It was a beautiful day in Equestria, well relatively speaking, since Rainbow Dash, Ponyville’s second best reader and twenty-second best weather pony, had actually decided to do some work today. Dash always thought it was weird that she was twenty-second best when there was only twenty other pegasus on the weather team. Her boss said something about her being the worst worker she has ever had the misfortune to be in charge of and that she was so useless that a mud pony could do her job better.
“But how can Earth Ponies move the weather if they don’t have any wings?” asked the confused rainbow pony, before being unceremoniously thrown out the door to a chorus of colorful curses, guttural grunts, and troubling threats.
Dash strained her mind with how an earth pony would clear clouds, but couldn’t come up with an answer.
“Oh, I know who would know this” said Dash out loud to no one in particular, “Pinkie Pie!”
And with that Dash flew off towards Sugar Cube Corner, satisfied with the solid thirty minutes of work behind her and sure that she could finish the other seven and a half hours later.
“What do…mph...mean she’s not…nom…here?” Rainbow asked between bites of cupcakes.
She had arrived at Sugar Cube Corner the same way she always arrived, a crash landing through Pinkie’s bedroom window on the second floor. Her crash had become so predictable that there was already a mattress in place. Well actually the mattress wasn’t really just for her, Pinkie claimed that she used that mattress when she had special friends over, which made Dash wonder how many other Pegasus crashed into Pinkie’s bedroom. She decided that she would add that to the list of things she would ask Pinkie.
However, the pink psychopath was nowhere to be seen. Dash wandered down stairs to find Mrs. Cupcake hard at work. Before Dash could get a word off, Mrs. Cake brought a plate with a half dozen cupcakes and placed them at the table by Dash.
“So I take it you had a good time last night?” said Mrs. Cake awkwardly, still not entirely comfortable with strangers wandering down from the second floor every so often. At least it was just Dash this time; although she was still trying to decide if that made it better or worse.
“Well yea, I guess” answered Dash. All she had really done is read a story and then went to bed. It was a good story, Dash thought, but how did Mrs. Cake know she had read a good story last night? Well obviously Ponyville’s second best reader would have just read a good story. Dash, satisfied with this answer, moved on to why she was really here, only to find Pinkie had already left earlier in the day. “Well where did she go?” asked Dash after she finished her last cupcake, “To go pull more pranks or something?”
“She didn’t say anything about pranking...” replied a suddenly very paranoid Mrs. Cake. The last ‘prank’ Pinkie pulled involved replacing all of her maple syrup with a very strong acid. Luckily it burned through the plate before she had taken a bite. “She said she was going to visit ‘yellow one’. I don’t I know who that is, is it someone who just moved to town?”
However, before she could get an answer, Dash had already left.
As Dash approached Fluttershy’s cottage, she began to wonder why Pinkie would come here. Maybe Pinkie wanted to read another story with Dash! When Dash first suggested to Pinkie that she should read a story with her, Pinkie said she couldn’t do it in Dash’s cloud house because she would fall.
“We can use the Yellow One’s house, yes. Pinkie knows she has a good room for reading” said Pinkie.
“Oh cool, so she gave you permission?” asked Dash.
“Er, Yes? Yes.” Replied Pinkie.
Dash entered the cottage, the door being unlocked as usual (“It’s not like I have anything worth taking” Fluttershy had once explained). It wasn’t long before she heard Pinkie’s voice coming from her reading room.
“Ok once again. On 3…1, 3 go!”
Suddenly the air filled with the deep sound of a Bass and the rhythmic thumps of drums. Dash walked into the reading room to find Pinkie on Bass and a very tired looking Fluttershy with drum sticks glued to her hooves. Once Pinkie noticed Dash, she stopped playing.
“Um, Pinkie, can we take a break now? I’ve been here for two days and I haven’t gotten to eat any-“ Fluttershy started.
“Oh my gosh!” interrupted Dash “You’re starting a band Pinkie?”
“Well it’s not really much of a band but, Yes! Yes.” said Pinkie, “It is called Flitter.”
“That’s so cool. Can we do a song?” asked Dash
“Er, yes, Pinkie supposes we can.”
“Not another song…” complained Fluttershy.
But it was too late, Dash has already strapped on a guitar that Pinkie had pulled from hammerspace. With “1, 2, 3” they were off, falling into a steady rhythm that would make any garage band proud. They were going smoothly for a while when suddenly a feeling overtook Rainbow Dash: she needed to sing. But what would she sing? What deep, moving thoughts could she put into words that would swell the emotions of everyone who heard them.
“So I went to the store the other day because I really needed some milk because I was making a cake for my friend Pinkie Pie” started Dash before launching into a full story about milk, jerk cows, strange sales, and cake. As if in sync with each other, Pinkie and Dash (oh and the yellow one), broke into a makeshift chorus together with Dash singing “Two for One!”
As they continued to play, Pinkie looked over to Dash with a confused look on her face. “Dash, are you just telling me a story, a not very good story, are you just making it up as you go?”
Dash, however, was lost in deep intricacies of her mind and had moved onto the next part “You know what I love? I love smoothies.” And on she went; the components, the taste, the straws, the store, and that bitch Cherry Berry, before breaking back into the chorus.
However, mental stimulation and Dash had never had a healthy relationship. Every time Dash found herself doing something that challenged her to think hard, she would just get bored. So despite being the one to ask to play, Dash found herself getting bored now. She thought the chorus was fun, but thinking up the new parts in-between choruses was hard. At first she thought that rhyming would make it easier, but that just made it worse because sounds are hard, and then she just started thinking about smoothies again. So she tried another verse, about cars. She had never actually seen a car before, and didn’t really know what they were about, but she knew she would really like them. And that a sale of them would make them more awesome! But once Dash ran out of things she knew about cars, she just gave up and went back to the chorus.
But that was when Dash got her best idea yet. “Pinkie, you should give it a try!” said Dash suddenly.
Pinkie, who had been in the middle of complaining, quickly responded “What? No, no, no, no.”
“Oh come on, you’ll love it.”
“Noo, no, yes.”
“You’ll have a great time.”
“You know what, yes, ok. Let’s do it.”
“Really?”
“I don’t want to.” Interjected Fluttershy
“Yes!” overruled Pinkie. “Let’s do it, here we go:
There once was a pony
Who was really fast,
And I think that her name
Was Rainbow Dash.
One day,
She sang a song about stuff.
And then she died.
The end.”
“....I like that story” said Dash, who had had enough music for the day and took off with Pinkie who had a new prank in mind using some paint called Agent Orange.
“Wait, Pinkie, you said you’d get the glue off when we finished” whimpered Fluttershy.
“Hello?”
