'So, here I am in Ponyville. I've already dropped my meager amount of luggage at Rarity's, and had lunch. I've got literally nothing to do for the whole afternoon. Let's see, testing, testing, what can I test? Testestest. Experiments. I feel like Glados. Space Core is best core. Hmm...'

"Hey! Rainbow Dash!" At hearing my shout, the pegasus was rudely awoken from her slumber. She rolled off her nap cloud and glided down to where I was standing in the market below. Looks like I got lucky. I didn't even know she was there. I just shouted randomly... No, that wasn't the test, though it was convenient... Gotta remember to experiment with that later.

"Uugh, what? I was in the middle of a nap." She complained.

"I've thought of something terrible."

"Yeah? What?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"For as long as I've known you, I've never actually seen a sonic rainboom..." I explained. "I just had a horrible thought that perhaps with your naps all the time, you're losing your edge, and can't do them anymore."

"Oooh no. I'm not falling for that. Twilight told me to be on the lookout for your tricks. What is it you REALLY want?" Damn, manipulation didn't work.

"I just really wanna see it okay?" She glared at me. "FINE. I want to see a sonic rainboom so I can analyze the wind patterns that form so I can improve my own flying through aeromantic pressure synthesis."

"All I caught from that was 'See a rainboom' and 'improve my own flying'. Egghead. Sure, why not."

"I'll need to see it from different angles, so I'll be up there with you for a couple of them, but for the first one, I'll see it from the ground. Also, can you do it like the first time you did it? I need to see how the air pressure builds up around you.."

"Won't that be kinda hard to see?... And how do you know how I did it the first time?" She asked. In response, I just pointed at my face. "Right... alien thing, and you've got eagle eyes. Okay weirdo."

She flew up high into the air, then allowed herself to plummet, pumping her wings to gain the necessary speed before breaking the sound barrier, letting off a grand blast of rainbow colours, before pulling up and arcing her multi-hued trail across the sky, while I hastily drew the important points in my notebook.

"Alright, so, now what?" She asked.

"Actually, I got all I needed from that one run, and I've come across some very interesting points." I replied.

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Here, I'll show you."

I showed her the book, with two drawings. One, a parabola, and the other, the v of the mach cone. Instead of a pony, I just wrote 'RD' inside two parallel lines. I had labeled them 'figure 1' and 'figure 2'.

"RD?"

"Rainbow Dash... I can't draw okay? Schematics? Yeah. Designs? Sure! Anything not able to be measured and put on a chart? Nope. No artistic talent AT ALL. Can't even draw a proper stick pony. Anyways, see the first picture? The air pressure in front of you builds up, and the light from the sun shines off it, which makes the outline visible. It's a nice, round arc. This second one, the v shape, is right before you make the sonic rainboom. The thing I've noticed is that the timing between the two is too close together."

"What do you mean?"

"As your speed increases, the angle of the cone will become sharper, right till you break through it. The faster an object is moving, the more force is required to make it accelerate, but the air pressure goes from an arc to a v in nearly an instant."

"So?" Clearly, the ONLY books she reads are Daring Do and possibly others in the adventure genre. Nothing scientific at all.

"Okay, so, there's only two ways what happened here is possible. The first is that right before you break the sound barrier, you accelerate dramatically. I know you can do that NOW, but what about the first time you tried it? The faster you go, the higher the pressure of the air in front of you, making it exponentially more difficult to speed up." I explained.

"I still don't get it."

"What I'm saying is, when you first tried doing it, you didn't have the strength to accelerate that quickly. You couldn't bring yourself closer to the sound barrier... so you brought the sound barrier closer to you."

"What do you mean?" She asked, confused.

"Pegasi, and griffins, can manipulate the weather. Which means we can control air currents. What I'm saying is, when you do a sonic rainboom, at least when you first started doing them, you unconsciously used your natural pegasus magic to increase the air density around you. This gave your wings more to push on, decreased the drag behind you, and increased the density of the air pocket in front of you. Having a higher density, it would take longer to pass around you, meaning it was easier to 'burst the bubble'. This is why the change between these two shapes is so quick, instead of being gradual, as it would be without air manipulation."

"Are you saying that when I do a sonic rainboom, I'm not flying faster than sound?"

"Oh, you definitely are, once you've actually DONE the boom, since the resistance lowers once you're past it. And, since your magic is keeping the air close, the dense pocket winds up behind you, which lowers drag even more. That's why as soon as you break the barrier, you rocket forwards." I finished my explanation. "It's still just a theory, since I'm not entirely sure how physics work here, but it makes sense given the information I've gathered."

"... and you got that, from watching me do a rainboom, once?" She looked at me in disbelief.

"To be fair, I've actually been practicing with air density for about a year now, I just needed to see the rainboom to make it all work out. I think I can use this. Thank you, you've been a big help."

Her look of disbelief only became greater, which was then followed by a sly smile.

"Oh? Good, cuz you're helping on cloud duty the rest of the week. You can start with the clouds over Ponyville."

"... You mean the ones you were just napping on? You were supposed to have gotten rid of those already, weren't you?"

"You mean the clouds YOU were supposed to have gotten rid of already." She retorted.

"..." I replied.

