Before amazed pony eyes, the owl shimmered as it wafted to the ground, illuminating the dark copse around it. “You see, this form is not the one I usually take.” The tiny owl began to grow, and two legs became four as a beautiful, sparkling mane and tail grew from an increasingly equine head.
“P-Princess?” Rainbow Dash sputtered, seeing the regal figure of Princess Celestia emerging from the transformation.
“Hello, Rainbow Dash,” she said, her warm smile putting her pegasus subject at ease. “I apologize for deceiving you.” Her mouth curled downward as she spoke, a trend Rainbow Dash immediately wanted to reverse.
“No, not at all.” Dash scurried into a bow. “I had fun, actually!” She tried not to think of Gilda. Later, she told herself.
“About that, Rainbow Dash. How do you think those ponies felt after you visited them?”
“Y-you mean, you know what I did? All of it?” A small squeak of fear escaped her muzzle as she glanced up at Princess Celestia’s disappointed gaze. “I um… I didn’t mean it when I stole that kiss from Pinkie! I swear!”
“You did what to Pinkie now?” Princess Celestia cocked her head, confused. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Th-that was a test of my own! And you passed!” Rainbow Dash’s cheeks burned. Smooth.
“In any case… back to my question.” A breeze blew up, rustling the fallen leaves around them. A few stuck in Princess Celestia’s flowing mane and tail; Rainbow Dash struggled to not chuckle. “How do you think those ponies felt when you took advantage of your gift, your power? Do you think they liked what you did? Or deserved it?”
Rainbow Dash looked away, unable to meet the royal gaze. Of course she knew Lightning Dust and the ponies she’d shoved out of the way in the sky hadn’t deserved it. Of course she knew they didn’t like it. Of course she knew she was in the wrong. All these thoughts flitted through her mind, and she longed to say them, but one thought came after that gave her pause: And yet I still did it, didn’t I?
“As I thought,” she said, apparently finding her answer in Rainbow Dash’s avoidance of her gaze. “Just remember what you’re feeling now and what led you here, to this moment, Rainbow Dash. I am not here to judge you, nor put you down, nor lecture you.”
Rainbow Dash sniffled. “Y-you’re not?” She glanced at Princess Celestia and blinked through a thin film of water.
She leaned in. “I won’t even tell them you got something in your eyes.” She was all smiles again, the benevolent princess Rainbow Dash expected. “Just remember this. Difficult things lie ahead, Rainbow Dash. I need you to stick by my faithful student, now more than ever…” She stared into the dark skies for a moment, lost in thought.
“Why? What’s gonna happen? Is something bad going to happen to Twilight? I mean, she’s a princess now!”
Celestia snapped back to reality, her unsure gaze unnerving Rainbow Dash. “I am… not entirely certain. It might even be nothing. I just sense something… unusual on the horizon. I’m counting on you to tell her how too much power can drive a pony a little batty.” In a mutter so low Dash was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear it, Celestia added, “And I hope Twilight can keep it together well enough that you won’t have to.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “I will.” She sat on the cold, leafy ground as Princess Celestia took wing and headed for Canterlot. In the morning, Rainbow Dash would take some time off the weather squad and look for Gilda in earnest, after apologizing to Lightning Dust. Even if Lightning wasn’t going to remember what Dash was begging forgiveness for.
