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COLD LIGHTNING
by the parasprite
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The water coming down on Lightning Dust’s wings was refreshingly cool, about the same temperature as the spring rains she sometimes sat up on top of her apartment for. It slowly washed away the dirt and sweat that coated her body after her half-finished day of Academy exercises, leaving her feathers heavy, wet, and stuck together. Lightning herself merely stood there on her hind legs, leaning her forehooves against the grip bar and resting her head against the wall. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t move in the slightest save for her hoof, which was resting on the tap.
Slowly, she turned the tap further and further toward the little blue mark on one side. The water grew colder and colder, until the freezing spray made her whole body shake violently. Her wings automatically drew up against her sides in response, trying to preserve as much heat as possible. When the tap hit the limit on the cold end, Lightning left it there and let her foreleg fall limp, her entire body trembling under the icy downpour.
Though every part of her wanted to move out of the cold, she forced herself to endure it. Minutes went by, during which she did nothing but let the water fall and let her muscles twitch and tremble. After a while, she began to lose feeling in her back, and the skin beneath her coat and feathers started to grow pale and sickly from the cold.
Quite suddenly, Lightning reached out and spun the tap around in the other direction until it bumped to a stop at its very highest temperature. The water began to heat up rapidly, soon reaching a scalding temperature, but still she refused to move away from it. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes, mostly hidden by all the rising steam, and Lightning bit down on her other hoof to stifle a whimper. After that, only a hissing noise, punctuated by nebulous half-curses, came out of her mouth.
Her body protested the vicious wakeup call, but Lightning let it suffer as a necessary evil. Crying silently, the mare slammed a hoof up against the wall to prevent herself from moving out from under the burning rain. She bit her lip so hard the indentation bled a little and stomped around on the floor, trying to distract herself from the pain, even as she held up a stiff, twitching other foreleg and started slowly washing the greasy film of failure from herself. The cleaning didn’t even stop when Lightning began to feel physically ill from the rapid rise in her body temperature and her face was smeared with tears and snot.
As abruptly and senselessly as she’d changed the water to boil her feathers off, Lightning fell on all fours and bucked the wall as hard as she could, shattering a piece of the tile off it. It wasn’t a very good idea, really, because it left her back hooves extremely sore, but she hardly noticed. Instead of tending to her injury, she rose up onto her wounded hind legs to assault the wall with her forehooves, silently taking shots it with as much force as she could muster.
This continued for some time, until the water turned lukewarm and no longer burned when it fell against her wings. By then, the pegasus’ hooves were bruised, chipped, and bleeding from all the abuse, which forced her to walk with a severe limp when she finally stepped out of the shower and found a towel to dry herself with.
Ten minutes later, a still damp and mussed Lightning trotted into the hallway where Spitfire’s office was located: on the opposite side of the Academy from the showers. For once, she’d given little attention to her appearance, not even bothering to style her mane into its usual bob. It remained plastered against her neck, still dripping wet, and her feathers stuck out at wild angles from her wings and would need to be preened thoroughly later. Lightning would, of course, put it off as long as possible, since she loathed preening in general, regardless of the context. The skin under the feathers was so red and irritated that it gave her entire body a slightly flushed appearance, like she’d been lying out in the sun for too long. She winced as she flexed her wings, trying to reposition them to be more comfortable against her sides, as every little movement irritated the burned skin.
She’d put on her spare cadet uniform—the undamaged one; the one that didn’t have that big, ugly, gaping rip on the left breast where her Lead Pony pin had once been tacked. The uniform looked horrifyingly bare now that it didn’t have that pin on it. It would have been there, of course, if Dash hadn’t lost control of the tornado, and if Spitfire hadn’t decided it would be a good idea to humiliate Lightning in front of her entire team.
Her team.
Not Rainbow Dash’s.
But, as angry as she was over the public abuse and unfair demotion, Lightning Dust was confident that everything would work out just fine. Once she’d explained everything to Spitfire and the stuntmare realized that it was Dash who’d been in the wrong, not Lightning, she’d get her Lead Pony badge back and everything would be just as it should have been once again. Lightning had already proven that she was the best flyer in the Wonderbolts Academy; had earned that badge, and she knew Spitfire was level-headed enough to realize that.