"... I don't need you to lecture me about procrastination. I'm gonna go take a nap. Have these clouds gone in an hour." With that, she grabbed the cloud she had been sleeping on and flew off with it towards Sweet Apple Acres for some peace and quiet.

"Oh Rainbow... Well, it's not like I had anything better to do... Might not wanna try that out yet, not till I've had some practice with it. Looks like I'm doing this the old fashioned way."

I flew off towards the Acres so I could continue my nap in peace. I mean, who does that guy think he is? Wake up and do a rainboom right away? I mean, I could pull it off cuz I'm awesome, but still. Parking my cloud above the farm, I pulled out my blanket, (since it was not quite spring yet and still a little chilly) and laid down to resume my important task.

"Hey Rainbow!" I heard Applejack's voice call from below. Muttering a quick curse at my luck, I slowly circled down to meet her.

"What's up AJ?"

"Y'all are. You know what ah said 'bout napping above mah farm." She looked at me sternly, then relaxed. "I don't mind it right now on accounta it not bein season an all though. I was jus wonderin what y'all were doin round these parts. I thought ya had cloud duty up in town?" She questioned.

"Yeah... I got Griffin to do it."

"How'd ya manage that?"

"He asked to see my rainboom so he could go all egghead on it and fly better. I roped him into it after. I feel kinda bad about it..." Thinking back, I didn't really give him a choice. I just kinda told him to do it. Ah ponyfeathers, I should have made a deal with him beforehoof. He wouldn't just run off and leave it would he? I mean, it's my hide on the line if the job doesn't get done.

"Ah, well don't. Maybe ya'll can teach that lyin, cheatin, no good scoundrel the value ah good, honest work... though you certainly didn't seem ta learn."

"... just remembered I said he had to HELP with the clouds, not do them all himself. Ah horseapples, he'll probably only do half, and leave the other half for me! Gotta go!" I swear, I'm not feeling guilty at all, and I'm not afraid he'll be mad I just dumped my job, which I'm PAID for, on him. He's not gonna want a cut of my paycheck is he? I'm already behind this month as is! As I turned to start racing back to town, I heard Applejack mutter absently.

"Ah swear, trouble follows that guy everywhere he goes."

"Screw the old fashioned way! This is awesome! Pew! Pew pew!... Did I really just say 'pew pew'?" Having thrown caution to the wind, something extremely difficult for me to do, I decided to put what I had learned to practical application with no testing beforehand. What I discovered is, most of my difficulty with my 'air cannon' spell was the compression factor. I didn't have enough magic available to compress the air sufficiently. And that was back when I had been drinking dragon blood. I decided to start with a very simple test. Fly up high, let myself fall with my wings open, and use the compression that naturally occurred in conjunction with my magic to make the air ball, much the opposite of how Rainbow Dash had unknowingly used her magic to increase her speed.

So, I took to forming one air ball under each wing, not nearly so dense as to cause a state change, (as I wasn't using the clepto ignis, perfectum circus, and reverti portions of the spell, nor the control of both my wings to condense it), was however dense enough that when I launched it with 'ramex' the resulting 'air bullet' was sufficient to pop clouds. Since the air balls would just about form on their own as I flew, it took surprisingly little to make a tiny bomb. Clouds don't take that much to pop, but already the gears were turning in my head on how I could weaponize this. So, I spent the last ten minutes shooting clouds out of the sky as target practice. Needless to say, it was freaking FUN! Aaaaaand it got the job done, just in time for Dash to come back.

"Oh, uh, you're... already done?" She looked around as we both hovered above the town square.

"Well, yeah. Killing clouds? No biggie. I mean, you're fast, but that doesn't make everyone else slow you know?"

"Wasn't it, you know, boring?"

"Nah. Oh, missed one!" I pointed my claw at it. "Ramex." Instead of popping and dissipating, it instead hissed and sagged, like a balloon with the air being slowly let out of it.

"... looks like I'm tapped out. Dang." I flew over to it and punched it manually, putting the poor nimbus out of it's misery. "There we go. Anyways, I'm going back to Rarity's to see if there's anything she needs doing. See ya tomorrow."

Author's Notes:

Bleeeugh. Welp, I got a chapter out. I went all Bill Nye on it. Between still trying to get out of my rut and work (I finally got a job yay! I have so much fun, the only downside is it takes away from pony time, but at the same time, I think I needed a break from constant pony to clear my head and make room for more pony, if that makes any sense, and the bracketed portion of these author's notes is gonna be bigger than the rest, because in here I can use run on sentences and woo hoo! I've been up for like, the past 18 hours straight, and I feel FANTASTIC! No caffeine required! *Spins around in circles till he falls over dizzy*) so I put a chapter out, and Griffin learned a new trick, and Dash is all wtf because of how fast he figured it out. (and Human, Shades of Grey updated a while ago, but, stupid fimfiction marked it as read when I HADN'T READ IT!, and no, I didn't click the mark as read button, so I had a bunch of chapters to catch up on, and I'M NOT ON DRUGS! Okay, maybe a bit of allergy medicine. But it says it's supposed to make you drowsy! Why am I not drowsy? Drowsy is a pokemon, isn't it? I don't know, my childhood was lame. I never had any fun! But it's all happy fun times now! *Thud, snore*