Chapter 3 - The Mystic Black and Blue

          Our days weren’t numbered from the start. Our course through the Academy was just a simple breeze to start with. Well, for me it was, anyway. Each day we would get up in the morning, go to the mess hall for breakfast, hang around, attend theory and practical exercises and run through a couple of tests and courses, get lunch, hang around some more, train, eat dinner and go to our cabins to either sleep or screw around for the night.

     It’s a continuous process of repetition, so that we, as potential Wonderbolts, can get relatively used to the repetitive processes Wonderbolts go through. It’s not a mentally healthy way of implication, but it works nevertheless. Of course, with this sort of process, you need some helping hands along the way.

     I became best friends with the two almost immediately. Rainbow Dash was such a pompous and cheerful character with a somewhat charismatic approach to people, yet at the same time presents herself as the “axis of awesome”, as she would always say to me! She and I had a mutual friendship; we would always look out for each other, sort of like best buds. Thunderlane was a slower character, but a great guy to hang around with nonetheless! He and I always worked well together, whether it be running a course as a team or competing against each other, we would always have a ball! I think, in a sense, we were, from the beginning, more than just best buds!

     Both Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane come from Ponyville, so they’ve known each other as well for many years, and they actually do get along with each other; occasionally. Thunderlane himself wasn’t the one to talk about Rainbow Dash in great detail. She and he are friends-with-a-catch. His persistence in the art of both laziness and manipulation conflict with Rainbow Dash’s imperialist attitudes and lack of tolerance for the kind of behavior Thunderlane presents whenever they try to co-operate with each other. When you present the two with the same problem, Rainbow Dash will seek to find the most effective and efficient way to deal with it, while Thunderlane would just find an easy way out, or, of course, get Rainbow Dash to solve it!

     Don’t get me wrong, they’re actually very good friends, sort of like something out of a cartoon; they hate each other, but they don’t actually hate each other! It’s always funny to watch the two sometimes, whenever they see problems. The entertainment value in seeing the two in conflict with each other is simply gold, but it’s always good to see Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane just chilling out with each other and some other friends including myself.

     When it’s the three of us, it was, indeed, somewhat of a head-turner in the Academy of an afternoon. We were undoubtedly the best of friends. Thunderlane would always show a great deal of care and respect for me, and I would show that same affection back. Rainbow Dash would always look out for me, and I would always be a spectator to the countless tricks and stunts that she would pull off during afternoon training sessions. I supported her all the way, even if it meant that Thunderlane and I would be practically the only ponies in the stand watching! I would always try to mimic her moves, but I would always stuff up!

     “You’ll be as good as me someday, don’t you worry!” she would always say to me.

     We would always go out to the Academy Grounds and go play a match or two of football against other ponies down at the park together. Mind you, along with the other ponies in our team, we were practically unbeatable. I was very good at catching, mainly because I had a more aware mind of my special surroundings and the depth of field in front of me than anyone else. I very rarely dropped a ball in any game. That’s why I would always be the first to run out to gain those extra yards or go for a catch past the touchdown line. Rainbow Dash was all for the speed, so when it’s decided that we should run with the ball instead, we just give it to her and see how the other team copes with that. Faster than a speeding bullet, she is responsible for much more than just 20% of the touchdowns we’ve scored in our amateur careers! Not at the very least of course, Thunderlane is always our Quarterback. He’s got the entire team mapped out in his head and every move we and the others make. He is always autonomously aware of his entire surroundings. He is, ultimately, the one who decides how we should play next within a justified space of time from the point where the ball lands in his hooves to initiate the play to the split second after he puts his left leg comfortably into the cloud behind him. Then he carries that plan out immediately.

     Football wasn’t the only thing the three of us were good at though, obviously. We were also A-grade players in practically every sport with teams of three or more players! The three of us were good at hitting a ball with a metal stick, aiming a ball at a hoop and plucking chips into a box, but I guess the appeal for football was more prominent considering everyone knew how to play, and were playing it, whereas Baseball and Basketball as such was more of a foreign thing. Baseball was more of a sport they would play in Manehattan if anything, and the only ponies I know that play Hockey with a passion are the stallions from Vanhoover. Thunderlane said he had a mare friend from Vanhoover at the Academy, but I never got to see her…

     Apart from all the physical stuff we do together, our friendship flew like a traveler going across the world. You never knew what to expect next!