Stopping in front of the door of Spitfire’s office, she took a deep breath. No, she wasn’t worried—but still, she felt a flutter of something—anxiety, maybe—in her belly as she exhaled again as silently as possible and took another deep breath. Then she raised her hoof, knocked soundly on the door a couple of times, and waited.
The silence that followed her knocks seemed to last forever, to the point where Lightning began to fidget impatiently. She found herself tapping her hoof on the floor impatiently, waiting for a response, and then making a half-hearted effort to smooth her slowly frizzing tail over a little bit.
“Come in,” said Spitfire’s voice from the other side of the door.
Lightning took another deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them, and pushed open the door. When she stepped into her hero’s office, still limping slightly on her bruised hooves, she found the uniformed Spitfire looking sharply at her from behind the huge desk on the other side of the room. Undaunted by the glare, Lightning kept her confident posture and saluted.
“Lead Pony Lightning Dust reporting as ordered, ma’am.”
The already unpleasant look Spitfire was giving her became steadily colder, until it was nothing less than frigid. “Well, I’ll give you a tenth of a point for trying, but that’s not going to work on me. Sit down, cadet. We have some things to talk about.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lightning sat down in front of her desk and waited to be addressed again.
Spitfire took some time to speak, choosing instead to straighten a stray feather on one of her huge wings. They were quite nice wings, too; strong and muscular, and every feather now preened perfectly into place. Under different circumstances, Lightning might have been aroused watching her straighten her feathers—she certainly found Spitfire attractive, after all. In fact, she still had the Playpony magazine she’d gotten when she was fourteen that the Wonderbolt had posed for—the one she’d clopped herself silly over for months while she imagined Spitfire straddling her, lips pressed against her own; that it wasn’t her own lonely hoof doing the work, but the fiery Wonderbolt’s.
“Cadet Lightning Dust,” said Spitfire at last, suddenly snapping Lightning out of her reverie, “I made a big mistake when I gave you that Lead Pony badge. Do you know why?”
Another pause passed between the two of them. Lightning eventually asked, “Why do you think you made a mistake, ma’am?”
“I’ve been watching you. You left your teammates behind when they needed you to be there for them. You ignored them when they were in trouble, and sabotaged them when you were supposed to be working together. That isn’t the way a leader is supposed to act, Lightning Dust.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lightning, arranging her expression to look as apologetic as possible. “After what happened with Dash and that tornado, I’ve definitely learned my—”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it!” Spitfire cut in sharply. “I don’t know if you were aware of it, cadet, but this is the military. We don’t lug guns around like the EAF proper, but we also don’t tolerate stunts like the one you pulled—and I don’t mean just the stunt with the tornado. I mean the one you’ve been pulling since you got the freaking badge.”
“I haven’t been pulling anything, ma’am,” Lightning told her. “I screwed up, okay? I get that. Everypony makes mistakes. I made a huge one when I let Dash talk me into making that tornado. If I had thought ahead, I would have realized it was a bad idea to listen to her.”
“So, this was Dash’s fault,” said Spitfire, her tone skeptical.
“Well, yes and no—it’s kind of my fault for letting it happen, but she had the idea. She was impatient and she wanted to get ahead of everypony else, so she suggested making a tornado to clear everyone’s clouds. I don’t think she really thought ahead, either. But I should have realized it was dangerous, and I understand that now, ma’am. It’s just that, she was kind of my friend, and I trusted her...”
“Just keep digging your grave, Dust... or shut and stop trying to lie your way out of trouble! Dash told me what really happened, and I’m inclined to believe her over you. You made the tornado, you roped her in, you laughed about it... so you deal with the consequences now, like an adult.”
“Obviously she was the one who lied,” said Lightning, unfazed. “Look... I made a mistake, and I understand that I made a mistake, but I don’t think letting Dash get away with what she did is the right way to handle this, ma’am. Even if it wasn’t me she threw under the cart, I’d still feel like it was my duty to... well, tell you the truth. She did something bad, and made it worse by lying.”
