In the sanctum of his house, Spike loved one thing above all the other things he could do.

Sleep.

Spike slept on his right side as he snored loudly in his sleep, as the first rays of morning flittered through his window. Small wisps of smoke sometimes came out of his nostrils, a fact that would scare his mother into fire-proofing his room years ago.

With a particularly loud snore, Spike rolled over onto his left side and wistfully sighed, dreaming about meeting his girlfriend Gilda again.

BANG BANG BANG!

With an obnoxious grunt, Spike pulled over his pillow on top of his head.

“Go away…” he muttered.

“Spike! C’mon, it’s today! Flight school starts today!” Rainbow Dash yelled from behind the door to his room.

“No, not today…” Spike muttered again. Rainbow Dash let out a loud sigh before kicking the lock in, opening the door. She thanked her luck that dad hadn’t repaired the lock to Spike’s room yet.

She looked back to see Spike sleeping even after the noise. She groaned and walked over to her brother’s bed, nudging his body with no luck.

“Okay Spike, you can’t get angry at me for this,” she said. She grabbed Spike’s right arm and, with a form that took her two summers of self-defense practice, threw her brother over her body and across the room, landing him at a door to his closet.

“OW!” Spike yelled. His body propped up against the door, with his head being the only part of his body that touched the floor. With a pained grunt, he righted himself up, holding a hand to his neck.

“You up now?” Rainbow asked.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks a lot for basically suplexing me!” Spike retorted.

“You’re welcome. Now get ready! We don’t have much time left until we have to fly to school!”

Spike rubbed his head. “You seem really excited to go to school…”

“It’s flight school, Spike! Since you can fly now, you and I can both race each other now in the school competitions! Course, I’ll win every time, but still, FLIGHT SCHOOL!” Rainbow jumped into Spike’s face with a large grin.

Spike stepped back to regain his personal space before moving out of the room, Rainbow following behind. “And what makes you think you’ll win every time?”

“Spike, it’s me. Rainbow Dash! The fastest Pegasus alive! I’ll show them all what I can do, and by the end of flight school, the Wonderbolts will want me to join on the spot!”

“The Wonderbolts will hire you right out of flight school?” Spike asked skeptically.

“Well of course! I’ll have all the friends and flight-mates that I want too!” Rainbow closed her eyes in another large grin.

Spike raised his eyebrow and smirked. “And all the colt-friends you’ll want too, huh?”

Rainbow widened her eyes as she blushed. “Well, I mean, uh… What about you!?” she pointed a hoof at the drake, “Are you gonna try to get any marefriends? Or even just a girlfriend?!”

Spike raised another eyebrow. “I already have Gilda, remember?”

Rainbow sighed. “Yeah, but, she’s gone now, remember?”

“Bu-But she said she’d visit!”

“Right, she’ll visit all the way from the griffon kingdoms, which is like, what, 100 miles away?”

Spike sighed dejectedly. “It’s about 2045 miles…” he muttered. He held his head low as he walked down the stairs of their home, stepping out onto the main living room of the Rainbow mansion. “Where’s mom and dad anyway?”

“They left early for work. Hey,” Rainbow wrapped her foreleg around Spike’s neck, “it’ll be okay. There’s loads of fillies out there that probably can stand you and your morning breath!”

Spike couldn’t help but smile as he raised an eyebrow again. “Well gee, thanks for the encouragement…”

“You’re welcome. And hey, trust me, you can definitely get a marefriend. I mean, I hear Fluttershy is single this time of year…”

Rainbow smiled, but on the inside, she mentally slapped herself repeatedly for the admittedly very stupid segue of raising up the topic of Fluttershy. Because seriously, “this time of year”? As opposed to, what, other times where she actually isn’t alone?!

“Don’t you remember?” Spike asked. “She’s also leaving. She’ll be heading down to the surface to see about getting an apprenticeship in…whatever her cutie mark makes her good at.”

Once again, Rainbow mentally slapped herself. Of course Fluttershy is gone. Well I tried, Shy, you can’t blame me…

“Heh, it’s just like kindergarten, with it only being us two. Except without Missus… uh, what her name was.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, don’t remind me of her any more than I need to remember. But… yeah, I guess we’re on our own then…”

The rest of the morning was silent as the two siblings ate their breakfast lost in their own thoughts. Spike was missing Gilda and Fluttershy, and Rainbow was wondering what life would be like without them.

