The Life and Times of a West Hoof Cadet

Nimbus seemed to recover from Mom's interrogation in record time and was feverishly babbling about the experience, one that I had enjoyed on many occasions.

“And the most amazing thing is that she didn't do a single thing. She just laid there and stared at me. Normally, that wouldn't make me say anything but I just got the feeling that she already knew everything about me and she was just waiting for me to say it. It wasn't even an intimidating stare, just the stare of somepony who knew she had all the time she needed to get what she wanted out of you. Every time I tried to stop or lie, she just continued to stare at me until I broke and told her more.

“Then, she knew when the story was over. I didn't have to say anything, she just knew. She got up and started pushing me towards your bedroom. Your mom is the most amazing mare I have ever met.”

“Yeah, she's pretty neat, how she can get inside your head without having to do anything. Aunt Draft,” I called out, waving a wing for her attention. Mom's twin sister, Draft Kicker, had been quite pregnant when I had last seen her, just before I left for West Hoof. Now, she was slim and muscular without the massive foal-barrel of a pregnant mare.

I trotted over with Nimbus moving behind. Aunt Draft smiled before turning and nuzzling something tucked away on her back. I got a peek at the incredibly adorable yellow fuzzball that was Aunt Draft's foal. I gasped, “Is this her?”

Aunt Draft giggled, “Yes. This is Rayne, your new cousin.”

The tiny pegasus shifted slightly and gave a huge yawn. She blinked and looked up at Nim and I, her muzzle splitting into a huge grin.

“Awww,” I cooed. “Hi, sweetheart. Oh, you're just too precious.”

“Hi, sugar. Hi there.” Nimbus said in a sing-song voice.

She and I spent a few minutes more fawning over Rayne before moving on across the compound. There was a large area, far away from the houses, where Kicker unicorns practiced their magic. The area was wide and open with targets for offensive spells against the far wall, which was reenforced to withstand wild blasts. The field was mostly vacant save Tor and Ty, who were playing with one of the target dummies.

“What are those two doing?” Nimbus asked in a long-suffering voice.

“Dunno. They're up to something bad, though.”

“What makes you say that?”

“They're stallions, it's in their nature.”

With a loud whoop, both Tor and Ty fled from the dummy, which detonated a moment later. The blast launched the dummy into the air. The wood flipped end over end before smashing against the ground.

The noise startled both Nimbus and I and echoed throughout the compound. In the distance, a foal began to scream and I hoped those two idiots hadn't disturbed Rayne.

“Whoa,” Nim said.

“How did you two get your hooves on explosives?” I bellowed as I charged toward them. “How dare you steal explosives from West Hoof's armory.”

“What are you talking about, Windy? Ty and I made those.”

I looked at the crater and splinters that had once been a training dummy, “You made that?”

“And a few others. We hid them around the compound but we weren't sure they would still work.”

“And what would possess you to detonate one of these explosives on the compound in the middle of Canterlot?”

Tor shrugged, “Why not?”

“Why not?” I made a show of tapping my chin with a hoof, “Well, let's see, aside from detonating an explosive in the middle of the Equestrian seat of government, you scared the willies out of every single pony in earshot and probably terrified the life out of poor little Raynie.”

“Who's Raynie?”

“Aunt Draft's daughter. Oh, by the way, once Mom hears about this, and she will hear about it, she is going to skin the both of you alive.”

Ty's ears lowered, “I'm not her foal.”

I grinned, “That's never stopped her before.”

“Wind, please, ya gotta cover for us.”

“What's in it for me?”

Tor raced to think an offer, “I'll do all of your assignments for the rest of term, for the rest of the year, for the rest of your time at West Hoof.”

I made another show of looking about, pretending to consider his offer. “Umm...no.”

“Wind, c'mon!” Tor actually whined, “Name your price!”

“My price? Justice!”

“Speaking of the mare.” Nimbus announced.

I turned in time to see Mom trotting across the field towards us and never before had I seen her so angry. She marched up to me, a fiery glare in her eyes. Of course she would come to me. I was the older sister, the good filly, Mother-may-I and all that. I shook my head and pointed at the Devastating Duo to my right.

Mom gave a single nod, marched over to Tor, and gave a sigh, patiently waiting for whatever excuse he could cook up.

He took a breath, opened his mouth, and hesitated. “I got nothing.”

Mom nodded and gripped his ear in her mouth.

“Owowowowowowowow,” Tor whined as he was led away, Ty following quietly in his wake.

Nim didn't need to see Tor crying like a foal when Mom paddled his plot. I may be the mean older sister but I'm by no means a sadist. Besides, I was trying to get him and Nimbus together and her seeing him in a moment of shame would be detrimental to that.