Spitfire nodded. “And you’re not lying, hmm?”
“I haven’t lied once since I came to the Wonderbolts Academy, ma’am. Everything I’m saying is the truth.”
Leaning back in her chair again, Spitfire appeared to consider the matter. Then she laughed hollowly. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you actually believe what you’re trying to sell. You’re a real piece of work, kiddo.”
“Why do you believe Dash over me?” Lightning asked. “I know how it sounds—but Dash kinda had it out for me. She kept screwing with the exercises to make it harder for me to get them done. I had to do twice as much work because she wasn’t doing her part. I think maybe she thought she could just come in here and lay around like she did when she was a weathermare—you heard her bragging about how lazy she is. When she didn’t get exactly what she wanted, she tried to make me mess up so she could get me in trouble. Right before that stuff with the tornado happened, we had this argument: she thought she should be Lead Pony, and I told her you made the decisions around here, not her. I’m not saying they’re related, but...”
“Dust... you’re really, really pushing it. I’m not stupid, and I’m not naive.” Spitfire leaned back a little and ran her hooves through her mane. “I’ve met ponies like you, okay? Ponies who just don’t give a fuck about anything and lie through their teeth half the time they open their mouths. You’re lucky I can’t actually say you’re lying for sure, or you’d already be outta here. But I can tell, cadet. All that crap you’re saying is just that: crap. You’re making this up as you talk. I can almost hear the gears turning inside your head.”
Slowly, Lightning’s confident look gave way to confusion and hurt. “Look—I just need to know... Rainbow Dash helped me make that tornado, okay? Why did you make her Lead Pony and hit me and stuff when she’s the one who lost control of it? It bothers me, okay?”
“I thought you helped her make it.”
“That’s not what I meant—” ...you stupid fucking cunt. “—ma’am. I just want to know why you’re rewarding her for the same thing you’re punishing me for. It doesn’t seem fair to me, and I want to know why.”
“What’s there to explain? You were reckless, and you put ponies in danger with the tornado—which, by the way, I’m aware was to sabotage your own teammates. You almost killed a couple of ponies just so you could win a cloud-clearing ‘race’ that was entirely in your own head, Dust.” Spitfire leaned forward a bit, looking very serious indeed. “Do you even understand why what you did is wrong?”
“Of course I do, ma’am. But nopony actually got hurt. Everypony was fine when it was all over,” Lightning pointed out. “Look, I feel bad and everything, and I’m glad they’re okay. I really am. Nopony feels as bad about the whole thing as I do. But the tornado would have worked out just fine if Dash hadn’t been trying to sabotage it. She’s the one who caused this whole disaster. I don’t understand why I’m being punished instead of her, ma’am.”
“I made Dash Lead Pony because she actually learned a lesson from all this, and you’re still trying to blame everypony else for shortcomings you obviously don’t even think you have,” replied Spitfire. “If denial is a river, you’re swimming in it. That much is clear. Now, I’m really getting sick of this, so listen up.
“I didn’t say you were expelled, but you’re damn well going to be if you keep acting this way. The number of chances I’m giving you is beyond absurd—you’re lucky you’re such a good flyer, or you’d’ve been kicked out the moment I heard about that tornado. Your cloud’s getting real fucking thin as it is, so cut the bullshit. Are you going to cut the bullshit and listen to me now, Lightning Dust?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“You seem to think being a Wonderbolt is about winning and stepping on everypony else on the way to the top. Let me tell you something, kiddo: it’s not. It’s about being a team. You’ve been telling me you can play on a team, that you can be a leader, but I don’t believe you anymore. Your mouth says one thing, but your actions say something else. That’s why I gave Dash your Lead Pony badge—you’re self-centered and dangerous, and she’s proven she can be ten times more responsible than you. Now, I’m going to give you a choice. One: I suspend you until next year, and you can start over fresh with new recruits after you’ve had some time to think about what you did and grow the fuck up a little.”
Lightning opened her mouth to protest this.