The silence was deafening, and Spike had enough. “Hey, let’s not dwell on them anymore. They both went on their own, so now we have to too. Didn’t you say you wanted to try out for the hoofball team?”

“Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, I’m gonna try out too! Someone has to make sure you don’t embarrass yourself, or at least pull you out when you do.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Well gee, thanks for the encouragement…”

“Don’t mention it, and hey, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of friends in Flight School!”

After taking a few minutes to clean up the kitchen and grab their backpacks full of school supplies lovingly supplied (emphasis on supplied) by their mother, the duo left the house and flew to where they were told their new school was going to be. They didn’t take the chance to have an impromptu race, as they were a bit loaded down by breakfast, and both of them learned the hard way why you shouldn’t race right after breakfast.

Fluttershy also knew the hard way too. Good thing there was a raincloud nearby, or else she probably would have smelled like half-digested gems for the rest of that day.

“So…” Rainbow began. “Are you gonna keep the necklace on all day? I don’t exactly know the school’s policy on uniforms or attire or whatever sort of clothes, but I don’t think you can wear that inside.”

Spike glanced down at the brooch that Rainbow had gifted him, its vibrant colors of the rainbow shining brightly in the rising sun of the morning. “Eh, I’ll keep it on and see if anyone gets mad at me for it.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “Alright, but don’t lose it, please. I worked hard for the bits to pay for that thing, I don’t wanna have to work anymore like that.” Especially for that stuck-up mare of a jeweler…

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it stays on. Not like we’re gonna be doing so much flying today, at least.”

After a few minutes of easy flying, the pair spotted the building that they assumed was the school. Flying closer, they could see some of their old classmates from their own middle school, along with other colts and fillies they didn’t recognize.

Some of the less familiar pegasi went wide-eyed at the sight of Spike the dragon, but he shrugged it off.

“…Wait,” Spike stopped in the air. “Do we even have our schedules?”

“Uh, I thought mom said you were going to pack them when you woke up?”

“No, I thought mom already packed them…”

The two Rainbow siblings’ eyes went wide as they spun around to grab their backpacks. Opening up and searching around with their hooves and claws, they found that, indeed, they did not have their schedules that included where they need to go right at the start of school.

With panicked eyes, they looked at each other before blasting away from the school back to their house as quick as they could.

After only a couple minutes of rapid flying, the pair came back and went through the front door of the school and scanned their schedules.

“Okay, I’ve got Cloudsdale history in room 110, which according to the map,” Spike panted while he pointed at a map of the school provided on his schedule, “Is right around the corner. I think you have P.E. at room 213, right?”

“Uh, right, but where…”

“Can’t talk, gunna be late, see ya!” Spike dashed down the hallway filled with unlocked lockers before turning right and finding the room number he needed. Merely seconds after he entered, the bell rang, signaling the beginning of school.

With several students shocked to see a dragon of all things suddenly barging into the room, it took a couple seconds before the teacher also entered the room.

“Ah, Mr. Rainbow Spike. I’ve heard great things about your intellectual prowess. I am glad you have decided to choose my class.”

“Yeah, yeah, no problem…” Spike panted, before he felt a sudden unpleasantness in his stomach. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Spike dived to the nearest trashcan he could find before throwing up breakfast inside.

“Oh, it will be fine, Rainbow Spike. I know how hard it is to stomach the first day of school as well. Why, when I was your age…”

Spike wished he could die.

Author's Notes:

Ya'know, I'm starting to see a trend here on my stories.

I always seem to have half-assed updates during school time.

This is why you don't take AP classes, kids.

Anyways, yadda yadda yadda, sorry for long wait on bad chapter, I blame school and life and everything, the works.

On the bright side I have another project coming up soon that'll be a little more dramatic and a bit different in the way how usual HiEs go.

Let me know what you hate most about this chapter.

Oh, and this is the end of the prologue arc. Next time when we come back, we'll be seeing the Rainbow duo fresh out of Flight school, with memories both good and bad.

Mostly bad.

Enough for them to move out of Cloudsdale and into Ponyville.