Chapter Text
Applejack had been inside Canterlot High for six minutes when she accepted that the building had been designed as a punishment.
Every hallway forked into two more hallways. Stairwells went sideways. Room numbers jumped from 108 to 247 without explanation or apology, and the map printed on the back of her schedule appeared to describe a completely different school, possibly in a different country.
She stopped beneath a banner that read WELCOME BACK WONDERCOLTS and turned the paper ninety degrees.
It became less helpful.
She had taken the 6:15 bus from Sweet Apple Acres. Granny Smith had tried to make a full breakfast, but AJ waved her off and ate a peanut butter sandwich standing up in the kitchen while Apple Bloom drew a sun on the brown paper lunch bag. Big Mac had driven her to the bus stop without saying more than two words, which for Big Mac was practically a monologue.
First day. New school. Couldn't be late.
She was now eleven minutes late.
The hallway she had wandered into was lined with trophy cases. Most of the trophies were for soccer. A few for track and field. One entire glass case was dedicated to someone named Spitfire, which seemed like a lot for a high school student, but Canterlot High clearly had opinions about what deserved wall space.
That was when she noticed the girl.
She was sitting on top of the last trophy case. Her legs swung over the edge, one sneaker braced against the glass, the other dangling freely. She had hair in six colors, which should have looked ridiculous and somehow looked intentional. She was chewing on the cap of a pen and staring out the window toward the athletic field with the concentration of someone watching a final she had money on.
She had not noticed Applejack.
"Excuse me."
The girl glanced down.
"I'm lookin' for room two-sixteen."
The girl pointed with the chewed pen. "Down the hall, take a left at the music room, up one floor, then left again."
"That sounds like the third floor."
"It's the second floor. The building's weird."
At least they agreed on something.
Applejack adjusted her bag strap. The girl's attention had already drifted back to the field. Outside, someone blew a whistle. The girl's foot stopped swinging.
"Thanks," Applejack said. "I'm Applejack, by the way."
"Rainbow Dash."
She said it the way a person might state the time. Information delivered, transaction complete.
"Nice to meet you, Rainbow Dash."
"Yeah."
A group of students jogged onto the field below. One of them sent a soccer ball across the grass in a clean arc. Rainbow tracked it with her whole body, leaning forward on the case.
Applejack waited another second.
Rainbow did not look back.
She continued down the hall and decided that Rainbow Dash was either remarkably rude or genuinely unaware that conversations traditionally involved more than one participant.
The room turned out to be fifty feet from where she had started.
The teacher paused mid-sentence as Applejack entered. Twenty-odd faces turned.
"Ah. You must be our new student."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Class, this is Applejack. She's transferred from Whitetail. Why don't you tell us a little about yourself?"
Applejack looked over the room.
A girl near the middle had purple curls and had somehow turned the school uniform into something that belonged in a window display. She sat with her ankles crossed and her chin resting on one hand, watching Applejack with polite curiosity.
A pink-haired girl near the back was already waving as though they were old friends who had arranged to meet. She appeared to have an entire bakery's worth of frosting on her fingertips.
Beside her, a girl with pale yellow hair and a green clip smiled gently and then looked away the instant Applejack noticed.
And near the windows, slouched in her seat with a pencil spinning between her fingers, was Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow was not looking at her.
Of course.
"My family runs Sweet Apple Acres," Applejack said. "I help out there after school. I've got a younger sister, an older brother, and a grandmother who'll feed anyone who stands still long enough."
The pink-haired girl raised her hand.
"What kind of food?"
The teacher sighed. "Pinkie Pie."
"It's an important question!"
Applejack laughed. "Mostly apple-related."
Pinkie gasped as though this was the most exciting thing she had heard in her life, which, given the frosting and the energy, might have been true for approximately three seconds before something else took over.
The teacher pointed Applejack to an empty desk.
It was beside Rainbow Dash.
Applejack sat down. Rainbow's pencil continued its rotation.
"Found the room," Rainbow murmured.
"No thanks to your directions."
"My directions were perfect. You went the wrong way."
"I went exactly the way you pointed."
"I point abstractly."
Applejack stared at her.
Rainbow's mouth twitched. She did not look up from the pencil.
For the next forty minutes, Rainbow wrote three words in her notebook. Applejack counted.
The cafeteria was arranged with all the subtlety of a territory dispute.
Athletes held the two tables nearest the windows. Drama students had claimed the corner beside the stage doors. Musicians sat near the vending machines. A cluster of students Applejack couldn't categorize occupied a round table in the center, apparently united by the shared experience of not fitting elsewhere.
Back home, lunch had been one long wooden table where you sat wherever there was room.