“Two,” interrupted the fiery pegasus, “you can take Dash’s wingpony badge and save me the trouble of filling out a bunch of paperwork, and save yourself the big black mark on your record saying you got suspended. It’ll just say you were wingpony all along. The idea is that maybe if you realize how badly you fucked up, you’ll act your age for the rest of your time here—though I’m beginning to doubt that’s going to happen. You do not get any more choices than those, cadet. This is a real big courtesy to begin with, so you’d better appreciate it.”
“I earned that Lead Pony badge, not some fucking wingpony shit!” Lightning shouted furiously, her rage over the unfairness of her situation momentarily overtaking her common sense. “I deserve what I ear—”
“If you even finish that I’m going to kick you out of the Wonderbolts Academy!” Spitfire rose up and leaned over her desk to go nose to nose with Lightning. “Suck it up and deal with it! You fucked up, you deal with the consequences! That’s how it works! If you still want to complain about it, then fuck you. Leave the Academy if you don’t like how things work! Which one’s it gonna be, Dust? Leave or stay? Now, Dust! Right now!”
“I’m staying,” Lightning spat. She glowered at Spitfire. “I earned this.”
“Damn right you earned this. You earned a lot more, cadet, and you’re real lucky you didn’t get it. Get out of my office and go get your wingpony badge from Dash. Go—before I change my mind, which I’m going to do if you don’t get the fuck out in the next five seconds!”
Silently, Lightning turned around and stalked out of the office, grinding her teeth together loudly. After she’d shut the door behind her, she took a few steps down the hall, then leaned heavily against the wall and smoothed her still damp mane back, breathing quickly. She made a concentrated effort to plaster back onto her face the neutral expression she’d gone into the office wearing, but the end result was more of a grotesque, crooked grimace than anything.
As it turned out, her mane had not returned to the windswept state it had been in before she’d gone into the showers, but remained tangled and disgusting like copperish-yellow seaweed cascading down her head and shoudlers. Lightning ran one of her primaries through it, trying to work out some of the knots and kinks before they became permanent, only to find that her feathers were even more askew than before. A wave of anger passed through her, and she only barely managed to restrain herself from bashing her hoof against the wall.
She reluctantly trotted down the hall to the nearest restroom, grinding her teeth together in frustration, and locked herself in one of the stalls to preen some of her more out-of-place feathers back into their normal positions.
So I’m wingpony now, she thought disgustedly as she sat down on the toilet seat and started tugging at her feathers with her teeth.
It wasn’t acceptable; not from any angle she looked at it from. Lead Pony meant you were the best, and wingpony meant you were second-best. And Lightning Dust was the best; this was something that she knew. She had earned that Lead Pony pin, and Rainbow Dash had no right to take it away from her.
The next place she had to go, then, was to see Dash. Dash was a pretty easy pony to convince to do things, so all Lightning would have to do was say the right words. Then, when Dash admitted she was lying to Spitfire, she’d get demoted again—or even kicked out, the opal pegasus thought gleefully—and Lightning would be reinstated as Lead Pony.
Maybe Lightning would have to lie and break the rules once or twice to make it happen, but it wasn’t like she’d wanted to be put in this position. It was Dash’s fault all this had happened; if she hadn’t gone whining to Spitfire, everything would have turned out just fine. All Lightning was doing was righting a wrong that had been committed against her by the jealous Rainbow Dash. All she was doing was defending herself against an attack by a pony who hated her for being better at flying.
And besides, she thought furiously, wincing and tearing up as she accidentally ripped a feather right out in her overzealousness, I was doing just fineas Lead Pony before Dash decided to fuck everything up.
It took some time for Lightning to actually locate Dash, but she eventually found her doing laps around the Academy. There had been a planned flight exercise for later that day, after the cloud-clearing exercise, so the others were probably wheezing on the clouds somewhere behind their leader. It wasn’t exactly a team exercise, though, so Dash clearly wasn’t making use of the authority Spitfire had given her. Just thinking about what Dash had done to her made Lightning’s wings twitch with anger—it should have been her leading the way, not that rainbow-headed floozy.
