As the sun is nearing the horizon, marking the upcoming end of another day, a certain cyan pegasus blows past one of her best friends at enormous speeds.
"How'd I do?" she shouts over to the lavender alicorn who looks as if she's been tossed around by a tornado.
Letting out a slightly annoyed sigh Twilight responds "Why do you need to know exactly how fast you are, isn't "nearly blow everyone's mane off their head" fast an accurate enough estimate of your speed? Not that Im complaining about it, well I wasn't 2 hours ago, but why do you insist on doing this all day?".
"What, isn't spending time with the fastest flier in equestria and getting to see a days worth of Sonic Rainbooms the most awesome way to spend an afternoon?" Rainbow responds lazily as she now relaxes on a nearby cloud.
"I never said this wasn't fun, I did get plenty of data on how to improve my own flying ability, but don't you think repeating it over and over again is a bit excessive just to determine how fast you are?" Twilight responds as she flies up to the cloud Rainbow is on.
Ignoring everything her friend just said the cyan pegasus responds "I dont think I'll ever get used to you flying. I know you've been an alicorn for 3 years already but it's just so weird. Not that flying is weird, flying is awesome, but in my head you and flying don't go together."
Twilight steps on a nearby cloud only to lose her balance and spend the next half minute trying to straighten out. Finally deciding to answer with "Now that you're done telling me how "weird" it is for me to fly can you tell me why you insisted on doing the same thing nearly the whole day?".
Rainbow rolls over to face Twilight and says "Uh, isn't it obvious? I just wanted to get you out of that library so you could have some fun! And now that Im done flying, lets see how fast you are!". The cyan mare rolls all the way of the cloud and plummets towards the ground before opening her wings just in time to avoid becoming a bloody splattered mess on the ground.
As Twilight clumsily gets down from the cloud to follow her speedy friend, Dash decides to go on ahead and try to see the results on her speed test. She lands near where Twilight has set up her temporary "research base" which she has been using for the past few weeks to study ways to improve her flying, as well as helping Dash out with getting faster. The research base is only a little wooden shed like structure far away from Ponyville, nearing the Everfree forest. Twilight said she might eventually expand it if RD ever wants to get serious about getting faster, but why would she need to, she's already the fastest thing in equestria. She walks in and looks through some of the notebooks on Twilight's desk only to find some sort of complicated looking chart that she definitely does not feel like figuring out at the moment.
RD quickly closes the notebook and puts everything back to how it was and gets out of the small structure. A few seconds later Twilight arrives.
Landing noisily on the ground a few feet away from her friend Twilight begins, "So you mean to tell me that you dragged me all the way out here for the whole day just to make sure I didn't finish that time spell I've been working on for the past week!",Twilight yells at her friend in disbelieve.
"Huh huh huh, uh...just kidding?" RD tries with a nervous laugh.
Twilight just stands there and blinks a few times.
"Ok so here's the real reason why I made you record the results of the same thing over and over again. I wanted to make sure that I was getting my real max speed, no mistakes, so just in case I slowed down on one of the trials I would have multiple others to choose from." Rainbow said, suddenly starting to sound a bit more rational.
"Oh, in that case…" the lavender alicorn is interrupted as suddenly a series of earth shaking explosions knocks both of them to the ground. A yellow streak flies over both of them and crashes somewhere nearby,even further away from ponyville than they are, and the ground shakes yet again.
Both ponies get up relatively quickly, and end up just staring at each other for a little while, both thinking about what just happened before Rainbow spoke up.
"Please tell me we're gonna go check that out." the cyan mare says as a small smile crosses her face at the possibility of some action from whatever that just was.
"I don't know, it might be dangerous. And from the direction it was headed it seems to have landed in the Everfree forest! Now I know that now you're gonna say something about how you're not afraid of a bunch of trees, but if you'd think about it, I GOT TURNED TO STONE BY SNAKE CHICKEN when I went in there! There's no telling what weirder things are in there." Twilight responds while screaming about the part where she got turned to stone.
And as Twilight had predicted Rainbow still reacted by saying "Oh come on Twilight, if we're careful Im sure nothing like that could happen again. Now lets go before someone beats us to it!"
"Oh, fine. But if you get eaten by some undocumented beast dont blame me!" Twilight says realising it was futile to argue Dash once she set her mind on doing something, and in this case that something was going on a possibly suicide mission into the Everfree forest.
Twilight walked slowly, nervously panning the area every few steps to ensure that nothing was sneaking up on them. As an added precaution she also kept a light purple shield up at all times.
"Oh will you hurry up Twilight, when I said we could be carefull this time I didn't meaning inching through here like a snail! If we both all out flew through here nothing would have time to attack us! We could at least walk normally, we have that shield of yours don't we?" an annoyed RD complained as she hovered above Twilight.