Here, a person apparently needed either a preexisting alliance or a detailed understanding of social geography.
"Applejack! Applejack! Over here!"
Pinkie Pie waved both arms from across the room. The girl with the purple curls sat beside her, wincing slightly at the volume. Fluttershy was on Pinkie's other side, half-hidden behind a juice box.
Applejack started toward them.
She got four steps before the lunch line deposited Rainbow Dash directly in her path.
Rainbow had two sandwiches, a carton of milk, and an apple. She examined the apple, frowned, and put it back.
Applejack raised an eyebrow.
"What?" Rainbow said.
"Nothing."
"It was bruised."
"You looked at it for half a second."
"I have good eyes."
Applejack selected the same apple. "Seems fine to me."
"You run an apple farm. Shouldn't your standards be higher?"
Applejack bit into it. It was mealy and tasteless. She chewed slowly, maintaining eye contact.
"Little bruised," she admitted.
Rainbow grinned. It rearranged her entire face into something unexpectedly warm, and Applejack almost forgot how irritating the last six minutes had been.
Almost.
"You got somewhere you usually sit?" Applejack asked.
Rainbow glanced toward the athletes' tables. The fiery-haired girl from the field was there, talking to another player.
Rainbow watched for a beat too long.
"Not really," she said.
Applejack noted this.
"Well, you can sit with me."
Rainbow blinked. Something unguarded crossed her face. It lasted about a second.
"With you?"
"Unless you've got more fashion advice stored up. In which case I might reconsider."
Rainbow had told her to change her hat that morning. Applejack had chosen not to forget this.
"I was being helpful," Rainbow said.
"And I'm bein' helpful now. You comin' or not?"
Rainbow shifted her tray. "Fine."
They took four steps toward Pinkie's table.
"Rainbow Dash!"
The fiery-haired girl was standing beside the athletes' table. Up close, she carried herself the way a person did when rooms routinely rearranged themselves around her.
"You're trying out this afternoon, right?"
Rainbow's entire posture changed. Her shoulders went back. Her chin lifted. The bored confidence hardened into something pointed and eager.
"Yeah. Definitely."
"Good. I've seen you at the park." The older girl gave her an appraising look. "You've got speed."
Rainbow looked as though someone had pinned a medal to her chest.
"You have?"
"Hard to miss someone attempting bicycle kicks against a chain-link fence."
"That was one time."
"Six."
"Did any of them go in?"
"Two."
"Three."
The older girl smiled slightly. "Tryouts are at four. Don't be late."
"I won't."
"And Dash? Being fast won't matter if you can't work with the team."
Something in Rainbow's expression shifted. A crack, barely visible.
She nodded. "Got it, Spitfire."
Spitfire returned to her table. Rainbow stood still, watching her go.
"Rainbow?"
"Huh?"
"You comin'?"
Rainbow looked at Applejack. Then at Spitfire's table. Then back at Applejack.
The decision happened so openly that it would have been comical if Applejack had not been standing there watching herself lose.
"I should probably go talk to them," Rainbow said. "About tryouts."
Applejack glanced at the athletes' table. None of them appeared to be waiting for Rainbow. Spitfire had already resumed her conversation.
"You said you were sittin' with me."
"I'll catch up. Five minutes."
"Sure."
Rainbow crossed the cafeteria before the word was finished. She slid into the open space at the end of the athletes' table with her shoulders high and began talking before she had even set her tray down.
Applejack continued to Pinkie's table alone.
Pinkie had witnessed the entire thing. Her expression had traveled from delight to sympathetic outrage in under ten seconds.
"That was rude," she announced.
Rarity, the purple-haired girl, winced. "Pinkie."
"What? It was."
Fluttershy gave Applejack a small, worried smile. "I'm sure she didn't mean to be."
Applejack placed her tray on the table. "Doesn't change much."
"Rainbow gets focused," Rarity said carefully. "When that happens, the rest of civilization occasionally stops existing for her."
"Her focus seems to have plenty of room for trophies," Pinkie said. "And pictures of herself near trophies."
Applejack looked toward Rainbow's table. Rainbow was speaking with both hands, describing something complicated. Every few seconds she checked Spitfire's reaction.
She did not look back at Applejack.
"Is she always like that?" Applejack asked.
The three girls exchanged a glance.
"Sometimes less," Fluttershy said quietly.
That sounded more like hope than fact.
Rarity sighed. "Rainbow possesses many admirable qualities. Awareness of other people's feelings has never been her strongest."
Applejack picked up the bruised apple and took another bite.
Still terrible.
The week settled in around Applejack faster than she expected.