The look on Dash’s face when Lightning practically dropped on top of her from out of a cloud was priceless. Panicking, the cerulean pegasus dove out of the way, actually letting out a squawking sound that made it difficult not to call out and tell her she was a dodo. In fact, Lightning had to struggle not to crack a grin at her rival’s fright as she calmly recovered and reoriented herself after rolling off to the side. Instead, she focused on keeping up with Dash’s flying, as the other mare had sped up significantly as a result of the adrenaline rush.
“Hey, Dash!” she shouted, diving after her wingpony. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
Once the initial panic had passed, Dash wound down a bit, slowed her wingbeats, and leveled out. She threw Lightning a very sour glance as the opal mare flew even with her. “What do you want?”
“I just wanna talk. Can we go down and, ah, talk?”
“Why would I wanna talk to you?”
“I just wanna talk, Dash. You know, apologize, and stuff.”
Dash just gave her a look rather reminiscent of the ones Spitfire had thrown her way for most of their conversation in the office; one that quite clearly stated, I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Annoyed, Lightning turned away to hide her momentary frown, though she reverted right back to an apologetic, almost pleading expression within moments.
“I just wanna talk, okay!” she repeated. “That’s it! Please, Dash!”
“Okay... I guess...”
The tone Dash used suggested that she wanted few things less than to talk to Lightning, but she still slowed down even more and banked after Lightning, who was headed for the runway. They landed at the same time—though quite far apart—and Lightning started off at a slow trot with Dash following along. Neither of them said anything; the situation was too tense and awkward for the ice to be broken just yet.
“I... didn’t expect to see you back here,” said Dash after a while.
“Yeah, I bet not. I’m real sorry about what happened,” Lightning told her, putting the most sincere sad, apologetic smile she could affect across her face. “I guess I was kinda, you know, being stupid when I said that stuff.”
“You think?”
“I was real out of line when we talked after I made that tornado. I could have hurt somepony, and I shouldn’t have laughed about it. That’s not something you laugh about, y’know?”
“Doesn’t mean very much when you already blew your chance to realize that, Lightning,” muttered Dash.
“Dash, I’m really sorry. Look, I have this problem, okay?” Lightning flexed her wings nervously and veered off to the right. Dash followed her curiously. “My parents had this idea that being better at something than everypony else makes you better than them, period. I know that’s not true, but... it’s hard to stop living something like that after you were raised on it. Sometimes I forget I’m not better than everypony. Sometimes I forget they matter.”
Dash’s expression had given way to disgust. “Your parents taught you that, huh?”
“They, uh, kind of beat it into me,” Lightning replied quietly. The other pegasus’s contemptuous look slid right off her face. “I had water wings when I was a filly, Dash—its a disease that makes the muscles in your wings really weak. Mom and dad didn’t like that; they said it made me worthless because I’d never be able to fly like all the other pegasi... and… and other things. They hit me a lot. It hurt... They said I was a sorry excuse for a pegasus. And that hurt, too.”
“I’m sorry, Lightning... I didn’t know.”
“They were right, though,” she said, a tinge of misery seeping into her voice. “I’m pathetic. I’m freaking twenty-five years old… it took me this long to get my wings in shape, y’know, but I worked so hard because I wanted to prove I’m worth something. I wanted to be able to visit my family and—out of the blue, you know? They don’t even invite me to reunions—and tell them I was the top flyer at the Wonderbolts Academy. Now I’ll never be able to do that.”
Dash looked uncomfortably at the runway. “I’m sorry.”
They walked in silence for a while, Dash apparently still feeling too awkward around Lighting to say whatever was on her mind at first. It took quite some time before she relaxed enough to actually speak on her own again. “That thing with Spitfire out on the runway... I mean, I-I didn’t really mean... for her to do that, Lightning. I just wanted her to do something about the way you were acting. I had no idea she’d humiliate you like that. I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever. I deserved it,” said Lightning in a bitter, resigned tone of voice. They reached the end of the runway and stopped in front of the large machines that produced the clouds the cadets had to fly through and clear. “I was out of control. It’s better this way. They were right—my parents, that is. Weak ponies like me always lose.”
