Rainbow Dash reached for the sun.
The pegasus shot upwards, wings whirring in a blur, carrying her higher and higher into the cerulean blue sky. Ponyville fell away below her, in moments going to a size she could cover with one hoof. Dash grinned. There was nothing better than this. The wind ruffling her coat and mane, the air both pushing at her and giving her lift, and the sun as bright and beautiful as the one who raised it every morning. Even the slipstream ruffling her muzzle and between her teeth felt, well, awesome.
One thing that Rainbow Dash was yet to conquer, however, was gravity. She was not lighter than air, after all. Twilight Sparkle would use complicated mathematics to explain lift coefficients and thrust-to-weight ratios, but all that Dash knew was that she could not go straight up forever. What came up sooner or later must fall. Dash felt her speed fall off; she knew she could go higher if she strained herself, but this was just for fun and there was no reason to push it. A moment before she would've stopped in a hover, Dash let gravity take over, curved over on one wing, and dropped over in a slow stall. She folded her wings back and dived, letting her speed build higher and higher. Now the ground rushed up at Dash, but she felt no fear. To onlookers—and as usual, she had attracted plenty—it looked as if Dash was in a suicidal power dive, but she was in full control. She chose her moment, almost unconsciously, let her wings out a little to slow her down, and pulled out of the dive with fifty feet to spare.
Now Dash roared over the ground so low her passage rippled the grass and blew away dandelions. She passed the crowd of onlookers, sending a quick wave to Pinkie Pie, who jumped up in down, and Fluttershy, who could barely watch. Her attention, however, was on a orange pegasus filly: Scootaloo sat in wide-eyed wonder as her idol flashed past. Dash threw in a barrel roll for Scootaloo's entertainment and her own, then kicked upwards again. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw Scootaloo leap into the air in a vain attempt to follow her, but her stubby, undeveloped wings were still too small to give her more than a long hop. She's getting there, though, Dash thought happily. Her protégé was working hard every day, and as soon as her wings caught up to her ambition, Scootaloo was going to be hard to beat. For everyone but Rainbow Dash, of course, but some things were a given
As she headed skyward again, Dash knew she was more or less just wasting time. She wasn't really trying to put on an airshow or impress Scootaloo, though that was a pleasant bonus. She was actually supposed to be training Twilight Sparkle, who was uncharacteristically late.
"Dammit," Twilight Sparkle growled below earshot. She had overslept, which almost never happened—except when certain friends that would remain unnamed, like Pinkie Pie, kept her up most of the night with a slumber party. Of course Pinkie was up with the dawn, hopping out of the library in search of muffins and sugar, waking up Twilight when she accidentally slammed the door behind her. After only five hours of so-called rest, Twilight noticed she was running late for her thrice-weekly flight training session with Rainbow Dash…who was not the easiest of taskmasters.
Flying came natural to pegasi. It did not, however, come so easily to alicorns, unless they had centuries of practice, like Princesses Celestia and Luna, or tended towards perfection, like Princess Cadence. Twilight had neither trait, but she had a willpower borne of years of fanatical studying. Twilight found that all the books and studying she could do did not prepare her for actual flight. Certainly she had wowed the crowd at Canterlot on her coronation, flying upwards and doing loop-de-loops, but the crowd had not seen her nearly crash into the mountains at high speed, or fall flailing nearly to her death before she was rescued by Rainbow Dash and Luna. Nor did the crowd see her desperately trying to learn how to control her wings, or do anything more complicated than hover and fly in straight lines. Even that required concentration, whereas pegasi like Dash could do it as easily as walking—more easily, it seemed. Derpy Hooves was a better flyer than Twilight, even if she seemed incredibly random.
Making things immeasurably worse was that Twilight's newly acquired wings seemed to have a mind of their own. She was trotting down the streets of Ponyville, headed for the glen near Fluttershy's home where they practiced, and instead of a good steady pace that would allow her to make up the time lost, Twilight found her hooves leaving the ground until she would simply stop in place, hovering aimlessly as her wings decided it would be faster to fly than trot. This was worse than her wings suddenly deploying in sleep or at virtually any other time they wished, eliciting gales of laughter from Rainbow Dash, who mercilessly kidded her about having 'wingboners,' whatever the hay that meant.
Twilight saw Dash climbing steadily upwards, then roll over and dive for the ground. Well, she thought morosely, at least Dashie's having fun.
Rainbow Dash knew she was pulling out of the dive a fraction late; she hoped to level out twenty feet or so above ground, but it was more like five. Easy, Dash, she admonished herself, let's not fly into the ground. That won't look too good. Still, making a high-speed pass at five feet was, she estimated, about fifty percent cooler than twenty. The ground flashed beneath her; behind her was a trail of loose grass, blown into the air by her slipstream. Dash left a trail across the ground. She thought about pulling up a bit, then grinned to herself. No, this was too fun. In fact, maybe she should drop to two feet—
Suddenly, Scootaloo was directly in her path.
Both filly and adult pegasi had made a mistake: Rainbow Dash was too low and too fast, and Scootaloo, in her exuberance, trotted forward to get a better look at her idol. Dash was presented with a decision to be made in half a second: continue forward and collide with Scootaloo, or try and turn.