     We were the trio that would never part, and would always stick together until the very end. We even promised to each other that we’d be a flying trio, should all three of us make it into the Wonderbolts; putting it into our own words at the time, of course, when all three of us become Wonderbolts. Confidence is everything, after all!

The Mystic Black and Blue; a name I will always remember the two by. Two figures that I never knew before had become the two ponies I trusted the most. Looking back on it now, I don’t know whether it was the fact that I never had a friend like them or the fact that their friends respectively were out of touch from them that brought us together like pieces of a larger puzzle. I started to question myself sometimes. Who are the Mystic Black and Blue?

     Who was Rainbow Dash? I remembered the day we met, she told me that life was weighing her down. She hadn’t seen her friends from Ponyville for a while, and she’s been separated a far distance from them.

“All my friends are a very busy in their own lives that I haven’t been able to talk to anyone of them recently. It’s been sorta weighing me down a bit, if you know what I mean. It… just seems hard since I’ve known and hung out with them for a while now, and I’ve never been this far apart.”

     I still didn’t know what to make of it, really. I’d be pondering it night and day without even asking. She was such a cheerful and passionate life-rider, but was there a side to Rainbow Dash I didn’t know? Is there a real Rainbow Dash hiding behind the veil of the pompous and consequential fake Rainbow dash she made to please herself? Maybe that’s how we became friends so instantaneously? The fact that she didn’t have anyone else besides Rainbow Dash in this Academy? Gosh, it was a brainstorm, but at my more diligent times, I would just shun it off as one of my absurdist mind-races that I would occasionally go off into, but then I would occasionally be proven otherwise…

     Other than Thunderlane and I, who else did she have? Sure, in our group we had other people that we train with, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all friends. Some of us forget each other’s names sometimes! I would usually enter the mess hall of a lunchtime and see Rainbow Dash sitting by herself on one of the many tables the spacious and sometimes surprisingly over-crowded mess hall had to offer. Ponies would just pass by her every minute without even a look, just a casual walk past, not dilly-dallying in some other pony’s business of eating a sandwich or two. She didn’t even have food on the table sometimes, and it wasn’t because the line was too long. She would always seem sad and spaced-out within herself before she spots me. When she does, however, she immediately switches into a state of utter happiness, like someone was secretly operating her mood switch under the table!

     It seemed like friends were really important to Rainbow Dash, because, for some reason, she just doesn’t function without them, and it worried me sometimes, like, really worried me. Was Rainbow Dash feeling okay? I never asked her that question though, and ever since I graduated from the Academy, it’s been something I deeply regret. I should’ve asked, but I didn’t. Dash’s persistence on making it a whole big secret always threw me off-guard, and I would always keep forgetting that she may or may not have life problems. She seemed pretty okay with it all, but that was just probably her acting skills if anything!

     Then there’s Thunderlane. Who was the stallion behind the Black coat? He was probably suffering the same problem as Rainbow Dash, or at least those were my initial thoughts, but this couldn’t be true; he keeps getting letters from anonymous someponies every day! He obviously had somepony following him, although it obviously wasn’t letters from just one pony.

“Who are the letters from?”

    “Oh, some ponies…”

     He said it with guilt as well, but what did he have to be guilty about? Who were these “some ponies”, and how come I never seen them around? Thunderlane’s usually just around Rainbow Dash and I, and if not, serving as the bartender of an evening down at the cabin house’s lobby. Yeah, I forgot to mention earlier that Thunderlane volunteers as a bartender at this little bar next to the help desk in the cabin house’s unnecessarily huge and grand entrance. It was a wood-grain bar like any other, and I guess it fit well in a wood-grain house as well! The bar was there to interest ponies coming home to their cabins to a beverage. They had all the necessary liquids there: Water, Soda, Root Beer, imported Apple Cider and for those of eligible age like Thunderlane and I, clean and polished Beer, Rum and Whiskey! However, I don’t think a lot of ponies drank the alcoholic stuff for good reason, but Thunderlane did occasionally, just for kicks! He didn’t do anything more than two or three glasses of Beer. He wasn’t the sort of guy to get drunk off the stuff.