“Stop that! Stop beating yourself up like that. Nopony’s perfect,” Dash snapped at her. The look she wore suggested that she, too, was truly hurt by Lightning’s self-abusive words. “I’m... really sorry about all this, Lightning. I didn’t know any of it.”
“There’s nothing you can do about it, Dash. I’m fucked. I’m just a wingpony now, and I guess I was stupid to think I could ever be anything more.”
“Wingpony is almost as g—”
“Wingpony is no fucking good!” Lightning snarled, startling Dash so badly that the other mare skittered to the side in fear. It was less her words that had a disturbing quality to them than the way she said them, the venom dripping from them, and twisted visage of fury that accompanied them. Just as quickly, Lightning’s outburst was over, and she was back to her dejected, almost-defeated look; something that seemed to bother Dash almost as much as the comment itself.
“C-calm down, dude... I’m really sorry this happened, but would you rather be in jail? It’s good that nopony died!”
“Dash... I just don’t know how I’m going to prove I’m good enough,” she said. “It’s eating me up inside.”
“I’m sorry, Lightning—I’m here for you if you need a fr—”
Lightning cut in sharply. “Yeah, but you’re not actually gonna do anything to help.”
“What do you want from me, then? I can’t take back what you did,” said Dash. Her wings were starting to flap agitatedly on their own.
“I don’t know... I don’t know...” Lightning leaned against one of the pipes and hid her face behind her wing, shuddering a little. “I guess a second chance is too much to ask for, huh...”
“Lightning... this is a second chance for you,” Dash explained quietly, putting a hoof on Lightning’s wing in an unusually tender gesture that was immediately shrugged off by the opal mare. “You can still prove to yourself that you’re worth something. You don’t have to be perfect, and what your family thinks of you doesn’t have to matter. I learned both of those a long time ago.”
“It does matter, Dash. It’s not a second chance... not to me. I always have to do so much more than everypony else just to get the same distance—so I don’t have a freaking chance of getting into the Wonderbolts if I don’t have ‘Lead Pony’ on my record...”
Dash said nothing for a while. She just stared at Lightning sadly, a hurt look spreading across her face. Finally, she murmured, “You didn’t really come here to apologize, did you, Lightning?”
Turning, Lightning fixed Dash with an innocent look, mirroring her one of betrayal. “Of course I did. I feel really terrible about this. I almost killed your friends. And your friends are my friends, kind of. It just hurts a lot...”
“I’m not... I’m not stupid...” said Dash in a quavering voice. “I might act like it sometimes, but I’m not. You came to me, said you were sorry, told me about your sad fillyhood—I’m sorry for that, I really am—but then you started hinting that I should switch places with you again to... to make you feel better? How much more transparent can you get? I’m not dumb, Lightning. I’m not.”
“Please, Dash! You have to help me! I-I don’t know what I’m going to do if—if... You—you stupi—Agh...” Lightning trailed off with a growl of frustration, and in the following lull, Dash continued speaking.
“I’m really sorry. I just don’t think you should be in charge of anypony, especially after you even admitted you have a problem with… you know. Being reckless. I’m not gonna let you be Lead Pony again, because it’s bad for everypony—including you—and I’m not gonna help you do it, either. Look, wingpony isn’t as bad as you think it is. I’d know, ‘cause I was your wingpony for—”
“You were been a terrible wingpony, y’know,” A small, humorless smile turned up one corner of Lightning’s mouth; less an expression of amusement than a condescending sneer. “You were lazy the whole damn time. You made everypony else do twice as much work. Do you think the Wonderbolts want somepony who lazes around on clouds all day or somepony who actually bothers to do the things they’re told to do, Dash? But I didn’t even tell them, and d’ya know why? Because you were my friend. Until you stabbed me in the back. What do you think’s gonna happen now that we’re not friends anymore? I have no reason to hide everything you did wrong from the Wonderbolts! Nopony does. You’re screwed, little pony. Yeah, you got yourself a one-way ticket to any-frickin-where but here. Everypony at the Academy knows it, too: you suck at flying and you’ll never be good enough. Even Spitfire knows. You’re in deep shit now, Dash. All it’s gonna take to get you kicked out is one anonymous letter to Spitfire.”