Dash exerted every muscle in her wings and body to throw herself to one side. At the velocity she was traveling, she still should have blindsided Scootaloo, but somehow, through magic, fate, or sheer determination, the most the filly got was a faceful of grass and blown off her hooves by the shock of Dash's passing. Dash's left wing brushed the ground and three blue feathers flew off, but she made the turn. Did it! Dash thought with a smile. That was something, a high-speed, low level turn. Let's see Spitfire do that—
Then Dash saw the tree rushing to meet her. Her turn had taken her directly towards an outlying grove of the Everfree Forest.
There was no time, but Dash tried to make an even tighter turn. She failed. Dash felt branches slash at her legs and another hit her hard in the chest, before the main trunk blotted out her vision. Her last thought was This is going to be hard on Scoot.
Twilight was nearly at the glade when she heard a collective gasp turn into a cheer, then turn into screams of horror. She picked up speed, this time able to get her wings under control, fold them back against her body, and begin running. She saw a crowd of ponies running towards a line of trees, and rapidly caught up to them. The crowd slowed, then stopped, and Twilight forced her way through.
The first thing she saw was the broken tree. Something had hit it head on at high velocity, enough to partially snap it in half. Then she looked down and saw Rainbow Dash.
Dash lay on the ground, not moving. Pinkie Pie was already at her side, but Pinkie had stopped, unsure of what to do. Twilight saw blood streaming from Dash's mane, then it appeared at her mouth. Her legs twitched in uncontrollable spasms, her breathing was rapid and labored. Pinkie glanced up at Twilight. "What…what's going on?"
Twilight's brain shifted into automatic. She was not a nurse, but she had read enough books to catalog Dash's injuries: she's got a concussion, maybe a fractured skull, and one of her lungs has collapsed. Her left wing is broken and she's got a few cuts and bruises, but those aren't dangerous. We need to get her to a hospital now, but we can't move her in case her back is injured.
Twilight heard Fluttershy scream, the loudest she'd ever heard her friend do anything. "Pinkie," Twilight ordered, "get Fluttershy out of here!" From her tone, Fluttershy was on the verge of utter panic, and it would give Pinkie something to do. Pinkie nodded once and quickly got between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Twilight spotted Derpy Hooves in the crowd. Derpy might not be the brightest crayon in the box, but she was surprisingly fast. "Derpy! Get Dr. Stable! Now!" Stung into action, Derpy flew off towards Ponyville General Hospital nearly as fast as Rainbow Dash herself.
Twilight bent down to her friend. "Dash! Rainbow Dash! Are you all right?" She noticed that Dash's eyes were half-open, blank, one of them clouded over. She did not know what that meant, but it couldn't be good. "Speak to me, Dashie. Please." There was no response. Think, Twilight! she yelled at herself. There must be something I can do. She reached forward a hoof, but then drew it back, knowing she couldn't move Dash, not in her condition; it could make things worse. A healing spell, Twilight thought. She only knew the basics, but she could at least try. Twilight closed her eyes, concentrated, and her horn glowed with magical energy. She risked a squint, but other than straightening Dash's wing slightly, the spell wasn't doing much. Dash's breathing was becoming labored. Twilight felt her eyes filling with tears and concentrated all the harder.
Rainbow Dash was dying before her eyes.
"Princess Twilight!" Twilight turned and saw Dr. Stable, along with two nurses. One of them, a stallion nearly as burly as Big Macintosh, pushed a gurney in front of him.
"Doctor," Twilight said rapidly, "I think Rainbow Dash has a concussion, maybe a fractured skull—"
She was gently but firmly pushed aside. Stable knelt down and ran a quick, professional eye over the injured pegasus. He gave a slight nod to the female nurse, a unicorn, who used her magic to levitate Dash onto the gurney. Twilight stepped in to help, using her own magic to strap Dash firmly down. The stallion was then off, charging down the main road to Ponyville's hospital as fast as was safe to travel. "Doctor," Twilight asked, "will she be all right?"
"I don't know yet, Highness. Please excuse me." Stable ran off, but not before Twilight noticed that the doctor's face was a blank. That told her the situation was quite serious. Pinkie Pie, consoling a near-hysterical Fluttershy, glanced up at her, a look of terror on her face. Twilight trotted over. Softly, she said, "Fluttershy? Can you make sure Scootaloo gets home all right?" She motioned towards the filly, who sat alone in the field, in shock. Fluttershy looked over, nodded, dried her tears with a swipe of a hoof, and walked over to Scootaloo. "Pinkie Pie, find Applejack and Rarity and let them know what happened."
"Okie dokie," Pinkie replied. "Where are you going?"
"To find Spike. I need to get hold of Princess Celestia, now. I think we're going to need her magic."
"Okay. I'm on it." Pinkie ran off towards the Carousel Boutique. Derpy hovered next to her. "I'll find Applejack," the pegasus said. She hesitated. "Will it be okay, Twilight Sparkle?"
Twilight smiled. "It'll be fine, Derpy. Thanks." It would have to be. It had always been. As Derpy flew off, Twilight gathered her own wings and headed towards the library.