She learned the building well enough to stop consulting the map by Wednesday. She discovered that Pinkie Pie knew every student's birthday and at least three things each person was allergic to. Fluttershy volunteered at an animal shelter after school and spoke about rabbits with a seriousness that demanded respect. Rarity could transform any conversation into a consultation on fabric, color theory, or the general failures of the school's interior design.
She also learned that Rainbow Dash did not sit still.
Rainbow tapped her feet during class. She drummed pencils against desks, bounced soccer balls off walls in the hallway, and treated every staircase as an opportunity to race someone who had never agreed to compete. She was loud when excited, louder when challenged, and somehow loudest when attempting to whisper.
Rainbow had made varsity. She announced it to the entire hallway Tuesday morning.
"I made varsity!"
Several students turned. A teacher frowned over his coffee. Someone near the lockers applauded sarcastically.
Rainbow did not care.
She found Applejack at her locker.
"First-year starter."
"Congratulations."
"Spitfire said I've got the fastest sprint time from a new player."
"That's somethin'."
"And I scored four goals during drills."
"You gonna tell me what the rest of the team scored, or would that mess up the story?"
Rainbow grinned. "Less than four."
Applejack shut her locker.
For a second, Rainbow looked confused by the absence of further praise.
"You're not surprised, right?"
"I barely know you."
"You saw me watching practice."
"That proves you can sit on furniture and stare out a window."
Rainbow laughed. Applejack had not been trying to be funny, and the laugh made her feel something she did not want to feel, so she started walking.
Rainbow fell into step beside her as though this had been arranged.
"You should come to our first game."
"Why?"
"Because it'll be awesome."
"Compelling."
"You'll get it when you see me play."
Applejack stopped walking.
Rainbow took another step before noticing and turning back. "What?"
Applejack looked at her. Rainbow seemed genuinely unaware of what she had done the day before. There was no embarrassment in her face. No careful casualness. She had simply moved on, the way a river moves past a stone.
"Nothing," Applejack said.
"You do that a lot."
"Do what?"
"Say 'nothing' when it's obviously something."
Applejack considered, briefly, whether Rainbow Dash deserved the honesty.
"You said you'd catch up at lunch yesterday."
Rainbow's expression went blank.
"You told me five minutes," Applejack said. "You never came back."
"Oh."
There it was. Recognition.
"I got busy."
"I noticed."
"I was talking to the team."
"I noticed that too."
Rainbow shifted her bag. "It was kind of important."
"And the new girl you'd agreed to sit with wasn't."
"That's not what I said."
"Didn't need to say it."
The hallway moved around them. Students on both sides, paying them no attention.
Rainbow crossed her arms. "You're making this a bigger deal than it was."
Applejack felt her temper stir and pushed it down. It was her second day. She was not going to start an argument in a corridor with a girl she barely knew over a cafeteria table.
"You're right," she said. "It ain't a big deal."
Rainbow's shoulders loosened.
Applejack resumed walking.
"It just told me what I needed to know."
Rainbow followed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you had somewhere you wanted to be more. So you went."
"Yeah, but—"
"No harm done, Rainbow."
"You sound like harm was done."
Applejack turned at the classroom door. Rainbow nearly walked into her.
"I'm sayin' I understand you fine."
Something flickered in Rainbow's face. Before Applejack could read it, she went inside.
Rainbow kept appearing anyway.
That was the strange part. Applejack had expected the trophy-case girl to drift away once the novelty of a new student wore off. Instead, Rainbow materialized beside her at least twice a day.
Sometimes she arrived with questions she could have asked anyone.
"Did we have math homework?"
"It's on the board."
"Yeah, but did she actually assign it?"
Sometimes she came to announce things.
"Coach moved me to forward."
"Congratulations."
"You don't know what that means."
"Means you stand closer to the other team's goal."
Rainbow stared. "How do you know that?"
"I have encountered sports before."
Sometimes she simply occupied the space next to Applejack's locker without explanation, leaning against it or walking beside her between classes as though the lunch incident had been erased by the fact that Rainbow no longer thought about it.
Applejack noticed something else too.
Without Spitfire nearby, without an audience or a stage, Rainbow occasionally became almost tolerable. She made sharp observations when she paid attention. She carried Fluttershy's bag without comment when the strap broke on Thursday. She pretended to hate Pinkie's jokes and laughed before anyone else at the table did.
And once, when a senior knocked Applejack's books from her hands and kept walking, Rainbow crossed the hallway in four steps, blocked his path, and brought him back.
"You dropped these," Rainbow told Applejack.
The senior gathered every book. "Sorry," he muttered.
Rainbow nodded once and looked at Applejack as though nothing unusual had happened.
"What?"