In her mind, which was used to speed and saw everything slower than most ponies therefore causing her to seem hugely impatient, it had taken FOREVER to get to where they currently were and it would take FOREVER to get to where they were going!
"Im the one here who got turned to stone, not you. Trust me, it does not feel good. So either take the necessary precautions or we can turn back and head for Ponyville where you can go as fast as you'd like." Twilight stated assertively, tired of her friends complaining.
This officially brought her over the edge. Not that she was angry at Twilight, who was just being her usual egghead self. She would be completely FINE if she just flew through here without Twilight, nothing could do as much as react to her before she was gone.
"Ok, in that case I choose option C, fly into the Everfree, check out whatever crashed here, and meet you back here two minutes later and tell you all about it. Sounds good to me, ready, set, go!" Rainbow takes off before Twilight could protest.
Flying about as quickly as she could in the dense forest she streaked towards the general direction Twilight was taking them earlier. She flew for a good ten minutes straight, a lot of distance, but Twilight did say something about angles and trajectory and blah blah blah and then something about how whatever crashed would be quite far into the forest. Realising something crashing hard enough to shake her off her hooves from such a distance would probably leave some sort of crater, which could be seen from above the trees.
She quickly paused her forward motion and burst upwards through the trees into the...pitch black sky?
A wave of thoughts rushed over her, she had completely forgotten it was getting dark when they began this trip! How was she going to find Twilight again? How was she going to get out of here? In daylight she would be able to use the general position of the sun to guide her way back to at least the right side of the forest, she would normally be able to do something similar with the stars...if it wasn't for the fog that didn't let her see more than 20 feet away.
She knew that the Everfree covered a good 30% of all Equestria, reaching all the way out towards the unexplored areas in the east, the Great Sea, south of the Griffon kingdom. The best option she had right now was to pick a direction and fly, while she had recently eaten was well rested, and well hydrated. But if she flew in the wrong direction, away from Ponyville and deeper into the Everfree, she would not have much of a chance of surviving for very long.
Hovering around through the whole night waiting for the day would not be a very good choice but at this point she considered it, the risk of flying further away from Ponyville was pretty big.
After considering the options she decided that picking a direction and flying would most likely be the best choice. She tried to guess the relative direction she had come from but realised it to be futile as she had absolutely no idea which way that was.
So she had to settle for going with her gut.
Flying for what seemed to be, by her best estimate, around 20 minutes, she knew she had chosen the wrong direction. But which way now? She could be flying parallel to where ponyville is and if she turned she might end up going deeper in. And a night's worth of flying would not be easy to reverse at a situation where she has to stay above the trees to make sure nothing gets to her.
Hovering approximately ten feet above the treetops the rainbow maned mare lets her thoughts wander for a little while.
What was Twilight doing now? Hopefully she hasn't tried to follow her and got lost as well, that wouldn't be good.
Why couldn't her egghead friend be here now? She always had some way of figuring out what to do no matter what. She could probably figure out which way to go from the direction a leaf faced, or how the air smelled or something ridiculous like that.
She mentally cursed herself from making fun of Twilight in her thoughts when if she had listened to her none of this would have happened in the first place.
Deciding that a few minutes of thought where a waste of time she slightly altered her direction and flew as fast as she could that way, so fast on of those air cone things she got before a Sonic Rainboom appeared. Twilight called it a "mach cone" or something like that.*
It felt good to be flying this fast it always did, even when you were stuck in the Everfree forest without a clue of where you're going.
And suddenly she heard a loud boom from somewhere behind her, turning back she saw nothing, that was strange. Tough looking forward she saw a spiky dark creature quite a way in front of her.
"That boom, it sounded exactly like my Sonic Rainboom! But it couldn't have been, Im the only one who can do it!" Rainbow thought in confusion.
The black creature raised its arms up slightly and the whole area of forest around it was obliterated in a massive explosion. For a second a massive, perfect sphere of fire flew up around the creature before a shockwave bent the surrounding trees down to the ground as it passed.
Dash's heart skipped a beat. Everything in her mind was screaming "run" after witnessing this show of power, yet she was paralyzed. Her wings slowed as she decelerated drastically until she was hovering.
The black creature that was still just a spiky blob in the distance landed. She did not know how it was flying in the first place as it did not seem to have any wings. Just before going below the tree line it made a strange downward gesture with its arm that to her best guess seemed to mean it was telling her to land.
What could it possibly want with her? She quickly thought over the giant list of reasons to not land and instead fly the other way, but eventually "if I fly away and that thing follows me I'll get blown up" won the mental battle.
She cautiously landed in the circle of cleared land.