“W-what?” spluttered Dash, whose eyes had widened progressively in combined disgust and shock throughout Lightning’s about-face. “What’s the matter with—"
“You’re wrong, y’know,” continued Lightning. “You’re actuallyreally stupid. You’re thicker than a fucking brick wall.”
Visibly insulted, Dash opened her wings to take off, but Lightning suddenly took a step forward, and then another; slowly backing her right up right in between some of the pipes. The sneer twisting the opal mare’s face became more pronounced and more inequine with each passing second.
“So,” she continued, with palpable venom now coursing through each and every vicious word she spoke, “you and I need to go talk to Spitfire, because I need my fucking Lead Pony badge back, Dash. You can tell her you think I did a better job as Lead Pony overall, in spite of my one supposed mistake, and you may have overreacted when you stormed into her office, raging about me. That’s what you should say to her.”
“Um, I-I think not,” Dash replied, fluttering her wings anxiously again. Lightning felt a strong desire to pin them down until the bones snapped.
“You don’t get it, do you, Dash?” hissed Lightning. “That wasn’t a request. There is no ‘U-u-um-m, I-I-I-I th-th-think n-n-n-n-not’... because you don’t have a choice,” she said, and then ground her teeth together. “I tried asking nicely, but I guess you just don’t have a conscience, or something. You’re the kind of pony who would steal from somepony who’s just trying to feel like they’re not a complete waste of space.”
“You don’t even care about what you did, do you?” There were tears forming in Rainbow Dash’s eyes as she finally seemed to realize the full extent of Lightning’s callousness. “You could’ve killed my best friends, and you don’t even give a flying feather! You just care about your stupid position on the team!”
“Trust me, wingpony... you need to worry about your own flying career, not mine. This is gonna be better for both of us in the long run,” Lightning assured her, now grinning openly at Dash’s obvious discomfort.
“This is why I don’t want you to come back at all, Lightning: because you almostkilled my friends and laughed about it, and then you lied to my face when you finally apologized for it. And now you’re trying to bully me, or something, and it’s not gonna work, and w-will you wipe that freaking c-creepy grin off your face before I wipe it off for you!”
Lightning heaved an exasperated sigh. “Ya know, Dash... I’m not stupid either—and when I say that, I mean I’m not fucking stupid. I see every mistake you make here; every time you break the rules; and I can list them off for the Wonderbolts if I want. I’m giving you a chance to help both of us out, Dash—otherwise, the Bolts are gonna be short two good flyers, not one. Stop digging holes in your cloud and use your brain for a sec.”
“Whatever,” said the cerulean mare, though she looked truly shaken by the other mare’s words. “You’re t-too narss-issi—sissit—iseric—whatever—to pay attention to anypony b-but yourself...”
“You couldn’t even run a basic obstacle course without hurting your wing,” Lightning mocked. “Do you think the Wonderbolts will want a worthless pony like you if they know how many stupid mistakes you’ve made? I have one fuckup to my name; you have, like, twenty! Who are the Wonderbolts gonna want less? You or me? Think about it. I just didn’t tell them because, y’know, we’re friends... but it seems like you don’t wanna be friends anymore, so why don’t I just send them an anonymous letter with every little thing you ever did wrong?”
“Screw you!” snapped Dash, who was, by then, on the verge of tears. “I’m leaving!”
She tried to push past Lightning and get out from between the pipes, but Lightning moved to block the opening with her body, rearing up onto her hind legs. The golden-eyed mare was several inches taller than Dash even on all fours—in fact, Lightning Dust was several inches taller than most pegasi, period—and since she had a wingspan to match her size, it made her a rather frightening sight when she took such an aggressive two-legged poise like the one she was now striking. It was ten times as terrifying when combined with the shadows the pipes cast on Lightning’s already eerie smile.
“Let me out, Lightning,” Dash sniffled.
“No.”
“I don’t wanna listen to this crap anymore!”
