Twilight looked around as they went deeper into the structure, noticing how everypony was giving her group a wide berth. She had supposed that, between an alicorn and a massive stallion, most ponies would want to keep their distance. Especially now since the story of what Celestia had done to those two colts back at the bar was starting to get around.

"We don't usually see magic like that 'round these parts," Big Macintosh, or Big Mac as he preferred to be called, was explaining, "Most folks here are downright suspicious of it."

At a rear booth, they encountered a cyan-blue pegasus mare with a mane and tail that sported all of the colors of the rainbow. She displayed the openness of the supremely confident-or the insanely reckless; Twilight felt that those two adjectives were pretty much the same anyway.

Big Macintosh, whispered something into her ear, and she shot up right into Celestia's face.

"Omigosh omigosh omigosh! You're that pony that I've been hearing about! That stunt you pulled with those colts? Priceless!" She spoke a mile a minute and it was all Twilight could do to keep track of it all. Big Mac cleared his throat.

"Oh, right," she calmed down and settled back into her booth while Twilight and Celestia joined her. "The name's Rainbow Dash, best flyer in all of the galaxy. And I hear you're looking for a ship to Aldermare."

"That's right, if it's on a fast ship." Celestia told him.

"Fast ship? You mean you've never even heard of the Sonic Rainboom?"

Celestia appeared to be amused. "I'm afraid I haven't."

"It's the ship that made the Corral Run in ten. Parsecs. Flat." Rainbow stated with flourish.

Twilight spoke up. "Wait a minute: a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. How can you call yourself a starship captain without knowing that?" With everypony looking at her she continued, "Also, the Corral Run is 18 parsecs long. There's no possible way you could've done it in ten."

Rainbow stuttered, "Yeah? Well…do you want your ship or not?"

"Yes!" Celestia said quickly before Twilight could say anymore to alienate their best shot to Aldermare. Giving her a stern look, she continued, "We only have passengers. Myself, Twilight, a pegasus Fluttershy, her pet rabbit Angel-and no questions asked."

"No questions, huh?" Rainbow smirked. "This isn't some kinda local trouble is it?"

"Let's just say we'd like to avoid any…complications with the Galactic Empire." Celestia replied easily.

"Hey, no problem! I am the number one flyer in the galaxy, no matter what anypony says." She gave a sideways glance at Twilight before continuing, "Still, it'll cost you extra: ten thousand, in advance, with no questions asked."

"Ten thousand bits!" Twilight stammered, "We might be able to find our own ship for that!"

"Not as good as my ship," Rainbow leaned over the table towards her, "and you wouldn't get its awesome crew. You think you could fly it?" Twilight looked down at her hooves. No, she thought, she probably couldn't. She'd read about piloting, of course, but she didn't think her book knowledge of the subject would get them all safely to Aldermare.

"Unfortunately," Celestia explained, "we haven't that much money now. But we can pay you two thousand now…" She leaned right up to Rainbow Dash's ear, "and fifteen thousand more when we get to Aldermare." Rainbow's jaw dropped.

"Seventeen thousand bits…" Rainbow Dash stared in awe as Celestia smiled and nodded in affirmation. "This is going to be so awesome!" She flew up to the ceiling and started darting around in her excitement.

"You ladies have yourself a first class ride to Aldermare! Meet me in Docking Bay 94 in about an hour!" Rainbow Dash lived up to her name as she shot out of the room.

"Is she always like this, Big Macintosh?" Twilight inquired.

"Eeyup," was the reply as Big Mac trotted out the door after his captain.

---

Twilight squinted as she stepped back out into Tolfetooine's blistering twin suns. When her pupils contracted enough she was able to make out Fluttershy and Angel standing under an awning not twenty paces from where they left them.

"Oh, hello," Fluttershy greeted her, "Did you two get us a ship?"

"I guess so," Twilight answered uncertainly; she still didn't quite trust their safety in the hooves of somepony who didn't know their units of distance from units of time. "We're to meet a pegasus named Rainbow Dash in Docking Bay 94 in about forty five minutes."

"Before we do, however, we're going to have to come up with two thousand bits," Celly informed the group, having now finished transforming back into her disguise. "We'll have to sell your speeder."

"Sure," Twilight replied earnestly, "I don't think I'll need it anymore."

"We'll also need to sell those books in your library." Celly continued.

"WHAT?" Twilight spun around in shock to face Celly. "What am I supposed to do without my books? Even the fastest ships take hours to get from here to any planet worth going to; what will I read on the way?" Twilight made a face which looked like a filly that had just had her favorite toy snatched away.

"Twilight, don't you think this is a worthy sacrifice for getting the information we have on the Great Sphere to Aldermare?" Celly asked simply. Twilight dejectedly looked away in silent acceptance.

Celly pressed on, "If we can bring any of them along, we will. But you will have to choose which ones you want to keep the most. Is that fair?" Twilight nodded, but didn't look any happier at the prospect. "Alright, let's go find a pawn shop," Celly sighed as everypony climbed into the landspeeder for the final time, "We'll be there and back with plenty of time to make better acquaintances with our new friends."

---

Rainbow Dash and Big Mac were idly trotting along one of the hallways in the docking complex towards Docking Bay 94, and their next job.

"This job could save our necks," Rainbow was excitedly telling her partner, "Seventeen thousand bits! They've gotta be desperate to get out of here; I know I am."