I took the lead again as Nimbus and I followed the sounds of screaming. I was correct in assuming that it was Rayne, who had a death-grip on Aunt Draft while she screamed her little lungs out.

“What in the name of Celestia was that?” She cried, working through her own irritation to soothe her foal.

“Tor and one of his buddies being idiots.” I told her, “Don't worry, Mom's got him.” I leaned down and nuzzled Rayne. “Did mean ol' Tor scare you with his big boom? I sorry. You're okay, though, and Auntie Drift's gonna take care of it.”

The foal's screams quieted to moans and sobs as I continued to nuzzle her. Eventually, she rested her head against Draft's neck and dozed off.

“Thank you, Wind. You're a miracle-worker. I have been trying to calm her down since that blast but she wasn't responding to anything. I tell you, your talent should have been foal-rearing.”

“In a way, it kind of is. She was afraid and she needed somepony to tell her it's all okay.” I gave her another nuzzle. “See? All better.”

With that crisis over, Nim and I wandered over to the sparring ground. She had boasted, time and again, of her prowess with a wingblade but I had never had the opportunity to see her in action. I donned my training blades and my armor and did a few light warm-up exercises while I waited for Nim to join me.

“Do you know what the difference is between you and me?”

“What's that?” I asked as I turned around.

Nimbus struck a pose in three-quarter profile, lifting her left foreleg, spreading her wings, and proudly displaying her borrowed Kicker-red armor. “I make this look good.”

I chuckled and shook my head as I spread my wings. “Are you going to preen or fight?”

“Have you noticed my cutie mark? I was born for wingblade combat.”

“Ponies are born for many things.” I replied, coolly. “That doesn't mean they do those things well.”

Nimbus' grin seemed slightly demented as she crouched into a defensive posture and stretched her wings to their full length, “Then stop your chatter and show me some of that legendary Kicker combat training.”

I reared up and charged, slinging left and right as Nimbus moved to block me. I raised my left wing and brought it down towards a strike point on her head. She blocked me with her left.

Excellent.

I had sought to surprise her with a right wing to the flank but it was she who surprised me by trapping that wing under a hind hoof. I twisted and came down on my back, exposing my belly. This would have been a terrible idea but it was a tactic I knew how to pull. I immediately wrapped my legs around Nim's body and pressed my body to hers.

“Windy, if you wanted to do this, you just had to ask. We didn't need to go through this dance.”

My gambit had worked. Distracted, she lowered her wings slightly.

I beat her head, scoring several points. She managed to pry me from around her barrel and fling me a few feet. I rolled to my hooves and spun to face her. With some distance between us, we paused to reassess the situation. Both of us panted as we stared each other down.

I shot into the air while Nimbus stood and watched. I straightened my legs and plummeted. This was the same tactic I had used against Rapid Strike but it wouldn't harm Nimbus nearly as much. Kicker armor was top-quality stuff.

I looked down and checked my position. Moments before I struck, Nimbus vanished. She just disappeared.

I landed and scanned for her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I pushed myself up on my hind legs, thinking that might give me a better vantage point.

I felt a pair of hooves strike my back with enough force to send me, muzzle-first, into the grass. A trickle of blood leaked from my left nostril but that was the worst injury. My armor had absorbed the worst of the blow without any damage. I reflexively spread my wings as I pushed myself back up and Nim took this opportunity for a double-strike along both of my patagium. My vision darkened at the edges. Shadow's ghost, that hurt.

I pulled my wings in close and forced myself up on shaky legs. Nimbus was really doing some damage, but I was a Kicker and I could fight better. I opened my wings again and waited, acting distracted and in pain.

She took the opening I gave her, moving well within striking distance. I reared up and bucked, catching her in her soft stomach and hearing the satisfying clang of my hooves striking home against the plate armor.

Given our recent injuries, which still weren't completely healed, we probably shouldn't have been training this hard, but I had reached my wit's end with Nimbus and her constant braying of how well she was able to fight with a wingblade. I wanted to beat her at her own game.

I spun and charged, watching her carefully to make certain she didn't vanish again. She did nothing but stand there with that damn superior smile of hers.

“I'm coming to get you, Nimbus Gust!” I roared as I lowered my head.

Nimbus had other plans. She ducked beneath me, spread her wings, and took off. She had always been one of the fastest and most powerful fliers at the academy and here I was, seeing it first-hand.

Before I could react, Nimbus had begun her descent. Because I was riding her backwards, I couldn't open my wings and simply glide off of her. The drag of the wind against my wings would likely tear out a few primaries and secondaries.

I stood and started to turn around, precariously balanced atop her plot. Thank Celestia, nopony was watching us or they would have died laughing. We must have been quite a sight.