Her mind wandered to what Celestia had said when she mentioned some "unspeakable things" living in the Everfree. Even Celestia seemed hesitant about going in here unless absolutely necessary, could she have encountered this… thing in the past? It sure seemed threatening enough to make a lasting impression.
She was now close enough to get a better look at the creature, it was black all around and seemed to be radiating a dark aura that sucked up any light around it. Yet looking closer it also had what seemed to be a very thin yellow outline to its entire body. It had dark spikes protruding from its head and flowing wildly above his head like a dark flame. It was also wearing shoes and white gloves. But what struck her most about this things appearance where the glowing, white, pupil-less eyes. They were downright die from a heart attack terrifying.
"W...What are you?" she asked loudly with a slightly shaky voice, not knowing where the sudden courage to speak to something that looked like it belonged in Tartarus came from.
Not attempting to make any vocal response the spiked monster only walked closer until it was only perhaps 5 feet away from her.
The two simply stared at each other in silence for a while, white eyes staring into magenta.
"What do you want?" She asked with a more assertive tone, getting braver as it did not seem to make any hostile approach.
The creature tilts its head slightly and gives her a confused look, emerald green pupils flashed in its eyes for a second before going back to glowing white. It suddenly seemed angry at something and it's hands clutched the side of its now lowered head.
Dash had no idea what was going on here. Some sort of spell? Was something messing with the spiked creatures mind? That was her best guess at this point.
Going back to looking as it had a minute ago with no more signs of anger the creature stared blankly at the cyan mare. Suddenly its eyes widened slightly and it rapidly shook its head from side to side.
RD was getting genuinely freaked out at this. Whatever this thing was it was not acting normal, it hadn't answered her questions and now it was doing...whatever it was doing. She sadly thought about how Twilight would most likely know what was happening right now and already know how to fix it. She had gotten very used to Twilight being around to fix any and every problem that involved magic, or that complicated stuff called "science".
"Whats going on here?" she demands.
"I need not explain myself to you." it said in a strange voice that didn't seem possible.. (think a mix between CW Zoom and Flash when they do the vibrating vocal cord thing)
"Well than at least tell me why you wanted me to come down here after you blew this place up!" she yelled, getting annoyed at the situation. First it tells her to land and now its going all "I dont need to tell you nothin".
The creature started smirking, its white eyes giving it a look of pure evil and insanity.
"Fair enough, let's just say I do not enjoy anything that's fast, blue, and with an attitude, and you happen to be a mixture of all of the above." it said with that creepy smirk still on its face.
Rainbow just blinks several times, not knowing how to respond, or even what to think, about what it just said.
"Not specific enough? Alright then, I don't want you to remind me of HIM in any way, shape, or form. I had everything under control for the first time in ages and when you come along and he started trying to take control again." it said suddenly getting serious.
And that one sentence had at least doubled her confusion. It seemed to think she'd know of some "him" and was trying to act like it. She had no idea what this thing was talking about! And what about the "I had everything under control but when you showed up he tried to take control again"? That did NOT in any way sound normal. She was convinced now, she was talking with some kind of insane psychopath that could apparently blow stuff up at will, she had to get out of here and fast.
"Listen whoever or whatever you are, I dont know of this "him" you're talking about and I wasn't trying to act in a certain way to annoy you or something! I wasn't asking for some sort of weird demon riddle, I just wanted to know why you wanted me to come here and you tell me some cryptic stuff about not liking my speed! Can you hear yourself? You sound completely insane!" she yells back at him.
"HOW DARE YOU CALL ME INSANE, YOU PATHETIC, WEAK, MORTAL! IT TOOK A MIND AS ADVANCED AS MY OWN TO STAY SANE WHEN TRAPPED IN THE ENDLESS VOID KNOWN AS HIS SUBCONSCIENCE! YOU WOULDN'T HAVE LASTED A WEEK YET I SURVIVED FOR UNCOUNTABLE YEARS!" The spiked creature screamed in rage in a voice that would put Luna's royal canterlot voice to shame. His eyes glowed a much brighter white and it's dark aura increased in size exponentially as white lightning flew around wildly.
Rainbow quickly backed up as her eyes widened and her pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks. Realising that perhaps calling a seemingly immortal...thing insane might not have been the best word choice. Maybe Twilight was right about her rushing into everything blindly, and she also said that eventually it would get her into trouble…
Seeming to slightly calm down the creature spoke "I tried to talk rationally but you chose to call me insane. I originally intended on letting you live, but that wouldn't be very fun at this point now would it?"
Rainbow took that as her cue to leave,unfolding her wings and taking to the sky she shattered the sound barrier almost instantly, never had she flown this quickly, with so much determination to go faster.
And what she heard next nearly stopped her heart.
"YOU'RE TOO SLOOOWWW!"
She turned around to see glowing white eyes and a psychotic grin...