"Why? Got somewhere to be?"

Rainbow quickly looked forward. Standing in their path was a griffon with her wings spread, standing up to almost Big Mac's height, and barring passage to the docking bays beyond. Rainbow Dash knew that, while she could probably take the half-eagle-half-lion creature in open air, she had no chance in the cramped confines of the hallway they found themselves in.

"Hey Gilda," Dash said slowly, nudging Big Mac to continue on to the ship, "What's up?"

"You know perfectly well what's up!" the griffon snapped, "The boss man wants his money, and I'm here to collect." What she didn't say was there were other reasons as well.

"Hey cool! I was just on my way to see him now," Rainbow lied, "You can tell him that I've got that money-."

"Yeah right, that's what you said yesterday-and every other day this past month! He's getting really tired of you ducking him, Dash!" Gilda sneered at her.

"Is that so? How come short-stuff can't come to me and say so himself?" Rainbow retorted, trying to keep the conversation going.

"We both have our reasons," Gilda replied, looking away.

"Gilda, I..." muttered Rainbow, knowing full well what Gilda's reasons must have been.

"Save it!" Gilda was rapidly losing her patience with the pegasus. "How about I take that money now? Unless that's another one of your lame lies."

"I, uh, don't actually have it on me, sorry," admitted Rainbow Dash, shifting her weight to one side.

Gilda smirked as she slowly advanced on Rainbow Dash. "That's okay, I'll just take you instead."

"Heh, you'll have to catch me first!" Rainbow shot down the hallway past Gilda as fast as she dared to fly indoors.

"You're not ditching me this time," growled Gilda as she took off after the rainbow colored blur.

---

Docking Bay 94 was no different from any of the ninety three docking bays before it. It consisted mostly of an entrance ramp and an enormous pit gouged into the rocky soil. This provided clearance for the effects of the various types of antigrav and sublight drives which propelled all spacecraft free of the gravitational field of the planet.

The basics of space travel were simple enough, thought Twilight idly. Supralight travel could only take place once the ship had cleared the gravitational well of the planet, hence the necessity of sublight engines to get the ship past that threshold.

The ship she now beheld, however, barely looked like it could hold its shape. The ellipsoid that made up the hull looked to be made of various bits and pieces salvaged from other vehicles which had met untimely ends and then thrown in a blender with every color of paint imaginable. The very idea that this ship would be their transport to Aldermare would've had Twilight laughing at the absurdity at any other time.

"We're travelling to Aldermare in, this?" Twilight couldn't help but exclaim.

"Eeyup," Big Mac replied as he walked out of the entryway.

"I think it's, nice," Fluttershy offered as Angel rode in her mane.

Twilight rolled her eyes as she continued her slow march towards the entrance where Big Mac was standing. After a few seconds of silence, she realized something was missing. Rather somepony was missing.

"So, where is 'the fastest flier in all of the galaxy'?" asked Twilight, not without sarcasm.

To answer her question, a rainbow color blur burst in from the hallway they had just exited. It collided with the lavender mare, knocking the wind out of her while sliding to a complete stop, revealing itself to be Rainbow Dash.

"Sorry," Rainbow apologized. She sat up and looked around; smiling as she realized that everypony was already present. "Okay, change of plans: we're leaving now," she declared before bolting up the ramp into her spacecraft, followed quickly by Big Mac.

Before Twilight could protest, another shape appeared in the doorway out of the docking bay. An angry griffon was shortly followed by four ponies, all wielding weapons of various types.

"Take 'em down!" shouted the griffon as she sighted down the barrel of her own rifle, taking advantage of her claws.

The ponies started firing just as Twilight had risen to her hooves; fortunately for her ponies were notoriously terrible shots, mainly due to having no easy way to hold a gun. The griffon had no such impedance, however, and fired a shot at her. Twilight opened her mouth to scream, but a bright yellow barrier intercepted the lethal lance before it reached her before fading.

"Run!" shouted Celly behind her. Twilight didn't need to be told again as she galloped up the ramp behind Fluttershy. Once inside, she followed the tail of the aptly named Rainbow Dash to the cockpit.

"What was that?" Twilight asked panicking.

"One of my biggest mistakes," replied Rainbow Dash sourly before turning back to Twilight. "Sit down and get comfortable, you're in for one bumpy ride."

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed with Dash's assessment as he deftly worked his hooves over the controls. As Twilight sat down in the seat behind him, a rumble sounded from the rear of the ship as the engines came to life; the Sonic Rainboom began to lift and rotate in the air as Big Mac steered the small freighter out of the dock and over the city, with the ponies on the ground still firing at it futilely. Just as she finished strapping herself in, Twilight finally noticed her pilot's cutie mark: a cloud sporting a red, yellow, and blue lightning bolt.

"Uh," she meekly asked, "would now be a good time to mention that I've never actually flown bef-" Her sentence was cut off as Rainbow Dash slammed the throttle all the way open; she was flattened into her seat back as the Sonic Rainboom shot skyward, its modified engines leaving their own rainbow in their wake.

---

Author's Notes:

All characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic are all owned by Hasbro, Inc.

Original story Star Wars: A New Hope by George Lucas

Hooray for Rainbow Dash and her Amazing Technicolor Dream Ship!