Moments before impacting the ground, Nimbus leveled-out and rolled, dumping me from my perch. My momentum carried my curled-up body halfway across the compound before I slid to a halt. Nimbus landed atop me and pressed her hoof to my cheek, painfully pinning my head to the ground.

She leaned close and whispered in my ear, “I win.”

Damn, she had.

x----x

After showering, I met Nimbus in Mom's study for a bit of a talk. When I arrived, the mare was curled up on the floor, quietly preening. I've often heard it said, usually by Unicorns and Earth ponies, that a Pegasus' preening was for aesthetics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Preening was quite necessary to keep our wings and feathers clean and free of parasites. It worked to reaffirm social and familial bonds and preening circles of pegasi, cleaning each others wings, were a common site in pegasi clans.

Nimbus strained to reach a particularly troublesome spot near the wing joint and wasn't having much success.

“Here,” I said, “let me.”

I sat down behind her and took her feathers in my mouth, slowly working my teeth along each one. As I worked, Nimbus told me about her sister.

“She's incredibly intelligent. I said she was cunning before, but that was an understatement. She's charismatic and manipulative. If she can't talk you into doing things her way, she has other means at her disposal and she's not shy about using them. If your not careful, she'll have you eating out of her hoof within an hour of meeting her.”

I spat a bit of dust into the waste bin, “She's that good?”

“She's better than good. She can make anypony do anything she wants.”

I paused in my work. “So, she has a lot of friends?”

“She runs with a group of ponies that seem a little...off. A little to the left, please. Anyways, these ponies have always scared my parents, so much so that they forbade Skyy from seeing them. So, what does she do? She starts sneaking out to see them.”

“What can you tell me about these friends of hers?”

“Not much. They always spoke very quietly. I know, talk about cliched, but it was enough to spook some ponies. Skyy would disappear for days at a time to go and be with them. For a long time, we didn't see them, but then they showed up right before I left for West Hoof.”

“They have any sort of distinctive markings?”

“Nothing really. They were kind of big and scary but Skyy was the scariest one. Not because she was adept at combat, but because the others would do anything she said without hesitation.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” I replied, finishing off the last of her feathers. She had done a pretty decent job by herself, but this was a task best suited for another Pegasus. “All done.”

Nimbus stretched her wings and turned to me. “Thanks. Now, let me do you.”

I blinked, “Pardon?”

“I said, let me preen your wings. Sweet Celestia, Windy, keep acting like that and I might start thinking you want me to buck you. C'mon now, about face. Tit for tat and all of that.”

I turned around and spread my wings, allowing her to begin her work.

“Tell me about your family. What's it like growing up in the world-famous Kicker clan?”

“Well,” I began, “we start with combat training pretty early on. Usually, it's the parents who train the foals but, sometimes, there are specialized instructors that do the teaching. As a clan, we've become pretty self-reliant with everything from cooks to smiths to educators but, as the family saying goes, 'Every Kicker a Guardspony'.”

“So all of you are trained for combat?”

“Some more than others. If a pony's special talent is pastry-making, obviously we're not going to put them on the front. They stay here, in the safety of the compound, making pastries. Those who's talents lie in medicine or any form of combat, they are encouraged to attend West Hoof and become a career Guardspony.”

“Only encouraged?”

“Well, it's not like we're going to put a spear to their heads. The decision ultimately lies with them, but we'd rather not see all of that training go to waste. What do you think of my brother?”

That's it, Wind. Go for subtlety. I did say I sucked at matchmaking, right?

Nimbus leaned over my withers to look me in the eye. “What?”

“My brother, Tor. The pony who's been following you around like some lovesick puppy. What do you think of him?”

She shrugged and returned to her work. “He's sweet.”

I winced. “Already struck out, hasn't he?”

“Not necessarily. Even at my age, I've been around the block a few times with more than a few block-heads. I'm starting to think that 'sweet' might be enough. He's pretty cute...and attentive,” she added as an afterthought. “While we were recuperating, he was always there every time I was out, rushing to my side if he thought I so much as stubbed a hoof.”

“You know he likes you.”

“C'mon, Wind. Give me a little credit. I'm not completely oblivious.”

“Well...?”

“Well, what?”

“What do you think?”

Nimbus was silent for a second before replying, “I think I like him too.”

Right about then, the subject of our conversation poked his head in the door. “Nim? Wind? It's time to eat.”

“We'll be right there.” I replied. Then, with a grin on my face, I asked, “How's your plot?”

The glare he shot me was downright evil as he flattened his ears and ducked his head. “Sore,” he snapped before disappearing.

“Wow,” Nimbus said, “If looks could kill...”