     The thing was, however, that a lot of mares besides us two would talk to Thunderlane, especially at that bar. I usually hung around in the lobby, sitting at one of the benches on the side of the room, so I would usually witness it all unfold. Sometimes Thunderlane would engage in long conversations with them and exchange witty remarks, like they know Thunderlane every well, but probably only just know him because he’s that charming and sexy stallion who serves drinks at the bar. However, some of the time, he would ignore these mares, sometimes even completely, after some time.

     I remember a tango between Thunderlane and a specific somepony once. I’m guessing the two had met before at once stage, because they seemed to relate so well from day one. She had a white coat and an over-arching mane, like the one stereotypical geeks would have, coloured in streams of green and pink. Blossomforth I think her name was! The two would always talk to each other at the bar. Talking like best buds, the two would always ask and listen to each other, inquiring about their day and occasionally flirting with one another as well! I’m sure “best buds” isn’t the appropriate wording for this situation! Sorry!

     Anyway, Thunderlane and Blossomforth were always in touch with each other at that bar; Blossomforth loved to finish the day with Orange Soda, so Thunderlane would serve her some, even before she managed to reach the bar upon entrance to the building! She never drank anything else from the bar, and Thunderlane knew this. She would take a seat at one end of the bar, and Thunderlane would slide the Soda across the table from the other side like a star in one of those action movies.

     He would also, as a joke, toss up a really bad pick-up line for Blossomforth just to provoke a reaction out of her, and it was pretty funny sometimes. I remember him saying to her once:

    “Your father must have been a thief, because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes”

     “No, actually he is a cop and I think I saw your mug on his most-wanted list.” She came back with.

     I also remember:

     “If you're feeling down, can I feel you up?”

     “Only if you want my hoof to make contact with your muzzle.”

     The two would laugh it off, but there was this complex in his voice when executing those cheesy lines of his that he really did want to get inside Blossomforth somehow, and it didn’t seem like she was resisting either. This happened to all the mares he encountered and grew fond of. I was beginning to suspect that he was some sort of mare-hunter. You know, one of those guys; the type of stallion that’s out there looking for mares to make that “connection with”. But he never invited any mare to his room, not even Blossomforth, which was strange, given the two’s very obvious lust for each other. I was confused about Thunderlane given this fact. Maybe he doesn’t really want to do it with all these mares, but just wants to have a strong relationship with somepony. Maybe he was looking for that somepony? If he was, however, Blossomforth should’ve been it. They had to be, but somehow it wasn’t to be, unfortunately.

     One random day, Thunderlane just stopped being social with Blossomforth for some odd and very mysterious reason. Sure, he still served her drink early, but Thunderlane was just ignoring her. She continued to try to talk to her, this time in a very romantic tone for another unknown reason, but even then, Thunderlane wasn’t interested. It came so suddenly, that even I was shocked! What happened between them that made Thunderlane want to ignore her and Blossomforth wanting more from him?

     The sad thing was, however, that after Blossomforth gave up on Thunderlane and just went past the bar every time she walked in, giving him the awkward look, in came another mare that he would make a lofty relationship with and then fall apart.

     The cycle seemed to repeat over and over and over again. It came to the point that a concernable number of mares were walking past the bar giving Thunderlane the look, and each time he was given the look, he expressed a great deal of guilt in his face. The same guilt he expressed when I asked him about those letters. Were these letters from these “some ponies” from his former lovers? If they are, that’s a lot of mares he’s disappointed.

     Was this Thunderlane’s problem; the fact that he can’t have a stable, happy relationship with a mare? Was the burden of having so many former mare-friends in his life weighing him down? I honestly didn’t know what I was thinking at the time. I became so convinced that this was fact and felt so sorry for Thunderlane that I felt like I needed to help him in the best possible way.

     How, you ask? Did I ask about his problems? Did I give him helpful advice? Did I try to get him out of this cycle?

     Looking back on it all, these were really plausible things to do. But the really insane fact was that I didn’t do any of the above. What did I do, you ask? I did something that changed both Thunderlane’s life and my life forever.

     I walked up to the bar and asked for a glass of Root Beer. Because the matter of fact was,

     I liked Thunderlane a bit.