Applejack took the books. "Nothin'."
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"The nothing thing."
Applejack smiled. She didn't explain.
Rainbow looked suspicious of that too.
On Friday, the last class was PE.
Rainbow appeared in the gym already changed, bouncing a soccer ball on her knee. Spitfire's praise had given her a glow that lasted the entire week. She walked taller. She spoke louder, which Applejack had not believed possible.
The teacher assigned pairs for fitness tests.
Rainbow moved toward Spitfire.
The teacher intercepted her. "Assigned pairs, Miss Dash."
Rainbow groaned.
"Rainbow Dash and Applejack."
Rainbow stopped groaning.
Applejack pretended she hadn't noticed.
The first test was a short sprint.
Rainbow bounced on her toes at the starting line. "You run?"
"I've been known to."
"Like, seriously?"
"Usually because somethin' needs catching."
"Try to keep up."
The whistle blew.
Rainbow was fast. That much was immediately, painfully clear. She fired off the line like something spring-loaded and built for this exact purpose, her form clean, her stride long. By the first few seconds, she was clearly ahead.
Then Applejack found her rhythm.
Years of carrying feed crates, chasing escaped livestock, and working sunup to sundown across uneven farmland had built something in her legs that did not look like speed but refused to stop. She could not close the gap entirely, but she stayed close, her boots slapping the gym floor in a steady, stubborn beat.
Rainbow crossed the line first.
She turned immediately to check.
Applejack finished less than a second later.
Rainbow stared.
Applejack bent forward, hands on knees, breathing hard. "Well?"
Rainbow's surprise rearranged itself into something bright and hungry.
"Again."
"That was the test."
"Again."
"You won."
"Barely."
"A win's a win."
"You almost caught me."
"Almost ain't caught."
Rainbow stepped closer. Her eyes were sharp. All the posturing had burned away. "You think you could?"
Applejack met her stare. Something in her own chest responded, an old competitive instinct that had been dormant since the county fair back in Whitetail.
"Maybe," she said.
Rainbow grinned. They returned to the starting line without asking.
The teacher blew her whistle. "Girls, we are moving on."
Rainbow kept her eyes on Applejack. "After school."
"I've got chores."
"Tomorrow."
"Still got chores."
"Sunday."
"Family dinner."
Rainbow frowned as though Applejack's life was a personal inconvenience.
Then she snapped her fingers.
"I'll help."
Applejack blinked. "With what?"
"Your chores. Then we race."
"You don't even know what the chores are."
"How hard could farm chores be?"
Applejack stared at her for a long moment.
Rainbow stared back with absolute confidence.
Slowly, Applejack smiled.
Rainbow seemed more worried by the smile than she would have been by anger.
"Tell you what," Applejack said. "You come out to Sweet Apple Acres tomorrow morning. You last till noon without complainin', and I'll race you wherever you want."
"Easy."
"Seven o'clock."
"In the morning?"
"That's when morning starts."
Rainbow hesitated for exactly one second.
"I'll be there."
The teacher blew the whistle again.
They moved to the next station. Rainbow spent the remaining class explaining in detail why she would win. Applejack let her talk.
Walking to the bus stop after school, Pinkie appeared beside her like a person who had been materialized by the universe rather than arrived on foot.
"So," Pinkie said.
"So?"
"Rainbow Dash is going to your farm?"
"She wants to race."
Pinkie nodded sagely. "That's how it starts."
"How what starts?"
"I don't know yet. But I'll let you know when I figure it out."
Pinkie vanished into the crowd before Applejack could respond.
Fluttershy appeared on her other side, quiet as a passing thought. "Be patient with Rainbow."
Applejack looked at her. "Why?"
"She wants people to like her more than she knows how to show it."
The bus pulled up. Fluttershy gave a small wave and drifted toward the parking lot where, presumably, someone kind and gentle was waiting to take her somewhere equally quiet.
Applejack climbed onto the 3:45.
Forty minutes to Sweet Apple Acres. She sat by the window and watched Canterlot shrink behind her. She thought about a girl on a trophy case who gave directions while staring at a field. A girl who left lunches, defended strangers, laughed at jokes she pretended to hate, and asked for a second race before the first one had gone cold.
She thought about Rainbow's face after the sprint. No performance. No swagger. Just focus, stripped bare.
For the first time since transferring to Canterlot High, Applejack was looking forward to Saturday.
She told herself it was because Rainbow Dash was about to learn exactly what farm work meant.
It had nothing to do with the fact that, this time, Rainbow had been the one asking where Applejack would be.
Tomorrow, at seven, Rainbow Dash was coming to her.
Applejack suspected she would be late.
She hoped she would come anyway.