“I keep giving you really simple ways to end this where we’re both still friends, and you keep arguing with me like a moron,” Lightning sneered as she boxed Dash further in between the pipes. “You’re just digging and digging, Dash, and everything’s just getting worse and worse for you. In fact, I think now you’re going to tell Spitfire that you were the one that made the tornado, and you just lied about everything, and I covered for you because I’m such a good friend. Maybe she’ll let you stay and finish at the bottom of the class! No feathers off my wings!”
“Let m-me outta here right now, o-or you’ll get a hoof sandwich right in the face!”
“Not unless you do what I want when you leave,” the opal pegasus told her in a dangerously soft voice.
“Stop a-already!”
“No. Do what I want.”
“Lightning, cut the crap and let me out!” Dash screamed. “You almost killed my friends and you didn’t give a flying fuck, and you lied to me when you apologized because you knew I would accept it! There’s no way in Tartarus I’m gonna—”
Lightning abruptly lurched forward, seized Dash by the hoof, and spun her around. Within a fraction of a second, she’d pinned Dash against the wall of pipes on one side, with the smaller mare’s own forehooves twisted behind her back and holding her wings shut.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t do what I want!” Lightning spat, her face suddenly twisted into a ghoulish snarl. “I’ll—I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill your friends, and I’ll kill Spitfire, and I’ll kill every single pony in this whole academy, and then I’ll kill myself, too!”
She moved back from Dash with a loud huff, shoving her into the pipes again as she did, and stepped back, letting the shaking, shell shocked rainbow pegasus move away.
“…so do what I freaking want,” she concluded in a somewhat more subdued tone.
Dash had blood dribbling down her nose, though it didn’t look broken, and she’d taken on a completely terrified expression to complement Lightning’s monstrous look. When she spoke, her voice also shook with her body, and the words came as she edged away from Lightning. “D-dude... w-what the hell is wrong with you...?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m not the one who stabbed her depressed, self-loathing friend in the back,” replied Lightning, jabbing a hoof violently at herself. Then she jabbed the same hoof at Dash. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I… n-never mind…”
There was a soft puff as Dash lobbed her Lead Pony badge in Lightning’s direction, and the latter failed to notice it in time to catch it. “Are you freaking happy now?”
Lightning picked up the badge and polished it with her hoof, then pinned it to her own chest. She leered at Rainbow Dash as she smoothed her mane back, feeling a sense of accomplishment for the first time since she’d been demoted.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m pretty happy now.”
She watched Dash get up in silence. The other mare was apparently cautious of coming near her at all now, as she stepped back a few paces as soon as she was able. Lightning made up for it by stepping forward in kind, until they were almost nose-to-nose.
“This is what you’re going to do,” Lightning told Dash quietly, a noxious, power-drunken smile spreading across her face. “You’re going to come out from behind those pipes and come with me. You’re going to write a note explaining that you lied about the tornado. You’re going to tell Spitfire that you had the idea, you made the twister, and I reluctantly helped and heroically saved all the falling ponies. You threatened me to keep me quiet when it went south so that you could lie and take my place. But, because you’re a good little pony, you felt really bad about it all and couldn’t bear the guilt. You’re a good little pony... right, Dash?”
When Dash started to move back again, Lightning took another abrupt step foward, making her jump a bit.
“I’m not finished! You’re going to sign that letter with your name and leave it in Spitfire’s inbox without going in to talk to her, because you're also a coward and you can't bear to face the mares you cheated to further your aborted career. Then you’re going to pack up your things, fly away, and never come back here. And you’re going to do all of it without talking to anypony at all. In fact, you’re never going to even go to another Wonderbolts show again. And if you do anything I don’t want you to, I’ll kill all your friends, Dash. So you’d better do what I want you to do.”
Lightning’s grotesque smile only grew wider when she saw how badly she had hurt Rainbow Dash. The cerulean mare looked heartbroken by the combined betrayal, threats to her friends, and the fact that she would never have a chance to realize her dream. It made Lightning want to laugh.
Well, she thought jovially to herself as she led the fidgeting Dash out from behind the pipes a moment later, it’s my dream, too. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, in order to get what you need.
She was still smiling.
